Finally! At last, I am free! This file was an absolute nightmare to edit due to technical issues, but the final episode of our Dusk City Outlaws campaign is finished and live! I don't even care if you listen to it – it's out there, it's done!
Tales of New Dunhaven Session 20 - The Leverage Job, Part 4 (Season Finale): PodcastVideo
I gotta agree with RD here. AJ you would be whining and moaning if she'd thrown the rest of you under the bus if she had picked the other choice. This is about the point where I'd just respond with a heavy "Oh shuuuuut up!"
The best part? This version of Rainbow Dash throwing Cloudsdale under the bus to save the party is completely in character for her. She is Chaotic Evil, after all.
It make sense out of character too. Ash (Dash's player) has always cared less of about the setting then the other players. To Ash, Cloudsdale is just meaningless background text. What matters is the flesh and blood friends sitting beside her. Ironically, Dash's choice may be what tears the party apart.
To the best of my recollection, the players have never been given names in the comic itself. (No, I'm not going to go back through over 1100 pages to find out for certain.)
Any names given to the players are the work of the commenters.
Yeah, AJ's got nothing. The fact that the CE barbarian made a pragmatic and arguably moral choice is not her business to analyze. In fact, any actions by a player that do not have negative consequences for another player should never be open for OoC party criticism.
Also it's possible RD realizes that they're going to have to reset the world afterwards anways when Discord is done so that would include reversing and negative effects to Cloudsdale. It's possible that AJ is unknowingly salty too that Dash, the 'bad' player was smarter than the rest of them and didn't get cursed by simply telling him to go flap himself like the rest should have.
My guess is it's more that AJ thinks doing something that was such a no-brainer action for RD was probably what DiscorDM actually wanted to happen in the first place.
Possible though AJ's tone seems prtty confrontational and it seems like AJ may be a bit of a RP snob. Where they constantly judge everyone else's actions characterwise. People like that see ignoring plot drama hooks as a total sin. Like my party that released a demon and then tore into me for wanting to ignore it. Thankfully I was kinda vindicated when the GM revealed that the demon was not plot important, it was a total ruse he had thrown in there completely believing the party wouldn't be stupid enough to realease an archdemon just because he said to. Boy they were not happy when he kept tormenting us through the campaign.
*dressed as a baseball vendor*
Glasses, get your monochrome glasses here!
Be prepared for rainbow explosion with these monochromatic glasses!
Only costs one bad joke!
When the Mallard boat sank, killing a couple dozen people, its makers pointed out the storm conditions its captain sailed into, the lack of maintenance, et cetera, because they wanted to duck responsibility.
Mr. Jackson, the famous football/baseball dual athlete, decided to pick up a third sport as a hobby and try out archery. However, things went awry when an anthropomorphic bear accidentally knelt on the quiver and equipment, thinking it was a log. Said bear then repeatedly kowtowed as a form of apology for the mistake. In other words, Booboo boobooed Bo's bow by bowing.
Twi's line in panel two pretty much sums up the problem with this session at least at this point. DiscorDM is not letting the PC's do anything and is just railroading them. At this point if the PC actully win it will be because he let them.
It's also possible to just split the difference and go, "They're both being railroading douches, unintentionally or otherwise due to the nature of their plot idea, and need to stop immediately." I'm slightly more willing to be charitable to Discord!DM in the sense that he wasn't the guy who made the idea in the first place, but I think WordyGuest said it best a while back when they said Discord!DM has a heavy hand in making Discord the annoying Big Bad Evil Guy that he is in this campaign through their rp and actions as co-DM. Neither of the DMs have totally clean hands in this, and - to me at least - trying to decide who has more blame is just splitting hairs at this point.
Seriously can't wait for that moment when Twilight and the DM just talk properly instead of continuing this whole deal.
And on top of all that the rest of the party has contributed -nothing- the whole session. They've been too busy rping by themselves mostly to actually do anything. Yes I know rp is part of it, but there's a G in there too, Game. Eventually you have to shut up and play the game otherwise what's the point. To quote myself when dealing with a player with the same issue of dragging the game down so he could rp all the time.....
"Listen man, if you just want to rp with yourself go find a chat room, message board or write a damn fanfic with your OC. If you're not going to actually play the game there's no point in you wasting everyone's time watching you (*redacted to keep thing PG*) for four hours."
I'm actually thinking of... DC Comics, and the film they made out of this, that storyline where Vandal Savage stole Batman's plans for neutralizing the Justice League should they go rogue, tweaked them to be lethal (and outright sadistic), and all as part of a plot to wipe out modern civilization because the caveman finds electronic devices strange and confusing. Specifically, the bit at the end where the team is so pissed at Batman for... being sensible. Because it's not as if mind control, evil clones, possession, and alternate timelines aren't a thing for them, right?
As for Discord GM... I'm wondering if he's doing this specifically to create the intra-party conflict. The only reason I can think of to do this is because of something he said in a previous page. "These ARE your friends... warts and all." Is that supposed to be the challenge, the team learning to address their flaws and come together? (I.e. the way they did in the two-part episode that this story arc is based on)
If I'm remembering that DC storyline correctly (though I'll go double check that info through Tvtropes in a sec), a bigger issue - on my end as a consumer of the story, if not from an in-universe perspective - wasn't necessarily that Batman had the plans in the first place (though that definitely was a part of it, if not the official thing - most people don't make plans to take down their friends), it was that a) He didn't tell them he had the plans in the first place, and b) He didn't secure them well enough against supervillain theft. Because of those two factors, the Justice League got fucked royally since they had no way to counter the plans on their own in the first place (at least until Batman started frantically scrambling everyone with counter plans for his modified plans). Also, I remember the plans being specifically tailored to the League as capital-H Heroes, rather than them as supervillains/alternate universe people/mind controlled slaves, which was weird if he was trying to plan for evil/dangerous/alternate/different versions of the League, though it could work if they were just mind controlled and fundamentally the same people underneath. (Also, his plan to deal with an evil version of himself was the Justice League, even though he has plans to take down the Justice League...? Not sure how well thought out that is).
I dunno, maybe there were details I missed about that story, but I don't necessarily think Batman was the solely sensible one there. (Honestly, he should've written everything down then dug a hole somewhere only he knew about to bury it in, or just kept the info in his head - can't download something with tech if it's not on a computer, right? Also, I remember Superman giving Batman a Kryptonite bullet at the end of it cause he thought having the backup plans/contingencies was a good idea, so it wasn't like everyone on the League was mad at Batman or thought he was being totally insane or something)
As far as the security was concerned... it was the Batcave. They had to break into the Batcave. Their plan for HIM relied on the fact that they already knew he was Bruce Wayne and buried him alive in his parents' grave. Also, they tweaked the plans - his original methods were nonlethal and far less sadistic, while still playing on their weaknesses (kryptonite for Superman, fire for Martian Manhunter, etc). We've seen some of his original plans in their unmodified form - when HE hit Superman with a kryptonite weapon, it was a dart with a handle, allowing to to be yanked out the moment Superman was back to himself.
Yes, Superman gave Batman the kryptonite... he shaped it into a dart. IIRC. Unfortunately there's a LOT of the stuff... one of the many many timelines (they keep doing reboots) had Krypton's destruction be due to a doomsday device that had been detonated a thousand years prior, that turned the ENTIRE PLANET into kryptonite from the inside out until it finally cracked and blew up.
Personally, I think the least sensible part is that nobody thought to take Vandal Savage and throw him in a mulcher, then throw the resulting puree into a concrete mixer and make a bunch of bricks to toss in the ocean and into space. Savage is an immortal evil bastard who is suspected to have been the first cannibal and is a social darwinist to boot. Turning him into bricks wouldn't even qualify as killing, since he's immortal.
> Personally, I think the least sensible part is that nobody thought to take Vandal Savage and throw him in a mulcher, then throw the resulting puree into a concrete mixer and make a bunch of bricks to toss in the ocean and into space. Savage is an immortal evil bastard who is suspected to have been the first cannibal and is a social darwinist to boot. Turning him into bricks wouldn't even qualify as killing, since he's immortal.
He's immortal, and tends to regrow from a single cell when necessary. Sure, you could do that to him, but so what? By the next day he is (a) back and (b) a lot angrier - what have you gained in this process?
How I see this ending. Dischord lets them have the elements, tells them that using them will destroy Him but leave the curses permanent.Then has them secretly vote on either winning now with all the havoc intact, or waiting, going into each ponie's mind to find the fault that allowed the curse to take hold and helping them overcome it thus breaking the curse and getting the good end.
I wouldn't be surprised if one (or all) of the players take their regular GM aside at the end of that and make it *perfectly clear* that they don't want that other guy to GM their games ever again.
I've been around a player or two who are like that character, and they are all total douches when it comes to "their way or the highway" in game management. It makes games unplayable for me. So I don't game with them. But if one of those people was foisted on our group, I'd make *damn sure* the regular GM knew how unhappy I was with their decision, and know that if they insisted on letting that other guy GM regularly, I was leaving the game.
I suspect the same thing may happen here. The GM just wanted to introduce his players to his original GM, but said original GM appears to be a major douche with a railroad conductor's hat and whistle as his favorite accessories. I would not be surprised if the players were *firm* with the GM about their choice of co-DM.
You’re right, communicating like that would be the best thing they could do. I still think the Main GM should have gotten an actual go-ahead before doing this, and not let somebody else come in and deeply mess with each player, without the players agreeing to participate.
Ya know, I didn't know "removing your filter," Just meant "Constantly be a bitch for no reason." Cuz that's kinda all Flutterdouche does now. It speaks volumes about how fake the person playing the character really is.
This arc presents an interesting problem: is the fun of roleplaying outside your comfort zone worth the strain of intra-party conflict? The analysis so far in these comments seem to focus on one of two positions: either 1) the group is having fun with what DiscorDM is doing, and are playing to find out what happens, or 2) the group has gone overboard playing to the hilt and Twilight, who doesn’t have a curse of her own, is getting increasingly alienated and frustrated
What’s interesting is that I can’t really see one of these as the stronger. Is the climax of this arc is good enough and everyone has fun, and making the Discord NPC finally shut up is cathartic, the group might not worry about the middle of they’re satisfied with the ending. Likewise, it’s possible that by his insistence on running things HIS way, DiscorDM pushes everyone away and the players start fighting at the table, as has already seemed to happen.
So I put it to the comment section, what do you think?
It's starting to seem like a solid 2, and the way Discord is only throwing more gas on the fire constantly makes me think he wanted this to turn out into an all out RL brawl at the table if he could manage it. The regular GM is just too deep in their hero worship to pay attention right now.
"He's not really trying to burn my game to the ground for a cheap laugh...he's amazing and brilliant, it's all just my imagination...yes...must trust him, he's so great."
I guess I don’t want DiscorDM vindicated just because the party wins in the end (assuming my foreknowledge holds true). Because it’ll be a flimsy excuse for putting everybody through hell.
I've suspected from the beginning of the arc that there's going to be an "out-of-game" (still illustrated by edited screen-caps) segment after the party breaks up at the end of the session, potentially "Permanently" thanks to all the inter-party arguing and Discord!DM's antics wearing on everyone and someone (probably Twilight) finally having Enough and rage-quitting the table.
How the segment would work, in my mind, is that the Regular GM goes out and tries to round everyone up for "One Last Hurrah" to put the campaign to rest and get closure after a week or so to let things cool off. This time, during the hiatus they would actually legitimately work things out with the Discord!DM so that the players can actually have the amazing experience they wanted in the first place, and things turn around so well during the followup session that the game continues.
Maybe Newbiespud also intends to incorporate some of the episode where Raging Bull helps Fluttershy be more confident, only for Fluttershy to realize she's starting to act like a bully?
Any names given to the players are the work of the commenters.
Glasses, get your monochrome glasses here!
Be prepared for rainbow explosion with these monochromatic glasses!
Only costs one bad joke!
Something something Scootaloo.
It was the chicken's day off.
The incredible Sulk.
One, but the lightbulb has to *want* to change.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.
I'm holding off judgment on DiscorDM as a person, but as a GM, there's a conductor's hat and a whistle nearby.
I'm holding off judgment on DiscorDM as a person, but as a GM, there's a conductor's hat and a whistle nearby.
Heck, CelesGM did more railroading when it came to the maze in the first place.
Seriously can't wait for that moment when Twilight and the DM just talk properly instead of continuing this whole deal.
"Listen man, if you just want to rp with yourself go find a chat room, message board or write a damn fanfic with your OC. If you're not going to actually play the game there's no point in you wasting everyone's time watching you (*redacted to keep thing PG*) for four hours."
As for Discord GM... I'm wondering if he's doing this specifically to create the intra-party conflict. The only reason I can think of to do this is because of something he said in a previous page. "These ARE your friends... warts and all." Is that supposed to be the challenge, the team learning to address their flaws and come together? (I.e. the way they did in the two-part episode that this story arc is based on)
I dunno, maybe there were details I missed about that story, but I don't necessarily think Batman was the solely sensible one there. (Honestly, he should've written everything down then dug a hole somewhere only he knew about to bury it in, or just kept the info in his head - can't download something with tech if it's not on a computer, right? Also, I remember Superman giving Batman a Kryptonite bullet at the end of it cause he thought having the backup plans/contingencies was a good idea, so it wasn't like everyone on the League was mad at Batman or thought he was being totally insane or something)
Yes, Superman gave Batman the kryptonite... he shaped it into a dart. IIRC. Unfortunately there's a LOT of the stuff... one of the many many timelines (they keep doing reboots) had Krypton's destruction be due to a doomsday device that had been detonated a thousand years prior, that turned the ENTIRE PLANET into kryptonite from the inside out until it finally cracked and blew up.
Personally, I think the least sensible part is that nobody thought to take Vandal Savage and throw him in a mulcher, then throw the resulting puree into a concrete mixer and make a bunch of bricks to toss in the ocean and into space. Savage is an immortal evil bastard who is suspected to have been the first cannibal and is a social darwinist to boot. Turning him into bricks wouldn't even qualify as killing, since he's immortal.
He's immortal, and tends to regrow from a single cell when necessary. Sure, you could do that to him, but so what? By the next day he is (a) back and (b) a lot angrier - what have you gained in this process?
I've been around a player or two who are like that character, and they are all total douches when it comes to "their way or the highway" in game management. It makes games unplayable for me. So I don't game with them. But if one of those people was foisted on our group, I'd make *damn sure* the regular GM knew how unhappy I was with their decision, and know that if they insisted on letting that other guy GM regularly, I was leaving the game.
I suspect the same thing may happen here. The GM just wanted to introduce his players to his original GM, but said original GM appears to be a major douche with a railroad conductor's hat and whistle as his favorite accessories. I would not be surprised if the players were *firm* with the GM about their choice of co-DM.
Players, in unison: "RULE ZERO! It's gone when you are." Or words to that effect.
What’s interesting is that I can’t really see one of these as the stronger. Is the climax of this arc is good enough and everyone has fun, and making the Discord NPC finally shut up is cathartic, the group might not worry about the middle of they’re satisfied with the ending. Likewise, it’s possible that by his insistence on running things HIS way, DiscorDM pushes everyone away and the players start fighting at the table, as has already seemed to happen.
So I put it to the comment section, what do you think?
"He's not really trying to burn my game to the ground for a cheap laugh...he's amazing and brilliant, it's all just my imagination...yes...must trust him, he's so great."
How the segment would work, in my mind, is that the Regular GM goes out and tries to round everyone up for "One Last Hurrah" to put the campaign to rest and get closure after a week or so to let things cool off. This time, during the hiatus they would actually legitimately work things out with the Discord!DM so that the players can actually have the amazing experience they wanted in the first place, and things turn around so well during the followup session that the game continues.