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The Flophouse Fatalities
General | Posted 15 years agoAftermath of events in previous sessions starts to stack up on the investigators. The Arkham police want to interview them all about events in Virginia for one thing. And McGinty has two suspiciously oblong boxes to get out of New York. Only one has airholes.
To my utter pleasure they all give different versions of events to the police, although they are all genuinely appalled when told of the four topless corpses dug up from the basement. This will not end well. And when Amy hears what the boys got up to in New York, and sees what McGinty's dragging down the steps to the freezer cabinets in the basement, she's so horrified she decides to move to Cambridge. But then investigating the Mythos is emotionally trying.
Amy : The Mythos made McGinty that way!
Me, GM : It could also have been the obscene alcohol intake.
Dr von Habsburg claims ignorance
Dr vH : You didn't tell me anything!
The Amazing Julius : Sure I did. I told you McGinty's friends are sick ****s
McGinty has an excuse to get out of town too - one of his unnamed associates wants him to install four aircraft engines into the back of a small boat. Amy faces other challenges - a visit to her parents, who go on at length about how the new twelve-mile limit would get rid of that awful Rum Row off Boston's coast; the increasing reward for the Crimson Gang; and when will Amy settle down and marry some nice well-bred gentleman?
But it's a small article in the Globe that captures her attention. (scenario suggested by Dave Ford. Message me if you want details to run in your own campaigns)
MYSTERIOUS DEATHS IN SOUTH BOSTON BOARDINGHOUSE - Olaf Henriksson ( carpenter, 37 ) was killed today in circumstances our fine police describe as suspicious. Witnesses at the Dock Lane boardinghouse state that they were woken by his cries in the early morning, and saw him thrown or pushed from the fourth floor landing to his death below. However, despite an immediate search for the assailant no-one has been apprehended.
This unfortunate case follows the death of Carl Dietz ( plumber, 41) in the same room the previous week, of causes then described as unknown.
Naturally, she calls in her associates, and they make conversation and plans over dinner. Rondale, under advice from Dr von Habsburg, has changed his insomnia prescription to one of the new German wonderdrugs. They invent a lot of tranquillisers, those Germans.
Rondale : They're such a happy, upbeat people. They need downers.
Amy is sharing a flat with Lucy Smith, who's behaviour has become increasingly odd since the events in Innsmouth. For one thing she keeps checking herself in the mirror and asking if her eyes are getting bigger.
Rondale : Eyes getting bigger? Tell her not to worry - I find that attractive in a woman.
Amy chokes for bit, and decides not to tell Rondale what they knew about Lucy's ancestors. He has a long history of killing Deep One hybrids, after all.
Some outrageous bluff by Guiliano gets them into the flophouse in question - a four storey building near the docks, surrounded on three sides with warehouses and other businesses even taller. The place is falling apart, and each existing room subdivided to maximise profits. The death room itself seems unremarkable - the only oddities being the way the nailed-shut window has been forced fully open , two glasses in a room where you're not allowed to have guests, and a length of pipe in one corner. There's no fire escape, and the guttering above the window is rusted so badly that large holes are already present.
Close inspection reveals that glasses and pipe still stink of homemade booze, but a search of the building reveals no illicit stills. There's no room in the roofspace either, and Guiliano is reluctant to even climb in there.
TAJ : I'm the magician, not the assistant
Inspiration strikes, and the players realise that the deceased must have been piping the alcohol in from somewhere else - collecting it as it dripped from the hole in the guttering. That leads them around the block to one of the adjoining warehouses ... but that building is locked tight and long abandoned, all doors and ground-floor windows boarded up. Tracking down the owners "because we want a place to store all the bodies" doesn't help because the building's latest owner turns out to be fictional. The veterinarian at the address listed seems helpful enough though.
TAJ : How long can a rabbit go without breathing?
They can't find any hidden access from the neighbouring businesses either, despite claiming to be health inspectors from the CDC investigating possible disease risks seeping from the empty warehouse.
Amy : Telling them both the same story
TAJ : *heavy irony* What a radical concept!
Jumping on the floorboards in the basement of the linoleum factory does suggest an open underground space, but there's no sign of an access-way there either. The view from the roof of the shipping company to the west does reveal one anomaly about the abandoned building - a brand-new metal chimney, emerging from a hole cut in the warehouse's sloping tin roof. So they decide to come back after night and break in.
Amy : You know, this is the kind of situation I wish McGinty was here for.
Rondale : Yes, I can picture him now - head out the window, mouth open catching the drops.
The warehouse is a single open space two stories high, here at ground level. Assorted trash, broken glass, and rusting bearing and a freight elevator are the only details. Stairs to the upper floors have collapsed from age. One peculiarity of the lift - a new cord running from below ground level up into the higher floors. They carefully don't tug on it, and Rondale carefully climbs and sneaks up through the dark, mouldy building, until he reaches the top floor, where three figures wait, two seated at a table, one leaning on a crutch and the wall beside a door opposite the stairs. They don't move. Or even breath, since they're all weeks dead. The two at the table have had playing cards wired into their hands, in mockery of a card game.
Rondale opens the unlocked door opposite, gun ready, and finds a large still, stacks of empty sugar sacks and other brewing ingredients, barrels, empty tin cans, and a terrified madman who's been dying of starvation and thirst for weeks. Rondale fetches Guiliano, since for some reason the pathetic figure keeps begging that he's done everything he was told to do, and struggles frantically every time Rondale tries to get him out of the room.
There's a reason for that - since the moment they get him out the door the corpse beside it lurches upright and starts to swing at the captive with the crutch as a club. Rondale puts two bullets between it's eyesockets, but not before the screams and gunfire panic the doctor and nurse waiting five floors below. They run to assist, but Rondale doesn't want to upset them with the details.
Amy : What happened? What happened?
Rondale : Nothing, honestly, you don't want to know, I've dealt with it.
Amy : Then what was the shooting about?
Rondale : Well, when a corpse takes a swing at you you tend to be a little surprised.
Amy : Whaaaaat?
Rondale : I told you you wouldn't want to know.
Rondale : I generally shoot everything in the head.
Me, GM : Remember that when you run into Y'Golonac
It turns out that the man - kidnapped by persons unknown to operate the still - has been trapped here for weeks. Nobody has come to bring more food or supplies, and every time he tried to leave the zombie guard attacked him. Half-mad from malnutrition and terror, he's been getting the recipe wrong too - instead of ethyl alcohol, the leaking still has been pumping out methyl alcohol, that condensed on the roof at night, dripped down onto the boarding house, was discovered and eagerly collected by the late men there, who drank it and went blind, mad, or dead as a result. There WAS no mystery assailant - the carpenter had woken to find himself blind, panicked, and fell over the railing all by himself.
They determine that the cord triggers a bell, and the bell triggers the other two zombies to get up and starting winching the freight elevator. And below street level is a tunnel running out beneath Boston, currently decorated with empty barrels, bootlegging supplies, multitudinous bloodstains, a mess of bootprints and weirdly cleft paw prints, and a corpse nailed by it's feet to the roof beams. That corpse takes offence at the Doctor's attempt at post-mortem inspection, but a hail of gunfire soon puts an end to that ingrate display. Faced with a maze of tunnels and no mad Irishman to take point, the party decide their best option is to retreat, anonymously dump the poor moonshiner at the nearest asylum, and forget it all ever happened.
GM : "DeAr SiR, PlEEZ LooK After this POOR Madman"
Rondale : "KTHANX BAI"
To my utter pleasure they all give different versions of events to the police, although they are all genuinely appalled when told of the four topless corpses dug up from the basement. This will not end well. And when Amy hears what the boys got up to in New York, and sees what McGinty's dragging down the steps to the freezer cabinets in the basement, she's so horrified she decides to move to Cambridge. But then investigating the Mythos is emotionally trying.
Amy : The Mythos made McGinty that way!
Me, GM : It could also have been the obscene alcohol intake.
Dr von Habsburg claims ignorance
Dr vH : You didn't tell me anything!
The Amazing Julius : Sure I did. I told you McGinty's friends are sick ****s
McGinty has an excuse to get out of town too - one of his unnamed associates wants him to install four aircraft engines into the back of a small boat. Amy faces other challenges - a visit to her parents, who go on at length about how the new twelve-mile limit would get rid of that awful Rum Row off Boston's coast; the increasing reward for the Crimson Gang; and when will Amy settle down and marry some nice well-bred gentleman?
But it's a small article in the Globe that captures her attention. (scenario suggested by Dave Ford. Message me if you want details to run in your own campaigns)
MYSTERIOUS DEATHS IN SOUTH BOSTON BOARDINGHOUSE - Olaf Henriksson ( carpenter, 37 ) was killed today in circumstances our fine police describe as suspicious. Witnesses at the Dock Lane boardinghouse state that they were woken by his cries in the early morning, and saw him thrown or pushed from the fourth floor landing to his death below. However, despite an immediate search for the assailant no-one has been apprehended.
This unfortunate case follows the death of Carl Dietz ( plumber, 41) in the same room the previous week, of causes then described as unknown.
Naturally, she calls in her associates, and they make conversation and plans over dinner. Rondale, under advice from Dr von Habsburg, has changed his insomnia prescription to one of the new German wonderdrugs. They invent a lot of tranquillisers, those Germans.
Rondale : They're such a happy, upbeat people. They need downers.
Amy is sharing a flat with Lucy Smith, who's behaviour has become increasingly odd since the events in Innsmouth. For one thing she keeps checking herself in the mirror and asking if her eyes are getting bigger.
Rondale : Eyes getting bigger? Tell her not to worry - I find that attractive in a woman.
Amy chokes for bit, and decides not to tell Rondale what they knew about Lucy's ancestors. He has a long history of killing Deep One hybrids, after all.
Some outrageous bluff by Guiliano gets them into the flophouse in question - a four storey building near the docks, surrounded on three sides with warehouses and other businesses even taller. The place is falling apart, and each existing room subdivided to maximise profits. The death room itself seems unremarkable - the only oddities being the way the nailed-shut window has been forced fully open , two glasses in a room where you're not allowed to have guests, and a length of pipe in one corner. There's no fire escape, and the guttering above the window is rusted so badly that large holes are already present.
Close inspection reveals that glasses and pipe still stink of homemade booze, but a search of the building reveals no illicit stills. There's no room in the roofspace either, and Guiliano is reluctant to even climb in there.
TAJ : I'm the magician, not the assistant
Inspiration strikes, and the players realise that the deceased must have been piping the alcohol in from somewhere else - collecting it as it dripped from the hole in the guttering. That leads them around the block to one of the adjoining warehouses ... but that building is locked tight and long abandoned, all doors and ground-floor windows boarded up. Tracking down the owners "because we want a place to store all the bodies" doesn't help because the building's latest owner turns out to be fictional. The veterinarian at the address listed seems helpful enough though.
TAJ : How long can a rabbit go without breathing?
They can't find any hidden access from the neighbouring businesses either, despite claiming to be health inspectors from the CDC investigating possible disease risks seeping from the empty warehouse.
Amy : Telling them both the same story
TAJ : *heavy irony* What a radical concept!
Jumping on the floorboards in the basement of the linoleum factory does suggest an open underground space, but there's no sign of an access-way there either. The view from the roof of the shipping company to the west does reveal one anomaly about the abandoned building - a brand-new metal chimney, emerging from a hole cut in the warehouse's sloping tin roof. So they decide to come back after night and break in.
Amy : You know, this is the kind of situation I wish McGinty was here for.
Rondale : Yes, I can picture him now - head out the window, mouth open catching the drops.
The warehouse is a single open space two stories high, here at ground level. Assorted trash, broken glass, and rusting bearing and a freight elevator are the only details. Stairs to the upper floors have collapsed from age. One peculiarity of the lift - a new cord running from below ground level up into the higher floors. They carefully don't tug on it, and Rondale carefully climbs and sneaks up through the dark, mouldy building, until he reaches the top floor, where three figures wait, two seated at a table, one leaning on a crutch and the wall beside a door opposite the stairs. They don't move. Or even breath, since they're all weeks dead. The two at the table have had playing cards wired into their hands, in mockery of a card game.
Rondale opens the unlocked door opposite, gun ready, and finds a large still, stacks of empty sugar sacks and other brewing ingredients, barrels, empty tin cans, and a terrified madman who's been dying of starvation and thirst for weeks. Rondale fetches Guiliano, since for some reason the pathetic figure keeps begging that he's done everything he was told to do, and struggles frantically every time Rondale tries to get him out of the room.
There's a reason for that - since the moment they get him out the door the corpse beside it lurches upright and starts to swing at the captive with the crutch as a club. Rondale puts two bullets between it's eyesockets, but not before the screams and gunfire panic the doctor and nurse waiting five floors below. They run to assist, but Rondale doesn't want to upset them with the details.
Amy : What happened? What happened?
Rondale : Nothing, honestly, you don't want to know, I've dealt with it.
Amy : Then what was the shooting about?
Rondale : Well, when a corpse takes a swing at you you tend to be a little surprised.
Amy : Whaaaaat?
Rondale : I told you you wouldn't want to know.
Rondale : I generally shoot everything in the head.
Me, GM : Remember that when you run into Y'Golonac
It turns out that the man - kidnapped by persons unknown to operate the still - has been trapped here for weeks. Nobody has come to bring more food or supplies, and every time he tried to leave the zombie guard attacked him. Half-mad from malnutrition and terror, he's been getting the recipe wrong too - instead of ethyl alcohol, the leaking still has been pumping out methyl alcohol, that condensed on the roof at night, dripped down onto the boarding house, was discovered and eagerly collected by the late men there, who drank it and went blind, mad, or dead as a result. There WAS no mystery assailant - the carpenter had woken to find himself blind, panicked, and fell over the railing all by himself.
They determine that the cord triggers a bell, and the bell triggers the other two zombies to get up and starting winching the freight elevator. And below street level is a tunnel running out beneath Boston, currently decorated with empty barrels, bootlegging supplies, multitudinous bloodstains, a mess of bootprints and weirdly cleft paw prints, and a corpse nailed by it's feet to the roof beams. That corpse takes offence at the Doctor's attempt at post-mortem inspection, but a hail of gunfire soon puts an end to that ingrate display. Faced with a maze of tunnels and no mad Irishman to take point, the party decide their best option is to retreat, anonymously dump the poor moonshiner at the nearest asylum, and forget it all ever happened.
GM : "DeAr SiR, PlEEZ LooK After this POOR Madman"
Rondale : "KTHANX BAI"
A Different Kind Of Thinking
General | Posted 15 years agoEvening's Cthulhu was supposed to be a playtest of a scenario set in 1930s Soviet Russia, but I faced a player mutiny unless I continued with the regular campaign. I couldn't run the Classic Era homebaked adventure I had ready as a back-up, since it's Boston-based and I'm saving that for Amy's visit to her parents. Happily, however, I had notes ready for a third game, ripped off from one of Theodore Sturgeon's astoundingly good short stories.
It was set in New York, so it was easy to fit into their return trip to Massachusetts, since Rondale wanted to report to Agent Landing at ONI, & Dr von Habsburg & Guiliano lives in NYC anyway.
And the fact that the story has a medical hook made it even easier - a fellow medico wanted to consult regarding a nasty case of multiple broken bones that happened whilst the young man was walking down the hall of his apartment. And keep on happening, even when he's at hospital or being wheeled around on a stretcher. And there's all the other hemorrhaging & necrosis & adhesions, it's been going on for months, and it's killing him by inches. The stress isn't doing his doctor or brother any good either
McGinty : Sounds like he was beaten up
Rondale : *darkly* Yes, and we all know you're the expert when it comes to savage beatings.
The Doctor sends McGinty and the brother across town for fresh canteloupe, just to get him out of the house whilst he calls in more specialists.
McGinty : We're off to fetch the Paddy melon
Investigations uncover the claim that last year the young man got a girl 'in trouble'. This euphemism confuses McGinty & Rondale for a moment
Rondale : When you get people in trouble, McGinty, they don't end up pregnant!
McGinty comes home with a bottle of fine whiskey. Don't bother asking where from, it's as if the stuff gravitates towards him. He's a bottomless black hole for booze, dragging anything alcoholic to its inevitable doom.
McGinty : I'm all for the sharing
Me, GM : Can I get an acting check for that bare-faced lie?
McGinty : We'll put the bottle on the table and go 'supper's on'
The Amazing Julius has a plan. There's still a few holes in it.
The Amazing Julius : I'm stuck at Step 1) Go to speakeasy. Step 2) ??? Step 3) Profit!
Unfortunately, their target is too dim to even recognize the bait.
The Amazing Julius : I collect things. To sell. From overseas.
Charity : *looks blank* What, like from Canadia?
It was set in New York, so it was easy to fit into their return trip to Massachusetts, since Rondale wanted to report to Agent Landing at ONI, & Dr von Habsburg & Guiliano lives in NYC anyway.
And the fact that the story has a medical hook made it even easier - a fellow medico wanted to consult regarding a nasty case of multiple broken bones that happened whilst the young man was walking down the hall of his apartment. And keep on happening, even when he's at hospital or being wheeled around on a stretcher. And there's all the other hemorrhaging & necrosis & adhesions, it's been going on for months, and it's killing him by inches. The stress isn't doing his doctor or brother any good either
McGinty : Sounds like he was beaten up
Rondale : *darkly* Yes, and we all know you're the expert when it comes to savage beatings.
The Doctor sends McGinty and the brother across town for fresh canteloupe, just to get him out of the house whilst he calls in more specialists.
McGinty : We're off to fetch the Paddy melon
Investigations uncover the claim that last year the young man got a girl 'in trouble'. This euphemism confuses McGinty & Rondale for a moment
Rondale : When you get people in trouble, McGinty, they don't end up pregnant!
McGinty comes home with a bottle of fine whiskey. Don't bother asking where from, it's as if the stuff gravitates towards him. He's a bottomless black hole for booze, dragging anything alcoholic to its inevitable doom.
McGinty : I'm all for the sharing
Me, GM : Can I get an acting check for that bare-faced lie?
McGinty : We'll put the bottle on the table and go 'supper's on'
The Amazing Julius has a plan. There's still a few holes in it.
The Amazing Julius : I'm stuck at Step 1) Go to speakeasy. Step 2) ??? Step 3) Profit!
Unfortunately, their target is too dim to even recognize the bait.
The Amazing Julius : I collect things. To sell. From overseas.
Charity : *looks blank* What, like from Canadia?
D&D 4th Ed
General | Posted 15 years agoD&D 4th Ed. Quite a good day for quotes
Murray,GM : With the Feast of Corellon and the Feywild coming up every Wizard, Warlock and Druid...
Rumbaba : ... and long-haired hippie
Murray,GM : ... who can get a few days off is going to spend the week talking shop, brewing potions and showing off spells. This means most *sane* people move out of the county for the holidays, but give it 1500 years and people will consider it a popular festival.
Rumbaba : And everybody will complain it isn't like the old days.
Murray,GM : ... and according to rumour there's a troop of secret police working for the Sheriff
Tarmikos : I'm not secret police!
Rumbaba : And I'm hardly inconspicuous!
Tarmikos : BANGBANGBANG Open up!
Arjhan the Dragonborn : Who's there?
Rumbaba : ... the secret police...
Tarmikos : We would like a word with you.
Rumbaba : ...comrade...
Rumbaba : We told them to keep the race riots to a minimum.
Murray,GM : ...and you found out that he'd been having an affair with the cook across the road.
Rumbaba : Can't say I blame him. Nice hips.
Blatant sizism continues to plague Rumbaba
Rumbaba : *singing softly* Short people got - no reason to liiiiive
Murray,GM : *on Dave's Bushido character* He survived a seven-day battle, made it to second level, rode back to the castle to report, fell off his horse and drowned.
Rumbaba : Yes, you goblin is more immaculately dressed than the elf. And better bathed.
Adrie the Druid : I'm all for hunting humans. It's hunting animals I draw the line at.
Arjhan : Let me get this straight... The Sheriff's men are all for protecting animals and monsters?
Murray,GM : Yes, it does sound like a meeting of PETA
Rumbaba : People for the Ethical Treatment of Aberrations
Hope : I was raised by dwarves.
Arjhan : What?! A Tiefling Paladin of Pelor raised by dwarves??
Rumbaba : He's joking. Although I do recall a boy that was raised by limpets. Sadly, he drowned at the first high tide.
Murray,GM : I heard a police sergeant once who would send his constables in to break up bar fights and throw the combatants out into the street, so he could throw them into the paddywagon. Once he missed and the bloke bounced off and dented the door. So he charged him with damaging police property.
Rumbaba : None of us are experts on post-dead citizens
Murray,GM : The eladrin steps through a portal in the air and closes it behind him.
Hope : That's mildly impressive.
Murray,GM : A voice hangs in the air... "...only mildly???..."
Rumbaba : Does the message arrive by pigeon?
Murray,GM : No?
Rumbaba : Ah. Not Twitter then.
Murray,GM : No, druids use Twitter.
Hope : Wizards use the magic mirror network, MyFace.
Murray,GM : The moonshine-making ranger was a Half-elf.
Rumbaba : Ah, so was he making wood elf alcohol?
Murray,GM : *headdesk*
Rumbaba : No wonder he died
Rumbaba : I'm off buying basic dungeoneering gear - torches, ropes, spikes... Dynamite... Bat-repellant...
Tarmikos : Do you know the funerary rituals of Bahamut?
Rumbaba : No, but if you hum a few bars I'll join in
Murray,GM : They were carrying longswords, a longbow, and spears.
Rumbaba : Given all of those are taller than me, help yourself.
Tarmikos : Which way is the wind burning?
Murray,GM : Burning?
Tarmikos : Blowing.
Rumbaba : If the air was on fire we'ld have bigger problems.
Rumbaba : I really should have brought a net, shouldn't I?
Tarmikos : No, I don't think she would have helped.
Murray,GM : So do you changely into a male or shemale Dire Wolf?
Adrie : Shemale.
Rumbaba : Shemale?!?
Murray,GM : Who's going first?
Arjhan : I volunteer the guy in heavy armour
Rumbaba : I'm carrying a torch.
Murray,GM : And who are you carrying a torch for, you romantic goblin you?
Rumbaba : Well, I still miss the Goliath
The group continue to get kobolds, gnomes, and goblins confused. Attacked by giant centipedes...
Arjhan : I target the scorpion on the left.
Rumbaba : CENTIPEDE! CENTIPEDE. What is with this group and basic taxonomy?
Murray,GM : With the Feast of Corellon and the Feywild coming up every Wizard, Warlock and Druid...
Rumbaba : ... and long-haired hippie
Murray,GM : ... who can get a few days off is going to spend the week talking shop, brewing potions and showing off spells. This means most *sane* people move out of the county for the holidays, but give it 1500 years and people will consider it a popular festival.
Rumbaba : And everybody will complain it isn't like the old days.
Murray,GM : ... and according to rumour there's a troop of secret police working for the Sheriff
Tarmikos : I'm not secret police!
Rumbaba : And I'm hardly inconspicuous!
Tarmikos : BANGBANGBANG Open up!
Arjhan the Dragonborn : Who's there?
Rumbaba : ... the secret police...
Tarmikos : We would like a word with you.
Rumbaba : ...comrade...
Rumbaba : We told them to keep the race riots to a minimum.
Murray,GM : ...and you found out that he'd been having an affair with the cook across the road.
Rumbaba : Can't say I blame him. Nice hips.
Blatant sizism continues to plague Rumbaba
Rumbaba : *singing softly* Short people got - no reason to liiiiive
Murray,GM : *on Dave's Bushido character* He survived a seven-day battle, made it to second level, rode back to the castle to report, fell off his horse and drowned.
Rumbaba : Yes, you goblin is more immaculately dressed than the elf. And better bathed.
Adrie the Druid : I'm all for hunting humans. It's hunting animals I draw the line at.
Arjhan : Let me get this straight... The Sheriff's men are all for protecting animals and monsters?
Murray,GM : Yes, it does sound like a meeting of PETA
Rumbaba : People for the Ethical Treatment of Aberrations
Hope : I was raised by dwarves.
Arjhan : What?! A Tiefling Paladin of Pelor raised by dwarves??
Rumbaba : He's joking. Although I do recall a boy that was raised by limpets. Sadly, he drowned at the first high tide.
Murray,GM : I heard a police sergeant once who would send his constables in to break up bar fights and throw the combatants out into the street, so he could throw them into the paddywagon. Once he missed and the bloke bounced off and dented the door. So he charged him with damaging police property.
Rumbaba : None of us are experts on post-dead citizens
Murray,GM : The eladrin steps through a portal in the air and closes it behind him.
Hope : That's mildly impressive.
Murray,GM : A voice hangs in the air... "...only mildly???..."
Rumbaba : Does the message arrive by pigeon?
Murray,GM : No?
Rumbaba : Ah. Not Twitter then.
Murray,GM : No, druids use Twitter.
Hope : Wizards use the magic mirror network, MyFace.
Murray,GM : The moonshine-making ranger was a Half-elf.
Rumbaba : Ah, so was he making wood elf alcohol?
Murray,GM : *headdesk*
Rumbaba : No wonder he died
Rumbaba : I'm off buying basic dungeoneering gear - torches, ropes, spikes... Dynamite... Bat-repellant...
Tarmikos : Do you know the funerary rituals of Bahamut?
Rumbaba : No, but if you hum a few bars I'll join in
Murray,GM : They were carrying longswords, a longbow, and spears.
Rumbaba : Given all of those are taller than me, help yourself.
Tarmikos : Which way is the wind burning?
Murray,GM : Burning?
Tarmikos : Blowing.
Rumbaba : If the air was on fire we'ld have bigger problems.
Rumbaba : I really should have brought a net, shouldn't I?
Tarmikos : No, I don't think she would have helped.
Murray,GM : So do you changely into a male or shemale Dire Wolf?
Adrie : Shemale.
Rumbaba : Shemale?!?
Murray,GM : Who's going first?
Arjhan : I volunteer the guy in heavy armour
Rumbaba : I'm carrying a torch.
Murray,GM : And who are you carrying a torch for, you romantic goblin you?
Rumbaba : Well, I still miss the Goliath
The group continue to get kobolds, gnomes, and goblins confused. Attacked by giant centipedes...
Arjhan : I target the scorpion on the left.
Rumbaba : CENTIPEDE! CENTIPEDE. What is with this group and basic taxonomy?
Baffling
General | Posted 15 years agoWhy in dog's name would someone leave the seat of a Port-a-loo lined with bacon?
BSG:12C
General | Posted 15 years agoWell, being ill was an exhausting weekend. Spent most of it on Purrdence's Battlestar Galactica sim on Second Life, 'Twelve Colonies'. Although it's rather fewer than twelve now, given they finally reached the point the minseries launched from - the start of the Second Cylon War.
It was nice to finally get an opportunity to RP at length, too, although I may have overdone things, given I was playing four different roles at once. Would have been five, but I was too busy playing a somewhat meta role in the tunnels under Illumini to switch to a Centurion skin and go gun down civilians. Not that I needed to in the end, since the existing Centurions did a perfectly adequate job by themselves. Especially after I lead some two dozen people into the middle of a Cylon crossfire.
Particularly satisfying - setting up that ambush, *everything* I said in the sim having an ulterior interpretation, and being the very last person rescued off the planet before the Battlestar Phœnix jumped out.
So at the moment my main character, a late-middle-aged accountant, is hanging around in the Phœnix sickbay, which led to some of the following OOC comments by me in the group chat.
Me : At least Cylons can edit their own memories. That way they don't have to endure the sight of Edi in a backless hospital gown.
Other players : LMAO, shudders, etc.
Me : Could be worse, though.
Other players : ?
Me : He could be wearing the gown backwards.
Another observation from the weekend
Me : Battlestar Galactica & Neon Genesis Evangelion - two series where everyone is frakked in the head. Including the robots.
There's other similarities as well. Both open with the near-extinction of humanity, both feature twisted religious fanaticism and even more twisted parental issues, and both humanity is very nearly wiped out completely by a skinjob.
It was nice to finally get an opportunity to RP at length, too, although I may have overdone things, given I was playing four different roles at once. Would have been five, but I was too busy playing a somewhat meta role in the tunnels under Illumini to switch to a Centurion skin and go gun down civilians. Not that I needed to in the end, since the existing Centurions did a perfectly adequate job by themselves. Especially after I lead some two dozen people into the middle of a Cylon crossfire.
Particularly satisfying - setting up that ambush, *everything* I said in the sim having an ulterior interpretation, and being the very last person rescued off the planet before the Battlestar Phœnix jumped out.
So at the moment my main character, a late-middle-aged accountant, is hanging around in the Phœnix sickbay, which led to some of the following OOC comments by me in the group chat.
Me : At least Cylons can edit their own memories. That way they don't have to endure the sight of Edi in a backless hospital gown.
Other players : LMAO, shudders, etc.
Me : Could be worse, though.
Other players : ?
Me : He could be wearing the gown backwards.
Another observation from the weekend
Me : Battlestar Galactica & Neon Genesis Evangelion - two series where everyone is frakked in the head. Including the robots.
There's other similarities as well. Both open with the near-extinction of humanity, both feature twisted religious fanaticism and even more twisted parental issues, and both humanity is very nearly wiped out completely by a skinjob.
Moon Bunnies!
General | Posted 15 years agoWell, being as sick as a dog since last Thursday has now got me staying home until Sunday. And what a sod of a virus it is, too. The first night it was raging fever and sweating so badly the sheets and pillow were dripping, not just damp. The next night I was shivering uncontrollably. New symptom ever night. But Purrdence finally persuaded me not to go to work, and the doctor agreed. Still, I've failed to eat more than a sandwich a day since I fell ill, and I've spent most of the last 48 hours asleep.
So I missed Monday's Goodies episode - National Health Service. Just as well I didn't miss last week's, which provoked a simultaneous cry from Purrdence and I of "Moon Bunnies!!!!" when we realised what episode it was. And we both were waiting eagerly for such well remembered moments as 7:40 on in the following.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FJCO1JH_WQ
This weeks - It's the spelunking episode.
If you want me, I shall be in the spleen.
So I missed Monday's Goodies episode - National Health Service. Just as well I didn't miss last week's, which provoked a simultaneous cry from Purrdence and I of "Moon Bunnies!!!!" when we realised what episode it was. And we both were waiting eagerly for such well remembered moments as 7:40 on in the following.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FJCO1JH_WQ
This weeks - It's the spelunking episode.
If you want me, I shall be in the spleen.
Run! It's the Plutonian Flying Crawdads!
General | Posted 15 years agoZoologger: Horror fly returns from the dead http://www.newscientist.com/article.....-the-dead.html
"a mythical beast, not seen for more than 160 years. A nocturnal animal that feeds on the rotten flesh of large mammals. A species active only during the winter months that reportedly emits a luminous glow from its large, orange head. What new horror is this?
It's a fly, the bone skipper Thyreophora cynophila, and it is back from the dead. Considered globally extinct until now, the first fly to be killed off by humans, the bone skipper was first described by an entomologist who found it on the carcass of a dog in 1798. Last seen in the 1840s, it has now been rediscovered by Daniel Martín-Vega and colleagues of the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain. "
Glowing head? That's no fly! It's a Fungus From Yuggoth! Flee, you fools, before they remove your brains and cart them off to Pluto in their special Mi-Go Brain Canisters!
Compare and contrast :
http://www.newscientist.com/data/im.....9359-2_300.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....250px-Migo.jpg
"a mythical beast, not seen for more than 160 years. A nocturnal animal that feeds on the rotten flesh of large mammals. A species active only during the winter months that reportedly emits a luminous glow from its large, orange head. What new horror is this?
It's a fly, the bone skipper Thyreophora cynophila, and it is back from the dead. Considered globally extinct until now, the first fly to be killed off by humans, the bone skipper was first described by an entomologist who found it on the carcass of a dog in 1798. Last seen in the 1840s, it has now been rediscovered by Daniel Martín-Vega and colleagues of the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain. "
Glowing head? That's no fly! It's a Fungus From Yuggoth! Flee, you fools, before they remove your brains and cart them off to Pluto in their special Mi-Go Brain Canisters!
Compare and contrast :
http://www.newscientist.com/data/im.....9359-2_300.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.....250px-Migo.jpg
I have some good players
General | Posted 15 years agoYay! [info]ratfan's character journal for Virginia Kendall ( in the Cthulhu Apocalypse playtest ) got quoted in the Pelgrane Press blog.
http://www.pelgranepress.com/
I'm so chuffed on her behalf, and glad to have a player of her quality in my group :) Which reminds me, I think I'm going to have to force a reset of the last hour of Saturday's session, because otherwise their second armed stand-off with the Charing Cross police was going to end up with one of the cops dead and the PCs hunted down for an appointment with Old Sparky.
Another example of her work
Journal of Amy Wells
[found in the ruins of an old Boston house, much damaged and torn.]
24 December 1923
Until now I have not written down anything that happened to me, save the most banal and ordinary events which could occur in the life of a person. This year, however, my life took a drastic turn away from anything which could be called banal and ordinary, such that I have real cause to question my own chances of survival.
My name is Amelia Wells, of the Boston Wells, born in the year of grace 1899, and I write in the apparent safety of my childhood bedroom in snow-covered Boston, having yielded to my parents' entreaties to come home for Christmas. Of course, I am an adult woman, not that child any longer, and I have seen my two brothers go to war and only one return, so it is futile to expect that innocence could still persist.
When I was not so much younger, I wanted to do something real, something which would be respected. Staying in the well-to-do circles of my friends, who were the children of my parents' friends, wouldn't have brought me that. We were called the Boston aristocracy, a title I hated when I was growing up. I did not like it any better when I heard it from the young women who were my companions in nursing training.
I became a nurse because I wanted to help people. Trite but true. I could not fight for them as my brothers did, so I took the path which was possible for me.
I worked as a hospital nurse after completing my training, with those whose bodies and often their minds had been damaged or destroyed by the terrible rigors of the Great War. From Boston General, I became interested in the workings of the mind and applied for a position at the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane in Danvers.
When I had been there only a few months, an extraordinary gentleman from the town of Arkham came to visit the asylum. He was a military veteran and collector of antiquities, apparently intent on questioning one of our inmates concerning some past experience of his. Colonel Lancaster by name, he is much weakened by his war experience, but remains a courageous and generous benefactor of the unfortunate.
Among his friends are the actress, Lucy Smith, a somewhat vociferous Irishman, by name Patrick McGinty, and now a young ex-serviceman, Paul Rondale, who reminds me hauntingly of my brother Jack. These, and others I met along the way, have been my companions in a strange and terrible journey. Yet, somehow, I would not wish to have never taken this path.
Col. Lancaster made his visit on the 4th of April of this year, a bare nine months ago. I am not entirely clear how I came to be of their company, save that I felt it my business, since it was the ravings of one of the patients under my care who led us to the rescue of the strange children whose prattlings were in no language known to man. I will never forget seeing the Colonel and the others firing on a boat rowed in darkness by the part-human creatures who had kidnapped the children.
Only a few months later, I have seen my companions do murder several times over. But is it murder or warfare, when it is waged against an ancient race whose very spoken word can induce horror and madness in those who hear it, or read the texts from their far past, when they were truly masters of this world?
This race seemed to have as its headquarters the fishing town of Innsmouth, Mass, where the common folk had a cast to their features and a tone to their speech which was not entirely of humanity. So it was that we removed there, to learn what we could – what my companions feared.
Also with us was Lucy's elderly mother, for whom I was caring and whom she feared to leave behind.
[Here pages are torn from the book]
........the flight to New York.......the freezing cold was too much for the elderly woman and she passed away, never knowing the horrors which she had moved among in Innsmouth, though we could not protect her from the greater horrors of our escape by bus with McGinty at the wheel......
Unfortunately, though I was too ignorant to realise this until much time had passed, the US Government itself was made aware of the horrors which nested in Innsmouth and beneath the very sea itself, and a full military raid, on land and by sea, was organised and ourselves drafted as civilian specialists in the endeavour. Mr Rondale joined us at this time – this was to be his first military action – and of course Mr. McGinty was a veteran of the Great War.
[Here several more pages are torn out, quite violently]
..... After our terrifying experiences in Innsmouth, I knew I needed to escape from my familiar surrounds in Arkham for a time. Of course, my family wished me to come home and indeed, for a time this seemed to be the easiest option. It seems that I am forever fighting against their wish that I should return and be a lady, abandoning this working class aspiration of nursing.
However, now it would be not only this about which I would have to remain silent! For their own sake, I could not speak of the darker things which are now part of my own dreams, lest these horrors walk in their own thoughts. Once I thought there could be no horror more compelling than the Great War, where my brothers went to fight, believing in conscience that they could not leave the British without aid from America, though our nation was not yet a part of that terrible conflict.
Jack never came back from that fight and my other brother, Ronnie, has never completely come back.
I think of some of the things Ronnie has said when he has had too much to drink, and of the patients I cared for in the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane. Some of them included ex-servicemen, and they used to rant and plead in equal measure, restrained in their jackets from harming themselves or us. "I am not insane!" they would cry. I wonder now, how many were telling the truth, how many had seen with their own eyes such things as the dank horrors of the tunnels below Innsmouth and the human beings of that town who were no longer....quite human?
I wonder, and I believed that I could not be with my family, until I had some way of ensuring their safety, to know that what I have experienced will not follow me and hook them into that living darkness.
In early December, then, I found myself in a small inland town, hoping for a peaceful holiday, only to become embroiled in the matter of the evilly bewitched dolls.
Since it seems my fate will pursue me wherever I go, I should be even more reluctant to bring my family to the attention of whatever malign beings now observe me and my companions. I should – but I have had cause to realise that the remnants of that ancient civilisation which dwells alongside ours, in the dark of moonless nights and below the earth itself, are far more widespread than I had at first believed. They are in Boston, then, as they are in Arkham, Innsmouth and other small towns whose names I do not know.
I am careful, I have come alone and without writing or telephoning ahead, which is discourteous but in this case is also a protection. I have told my companions only that I will be away for a few days and will return soon.
[end of this journal entry]
http://www.pelgranepress.com/
I'm so chuffed on her behalf, and glad to have a player of her quality in my group :) Which reminds me, I think I'm going to have to force a reset of the last hour of Saturday's session, because otherwise their second armed stand-off with the Charing Cross police was going to end up with one of the cops dead and the PCs hunted down for an appointment with Old Sparky.
Another example of her work
Journal of Amy Wells
[found in the ruins of an old Boston house, much damaged and torn.]
24 December 1923
Until now I have not written down anything that happened to me, save the most banal and ordinary events which could occur in the life of a person. This year, however, my life took a drastic turn away from anything which could be called banal and ordinary, such that I have real cause to question my own chances of survival.
My name is Amelia Wells, of the Boston Wells, born in the year of grace 1899, and I write in the apparent safety of my childhood bedroom in snow-covered Boston, having yielded to my parents' entreaties to come home for Christmas. Of course, I am an adult woman, not that child any longer, and I have seen my two brothers go to war and only one return, so it is futile to expect that innocence could still persist.
When I was not so much younger, I wanted to do something real, something which would be respected. Staying in the well-to-do circles of my friends, who were the children of my parents' friends, wouldn't have brought me that. We were called the Boston aristocracy, a title I hated when I was growing up. I did not like it any better when I heard it from the young women who were my companions in nursing training.
I became a nurse because I wanted to help people. Trite but true. I could not fight for them as my brothers did, so I took the path which was possible for me.
I worked as a hospital nurse after completing my training, with those whose bodies and often their minds had been damaged or destroyed by the terrible rigors of the Great War. From Boston General, I became interested in the workings of the mind and applied for a position at the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane in Danvers.
When I had been there only a few months, an extraordinary gentleman from the town of Arkham came to visit the asylum. He was a military veteran and collector of antiquities, apparently intent on questioning one of our inmates concerning some past experience of his. Colonel Lancaster by name, he is much weakened by his war experience, but remains a courageous and generous benefactor of the unfortunate.
Among his friends are the actress, Lucy Smith, a somewhat vociferous Irishman, by name Patrick McGinty, and now a young ex-serviceman, Paul Rondale, who reminds me hauntingly of my brother Jack. These, and others I met along the way, have been my companions in a strange and terrible journey. Yet, somehow, I would not wish to have never taken this path.
Col. Lancaster made his visit on the 4th of April of this year, a bare nine months ago. I am not entirely clear how I came to be of their company, save that I felt it my business, since it was the ravings of one of the patients under my care who led us to the rescue of the strange children whose prattlings were in no language known to man. I will never forget seeing the Colonel and the others firing on a boat rowed in darkness by the part-human creatures who had kidnapped the children.
Only a few months later, I have seen my companions do murder several times over. But is it murder or warfare, when it is waged against an ancient race whose very spoken word can induce horror and madness in those who hear it, or read the texts from their far past, when they were truly masters of this world?
This race seemed to have as its headquarters the fishing town of Innsmouth, Mass, where the common folk had a cast to their features and a tone to their speech which was not entirely of humanity. So it was that we removed there, to learn what we could – what my companions feared.
Also with us was Lucy's elderly mother, for whom I was caring and whom she feared to leave behind.
[Here pages are torn from the book]
........the flight to New York.......the freezing cold was too much for the elderly woman and she passed away, never knowing the horrors which she had moved among in Innsmouth, though we could not protect her from the greater horrors of our escape by bus with McGinty at the wheel......
Unfortunately, though I was too ignorant to realise this until much time had passed, the US Government itself was made aware of the horrors which nested in Innsmouth and beneath the very sea itself, and a full military raid, on land and by sea, was organised and ourselves drafted as civilian specialists in the endeavour. Mr Rondale joined us at this time – this was to be his first military action – and of course Mr. McGinty was a veteran of the Great War.
[Here several more pages are torn out, quite violently]
..... After our terrifying experiences in Innsmouth, I knew I needed to escape from my familiar surrounds in Arkham for a time. Of course, my family wished me to come home and indeed, for a time this seemed to be the easiest option. It seems that I am forever fighting against their wish that I should return and be a lady, abandoning this working class aspiration of nursing.
However, now it would be not only this about which I would have to remain silent! For their own sake, I could not speak of the darker things which are now part of my own dreams, lest these horrors walk in their own thoughts. Once I thought there could be no horror more compelling than the Great War, where my brothers went to fight, believing in conscience that they could not leave the British without aid from America, though our nation was not yet a part of that terrible conflict.
Jack never came back from that fight and my other brother, Ronnie, has never completely come back.
I think of some of the things Ronnie has said when he has had too much to drink, and of the patients I cared for in the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Insane. Some of them included ex-servicemen, and they used to rant and plead in equal measure, restrained in their jackets from harming themselves or us. "I am not insane!" they would cry. I wonder now, how many were telling the truth, how many had seen with their own eyes such things as the dank horrors of the tunnels below Innsmouth and the human beings of that town who were no longer....quite human?
I wonder, and I believed that I could not be with my family, until I had some way of ensuring their safety, to know that what I have experienced will not follow me and hook them into that living darkness.
In early December, then, I found myself in a small inland town, hoping for a peaceful holiday, only to become embroiled in the matter of the evilly bewitched dolls.
Since it seems my fate will pursue me wherever I go, I should be even more reluctant to bring my family to the attention of whatever malign beings now observe me and my companions. I should – but I have had cause to realise that the remnants of that ancient civilisation which dwells alongside ours, in the dark of moonless nights and below the earth itself, are far more widespread than I had at first believed. They are in Boston, then, as they are in Arkham, Innsmouth and other small towns whose names I do not know.
I am careful, I have come alone and without writing or telephoning ahead, which is discourteous but in this case is also a protection. I have told my companions only that I will be away for a few days and will return soon.
[end of this journal entry]
'The Statement of Randolph Carter' as written by PG Wodehous
General | Posted 15 years agoby Wrathnar - http://www.yog-sothoth.com/entries/.....y-PG-Wodehouse
"One hesitates to employ the idiom of the hyperbolic," came the voice of the presently subterranean gentleman's gentleman, "but I very much regret to inform you that I am in the unfortunate position of encountering what can only be described as 'the Unnameable', sir."
We Woosters are made of the sternest, of course, but at the sound of a slight quaver in the measured tones of the hitherto ever-imperturbable Jeeves, this Wooster was sorely tempted to biff off with all despatch. I stiffened the upper lip, braced the spine, and spoke into the field telephone.
"Hang on, old egg. I'm coming down. Bertram to the rescue, what?"
"Absolutely not, sir, if you'll forgive the use of the imperative. It would appear to be rather too late, in any case. Save yourself, sir; one simply could not contemplate the premature termination of the Wooster posterity."
Dash it all, but the man was right, as always
"One hesitates to employ the idiom of the hyperbolic," came the voice of the presently subterranean gentleman's gentleman, "but I very much regret to inform you that I am in the unfortunate position of encountering what can only be described as 'the Unnameable', sir."
We Woosters are made of the sternest, of course, but at the sound of a slight quaver in the measured tones of the hitherto ever-imperturbable Jeeves, this Wooster was sorely tempted to biff off with all despatch. I stiffened the upper lip, braced the spine, and spoke into the field telephone.
"Hang on, old egg. I'm coming down. Bertram to the rescue, what?"
"Absolutely not, sir, if you'll forgive the use of the imperative. It would appear to be rather too late, in any case. Save yourself, sir; one simply could not contemplate the premature termination of the Wooster posterity."
Dash it all, but the man was right, as always
D&D of weeks times Three
General | Posted 15 years ago Al the wizard : The problem with political jokes is that sometimes they get elected
Improvised miniatures to represent party transport
Murray, GM : It's made out of cork and a bit of plywood. Therefore it's a hobbyhorse
Adrie the Druid : I turn into a wolf.
Murray, GM : What kind of wolf?
Rumbaba : Airwolf. A helicopter would really surprise them.
Hope the Paladin : You just called the goblin a gnome.
Murray, GM : I did? Well, they're all the same to me - Short.
Rumbaba : You know, a goblin could really develop a complex from all this
Murray, GM : So you might be accosted by horny goats
Al OOC : Well, then we Dodge Ram
Murray, GM : You charge in to attack the wolf. Which is when you discover that some of the Kobolds in the pile are still alive. They groan and cry out underfoot
Rumbaba : Ooops. Sorry, sorry! Stab.
Murray, GM : What's Insight of an Elf?
Al : Guts.
Tarmikos : Vicious Mockery on the non-blinded elf
Rumbaba OOC : 'Ah, your momma wears army boots'
Tarmikos : *rolls 1*
Rumbaba OOC : 'Ah, your momma wears.... things'
Rumbaba OOC : I use the knife to pole-vault over the dog.
Murray, GM : That'll look good in the movie
Rumbaba OOC : Nah, it wouldn't get past the ASPCA. "No riding dogs were harmed in the production of this film"
he party - still roped in as law enforcement - are standing around the woods with one of the people they just killed in self-defense.
Al the Wizard : Are you saying the cops are in the copse with the corpse?
Al the Wizard : Sheep and goats only want you to think they're herbivores. That's why you hardly ever see dead shepherds.
Al the Wizard : If you can't laugh at hideous mutants, who can you laugh at?
Hope the Paladin : Hideous Mutant Babies?
Interrogating a victim
Al the Wizard : And where does your family live?
Olessa : Um.... Baker Street
Al the Wizard : And what is your father's profession?
Rumbaba OOC : Consulting Detective
Rumbaba : There are holes in her story big enough to drive a Tarrasque through.
Al the Wizard : Make a note gents - we have to confirm what species the suspect is. He's already been identified as three different things - in one sentence.
Murray, GM : He's got a point.
Al the Wizard : Yes, usually it's on top of my head.
Rumbaba : The only way to be sure is to cut him in half and see if he says GNOME all the way through.
Hope : Do bugbears speak Buggery?
Al : No, but it is their national sport
Rumbaba : I'm not stupid, I'm not going in a cave alone!
Al : Especially when you're shaped like a chew toy.
Hope : Tell me, do goblins still come with flavours?
Fighting a murderous ghost apparently fettered to a moonshine still in a backwoods shack.
Al : Don't drink anything from the still!
Rumbaba : ... why?
Al : Bad spirits!
Adrie transforms to swarm form to scout for the party, and returns to report.
Rumbaba : So, what's the buzz?
Improvised miniatures to represent party transport
Murray, GM : It's made out of cork and a bit of plywood. Therefore it's a hobbyhorse
Adrie the Druid : I turn into a wolf.
Murray, GM : What kind of wolf?
Rumbaba : Airwolf. A helicopter would really surprise them.
Hope the Paladin : You just called the goblin a gnome.
Murray, GM : I did? Well, they're all the same to me - Short.
Rumbaba : You know, a goblin could really develop a complex from all this
Murray, GM : So you might be accosted by horny goats
Al OOC : Well, then we Dodge Ram
Murray, GM : You charge in to attack the wolf. Which is when you discover that some of the Kobolds in the pile are still alive. They groan and cry out underfoot
Rumbaba : Ooops. Sorry, sorry! Stab.
Murray, GM : What's Insight of an Elf?
Al : Guts.
Tarmikos : Vicious Mockery on the non-blinded elf
Rumbaba OOC : 'Ah, your momma wears army boots'
Tarmikos : *rolls 1*
Rumbaba OOC : 'Ah, your momma wears.... things'
Rumbaba OOC : I use the knife to pole-vault over the dog.
Murray, GM : That'll look good in the movie
Rumbaba OOC : Nah, it wouldn't get past the ASPCA. "No riding dogs were harmed in the production of this film"
he party - still roped in as law enforcement - are standing around the woods with one of the people they just killed in self-defense.
Al the Wizard : Are you saying the cops are in the copse with the corpse?
Al the Wizard : Sheep and goats only want you to think they're herbivores. That's why you hardly ever see dead shepherds.
Al the Wizard : If you can't laugh at hideous mutants, who can you laugh at?
Hope the Paladin : Hideous Mutant Babies?
Interrogating a victim
Al the Wizard : And where does your family live?
Olessa : Um.... Baker Street
Al the Wizard : And what is your father's profession?
Rumbaba OOC : Consulting Detective
Rumbaba : There are holes in her story big enough to drive a Tarrasque through.
Al the Wizard : Make a note gents - we have to confirm what species the suspect is. He's already been identified as three different things - in one sentence.
Murray, GM : He's got a point.
Al the Wizard : Yes, usually it's on top of my head.
Rumbaba : The only way to be sure is to cut him in half and see if he says GNOME all the way through.
Hope : Do bugbears speak Buggery?
Al : No, but it is their national sport
Rumbaba : I'm not stupid, I'm not going in a cave alone!
Al : Especially when you're shaped like a chew toy.
Hope : Tell me, do goblins still come with flavours?
Fighting a murderous ghost apparently fettered to a moonshine still in a backwoods shack.
Al : Don't drink anything from the still!
Rumbaba : ... why?
Al : Bad spirits!
Adrie transforms to swarm form to scout for the party, and returns to report.
Rumbaba : So, what's the buzz?
A few weeks of Quotes
General | Posted 15 years agoThe last few weeks of Cthulhu Quotes
The aftermath of their excursion to the 1930s, planting the Reverend Vegetable, and the Case of the Bisected Corpse Part One - http://drhoz.livejournal.com/748536.html
The Case of the Bisected Corpse Part Two. And not just one corpse either, it turns out. By the third day they've accrued quite the collection of bodyparts -http://drhoz.livejournal.com/750583.html
Denouement of the Bisected Corpse Collections, and off to Virginia to catalog an occult collection - http://drhoz.livejournal.com/753812.html
The aftermath of their excursion to the 1930s, planting the Reverend Vegetable, and the Case of the Bisected Corpse Part One - http://drhoz.livejournal.com/748536.html
The Case of the Bisected Corpse Part Two. And not just one corpse either, it turns out. By the third day they've accrued quite the collection of bodyparts -http://drhoz.livejournal.com/750583.html
Denouement of the Bisected Corpse Collections, and off to Virginia to catalog an occult collection - http://drhoz.livejournal.com/753812.html
Letters From The Dead - Cthulhu Apocalypse continues
General | Posted 15 years agoI have to say this is one of the most frustrating sessions I've ever run, at least since I used to try to GM for Team Demolition back in Sydney. And the worst thing about it is that a great deal of it is my fault, and stems from from what I thought was my cunning attempts to mesh together the ongoing 1920s campaign, and the playtest of the 1930s Cthulhu Apocalypse. Instead, the players and their characters had reason to believe that they were in fact, trapped in some Mi-Go Matrix-style virtual reality, instead of a rather more horrifying plan millions of years in the making, involving time travel, multiple Mythos species, and the incidental extinction of humanity. I certainly shouldn't have spent an hour and a half at Matt's going-away do, prompting Ian to recount all the kinds of bullshit he inflicted on games in the past.
And the worst thing about it was players getting argumentative with me when I tried to inflict sanity losses on them when the scale, and time scale, of events, became apparent. I was very unhappy about the session by the end of it, and the "Oh god" count reached ten. Rondale's player was keeping track.
At least my attempts to mesh the campaigns left them with the knowledge that they'll be doing something terribly important, and horribly terrifying, in New York and London in the coming year, and that it involves somebody named Jackson Elias. Oh, and the small enjoinder that the something they do will result in the extinction of their species. Unless the amnesia, mind swapping, time travel, and letters from the dead are all some cunning trans-temporal game to try and ensure that doesn't happen.
Most quotes below give away nothing of the Apocalypse plot, or relate only to my apparently incompetent welding effort.
Anyway - the apocalypse has happened ( You could probably guess as much from the title of the book we're playtesting ). Needless to say this was quite a shock to the Reverend Joe, amongst others. Professor Engeleins has apparently gone catatonic, Colonel Lancaster spends most of the session sitting muttering over the coffee can full of the ashes of the daughter he cremated in the foyer of the post office, McGinty is relishing the fact that everybody in England is apparently dead, but I note he avoids ringing Dublin to see how things fare over the Irish Channel, and Rondale has gone just slightly bonkers as well. And they've run into a woman that apparently knows them, but they've never seen before.
McGinty : Let's go steal the Crown Jewels! An Irishman with the crown jewels, they'll be rolling in their graves. I'll be walking around with my robe and the little sceptre, going 'Look at me, I'm the King!'
Me, GM : *giving him the first of many Looks that session* .... Right.
McGinty, in gas mask ( the ermine robe is acquired later ) and waving a flamethrower.
Virginia Kendall : Are you from the Government?
Paddy McGinty : .....Yes. I commandeer this property in the name of Paddy!
Virginia Kendall : Do you have any ID?
This Ms. Kendall ( [info]ratfan's character for the duration ) has apparently known them since the mid 20s, and is trying to prod their memories about the horrible events in New York, and London. Which, thanks to the bizarre events in play, the regular party members don't know a thing about.
Pvt. Rondale : Ma'am, I have never been in London in my life.
Me, GM : Yes you have, this morning.
Pvt. Rondale : OK, apart from this morning.
McGinty puts it down to drug abuse
Paddy McGinty : Hey hey hey. Look over here. This table is full of cocaine. And there's s***loads of alcohol. This woman is clearly off her chops. She's turned vegetarian.
Me, GM : Yet she knows all your names.
Paddy McGinty : Well clearly she's taken some happy pills that let her see the fut... Where'd you get these happy pills?
McGinty's paranoia becomes alarming
Virginia Kendall :Anybody that knows you is a threat???
Paddy McGinty : Anybody that knows me, and I don't know them, is a threat
Virginia Kendall : Well, it's possible you're not in a state to remember
Paddy McGinty : Well, that's true. I'm quite often in no state to remember. *commandeers another bottle of champagne*
Pvt. Rondale : But I don't drink
Paddy McGinty : Yes you do, I proved it, eleven years ago you fell over almost dead because you'd been drinkin'
Pvt. Rondale : That's because you gave me poison
McGinty, Rondale & Reverend Joe go on a looting rampage through Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and the Tower of London. This fails to impress Ms. Kendall
Pvt. Rondale : Well, there could be useful ammunition and stocks in there
Virginia Kendall : That's not why you're doing it, sonny
Pvt. Rondale : Not at all, but we might as well check anyway
Various proofs that what they're in can't be reality. 1) McGinty is wearing a tux ( under the gasmask, flamethrower straps and ermine robe ). 2) McGinty is in England.
Paddy McGinty : I'm in England! I wouldn't be here unless I was dragged here by wild Byakhee!
Pvt. Rondale : Do you know anything about Innsmouth?
Me, GM : They mentioned it from time to time. And usually went very quiet.
Virginia Kendall : Something happened in a fishing town, didn't it?
Paddy McGinty : *muttering to self* Fishmen with the claws and the teeth and the murrrrrderous intentions...
Pvt. Rondale : Speak to McGinty about it. He'll keep you entertained for hours.
Paddy McGinty : ...and screaming worms in the sky. It was grand.
Reverend Joe : Where's my Bible?
Me, GM : It wasn't in your suit.
Reverend Joe : This isn't real.
Paddy McGinty : You might have left it your suitcase, numbnuts.
Me, GM : Or lost your faith at some point between 1925 and 1935.
Reverend Joe : Or lost my mind AND my faith.
Paddy McGinty : There's a high probability.
Paddy McGinty : We got to defenestrate somebody from a ground-floor window
Professor Engeleins : And I got to explain what defenestrate meant.
Paddy McGinty : I already knew what it meant! It's a great word. We just don't get to use it often, especially underground.
Definite spoilers ahead, heavily mixed with welding flux. A special no-prize to anybody that can name the cultural references I fitted into the Thing's speech.
Paddy McGinty OOC : And Dover's under the sea. *sings* Under the sea - Under the sea!/ Everything's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me!
Pvt. Rondale OOC : Would have made for a more interesting Little Mermaid.
Paddy McGinty OOC : What, having a Deep One in it?
Pvt. Rondale OOC : Yup.
Paddy McGinty OOC : *sings* Doobeedoo DooDoo beedooBEEdooRAGGHH!!!
Virginia Kendall, climbing up onto an eight-foot-tall table, and finding a paperweight and bundles of 'papers'
Paddy McGinty : What was that? What's up there?
Virginia Kendall : There's a paperweight
Paddy McGinty : Give it to me!
Virginia Kendall : *hefting the head-sized mass thoughtfully* I'm really tempted to give it to him
Some lines I came up with ( or stole ) that I'm very pleased with. Engelein's player came up with the first, though
The Unpronounceable Thing : [We] study how other species react to apocalypse. Every species encounters apocalypse. It happens to all.
Thing : We are not a cruel species. All species become extinct at one point, or another. Even on this world - the serpentmen of Valusia, the pre-human voormis, these have come and gone. You four came to our attention.
Pvt. Rondale : Well, we did set Buckingham Palace on fire.
Thing : Not for anything that unimportant. You are involved in the extinction of your species, ten years ago.
Pvt. Rondale : ........ that somewhat increases the kill count.
Virginia Kendall : That's when I met you!
Thing : Your actions drew our attention - not least because you have been involved in the manipulation of time
And the players indeed have, on four different occasions according to the Thing, but they can only think of two - their recent adventure involving Buttercup the Eldritch Cow, and that arch thing from Innsmouth. Despite their best hopes, setting Big Ben to Irish Time probably doesn't count.
Thing : As the Great Race craft our destiny and our eschaton, we can use you to shape that future - the future can take many paths, many branches - and whilst we are a gentle race sometimes we are forced to prune.
Paddy McGinty's player : *laughs* That's a nasty way of putting it.
Pvt. Rondale : So that's it?? This is all humanity has left?? This is our great End????
Thing : No! Humanity has, can and will become extinct many times! It has become extinct 300 years in your past! It will become extinct in 1945! And again in 2107!
Reverend Joe : ........ huh?
Thing : Time is, in a sense, mutable - lesser races assume time is a strict progression of linear events, but from a non-Euclidean, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a massive spheroid of elastic time-like quasimatter. Your species will, can and has discovered the means to travel in Time many times... the Plattnerite Armada of the Morlokoi, the devices of Kerensky & Blinovitch, the Zygma Beam of Findecker and Greel, the Time Capsules of Lambert & Newman. Your species will travel in Time - and suffer for it. Eaten by Paradox, hunted by the Tindalosi, earning the wrath of Afmogorgon...
Paddy McGinty : What the fooking hell is this thing talking about?
Thing : ...But the Great Race move on, learning all we can of the civilisations that rise and fall between the cusps of our existence.
Reverend Joe : ... aren't humans the Great Race?
GM and other players : *pause, followed by hysterical laughter*
I don't think I'll include any quotes from the third chapter - I'm that annoyed with how it went. One relevant comment about Cthulhu Apocalypse, however.
Rondale's Player : I notice that this is more pulp in tone than usual.
Me : *Nods* It's written for Trail of Cthulhu, a much pulpier system than Chaosium's original.
Rondale's Player : That's good. I like pulp.
Me : You should like what I have planned for you for the next year then. It's probably the pulpiest campaign Chaosium ever produced.
Rondale's Player : Great!
Me : It also has more ways to have a Total Party Kill than anything they've ever written.
Rondale's Player : D:
And the worst thing about it was players getting argumentative with me when I tried to inflict sanity losses on them when the scale, and time scale, of events, became apparent. I was very unhappy about the session by the end of it, and the "Oh god" count reached ten. Rondale's player was keeping track.
At least my attempts to mesh the campaigns left them with the knowledge that they'll be doing something terribly important, and horribly terrifying, in New York and London in the coming year, and that it involves somebody named Jackson Elias. Oh, and the small enjoinder that the something they do will result in the extinction of their species. Unless the amnesia, mind swapping, time travel, and letters from the dead are all some cunning trans-temporal game to try and ensure that doesn't happen.
Most quotes below give away nothing of the Apocalypse plot, or relate only to my apparently incompetent welding effort.
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*Anyway - the apocalypse has happened ( You could probably guess as much from the title of the book we're playtesting ). Needless to say this was quite a shock to the Reverend Joe, amongst others. Professor Engeleins has apparently gone catatonic, Colonel Lancaster spends most of the session sitting muttering over the coffee can full of the ashes of the daughter he cremated in the foyer of the post office, McGinty is relishing the fact that everybody in England is apparently dead, but I note he avoids ringing Dublin to see how things fare over the Irish Channel, and Rondale has gone just slightly bonkers as well. And they've run into a woman that apparently knows them, but they've never seen before.
McGinty : Let's go steal the Crown Jewels! An Irishman with the crown jewels, they'll be rolling in their graves. I'll be walking around with my robe and the little sceptre, going 'Look at me, I'm the King!'
Me, GM : *giving him the first of many Looks that session* .... Right.
McGinty, in gas mask ( the ermine robe is acquired later ) and waving a flamethrower.
Virginia Kendall : Are you from the Government?
Paddy McGinty : .....Yes. I commandeer this property in the name of Paddy!
Virginia Kendall : Do you have any ID?
This Ms. Kendall ( [info]ratfan's character for the duration ) has apparently known them since the mid 20s, and is trying to prod their memories about the horrible events in New York, and London. Which, thanks to the bizarre events in play, the regular party members don't know a thing about.
Pvt. Rondale : Ma'am, I have never been in London in my life.
Me, GM : Yes you have, this morning.
Pvt. Rondale : OK, apart from this morning.
McGinty puts it down to drug abuse
Paddy McGinty : Hey hey hey. Look over here. This table is full of cocaine. And there's s***loads of alcohol. This woman is clearly off her chops. She's turned vegetarian.
Me, GM : Yet she knows all your names.
Paddy McGinty : Well clearly she's taken some happy pills that let her see the fut... Where'd you get these happy pills?
McGinty's paranoia becomes alarming
Virginia Kendall :Anybody that knows you is a threat???
Paddy McGinty : Anybody that knows me, and I don't know them, is a threat
Virginia Kendall : Well, it's possible you're not in a state to remember
Paddy McGinty : Well, that's true. I'm quite often in no state to remember. *commandeers another bottle of champagne*
Pvt. Rondale : But I don't drink
Paddy McGinty : Yes you do, I proved it, eleven years ago you fell over almost dead because you'd been drinkin'
Pvt. Rondale : That's because you gave me poison
McGinty, Rondale & Reverend Joe go on a looting rampage through Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and the Tower of London. This fails to impress Ms. Kendall
Pvt. Rondale : Well, there could be useful ammunition and stocks in there
Virginia Kendall : That's not why you're doing it, sonny
Pvt. Rondale : Not at all, but we might as well check anyway
Various proofs that what they're in can't be reality. 1) McGinty is wearing a tux ( under the gasmask, flamethrower straps and ermine robe ). 2) McGinty is in England.
Paddy McGinty : I'm in England! I wouldn't be here unless I was dragged here by wild Byakhee!
Pvt. Rondale : Do you know anything about Innsmouth?
Me, GM : They mentioned it from time to time. And usually went very quiet.
Virginia Kendall : Something happened in a fishing town, didn't it?
Paddy McGinty : *muttering to self* Fishmen with the claws and the teeth and the murrrrrderous intentions...
Pvt. Rondale : Speak to McGinty about it. He'll keep you entertained for hours.
Paddy McGinty : ...and screaming worms in the sky. It was grand.
Reverend Joe : Where's my Bible?
Me, GM : It wasn't in your suit.
Reverend Joe : This isn't real.
Paddy McGinty : You might have left it your suitcase, numbnuts.
Me, GM : Or lost your faith at some point between 1925 and 1935.
Reverend Joe : Or lost my mind AND my faith.
Paddy McGinty : There's a high probability.
Paddy McGinty : We got to defenestrate somebody from a ground-floor window
Professor Engeleins : And I got to explain what defenestrate meant.
Paddy McGinty : I already knew what it meant! It's a great word. We just don't get to use it often, especially underground.
Definite spoilers ahead, heavily mixed with welding flux. A special no-prize to anybody that can name the cultural references I fitted into the Thing's speech.
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Paddy McGinty OOC : And Dover's under the sea. *sings* Under the sea - Under the sea!/ Everything's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me!
Pvt. Rondale OOC : Would have made for a more interesting Little Mermaid.
Paddy McGinty OOC : What, having a Deep One in it?
Pvt. Rondale OOC : Yup.
Paddy McGinty OOC : *sings* Doobeedoo DooDoo beedooBEEdooRAGGHH!!!
Virginia Kendall, climbing up onto an eight-foot-tall table, and finding a paperweight and bundles of 'papers'
Paddy McGinty : What was that? What's up there?
Virginia Kendall : There's a paperweight
Paddy McGinty : Give it to me!
Virginia Kendall : *hefting the head-sized mass thoughtfully* I'm really tempted to give it to him
Some lines I came up with ( or stole ) that I'm very pleased with. Engelein's player came up with the first, though
The Unpronounceable Thing : [We] study how other species react to apocalypse. Every species encounters apocalypse. It happens to all.
Thing : We are not a cruel species. All species become extinct at one point, or another. Even on this world - the serpentmen of Valusia, the pre-human voormis, these have come and gone. You four came to our attention.
Pvt. Rondale : Well, we did set Buckingham Palace on fire.
Thing : Not for anything that unimportant. You are involved in the extinction of your species, ten years ago.
Pvt. Rondale : ........ that somewhat increases the kill count.
Virginia Kendall : That's when I met you!
Thing : Your actions drew our attention - not least because you have been involved in the manipulation of time
And the players indeed have, on four different occasions according to the Thing, but they can only think of two - their recent adventure involving Buttercup the Eldritch Cow, and that arch thing from Innsmouth. Despite their best hopes, setting Big Ben to Irish Time probably doesn't count.
Thing : As the Great Race craft our destiny and our eschaton, we can use you to shape that future - the future can take many paths, many branches - and whilst we are a gentle race sometimes we are forced to prune.
Paddy McGinty's player : *laughs* That's a nasty way of putting it.
Pvt. Rondale : So that's it?? This is all humanity has left?? This is our great End????
Thing : No! Humanity has, can and will become extinct many times! It has become extinct 300 years in your past! It will become extinct in 1945! And again in 2107!
Reverend Joe : ........ huh?
Thing : Time is, in a sense, mutable - lesser races assume time is a strict progression of linear events, but from a non-Euclidean, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a massive spheroid of elastic time-like quasimatter. Your species will, can and has discovered the means to travel in Time many times... the Plattnerite Armada of the Morlokoi, the devices of Kerensky & Blinovitch, the Zygma Beam of Findecker and Greel, the Time Capsules of Lambert & Newman. Your species will travel in Time - and suffer for it. Eaten by Paradox, hunted by the Tindalosi, earning the wrath of Afmogorgon...
Paddy McGinty : What the fooking hell is this thing talking about?
Thing : ...But the Great Race move on, learning all we can of the civilisations that rise and fall between the cusps of our existence.
Reverend Joe : ... aren't humans the Great Race?
GM and other players : *pause, followed by hysterical laughter*
I don't think I'll include any quotes from the third chapter - I'm that annoyed with how it went. One relevant comment about Cthulhu Apocalypse, however.
Rondale's Player : I notice that this is more pulp in tone than usual.
Me : *Nods* It's written for Trail of Cthulhu, a much pulpier system than Chaosium's original.
Rondale's Player : That's good. I like pulp.
Me : You should like what I have planned for you for the next year then. It's probably the pulpiest campaign Chaosium ever produced.
Rondale's Player : Great!
Me : It also has more ways to have a Total Party Kill than anything they've ever written.
Rondale's Player : D:
RL+D&D+CoCOOC QTD
General | Posted 15 years agoLancaster's player is moving out of the country for a bit
"I'm outsourcing myself to China"
At the Guild, discussing the roles of Reverend Joe in the Cthulhu gam4e
"So Catholics are Battle-priests and Protestants are D&D clerics?"
We watch a large blowfly staggering drunken around the edges of a puddle of beer
My Brother : Well, you have to admit it's the perfect place for a drunk fly - it's a barfly.
The 4th Ed D&D
Murray, GM : Under the admittedly loose definitions you can get with anything you can justify as adventuring and not piracy or brigandage.
Al : As long as we pay tax.
Rumbaba : I'd like to think they rioted because I didn't appear that night, but I'm not that egotistical.
Rumbaba : It's not so much an Underworld in a town this small, as a slightly sunken dining room.
Police clerk : *checks record scroll on dead hood* Petty theft, petty theft, drunk & disorderly, brawling, sheep rustling, sheep.. *peers closer* Oh, sheep fleecing
Gae-el : I think we should go talk to the pigs. They have better manners.
Gae-el : Are the brands on the pigs genuine? Are they Kosher?
Hood's GF : *to Tiefling* Get out of my hovel, you're lowering the tone
Tiefling Paladin : I get back on my horse...
Murray, GM : Your high horse. Typical Paladin.
Tiefling Paladin : ... And reinsert the stick in my arse.
Murray, GM: *headdesk*
Tiefling Paladin : It's a class requirement
Mad Dwarven Fire Warlock : *grudgingly agrees to truce* Well, we're within each other's blast radius. Mutually Assured Conflagration is fine by me.
Rumbaba : OK, we're taking fairy cakes and mead and sweetmeats in case the fae turn up to the barbecue.
Murray, GM : Just don't tell them you're baking brownies.
And a few comments from before the start of the Cthulhu game
Me, GM : Paddy McGinty, the other Irish Blight
Pvt. Rondale's Player : I count that wizard as a kill! He ain't coming back! Admittedly he took a whole town with him.
Me, GM :Yes, there was a certain amount of collateral damage with that one.
The Peanut Gallery : Are there any Welshmen in the party?
Paddy McGinty : No
The Peanut Gallery : Good - Irishmen and Welshmen do not get along
Paddy McGinty : Hey, Irishmen don't get along with anybody from that little island off the coast. We don't get along with each other.
"I'm outsourcing myself to China"
At the Guild, discussing the roles of Reverend Joe in the Cthulhu gam4e
"So Catholics are Battle-priests and Protestants are D&D clerics?"
We watch a large blowfly staggering drunken around the edges of a puddle of beer
My Brother : Well, you have to admit it's the perfect place for a drunk fly - it's a barfly.
The 4th Ed D&D
Murray, GM : Under the admittedly loose definitions you can get with anything you can justify as adventuring and not piracy or brigandage.
Al : As long as we pay tax.
Rumbaba : I'd like to think they rioted because I didn't appear that night, but I'm not that egotistical.
Rumbaba : It's not so much an Underworld in a town this small, as a slightly sunken dining room.
Police clerk : *checks record scroll on dead hood* Petty theft, petty theft, drunk & disorderly, brawling, sheep rustling, sheep.. *peers closer* Oh, sheep fleecing
Gae-el : I think we should go talk to the pigs. They have better manners.
Gae-el : Are the brands on the pigs genuine? Are they Kosher?
Hood's GF : *to Tiefling* Get out of my hovel, you're lowering the tone
Tiefling Paladin : I get back on my horse...
Murray, GM : Your high horse. Typical Paladin.
Tiefling Paladin : ... And reinsert the stick in my arse.
Murray, GM: *headdesk*
Tiefling Paladin : It's a class requirement
Mad Dwarven Fire Warlock : *grudgingly agrees to truce* Well, we're within each other's blast radius. Mutually Assured Conflagration is fine by me.
Rumbaba : OK, we're taking fairy cakes and mead and sweetmeats in case the fae turn up to the barbecue.
Murray, GM : Just don't tell them you're baking brownies.
And a few comments from before the start of the Cthulhu game
Me, GM : Paddy McGinty, the other Irish Blight
Pvt. Rondale's Player : I count that wizard as a kill! He ain't coming back! Admittedly he took a whole town with him.
Me, GM :Yes, there was a certain amount of collateral damage with that one.
The Peanut Gallery : Are there any Welshmen in the party?
Paddy McGinty : No
The Peanut Gallery : Good - Irishmen and Welshmen do not get along
Paddy McGinty : Hey, Irishmen don't get along with anybody from that little island off the coast. We don't get along with each other.
They Saved Lancaster's Brain
General | Posted 15 years agoIn Cthulhu, some proud moments for me as a Keeper. Including Investigators refusing to read clues because they don't want to know what's going on, and two of them chanting "I disbelieve! I disbelieve!" in the vain hope that will work. This session was recorded by Pastor Joe's player, Mark, but there's no way in hell I'm going to release it to the general public. Partly because the players were somewhat out of control without the moderating influence of Ratfan and Purrdence ( and imagine a session where Purrdence is a moderating influence!), partly because the session began a playtest of Pelgrane Press's Cthulhu Apocalypse, but mostly because listening to my own voice in playback was a mortifying experience.
At least I can transcribe dialogue at my leisure.
But as usual, it's the downtime between sessions that provides some of the best lines. Such as double-checking which spells party members have actually learned.
Me, to McGinty's player : I'm already worried by what McGinty might do when he finally snaps. Dispatch a Star Vampire to assassinate the Pope, perhaps.
To my considerable and unprintable alarm, McGinty's repertoire now includes both Summon/Bind Star Vampire, and Brew Space Mead, which makes Interstellar monster-assisted flight survivable by putting the imbiber into suspended animation.
McGinty OOC : Woohoo!!!! First Irishman in Space! No-one can take the sky from me! I'll plant the Irish flag on the moon!
Me, GM : 'I claim this satellite in the name of Belfast!'
Anticipating the consequences of the Irish Space Program
Prof. Engeleins : The Irish are leaving the planet - at last we can build Utopia.
McGinty : How far away is the Sun?
Me, GM : Why, are you planning on being the first Irishman there, too?
McGinty : ... We'll be fine, we'll travel at night.
The first Irish Interstellar Voyage
All : Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
McGinty : If you don't shut up back there I'm turning this thing around!
McGinty : Somebody open a window so Growler can stick his head out
Growler : *explodes in the vacuum*
Me, GM : Thank goodness for Space Mead is all I can say
Further discussion reveals just how many options the party has in the event they're too late to rescue poor Lancaster.
Pvt. Rondale : McGinty here invented classic gangsterism ten years early. He's got a tommygun in a violin case in one hand...
McGinty : And a trumpet case in the other!
Me, GM : ... And the trumpet raises the dead.
McGinty : I'm a one-man marching band!
Me, GM : You'd think that after the incident with the chicken lunch, the party would steer well clear of fowl necromancy.
Me, GM : If you're serious about getting into Lucy's knickers I'd recommend plying her with absinthe, if it hadn't been banned 13 years earlier. It has quite a reputation as an aphrodisiac. It might be the wormwood oil, it might be the fact it's 180° proof, but it's apparently true what they say - absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.
All : *dead silence*
Me, GM : ...aw... :(
Engeleins' player : *slow clap*
Rondale's player : Well. Done. Drhoz. How Droll.
Pastor Joe's player : I heard it, I appreciated it!
Rondale's player : Oh, I heard it. I just didn't appreciate it.
Colonel Lancaster, carted off into the black Vermont skies by hideous arthropoid things. Lucy & Amy run ahead to the waiting vehicles, to get the missing reporter and themselves to safely.
McGinty : Hang... *rolls dice* Yes, I physically piss myself laughing at the thought of Lucy driving anywhere.
Me, GM : McGinty has apparently gone into hysterics again
Pastor Joe : ... and wet himself
Prof. Engeleins : *slaps McGinty*
McGinty : Where the fook did that come from? *slaps the Professor back*
Pvt. Rondale : *intervenes. squabbling ensues*
Me, GM : *turning to Lancaster* Aren't you glad these people are coming to rescue you.
Me, GM : So, Pastor Joe, what are you going to do whilst these three go through their Three Stooges routine?
McGinty, Rondale, Engeleins OOC : Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! Nyuk! Nyuk! Why I oughta...
Pastor Joe OOC : I'm probably still terrified - this is the first unearthly thing I've ever encountered.
McGinty : Aw padre, don't you worry about it, it's just fooking big crayfish
Me, GM : Flying crayfish
Pastor Joe : Flying glowing crayfish
Pvt. Rondale : So, easier to hit?
McGinty : It's all to do with the French. You can't trust the bastards. They're doing stuff to the fooking crayfish now.
All : *long pause as we consider this statement and McGinty's previous blaming of all the world's ills on, variously, the English, the Catholics, the Satanists, and fishmen cults.*
Pastor Joe : Riiiiiight.
The end result of McGinty's megalomania and paranoia.
Col. Lancaster OOC : Oh that's just wonderful. After you've wiped out the English, the French, and the Germans, what have we got left? The Irish and the Scots.
McGinty OOC : *pauses. Then picks a fight with himself*
Me, GM : The things have landed on a ledge, and pin your limbs before dragging you into a sort of cave
Pvt. Rondale player : Thank god this is not an anime
Col. Lancaster OOC : 'I'm not comfortable being grabbed there!'
Prof. Engeleins' player : You're confusing anime with hentai, and hentai with yaoi... If they give you a sex change it could be yuri.
Col. Lancaster's player : *rolls dice* woohoo!
Pvt. Rondale's player : Was that a sex change roll?
Col. Lancaster's player : Yes!
Lancaster tries to bluff his way out.
Col. Lancaster : By the power vested in me by the King himself and the Greater British Empire I hearby order you to return to the nearest parallel dimension of convenience!
And elsewhere the party disregards McGinty's warnings about dimensional engineering.
Me, GM : [The Pastor] just vanished into thin air before your eyes.
McGinty : I told ya! I fooking TOLD ya! Nobody listens to the drunk Irishman!
Col. Lancaster OOC : Nobody listens to the drunk Irishman? For fooking good reason! The only that's worse than a drunk Irishman is a sober Irishman!
Col. Lancaster OOC : I just love how [McGinty] keeps asking which button it was, when it's been said there's one button. 'WHICH BUTTON IS IT?'
The Peanut Gallery : 'I'll give you six bucks if you shut up'
McGinty OOC : He hasn't got any money, he's being held down by giant crawdads
Pastor Joe OOC : Space Crawdads
McGinty OOC : No, it's a fooking buffet. Six claws and six wings on each, it's fooking grand.
Which gives us various recipes for Mi-Go barbecue
McGinty OOC : What do we do with these glowing head things?
Pastor Joe OOC : Nah, it's great, you don't need lights or anythin', 'cause the heids still 'lluminated
Pvt. Rondale : Do you know how to use a tommygun?
Pastor Joe : No...*takes gun* but I'm willing to learn.
Me, GM : The only noise is the hum and susurration of the machines. There's no screaming, no cursing, no English accent demanding to speak to the Ambassador
Pastor Joe : We've got two choices...
Prof. Engeleins : We follow the drag marks
Pastor Joe : Sure, let's go!
Prof. Engeleins : German efficiency :)
Me, GM : When you sneak up to the bend in the tunnel and peer around into the sickly yellow-green glow, you can see a chamber - not as large as the last, and with fewer machines, if that's what they were. There's also a raised slab of grey, polished stone. It looks a bit like an altar. Lancaster's body is lying face-up on it, and three of the crayfish things are crowded around one end - where it looks like they've gnawed off the top of his head. One is busy scraping the last bits of flesh out of the cavity.
Prof. Engeleins : *screams and hoses the room with a looted Mist Projector* Mein Gott! Estanglatten liegenstatten! Nein! Nein! Nein!
Further hysteria -
Me, GM : There's an assortment of curious tools, or possibly holy sacrificial knives, laid out around the remains. One of them resembles a large ice-cream scoop.
Pastor Joe : Are there any weapons?
Me, GM : Well, there's the ice-cream scoop.
Me, GM : *To Lancaster's Brain* All you can see is is these three, moving back and forth. And it's all grey. Perhaps it's moonlight, or you were hit in the head. But you can't turn your head.
Col. Lancaster's Brain : *flat mechanical voice from the speaker rig* Why. Can't. I. Move. My. Head.
Prof. Engeleins : You're in a jar, my friend.
All : *pause*
Pvt. Rondale : You could have said it a little bit nicely, but then again -
Prof. Engeleins : I don't think there's a nice way to say it.
Pastor Joe : And he did say 'my friend'.
Prof. Engeleins : You're a brain in a jar. And by the way now is a good time to talk about my outstanding debt at your antique shop.
Col. Lancaster's Brain : I. Know. I Am In. A Jam. Wait. Jar?
Prof. Engeleins : Yes, they scooped out your gooey gooey bits and put them in a jar. It's quite humorous.
Prof. Engeleins : I'm moving the rig around, without showing him his body, until he can get a good straight-on view of the hole
Me, GM : Are you really doing that?
Pastor Joe OOC : He's German, what do you expect?
Prof. Engeleins : Schadenfreude
Col. Lancaster's Brain : Where. Are. You. Taking Me? Why Can't. I. Feel. My. Legs?
Pvt. Rondale : Don't worry, I can feel them, they're fine.
Prof. Engeleins : Are you sure you want to see your body?
Col. Lancaster's Brain : Yes.
Prof. Engeleins : Are you reeeeeaaaally sure you want to see your body?
Col. Lancaster's Brain : Yes.
Prof. Engeleins : Are you going to erase my debt at your shop?
Pvt. Rondale's player : He lost ten points of sanity, he's a brain in a jar... and he's still the most sane of us???
Col. Lancaster's Brain : *Is shown his remains - assorted choking noises* If... If We've. Got All. The Bits. I'll Be. OK!
Prof. Engeleins : *Finds the Colonel's bloody and snap-frozen scalp and skullbones and props them at a jaunty angle on top of Lancaster's jar.*
Col. Lancaster's Brain OOC : So I have a literal skullcap.
Pastor Joe OOC : You're might be a brain in a jar but at least you have a hairstyle
At this point I lead them into the actual playtest. Which reduces most of the party to utter bafflement, confusion, and shock, despite their disturbingly high genre-savvyness, correctly predicting half the plot without realising it, and ongoing totally wrong guesses about what's really going on that they'll soon be regretting very much indeed.
Prof. Engeleins : *shouting hysterically* Everything's wrong! We have to get Lancaster's brain back out of his head!
Pastor Joe : We can't, we don't have the jar!
Prof. Engeleins : *almost in tears* I don't care!
Col. Lancaster's Player : I'm sorry, but the best thing about this sequence is that Paddy has been unconscious - FOR ELEVEN YEARS
Me, GM : There's two dead men - both of them frothing at the mouth.
McGinty : I've seen that. That's the crazy person look.
Pastor Joe : *chokes on laughter* Yeah, you should know it...
Weldun, coming in to see what was keeping Lancaster's Player : How long does it take to get killed?
Col. Lancaster's Player : A long time, apparently. He was a brain in a jar, and that didn't stop him.
Pastor Joe : Do they usually have earthquakes in England?
McGinty : No! That's the fooking problem! Otherwise the whole place would have disappeared under the waves!
Finding a tearful survivor
Survivor : Have you come to help?
Prof. Engeleins : Sure, why not?
Prof. Engeleins : Ma'am, do you drink?
Survivor : .....socially...
Prof. Engeleins : I drink socially. Also unsocially and antisocially.
Updating Lancaster
Prof. Engeleins : The entire city is dead
Me, GM : They did find two survivors though. And killed half of them.
Prof. Engeleins OOC : We have a tank full of alcohol and guns... And we have a woman!
Me, GM : Oh God. British Road Warriors. 'Eccentric Max'
Pvt. Rondale's Player : This is the best campaign ever!
An Englishman, an Irishman & a German walk into a bar. But only to loot the place of anything potable. The group swiftly descend to further looting, defenestration, arson, and other mayhem. Possibly because they're still half-convinced all of this has to be some sort of shared hallucination
Me, GM : I think we've proven that Lovecraft was right when he wrote that civilisation is a thin veneer over -
Pastor Joe's player : Comedy?
Me, GM : Insanity. Have we fled into a new Dark Age? I say yes!
Rondale does a stocktake on the increasingly crowded armoured car.
Pvt. Rondale : So we have two dogs, two Irishman, and a zombie colonel...
Prof. Engeleins OOC : That's no way to talk about the Colonel's daughter!
Lancaster is losing it.
McGinty : Why is he talking into a fooking pistol?
Pvt. Rondale's : It's the only thing that understands him.
McGinty : Then why doesn't he stick it in his mouth and talk even closer?
Me, GM : Around the hull the water is thick. White. Gelid with seeds.
McGinty : ...That's the problem with seamen
Me, GM : *facedesk*
Prof. Engeleins' player : You didn't see that coming?
Me, GM : I should have seen that coming.
Pvt. Rondale's Player : That's what she said!
And that's where I'll leave it for now. Apart from three minutes of dead air where I'd left the room and the buggers all ran out of the building to see how I'd react to having no players when I came back. We're only halfway into the tape! But much more would give too much of the Cthulhu Apocalypse plot away and we aren't even at the end of the first chapter yet...
At least I can transcribe dialogue at my leisure.
But as usual, it's the downtime between sessions that provides some of the best lines. Such as double-checking which spells party members have actually learned.
Me, to McGinty's player : I'm already worried by what McGinty might do when he finally snaps. Dispatch a Star Vampire to assassinate the Pope, perhaps.
To my considerable and unprintable alarm, McGinty's repertoire now includes both Summon/Bind Star Vampire, and Brew Space Mead, which makes Interstellar monster-assisted flight survivable by putting the imbiber into suspended animation.
McGinty OOC : Woohoo!!!! First Irishman in Space! No-one can take the sky from me! I'll plant the Irish flag on the moon!
Me, GM : 'I claim this satellite in the name of Belfast!'
Anticipating the consequences of the Irish Space Program
Prof. Engeleins : The Irish are leaving the planet - at last we can build Utopia.
McGinty : How far away is the Sun?
Me, GM : Why, are you planning on being the first Irishman there, too?
McGinty : ... We'll be fine, we'll travel at night.
The first Irish Interstellar Voyage
All : Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
McGinty : If you don't shut up back there I'm turning this thing around!
McGinty : Somebody open a window so Growler can stick his head out
Growler : *explodes in the vacuum*
Me, GM : Thank goodness for Space Mead is all I can say
Further discussion reveals just how many options the party has in the event they're too late to rescue poor Lancaster.
Pvt. Rondale : McGinty here invented classic gangsterism ten years early. He's got a tommygun in a violin case in one hand...
McGinty : And a trumpet case in the other!
Me, GM : ... And the trumpet raises the dead.
McGinty : I'm a one-man marching band!
Me, GM : You'd think that after the incident with the chicken lunch, the party would steer well clear of fowl necromancy.
Me, GM : If you're serious about getting into Lucy's knickers I'd recommend plying her with absinthe, if it hadn't been banned 13 years earlier. It has quite a reputation as an aphrodisiac. It might be the wormwood oil, it might be the fact it's 180° proof, but it's apparently true what they say - absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.
All : *dead silence*
Me, GM : ...aw... :(
Engeleins' player : *slow clap*
Rondale's player : Well. Done. Drhoz. How Droll.
Pastor Joe's player : I heard it, I appreciated it!
Rondale's player : Oh, I heard it. I just didn't appreciate it.
Colonel Lancaster, carted off into the black Vermont skies by hideous arthropoid things. Lucy & Amy run ahead to the waiting vehicles, to get the missing reporter and themselves to safely.
McGinty : Hang... *rolls dice* Yes, I physically piss myself laughing at the thought of Lucy driving anywhere.
Me, GM : McGinty has apparently gone into hysterics again
Pastor Joe : ... and wet himself
Prof. Engeleins : *slaps McGinty*
McGinty : Where the fook did that come from? *slaps the Professor back*
Pvt. Rondale : *intervenes. squabbling ensues*
Me, GM : *turning to Lancaster* Aren't you glad these people are coming to rescue you.
Me, GM : So, Pastor Joe, what are you going to do whilst these three go through their Three Stooges routine?
McGinty, Rondale, Engeleins OOC : Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo! Nyuk! Nyuk! Why I oughta...
Pastor Joe OOC : I'm probably still terrified - this is the first unearthly thing I've ever encountered.
McGinty : Aw padre, don't you worry about it, it's just fooking big crayfish
Me, GM : Flying crayfish
Pastor Joe : Flying glowing crayfish
Pvt. Rondale : So, easier to hit?
McGinty : It's all to do with the French. You can't trust the bastards. They're doing stuff to the fooking crayfish now.
All : *long pause as we consider this statement and McGinty's previous blaming of all the world's ills on, variously, the English, the Catholics, the Satanists, and fishmen cults.*
Pastor Joe : Riiiiiight.
The end result of McGinty's megalomania and paranoia.
Col. Lancaster OOC : Oh that's just wonderful. After you've wiped out the English, the French, and the Germans, what have we got left? The Irish and the Scots.
McGinty OOC : *pauses. Then picks a fight with himself*
Me, GM : The things have landed on a ledge, and pin your limbs before dragging you into a sort of cave
Pvt. Rondale player : Thank god this is not an anime
Col. Lancaster OOC : 'I'm not comfortable being grabbed there!'
Prof. Engeleins' player : You're confusing anime with hentai, and hentai with yaoi... If they give you a sex change it could be yuri.
Col. Lancaster's player : *rolls dice* woohoo!
Pvt. Rondale's player : Was that a sex change roll?
Col. Lancaster's player : Yes!
Lancaster tries to bluff his way out.
Col. Lancaster : By the power vested in me by the King himself and the Greater British Empire I hearby order you to return to the nearest parallel dimension of convenience!
And elsewhere the party disregards McGinty's warnings about dimensional engineering.
Me, GM : [The Pastor] just vanished into thin air before your eyes.
McGinty : I told ya! I fooking TOLD ya! Nobody listens to the drunk Irishman!
Col. Lancaster OOC : Nobody listens to the drunk Irishman? For fooking good reason! The only that's worse than a drunk Irishman is a sober Irishman!
Col. Lancaster OOC : I just love how [McGinty] keeps asking which button it was, when it's been said there's one button. 'WHICH BUTTON IS IT?'
The Peanut Gallery : 'I'll give you six bucks if you shut up'
McGinty OOC : He hasn't got any money, he's being held down by giant crawdads
Pastor Joe OOC : Space Crawdads
McGinty OOC : No, it's a fooking buffet. Six claws and six wings on each, it's fooking grand.
Which gives us various recipes for Mi-Go barbecue
McGinty OOC : What do we do with these glowing head things?
Pastor Joe OOC : Nah, it's great, you don't need lights or anythin', 'cause the heids still 'lluminated
Pvt. Rondale : Do you know how to use a tommygun?
Pastor Joe : No...*takes gun* but I'm willing to learn.
Me, GM : The only noise is the hum and susurration of the machines. There's no screaming, no cursing, no English accent demanding to speak to the Ambassador
Pastor Joe : We've got two choices...
Prof. Engeleins : We follow the drag marks
Pastor Joe : Sure, let's go!
Prof. Engeleins : German efficiency :)
Me, GM : When you sneak up to the bend in the tunnel and peer around into the sickly yellow-green glow, you can see a chamber - not as large as the last, and with fewer machines, if that's what they were. There's also a raised slab of grey, polished stone. It looks a bit like an altar. Lancaster's body is lying face-up on it, and three of the crayfish things are crowded around one end - where it looks like they've gnawed off the top of his head. One is busy scraping the last bits of flesh out of the cavity.
Prof. Engeleins : *screams and hoses the room with a looted Mist Projector* Mein Gott! Estanglatten liegenstatten! Nein! Nein! Nein!
Further hysteria -
Me, GM : There's an assortment of curious tools, or possibly holy sacrificial knives, laid out around the remains. One of them resembles a large ice-cream scoop.
Pastor Joe : Are there any weapons?
Me, GM : Well, there's the ice-cream scoop.
Me, GM : *To Lancaster's Brain* All you can see is is these three, moving back and forth. And it's all grey. Perhaps it's moonlight, or you were hit in the head. But you can't turn your head.
Col. Lancaster's Brain : *flat mechanical voice from the speaker rig* Why. Can't. I. Move. My. Head.
Prof. Engeleins : You're in a jar, my friend.
All : *pause*
Pvt. Rondale : You could have said it a little bit nicely, but then again -
Prof. Engeleins : I don't think there's a nice way to say it.
Pastor Joe : And he did say 'my friend'.
Prof. Engeleins : You're a brain in a jar. And by the way now is a good time to talk about my outstanding debt at your antique shop.
Col. Lancaster's Brain : I. Know. I Am In. A Jam. Wait. Jar?
Prof. Engeleins : Yes, they scooped out your gooey gooey bits and put them in a jar. It's quite humorous.
Prof. Engeleins : I'm moving the rig around, without showing him his body, until he can get a good straight-on view of the hole
Me, GM : Are you really doing that?
Pastor Joe OOC : He's German, what do you expect?
Prof. Engeleins : Schadenfreude
Col. Lancaster's Brain : Where. Are. You. Taking Me? Why Can't. I. Feel. My. Legs?
Pvt. Rondale : Don't worry, I can feel them, they're fine.
Prof. Engeleins : Are you sure you want to see your body?
Col. Lancaster's Brain : Yes.
Prof. Engeleins : Are you reeeeeaaaally sure you want to see your body?
Col. Lancaster's Brain : Yes.
Prof. Engeleins : Are you going to erase my debt at your shop?
Pvt. Rondale's player : He lost ten points of sanity, he's a brain in a jar... and he's still the most sane of us???
Col. Lancaster's Brain : *Is shown his remains - assorted choking noises* If... If We've. Got All. The Bits. I'll Be. OK!
Prof. Engeleins : *Finds the Colonel's bloody and snap-frozen scalp and skullbones and props them at a jaunty angle on top of Lancaster's jar.*
Col. Lancaster's Brain OOC : So I have a literal skullcap.
Pastor Joe OOC : You're might be a brain in a jar but at least you have a hairstyle
At this point I lead them into the actual playtest. Which reduces most of the party to utter bafflement, confusion, and shock, despite their disturbingly high genre-savvyness, correctly predicting half the plot without realising it, and ongoing totally wrong guesses about what's really going on that they'll soon be regretting very much indeed.
Prof. Engeleins : *shouting hysterically* Everything's wrong! We have to get Lancaster's brain back out of his head!
Pastor Joe : We can't, we don't have the jar!
Prof. Engeleins : *almost in tears* I don't care!
Col. Lancaster's Player : I'm sorry, but the best thing about this sequence is that Paddy has been unconscious - FOR ELEVEN YEARS
Me, GM : There's two dead men - both of them frothing at the mouth.
McGinty : I've seen that. That's the crazy person look.
Pastor Joe : *chokes on laughter* Yeah, you should know it...
Weldun, coming in to see what was keeping Lancaster's Player : How long does it take to get killed?
Col. Lancaster's Player : A long time, apparently. He was a brain in a jar, and that didn't stop him.
Pastor Joe : Do they usually have earthquakes in England?
McGinty : No! That's the fooking problem! Otherwise the whole place would have disappeared under the waves!
Finding a tearful survivor
Survivor : Have you come to help?
Prof. Engeleins : Sure, why not?
Prof. Engeleins : Ma'am, do you drink?
Survivor : .....socially...
Prof. Engeleins : I drink socially. Also unsocially and antisocially.
Updating Lancaster
Prof. Engeleins : The entire city is dead
Me, GM : They did find two survivors though. And killed half of them.
Prof. Engeleins OOC : We have a tank full of alcohol and guns... And we have a woman!
Me, GM : Oh God. British Road Warriors. 'Eccentric Max'
Pvt. Rondale's Player : This is the best campaign ever!
An Englishman, an Irishman & a German walk into a bar. But only to loot the place of anything potable. The group swiftly descend to further looting, defenestration, arson, and other mayhem. Possibly because they're still half-convinced all of this has to be some sort of shared hallucination
Me, GM : I think we've proven that Lovecraft was right when he wrote that civilisation is a thin veneer over -
Pastor Joe's player : Comedy?
Me, GM : Insanity. Have we fled into a new Dark Age? I say yes!
Rondale does a stocktake on the increasingly crowded armoured car.
Pvt. Rondale : So we have two dogs, two Irishman, and a zombie colonel...
Prof. Engeleins OOC : That's no way to talk about the Colonel's daughter!
Lancaster is losing it.
McGinty : Why is he talking into a fooking pistol?
Pvt. Rondale's : It's the only thing that understands him.
McGinty : Then why doesn't he stick it in his mouth and talk even closer?
Me, GM : Around the hull the water is thick. White. Gelid with seeds.
McGinty : ...That's the problem with seamen
Me, GM : *facedesk*
Prof. Engeleins' player : You didn't see that coming?
Me, GM : I should have seen that coming.
Pvt. Rondale's Player : That's what she said!
And that's where I'll leave it for now. Apart from three minutes of dead air where I'd left the room and the buggers all ran out of the building to see how I'd react to having no players when I came back. We're only halfway into the tape! But much more would give too much of the Cthulhu Apocalypse plot away and we aren't even at the end of the first chapter yet...
An Owlbear Market
General | Posted 15 years agoSome more quotes from last fortnight's D&D that I forgot
Rumbaba : *wretchedly* This is about to get Political, isn't it? Don't get me me wrong, as a player I'm all for some political intrigue. As a character, I'd rather juggle rabid polecats
Lord Martial : You'll all be well rewarded for this day's work. Of course you'll have to swear never to speak of this ... establishment, or our guests.
Rumbaba : We were never here. And here never existed anyway. You were somewhere else too, presumably
Lord Martial : Good. I see the goblin understands.
Rumbaba : Who said that?
Some PCs persist in asking questions
Rumbaba : Please, we really don't need to know this.
Hope : So who was the -
Rumbaba : *sticks fingers in ears and closes eyes* LALALALALA
Rumbaba : This is really beginning to worry me. Several hundred kobolds, prepared to die for Bahamut, are attacking this place and half a dozen farmhouse to make it look like a raid by renegade kobolds... what is the Great Bronze Dragon up to?
Hope the Tiefling Paladin : He wouldn't plan something like this, would he? He's Good, isn't he?
Murray, GM : The island is named after him. He's the Patriarch of a line of metallic dragons. He's got half-a-dozen senators in his pocket, most of the legislators, and spokespeople on every committee on the island.The waterless month is named after him, because he said it was. The usual coinage is bronze, in his honour.
Rumbaba : All we can say is that he's not Stupid Evil
Missed almost all of this session - was taking the Japanese schoolgirl we're hosting to the Wildlife Park. Apparently I missed some first-class puns. The following come from the last half-hour.
Rumbaba the goblin : Apart from the events of last night, which never happened, how about we spread word of the exam raid as wildly as possible?
Murray, GM : Rumours are already spreading like wildfire.
Rumbaba : Great! The conspiracies will have to either rush their plans forward, abandon them, or change them at short notice. All of which works out as a plus for us. :D
Gae-el : We need you to find out what that murdered low-life was up to.
Rumbaba : *miserably* I'm going to have to pretend to be a criminal, aren't I?
Murray, GM : You've already been seen working with the police!
Rumbaba : Oh good, I wouldn't want to live up to the cultural stereotype :)
Al : You'll never stop disappointing your father, will you?
Al : Certainly, we could split up and get respectable jobs as butchers, prison guards and farm hands, but our skill sets suit us for only one profession - hired killers.
Rumbaba : I'm not a hired killer!
Al : True! Indeed, you have the choice of three lucrative professions - burglar, thief or mugger.
Rumbaba : :(
And a prolonged discussion about whether we should register as a professional group.
Murray, GM : Groups on Barakusia become incorporated for the same reason people register small businesses today - so people know who to sue.
Gae-el : Can we sell shares in the party?
Given the fact the players include multiple history majors, this lead to a short lecture on the German General who in the Thirty Year War set up an army as a profit-making venture and ended up bankrupting his own country.
Despite this warning Gae-el's player proposes a series of underhanded stratagems involving limited liability and trust funds in order to milk the investors of every penny.
Rumbaba : Please bear in mind we live in a civilisation where people can and do hire assassins. And besides, I'll put money on the fact that the Great Bronze Dragon is already aware of such tricks. Indeed, he probably invented them.
Proposing names for the group
Gae-el OOC : Loot & Pillage Pty. Ltd.
Murray, GM : Already registered. In a dozen different misspellings.
Expectations for the game
Me, on Rumbaba : I expect he'll go on desperately trying to avoid Politics or adventuring, and failing utterly
Rumbaba : *wretchedly* This is about to get Political, isn't it? Don't get me me wrong, as a player I'm all for some political intrigue. As a character, I'd rather juggle rabid polecats
Lord Martial : You'll all be well rewarded for this day's work. Of course you'll have to swear never to speak of this ... establishment, or our guests.
Rumbaba : We were never here. And here never existed anyway. You were somewhere else too, presumably
Lord Martial : Good. I see the goblin understands.
Rumbaba : Who said that?
Some PCs persist in asking questions
Rumbaba : Please, we really don't need to know this.
Hope : So who was the -
Rumbaba : *sticks fingers in ears and closes eyes* LALALALALA
Rumbaba : This is really beginning to worry me. Several hundred kobolds, prepared to die for Bahamut, are attacking this place and half a dozen farmhouse to make it look like a raid by renegade kobolds... what is the Great Bronze Dragon up to?
Hope the Tiefling Paladin : He wouldn't plan something like this, would he? He's Good, isn't he?
Murray, GM : The island is named after him. He's the Patriarch of a line of metallic dragons. He's got half-a-dozen senators in his pocket, most of the legislators, and spokespeople on every committee on the island.The waterless month is named after him, because he said it was. The usual coinage is bronze, in his honour.
Rumbaba : All we can say is that he's not Stupid Evil
Missed almost all of this session - was taking the Japanese schoolgirl we're hosting to the Wildlife Park. Apparently I missed some first-class puns. The following come from the last half-hour.
Rumbaba the goblin : Apart from the events of last night, which never happened, how about we spread word of the exam raid as wildly as possible?
Murray, GM : Rumours are already spreading like wildfire.
Rumbaba : Great! The conspiracies will have to either rush their plans forward, abandon them, or change them at short notice. All of which works out as a plus for us. :D
Gae-el : We need you to find out what that murdered low-life was up to.
Rumbaba : *miserably* I'm going to have to pretend to be a criminal, aren't I?
Murray, GM : You've already been seen working with the police!
Rumbaba : Oh good, I wouldn't want to live up to the cultural stereotype :)
Al : You'll never stop disappointing your father, will you?
Al : Certainly, we could split up and get respectable jobs as butchers, prison guards and farm hands, but our skill sets suit us for only one profession - hired killers.
Rumbaba : I'm not a hired killer!
Al : True! Indeed, you have the choice of three lucrative professions - burglar, thief or mugger.
Rumbaba : :(
And a prolonged discussion about whether we should register as a professional group.
Murray, GM : Groups on Barakusia become incorporated for the same reason people register small businesses today - so people know who to sue.
Gae-el : Can we sell shares in the party?
Given the fact the players include multiple history majors, this lead to a short lecture on the German General who in the Thirty Year War set up an army as a profit-making venture and ended up bankrupting his own country.
Despite this warning Gae-el's player proposes a series of underhanded stratagems involving limited liability and trust funds in order to milk the investors of every penny.
Rumbaba : Please bear in mind we live in a civilisation where people can and do hire assassins. And besides, I'll put money on the fact that the Great Bronze Dragon is already aware of such tricks. Indeed, he probably invented them.
Proposing names for the group
Gae-el OOC : Loot & Pillage Pty. Ltd.
Murray, GM : Already registered. In a dozen different misspellings.
Expectations for the game
Me, on Rumbaba : I expect he'll go on desperately trying to avoid Politics or adventuring, and failing utterly
The Siege At Rooger's Shack : Pt 2
General | Posted 15 years agoIn our last episode, the PCs had decided to camp out at the suspect's house for the night, since they were suddenly nervous about walking four miles back to town as it got dark. Especially since they had no idea what the 'new friends' he'd been working for were. Although somebody back in town had mentioned giant crawdads. There was one moment when Lancaster's player bounced upright off his seat because, I suspect, he was alarmed by the possibility they'd be running into Vitus again. But I wouldn't be that mean to my players. Usually.
They did have to subdue their captive a few times. But since it was Lancaster doing the subduing, and that gentlemen is infamously poor at fisticuffs (despite having somehow punched him out a short while previously ) ...
Me, GM : "How much damage?"
Col. Lancaster : "I don't know! I don't want to roll it!"
That was the same player who facepalmed and said "Oh god" when the first emissary turned up and started buzzing, because now half the players did know what they were up against, and were very unhappy about it.
The first arguments began after that whisperer in darkness was blown apart. Half the party immediately wanted to run for it, but the rest were too afraid they'd be picked off one by one in the forest. So they barricaded the place and hoped like hell the thing's friends wouldn't come to investigate. Unfortunately, after the second scout reported back, they returned en masse. At this point, as McGinty waved a Tommy-gun at the things through a crack in the door, and the things out beyond the ring of lamplight buzzed back claiming benign intentions, the players had an ace up their sleeve. As far as the things knew, there was only one human in the shack.
Unfortunately they blew this almost immediately. When the things flapped off to prove their good will, the party neglected to check whether they had all flapped off, and started arguing with each other again.
And pretty soon it was the group blazing away through windows and the roof hoping like hell they would actually hit something.
McGinty : Bat Country! I told you! Bat Country!
Amy, Lucy and the dog tried to crowd together under the bed hoping the things wouldn't notice them when they eventually stormed the building, McGinty sprayed machine gun fire into the night, and the rest of investigators emptied their guns at anything that might be a flapping or scrabbling noise. And they kept on arguing and barking and swearing about what to do next throughout it all.
Rondale : *to Lucy* "If you don't have a gun in your hand, your opinion doesn't count!"
Col. Lancaster : "As the person with the most guns, I have the swinging vote; so SHUT UP!"
During a pause, McGinty decides to pull out his other ace - a spell apparently called Call Spirit Of The Air that he picked up in one of the books he's been jealously hoarding. Understandably, the rest of the investigators were deeply suspicious, and I was highly amused by the way the players all moved a little further away from him without even realising they were doing it. So, after the chanting and waving... nothing happened.
McGinty : Er.....
Rondale : What was supposed to happen?
McGinty : A flappy thing was supposed to turn up.
Me, GM : And that's my cue for the monsters to drop the first log through the roof.
More gunplay ensues
Prof. Engeleins : Can we see any glowing heads flying about through the hole?
Me, GM : Not this time. It looks like they're going for silent running...
The things fall back to regroup, and McGinty tries again - and successfully summons a Worse Thing to deal with the Bad Things. And promptly going stark raving bonkers. Luckily for him, the result isn't catatonia or worse. It's megalomania. Possibly that IS worse.
The resulting gush of blazing overconfidence as he sics his invisible tittering beast on the other creatures includes the following, and much else.
McGinty : Get 'em! Get all the flappy things! Kill all the flappy things! Kill them all! Kill them all, my pretty!"
This does seem to disrupt the arrival of an even bigger log, at least. Which is McGinty's cue to launch into a rowing dance of victory, and song. Lancaster's player just encourages him.
Lancaster OOC : Who did it?
McGinty : I did it!
Lancaster OOC : Who did it?
McGinty : I did it!
Lancaster OOC : And hip-hop is invented 60 years early, by the wrong minority.
Me, GM : You've never heard of the Black Irish?
Unfortunately, McGinty's little episode shows no sign of abating, and he can't seem to making up his mind whether he's a sorcerer supreme, St Patrick, or God. Lancaster attempts to subdue him so everybody can get the hell out of there whilst the creatures are away regrouping for another assault. Instead, McGinty soon has Lancaster by the shirt and is punching him in the face.
McGinty : "I punched him because he said I was an idiot! No one says that to a god!"
Lancaster rebuts with a punch to the groin (not quite the Queensbury rules, there ). Despite having a constitution which would shame an asthmatic hamster, as Amy puts it, he manages an impale.
McGinty : Ha! Didn't feel a thing!
Lancaster : *rolls second lot of damage*
McGinty : GGHNN! ... felt... it.. that time!
Prof. Engeliens : And St Patrick descends, waving his Sword of Justice!
Me, GM : And St Patrick is on the floor, curled around his Sword of Justice
McGinty : *clutching groin* Ahg! Me lucky charms!
Lancaster OOC : Who's a god now, bitch?
Having put a temporary end to McGinty's rant, the party decide now is a good time to bug out. Sad to say, the bugs find it quite convenient too, and grab the colonel from the rear of the line as the party flees into the night.
McGinty's player : You mean my critter didn't get all the other critters?
Me, GM : Doesn't look like it
McGinty's player : Dammit
Me, GM : Well think about it. Is invisibility really going to be that helpful against creatures that don't have eyes?
Carried off into the sky by flying Mythos beasties, screaming what may be his last words:
Lancaster OOC : "I have a right to a phone call....I regret nothing!"
Which is where we left it for the night, apart from my aside to Lancaster's player
Me, GM : 'My legs! Why can't I feel my legs!'
Lancaster OOC : Oh god, they didn't....
HE knows what's happened... the rest of the newbies will have to find out... BWAHAHAHA
They did have to subdue their captive a few times. But since it was Lancaster doing the subduing, and that gentlemen is infamously poor at fisticuffs (despite having somehow punched him out a short while previously ) ...
Me, GM : "How much damage?"
Col. Lancaster : "I don't know! I don't want to roll it!"
That was the same player who facepalmed and said "Oh god" when the first emissary turned up and started buzzing, because now half the players did know what they were up against, and were very unhappy about it.
The first arguments began after that whisperer in darkness was blown apart. Half the party immediately wanted to run for it, but the rest were too afraid they'd be picked off one by one in the forest. So they barricaded the place and hoped like hell the thing's friends wouldn't come to investigate. Unfortunately, after the second scout reported back, they returned en masse. At this point, as McGinty waved a Tommy-gun at the things through a crack in the door, and the things out beyond the ring of lamplight buzzed back claiming benign intentions, the players had an ace up their sleeve. As far as the things knew, there was only one human in the shack.
Unfortunately they blew this almost immediately. When the things flapped off to prove their good will, the party neglected to check whether they had all flapped off, and started arguing with each other again.
And pretty soon it was the group blazing away through windows and the roof hoping like hell they would actually hit something.
McGinty : Bat Country! I told you! Bat Country!
Amy, Lucy and the dog tried to crowd together under the bed hoping the things wouldn't notice them when they eventually stormed the building, McGinty sprayed machine gun fire into the night, and the rest of investigators emptied their guns at anything that might be a flapping or scrabbling noise. And they kept on arguing and barking and swearing about what to do next throughout it all.
Rondale : *to Lucy* "If you don't have a gun in your hand, your opinion doesn't count!"
Col. Lancaster : "As the person with the most guns, I have the swinging vote; so SHUT UP!"
During a pause, McGinty decides to pull out his other ace - a spell apparently called Call Spirit Of The Air that he picked up in one of the books he's been jealously hoarding. Understandably, the rest of the investigators were deeply suspicious, and I was highly amused by the way the players all moved a little further away from him without even realising they were doing it. So, after the chanting and waving... nothing happened.
McGinty : Er.....
Rondale : What was supposed to happen?
McGinty : A flappy thing was supposed to turn up.
Me, GM : And that's my cue for the monsters to drop the first log through the roof.
More gunplay ensues
Prof. Engeleins : Can we see any glowing heads flying about through the hole?
Me, GM : Not this time. It looks like they're going for silent running...
The things fall back to regroup, and McGinty tries again - and successfully summons a Worse Thing to deal with the Bad Things. And promptly going stark raving bonkers. Luckily for him, the result isn't catatonia or worse. It's megalomania. Possibly that IS worse.
The resulting gush of blazing overconfidence as he sics his invisible tittering beast on the other creatures includes the following, and much else.
McGinty : Get 'em! Get all the flappy things! Kill all the flappy things! Kill them all! Kill them all, my pretty!"
This does seem to disrupt the arrival of an even bigger log, at least. Which is McGinty's cue to launch into a rowing dance of victory, and song. Lancaster's player just encourages him.
Lancaster OOC : Who did it?
McGinty : I did it!
Lancaster OOC : Who did it?
McGinty : I did it!
Lancaster OOC : And hip-hop is invented 60 years early, by the wrong minority.
Me, GM : You've never heard of the Black Irish?
Unfortunately, McGinty's little episode shows no sign of abating, and he can't seem to making up his mind whether he's a sorcerer supreme, St Patrick, or God. Lancaster attempts to subdue him so everybody can get the hell out of there whilst the creatures are away regrouping for another assault. Instead, McGinty soon has Lancaster by the shirt and is punching him in the face.
McGinty : "I punched him because he said I was an idiot! No one says that to a god!"
Lancaster rebuts with a punch to the groin (not quite the Queensbury rules, there ). Despite having a constitution which would shame an asthmatic hamster, as Amy puts it, he manages an impale.
McGinty : Ha! Didn't feel a thing!
Lancaster : *rolls second lot of damage*
McGinty : GGHNN! ... felt... it.. that time!
Prof. Engeliens : And St Patrick descends, waving his Sword of Justice!
Me, GM : And St Patrick is on the floor, curled around his Sword of Justice
McGinty : *clutching groin* Ahg! Me lucky charms!
Lancaster OOC : Who's a god now, bitch?
Having put a temporary end to McGinty's rant, the party decide now is a good time to bug out. Sad to say, the bugs find it quite convenient too, and grab the colonel from the rear of the line as the party flees into the night.
McGinty's player : You mean my critter didn't get all the other critters?
Me, GM : Doesn't look like it
McGinty's player : Dammit
Me, GM : Well think about it. Is invisibility really going to be that helpful against creatures that don't have eyes?
Carried off into the sky by flying Mythos beasties, screaming what may be his last words:
Lancaster OOC : "I have a right to a phone call....I regret nothing!"
Which is where we left it for the night, apart from my aside to Lancaster's player
Me, GM : 'My legs! Why can't I feel my legs!'
Lancaster OOC : Oh god, they didn't....
HE knows what's happened... the rest of the newbies will have to find out... BWAHAHAHA
More Eldritch Cow
General | Posted 15 years agoAnother quote from the other week. Spoilers for Within You, Without You
McGinty's player : Is there any way we could have come out ahead here?
Me : Well, you could have stopped the machine
McGinty's player : We did stop the machine!
Me : No, you blew it up. There's a difference between safely landing a passenger jet and breaking the wings off at 40,000 feet.
Rondale's player : *slightly irked* So we could either save the locals, or end up with everybody exploded.
Me : Believe me - those were the two best possibilities.
McGinty's player : Is there any way we could have come out ahead here?
Me : Well, you could have stopped the machine
McGinty's player : We did stop the machine!
Me : No, you blew it up. There's a difference between safely landing a passenger jet and breaking the wings off at 40,000 feet.
Rondale's player : *slightly irked* So we could either save the locals, or end up with everybody exploded.
Me : Believe me - those were the two best possibilities.
D'aww!
General | Posted 15 years agoIa! Ia! Paul fthghn!
General | Posted 15 years agoLinkies
General | Posted 15 years agoSomething that would have my PCs distinctly unsettled, especially after the Painted Smile story last month...
"A world renowned tourist destination is “La Isla de la Munecas”- a Spanish name which means the Island of the dolls. This Island of dolls is situated in Mexico and as the name suggests, one expects to see a beautiful world which will leave an everlasting impression. But the reality is exactly opposite and very harsh when one discovers the thousands of mutilated ugly dolls hanging from every tree on the island."
http://planetoddity.com/the-island-.....ion-in-mexico/
Naked gunman talked down from billboard
A naked and armed man in Perth's CBD is now in hospital being assessed. (7pm TV News WA)
A man is undergoing a medical assessment at Royal Perth Hospital after climbing on to the top of a billboard near Perth's main train station yesterday afternoon, naked and armed with a gun.
Police spent four hours trying to talk the man down.
A cherry picker was used to lift a police negotiator to the man and he was safely brought down shortly after 6:00pm.
And here was me thinking Perth was a nice quiet town :D
It certainly disrupted the games the other week - about a third of the players were late.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Food
http://insideinsides.blogspot.com/
rather awesome, actually - Watermelon anatomy is quite surprising
"A world renowned tourist destination is “La Isla de la Munecas”- a Spanish name which means the Island of the dolls. This Island of dolls is situated in Mexico and as the name suggests, one expects to see a beautiful world which will leave an everlasting impression. But the reality is exactly opposite and very harsh when one discovers the thousands of mutilated ugly dolls hanging from every tree on the island."
http://planetoddity.com/the-island-.....ion-in-mexico/
Naked gunman talked down from billboard
A naked and armed man in Perth's CBD is now in hospital being assessed. (7pm TV News WA)
A man is undergoing a medical assessment at Royal Perth Hospital after climbing on to the top of a billboard near Perth's main train station yesterday afternoon, naked and armed with a gun.
Police spent four hours trying to talk the man down.
A cherry picker was used to lift a police negotiator to the man and he was safely brought down shortly after 6:00pm.
And here was me thinking Perth was a nice quiet town :D
It certainly disrupted the games the other week - about a third of the players were late.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Food
http://insideinsides.blogspot.com/
rather awesome, actually - Watermelon anatomy is quite surprising
Friday week before last
General | Posted 15 years ago6:30PM - been in this traffic jam for two hours. Still have three jobs that must be done today. *froths at the mouth*
turns out there was a traffic accident - truck and motorcycle - that closed the freeway for 4 and a half hours. The side roads were INSANE
Basement Cat
General | Posted 15 years agoJiji continues to be a pain in the neck
Purrdence : There's cat hair in my Kahlua!
Purrdence : Don't eat the couch! Couches are not for eating!
Purrdence : There's cat hair in my Kahlua!
Purrdence : Don't eat the couch! Couches are not for eating!
Bad Translator
General | Posted 15 years agohttp://funnytranslator.com/translation
Original text:
"That is not dead that can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die"
...10 translations later we get:
"It is an eternal death, you can open, and even death, eternal death of the high"
...50 translations later we get:
"Dead, dead, dead, apparently"
And players complain when it takes most of a year to understand a Mythos Tome...
Elder Gods and Heavy Artillery
General | Posted 15 years agoAnother quote from Saturday, when I was showing off the copy of Cthulhu Invictus Purrdence got me - The Mythos & the Roman Empire. CTHVLHV INVICTVS?
Player : No. No.NO. I refuse to go up against the Mythos without a shotgun.
Player : No. No.NO. I refuse to go up against the Mythos without a shotgun.
Sleeptalking
General | Posted 15 years agoWaking Purrdence up
Me : Up you get, we have to have a shower before we go out, so up you get.
Purrdence : Are you talking in or out of character?
Me : ?
Me : Up you get, we have to have a shower before we go out, so up you get.
Purrdence : Are you talking in or out of character?
Me : ?
