#it is all centered on my dnd boy and strahd | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kirchenaere · 2 years ago

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How goes your Curse of Strahd campaign? I really love your art for Van Richten! He's my favorite in that campaign module ngl

Hey Anon, and thank you for the compliment! Thanks for asking, get ready for a small essay because I love talking about DnD haha XD I'm throwing this behind a cut so I don't spoil anybody for CoS on accident.

We're on a little bit of a break while our DM does real life job things, but we recently hit level five and cleared Vallaki and the Feast of St. Andral and all that came after it, and we're about to head out to check on the Martikov's delayed wine shipment. Our DM is doing an amazing job fleshing the module out and we love to take our time with things, so we're definitely going pretty slow - the Feast was followed up by another fight that ended in almost every single key player in Vallaki dying (Fiona, the Baron, Victor, and Izek all went down in one big dramatic Shakespearean fight, it was a wild ride). There's a lot of questions still open about the town, like why are our buddies the ravens hanging around the Blue Water and what was with some of the stuff we found in the Reformation Center our DM fleshed out for us, but we're leaving our good friend Rictavio behind to do whatever business he needs to do and keep an eye on things in the meantime. He hasn't told us what his business is beyond "collecting stories" but we're pretty confident he's trying to built a circus in the woods. A totally normal circus. A very normal thing to do. Anyway, we are definitely currently in the process of trying to convince him to come with us when we finally depart the area.

On a totally unrelated note (jk very related), Van Richten is also easily my favorite at the moment and despite the fact that I love all the NPCs we've met so far, even the ones I hate, I don't expect that to change because one of my favorite character types is "salty sarcastic old man who screams at the sky and has A Lot Of Baggage" - plus the whole aesthetic is just A+. This old man really rolled into Barovia saying "time to fuck around and find out" with those shoes and those sideburns, a vibe which is amplified by the fact that our RvR has not disguised himself beyond possibly changing a few facial features and the kinds of clothes he's wearing (we still haven't seen him without the hat on, but my boy Vrinn has Eldritch Sight as an invocation and has narrowed down the general categories and whatever disguise he has on is subtle). The party at large has yet to meet him properly, but Vrinn ,who was immediately obsessed with the old man, managed to get his hands on a copy of Van Richten's Guide and rolled a nat 20 to notice some similarities between the writer and wonderful not-a-big-deal-don't-worry-about-me-I'm-normal Rictavio.

So that's where we're at. Our DM has changed a bunch (for example, he let Vasili be a real Vasili and not a Strahd disguise which added a lot of depth and a really really really REALLY intense dinner where we assumed we were with a man who might be Strahd even though Vrinn has Eldritch Sight and Divine Sense and has used it multiple times and detected nothing, only to have him use both of those while sitting next to Vasili at dinner for a totally unrelated reason because I thought there might be an imp and realize oh fuck they're two different people and I'm five feet away from THE DEVIL disguised as Vasili and have to ACT NORMAL, truly one wild session) and so there's a lot happening that probably doesn't compare super well to other campaigns. I'm currently working on 1 or 2 more poster-style illustrations for our little stint in Vallaki, and possibly some small comics, but it's slow going!

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giantchasm · 6 years ago

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holds up a gun do ur DND characters

send me a character & I’ll answer the following about them!

SIR I HAVE LIKE 800 DND CHARACTERS. I’ll do THREE.

Luth:

Robin:

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang | she’s 13.hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuffbest quality: she may be kind, but she also takes no shit. robin is very goal oriented, and knows what she wants, when she wants, and how to get it. she keeps her priorities in check, and it prevents people from taking advantage of her. she’s a smart kid.worst quality: no social abilities. debatably self centered. fortnite danced in public.ship them with: N/Abrotp them with: the whole party! but especially pandora and nilmus!needs to stay away from: ratthew, apparently. misc. thoughts: i have... a lot of feelings about her. she’s hands down my favorite dnd oc. she has strong fma vibes and i like that! she’s like if edward elric met nina tucker met sheska. i can’t wait to see where her arc goes.

Charlie:

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang | he’s a doghogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuffbest quality: SOFT. charlie prioritizes doing the right thing above all else. and not in a stuck up sort of lawful good way (though he IS lawful good.) he just genuinely wants to bring happiness to other people any way he can. and I love him for that.worst quality: dumb as a pile of bricks.ship them with: N/Abrotp them with: no one in this fucking party likes each other. ushagil, i guess.needs to stay away from: TITUS, also strahd.misc. thoughts:

#memes #angraavenger

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indigodice · 4 years ago

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AN END FORESEEN

We returned home from the cultists’ lair, after having murdered them like vermin, we returned and rested and inside the inn at the bottom of the stair the talking rat, La Pieto and I, Claviger Nero, noticed an advertisement for the orphans’ play. It was across the street from the White Stag inn. The Dwarf, Tor Torinson tried to convince us to pursue our leads.

We went to the play which despite the advertisement, was explained to be the worst play we’ve ever seen. The children delivered their lines without emotion, parts and people were missing, the main character included. Damien Krieger goes on to speak to the head of the orphanage. He gives us information and a kind of lead about the burned church, but nothing conclusive about the world or the present drama unfolding. So we leave.

The head of the orphanage spoke about one of his children being worried about her missing friends, and that her friends were part of a teenage romance story involving the burned down house. The girl Lilly was worried about her friends, Laura and Sam. I comment to the others that we still feel fated. “Don’t you feel the pull of the string of fate? I think if we follow this string the path forward will unfold before us. If we’re being watched we could take a different path. I think if we follow what’s obvious, the same fate that befell the knight and Barbar could befall us.” We did not abate. Our leads were Scarlets’, where Lilly worked, and the burned house, where Laura and Sam went missing. “I think they’re the same lead. And we’re not going to survive here unless we make some money,” said Nero.

“We don’t have any other leads, so we should stick to these,” said Damien.

Tor Torinson took some of the fancy clothes to the tailor and asked them about the cultist’s robes. He didn’t learn much, they weren’t made by craftsmen.

La Pieto extracts information and gets the rest of the party into Scarlets where we meet with Lilly who directs us to the burned house after giving us a description of Laura and Sam.

Inside we hear crying and a scream. I engage the cultist and smash his face in with my hammer. We notice a dead Laura in the center of the ritual room become a Hellhound. The fight goes poorly. La Pieto goes down, Damien drags him to safety. I try to drag Sam out of the room, and we make the decision to not leave him here to die. He’s about as strong as Nero is so it’s a fight that doesn’t go well, and he manages to keep his ground. Tor Torinson arrives to fight the hellhound, and Damien commits to the fight as well. Nero commits to the fight, and with everyone nearly dead, we defeat the hellhound after Nero goes down. Tor Torinson alerts the guards, who arrive and take us all in. End session.

Damien’s player comments on not being directed particularly well towards the thing we’re supposed to do, and I comment on how if I had a choice between Disco Elysium and Baldurs Gate, I’d choose Baldur’s Gate, to which the GM comments about how we’ve been rolling poorly, are still level one and acting high and might about our capabilities, built poor characters, and the story isn’t as linear as I think it is.

Yet my main problem, is that I’ve played with this GM before, and the problem of a character not being able to express it’s design isn’t a new problem. If there’s a problem with expectations, I think I need only point to the fact nothing about what or how the session would play was explained in the session zero beyond setting. But maybe its my own fault for thinking that if I held on to hope somehow the session would go smooth in a way I was happy with just by letting it develop.

The GM posted a meme about players complaining about not being able to find the path, then a picture with the path being littered with signs. It made me unreasonably angry because the way the argument went out was mostly with him talking over me, and me realizing I’d never been able to convince him about anything.

I think this is the first time in the entirety of our years of role playing that I’ve ever decided to bring up I had a problem with the session. Usually I sit down and shut up and accept that if I don’t have fun I’ll somehow have fun next time. A gamble. And the first time I bring it up I have this realization he’s not the kind to ever give up ground while he’s ranting off. His word, the last word, is the only word that matters. In a previous session I remember talking as a player, that he couldn’t keep making all the party decisions himself, or take everything into his own hand. For example, trampling over our morals to do what he personally wanted to do would mean we become threatening to him. For example my character could act out or slit his throat if he thought the act was egregious enough. The next session he bought a stone that let him not sleep instead of addressing the problem I had with his character design, or the fact his decision stopped my own character design from being expressed. He’d taken a lich stone and destroyed the vessel it was attached to, a young boy, instead of taking the steps the other players in the party wanted to take to free the boy.

All I can think is that this is a person I can’t get along with. And its some kind of wonder I’ve spent so much time with this person at all. This is a person who I watch my tongue around, and constantly feel I cannot express myself. So while he was complaining about how we wrongly keep trying to act heroic, I say I’m done, and I leave the channel. And I keep thinking about this all now I get angry enough to think, why have I spent so much time on this person, and I decide I’m cutting this person out, this person who doesn’t listen to me, who I have a hard time even thinking of as a friend.

Sepiadice comments that I’ve quit a lot of games recently. There was his own, there was my friend’s Strahd campagin which we were both in, there was the above GM’s end of the world campaign, there was the above GM’s current campaign. All of these were dnd or dnd adjacent, except for the end of the world campaigns which I had other reservations.

And this puts me in a space where I’m not sure if RPGs are for me if I’ve had so many poor experiences. I don’t know if it’s specifically DND and DND adjacent content or if its something other and else like my own personality somehow has a mismatch with these games, or the possibility I have some mental block about DND interfering with my ability to enjoy the games. Having played so much DND in the last decade, and having so many of them be so similarly discouraging experiences, it feels obvious that it should be the game. Yet, if they haven’t been fun, why do I keep doing them? Why do I keep insisting on trying them? There a grail of an experience I want and am going after, and more often than not the GM promises something interesting or close, but there’s always something off.

I don’t know how to clean any of this up. Maybe I’ll just do it later.

#pathfinder 2e #rpg #dnd #pathfinder

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