Chronicles of the Saturday Group - 2 February 2013

I'm beginning to get annoyed with this adventure.  Thankfully I think we're almost done with it.  I mentioned before that our characters have had their equipment removed from them and that therefore we've had to conserve spells and scrounge for gear.  That's fine; that's a different challenge.  The module consistently throws nasty stuff at us, mostly in the form of hordes of fighters from the various houses that we can barely hold our own against without all the spells and goodies we usually have access to.  That's also not a big deal.  But after being taught beyond the shadow of any doubt that we cannot trust anyone in this stinking city, we are set upon by too many opponents to defeat, boxed in at both sides with a civilian target we're trying to protect, trying to survive long enough to get away, on the edge of getting TPK'd, maybe, and the Deus Ex Machina comes out in the form of some other force attacking our enemies.  Twice.  The first time we didn't know who they were, though I now suspect I know their identities.  The second time they revealed themselves, but the problem is this: I'm trying to conserve my spells.  I'm not playing a combat character.  I'm trying to solve problems without hitting them with a stick this go-round.  So when I hold off on using my Spectral Force spell for two rounds, three rounds... and then I start casting it one segment before the cavalry shows up and instantly annihilates our foes, ensuring that not only will it not be necessary or useful but that it will be completely wasted and I have no way of replacing it... come on.  It feels too much like a 'gotcha!'.  Maybe it's nothing more than bad timing on my part, but I could have just sat back, hid behind the fighters and waited until the story (this is a module for an adventure game, recall) saved our asses itself.  That's not why I play.  I don't want to take part in a TPK either, but it's shown me that the players have no control over our destinies in this module.  Our DM actually stopped play early a few weeks earlier because he had to work out how to deal with our (well, one of our) actions.  Not because he's a bad DM or is unintelligent, but because the module is so heavily scripted.  Bleah and bleah.

Chronicles of the Saturday Group: 26 Jan 2013 - Beneath Two Suns

Our DM is running "Beneath Two Suns". Suffice it to say that these posts will include at least minor spoilers for any module/adventure we're playing in. We've been conserving our spells because we don't have any of our equipment and can't rememorise spells once we've cast them.  It wasn't apparently taken from us by our captors, but none of us has any gear of any kind, including spellbooks (though the DM has ruled we have any material components we may need to cast the spells we have memorised). 

I like this on one hand, but dislike it on another.  Maybe I'm just cranky about 2nd Edition S&P.  Taking away our stuff makes us use our brains.  And I think I've been conditioned, after ten years with this group, to look at my character sheet for answers instead of using my grey matter.  Without the ability to use most of what's on that sheet, I feel shortchanged somehow.  I know I oughtn't, as I'm an advocate of player agency, but it's out of the ordinary for this group.  Cue clip of Yoda saying, "You must unlearn what you have learned..."

We ambushed a patrol and knocked some of them into a pit, and our machine-gun dart thrower punched a few of them to death.   There was a somewhat lengthy discussion about what to do with the one guy who wasn't put into the pit or outright killed.   The half-orc wanted to just kill him, but there are too many Good characters around now, and he was outvoted (Remind me to tell you about how the bard was made Neutral Evil by a Helm of Alignment Change and then made Lawful Good by another magic item.  He's not playing Lawful Stupid, but he is playing Lawful Really Nice, which is nearly as bad.  Good guys can be jerks. They don't have to be, but they can be.).  The Witcher (1), who purports to only be able to kill 'monsters' or 'evil people', wanted to just kill the remaining guard.  When it was rapidly pointed out that that would be murder, she tried to explain why it wasn't.  Insert facepalm here.  In the end we tied the guy's arms and blindfolded him or some nonsense, and punted him off into the swamp, hopefully not to be eaten by some random animal.  You know, I think I had more fun when I was running a morally grey character.  But our Witcher's player gets so upset with quote-unquote evil characters.  She has a very narrow definition of what the game should be, and it includes cooperation.  The PCs should never be at odds with each other, oh my!

Anyway, my illusionist used her Improved Phantasmal Force to simulate an attack on the castle whilst the others went in and fought with the guys inside.    They freed the person we'd come to free and that was the end of that segment of the story.

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(1) A custom character build approved by our DM and basically ripped from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witcher