Mandy Morbid Interview, Hatter, Random Stupid Tax Table, Actual Play Report

There's still a lotta drama in the wake of 5th edition D&D being released with me credited as a consultant.

But since all the drama just makes my publisher money, it's kinda stupid and the people involved do seem to slowwwwwwwwly be realizing that. Anyway:

Here's the group getting shot for some magazine….

Heads clockwise from top left: Laney (halfling ranger and viridian knight, Connie--half elf thief, Charlotte Stokely--tiefling wizard, Mandy Morbid--tiefling cleric, make-up by LaneyBabes)

Here's an interview (with a lotta barelySFW pictures) that Mandy did. It's mostly about Mandy and her illness and how smart she is, not D&D, but maybe people wanna know, so there it is.

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We're rolling tomorrow, here's what happened last weekend:

The Hatter is a guy with a cylindrical hat in which he has a hare. An Al'Mi-Raj actually. It has a horn.

They are agents of The Pale King, and like all his agents, they collect his taxes.

Roll D20:

1. Leg tax--d100gp per leg.

2. Pie fee--d100gp per pie. If the party has no pie, 4d100 fine for pielessness.

3. Motion levy--d100gp per foot moved in tax agent's presence.

4. Picture toll--d100gp per image carried, tattooed on skin or inscribed or sewn on the party's clothes or armor.

5. Smile tithe--d100gp per happy party member.

6. Consumption tax--d100 per party member with tuberculosis, or anyone looking wan and withdrawn.

7. Smuggling toll--d100gp per non-local item.

8. Pulchritude fee--d100gp per point of charisma.

9. Confiscatory tax--d100gp per gp taken by party from any defeated foe.

10. Inherit ants tax--Pale agent smears honey on party members, demands d100gp per ant attracted.

11. Cap and hole gains tax--d100gp per piece of headgear in party and for every opening or hole in equipment or clothing carried by party.

12. Poor tax--d100gp for each member unable to produce d100gp.

13. Knuckle fee--d100 per knuckle.

14. Income tax--d100gp from each party member for entering any interior.

15. Sails tax--d100gp per party member able to pilot a watergoing vessel.

16. Proper tea tax--d100gp per party member unable to produce a decent cup of tea. The Tea Party strenuously objects to this tax.

17. Valuable adder tax--d100gp per party member carrying a useful snake.

18. Ex-eyes tax--d100gp per missing eye in party.

19. Pole tax-d100gp per pole arm.

20. Lie sensing fee-d100gp per time the party notices anyone lying.

I was hoping the Hatter and his weird watch would get to reign some chronal havoc on the party, but they played it cool and made a deal: in exchange for an "intercepted" message allegedly sent by the Colorless Queen, the party made 10,000gp. They then had to pay 10,000gp in consumption taxes (the Hatter had some big scales). However, since the payment was new it got them xp. Which, hey: Wonderland, ok?

They retrieved a rusty box with a face inside, an old lady used it to fix a skin condition Laney'd managed to acquire.

They spoke into the ear of a corpse to summon The Pseudoturtle and give it another copy of the "message".

Then some overland travel and an encounter with a Pale Rook: (think big hydrocephalic tweedledum) he demanded a Motion Levy.

The best part was:

Ok, last time Laney rolled a 1 to hit a vampire and hit Tyler, then the Mome Rath she was riding also rolled a 1 and knocked him out. The exact same 400-to-1 shot happened again today.

They kept trying to throw a shrinking cake into his mouth, it didn't work--but eventually he did get ganked. Mandy--playing a shrunken Alice--did take a lot of falling damage, being an inch tall and all.

Then it was off to Castle Poenari to seek the Red King and deliver him another false message from the Colorless Queen. One of his three red brides received them--and offered the players a mountain of gold to kill him for her.

I think she ended up sounding like the dwarf's whore (Shae?) from Game of Thrones.

GMing Principle

NPCs with who look players right in the eye and talk verrrrry slowly freak players out.

Anyway they were like about 45 minutes worth of uncomfortable with her, trying to figure out what to do and who to trust. 

After much argument, they remembered they were D&D PCs and so walked into the vampire king's palace where he waited with a bride, 4 vampire pawns and 6 vampire knights, said hello, negotiated with the doddering and beardo weirdo, then tried to kill him and take his stuff.

The wizard had a clever plan to trap the king in with them in a wall of force.

Ok, would-be-clever because the king just turned into a bat and flew right through it, leaving the party surrounded.

Which is perfect, really--it's so hard to engineer that "archvillain gets away" moment. And there we left it.

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For more pictures and stuff about the girls and the group, click the tag "players" for more actual play reports hit the "actual play" tag, for more about the unending 5E D&D consultant drama just scroll past the last few entries, for more random tables hot the tag "New Random Tables/Charts", for more about the RPG book the Hatter is from, hit "Eat Me"

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Nuptials, Jurisprudence, Deception, Diving, Dungeon, Green Swine, Friendly Fire

The Wedding

The party stumbled on a weaponized wedding between a great procession of Nephilidian Vampires and some vampire knights of the House of Hearts.

The PCs were in the company of the Nephildians and had a unicorn. There's only a single unicorn on  the Looking Glass continent of Voivodja and it was on the random encounter table 2 sessions ago and Connie has it now. And she's still a virgin after five years of rolls on the Carousing Table , so it likes her. And it's named Cornelia.

Everybody in both processions was kinda like Huh……those PCs have a unicorn.

But anyway there was a wedding duel. Vanessa and Laney temporarily played the Nephildians and Connie and Tyler played the Heart side. The Hearts won.

"Thank you!" said Tyler, "We're registered at Blood, Bath and Beyond"

An Arrest

The party retired from the field with the Nephilidians and went to camp with them.

We had a visiting player on hand named Vanessa--she decided to play a thief named Radon and steal the vicar's gospel tome (the gospel of slime).  I do like impulsive newbies.

Failed her roll, got caught. I started rolling up a preposterous Vornheim-style trial (two jaguars: one representing the accuser, one the defendant. The defendant's job is to convince the jury the accuser's jaguar did it.)

Some Player Skill

Now Vanessa had realized and pointed out that the Hearts would assume the PCs were allied with the Nephilidians they were warily sussing out.

And now Adam--playing Bryan the Wizard--used this notion to save her life and probably everyone else's.

"Wait," whispered the wizard to the Nephilidian queen, "'tis a ruse! We've arranged this all on purpose! The Hearts are no doubt spying on the camp as we speak, assuming we are allies--but now they'll think we're no more than common murderhobos, bent on trinket theft! We'll escape you--their spies will see. We can then sell your foes 'stolen' documents drafted by you especially to deceive them. Do you see?"

Damn, Adam.

I gave him a +4 on that Charisma roll. After all--the book the thief was trying to steal was basically useless and Adam thought that up very quickly. The roll went well. The party left with false papers (suggesting to all the Queen's enemies that they should converge at the Spires of Zombor) and did not have to fight 6d10 vampires.

Miniatures embellishments courtesy of Laney

Massacre Lake

All this intrigue left Laney cold. She'd missed a few sessions and this warring house thing was confusing.

What she wanted was for her skin to stop rotting (long story). Luckily, after the "escape"from the Nephildians, a wise old woman told Laney that she'd be free of the curse if she retrieved a rusted box from the bottom of Massacre Lake.

After about going 30 feet deep (which 4 or 5 10th and 11th level PCs took water inhalation damage diving through, so that was weirdly gritty), Massacre Lake gives way to open air again. And beneath that there's (shockingly) a dungeon. A ruin of the Red King's long-vanished continent-sized castle.

That's Charlotte's notebook down there.

The wolves aren't wolves, they're Mome Raths--a sort of vicious green boar that feeds on failure. Laney--being a ranger--managed to charm one and--being a halfling--started riding it around while slaying its fellows. The rest fell baconishly to fireball and scorching ray.

Laney had a good day in the beginning--leaping from that stone wall onto a hydrocephalic ogre (a Pale Rook, technically) and natural-20ing him over a ledge, among other things.

But then a door opened, revealing a bleak chapel. Connie knocked one Pale Bishop aside with deadly spores, Charlotte quickly counteracted a Blasphemous Frolic spell (Every foe within 50' is seized with the urge to desecrate, fondle, and vomit on the remains of any dead thing in sight… for a length of time equal to 10 seconds times the number of dead in the area) and Tyler, typically impetuous and unlucky, ran through and got level drained by the vampire cleric.

Vanessa tried to help and got likewise shanked. Laney ran in on hogback and rolled a one. I proposed the following fumbles:

d4

1-Hit yourself

2-Hit Tyler

3-Drop your weapon

4-Fall off your pig

2. Then the pig rolled to hit. And rolled the exact same thing. Tyler's down from friendly stabs and hog bites, level drained, unconscious and 2 hit points from death.

We cut it there.

Left: Almost dead, Right: Low on spells

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Oh No Devils And Elves

The girls were doing a D&D-themed photo shoot today. Laney did the special effects make-up--you may remember (Troy McClure voice) her as The Goth One Named Laney from such reality shows about special effects make-up people as Face-Off.

Here are some phone pics they took during…

Laney, Mandy

Charlotte. She wore a different shirt I think.

 

Connie got a fake nose. She looks way more like Sandy Duncan than usual.

Laney was able to come up with an awesome prosthesis to hide Mandy's horns and fangs

We roll tomorrow. Expecting like 8 people. Laney might still be wearing ears which'll be confusing.
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Porn Girls Talking Porn

There's an article with some porn girls talking about why they got into the business--here.

 I can vouch for Stoya, she's an elf druid...

...and Satine, she's an elf wizard.

The one in the middle with the purple eyebrows I don't know, maybe she's lying as part of an elaborate ruse. Seems unlikely.

If you have questions nobody asked in the article, you can ask in the comments and maybe I someone will answer them for you.
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The Next Drama Student Who Yells "Huzzah!" At Me Gets Ended

fairy, maiden, fairy, witch

LOS ANGELES REN FEST REPORT

-Throwing axes is fun. Throwing knives: also fun. Connie is pretty good at throwing axes.

-You're always hoping it'll be all Warhammer but then it ends up being kinda more Fleetwood Mac.

-Bard class is heavily over-represented.

-Also out in force: busty women of 40-55 years of age telling bawdy jokes. There is apparently a powerful powerful urge among southern Californian white women aged 40-55 years to wear boob-on-a-platter corsets and say stuff that would turn RPGnet green.

-Not one juggler.

-Also: no D&Dables in craft alley. Not anywhere. Like you could buy soap, tiny spring-powered wooden catapults, a wooden box shaped like a Japanese novel, but no dice or little castles. The closest they had was a few mangled mantlepiece pewter fairies, some notebooks which were bound so old-tymey they wouldn't lay flat. I remember the one in Maryland being different and having all kinds of antiquarian weirdoes but maybe I'm imagining things.

-The best thing was the least Renaissance thing:

The Champion Of Tiamat Diet

Deep within the jungles of Drownesia lies the Black Pyramid.

And deep within the Pyramid wallows The Viscid King:

A horrific, drooling slug-creature whose role is to anoint the Viridian Knight--choosing that Jade Champion of Tiamat from those who pass through the many trials and dangers of the Pyramid. (Or burn through them with acid they picked up in other peoples' games while looking for treasure. But, hey, the Jade Fang cult is pro- acid, greed and cheating.)

Anyway, this wasn't the first thing the players noticed about the Viscid King. The first thing they noticed was that he was a fat disgusting slug monster that had to die. This impression was possibly abetted by the fact that I represented him on the tabletop with a polish sausage left over from lunch:

(Likely also abetted by the fact that when Laney jabbed him with a poisoned rapier I represented his acidic vomit by spitting on the table. I'm awful.)

Anyway he got fighted with and died in the middle of crushsuffocating Mandy and David when Adam squeezed his lurid gut between a pair of mechanical doors.

Laney's halfling ranger took his crown and I put him in the fridge.

After further chicanery involving, among other things, a 5-foot-deep flood of emerald pythons falling from the ceiling and the demise of the ill-fated Bone Sorcerer the players bethought themselves to escape the dungeon by means of Shadow Step.

And while traversing the Plane of Shadow they met a Shadow Minister on the cobbled streets. He was alarmed that he could no longer feel the presence of the Viscid King--for only when the King finally chose a new Viridian Knight to lead the Armies of the Jade Fang would the Shadow Minister be released from his planar tether to the Black Pyramid.

"What has become of the Viscid King?" asked the Shadow Minister.

"I'm the new king!" Laney joked, brandishing his stolen crown.

"Excellent!" said the Shadow Minister and pointed to her.

"Laney," the GM said "you gain (roll roll) 53 pounds".

"WHAT THE FUCK!?!" said Laney

She continued to gain d100 pounds each round and her skin began to pale and speckle. She became ever more slugly. "It was just a joke!" Laney cried (failing a charisma roll)--but the Shadow Minister insisted there must be a replacement king. How else could a new Viridian Knight one day be found? How else could the Minister escape?

The players were frantic: Could the curse that tied the Minister to the Pyramid be lifted? Could he be killed? Could another king be found, could...

"I'll be the Viridian Knight!" said Laney.

…and in one stroke, the quiet ranger took up the panoply of war and the modest halfling took on a terrible burden.

…"though I don't know what that means."

The new, strange armor crept across her diminishing body.

"I just didn't want to be fat!" said Laney.

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Do Not Get Between Molly Crabapple And Stuff

Name: Molly Crabapple

Occupation: Artist, Writer

Character Name: Natasha

Class: Thief

Level: 1
Hit points: 2
First game: Thu Feb 13, 2014, Rappan Athuk.
Sessions played: 1
Sessions survived: 1
Conspicuous feat of heroism: Leaped on the back of the first ogre she saw, failed 2 backstabs in a row. Didn't get off until he was dead.
Natural 20s rolled against ogres blinded by sacks over their heads stuck in webs: 1
Quotes: "Do they have stuff we can steal?"
"Can I pickpocket them?
"If we kill them can we take their stuff?"
"Are the shiny things coins? Can we take them?"
"Copper? What's that good for? Is it worth anything?"
"Now that they're dead, do they have any stuff we can steal?"

What Happens In Vegas Is Technically Not RPG Related and Kinda NSFW...

…but whatever, that's where we all were, at the AVN awards, so I don't have any game to blog about. Here's pictures:

This is what Mandy wore on the red carpet

This is what I wore on the red carpet.

Just kidding, this is what I wore on the red carpet. R: Nina Hartley

Oh my god Vera you look like tattooed Scarlett Johansson!

Mandy, should we stay at this hot tub party?

"Yes, Zak, we should stay at this hot tub party."

Caroline Pierce (Smashy the Fighter), Max Hardcore (look him up. Wait, don't. Really, don't.)

Stoya (elf druid), Justine Joli (half-medusa wizard). They did not coordinate on the Mad Men style, that just happened.

Mandy (tiefling cleric), KK (str 18 druid, ex-barbarian)

Stokely (level 8 wizard) Mandy again

Front row center at the awards: Alexis Texas (in grey), Alektra Blue (in red), Skin Diamond (in goth red), Mandy. Note Fleshlight Zeppelin.

Talking to fans in a desperately overburdened wheelchair. My camera's doing its impression of a 70s British tabloid camera

Dave Navarro and Charlotte Stokely's butt

Home again. Connie (elf thief).

"How were the dogs, Connie?" "Oh, they were fine."

That's how you end a weekend.

Advice With Connie

So, remember this guy--Hex King--Archlich of Bellet Osc? Scourge of the Bleak Continent? He of The Unspeakable Crown?

 This is Connie:

 She killed him. Righteous Might, mace to the back. Not two days ago. A credit to 10th level thieves everywhere.

Also, she drew this unicorn...

Now you're thinking:

Holy fuck, Zak, this Connie sure is an incredible woman, but how can I put this raw force for justice and badassness to work for me?

Funny you should ask! For today on this lazy Thanksgiving Eve we here are introducing a new feature here on Playing D&D With Porn Stars....

ADVICE WITH CONNIE!

Here's a sample:

Dear Connie: Why am I up this early craving Orange Juice like a fucking madman. Is that some sort of allergy?
Sincerely,
W

 No, that is your body telling you what it NEEDS.  Did you smoke any pot tonight? I don't think you're allergic to anything, but you might want to start keeping orange juice in the fridge. Also, late night/early morning trips out into the world for things like OJ can be really fun and rewarding.
~Connie, M.D.

Yeah, I did smoke. And you're right, went the distance to find a 24-hour Kroger. It is cold. I like the music I have playing. I can see my breath singing. Will remember. Thanks.

So, here you go--ask anything about love, food, feelings, career, gaming, moving silently, using rope, whatever--- CONNIE WILL SOLVE ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS!

Place your questions in the comments....

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