Triumph!
Man, I
finally have a little bit to report here!
So, my last really long post
reported on reactivating my group here in my university town.
Soooo... The guy's girlfriend turned out to be really fantastic at makeup and clothes, when walking around sans said makeup and in baggy clothes, she looked rather plain, actually, and not distracting at all. I did not even recognize her. And she turned out to be a quiet one who almost never says anything and basically played herself. >_> We also got a new player in the second session who works at my observatory, a guy I like a lot but who was quickly in disfavor of the girl playing the hippie cleric who of course loudly voiced her opinion later. Third session finally got the people into the adventure and shortly afterward, I was "hired away" to Munich, and despite me being in town most weekends, we never played again. Especially because said girlfriend didn't like playing, and then somehow convinced her boyfriend to not have time for us anymore!!! Can't he leave her alone for one evening every few weeks or even months???
Damn these women...
Without him, this leaves just two players who can't stand each other!
Additionally, between sessions 2 and 3 of above adventure, we finally, after something like a year, convened another group where I am just a player and the GM has written an entire campaign by himself. We played a single awesome session with a totally open ending and since then... naught.
Ok, as mentioned, I went to Munich, and another of the players moved with his GF to Cologne, but the main problem is that our GM completely disappeared off the map. We finally reestablished a bit more contact some months ago and it seems he has gotten himself a GF as well and "he only does role-playing when he is unhappy"!!! And I guess he isn't right now... There was hope we'd get back to playing anyway but so far, nothing.
Anyway, then there was this from December 2012:
Don Alexander wrote:I hope to finally play again next week, even if it is only another two-character adventure with my most trustworthy compatriot (the guy who has been a father for a few weeks now...)
Followed by this from February 2014:
Don Alexander wrote:Hey!
Dirty n Evil wrote:Now, as I've mentioned I mostly play with the tiniest of RPing groups - me, my pal Zeus, and my pal Paul.
Since summer 2012, my role-playing group has consisted of me and my pal Lars. No one else.
Dirty n Evil wrote:And we play nearly every weekend.
And we play just a few times a year because he lives half the country away.
So be happy.
So, yeah. This adventure, which was started in April 2012 (so before the stuff mentioned above) turned out to be one loooong drag. Ok, I - remember me mentioning I have this detailed chronicle and usually also play "the journey from A to B? - came up with two small adventures before we even got to the official one (after 7.5 sessions...), but then the official adventure was nothing if not long and tedious. The whole thing was made worse by usually having months between the sessions, so always a lot of recouping was needed, not to mention my friend (and, admittedly, I too) can never really get into a playing mood after meeting up again, so if my visits were short, we usually had an evening, where we did not play at all, followed by a crap session where we maybe seriously played for an hour or two - and then I was gone again.
(He even told me that after such visits, he really got into the mood for playing...
)
Finall,y after three years, we finished the adventure this Easter!
It took a total of 19 sessions, though...
But luckily for us, I've been a veritable homeboy this year. After a single bad session after New Year's, I visited home again in March, where we had another rather bad session, but then we were able to play four times in my two-week Easter vacation and finally "got into it", allowing us to wrap it up.
Don Alexander wrote:I come from the opposite school of thought. All my groups have always started with beginner-level characters, who have then worked their way up... In one group, since 1994, two of the characters have reached "God" level (not literally, of course, but they are pushing the boundaries of what normal humans are capable of...)
Which brings me to THESE guys!! I have two "groups" in my home town, the "big group" (established 1994, basically the originals) and the "little group" (established 1999). The former adventure was in the little group, where my friend plays a mage and I play a... hm, kind of Mongol hunter/ranger/warrior. Roles are reversed in the big group, I play the mage (and what a mighty mage he is!), and my friend plays a mercenary who is by now also a cleric of the god of death, Boron. And it seems we just feel more at home playing these two...
The chronicle of my big group is quite strongly planned out, and while there are multiple adventures that still need to be played, I am still hoping to play these with additionally my best friend and his wife as players. But they have had less and less time these last years...
And there's simply no "room" for an adventure consisting of just me and Lars. So we diced to make a radical jump - about TEN years into the future!!! My big group right now resides in the year 18 (after the last emperor ascended). Starting in the year 23 or so, the greatest nigromancer of all time, Borbarad, returns from his prison in limbo and a gigantic world war develops which ends in a great battle toward the end of the year 28. The little group are to be the main actors of this campaign, whereas I'm planning to remove the big group to another continent - they only return for the final battle. The little group shall perish at the end of said battle
whereas for the big group, the sky's the limit...
In the late '90s, we already played a huge campaign where the heroes sail around the world with a "Viking" captain. Several big plot threads are left open at the end of this campaign, and a newer one, named "In the Shadow of Simyala" deals with these. Simyala is one of the six legendary elemental cities of the High Elves (comparable to the Eldar of the Silmarillion, whereas "modern" elves in DSA are more like Legolas & Co.), associated with the element Earth ("Humus" in Germany, which is literally dirt - DSA separates between fertile Earth and "Erz" - stone and ore), and it lies hidden in a huge forest at the center of the continent, right in the middle of the most powerful empire and not too far from the capital city. Yet still mysteriously hidden. This campaign will lead the heroes all the way into Simyala where they will interfere in a plan of the Nameless God, the true evil of the world.
Just weeks after my April vacation, I returned to my hometown to attend a wedding, and here had the chance to also visit Lars twice. And we began the campaign with the first adventure "Nameless Dawn", and lo, we actually managed to get going right on the first evening.
(It still could have been better...) And then, last weekend, over Pentecost, I returned to my parents yet again, and we managed to play three evenings in a row!!! AND we wrapped up the first adventure in just five nights in total, 20 hours playing time! That is SO refreshing!!
To be honest, I did not like the adventure that much. Plotwise, it is quite simple and linear, fells a bit railroady without being really epic. Oh, sure, we had loads of fun, but I had expected more (my friend liked it a lot).
Initially, the heroes are traveling in this huge forest (a part that still belongs to civilization). They come to the aid of a cleric who is being attacked by a horde of rats - creatures of the Nameless! She is on her way back to her home castle, being the sister of the former baron who perished after that huge battle I mentioned above (the campaign starts a year after it). She has had visions that her nephew is in great danger by a traitor. Said nephew has just returned after two years of squiring, and is now knighted, and ready to take over as the new baron following a great hunt where, it is expected, a great white stag will show up again.
The heroes arrive at the castle and begin some detective work. One funny aspect is that this campaign is meant for low-to-medium level characters, the first adventure is level 4-7 (the two others are 5-10) - and as pointed out above, these two characters are "god level" - level 21! Normally, we should have been great guests of honor, but since we had pissed on the plans of the Nameless so often... We went somewhat anonymously. In the course of the evening (the cleric is later killed by poison) we figure out that the line of Falconwind is linked to the fairies (who aren't Tinkerbell in DSA, but a lot closer to the powerful beings from White Wolf's Changeling: The Dreaming), and that this pact is essential in preventing a dark future... One of the people meet is a gruff cleric of the winter god, Firun - and this guy is actually the traitor, a powerful cleric of the Nameless! But I play him so well we do not "smell a rat"!
The following day will be a very long one for us. After having been up in the night because of the murder of cleric sister, we have to get up early again for the great hunt! The great white stag is actually a powerful fairy creature (a "Holde", a word that's hard to translate, perhaps "Fair One" - "holde Dame" means "fair lady" but there it is used as an adjective) who should "abduct" the new baron into her kingdom, where he will totally sex her up and knock her up!
This child will then later be implanted by magic into whoever the baron takes as wife, and will again be a half-fairy to continue the pact. Problem is, the young baron-to-be has absolutely no idea what is going on since his dad died before being able to convey the family secret...
To make things worse, the Nameless cleric unveils himself, and nearly kills the Holde!! He gets away, we follow her dying body, meet an "Ent" who sacrifices his life to keep her alive a while longer, and then must travel to the "Fairy Grottoes". This is a cave system which was once created by a powerful Eldar who was one of the Keepers of the Secret Keys to access hidden Simyala. A millennium ago, a Lamifaar, a fairy who has been corrupted by the Nameless (reminded me a lot of the black fairies in Magic's Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block, especially Faerie Macabre), found a way into these caves, but was trapped by the Holde before she could get out with the secrets. Now, the Holde is dying, and the Lamifaar is in danger of being released from her cage!
These grottoes are basically a dungeon, though they are not filled with your typical, orcs, skeletons and dragons. The caves are filled with a magical melody (one of the two keys!) created by a massive organ, and the Nameless, in form of a bunch of wicked 'shrooms, is attacking and corrupting this organ. Every time it is filled by spore cloud, cacophony ensues and the creatures in the cave turn against the heroes (and the heroes may turn upon each other as well). The main goal is to find four Cornucopias, attach them to a magical fountain, and thereby open a gate into the kingdom of the Holde which will give her enough power to survive her wound. This done, we restore her to power, and she sends us to the oak where the Lamifaar is imprisoned. There we defeat the Nameless cleric and his minions and manage to free the young baron who was abducted and indoctrinated into Nameless ways (luckily, he can be saved by the magical melody without PTSD). Oh, and we also blow away that damned fairy. Finally, we deliver him to the Holde who is able to seal the pact again. (Dude gets laid, we get nothing...)
Time runs differently in the fairy kingdoms, and we return a month after the beginning of tale, everyone thought us dead. Back at the castle, we meet up with an Elven countess (who mentored the young baron and who has been seeking Simyala for decades). We return with her to her castle where the baron reveals he has received a mysterious crystal - the second key!
And that's the end of it. The next part is a much more research/travel oriented tale and takes place a whole 3/4 year later. We did not get around to launching it.
But dayum! A whole adventure played in a single month! Made me so happy! Though I now have an incredible amount of report to write...
One thing that stuck out was that I need to use different dice for my mage! I fumbled stuff so fucking often!!! In some of the battles, which should have been easy-peasy for our powerful characters, I received multiple crits...
I can hardly claim "I nearly died" but it was quite embarrassing...