dnd Archives - 9to5 (dot cc)

Posts Tagged dnd

28 results.

9ES283: We Killed Auril

by jorn on April 8, 2023 at 1:22 pm

I apologize in advance for how conceited this next bit will sound.

If there was a late-night college radio show that existed in the 90s when I was in high-school (and before podcasts existed) where the hosts just shot the shit and talked about comic books, video games and obscure shit from the 80s it would be my favorite thing.

Now I get to make my favorite thing. But you get the pleasure of listening to it.

You’re so lucky.

[I think our listeners are used to this by now. -Jon]

It’s crazy to me that “Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light” has crept up into my mindspace multiple times in the span of only a few weeks. The show only has 13 episodes and was aired entirely between September 20 and December 13. 1987. What a world we live in that this strange little cartoon from over 35 years ago can so easily be consumed any time we want it. I guess the only question that remains is this: When will we set aside 5 hours to marathon the whole thing?

Listen up, Jon has been working at his real 9to5 a lot lately and he’s barely had any time off in weeks so guess what? There’s still plenty of time to let us know what movies you want to see get re-ranked on The List so please let us know your picks using this handy little survey. Since we’re too cheap to buy the premium survey features we are making due with what we’ve got so that means you have to pick at least 1 movie from each question, and at most 5 from each. So you need to pick 2 to 10 movies we should consider re-ranking. Use the comment boxes to explain yourself.

If this survey is too clunky for you, just find Scott and message him your picks.

Or DM us on Twitter, Instagram or FB:

Meanwhile over on Garbage Time we talk about the Marvel Snap card Shanna that Scott currently has pinned and then things get real upsetting as we talk about actual alleged Hollywood monsters named Ezra Miller and Jonathan Majors.

If all that sounds like the best (or actually, kind of the worst),then show your support and head over to Patreon and subscribe at the 9ES Deluxe tier to listen to this and all past episodes of Garbage Time!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Credit Where Credit is Due

Our intro song is a brand new jam cooked up by OKU-DA just for us, do yourself a favour and check out his SoundCloud).

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└ Tags: bakugon, best podcast montreal, bit brigade, black panther, dnd, do a powerbomb, heroclix, ike perlmutter, montreal geek, montreal geek podcast, podcast montreal, power rangers, reboot, spawn, visionaries, wrestlemania, wrestlemania 39 podcast, wwe

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Found Treasure Island

by keith on December 9, 2019 at 4:43 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where, once again, the Rogue has convinced the party to follow a treasure map.

Everyone laughed at how silly it was that nobody questioned the treasure map in the first one, I felt like it would be doubly on-brand to do it again.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue, Brubax the Goliath Barbarian and Tidus the Triton Cleric. Absent: L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock.

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you think Jon and I are at all entertaining please consider checking out the geek-centric podcast we do every two weeks “9ES” right here.

If you have happened to diligently read that prologue post from way back in the past, you will know that each of our characters have, at one point in their backstory, developed a sort of nemesis.

Jon mostly uses these as placeholders for the “villain” of a session, and sometimes ties it all back into the Glacius Rex character who is kind of the (woefully inept) bad guy of the campaign.

Yeah, I had really planned to lean on them more, but in the first season I got so wrapped up figuring out the process and timing for these sessions that I let the nemesis slide. If I ever run another Big Fish style campaign the nemesis will play a larger role. Missed opportunity there.

Anyhow, my (I play Jim Clocks the Rogue) nemesis is a Kenku. With most of the player character’s relationship with their nemesis, it is the nemesis who is the bad guy. It’s kind of a running joke that with Jim, he is most certainly not the good guy and by all accounts the Kenku really did nothing wrong. Jim just thinks Kenku are weird and creepy and just kind of singled out the poor birdman for cruelty.

Back to Basics

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: baldur, big fish, big fish adventure blog, big fish game tale, d&d, dnd, dunegons and dragons, gametale, gametales, grimtooths traps, grimtooths traps dnd, treasure island, tuckers kobolds

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Had a Wizard Battle

by keith on June 11, 2019 at 5:25 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

The story of a wizard battle, theme and setting 100% original and in no way stolen from Thor: Ragnarok.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue, Brubax the Goliath Barbarian, Tidus the Triton Cleric and L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock. Featuring: A big blue crab man named Miek.

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue.

I suppose it is only fair that we point out that this session took place in the midst of Eric’s (the player of Tidus) bachelor party. Substances were in various degrees of abuse. My notes are only a few little pages and are largely incomprehensible. Eric’s real-world brother was along for the ride and he played Meek, a big blue crab man. Dungeons & Dragons!

Jon paints the following word picture for us: Our heroes are in an arena, surrounded by easily over 30,000 spectators. In the sky above, a loose ring of spaceships are docked low in the atmosphere. Each of the heroes is collared and chained to another in pairs. Except Jim Clocks, he is chained to a big blue crab man.

The sky was neon orange. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish dnd, dnd, dnd adventure blog, dnd gametales, dungeond and dragons, dungeons and dragons, space hamster, space hamsters dnd, wizard battle

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Started Spelljamming

by keith on February 17, 2019 at 5:48 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Jon's Junk, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where our heroes find themselves suddenly transported into outer space and find that they are now in the most logical of Dungeons & Dragons settings: Spelljammer.

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue. Eric has a few comments in red. To find out how we got here, check out our last adventure.

Right, so I’m not really sure how much time I should spend trying to explain Spelljammer to the reader here. And there’s a number of reasons for that. First of all, it is batshit crazy. Second of all, I knew very little of it myself (despite the setting being my suggestion at the end of last game).

So I guess you can prime yourself for some of the concepts at play here by just skimming through the Wikipedia page for Spelljammer or you can enter into it with the same knowledge that I had of the setting. Here is what I knew about Spelljammer when I sat down at the table for our first adventure in Spelljamming:

It’s sci-fi mashed into Dungeons & Dragons where magic explains away a lot of the “science” problems you can think of. People fly around on actual ships that function like spaceships between realities or whatever.

I would later learn that the realities are called “crystal spheres” and the ships didn’t even have to be ships. Also, the stuff connecting the crystal spheres is called the phlogiston. A word I wlll try to avoid typing from here on out.

Are you kidding me? That word is a stroke of genius. I can just hear gnomish space marines taking phlogiston seriously. It’s some Dr Who / Hitchhiker’s Guide quality.

It’s actually a real word. It is “a substance supposed by 18th-century chemists to exist in all combustible bodies, and to be released in combustion.” ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: dnd, gametale blog, gametales, giff, githyanki, hippomen dnd, milliways, montreal dnd, montreal dungeons and dragons

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Big Fish – The Time Giddeon Messed Up Real Bad (Part 1)

by keith on December 30, 2018 at 6:14 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

In which our heroes have an improbable adventure and ultimately discover their hideout has been compromised for quite some time.

I’m not going to lie, it’s been a while since we played these sessions, let’s hope my notes hold up.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them. If you like reading these and enjoy what we do, consider dropping a coin or two over on our Patreon.

This two-part adventure serves as a kind of “Season Finale” where we have all picked an adventure pitch and the player who has yet to picked gets saddled with an adventure where their character has messed up real bad.

This happened to coincide with a player leaving the game due to time constraints. So this is the tale of the time Giddeon (The Bard) Messed Up Real Bad.

Freestyle Talespin

So the kick off of the game was basically a freestyle pitch session where each player tossed in elements until someone liked it. How nervous did this make you? Were you confident that your structure would allow a full on freestyle session?

Well, with the reveal in part 2 it sort of makes sense if the session was a total mess. I wanted a total mess. Also I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could do it, and partly I wanted to introduce season 3 with a bang, and you guys pitched ideas that more or less exactly did what I wanted. I win again! Just like always.

I think the first thing you asked for was a fill in the blank. “Remember the time we were…” and we came up with “sliding through dimensions”.

Then we needed a place? We opted for “Glacius Rex’s Keep”

The next thing we needed was an NPC concept. This story would involve a “Genasi Sorcerer who was the Heir to a Kingdom”.

Finally, we needed a hook. “It wasn’t an avalanche, it was a tidal wave.”

Recall that Jaxxo had final say on which of the ideas were chosen. The first thing we picked was the lead. In a sense they all came from his head.

From that, Jon spun us a tale. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big dish dnd, big fish, derpy dragon, dnd, dnd game share, dungeons and dragons, gameshare, ice king, ice king dnd

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Big Fish: Expedition To The Barrier Peaks (Deeper Still)

by keith on July 11, 2018 at 1:37 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

The one where one of the heroes dies.

Thanks Gary.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them.

Keith (me, Jim Clocks) is writing again this week, and just like last time it’s going to be a little fast and loose. I’ll be in black, Jon (our DM) is in blue. Another player, Eric shall be in red, as the prophecy foretold.

This is a Bonus Adventure where Jono takes old classic modules and updates them for 5e. It’s a fun chance for all of us to play versions of some of the classics.

I don’t want to spoil anything but one of the Cads dies in this one.

Rope-a-dope

The Couatl tells us that the people who used to inhabit this vessel travelled across worlds and planes, collecting creatures and vegetation. It doesn’t think they were inherently malicious in their intent, but it does think that they took on more than they could handle. Hence the whole creatures breaking out of their pods and everyone being dead thing.

The Couatl heals us up with fun flying snake magic and tells us we can seek out its aid later if we need to. We agree to let it know if we find a way out in return. Couatl friend!

I’m super pumped about this, another creature with the same alignment as me! I’m certainly the only lawful character in the group, and I may even be the only good character. (I’ll have to sneak a peek at some character sheets next session.)

I asked the Couatl for a feather. 5e item creation is pretty vague, but traditionally it’s a component in a bunch of magical items. I know it’s not a small request, but hey, if you don’t ask, you don’t get! He told us that he’d think on it, which is better than “no”.

That was a really nice touch. More or less guarantees the Couatl will show back up at some point.

The Couatl explains to the party that on the floor above us there is a great and terrible evil, and that it can probably handle it on its own. In fact, if we go with it we would probably hinder it more than help. We didn’t really want to face a great and terrible evil anyhow!

We press onwards and downwards.

We come across what looks to be relatively intact bar/leisure area. The booze crazy warlock gets giddy and we get attacked by 3 Ropers.

Typically, Ropers stay very still to resemble stalagmites in caves to lure in their prey. But this is a spaceship. So they’re just big flesh cones hanging out in the corner of a 70’s sci-fi drinking establishment.

Real smooth Ropers. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish dnd, couatl, dnd, dungeons and dragons, expedition to barrier peaks, expedition to barrier peaks playthrough, gary gygax, mindflayer, mindflayer with a raygun, montreal dnd, montreal dungeons and dragons, montreal gaming, montreal geeks, roper, tsr, vegepygmies, vegepygmy, veggiepygmies, webbird

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Dozens

by keith on July 4, 2018 at 7:34 am

Chapter: Saga

Characters: jon, the board

Would you stop booing? There’s nothing wrong with being an urban wizard. There are dozens of them. Dozens.

(With reverence to Arrested Development).

I’m not even 100% how we got around to writing this one. I wish I had better recollection of our process because I do not remember how this strip came to be. I think it started off as Jon dipping back into the well of his DM experience in a workplace setting and then sort of evolved into being about Jon wearing wizard robes to work. Which, as we know, he wears under his clothes anyways.

Wait a minute, is Jon a dowser? Aren’t they the real urban wizards?

You know you’ve been blogging, podcasting and writing comics for a long time when you can find previous references to DM’ing at work, wearing wizard robes all the time and dowsing for water all on your website. That stuff is just there, kicking around. For you.

As always, please tell your friends about this comic and this website. Every time you share a post, Sophie gets another set of wings. Soon she will transcend into her final form. Which I presume is kind of a heavy-metal dark Seraph of some kind.

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.

Jon is a Master of Dungeons of the highest caliber. He podcasts with me over on 9to5 Entertainment System and occasionally blogs here in Jon’s Junk.

Sophie does all of the arts on 9to5 illustrated and blogs weekly about her adventures with beer in The Ignorant Beer Review.

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└ Tags: comic, dnd, dozens of us, dungeon master, geek montreal, montreal comic, montreal geek, montreal webcomic, urban wizard, urban wizards, wizard, wizard comic, wizard robes

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Big Fish: Expedition To The Barrier Peaks (We Need to Go Deeper)

by keith on June 27, 2018 at 5:14 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

The one where we all learn a valuable lesson about key cards.

If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page. And if you’re enjoying our little GameTale Adventure Blog, please tell your friends on whatever platform you interact with them.

This is a Bonus Adventure where Jono takes old classic modules and updates them for 5e. It’s a fun chance for all of us to play versions of some of the classics.

In our last installment your heroes messed around a bunch more on the first floor and nearly died at the hands of vegepygmies. But we also got a big ‘ole shoulder mounted cannon (that will totally pay off later) and an elusive Red Key Card. Things were looking up for the Cads as we ventured downwards.

What could go wrong?

Stop trying to make “Cads” a thing!

It’s a thing and you can’t stop it.

In The Future, Key Card Readers Are Assholes

If you recall, most of the doors in this spaceship are locked behind key card readers. It’s a pretty simple affair. You can put your hand on the door and an orb will glow in the colour of the required card. If you’ve got the corresponding key card you can put it in the slot and it will pop back out into a little tray or whatever and the door will open.

We come across a door that glows grey.

This shouldn’t be a problem, right? After all, we’ve got red. If you read the last installment you will know that by presenting the red key card to a police-bot we were told that we had the clearance of a military General. What rooms would someone with a rank of General not be allowed in, right?

We slide in the red card (that we fought so much for) into the slot and it whirrs, makes a noise and then eats the damn card. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish dnd, couatl, dnd, dungeons and dragons, expedition to barrier peaks, expedition to barrier peaks playthrough, gary gygax, montreal dnd, montreal dungeons and dragons, montreal gaming, montreal geeks, tsr, vegepygmies, vegepygmy, veggiepygmies, webbird

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Big Fish: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (Still The 1st Floor)

by keith on June 14, 2018 at 3:15 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

When we last left our intrepid heroes they had just completed essentially an entire “lap” around the perimeter of a single floor of the crashed spaceship from Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. And nobody died! Perhaps our heroes will not be so lucky this time.

Keith (me, Jim Clocks) is writing again this week, and just like last time it’s going to be a little fast and loose. I’ll be in black, Jon (our DM) is in blue.

This is a Bonus Adventure where Jono takes old classic modules and updates them for 5e. It’s a fun chance for all of us to play versions of some of the classics.

The Expedition Continues

As we mentioned at the end of our last entry, Jon has decided to give us the option at the end of each session we spend in the Barrier Peaks to either abandon or keep going in the quest.We decided as a party to stick it out and spend more time in this funky 70s sci-fi nonsense. So the burning question was this: Do we venture down into the lower levels of this strange building/dungeon/mage tower (spaceship)?

The answer was: No.

Instead we decided to spend even more time exploring the first floor.

I think it more or less paid off.

This entry might be a little shorter than the rest, because really at is core, it is simply the three members of the party who showed up (Jim Clocks the Rogue, Jaxxo the Lizardman Monk and Tidus the Triton Cleric) fighting vegepygmies.

Lots and lots of vegepygmies.

With grenades and laser cannons. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish dnd, dnd, dungeons and dragons, expedition to barrier peaks, expedition to barrier peaks playthrough, gary gygax, montreal dnd, montreal dungeons and dragons, montreal gaming, montreal geeks, tsr, vegepygmies, vegepygmy, veggiepygmies

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Big Fish: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1st Floor)

by keith on May 30, 2018 at 8:33 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Gaming, Homepage, Jon, Keith, Perspicacious Geek

Where our heroes end up on a crashed spaceship. Probably. Or maybe an abandoned moonbase? Who knows man, this is all kinds of crazy. What happens when late 70s sci-fi collides with 70s high fantasy? Find out as Jon takes us on the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks!

Keith (me, Jim Clocks) is this week, and it’s going to be a little fast and loose. I’ll be in black, Jon (our DM) is in blue. Because blue is his favorite color. If you’re enjoying these, tell your nerdy friends!

If you’re not familiar with “Barrier Peaks” I’ll try to keep the history lesson brief. In 1975 there was science-fiction RPG called “Metamorphosis Alpha”, created by James M. Ward for TSR. This would ultimately evolve into what we know (and love) as Gamma World today. In 1980, in an effort to bring Metamorphosis Alpha to more players, Gary Gygax created an entry into TSR’s “S-Series” of gaming modules called “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” which was essentially Metamorphosis Alpha but intended to be played by Dungeons & Dragons players.

So what does that mean? That means Wizards and Fighters will explore an irradiated crashed spaceship for no real reason! Thanks Gary!

Monsters are plaguing the Grand Duchy of Geoff: go figure it out. That was the plot. I really wanted to have someone named “Jeff” send you on the quest but that was an obvious Elise moment.

Maybe it could have been her cousin? “Hey guys, this is my cousin Jeff, he’s got a mission.”

One of the neat things about modules in the “S-Series” is that TSR included a special booklet of illustrations for the DM to show to the players. It’s a cool little thing that certainly helps immerse players. Especially considering these modules were from an era before a DM could just image search a visual reference.

We played the Tomb of Horrors (the first and most famous “S Series” campaign) a few years back and after wrapping it up we kind of talked about running Barrier Peaks because it seemed completely bonkers.

Those visual references are a real treat. Mostly amateur art but whoever was drawing them was obviously having a lot of fun with it. There are like 90 in the book which is a pretty significant investment in page count for a module.

Most of these were apparently done by Erol Otus (who brought us the amazing cover of “Deities and Demigods”. But we can also thank Jeff Dee, Greg K. Fleming, David S. LaForce, Jim Roslof and David C. Sutherland III for these hokey-ass illustrations. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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