Alert the media — two Borderlands sessions in one month! Surely the End is Nigh!
Continue reading “Big Wolf On Campus: Gaming Summary, September 26, 2004”

Tales of the Rambling Bumblers
an RPG blog
Alert the media — two Borderlands sessions in one month! Surely the End is Nigh!
Continue reading “Big Wolf On Campus: Gaming Summary, September 26, 2004”
Barbecues, weddings, and illness have kept us away from the Borderlands for some time, but no gamer can stay away forever! You may want to read the entry from July 19 before clicking the link below.
Continue reading “The Haunting of Hill College: Gaming Summary, September 12, 2004”
In the continuing story of the 3 Palidinos (and thieHHHHcleric.. and the monk) we revisit the dungeon “Back to the Adobo!” Placido continues his plummeting ways, we discover how many kobolds can dance on the head of a spear, and why you should always search piles of rubble.
The Borderlands campaign didn't continue last night, because Wendy was off doing something. (Pennsic, was it? I don't quite recall…maybe if she'd ever mentioned it before, I'd remember.) So we played D&D. Specifically, we continued the Three Paladinos campaign from way back in May, except there was only one paladino this time: Placido (Paul), who was joined by Ogden the halfling thief…er, cleric (Doug), and Maelwyn the elvish monk (Brian, who created the character in defiance of the party's obvious need for a thief).
The party ventured back into the lower level of the dungeon the Paladinos had traversed before, and proved themselves against (in order) a zombie, an empty room, a pit trap, a goblin with a bow, a wolf, a succession of long, twisty corridors, and a dark mantle (bet you thought I wasn't listening when you told us about that last one, huh Josh?). The real danger, though, came from Brian's ineptitude at mapping, the party's ignorance regarding looms (and their uses in escaping from pits), and Doug's “Towlie” voice.
Welcome back, true believers! It's been a long, long time since we've visited the Borderlands campaign, but that's what we did last night. If you want to read the last entry before proceeding, you'll need to go all the way back to May 24.
Continue reading “Meet Miss Hiss: Gaming Summary, July 18, 2004”
Since Brian had a cold and couldn't show up, and Paul came late and left early because of moving hassles, we didn't get a lot done. Doug and Wendy made characters for a Silver-Age Sentinels d20 campaign, since I have a hankering to run some supers (at least in weeks when we don't have a quorum), and then beat up some thugs. As usual, Doug made a sickeningly crocked character with minimal effort (10 out of a possible 10 levels of Density Increase will do that, apparently): a first-level character with 78 hit points and 50 point armor. Wendy, more or less as usual, came up with a perfectly reasonable character (Psycho-Kitty, a psionic character with Mind Control, Telekinesis and Telepathy) and then proceeded to roll really crappily for the duration of the battle. Many cries of “I suck!” were heard.
So, what is the name of Doug's Space Opera campaign anyway?
In prior episodes the PCs escaped the doomed “automated prison” space stations (actually, unbeknownst to our heroes a secret military lab) just before it activated the mysterious secret weapon that vaporized itself and 13 out of the 15 attacking capital ships. Carrying their precious data cube destined to go to the High Command, they made their way to the planet below and finagled cooperation and passage aboard a fast ship out.
Episode IV: A New Hopelessness
The PCs embarked upon the corvette class fast diplomatic-runner, and introduced themselves to the captain, John Diddums (my new PC). A commotion near the entrance to the landing bay ensued, with a man in pilots garb shouting some nonsense about his ship being stolen. Diddums lifted off, despite some chatter from the control tower indicating that they disapproved of the idea for unfathomable reasons, with Paul's character racing up the closing gangplank as the ship charted a course for… ADVENTURE…and away from people who refuse to understand that four aces beat a full house kings over eights.
Upon leaving orbit, however, the remaining two enemy capital ships began to pursue. Diddums was a bit put out to find that his last-minute passengers were attracting this kind of attention, but since two of them were dressed in battle armor declined to make an issue of it. On their part, they forebore pressing him on the exact details of the ownership of his vessel, at least once he pointed out that while the exact legal ramifications were a matter of debate under well-accepted principles the ship was at least 90% his. They ran for the Gate to the next system out, made it, were hailed by a police ship of some kind (don't you just hate it when communications can outrun your escape?). They were explaining that they had no intention of stopping to be boarded considering the enemy capital ship that pursued them through the Gate, when another enemy ship teleported into the system between them and the only other Gate. Violating the laws of physics as he understood them cheesed Diddums off considerably, and since trying to hide from the planet destroying aliens on a planet didn't strike him as the best idea he'd heard that day, Diddums redlined the engines and tried to beat the enemy ship to the gate. Mike and Paul took the gun turrets while Diddums piloted and ran the shields (later, he found out that Mike was a better pilot–you live and learn) and after a brief SPAAAAAACE BATTLE, they made it through. Curiously, the enemy didn't follow immediately.
In the new system, they encountered a friendly fleet, and the grunts unburdened themselves (after a considerable amount of argument over the merits) to the highest ranking officer present–and were immediately assigned to take the data and keep running. While they were doing this, Diddums rearranged the “paperwork” on the ship and the ship's “license plate” to make things a bit more peacable in this cold hard universe filled with welshers and sore losers. Once this was accomplished, they resumed their flight…in both senses of the word.
As I wrote the recap for this week's session, I realized that several names were tossed about, and I didn't manage to remember any of them clearly. At the time, I figured that getting people's names wrong was in character for Fitz, but it does make the recapping harder. If I got anything wrong, let me know, and I'll edit accordingly.
Editor's comments in bold
Continue reading “The Sewers of Old New York: Gaming summary for 5/23/04”
Since it was Doug's turn to GM, but he couldn't make it, we played D&D.
The Three Paladinos continued to explore the dungeon, while Doug's cleric headed back to town to rest and recuperate. They found a spiral stair down and descended into the first underground level. The first thing they encountered was a chamber with a glowing pool and a book on a pedestal. From the tales back in Paladin Academy they recognized these as a healing pool and a Shrine of Memory (aka a Save Point). They triggered the shrine and the book floated up and opened in a burst of light. Glowing runic script invited them to record their names in the the Book of Valor. They did so, thus ensuring that as long as at least one of them survived to return to the book, the others could be brought back.
They proceded onward, into the stygian gloom.
After lighting a torch to make the gloom less stygian, they started poking around the suprisingly spacious network of corridors. Following the right-hand rule, they explored and defeated: a Krenshar (a hideous cat-like thing which peels the skin of its face back revealing a bloody skull and emitting a howl that casts Fear)–Wendy's Paladin stood her ground while the other two turned tail and bravely ran away (She excecuted a fighting retreat until her companions recovered and came back to help). A pair of Zombies, who for some reason had an unstrung loom in their room. A giant ant, surprisingly nimble and yet ineffective with its mighty mandibles.
At this point in the proceedings the trio had accumulated enough experience to Level Up (sfx including being bathed in light, a triumphant musical flourish, and levitating slight off the ground while the camera pans around them). Newly empowered and restored to full health and magic, they proceeded to fall into a forty-foot pit and there had to wrestle with a Giant Centipede. They defeated the centipede and we broke for the night.
This week's session was a bit disjointed, but I think that was more a result of the players finding their footing in the characters and the milieu than any fault of the GM's. Or it could have just been me, because I was very tired. As a result, the summary may be fractured as well, but here we go…
Continue reading “The Menace at Macy’s (conclusion): Gaming summary for 5/9/04”