PnP RPG Thread

[noodles]

if you like that logic puzzle you might like this one



First of all, Dungeon magazine. Every issue has stuff like puzzles and traps for you to put in your campaign. I don't think it's in print anymore, but it was for a long time, and I believe Paizo was the last publisher. In fact Pathfinder started as little adventures published in the magazine (either Dungeon or Dragon)

The main book that comes to mind is the Book of Challenges. It's from 3.0, so you would need minimal conversion for Pathfinder rules.

A similar thing is Traps and Treachery, that one having multiple books. Traps are the focus, but there's a chapter on puzzles.

Though, remember that many good puzzles are gonna be trapped somehow so if things go wrong there is danger. Keeping that in mind, check out The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps. Especially look at the "Lobster Trap" to see what I mean.

[Reynard-Miri]

If you don't want to open Door 2, then Door 3 is safe.

[noodles]

yup.

[zamisk]

There are a bunch of old Dungeon mags at an old bookstore I go to! I never bothered buying any, but I'll go scoop up a bunch. Thanks!

[zamisk]

Thoughts on my puzzle? It's based off a similar one I found on the internet, but with more of a story to it and the player's first glimpse of the letter-for-letter alternate language I am using on the older maps and stuff. I think it should be easy enough, it will be the first thing the players do after receiving the mission, gearing up, and talking to people around town. I'll probably do one other puzzle in the dungeon and make it more dangerous.

[noodles]

it seems really elaborate for something thats gonna be solved pretty fast by a cleric's dice roll

[zamisk]

That's a good point, but this is a classless game, and I feel like my friends are going to want to play as other types of characters and won't sink points into that.

I have somewhat easily available healing potions right away in the game that let characters avoid needing a dedicated healer, anyways.

[Curry-Kohai]

Do you have any people in your group that play tabletops a lot? 'Cause they might want to play cleric-like even though xe has potions, even then, somebody might think that knowledge religion is just a neat skill. To be safe, I'd probably just give them crptic hints on succeeded rolls to figure out what that stuff is.

[zamisk]

They're all fairly new, but good call.

[Drathi]

So, a few of my friends and I are doing a horror-based 3.5 Campaign. So far, we got a pretty decent group:

Nardak the Elf Warmage/Beguiler*
Thana the Human Rogue/Cleric
Lucy Kano the Human Shegunja
Ulfim the Half-Orc Barbarian

The DM allowed Warmage to be considered a favored class for elves, because it makes sense given their martial training and their preferred class of wizard (or was it Sorcerer?). That is my character. >w<

I rolled for random height for my elf, and he's the shortest of our party at 4' 9".

So, our first session was essentially our characters getting together to get this jewel from deep inside these mines, but before that our DM let us RP how we met, because we all had a very interesting way of knowing each other.

So, Nardak is a nomad of sorts and during his travels, he met Ulfim and the two have this passive-aggressive rivalry, which thy restrict to the orcish language so the rest of the party does not understand their insults being flung at the other. They met Lucy and she tried to hire them both, but Nardak refused because he had a bad feeling about her and did not want to work with a half-orc (he has a lot of pride). Ulfim became Lucy's indentured servant after this, because she took advantage of the former's illiteracy.

Nardak's travels continued and 2 months before the campaign started, he enters the town of Gladzin with no money to his name and is forced to rely on the kindness of others. That is when he met Thana, who really helped him out. He claims to only hang out with her because he has a debt to repay, but the fact is he's done more than that. She's the only non-elf he'd consider a friend.

So, our party meets up, Nardak is insulted that their employer thinks they'll need help, but he goes along with it. We get to the dungeon and look around. All of us fail our search checks, except for Ulfim. The 3 of us got distracted by a very nice looking hawk nearby. We have dubbed it our party's mascot now. Then, we enter in our first encounter, we run into a Large Centipede and Lucy got to go first. She casts Speak with Animal and enters a dialogue with it. Then our DM let her roll to befriend it and she rolled a natural 20. We bypassed the traps of one passage, because it led us to a safer passage. It also said that the rock was in a hole that my character could fit into. We enter the next room and there is a giant snake inside. It attacks Ulfim and poisons her. I throw a Lightning Orb at it and hit, but it was still kicking.

Thana's turn came next and she rolled to intimidate the snake. She rolled a natural 20. We scared the snake off and chose our next path, but not before I found a chest with 4000 pieces of copper. We kept on walking and found the hole we were looking for. The party was all, "Well, Nardak. You go get it."

"You get it. I'm not that short!"

Then Ulfim says,

"I don't know much about this world. Kinda dumb. But I do know you will fit in that hole."

She picks my character up and forces him in. So, we enter, get the gem, Thana and Ulfim see something that gives them 1 point of Depravity and then we leave. Our DM told me later that the fight at the end was him being like, "No, you guys are not allowed to leave without fighting SOMETHING."

So, our exit was blocked by a Huge bee. Ulfim wrecked it with her orcish double-axe and we are on our way back to town.

Hopefully time allows us to have another session. XD This party is just fun.

[zamisk]

That sounds like the perfect campaign. Serious at times but room to goof around.

My favorite kind or campaign is when there are some serious rpg elements but you're allowed to do funny things. I've only played more "seriously" a couple times and it's fun too, but in a different way that is less accessible to new players, like the ones that saw the Community episode and wanted to try it. (So far both of my two groups did this.) Both the groups I've lead have all told me they wanted it to be somewhat ridiculous, and so we have that for the most part.

OH, that reminded me. The next episode of Community is the next Dungeons and Dragons one!

[Drathi]

It helps that the four players (including myself) are all more into the RPing aspect of this rather than the gameplay. So, we got some interesting builds. My DM is terrified of what will happen, if I survive long enough to prestige.

Warmage/Beguiler/Dread Commando.

At that point, I literally kind of say, "Fuck you" to normal conventions of being a spellcaster. XD The downside is that if I put points into my CHA to raise my Warmage spells, I'll only be able to cast up to 5th level spells in each class, so I'm less specialized.

[zamisk]

Iget to play now that my friend is DMing, which is great. Tonight my rogue lost a hand after making a string of bad decisions. (I deserved it, I was being a typical CN rogue...) Anyway, we're a long way off from having a cleric that can regenerate limbs or enough feats to make up for the penalties. I hope the DM lets me make a Walking Dead-style Merle stump-shank.

And I hope I never have to disable traps or pick locks. <__<

[zamisk]

My rogue I mentioned before is secretly betraying the group to the big bad, and eventually my friends will find out and kill him. Tonight I rolled up a new character for when that happens, and using 4 drop 1, I got 18 17 16 14 10 10. I'm a human bard, so with my +2 bonus to any ability score, I have 20 charisma. @_@

Also, his name is Barty the bard, and his instrument is the hand flute so I can always have it with me, no matter what the DM throws at me.

[noodles]

Lemme say first that I've been playing the same DnD campaign with the same party since I was 19. Just about three solid years, and I'm still level 8 or 9. But I wouldn't have it any other way. It has been a long journey and I really feel like a hero that belongs in that world, the Kingdoms of Kalamar, a pre-medieval setting.

I've gone on many adventures for personal gain, for fun, for the sake of stopping evil, and in the service of various governments and organizations, but particularly in the name of the principality of Pekal, where half-orcs like myself are able to walk the streets in broad daylight without drawing looks. I fought giants and a dragon and an army of orcs in service of Pekal, and have long been considered a hero for my deeds. I have often been in the service Banelor, captain of the guard in the Pekalese capital, potent spy and master of disguise, in his efforts to thwart various criminal organizations in their plots to undermine the country.

But my most recent mission troubled me deeply. Disguised as pirates for hire, my companions and I were sent to the war-stricken country of Tokis, where we were to board a ship, the Perilous and wait for orders, the goal supposedly being to retrieve a stolen artifact.

It became apparent that we were in the middle of something big, as an entire fleet of privateer ships joined us on our course one by one. We were attacked one night by a horde of sahuagin, who claimed we had broken a truce with them and killed their leader. They wouldn't listen to us, and we had no choice but to kill them all in self defense. Arriving in the capital city of Tokis, we saw scores of privateer ships waiting alongside Tokis's own armada, seemingly ready to all set sail at once.

As soon as we stepped off the boat, we were unceremoniously arrested, and held before a Paladin judge, who gravely told us of our apparent crimes of espionage and sabotage, and threw us into the dungeon. The captain of the ship revealed himself to be Captain Banelor in disguise, who had killed the original captain and taken his place. Those who showed loyalty to the original captain or who threatened us were tied up and executed in our cell.

Banelor revealed that the true purpose of this mission was to thwart the Tokis navy, which had hired privateers to destroy a convoy of Pekalese freighters and blockade and important trade route. Banelor was the one who killed the Sahuagin leader, so they would burn the coastal villages and distract the military, and make the waters of their home hostile again. Over a thousand innocent Tokis commoners died as a result. The second part of our mission was to kill Tokis's own spymaster, which we achieved only after a fierce and costly battle. His "book of names" would provide valuable intelligence that Pekal could use to protect itself for years to come.

In the meantime, Banelor set fire to the capital and many of the privateer ships, causing chaos and infighting, distracting the navy so we could board the Perilous again and make our escape. I challenged Banelor on his immoral actions. He said that in service to your country, you don't have time for morals, you follow orders and do what you have to do to protect your people, and that our actions ensured peace and freedom for the people of Pekal.

As we sailed away from Tokis, we were attacked by a small, oarless but speedy sailing ship, which we managed to disable with ballista bolts and fire through the sails. However, it slowed us down enough for the largest ship in the armada to cut us off, a hulking leviathan that pelted us from afar with its siege engines. We sent everyone below decks to man the oars and get us up to ramming speed. As we drew near, our casters dueled with theirs, and between our ships was a barrage of fire and lightning and magic missiles. Our wizard stood in the crow's nest and blasted groups of sailors with fireballs, and our sorcerer used an ice staff to pelt them with a storm of hail, and seal parts of the ship off behind walls of ice, which caused the ship to tilt from the weight of the ice and slow down. That was when the Perilous rammed into its side, piercing through the hull and filling it with water. I led the boarding party as we slaughtered as many as we could in a short amount of time, ensuring that no one could fix the ship in time to keep it from sinking. We took what treasure we could, as well as any sailors who swore loyalty to us.

We made our way back to the disabled sailing ship, which was called the Dark Mistress, and the surviving crew surrendered when we announced we were coming aboard. We left Banelor and the other spies on the damaged Perilous to sail home ahead of us. We combined our two sets of prisoners to make a full crew which could fix the sails and get underway again, under our command, and I vowed not to hand any of them over to the authorities once we pulled into port.

My companions and I met with the prince. In a grand ceremony, we were thanked for our contributions and sacrifices in the name of Pekal. I kneeled, and was dubbed Lord Krugg, and given 25 square miles of unworked land all to my own, with which to do what I will, and my companions were promised favors in our future endeavors.

As the prince had me rise, he grasped my hand and said he hoped I would continue to do great deeds for Pekal. I simply nodded. Shortly after, Banelor tried to shake my hand and congratulate me, but I ignored him.

The prince paid for the repairs on the Dark Mistress. Once it's ready, my companions and I will sail south to the tropical land of Svimozhia on a personal mission of adventure. We will explore ancient ruins, steal treasure from a dragon, kill a vampire lord, and overthrow a tyrant in the hobgoblin-ruled Kodar mountains. We will owe no debts, we will be honorbound to no nation, we will answer to no one but ourselves, and we will use part of any treasure we find to pay our crew of renegade sailors. The ones that stick around for the ship to be repaired are the ones who are good and reliable men. The Tokis seamen served a country that did vile things to lift itself out of poverty, and I would not have them serve Pekal either.

I have seen much of this world, and what countries must do to protect themselves. No longer will my decisions be made for me by some country whose motivations may change by the day, whose fickle allegiances are determined by politics. And it sickens me to see how many soldiers and innocent people die for those capricious values.

With the great riches I will gain in this journey, I will fund the development of my land. My family, the persecuted orcs of the Sanakir Hills, will be brought down to Pekal where they will go to work clearing the woods and digging irrigation ditches. Building a small farming community by day, and training for war by night. With the resources of the farm and the forest, the community will grow into a private town, populated by unsavory outcasts of all races and disillusioned soldiers freed from their duty. They will be given a place and a focus, to work on my personal project, and Banelor and the rest of Pekal will keep their nose out of my business as the gold steadily streams their way.

I will need hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, but when my army of warriors and wizards finishes its great work, we will cut funding to Pekal. And when they call us to duty, we won't answer. As everyone gathers into my castle, it will unravel, and rise from the ground on sturdy legs, a stone colossus, with siege engines on each shoulder and archers and mages in its ramparts. Finally free. An army without borders. We will serve the noble and fight the vile, and we will surely have our pick of benefactors, as the most terrifying mercenary force in the world would be in high demand.

When I was born, it was prophecized I would unite the warring tribes and bring peace to the land. It could take years of building funds, but it will finally happen, though I doubt it's how the shaman foresaw it happening.