Two session reports from San Serafin (as hastily mashed out on Facebook)

So I've been sick this weekend which should mean I'm miserable but instead I've been playing in Mateo's San Serafin games. This is how I told it to my boyfriend via facebook chat:

also this game i played in last night was so much fun

What happened?

ok so it was one of mat diaz's games

and he hacked red and pleasant land into this massive undead city where beasts, the dead, and the living are at war

i was playing as a 14 year-old witch boy with morty's voice

who can do a dance to turn into small animals and tie knots that people become obsessed with untying

none of which actually helped me

but anyway it was mostly ordinary d&d stuff, we decided to explore this huge opera house guarded by a 25-foot caiman

but then we went to the opera and the vampire in our party started booing the singer and the semi-intelligent zombies in the audience got up and started trying to kill him

so i got up and told the audience that we were actors in a new form of experimental theatre that involved audience participation and actors hidden in the crowd

and then like weaved this whole narrative

the vampire gotten eaten anyway but the rest of us got away alive and with a standing ovation

and we got a coat with a map to a manor and stole a witchy coat from the cloakroom and there was a letter in the pocket signed by the king of lepers, who's a powerful NPC guy and witch patron I can learn spells from

we got almost 0 XP

it was great

Hahaha sounds like fun

I should join this game more

What happened to Jessica? [Talking about Jessica Nobletush the Vampire, my Perfidious Albion PC]

well this was mostly his friends from home

okay so he also ran the setting friday night with g+ people

and jessica is already knee-deep in the shit in some other part of the city so I figured I wanted to keep that separate

Oh lol

jessica's having a hard time

he had a turtle that had a ring on it containing the soul of a slain rival

the idea being to punish him forever by trapping him in the body of a turtle

but like

then there were some zombies guarding a gate and they asked me to impress them

so I showed them the turtle

and they bit off its head

and then when i tried to take the ring back they punched me really hard in the face and we ran away

then - remember Mr. Crushmore, his thrall? he was there too

well okay first we run into this terrifying funeral procession thing and the leader gets angry at us for blocking his way

and tells us we have to bring him a living victim

which is fine for me cause i needed to drink some blood

(in retrospect I could have drank Mr. Crushmore's)

Anyway we eventually run into a child with broken legs crying in the road

so anyway obvi it's an ambush and two jaguars attack us and the kid pulls a shiv

so the jaguars were tearing mr crushmore to pieces and there was clearly no saving him so I went into a bloodlust and ate the boy

so I'm down a rival's soul, which might be anywhere by now, a faithful thrall, and there's a funeral procession waiting for us to bring it a living soul

the session ended when we found a human camp

oh and i came up with this plan

where okay so I need to feed but I also need to rest and the jaguars destroyed my coffin while they were mauling Mr. Crushmore

so we dressed up half of mr crushmore in different clothes (he was in pieces anyway) so we're going to ask for two coffins for our "two dead friends" but really we're going to bury mr. crushmore in one and I'll sleep in the other and they'll never know I'm a vampire.

great times in mateo's game lately

Lol not a bad plan

Yeah sounds like it

Let me know when the next game is

Stick this on your arctic encounters table

Jynx

(AKA. Frost Hag, Tundra Witch, Ice Diva, Cold Widow)

(GameFreak later changed its skintone to purple so it would look less like a woman in blackface but they also made its expression less dopey so we're going with this one.)

Environment: Any sufficiently snow-blasted arctic waste.

No. Appearing: Roll 1d4. On a 1-2, there's only one. On a 3, there are two. On a 4, there are 1d30. It also appears whenever two players say the same thing at the same time.

What are they doing: Either a) Striking a pose, standing perfectly still. They will not budge as long as you're looking unless you come within arms reach. b) Dancing around, making this noise. Save versus spells or be drawn to look closer. c) Following you at a distance, watching. It seductively wiggles its hips as it walks.

AC As chain + shield, or as unarmoured + shield if attacking the hair

HD 2+1

Intelligence Average to above-average (9-14)

Languages Its own, which sounds like the noise linked above.
Movement Slow, graceful, yet distinctly inhuman

Attacks

Kiss - It will target the character with the highest Charisma first, or the one who has been kindest to it. A Jynx does not distinguish between sexes. The effect of a Jynx's kiss varies. Roll 1d6:

     1 - 3: Save vs spells or become infatuated with the Jynx as per charm person. You can understand its babbled instructions but cannot speak its language. The Jynx's directives are usually either a) subdue your friends, b) kiss your friends, or c) dance.
     4 - 6: Save vs spells or fall asleep for 1d6 hours. Since these are likely to appear in cold places, the DM is encouraged to enforce whatever freezing rules apply (keeping in mind that the body produces less heat when sleeping).

A character who has succumb to a Jynx's kiss has a d20% chance of seeing the Jynx in its dreams. The Jynx sees them too. The % chance is reduced by 1 every night.

Confusion - If a character does not appear to be succumbing to kisses a Jynx may use this mental attack. It deals 1d6 psychic damage and the target saves versus spells or becomes confused as per the confusion spell cast by a 10th-level Magic-User. A Jynx may use this power once a day. If you use psionics this is some kind of psionic attack.

Slap - 1d4 damage, but a Jynx will not use this unless the character attempts to harm it and does not succumb to kisses or confusion.

Behaviour
A Jynx's interests are to lure in victims, take thralls, and survive.

When all victims are charmed, sleeping, or dead, the Jynxes will whisk the charmed victims away. No one has ever seen where they are taken and lived to tell the tale.

A Jynx who sees a kiss-victim in their dreams will come find them the next day. There is a 50% chance it will bring 1d20 friends.

The Hair
This video reveals the Jynx's true nature:

Notice how when it faints the body disappears; only the hair remains. This is because the body is actually a psionic projection of the true creature: the hair. The body is not quite an illusion - it occupies actual space and the victims of a kiss will feel its cold, slimy lips against their skin, but a sword will seem to swish through the folds of its extravagant dress without cutting. The actual Jynx is not an uncanny feminine apparition but rather yellow, tentacular, and starfish-like. Any character who catches on to this and targets the hair directly has a better chance to hit.

If a Jynx is ever killed or knocked unconscious its false body will disappear.

Let's Go Camping

A while ago I raised the question on G+ about how you might bring something like Darkest Dungeon's Camping Actions into a tabletop RPG. I really like the idea of having a portion of play set aside to talking about how characters are unwinding - or not - after a hard day of adventuring. It seems like a wonderful beat to add to the adventuring day. So I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. Here's what I've come up with:

See this? This is what bliss looks like.

When the PCs set up camp for the evening, each player chooses one of the following:

Cook  Use up a fine ingredient per 2 characters: Everyone regains 1 HP.* Halflings may use up an extra ration instead.

Forage. Roll under Int: On a success, find edible or useful plants. DM rolls this in secret, so be careful, you might wind up with poison.

Guard. In case of random encounter, party gets an additional roll against surprise for each guard.

Hunt. Go looking for animals to eat. Look out – you might have to fight it.

Medicine. Roll under Wis: Restore 1 HP to an injured target. Must have a healing kit. Clerics pass automatically.

Scout.  Learn some information about the surrounding area. Each group of Scouts gets a new piece of information – but also checks for encounters independently.

Perform  Roll under Charisma. All characters Relaxing get a 5% bonus to XP gained.

Pray  A Cleric may attempt to change their Liturgy**

Relax  Add XP for the day’s adventuring. If you have enough to level, it happens when you wake up.

Repair  Roll under Int: Mend a sundered shield or weapon.

Study  A Wizard may make an attempt to learn a spell from a scroll or spellbook.

Train  Add +1 to any 1 roll tomorrow.

* This is for a low-HP, slow recovery game, where the difference between regaining 1, 2, or 3 HP in the course of a night might be quite significant.
** A thing for my game - Clerics have a spell that's "always prepared" - they can cast it instead of a spell of the same or lower level. This is on top of being able to turn any slot into a healing spell. Since you're probably not using these, you might allow them to regain a single 1st-level spell slot?

I have a hangover and this dungeon hates you

Last night I overindulged and now my everything feels gross. Sherief Gaber wants ideas for ways to make his players miserable without making them fight things. Turns out these things go well together. Here's my response.

Simple things:

A river to cross, and no bridges or boats (danger of being swept away, metal rusts, paper ruined, food rations ruined, excess weight increases chances of drowning)

A rainy night and a bad tent (again, damaged equipment, but also risk of hypothermia, and it's more or less impossible to sleep well, if at all, when your bed roll is soaked)

In the morning after all this bullshit you discover several poisonous spiders have laid eggs in your armour. Do you dare try to get them out?

Also in dungeons everything that takes time also uses up light (and vice versa. Light is dungeon-time.) Fill the darkness with awful things.

The bridge across the underground chasm is long and weak. It looks like it can just barely support one lightly - encumbered person at a time, and they'd better not run. Also something is snoring below.

And good luck getting all your stuff through that crawlspace. And mind the stalagmites, they're sharp.

This hallway is flooded four feet deep.

Basically just drown them.

dr. strabismus & the babi carbuncle

Not all D&D sessions are fun to write up but I expect this one will be.

I was a player (for once) in Mateo Diaz's Pernicious Albion.

Dramatis Personae

• Arnold K as a Goldenloin, 1st-level Warlock and former child prostitute.
• Anxious Princess (formerly known as Wil) as Grover Moses, 1st-level specialist.
• Jessica Nobletush (male, despite the name), 1st-level vampire, played by yours truly. Also his enchanted thrall Mr. Crushmore.

A wizard sent us into some old dungeon to catch a carbuncle that was living in there, and/or, extract the gem from its head, before the local zoological society could get their filthy preservationist paws on it. The prize was something like 2000 gp. So at this point it was just me and Arnold and we bought some nets and went to the dungeon.

Then we got to the dungeon and Mateo asked if we had torches and we were like "fuck" and rustled up some sticks or something and went in.

We explored so much of the dungeon you guys:

it felt kind of good being Those Fucking Players who explore 2 rooms and ditch

The first room was full of pressure plates with pictures of animals. We managed to figure out the room's like thematics (the west side was nice animals and east was mean animals) and we figured out that the unicorn tile makes the dungeon rumble or something and then we left the room because players.

So we went out the west door and found a room full of corpses which it soon turned out was also full of centipedes so we left.

Back in the first room there was the Carbuncle and we were like yesssss so Arnold offered it some cheese and the rules we're using it don't distinguish between humanoids and other things for the Charm spell so I made it love me and we cuddled it and then we wrapped it up in a net.

Then the zoological society showed up and they were assholes and were like GIVE US THE CARBUNCLE and we tried to lie to them but they pulled guns. So we bolted back towards the centipede room. Then we go there and Mateo mentioned the west wall was made of stucco. I bet he mentioned this like three times before but players. So anyway I was like OHHHHH STUCCO and sent Mr. Crushmore to body check it and there was a secret passage.

Then we found a way out of the dungeon and there was a pool of water with something metal sticking out of which I took but now I forget what it was.

Anyway we get out there and I stretch my net. Before long their leader whose name is Dr. Strabismus or something, I got it his name wrong like 100 times. Anyway so he tore through the net and fell flat on the ground. So I ran him through with my rapier and we looted his body. We found a really goth looking black ring and my character is kinda goth so I took it. Then Mateo told us both to check our G+ messages.

Fun fact: Out of the last 9 D&D sessions I've played in, my character has died or gone insane in 6. Not counting this one.

So I tried really hard to play it cool and I was like "so we're stealing horses and heading back to town?" and Arnold was like "yeah we have 5 horses let's go" and I was like "ohhh but who has the Carbuncle" and he was like "I do but I'm tiny so you should take it" and I was like "ok that sounds normal."

Then halfway back to town I was like YOU FOOL I WAS POSSESSED BY THE BAD GUY THE WHOLE TIME and rode off into the sunset and rolled up stats for Mr. Crushmore.

So we headed to town and set a trap for possessed-Jessica by suspending a rope across the entrance to the town and when Jessica came riding in he flew off the horse and broke all his bones. At which point I scooped him into his coffin (he carries it around) and we started talking about what to do with him. Arnold wanted to cut off the finger with the ring on it but the wording of the Charm person Crushmore is under indicates that Mr. Crushmore is in love with Jessica so I wasn't having that. Eventually Arnold decided to discard his weapons and use some strings to slip the ring off the finger. In order to make sure Arnold didn't get possessed, Mr. Crushmore mentioned that whatever question he asked after removing the ring, the answer was "3 geese."

So when Wil showed up there was a child with strings wrapped around the fingers of a badly mangled vampire and a big burly man hovering over him with his fist ready to knock him out. Jessica's demeanor changed some.

Arnold said, "Jessica, say something only Jessica would know!"

Jessica said, "3 geese."

It's their safe word. <3

Anyway so I'm Jessica again now.

Then we were like oh but what about this evil fucking ring. So I tied a worm around it and put the worm (now possessed by Dr. Strabismus) in a bag. Then we went into an inn and Arnold started a betting pool going to rope suckers into feeding me their blood so I could regenerate HP.

At this point we spent a while deciding what body to put Dr. Strabismus in. We decided a turtle would be funniest. So we dropped a bunch of money on a turtle and a special shell modification that would keep hold the ring in contact with the turtle.

Finally we went back to the magician who set us on this job with the Carbuncle, which still loved me.

ME: So, will extracting the gem hurt the Carbuncle?

MATEO: Oh, it'll be excruciating.

ME: Will it survive?

MATEO: Absolutely not.

While we argued about how we might save the poor thing or whether we should at all the magician's assistant came in, collected the creature and handed us our reward money.

MATEO: They take it into another room.

ARNOLD: I get up and leave.

ME: Yeah I'm out of here.

MATEO: Okay well you hear it-

WIL: I'm gone.

ME: We're all gone.

MATEO: From outside you hear it shrieking.

So Mateo's a jerk. Anyway.

Our plans for the future involve bewitching Dr. Strabismus into liking us while he's still trapped in a turtle's body, then when he's loyal to us we'll put the ring on like an ogre or something.

I love D&D.

End.

I FUCKING KILLED YOU

Immortal Athkan

Some context:

This is a deity for use with Logan Knight's Mystic rules.

Hook is the city in which my campaign is based.

Zekel is the chief and official deity in Hook. But this is not about Zekel.

A holy symbol of  Immortal Athkan

Immortal Athkan was once a general in the service of Hook. No one ever managed to best him in battle.

When he died, he refused to stop defending hook.

He now lies, usually dead, inside the Mound, in a specially guarded tomb. His skeleton and armour have grown to the height of 20 feet. He is a god, and cannot be Turned.

When Hook is in danger, Immortal Athkan rises from his tomb and goes to fight the foe. His bones are covered in gold.

Immortal Athkan is a god of valour and battle. He and his adherents value ruthlessness and defeat of one's enemies above all else - to be carried out with honour and fearlessness, rather than fear and subtlety.

It is illegal to worship Immortal Athkan, except when the city is under attack, in which case it is mandatory, and elaborate shrines are set up atop the Temple of Zekel. Zekel hates Athkan and the rulers of Hook can expect to suffer once he resumes his rest.

This means that Hookish worshipers of Immortal Athkan must carry out their practice in secret - a condition that Immortal Athkan deplores, but of which he accepts the necessity. For now.

Inherent Abilities

Battle Reader

Whenever you travel somewhere where a great battle has taken place, you can hear its echoes. With the erection of a small shrine to Immortal Athkan and a successful Wisdom check, you can learn of the battle's history and secrets.

Medic

You may attempt to heal wounds suffered in combat. (One attempt only):

4d6          Restore

18-24          Success

15-17          Success/Bestowed Mark

13-14          Bestowed Mark

7-12            Malpractice

4-6              Brilliant Manifestation of Divinity

Secret Keeper

Immortal Athkan occasionally bestows his followers with secret knowledge. These are to be kept guarded at all costs, or face terrible retribution. (You are excommunicated if you divulge the information to any NPC or player.)

Liturgies of Immortal Athkan

The First Liturgy (Cleric level 1)

In the order of the manifestation of bones and weapons, the bolstering of combat prowess, speaking to the spirits of dead soldiers.

The Second Liturgy (Cleric level 3)

In the order of sensing enemies, seeing enemies at a distance, enlisting the aid of dead soldiers, moderately enlarging humanoids.

The Third Liturgy (Cleric level 5)

In the order of the manifestation of skeletal warriors, terrible omens, the invocation of fear in the hearts of rivals, the infliction of curses, the infliction of smiting blows.

The Fourth Liturgy (Cleric level 7)

In the order of the granting of immunity to, and removal of, diseases, poisons, and toxins, increasing humanoids to giant size, the manifestation of baroque structures and siege weapons made of bone.

The Fifth Liturgy (Cleric level 9)

In the order of the permanent reanimation of those recently slain in battle, the temporary reanimation of any corpse, the summoning of skeletal armies, the manifestation of towering skeletal avatars.

The Secret Sixth Liturgy (Cleric level 13)

The awakening of Immortal Athkan himself.

Favour

Gain Favour with Immortal Athkan by performing actions that please him. For example:

1 point

• Officiate the burial of a fallen soldier
• Induct a convert into the cult of Immortal Athkan
• Publicly flagellate a liar

5 points

• Slay an enemy army, leaving no survivors
• Remove a coward or liar from a position of power

15 points

• Kill, in a fair fight, a powerful ruler, and claim their holdings in Immortal Athkan's name
• Lead an army in a pledge of eternal service to Immortal Athkan