Riding in Style

Players always want the craziest creatures to ride into battle. Like this purple spiky dragon unicorn dog thing. Does no one want a warhorse anymore? You could name it Concord! It would be heroic! But no, not even a hippogriff will do any more. It has to be something entirely bizarre. Kids these days. *curmudgeons*

Quotes from my lovely real life saturday game:

DM: In a puff of light, Tirah disappears

Rynasia: Magic gloves of body cavity searching +1

Attapacca: The short sider. (referring to the d4)

Attapacca: I'll flank with our porcupine of doom (referring to my rogue)
Looney: Did you just call me a porcupine?
Attapacca: Yes

Rynasia: They don't see the huge goliath in front of them.

Looney: But we will call you 'dancing errors'.

DM: You take 1d6 pizza damage.
Rynasia: And 5 ongoing grease damage as it passes through your system.

DM: The cup is evil.
Looney: It sings showtunes to him.

Rynasia: You're just difficult terrain now (referring to my recently deceased rogue)

DM: Are you chaotic?
Attapacca: I'm a bard.

Cecilia: Why can't ranged powers be a sigil opening up underneath them?
Looney: Because lasers are cool!
Cecilia: You're retarded.

Vissar: I call upon the powers of scootch (referring to one of his powers that forces movement)

Tirah: I use blades of ass-astral fire.

Vimac: I'm going to actify boundless endurance.

Rynasia: I mark him with my hunter's query.

Attapacca: Neener neener. (after an archer missed her)

DM: It's a magic nose goblin (referring to the mini he used to pick his nose)

Cecilia: Give me back my d20s.
Vissar: You may be sitting on them.
(She was. They were under the pad on her chair)

Cecilia: I don't think I can handle more.
DM: No one is going to hit you.
Looney: Suddenly tentacles pop out of the hull! They all attack Cecilia.

Vimac: Use the pseudodragon as a parachute

Cecilia: Aren't you weakened after using that power?
Looney: Yes. Half of zero is still zero.
(Hooray for shielding clerics)

(After Vissar's annoying death in the crow's nest where he became a wight and was contemplating how to attack us)
Vissar: Could I just float down?
DM: You're a wight.
Looney: You should fall out of the crow's nest headfirst.
*Vissar's mini falls out of the crow's nest*
Tirah: Like that!

See you all on Monday
LooneyDM

Player reactions to monsters

No humor from me today so you're stuck with a poster instead. Look at that creepy/cute smile and there's no way you can't convince me you don't fall into either group one or group b. I've had this issue with the gnolls in my campaign. I made the mistake of making them talk in child-like common. Now half my players think the gnolls are adorable. It amuses me as they're *supposed* to be killing these gnolls but they're talking to them to find out their life story. It's making me rewrite plots on the fly. Good DM muscle exercise.
Art by macgreen on deviant art
LooneyDM gone

Fantasy adventures distilled

You know you want to go into the dark and foreboding castle, you know you do! Especially if your DM manages to evoke a wondrous image in your head like this poster. Besides you're a horrible player if you don't take the obviously incredibly dangerous plot hookds. Ah, Killer GMs. Don't they just warm the cockles of your heart? It's a different attitude that I simply can't fathom. Don't expect much out of me this week due to my plans to devour most of a turkey and ridiculous amounts of other food.
This original art for this bright and cheery picture comes to us from dothaithanh on deviant art
LooneyDM

Tall Tales

There are big fish and then there are fish like the one in this picture. I'm sure the original is photoshopped. There aren't fish that big anywhere in the world. We've all known players like the guy by the fish. They simply won't stop telling you about their wicked awesome charcter. Aren't you impressed by their wicked awesome character? They can tell you again how wicked awesome the character was if you didn't get it the first three times. It's Friday! It's totally Friday. I didn't forget to post on Friday! Nope! Didn't happen at all!

LooneyDM

Make yourself MIGHTY!

Fear me for I am MIGHTY!

Make yourself mighty at Make Me Mighty

I've been playing with this all afternoon. It rocks. I believe this is perfect for an exalted style game or any game where you need an over the top name + title. I'm sure you won't find any random generator like this on your DM tools websites that generate names for you.

Looney

Tripping insanity through my head

You all will love my new campaign concept. It delves heavily into the surreal and I'll be doing my best to immerse you in the game. Let me repeat. You *will* love my new campaign concept. All those arms and windows are emblematic to me of how much a DM has to manage all the different frames of player perception. Yeah, I'm spouting bullshit. I went looking for the craziest picture I could find to create this poster.
This bizarre art comes to us from deviantart
LooneyDM

Barbarians

The Incredible Hulk is the patron saint of barbarians. He grants barbarians their strength increasing rage an nigh invulnerability. He may even be Kord's long lost brother. I miss barbarians. I know they technically still exist in 4e, but they're not the rage fueled head crushers they used to be. It's just not the same man. Everything's changed. They took away their damage reduction and gave them temp hit points! I don't know if I can take it!
This artwork brought to you by the letter B, the color green and el-grimlock on deviantart.
LooneyDM

Bluffing

Because everyone knows all you have to do to infiltrate dwarves is drink and talk like a scotsman. It would probably help this elf if she covered up her freaking ears. I win at fail! I totally missed Monday's motivational post so here's a motivational post for you today. This is what bluff looks like untrained. With a natural one. With additional circumstance penalties. Needless to say, it's amusing.
In other news I'm going to do an entire series based off the 4e skills, using images from the Princess Bride. Look for those to start showing up within the next week or two.
Since you were deprived of my brilliantly humorous wit on Monday there will also be rp quotes to sate your appetite for humor until friday rolls round when I will regal you with another motivational poster.

From my Saturday internet game:

Steely Dan: I get eaten like once a game

LooneyDM: Steely explodes out of the middle of the goopy monster like some freaky relative of the Koolaid Man
Steely Dan: "OH AYE!"

Found ambigious drow art in real life and spent 20 minutes trying to decide if the drow was male or female or had armor with boobies or was partway inbetween male and female.

Klo: (( now i use mountain hammer ))
* Klo rolls: 1d20+14 => 4 + 14 = 18
VortDM: (( aren't you glad you saved it? ))
Klo: (( OH MY GOD ))
LooneyDM: (( including bless from the cleric and hero's sword bonus? ))
Klo: (( goes into a corner to cry ))
Steely Dan: (( dicechaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! ))
Klo: (( i rolled a 4 ))
Corbinus: (( Obviously Klo didn't leave a blessing at the temple of the dice gods. ))
Steely Dan: (( okay ))
Steely Dan: (( I am now calling dicechan "dicekhan" ))

Clementine: (( I saw that as dickchan for some reason before I realized it was dicekhan >.> ))
*Atargatis rolls: 1d8+4 damage! => 1 + 4 = 5
*Atargatis rolls: 1d6 punishing damage! => 1
Klo: (( dickchan works too ))

Steely Dan: (( fucking dicekhan always does that ))
Corbinus: (( I'm just worried about the wrath of dicekhan. ))
Klo: i think dicekhan might like his new title

To a repeating magic mouth spell on a statue
Clementine: We know, we know! We heard you the first time! I'm old, but I' ain't hard o' hearing!
* Clementine makes a face at the statues.

LooneyDM: The symbol is of a left hand with an eye in the middle of it (Symbol of Vecna)
Steely Dan: is it one o' them necrowhatsistisis?
Atargatis: (( I'm willing to bet that that's a veeeery bad thing ))
Corbinus: (( Well I know what that means as a player. ))
Steely Dan: (( oh shit it's Sauron ))
Steely Dan: (( we're fucked now ))
Corbinus: (( Sauron is fictional...this is real... ))

(After yet another person forgets that while Klo's player is female, her character is male)
Klo: You're forcing a gender change on my character!

Corbinus: Maybe I'll rebuild my Kenku rogue into a half ogre druid
LooneyDM: not complete rebuilding, she only changed some feats
Steely Dan: "you wake up after resting, and suddenly corbinus is a half-ogre. a wizard did it."

Mason: I totally didn't fail to hit the enemy on my first encounter.
Steely Dan: you totally did

Dwirnem: "Before he was the Black One, he was my teacher of the arcane arts."
Steely Dan: damn! my money was on him being dwirnem's brother
Clementine: :0
Corbinus: Duhn duhn duhn
* LooneyDM cues dramatic music
Atargatis: I was betting he was an official of some kind
Steely Dan: you're pretty close
* Atargatis nods in sad understanding.
Clementine: my money was on Mrs. Plumb in the Library.

That is all.
Looney out

More Character Death

I victoriously vanquished a very vexing D&D game today. My saturday 4e DM has been on a killing spree! He's killed two characters in the past two sessions! This is abominable. Do you know how hard it is to kill 4e characters? We had to have a mass fight on a boat and even then the second one nearly survived, but the leaders couldn't get to him because our climb is suck and he went up into the crows nest. The guy up there wasn't even doing serious damage, until the soon to be exterminated player arrived up there. Anyways, dead dead and hopefully not another dead next game. We're running out of characters to play...

LooneyDM

Character Death

Guess what happened to my character last time my group met. No go on, guess. If you guessed "got a new awesome magic weapon" you guessed too wrong for words. My not so beloved half orc rogue bit the dust. To be honest he lasted more sessions than I expected. However I've come to the conclusion that the striker role in 4e D&D just doesn't do it for me. I need something with a little more zing, pizazz or merely anything that does more than "get flanking, stabbity stabbity stabbity". I'm making a cleric next under the assumption from previous experience with clerics that leaders are more complicated tactically and therefore more interesting. At least that's the theory. I plan to burn this theory for all it's worth in the coming weeks. The motivator above that I created is one of the pictures from the newest telescope that NASA launched. You're looking at the death of a star that is causing the huge spectrum blooms. On the subject of character death and characters, have a bonus poster from my collection. Disclaimer: I did not create the following poster. At all. Not even a litle bit.

This is, of course, Jim Darkmagic of the New Hampshire Darkmagics
On that note,
LooneyDM up up and away!

P.S. On time for once gosh darnit!

Theoretical Homebrew system

I have to say I've not been on time recently. I blame the stars and other celestial entities for throwing off my natural circadian rhythms making me late with blog posts. I have a confession to make. I'm considering creating my own game system. I know you're all very disappointed in this revelation and I certainly deserve it. I accept your scorn and mocking so I can get on with this post.
It started when I was arguing with someone about balancing of RPGs ( I know you're all amazed that I argue on the internet) when I considered that if one wanted to have a perfectly balanced game you should use rock-paper-scissors. That got me thinking about using a system more like rock-paper-scissors instead of things like dice mechanics. The first caveat I'd like to include is I'm not making up alternate rules for rock-paper-scissors in the sense of expanding the grid. There won't be any tanks, dragons, or aliens in the sense that I make a new item and lay out a grid of "tanks beat dragons, but aliens beat tanks and so do bazookas, while silly putty beats aliens." No, I'm going to keep to the simple triangle
Say we have related abilities X, Y, and Z. X beats Y, Y beats Z, Z beats X. Instead of making a hand symbol, though hand symbols are sexy ;), each time an attack happens the attacker and defender both take a properly labelled token (improperly labelled ones will be punishable by death), hold it in their hand, and reveal it at the same time. Simple and balanced enough.
To create a variety of options without increasing complexity unduley I'll allow different numbers? levels? ranks? increments? skill? Yes, skill is the word I'll use for this. I'll notate it such X:2 to indicate ability X at skill 2. Extrapolate this to your hearts content. A different amount of skill in an ability will affect how the ability interacts with the loss resolution system.
Instead of counting wins I assert most vigorously that it will be best to track losses for the resolution system. Each character or npc will be able to take a certain number of losses before they are defeated. The end result of the defeat will be up to the victor, but dependant on the type of conflict. Not making this a hit point mechanic has advantages. First it doesn't require that defeat = death. That allows for the mechanic to be used in non-physical and non-violent conflicts. Last it allows for a hero to be defeated without taking them out of the game for an unnessary chunk of time.
I'll have players buy up abilities starting from zero. For example, you start with 4 points( how many points you have will be how many losses you can take before being defeated, convenient no?). You can use them to buy abilities up a skill on a 1 for 1 basis so you could spend 1 point to buy X up to skill 1 from skill 0. Spend 1 point in each and now you have X:1, Y:1, Z:1 with one point left over to put into one of them. I'll up X by one for fun to give us X:2, Y:1, Z:1. Other variations give us X:2, Y:0, Z:2 or X:0, Y:3, Z:1. I'm not going to list every single possibility here.
Now the important part. The effect of different skill on losses. The formula for this will be simple. The loser of the attacker/defender pair in each contest takes one loss. Now if the winner has more skill in their attack ability than the defender has in their defense ability the loser takes extra losses equal to the difference in skill. Example: If a X:2, Y:0, Z:2 player attacks a X:1, Y:1, Z:1 mook with X and the mook defends with Y then the mook takes 2 losses of the 3 total he can take (obviously its illogical for the mook to choose anything but Z to defend we'll assume the Game master pulled the token blindly from a bag since it's a mook). To explain the tie rules we'll assume the mook attacked with Z and the player defended with Z. If they had the same skill level, there would be no loss on either side. Since the player has Z at skill 2 the player would cause 1 loss to the mook. Causing losses regardless of whom attacks speeds the game up, it also
plays into some ideas I have for later.

That is all for today. I'll be funnier and more coherent later
LooneyDM

Cosplayers

I'm sure this guy dressed up like a plastic soldier from Toy Story was actually a promo gimmick, but this looks just awesome if it was an actual cosplay. I did see some plastic soldier cosplay at Arkon this year. They even had a baby monitor. Sadly they weren't the most epic cosplay I saw that weekend. That would have to go to either Samus (who was a blonde girl underneath) or the clone trooper who later showed up as Arther Rimmer. My bad on posting on Tuesday instead of Monday. I'll be more on my game for Wednesday.

LooneyDM