Friendship is Dragons
Updates Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays
Page 990 - Loving Me is Optional
Author Notes:
Hey, remember my Dusk City Outlaws campaign podcast? Well, it's Tales of New Dunhaven now! We're playing with the full rules, going for 4-hour sessions, and releasing them in two parts on Thursdays and Saturdays following the livestream. Here's the first part of our first new session, and it's... Well. The title speaks for itself.
Tales of New Dunhaven - Session 8 - The Nut Job, Part 1: Libsyn YouTube
I'm reminded of the GM in our local gaming group who loves to railroad us into surprise attacks. One of the worst offenses was when the party was out in a lightly wooded forest hunting down a pair of Behirs. These are Huge-sized creatures weighing a couple tons each.
The GM didn't give us a chance to roll Spot checks as the two monsters approached us. The monsters just happen to "show up" within 10 feet of us and initiate a surprise attack round.
Two monsters.
40 feet long each.
Happen to surprise a party that has both a ranger and a druid actively tracking the monsters. No chance to avoid a surprise attack.
A party I was in one time got surprised by a pair of 25-foot-tall fire-breathing gorillas.
It wasn't the GM's fault. Random encounter tables suck.
Ranger: So what random encounters are possible?
GM: Well I’m just using the generic desert table so… *rolls* … well shit man.
And then there was a blue dragon. Against fourth level players. Lots of NPC’s died.
Yes it was the GM's fault: Encounters, random or not, should start at detection range, not combat range.
We were heading into a cave full of kobalds, and I was playing a Ranger/Rogue who hated kobalds. The whole way there, I was complaining in-character about kobald traps. We see the cave and there's a tree growing out in front of it, which I declare has to be a trap. I point out that we need to move very carefully, because the lone tree is OBVIOUSLY a trap.
Next thing you know, we're surprise attacked from the tree.
Wouldn't have been so bad if we then didn't go on to spring two more traps in the cave, without getting a chance to check for traps.
I tried to play it off in-character, though, with my character complaining about this being the reason he hates kobalds... they're always pulling sneaky crap like this.
I recall once in a Ravenloft adventure, the PC's are in Azalin the Lich's demesne. Anyone who knows that game module knows that this is probably the most dangerous place. Not because Azalin is dangerously affable if you catch him in a good mood, but because every possible kind of undead encounter is a legitimate wandering encounter.
So as the joke goes, the group is traveling across the grassland, when suddenly they blunder into 1d4 wandering *liches*. Because Ravenloft's stupid encounter rules.
It gets worse. It was theoretically possible to encounter 1d3 wandering *dracoliches* too!
Common sense prevailed that day, but it still became something of a meme we've referred to periodically over the years.
It needs to be taken out back, and given a couple rounds. Until its good and gone. Its a bad relic that honestly feels cheating of the players. You get to no sell something that would work because hey, 'gm fiat' yeah, that always goes over well.
Although... I could be wrong, as the question could have been "Can I hear Rarity from here?"
Blueblood is found: Arrest and pin everything on him.
Blueblood is not found: Escape to local convenient bar under an alias and disguise and spread a fast paced gossip of how it was Blueblood's fault, and how epic the issuing battle was that he escaped from.