D&D Story: Tragedy + Time = More Tragedy

a while ago i was numbster diving through our old notes after i got through the pages of screams from the 4th edition campaign i made it to my first 5th edition game it was actually kind of interesting flipping through the notes uh through how we used to play the game and we thought about it and kind of comparing contrasting the different styles one of which was stats we had all rolled for them i had dropped my lowest 12 into my intelligence and i set about playing the entire game like i was inept derpa derp i don't know how things work and it wasn't until about six months later that the gm noticed the number of my sheep and he was like wait a second i eventually told the others about it nbd but i'm actually kind of a big brain-thaving person or wizard katya explained yeah uh about that i rolled for stats too she proceeded to pick up a table and break it over her head i could probably multi-class into a barbarian fine and that was where i found out we have approximately similar strength randomized stats are weird some of the fights don't hold up as well if you know what the spells are there was one time we were fighting slenderman it was a dark night there was lightning and rain and a rolling fog and it was super creepy slenderman's finger extended out pointing toward bard something materialized above his head a twisted crown he tried to dodge out of the way but the crown latched onto his head his eyes went blank a dark aura emanated from him suddenly his arms swung wildly out on their own he was attacking us the monster has used mind magic to claim the bard for his side katya tried to pull the crown off of his head but it didn't work nothing we could do could rest him free from his grasp the twisted monster laughed maniacally watching us fight amongst ourselves would it be forever would it be impossible to free our bard's mind from this monstrosity nowadays if i had seen something like that i'd go oh crown of madness really first point why the bard the crown of madness says that lets an opponent use someone else's reaction to make a basic melee attack on them we've got a ranger a rogue a fighter any melee specialist would deal better damage since it's the bard it's what rules is written one damage maybe they let him draw his dagger out beforehand not technically allowed but that's still only a d4 come on hasn't he ever heard of the action economy this guy has all these tentacles coming out of him he could probably make six attacks or something and instead he's getting what four damage besides the bard still gets to use their main action and in general a boss monster casting a spell which needs concentration not the best idea with no minions we have to attack him anyway and there's no way it's going to have a duration longer than an hour since we're low levels he's going to be using something which doesn't have a permanent effect unless he decides to use one of those broken home brew rules which i guess will allow we even had an entire hostage situation where a sorcerer held someone at knife point for a really tense moment which was slightly undercut by someone going wait a second don't don't daggers only do like two damage yes yes they do i'm aware of that it kind of reminds me one time i was running called cthulhu session one of the characters got stuck in a death trap where they had walked into a grave once they were in the entire thing filled with dirt instantly it was kind of nice running cthulhu for a change since they were playing regular humans and investigators one of the players went i run to the shed grab a bunch of shovels and dig them out i definitely know that if i had been running d d the player's minds would have gone too wait is is that a spell i should be able to dispel magic as a trap to get him out does everyone have mold earth we should be able to use that counter spell it's a spell right the the trap it's acting as a move or a spell right got her spell i don't necessarily think that there's anything wrong with that it's just you know it's kind of refreshing for a change to play something different it was a few months into the campaign that we actually had our first character death two players had joined up to the party zarik the cleric and bodhi tree shadow adopted brothers both raised by elven parents we got ourselves into an intense fight eventually the group got hit with a cone of cold and bodhi died to the frost turning into an ice sculpture after the fight we actually had to decompress the players not the characters picking up some food and talking about it at first we were like can we just retcon this what do we do and then as we talked more about it the player realized i didn't tell you guys this but in his backstory bodhi was a survivor who hid away while his friends died i i think that he wouldn't have wanted to live through that again and is is happy he got to die protecting his friends there was an entire mini plot arc that spanned several sessions we had getting the body back to his family the parents had let them go on this adventure saying they're a bit young don't you think it's going to be dangerous oh it's going to be fine they're going out there to see the world and then we come back a month later with their son in a body bag we had a long session involving them talking about politics between high elves and wood elves zarek talking about their memories the bush they played hide and seek behind the tree they had used for archery practice eventually we buried the body and left to continue the adventure i wish i could say it was a happy ending but it wasn't another month later tragedy struck again in the final fight the entire family fought to drive out the demonic invaders from their home the father's wife died fighting to save the city and his son zarek got banished to another realm thinking his son was dead and knowing that the mother was gone as the last of his family he slung her body over his shoulder left and that was the last we saw of him as he went into the woods and he lived out the last of his days in solitude hello uh after that uh i guess somber note i just have one more thing one of my friends uh jess he runs a channel called just jackdaw uh if you don't remember i've been on his channel before he's been on mine anyway they're doing a kickstarter uh the book's called heliana's guide to monster hunting it's got great art in it uh the book covers new monsters magic items harvesting rules cooking monster tamer class has got a lot of neat stuff in it they're not sponsoring me i just i want to show them some love because i'm really proud that they managed to put this together since i know they've been working on it for a really long time they even have a free adventure up on the website for it it's called shadow of the brood mother so if that sounds like your thing you might want to go check it out uh the kickstarter is going to be ending june 30th but they're not the only ones that are working on kickstarter because the web dm are doing a thing of their own called weird wastelands set in a post-apocalyptic world where the gods have abandoned this realm and left people to their own devices and land is scarred by the warped magic of the past war which kind of sounds like it's reminiscent of dark sun's ish setting or kind of deadlines cthulhu-ish and they're going to be finishing up their kickstarter around kind of july 10th ish so so you can hop on over there if that sounds like a thing you might like okay that's uh that's all of them anyway goodbye i don't know why i'm waving you can't see me when i'm waving

Channel: Puffin Forest

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Id: wkWDlIULvvU

Length: 7min 30sec (450 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021