The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

It’s not easy being a Bard/Rogue with a bow.

For one, sometimes a bunch of lizardpeople attack the town when you’re just trying to get a fucking drink, and you have to shoot them up with arrows. That’s something.

For another, you could be teamed up with a band of misfits who decided to name their adventuring company Balls, LLC.

Yeah, I played DnD again.

I was under the impression we were going to be a big more serious, so I tried to create a character and play it as such. However, Essner made a character who was just named his name, which was really kind of silly, and Spaeth was playing a Shardmind who couldn’t decide if he was British or not. Kenny was silly, but was actually roleplaying, I thought, so awesome. He even had a little voice for his Gnome.

Jonathan did a wonderful job as always. He’s a solid DM. The game itself moved a little slow, though. We were in a single combat for something like 2 hours. Granted, it was supposed to be a huge setpiece, with people of the town being attacked around us, but that long in one fight can grate sometimes, especially with Essner. I didn’t really mind too much. I really enjoyed my Bard Arrow powers. None of them hit hard, (Almost all of them did 1W+CHA) but most of them had really great buffs on them. I especially enjoyed Rewrite the Future, where I’d roll an extra D20 and could assign it to someone’s roll before my next turn.

Everyone was very “Let’s just go kick some ass,” which my character had to keep complaining against. I didn’t see her as a reckless person who took risks for no reason. I spent a lot of my RP time arguing with people at the table. I’m sure that’s probably a good thing, but man, I kept “Inspiring Competence” so that they’d see how stupid their strategy was. I’m unsure it worked.

Still, it was a fun time. Hopefully we can get more done next session, though who knows when that will be. Hopefully soon! I can hope for things!

I had promised people from school some DnD action, and so, seeing as we couldn’t get Jonathan’s campaign going on Wednesday, I decided that would be as good a day as any to get my own little campaign with everyone started.

When I had originally proposed this campaign, I had given a general outline: James L. Harner, author of this lovely book, has an evil library, and you’ll fight through it. Of course, bringing that to life is a bit harder than saying it. Especially since I ended up with a party of nothing but Strikers, and players who really enjoy lore, which has never been my strong suit. I needed to make something I’d enjoy running, but also something with enough backstory and sense built in to make the kind of people who wrote 3 pages of character backstory when asked for a “quick character idea” happy.
Oh, and I’d also have to teach everyone how to play DnD.

In the end, though, I feel like things went really well. Everyone was put on the spot when I asked them to roleplay, though they eventually got into it. Spaeth and Cole were doing most of the roleplay, even though Cara and Josh were the ones with all the Charisma. People also had a bit of a problem grasping the basic combat mechanics. I thought the power cards would make that easier, but they didn’t really. Just a little. I was glad Spants was there for that, because as the DM, I didn’t want to railroad them with advice, so having Spaeth be able to say “That really doesn’t seem like a good idea” and stuff as part of their team was better, I think.

In the end, Spaeth had to Lawful Good Stop Cole from stealing money back from a shopkeep, and Josh kept running in circles around a tree to dodge arrows. Spaeth also almost left a dude to die, even though he had magical healing powers. My enemies hit REALLY hard, but went down like chumps too, since there were so many Strikers. I felt like I actually hit a pretty good balance in my monsters this time around, because it was really close, and they were being hit hard, but weren’t in any real danger, either.

Basically, I think I kicked ass in the DM department. Or at least did competently.

I want to wrap this plot up in another session, or maybe two. Not too many, because I don’t feel like I can be counted to do that many. We’ll see how it goes.

I had the bright idea, during the last week of classes, that we should play a short DnD campaign over the Christmas break. “There will be plenty of time!” I told myself. “So much time!”

Well, it took like… 3 weeks to be able to come up with a date to do this thing, and even then, we barely got it going, and even even then then, we only got through one combat. But hey, it was DnD! Dungeons and Dragons! That’s cool, right?

This campaign was supposed to be a departure in many ways. For one, it was supposed to be the first time that Mr. Justin Spants, Esq. got to be the DM. I knew this meant a complete lack of seriousness to absolutely anything about the campaign, but I hoped it would be fun. I also set out to make a character completely different from what I normally play.

You see, I am stuck, in a way. I always play the healer. Now, I love, love, love playing that role, don’t get me wrong. But if I don’t expand my horizons a little, how can I know all there is to know about the game? How can I know what the other roles need from me, the healer? How can I tell someone else they’re doing it wrong if I don’t know how to do it right? All this, plus the fact that maybe it’s time to try to roleplay someone different brought me to this point.
I had my eyes firmly set on the “Controller.” Nobody in my group has ever really played a Wizard, or the like, and we’ve often been found needing them. So I decide, hey, I’m going to play a Wizard! Only I get this idea for a character: Reckless, Brash, and in love with combat. Someone who shoots first and asks questions later, and is incredibly laid back about her chosen profession. The more I thought about this, the less this seemed like a Wizard. I turned to a class I laughed at before, the Invoker, for the answer. Invoker seemed so… bland, but as my character came together, the idea of this Avatar of Kord who isn’t about evil, or anything, but is just itching to get into war, into more fights, due to anything that could be seemed as a good idea? Well, that fit. That could be fun.

There we were, at a city with a name so stupid I cannot even recall it. Avril Sparklewhisper (sister, apparently of Rachael Sparklewhisper, my Warlord), Willhelm the Staunch (my brother’s completely min/maxed tank of a fighter), and the single-y named Tao (Essner’s warrior monk Cleric Dragonborn guy) were all there. Yes, this was a gathering of one of the land’s greatest adventuring parties: Rumblefuzzz, with three z’s, because… well, I have no idea why, it’s just how it is.

There was a fire cave, or so some guy named Brandon said. In said very religious fire cave were some very bad people, and they had taken the place hostage, which was really killing tourism. We wanted to talk to Brendon, because he seemed like he would no more, but Brandon would have none of that. Dick. We went in to take some names and throw some lightning. That’s what Avril was going to do, anyway.

And I totally did! Having AoE spells really does change combat a lot, and certainly makes it easier. I was knocking down big groups with little trouble, and it was pretty cool. Jonathan, of course, was tanking like a pro, and had some pretty crazy anti-damage skills. Essner continues to not be able to roll a d20 to save his life. Seriously, I just don’t get it. He ALWAYS misses. He never deals any damage at all. Yet he can play Arkham Horror, and murder enemies he shouldn’t be able to hit any day of the week. The guy just cannot use a d20. I don’t know. They just hate him.

Anyway, the combat went on a little longer than it probably should have, which happens, especially when you’re new at the stuff and don’t know what you’re doing: balancing a combat is hard. Really hard. But we had some fun, and then people were done, so we split. Hopefully we can continue and do some more soon, but hell, as long as it took to schedule this one, maybe we can get to it around next December. Who knows.

I got it in my head that, for Halloween, I was going to run a one-shot Call of Cthulhu game! I don’t really know why. I didn’t have any experience with it. But hey, I bought the book, and I schemed, and I planned, and on Wednesday, Jonathan, Spaeth, Essner, and Ben all played my little campaign.

The story I planned was based in 1920′s Arkham for ease of writing and familiarity for everyone, since we’ve all played so much Arkham Horror. I constructed a story about a Mask I made up and a creature called a Dream Sucker, which was sort of like a mosquito made of light that sucked out creativity until you sort of ended up like a robot. By a coincidence, all the players get infected by these beings, and had to work together to stop them.

The game wasn’t scary at all. We’re like… the least serious roleplayers on earth. And while sometimes I wish we’d get serious and do something serious, I wouldn’t trade the fun we have for that. We were laughing the whole damn time at stupid jokes, stupid decisions, etc. Jonathan’s character broke into a guy’s house, and then left a note with his name an address. Ben constantly attempted disguises and critically failed, causing us to invent crazier and crazier ways where he was MORE like his normal self in his failed disguises. Spants tried to pull guns on everybody, and Essner used his character’s “mentor, Dr. Phillip Rochester,” as the reason for every single thing he did. It was really quite ridiculous, in an awesome way.

From a planning standpoint, though, I feel like I succeeded pretty well. There were several points where I guessed what everyone would decide to do perfectly, and had notes for just such an occasion. I made a physical puzzle involving mocked-up card catalog cards, and while it stumped them for awhile, they all said it was a good puzzle. Which was good! Puzzle-making isn’t easy. I was glad that worked out.

But yeah, overall, a very fun time. I stayed up too late, perhaps, what with me being all old and going to bed early nowadays, but staying up for some fun once and awhile isn’t so bad, is it? I didn’t think so. I made a puzzle, drove someone insane, and laughed so hard I probably kept people up. That sounds like a good night to me.

After, what… months? Month? We finally managed to schedule another play session of high-level DnD campaign. And man, it was an epic one, lasting into the wee hours of the morning and being entertaining! Maps that spanned literally every doodling surface we had! Puzzles! Destroying priceless art! Me having like a million action points and then not using them! Madness!

As we started exploring the temple that we got into last time, we realized it seemed very badly constructed (“I know it’s not a perfect hexagon, but I’m not redrawing it,” Jonathan said) and since there was another temple just right next door, we assumed this must be the beta test temple. I mean, obviously. Just, you know, to give the builders an idea of what the real temple will be like, and test a few things…

So yes, Templ(beta) was filled with many golems. Golems are the magical robots! And Liendshauf (I don’t know how to spell your German character name, man, back off!) found a remote control, and used it to bash many priceless works of art. We also found a rock, which Jonathan represented with a Dire Badger. “That is a very dire rock.” “That’s it. It must be a dire rock. It’s got those spikes all over it.”

The Dire Rock was a very formidable foe.

In any case, the whole building was based around some puzzle ACTION where this crazy system put up barriers to block our path that we could only switch when we were all in certain rooms, and we had to figure out how to traverse the whole temple (or templ, if you will) to get to the bottom. It was actually a pretty well-designed puzzle. I have to give Jonathan props for that. Then again, I was distracting everyone by telling jokes about how “I can’t use this key to open the door! I have to insert the key into the door! That’s like raping the door!” “But look how sluttily the door is dressed!” “Dammit, it is asking for it, isn’t it…” (I don’t think Shauna liked that particular joke. I blame Jick for making me make rape jokes.)

There were also some combats.

The first combat was against a whole bunch of Manticores. In searching for an image of a manticore on his iPhone (for Shauna did not know what a Manticore was) Spaeth came up with this image. That seems like a pretty good representation of the battle.
Or not.
Well, okay, basically, we all ended up clumped in the corner of this library except Spaeth, who charged right in. So he was basically being attacked from all sides while we all lobbed ranged attacks and heals in there. A highlight was me moving into position to use a bit of Magic item that heals 1d6, and got attack of opportunitied for like… 26 damage during the move. A good tradeoff, there!

There was also a very dramatic boss battle against a Mummy who may or may not have been a Werebear. He was a total dick, because I tried to talk to his spirit, being a Shaman and all, and he just punched me. It was probably because he was some sort of Ioun spirit. I decided that Sehenine didn’t much care for his stupid ass or stupid religion!
Spaeth was Immobilized for like… this whole fucking battle, so we basically were having to use all our teleporting skills and such to get him into position, seeing as he deals fucking Sicknasty amounts of damage and we needed him. The boss had some really crazy high amounts of damage dealings as well. We were getting hit for like… half our HP. Lucky that 3/5ths of our party are healers then, huh? It also helped when I used my newly gotten utility power that lets me teleport people to switch places with my spirit companion to yank our Cleric out of the way of a particularly intense attack that would have downed him. (Sorry, my highlights are the things that I did that were awesome. I am biased.)

All in all, it was a damn, damn fun time, and just goes to show how much of a shame it was that we don’t manage to get our schedules working to make that happen more often. Hopefully we can get back together soon. Templ RC 1 is waiting for some exploring!

So, on Tuesday, we got to finally play more Dungeons and the Dragons! Huzzah! It had been awhile, but I’m glad it didn’t peter out. I’ve been having too much fun at it. So we all sat down, tried desperately to remember where we were, and set off into the desert.

Our first order of business was to cut down a palm tree for no reason. Ledeinshaft (also known as Guy de Purplopolis in some circles) fucking criticaled that tree! Then all the boys went on ahead while Canadia and I had some girl talk. Then people started to get eaten by burrowing sand alligators. I told them to stop dicking around, we didn’t have room for pets on the Astral Skiff, but noooo, they just kept getting eaten anyway!
The battle itself was fairly straightforward. I didn’t do much, as usual! Cause I can’t hit the broad side of a barn, it seems. We also didn’t pay attention and realize there was a gimmick about the place, but we crushed those lizards anyway. They were bastards.
The battle ended with the last lizard eating me, and Lord Captain Allouishous slicing off his head with me still inside. I had to climb out through disgusting alligator guts! I complained. “But we got eaten too!” they said! “Well, you just got thrown up nice and easy, I had to climb out! Stop playing with lizards!”

We soon ended up in an impressive set piece of a temple. There were tons of guarding spirits about that I could see with my Shamanvision (TM) but they were all untalkative dicks. I told them as such. We headed into the temple of Ioun, where, after wandering about a bit and a equally untalkative spirit helping me to find a secret passage, we managed, in our infinite wisdom, to turn on some robots.
It was then that something odd happened. We attempted to employ strategy. Talk around the table became about how to lead these robots through the passage to pick them off one at a time. I didn’t much like the plan, mostly because Sehanine doesn’t seem like the planning sort of goddess, and she’s MY goddess. But whatever, they enacted the plan. It didn’t work perfectly. The line was broken. But it was shockingly effective. The main enemy got bonuses for being around its minions, so our strategy managed to neutralize that pretty well, after he pushed through our ranks and we worked to hold the rest behind our line. I also managed to, GASP, deal damage! I got a crit with pretty well my heaviest hitter, Spirit Tide. That dealt 25 damage to the target, and 10 damage to all enemies within 5 squares… which was everyone. It was a shocking feeling, actually doing damage. Man, is this the rush Spaeth gets every time he attacks, I thought? But eh, such is the life of the healer.

In any case, we schooled that encounter too, much to Jonathan’s surprise, and we leveled up to level 12. I gained… a not very impressive utility power! I can teleport anyone to switch places with my spirit companion once an encounter now. Useful, but not really exciting. I also get a feat, but I have no idea which one that is. I might just take Paragon Defenses, I dunno.

Still, I hope it’s not another three week or whatever gap before we can play again. Dungeons and Dragons be fun times. I know this may come as a shocker, but it’s true.

When we last left our heroes, Lord Captain Alluishous had jumped directly into a slime and got his ass devoured. Luckily, since then, we got another party member… who was with us the whole time! Of course! Originally, I thought it quite unfortunate that he didn’t go Barbarian as I was expecting, but instead went Cleric. Yes, this brings our party to THREE healers and 0 tanks. But, it worked out well. He built him up as muscular, beefy, and hit-stuff-style as was possible, basically. It worked out well, with him on the front lines next to Spaeth, I think. With two melee-style people, we were looking a lot better.

This temple-thingy was the first actual “dungeon” I’ve probably ever been in while playing this stuff. We’ve been doing it wrong all along! Sort of. There was a fairly solid fight with some slimes and some rats, and a small little interlude with a Mimic of all things. It was good times. Still, I was OVERWHELMED by how badass Alena’s healing is. Man, I used my Spirits of Battle, and suddenly, healing the entire group was effortless thanks to my paragon path, since everyone was always in a zone of conjuration I made. It was kind of obscene. If I wasn’t so fragile, I’d say Shaman was kind of broken. As it is, I know if I was focused on fully, I’d go down like nothing.

I got to try out my Spirit of Shielding Flame, and it was as excitingly neat and as frustratingly situational as I expected! Still, I love the flavor. Setting up a protective barrier around a person that lets me burn anyone who hits them is fun, fun, fun for a healing/defense-oriented person like myself.

Mainly, though, there was problem-solving in this dungeon. And I amaze myself in how I work. Maybe it’s just because I was so tired, but man, the first thing I thought of to do was the solution, and then, suddenly, everyone starts coming up with humorous, silly ideas, and I get so caught up in playing along that I forget to even suggest what I knew, from the very first moment, we were supposed to do. I suppose it’s a good thing that we’re having such a good time and messing around so much. Fun is fun! Having fun is good! But goodness, it’s almost frustrating when I realize I’ve been sitting on the answer the whole time and I just forgot to say it while we were cracking jokes about my character stripping in front of everyone (to change armor, of course!) and people screaming at walls to create avalanches.
It’s also kind of amazing how wrapped up we can get in our own bullshit narrative around what the real narrative is. Every time I have to recap to explain what we’re doing (although I never remember any names or anything, so there’s a lot of “that dude” and “that one guy”) everyone is kind of amazed and finding it odd that that’s what we’re actually doing. Such bullshit we are spinning, let me tell you!

Still, our planar adventures are continuing. It looks like we won’t be able to play again for awhile, but hopefully this one doesn’t drop off and disappear. I’m having a really great time, to be sure, and I would like it to continue. Here’s to hoping scheduling prevails! Yay scheduling! I think!

So, last night, we got in some more inside-tense Dungeons and Dragoning. Fun times were had! And I guess we’re going to have more next time (Tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday) since we have an additional party member joining us, in the form of that guy I sort of remember that is a friend of Shauna’s that I played DnD 3rd edition with one time! He’s going to be a Dwarf Barbarian, I think. So, still no tanks, but having another front-liner will help, as we are a horribly distance-focused party at the moment.

Combat, however, went only marginally better for me than last time. I missed with every single one of my encounter powers during the bit of combat we enjoyed, though I was a bit more effective overall, hitting with Haunting Spirits several times, as well as getting to use Spirit’s Shield, my spirits Opportunity Attack, to heal Spaeth a little. So I suppose all went well. Speaking of Spaeth, he used his Paragon Path encounter power, got a crit on a guy we hadn’t touched yet, and killed him in one hit. The man is an avenging MACHINE, let me tell you. Shauna focused much more on her distance attacks than last time, which was good. I was worried she was specced out wrong, if you recall, because she relied mostly on her beast form last time. Kevin… was Kevin! I don’t remember him doing anything too effective. I only remember him starting out combat by jumping into water so crazy cold so as to do him damage, like a wonderful idiot. He also dealed out some pain with Rolling Echo again. That move is crazy good.

The more role-playing bits also went pretty well. I continued to have Alena put on puppet shows, as it’s pretty clear at this point that that’s what she does. She found a new totem after the last combat, so she keeps having it talk to her old totem. They’re good conversationalists.
Shauna had notes that helped us remember things. She remembered this Amulet we had gotten last time and flashed it at the right time, basically shocking Jonathan. I also dropped a bit of a surprise when I actually knew why we had come to this other plane. Nobody else really knew, just that we were trying to get to this person, and so I did some interviewing… and then went back to playing with my totems. They’re so cute and fun!

Anyway, the night ended with Spaeth jumping down a hole and being absorbed into a slime. It’s going to be the exciting times next time, I assure you!
Probably.
I may also use some action points and some dailies next time. I keep not summoning spirits besides Keiko. I’m a Shaman! I should summon spirits! Maybe!

A new DnD campaign has begun!
And gods, I sucked at it. But more on that later.

It was pretty obvious early on we were in for a kind of odd new campaign. For one, we don’t have a tank. Our four person party has an Avenger (damage-dealer), a Druid (Controller, debuffer-style as opposed to AoE style like the Wizard), a Bard (a healer, but Kevin focused more on debuffs and controller-style moves, so…), and me, a Shaman (specced out almost full healer, with a bit of a buffing undercurrent, since one or two of the buffs were so cool I couldn’t pass them up). It’s not a normal party! Spaeth’s Lord Captain Allouishous is the only melee attacker, and he’s almost always going to focus completely on his “I hate you” target. Although I suppose Shauna’s Druid was focusing a lot on Beast form and getting up in the grill of enemies as well. It’s certainly different from the few other combinations I’ve played.
It’s also not going to be a normal campaign when Justin Spaeth is being the voice of reason and logically progressing things. Kevin and I were running the two “leader” characters but we just kept up (totally fun) bickering the whole time. I was attempting to play my character a bit, actually. She’s a multiclass Cleric, and I figured that if she was going to worship a god, as someone who is so in tune with nature and spirits and such, she was probably going to be pretty fairly dedicated to that god. So since she’s a follower of Sehenine, I was really pushing the “Blaze your own path, see new things, don’t commit” that Sehenine teaches. I did things that seemed neat. I talked to people who weren’t there. I argued that we should be going in random portals instead of actually finding our way places. Meanwhile, Kevin was being a Gnomish ladies man, and fighting hard for his right to follow every female we met and hit on them.
So while this fun stuff was going on (and it was fun, I hope, for everyone. I assume it was. We do this shit all the time when we play) someone had to step up and take the lead. I assumed it would be Shauna, because she actually gets into the roleplaying part more than you might think a girlfriend pushed into it by her boyfriend would. But no, it was Justin Spaeth, the most ridiculous person I know (and I love him for it!), who stepped up and made it happen. Intense.
The plot itself makes me happy for one simple reason. It seems to take place in the multiverse of the DnD world. This is super cool, because it means Jonathan is using the Manual of the Planes I got him for his birthday. Score! Useful gift! Bam!

We only got to one combat, and Jonathan was feeling out the power level of 11th level characters, so it wasn’t perfect, but it was fun. Spaeth’s Avenger seemed almost broken, but I think that something as simple as a Fighter class monster who can mark him will probably shut him down. Shauna had a lot of fun pouncing people and making them grant combat advantage. Kevin did a whole bunch of weird things.
Me? I rolled like shit.
Seriously, of my first… oh… 6 rolls? Nothing was above a 5. I rolled a 1 for initiative, I critical missed my first attack, I rolled a 2 on the second… oh, it was tons of fun! I think I hit maybe two times. No, three. I hit three times in the long single combat we played. Yep.
That’s not to say I didn’t see what Alena Brighttail could do, and liked it. Cause I did! My Healing Spirit combined with my Spirit Boon of my Paragon path is kind of godly for healing, and I love it. Basically, I have one target spend a healing surge. Then, everyone who is not the target who is next to Keiko, my Spirit Companion (or any conjuration I have made) gains 3d6 + 5 HP. The first time I got that off and it became clear how much healing potential I have, I was ecstatic. I also have my Protecting Strike, which can grant all kinds of temporary HP. I also like moving Keiko around the map, setting her up for Opportunity Attacks that will never happen but I can pretend they will happen.

All in all, it went pretty well, I think. It’s unfortunate we didn’t have more time, but thanks to my 6 AM shift, we couldn’t really push it much longer. Hopefully it’s not too too long until we can play the next chapter. I look forward to, perhaps, actually HITTING with some of my neat abilities next time.

It’s no surprise that, after the Player’s Handbook 2 hit, along with all of the awesome Gabe, Tycho, Scott Kurtz, and Wil Wheaton DnD podcasts going about, that I’d hit a fever where I’d desperately want to get some more DnD in. And I do! Very much so! I assumed, however, it was going to be an uphill battle to make happen.

I got home from class yesterday, and there was Spants rolling up a new character, and Jonathan saying he’s planned the beginnings of a Paragon-level campaign.
What a thrilling development!
I resisted running upstairs to the computer to talk strategy out of excitement.

We wanted to run a Paragon campaign because, frankly, we’d run many half-campaigns starting at level 1 through 4 before, and we had all decided we wanted to try mixing it up next time. Jonathan just pulled the trigger and made the call! I’m thrilled.

I just need to figure out what class I want to run. My initial idea was a Paladin of Corellon multiclassing Bard. A kind of hymn-singing tank with a heavy focus on heals with the Hospitalier paragon path. However, Jonathan announced when I sat down that I was probably going to make a Shaman… and dammit, I was looking over the Shaman abilities today and I really do want to play a Shaman. Having the spirit companion is cool flavor, and getting to summon him around and having their basic heal hit multiple targets is something I can get behind to make them different from a Warlord or whatnot. So watch me end up doing that instead, though I really wanted to run a tank because I haven’t gotten to yet and that would leave more options for Shauna and Essner, if he’s playing, to pick from. Spaeth is being an Avenger, which is a divine damage dealer, so we still could really use at least a tank and a healer, you know? Eh, We’ll see when I roll the character later today.

Anyway, more DnD! I honestly couldn’t be more excited.