Dire-What the Heck

There comes a time in every where the DM gets fed up with his players reading the monster manual and comes up with his own monsters. My monsters were of course much more creative than a bunny with fangs, bird wings, and antlers. For example the monster that could only be described as a chain chomp head on a giant frog body. That's way more creative than combining real animals into an amalgamated mess. Another astounding creation I created was the crazy metallic imps that shot electricity from their eyes and used their decidedly malleable structure to entangle the players with razor whip claw fingers. All in all I'm entirely impressed with my ability to construct new creatures.

Despite my over qualification in the creating creatures department, I'd still love to hear about the wacky and awesome monsters you've either unleashed on your players or have had unleashed upon you. Drop a comment with your story.

Image source GIS for jackalope

LooneyDM out

Campaign journals and Ten foot poles

Campaign journals and Ten foot poles

Aloha to you just joining us from the RPG Bloggers Network. I'd like to inform everyone that I won't be touching campaign journals with a ten foot pole. It's not that I'm not vain and conceited enough to wax eloquent about my own campaigns, it's simply that I'm so damn lazy that even a summary of my actions takes up too much time to commit to paper or typing. Thus I've come up with a compromise for those of you who are dying to hear of my ingenious and hilarious exploits. Instead of summarizing and transcripting every single even from my multiple games I will instead regal you with the best quotes from all of them. Each wednesday I'll give you a little taste of what my players are like and the sorts of people with whom I engage in RPing behavior. Also, several of the players are jazzed about their internet fame.

Without further adieu, quotes from the saturday game I run:

(For reference.

(System: 3.5 D&D

(Players:

(Atargatis, Human female warblade, player is female)

(Clementine, Human female cleric, player is female)

(Corbinus, Kenku male rogue, player is male)

(Helena, Human female wizard, player is female)

(Klo, Human male warblade, player is female)

(Pete, Human male psion, player is male)

(Steely Dan, Feral Gnome male barbarian, player is female)

Corbinus: "Dread guards attack the flying skulls."

Steely Dan: they do not respond

Steely Dan: they only respond to "bitches" now

Klo: They're called biscuits Steely, dont you have them where you're from?

Steely Dan: Aye, tha's wha' Ah said. Bikkits.

Klo: ...

Steely Dan: ...

Klo: Can you say "bis"?

Steely Dan: Aye

Klo: And can you say "kits"?

Steely Dan: Aye

Atargatis: "But we've gotten the farthest diplomatically with the gnolls. Killing them would erase all our work."

Corbinus: A valid point. Let's kill lizardfolk. If nothing else we will have some fancy boots afterwards.

* Clementine whips out her wand of elation!

Helena: o_O

Steely Dan: bow chicka bow wow

Klo: clementine is elated at the sight of tentacles...

Steely Dan: ye summoned a tentacle beastie eh?

* Helena seems very embarrassed all of a sudden.

* Steely Dan wiggles his eyebrows

Helena: "No, it was my master's scroll, and I...kinda botched it...without his permission to use it in the first place."

Helena: "I need to get rid of the evidence!"

* Steely Dan grins and waggles his eyebrows EVEN MORE

* Helena watches as the flame jumps back into her staff.

* Corbinus thinks she probably needs all the fire to keep warm in that outfit.

Corbinus: I wonder if Helena's last name is handbasket.

Helena: it's Rosewright, but that's a nice pun anyway

Pete: Just because Dan's near water, he turns into a pirate.

Steely Dan: Steely is totally a pirate, he just prefers land-based pirating

Klo: but pirates is all about the sea!

Pete: And hates water.

Steely Dan: it's the whole B-A-T-H thing

* Clementine sees Corbinus isn't going to make the dreadguards go, and yells, "SEXY BITCH, ATTACK!"

LooneyDM: good thing you put that comma in there

Corbinus: I myself am a demon from the 302nd layer of the abyss.

LooneyDM as bugbear: "A little small to be a demon, aren't ye?

LooneyDM as bugbear: How will we find you if such time comes to pass?

Atargatis: Wherever the greatest source of trouble is... we'll already be in the middle of it, I'm sure.

Klo: crush his skull!

Clementine: no! we needs it!

Steely Dan: we need it for proooooof

Atargatis: No, we need that skull!

Klo: oh yea

Pete: I don't think Steely Dan would be into lockpicking, when he's got an axe handy.

Steely Dan: he'd just bash the door down with his head.

That's all for today folks

LooneyDM out

Drunken Master Prestige Class

The Drunken Master is the most flavorful and fun prestige class in D&D, hands down. In addition to evoking images of Jackie Chan breaking bottles and chairs over people's heads you get the added bonus of being able to use squirrels as a lethal weapon (see image above for reference on proper squirrel wielding technique. Additional manuals may be required for the single handed squirrel technique and the popular raccoon style). All in all this is the creme de la creme of prestige classes. Any RPG that doesn't allow you to wield squirrels like this should hang its head in shame and go sit in the corner.

I have sadly never been in a game that has run long enough for me to qualify for this prestige class. I did have a half orc fighter who offered to throw the smaller members of the party over a wall they couldn't climb. He was "special". I do have a character who is contemplating using the party's halfing rogue as an improvised club. Said halfing rogue decided his best bet against the magmins we fought last session was to drop trou and pee on them. The DM ruled he got sneak attack on that as well.

Drop a comment if you've got an awesome or crazy story about improvised weapons, squirrels or otherwise.

I'd like to take a moment to greet everyone who was linked here from the RPG bloggers network. [ ] Okay, you moments over, back to listening to me ramble. I produce motivational posters of the RPG variety and wax sarcastic about RPGs in general twice a week on Monday and Friday. The other day of my entirely entertaining entertainment is Wednesday when I post my exploits from the games in which I run and play. Wednesday reads like an excerpt off Mr. Welch's list. If you don't know what that is, may whatever god(s) or goddess(es) have mercy on your soul.

Many thanks to the RPG bloggers network for accepting my insanity to their aggregate blog service.

Motivational poster art from here

LooneyDM prays for the souls of all those not familiar with Mr. Welch's list.

Nostalgia and your first gaming experience

Nostalgia. There's nothing like it. Especially when it's your first RPG experience ever. No matter the oddities of the system, everyone loves the system that introduced them to RPGs so long ago. Mine involved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. TMNT is especially awesome as it's the only 80s show to get its own RPG. TMNT and other strangeness was my initiating RPG experience. I played a mutant wolverine who clawed things to death, when he wasn't shooting them with a pistol. I and several other mutant animals worked for the government taking out criminals and rogue mutants, WE FOUGHT CRIME!
I could wax eloquent about the awesome character creation system in TMNT for making your very own mutant animal in the spirit of the comic or the tv show but I'm sure you've got your own stories about the first system you ever played that you'd prefer to share. Not that I wouldn't share my own incredibly awesome fantastic stories with you, but my conscience tells me it's impolite not to let other people share. Excuse me while I bug bomb the house for crickets.
Today's poster created from a scan of the cover of TMNT and other strangeness which I finally went out and bought so many years after the fact.
LooneyDM is off to reread the book again.

When fighting creatures that are on fire...

Last week my Thursday group fought some magmins. These are creatures that are on fire. It lead to several interesting exchanges between all characters present. Said exchanges are listed below for your amusement. I don't DM this particular game. I do happen to have a tortle swordsage named Druten whom has been affectionately dubbed the "grumpy ninja turtle". I didn't set out to make a ninja turtle when I started. He would be Leonardo if he's any of them, only grumpier. With

* waterelemental sloshes menacingly over to Magmin2
Kanoa: "My elemental is coming for you."
Loperdos: "Geez, all this sloshing and gurgling is making me have to pee..."

Thistle: "Pew Pew!!"
Thistle: d20+8 => 14 + 8 = 22
DM: "That's a hit."
Everyone: "Pew Pew!!"

Loperdos: "I do more damage with my pee than you do with any of your attacks!"

* Loperdos prods Druten as he concentrates...
Druten: "Quit it. You're distracting me."
* Loperdos prods Druten again

LooneyDM out and about

Rogues and other pointy nonsense

I had a rogue once. I traded him for a cleric and a sack of potatoes. I feel I got a good deal. But back to the subject of the poster, and a mighty fine subject she is. "I stab it with my dagger!" was my rogue's battle cry, search technique and all around default reaction to anything that happened in game. I suspect he's not the first or only rogue to have done this. It got so cliche that the bard started referring to me as "the porcupine of doom". He wasn't nearly as sexy as this human rogue in the motivational poster here since he was a half-orc with nearly negative charisma. As a result he only managed to fulfill half of the rogue's job. He excelled at the "stabbing things" part but the "looking good while doing it" part eluded him.
I'm know you've got them so let's here your stabbity stabbity rogue stories.

Original art before I posterized it STAB!
LooneyDM *stabs it with his dagger*

Deceiving your players

All you need is something that looks innocent and you can keep the players distracted long enough to put them in a tidy pickle. Much like the monster in today's motivator that's going to sink the boat while they all look at the fake dolphin on its tentacle.
This reminds me of a classic deception I pulled on my players. They were all performers in this particular campaign and as part of an information gathering mission they infiltrated a party. Unsurprisingly they ended up performing for said party. Towards the end of their performance at the party they were found out. Rather than making a mad dash for the exit, they opted to waltz their way out the front door. Their exit performance went well until they were stopped by a tiefling. Of course I didn't tell them she was a tiefling, I just gave them a general description of her vaguely demonic features. She then handed them a magical purse and let them leave.
My players spent the next hour trying to figure out what the magic was on the purse (none of them had identify, but several had detect magic), up to and including dumping the contents on the street in the middle of the night to reveal 2000 gp. The tiefling was the lady of the house and she gave them a small bag of holding with money in it to pay them for the excellent performance as the performers scheduled for the night had not shown up. Using a little misdirection and misinformation, I managed to have them all quite freaked out by the situation. It was a blast.
So let's hear your awesome stories of misdirecting or being misdirected while playing RPGs.
LooneyDM is listening.

Starting Campaigns

Your two classic campaign starts. Either the world shattering start (both figuratively and literal, sometimes both) or the subtle lead in that gradually builds up to the climax of the first session. This is more contemplative than usual. I promise I'll avoid the navel gazing in the future. The campaign start sets the whole tone for the campaign. People may remember something in the middle of the campaign if you're lucky. They'll remember the start if you do well. The campaign start is one of the biggest events in your campaign, right after the campaign finish. Don't cock it up. Share about your awesome campaign starts in the comments.

Art from http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/
LooneyDM out

Archery in RPGs

Fantasy archery can get silly sometimes. The above poster is not one of those times. I'm sure that slight anime girl is quite capable of drawing back that large bow chain far enough to propel that meter long arrow THAT DOESN'T HAVE A TAIL straight into the enemy. I'm sure it's all very cinematic when she shoots. She needs to kill her enemy in one shot as she's only got the one arrow or she'll have to beat them to death with that absurd contraption that's supposed to be a bow.
LooneyDM