Wapsi Square Forum

Took my brother up to the military surplus to have him pick out something, and I ended up getting a jungle hammock for myself. Now I can just use my tarp as a rain fly, and not need to make a smudge fire.

Here's another one from my wallpaper changer:

Sarchasm:
The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

I played my first two D&D sessions as Dungeon Master last weekend, and ended up running three this weekend. We added two more players to the party, and somehow managed to survive so far. I should have read through the adventure before the first session, but I put it off too much, so I'm gonna fix that by reading ahead.

I also picked up the book for a simpler TTRPG called Kids on Bikes. If you know about Stranger Things, or all those '80s films of kids riding their bikes around a small town and getting into some supernatural weirdness... That's this game. So I'll be looking into setting up for that.

We're still working on the D&D adventure from the starter set, and my brother and I got the new starter set that is currently only available from Target's website... Which prompted me to look into making sure I have some of the proper figures ready to go for that adventure... One of which is an adult bronze dragon, which I ended up ordering. It arrived today, and I was not expecting it to look as great as it does. It looks better than the adult silver dragon figure I picked up a couple weeks ago.

D&D adventures can be so much fun . . . especially if the DM is a punster . . .

--FreeFlier

Looks like I can't read the comic anymore. I keep getting a DNS error.

It's weird, I was getting strange responses to MS's Update Servers last week.

'I blame Russian Hackers'...

FreeFlier wrote: ↑Thu Aug 11, 2022 10:27 pm D&D adventures can be so much fun . . . especially if the DM is a punster . . .

--FreeFlier

There's a meme going around of a picture of a tabletop mini of one of those Windstream trailers on a pair of bird legs, and the DM is telling the group they'll be going to Bubba Yaga's Dancing Hut.

"Do you mean Baba Yaga?"

"No. No, I do not."

I'd been planning to create my own setting in which to run a campaign, and all I have so far is the party gets sent to speak with a dragon, who seems threatening at first, then surprises someone in the group with a big lick before asking if they're going to beg for mercy... Turns out, it's a copper dragon, just trying to have a laugh. But copper dragons also love a good caper, so he sends them to retrieve a scroll case for them. A heist commences, and when the party returns, the scroll inside is a recipe for some kind of soup. Of course, the dragon knew it was a soup recipe, which is why he sent them to get it. It's a damn good soup, apparently.

I also had an idea for an antagonist, which will require some homebrew work: a dragonborn, but not of a type found in any of the books... A cobalt dragonborn, who has similarities to the cobalt dragons of the second and third editions of D&D, such as metallic blue scales and a magnetic breath weapon. That part will definitely take the party by surprise. I was also thinking of adding in a cobra dragon (from fourth edition), and there's a really cool looking mini for one that I saw online. Picture a massive cobra with the forelegs of a dragon, and using the wings as a pair of legs. They're particularly nasty foes, but I have an idea for how to get the party to meet one.

Sounds fun!

I don't know if you can do anything with this, but here it is anyway. In the one DnD event (I was asked to sit in) I've played, I was rolled as a basic fighter, but had a really good wisdom (?) which made me magic adept - a bit. So I wound up with two magic items -- Fire Gout and Throw Light.

Fire Gout was three bottles of elixir. Upon drinking one, I had three turns to spit fire once before it expired. The range and damage was 1d6 separately with 1d4 burn. Cool down was two turns before i could use it again, or receive 1d6 damage for that single turn (no burn). It was very handy for slowing down pursuing mobs! A bottle took 25 turns to refill automatically.

Throw Light was a simple leather pouch containing six pebbles. I or any other party member could throw the pebble according to their strength/dex rules to that range, and then it gave 2d6 light level (non burning) for 1d4 turns, including under water/snow. Party members could throw in different directions as desired. The pebbles reformed in the pouch in 10 turns.

In the end, I used the gout to set fire to the animate tree mob that was holding/protecting the gem we sought. It fell down through the burning branches and the barbarian used a spear to pull it out of the flames. Then we ran for our lives!

I'll save the story of the Wizard's dragon kill with a camping kit for another day.

We once killed a green dragon by turning its poison gas breath against it. Normally, they're immune to it, and it's officially supposed to be chlorine gas... Someone used a spell that creates a small storm, and when the moisture mixed with the chlorine, it became acid. While that alone wasn't quite enough to kill the dragon, it did a huge amount of damage during the fight.

There's also a way to do a massive amount of damage with a first level character. Apparently, you can use a custom origin as explained in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and select a specific one that gives you access to the Catapult spell. You combine that with five vials of acid placed into a mesh bag, and you can potentially deal 84 points of damage (though that requires all the dice get the highest roll possible, so you'll probably land around 40-ish).

Turns out, it's a copper dragon

And I somehow read that with an entirely different, non-metallic meaning of "copper"... which opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities. (After all, if a bunny and a fox can, then why not a dragon?)

Yeah, I'd been thinking that a prominent copper dragonborn family would live in the town where the adventure would start, and they would also have a copper dragon ancestor, resulting in a lot of sorcerers in the family. What wouldn't be known is that the copper dragon that lives nearby is also descended from the same dragon, and I thought it would be cute/silly if one of the dragonborn were to bring some enchanted plushies to some of the dragon wyrmlings as gifts. They're enchanted to make them indestructible, as I'm pretty sure dragons that young will likely destroy a normal doll.

I got the idea for that from a silly comic page I saw, where some knights are demanding a dragon's treasure, and the dragon starts crying because they want to take its "Rimplush".

I created one where the party is wandering through a limestone cavern, complete with stalagmites and stalactites, and find a stalagmite that's been carved into a statue of a strangely dressed man wearing a strange hat with a wide brim that's curled up at the sides, apparently two pairs of pants, a vest, and coil of rope over one shoulder . . . when the party touches the statue or even the pedestal, the statue starts singing "I'm just a limestone cowboy . . . "

This would also work with a minotaur, I suppose . . .


A friend of mine ran one where after much running around in a dungeon, the party reached to bottom level, which was a huge room with an alder tree in the center . . . sparks and witch-lights crawling all over the tree . . . when someone approached too closely, the tree shuddered, the lights froze for an instant . . . and then the party was back outside the dungeon entrance, which wasn't there any more.

The tree was a sessile god, and had been asleep and dreaming . . . the dungeon was its dream and the party had awakened it.

And since it was an alder tree, the dungeon had been an Alder Reality.


BTW, the DM in the latter case was the same guy who killed a huge ancient red dragon with a thrown dagger. The party had blundered into the dragon, his character got trapped, the dragon took a good shot at him, he's down to one hit point and the beast in inhaling to breathe again . . . so he threw his dagger at it. It was a good dagger, but not that good . . . except they were playing ChartMaster RoleMaster, and he rolled open-ended high multiple times and got a kill result.


This is the same guy who when I pulled one of my random camouflage rolls ("Everyody roll your [stat]!" . . . DM rolls dice, grunts, and goes on as though nothing has happened . . . because it didn't), rolled 496 before modifiers . . . he found four corroded coppers, 3 silver bits, and a dagger with a broken point. "That's all?!" "There wasn't supposed to be anything, but with a roll like that . . . "

--FreeFlier

Ha! Those sound like fun.

I'd been thinking that my homebrew setting wouldn't just be a few worlds on the prime material plane being connected. Each world would be part of its own multiverse (in this sense, the material plane and the higher/lower planes associated with it), so if the party wanted to visit, say, the feywild as depicted in D&D, they'd have to first be on the world that is from the correct multiverse.

I'd been considering lately that one of those worlds would have eldritch entities be their analogues for the gods of the other worlds... And these gods would be very reminiscent of Biblically Accurate Angels, or maybe something Timothy Leary would have seen in a kaleidoscope. They would be hyperdimensional beings, and most of the time they wouldn't even notice the three dimensional material plane. So far, the only one I've envisioned in my head would appear in 3D space as a bunch of arms that radiate (but don't appear to directly connect to) a central "eye" that appears to look at the viewer regardless of their position relative to the entity, and there may or may not be eyes in the palms of the hands.

My idea would be that these eldritch things would be able to interact with the "strings" from string theory, resulting in all kinds of weirdness, or maybe do some of the stuff seen in Doctor Strange. Maybe, with a certain amount of effort, one of these beings would be able to connect to the mind of a three-dimensional being, and then perceive itself as we might... And then it'd be like "holy crap, no wonder you're scared of us! Yyyyyyeah, we don't actually look like that."

I'd also been thinking that the recurring antagonist might just be trying to do something that might spark a war between the pantheons of the various worlds.

Y'all have suddenly made me wonder if Cornstalk Maiden is still around, or did Castela accidentally blast it into oblivion?

Cornstalk Maiden is probably still intact, and will probably come to life at some point, and see Castela as her mother.

In line with the D&D discussion, I'm thinking of getting some kind of vocal processor to do weird stuff, like roleplaying hyperdimensional entities and whatnot.

I thought she was Cornhusk Maiden.

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote: ↑Sat Aug 20, 2022 4:43 am I thought she was Cornhusk Maiden.

Aww, shucks - did we get it wrong?

Leaving for a short bicycle trip, many days later than I should have...

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/FamilyVisitTheLongWayAround

Dave wrote: ↑Sat Aug 20, 2022 8:36 am

FreeFlier wrote: ↑Sat Aug 20, 2022 4:43 amI thought she was Cornhusk Maiden.

Aww, shucks - did we get it wrong?

Colonel Flint says so . . .

--FreeFlier

No D&D this weekend... My brother's father in law, sister in law, and I have all tested positive for Covid.

This must be a weaker variant, because it feels like a typical fever. Headache, fever, cough, and a stuffy nose.