Posts Tagged dnd

23 results.

9ES295: D&D AIN’T

by on October 6, 2023 at 8:00 am
Posted In: 9ES, Podcast, Podcasting

We talk a lot about institutions in this episode of 9ES. Dungeons & Dragons and Wu-Tang Clan are definitely institutions of their established mediums. But where the Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ to Fuck Wit – perhaps it is time that we start fucking with D&D.

 

You have no idea how proud I am of writing that intro.

 

Dungeons & Dragons does seem to exist in a weird intersection of conflicting demands from the players. On the one hand it has over 40 years of hardcore players that demand that each edition is “just so” full of monsters, spells and abilities that they are familiar with and this multi-layered system that is a hodge-podge mess of four decades of rubber bands and glue holding a “game system” together. They never really get to start fresh since they are somehow obligated to transfer over whole chunks of each previous iteration.

 

On the other hand, it’s the most mainstream RPG there is. It’s basically synonymous with the term “role playing game” and if there is someone out there who is just interested in playing their first RPG they will almost certainly pick up a D&D book to do so.

 

They’re trying please people who are diehard fans of the hobby for decades and people that just picked up their first player’s handbook because the kids in Stranger Things looked like they were having fun at the same time.

Impossible.

 

I guess the good news is that they have a pretty decent history of listening to player feedback (possibly to their detriment). So if you care about this as much as we do maybe head over to dndbeyond and start telling them their new stuff sucks.

 

Tell them to be more like Wu Tang Clan. For the children.

 

Over on Garbage Time Scott and I talk a little bit about (what else) Marvel Snap (Scott hit Infinite everyone!) before we talk about some movies we’ve been watching recently. The 90s are alive in Garbage Time as we talk about Army of Darkness and Deep Rising. Keith also watched Shudder Exclusive “Who Invited Them?” and that was cool too. If that sounds cool 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!

 

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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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9ES283: We Killed Auril

by on April 8, 2023 at 1:22 pm
Posted In: 9ES, Podcast, Podcasting

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

Subscribe: RSS

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

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

by 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.

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.

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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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Started Spelljamming

by 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.

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.

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

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

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

by 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.

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.

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

by 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. 

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.

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

by 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!

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.

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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