#the summoning portal/bbeg: :) did someone say DAMAGE?

[nejackdaw]

Thinking about the lich fight ("fight") from my first dnd campaign..... Ouagh

[kimbisaurus]

My first almost D&D but Not DND session!

Soo way back when, my dad gave me a book - a AD&D DMG from a market stall. And it was soo intriguing - but completely almost incomprehensible. A DMG made some sense - but all the numbers & mechanics were weird alien concepts that followed no simple path (some went up, others went down - and there was all these weird changes to add or subtract everywhere! AD&D was a chaotic book to say the least). Later, I’d discover my school had an original D&D players guide (ok, it was actually just the D&D book. There was only meant to be one. It was the very first book every made & meant to be a all in one concept). Suddenly things made sense - and we even had 2 modules. D&D could be had! Sooo I went to a friends house & he loved the concept. He also loved elves - no really, you have to understand he worshipped elves soooo much his ears gear almost 2 inches longer & pointy when he was leaving highschool. it was OMG scary. No surgery, no fakes - just straight up brain power misspent to reshape his body after his favorite image. He was already kinda tall & thin. And a pale skinned gaming geek naturally... So all he needed was to grow out his hair & grow pointy ears. Sooo he did... Kinda freaky... Kinda explains a lot about being human - and yeah, ‘Worshipped tolkieen type elves’ is the best description I have. But otherwise a nerdy nice guy. Annyyywayyy, I went over (pre-elf state) & asked about D&D. And he produced a rulebook - for Lord of the Rings. I didn’t care, we’re doing this. So we rolled up some characters. He had a Warrior or a Paladin I think. And I had a rogue - were-tiger. The LOTR RPG was a point buy system similar to white wolf games. You buy advantages and flaws to gain talents/powers/magic/skills & flaws. I found some for balance, jumping & damage resistance. And something like claws/teeth. Add in some rogue skills & movement skills & I was set! Now my friend was the by the book type - which I thankfully cured immediately by suggesting we do a ‘By the seat of our story pants’ session - we just started. Soon we were running atop rooves of the city doing a chase scene - totally awesome for a thief. And the paladin was running below trying hard to keep up. Rogues are totally awesome! Ooohhh yes! Anyway - we dived into this brave new RPG world. We had lots of fun. At some point we decided our setting was Faerun’s Waterdeep - we’d read a D&D novel about it & that was all the inspiration we needed. We also grew our party to like 3-4 people, maybe 5? And we were working for the political movers & shakers of Waterdeep. But we started with 2 characters chasing a thief across rooftops... Using a completely alien system that had almost no magic what so ever - improvising everything from rules to dice. We knew D&D needed d20s, so we rolled d20s plus our skills. That worked well. Damage was a d6 or 2d6 for something big. Life was soo simple - then we got loot! And we had a DMG for that! OMG, but my mate surpassed me here. Suddenly we had a gnomish inventor with a self moving carriage. It was steam powered.. ish... Magic steam I think... And we ended up with a self shooting crossbow on top at somepoint. That was actually scary - it shoot anyone & everyone, sometimes even us! I remember leaping from the rooftop of our carriage as it steamed it’s way over snowtopped fields, leaping for our opponent’s horses & chariots. I had to make so many agility checks (or was it balance?) - and aced them all. I was a were-cat & I knew where to specialise. Movement skills! Later our paladin died - and we wanted him back. So we planehopped over to the elvish heavens to steal his soul back (we’re adventurers after all! We know we’re here to loot the place!) So the GM distracted us with various scenes of heaven. I was really tempted to try and open this ornate obsidian door that seemed to glow with red runes everywhere. It was chained up with heavy mithril chains & magic locks - and omg it was so tempting... But the party managed to guess it might actually be a portal to the Nine Hells & dragged their curious kitty away... Then the GM tried to distract another player with a beautiful glade. However it was the Kitty who ended up wandering inside & being all curious. There was an elf there & we talked a lot. We kinda got into a debate about religion - and realized we had the same goals, but completely opposite perspectives on how to achieve it. We laughed a lot as everyone else realized the GM & I we’re arguing the same points from the opposite side of the lens. After that, I decided I liked this god - and well our campaign was slowly getting a VS Evil Hell Demons vibe. So believing in a particular god was appropriate. We did a lot of the ‘I pay homage to each different deity when I do something related to their portfolio’ type of prayers - partly as jokes & partly just to be characterful. So having one God was kinda cool. Anyway this elf asked if I wanted to start on the path as a cleric. Sure I said - now the other players had noticed when the GM said this god was forgotten on our world (it was a grey hawk god I think? Some other setting besides Faerun either way). And we’re pretty powerful folk now. We dance with the city’s politicians, royalty & gentry. We go to fancy parties & hang out with the royal poisoner, do work for the head Assassin sometimes & we even helped out the temple of helm so much we have a writ from the High Priest of Helm - allowing us shelter, food, aid & even a few coins from any temple of Helm. Amazing right? Well imagine my surprise when someone introduced me as a cleric of ‘Long Forgotten God’ when we finally retrieved our Paladin’s soul, avoided accidentally opening the door to hell a second time (It glowed and everything! I mean spoilt sports!) and we went to a royal ball to our success & our Paladin’s resurrection! Cleric’s were kinda a rare thing - we had lots of priests. But they could do no more than light healing (cure wounds & disease, produce food & water kinda magic. Very limited- because the system was also kinda limited in regards to magic) but clerics could open portals, summon angels & do real magics. Of course, I had 1 spell (*cough I had just enough exp to buy 1 ability cough*) - and slightly elfin features. There was the promise of an elven lifespan if I was a dutiful cleric though. So almost immortality was a pretty cool boon for a were-kitty... Now you’re wondering what the catch was - because there was one. I was just a cleric of this god. The only cleric actually. I’d been charged with spreading the word & given a cool title. Cleric! And then someone finally completed the sentence - we walked into the Royal Ball - and I was announced as the High Priest of ‘Long forgotten Elven God’... High priest... Yeah... The GM saddled me with ‘promote my faith’ & ‘High Priest’ in a political campaign... Now the GM was cool - the royal folk gave me a plot of land to cultivate into a druid glave with an underground cave/temple space. Which was cool. I even got a gold grant to help transplant soil & plants to the space. And it was near the Temple of Helm. The High Grand Temple of Helm... Where we have that lovely writ of aid... Soooo I maybe started preaching on the steps to the Temple of Helm... About my new god. And that made the High Priest of Helm just a little mad... Then we summoned a angel. The GM read about this spell where you could trade goods & gold to gain the service of angels. And they were anime angels that could build cities in days instead of months. Or nuke cities filled with undead and such... Sooo we traded some stuff from our stash & roll a d100 like all good gamers asking for a miracle. Got a 99 or was it a 100? That called forth some angels, saved our city in a big climatic battle & then sponsored a massive party - and our Angels turned DJs & Dancers and we jammed all night long! I mean we literally had them in our service for 2 days, so we just jammed & partied, then cleaned up the city some the next morning.  Amazingly, given how rare Clerics with real magic were, this had an impact on the populace... Preventing the Devil Apocalypse, Summoning Angels & Jamming with the rarest of planar beings after kicking all the BBEG’s collective butts! Yes we made an impression... Now prior to this I had established a kitty theme for loving high places. I always liked to sleep atop these massive columns that adorned the Temple of Helm. 20 to 30m tall columns that were under an even taller roof - so I could nap up there or watch the city flow below me like ants... it was awesome! Which meant I was now awoken by crowds of faithful, flocking to the temple of helm, to wake my charrie up with shouts for wisdom & sermons. I’d tell stories on the front steps (just so I was taller than the crowds. They had a bunch of statues to climb over and leap atop too!) & it was sooo fun! Anddd the GM was secretly making rolls to see if the High Priest would finally snap & do something evil against me... Even turn to the devils just to ‘silence’ this menace to their god... I totally stole so many of their followers... I mean the GM saddled me with being a High Priest... So I lied, tricked & teased my way into becoming the most popular cleric in the city. You let the rogue make a faith after all. This is totally before we ever read Terry Pratchett btw - So you can’t think I’d ever read Going Postal or Making Money. All original madness I’m afraid :) - And yeah... I nearly broke apart the campaign world in my childish teasing of Helm’s chosen... Heeh... Still almost no remorse there :P Sooo that was my role in our first campaign. I mean, we fought wars, assassinated assassins trying to kill us in our supposed sleep, raced steam chariots & besieged armies! We stole artifacts, invented flawed intelligent items like repeating crossbows (we had a sciencey type player who got on well with the mad gnomish inventors guild) and ended up nearly killing the party 3 times with our own repeating crossbow (twice we luckily ran out of arrows, the third time we had to throw a boulder onto our carriage - and boy was that expensive to fix...)  And don’t get me started on the politics... It literally flew over my teenage head... I was so clueless then. I even was tricked into being a high priest... Seriously, our party laughed me out of the room when I realized my easy-street lazy rogue was now saddled with actually working & promoting something, raising funds & even having to preach to get followers... And then people worked out I was actually a really good talker & on state debate teams... I just really enjoyed being lazy, stealing & leaping my way through problems... Anyway... long rambling stories... Probably not that interesting - but OMG my fondest memory is just that beginning - we rolled up characters & started playing before we read the mechanics. We invented everything we needed in 5 minutes & learnt some real rules later - which we half ignored as we tried to recreate the spirit of DND with d20s & Lord of the Rings Character Sheets. Still have that sheet too! If you ever want to start a game - just take whatever books you have and go for it. Don’t stress about the rules, make stuff up. Borrow the Advantage/Disadvantage system from fifth Ed - and just go with the flow. If it feels like success, tell the player. If it doesn’t, describe the player's misfortune...