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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Joined the Crew of The Ship of Horror (Part 2)

by keith on July 10, 2019 at 11:26 am

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

Where our heroes are still in the goth infused majesty of to 1991 when vampires were the absolute coolest. They are on a ghost ship, not any ghost ship: The Ship of Horrors.

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.

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.

How To Get Off The Ship of Horror

One of the issues that creeps up in this game is the fact that this group has faced a lot of nonsense scenarios and come out of them relatively unscathed. The Expedition to Barrier Peaks alone would be enough for most parties to become unflappable heroes. Throw in being trapped in The Underdark, sailing through space in SpellJammer and occasionally squaring off against high level Demons and Beholders and you have a crew that has absolutely no problem with marching up to the Captain and telling him a thing or two.

It takes a lot to phase this group of adventurers.

I’m guessing the fact that Jon didn’t want to drag this module out for more than two sessions helped a little two with the pace of discovery.

Time for lightning round part 2, as before Jon, your comments are a treasure.

We basically mean mug the Captain into revealing that he used to ferry corpses for the Grabben Family for a lich
- Actually not a lich. Boring old Necromancer. Would have been great to tie his background into Grabben Island and had a few clues about him to earn there.
When he suddenly developed a conscience, the Captain threw the corpses overboard and tried to break his deal with the family, thereby invoking the wrath and curse of a lich.
The ghosts want their bodies laid to rest, so we need to find their bodies under the ocean and bring them back to Grabben Island to bury them.
Again, this would probably be pretty tricky but we’ve all got swim speeds and some of us straight up breathe under water.
The lady and Madeline want to be buried, but Jacob wants vengeance.
- Tidus decides to give into the demand and accepts a creepy ghost hug.
- Jacob is now a set of glowing eyes in a sack that Tidus carries and to try to reason with him is to possibly be consumed by the darkness of the wraith.
  - Man I hope none of this comes back to mess with Tidus later.
  - I just liked the imagery from Hellboy, obvs, plus I had some lingering desire to mess with Eric after letting the sword go.
Superior Ranger and tracking abilities allow us to nope the hell out of encounters with:
- A Monstrous Sea-Star
- Some Vodyanoi, aka, Aquatic Umberhulks.
The heroes head to Grabben Island to bury the bodies and track down the lich that started all this nonsense.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: anne brown, anne k brown, big fish, big fish dnd, dnd adventure blog, dungeons and dragons, game tale, gametales, montreal geek, ship of horror, ship of horror playthrough, ship of horror ravenloft, ship of horrors, ship of horrors play, ship of horrors ravenloft

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Big Fish D&D: The Time We Joined The Crew of The Ship of Horror (Part 1)

by keith on June 26, 2019 at 9:14 pm

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

Where our heroes travel back in time to 1991 when TSR was frantically trying to get all grimdark on our asses to compete with Vampire: The Masquerade.

As Jon has done several times before, our heroes find themselves stuck in an old school D&D module from the past. This time around they unwittingly join the crew of The Ship of Horror.

I think there was some kind of nostalgia here for you?

Very much so. The first major campaign I ran was a 2nd edition Ravenloft game, and its 4th chapter was the Ship of Horror. Took most of highschool, started with 2 players and grew to 4. There were 6 adventures, from level 1 to 13 or so. If for some inexplicable reason you could survive the end of Ship of Horror, that is.

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.

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

Point of order, in my brief little dive into the history of this module I found that it was written by Anne K. Brown. A few things here. One, big props to her for being a lady in what was certainly a male dominated industry in the late 80s and early 90s and going from Assistant Editor of Dragon Magazine to designing modules in like a couple of months. Two, she was apparently a big fan of Greyhawk but wrote for Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance so that is cool. In fact, Ship of Horror was the first module supporting Ravenloft which I am assuming is kind of a big deal and shows that the company had a lot of faith in her. Three, she had a bit of a renaissance in the 2000s as an author of non-fiction aimed at middle-school aged kids. Wait, what? That’s right, you can read Anne K. Brown’s take on the lives of Katy Perry, Gwen Stefani, Roger Federer or her takes on “Staying Safe Online” and “Migraines”. Weird.

Now that the history lesson is out of the way, let’s get started. We actually took two sessions to get through this little adventure, but I seriously took like 20 little pages of notes. That said, we’re going to be skipping through some of the narrative and just focusing only on the best bits. You’ll thank me later.

Dealing with Those Githyanki

The session started off with us onboard The Clepsydra, the fast little sloop owned by Jim Clocks. We were on our way to a treasure island, which in fact will be our next adventure. While stopped at a port city, the Ne’er Do Well Cads are pulled away from the important business of drinking by the sounds of a ruckus in the town square.

If you’ve been keeping tabs on our little foray into Spelljammer, you might remember that in the very first adventure we kind of happened upon a +3 Vorpal Sword that has since been wielded by our Cleric, Tidus. Small problem: the sword belonged to someone called The Lich Queen and every so often we are kind of ambushed by Red Dragons and Githyanki. I think this session marked the third such encounter.

But anyways it wasn’t an encounter, Tidus just gave the Githyanki back the +3 Vorpal Sword without a fight. Womp womp.

Almost certainly the first time in the history of DnD that someone gave back a silver sword. Color me a little disappointed. See, yeah, red dragon/githyanki wizard battle in populated area is no good, innocent bystanders and all. But I wanted that stolen silver sword to connect Tidus’ divine destiny into having to go to war with the Githyanki. Womp womp indeed. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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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 With the Doppelgangers

by keith on June 2, 2019 at 2:16 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Homepage

Where our heroes, now capable of Spelljamming, encounter some Doppelgangers.

An adventure starring Jaxxo the Lizardfolk Monk, Jim Clocks the Half-Aquatic Elf Rogue and L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock.

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

So the boys find themselves flying along a deep red strand of the phlogiston and upon exiting jamspace they see a system that features a planet orbiting around a bright green sun.

The only real place to go seems to be a planet that seems to feature a big giant tooth protruding up out of lush green planet. Spelljammer, you know?

We park the Space Whale at the port of a city that seems to be built on the upper surface of the tooth. The name of the town? Toothtown.

You’re spoiling us Jon.

Spelljammer is supposed to be weird. I wanted a 80s cartoon sci-fi Mad Max vibe for some of this. Was it actually an enormous tooth? Or was it marble cliffs that just really looked like it?

Having nothing better to do and having not seen a city like this in weeks or months, Jaxxo, Jim and L’eau D’ur decide to take in the sights of this strange city.

Welcome to Toothtown

Toothtown seems to be largely dominated by some of the more evil races that are prevalent in Spelljammer. I will let Jon tell you about these species because honestly I don’t have nearly the same familiarity with D&D races as he does.

Ain’t a big deal. You guys had bumped into mostly good races so far, and I wanted a toothier feel to Toothtown.

As a result, there seems to be quite the lively slave trade here. That’s fun. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish adventure blog, big fish game tale, d and d, dnd blog, dungeons and dragons, gametale, lizard, lizard folk, lizard man, lizardfolk, modron, planetar

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Big Fish D&D – The Time Giddeon Messed Up Real Bad (Part 2)

by keith on January 10, 2019 at 9:17 pm

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

Big Fish is back with “The Time Giddeon Messed Up – Part 2” where Jon basically writes a character out of the game since the player quit and we come face to face (yet again) with the party’s nemesis Glacius Rex!

I’m in black and Jon (the DM) is in blue. This is Part 2, so you should probably check out Part 1.

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.

Also, this is Jon’s last chance to wrap up our random improv suggestions from the previous session which were, if you recall: “The time we were sliding through dimensions, in our Nemesis’ (Glacius Rex) keep, to rescue a Genasi Sorcerer who was the heir to a Kingdom and it all started with an avalanche.”

A Interlude of Socks

Not sure how much it has come up in these write ups, but my character has a pet monkey. I have spent a number of downtime actions training and improving the monkey. This monkey is not magical, nor do I have any magical abilities to speak with him or command him. Any commands I give him are based purely on my character’s Animal Handling skill. He is a mundane trained monkey.

His name is Socks.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish adventure blog, big fish dnd, big fish gametale, capuchin monkey, dungeons and dragons, gaming montreal, ice goblin, ice goblin dnd, ice king, trex, trex dnd

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9ES174: 2018 In Review

by jorn on January 3, 2019 at 8:00 am

Posted In: 9ES, Podcast, Podcasting

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

The bed music during our advertising is an old loop by Dan of Steel!

The bed music while we explain what the episode is about is Son of a Bit “Chased by a Running Chupacabra” used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Finally, the song we use in the intro is “Shiny Spaceship” by the 8-bit Ninjas. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

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└ Tags: 2018, 2018 in review, 9es, a quiet place, altered carbon, annihilation, averngers, ballad of buster scruggs, beatsaver, best life, black panther, bojack horseman s05, cardi b, catullus 16, chance the rapper, childisj gambino, daredevil s03, dcss, dungeon crawl stone soup, dungeons and dragons, everything sucks, farenheit 11/9, gloomhaven, glow s02, gorillaz, harvey beaks, hereditary, hotel artemis, humans, infinity war, isle of dogs, jungle, jurrasic world 2, kids of harvey street, lords mobile, mandy, maniac, montreal podcast, netflix, nicki minaj, Podcast, pokemon go, queen, ready player one, sabrina, shera, solo, star trek bridge crew, the mind, the terror, this is america, this is us, totoro, wipeout, wolf parade

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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 Returns! – The Time the Lizard Met His Nemesis In A Monastery

by keith on December 12, 2018 at 9:38 pm

Posted In: Blogs, Homepage, Jon, Keith

So this is our first “back to normal” session after the multi-session epic that was our journey into the Barrier Peaks and what was basically a summer hiatus.

Do you know what that means?

It means we ran out of time and had an incomplete adventure. So sad. Remember that in the framework of the game we have a real world clock that we’re kind of racing against in order to have a fully successful adventure.

I’m in black and Jon 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.

Return of the Ice King

Ahem. I mean “Glacius Rex”.

Sure.

The Ne’er-do-well Cads find themselves in the city of Luskin, which is a pirate trade city or something. I just know that my character, a pirate by trade, is having the time of his life. Yo-ho’s and puffy shirts all around please and thank you.

Glacius Rex, who hasn’t made a true appearance since the ordeal with the Warlock, arrives with his as Jon puts it “slightly derpy” white dragon and wreaks havoc on the town.

It might be because I had been watching a lot of Adventure Time, but I just naturally kind of slipped into a mode of making fun of Glacius Rex. With quips like “More like Glacius Sex” and “When we’re done here, you won’t be having an ice day!” I think it really downplayed the whole part where there was a white dragon just wrecking a bunch of ships in the harbour. And freezing people to death.

Remember when we were setting this game up for the first time? One of my goals was to get into humor in D&D a little more, and you turning on the Finn banter with Glacius Rex is more or less exactly perfect. Any game that has a dumb ancient white dragon and an Ice King knockoff is going to be less than serious and that’s fine by me.

Glacius calls us “naughty pirates” and we have a good laugh. He then promises to return in 3 days and wants the City of Luskin to shower him with praise and riches.

In the midst of hilarious banter with our nemesis, Jaxxo the Lizard-Monk catches sight of a familiar foe and tails him. When he returns to the crew, he is shaken by what he has seen. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: big fish, big fish adventure blog, big fish game tale, dnd gale tale, dnd pirate adventure, dungeons and dragons, game tale, gibbering mouther, gibbering mouther dnd

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Big Fish: Expedition to Barrier Peaks (The Finale)

by keith on August 22, 2018 at 5:03 pm

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

Wherein a hero’s mind is finally flayed.

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.

Also! Pardon the long delay between updates on this one, the D&D game has been on a bit of summer hiatus and we intended on writing some filler content but hot damn have we been busy.

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 session featured: Jim Clocks the Half-Elf Rogue, L’Eau D’ur the Genasi Warlock and Brubax the Goliath Barbarian.

This is a Bonus Adventure where Jono takes old classic modules and updates them for 5e. Jono spent seriously something like 30 hours converting “The Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” for us and we seriously only saw about a third of it before escaping with our lives.

And by “our lives” I mean some of our lives. People died.

First Things First: The Dead Cleric

So if you’ve been keeping up to date you are probably wondering how we dealt with the fact that we had a very dead Triton on our hands.

Normally this would be a situation where the party could hole up somewhere and have the Cleric raise the dead party member. But the Triton is the Cleric. So that’s a problem.

Despite the fact that the player of the Cleric isn’t here, I feel like a PC death is still something that kind of needs a resolution. The active players need to decide what they’re doing with the body, etc.

Yeah we had discussed at the very start of the game character deaths and how I had hoped it would come into play more than it typically does in our games. Once the party has access to Raise Dead adding death to a list of available consequences only really opens storytelling doors. This Couatl was essentially a filler encounter with a non-hostile, and now he’s almost become part of the team. Thanks, death!

The episodic format particularly lends itself well to letting players get their characters raised from the dead offstage between games.

The party decides to lug Tidus’ body back to the Couatl to see if that magic-ass divine snake can help us out.

What we see is the Couatl spiraling around what appears to be a projection of Tidus. 20 feet tall and looped in a scene of epic combat. Ducking and weaving in a never ending heroic battle. A sense of (small) relief comes over the party to see that the immortal spirit of our Cleric is not some place horrible. The Couatl explains that what we are seeing is a glimpse into the Elysian Fields.

Jim Clocks, seeing an opportunity to weave his wordplay with a divine being beseeches the Couatl:

When we met, you looked upon us and saw us to be good.
There is no better among us than Tidus.
He was a good Triton, pure of heart.
And he deserves better than the fate that has befallen him.
Killed by some unknown poisonous explosive, wielded by an aberration of the far realm.
Who knows what good deeds will never be done if his story ends here in this place?
He will certainly never fulfill his promise to rid the world of Mardak Frostwhisper, a fiend pact warlock he once called friend before Mardak succumbed to darkness.
When you met him he asked you for a token, this was not just for his personal gain, but I know that he desired that token as memento of meeting you, one of the most pure and good creatures of our world. A creature that he no doubt aspired to emulate.
So now, we offer YOU a token. A token of Tidus. The enchanted Trident called Violet Marlin. A token we offer freely, but with the hope that you will find it in your heart to resurrect our companion.
I don’t even know if this is something within your power. It may even be impossible.
But I live by a set of words mighty Couatl… and I say, nothing is impossible!

(applause break)

Maybe Jim should have been named John. This will have consequences. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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└ Tags: actual play, barrier peaks, big fish, big fish adventure blog, big fish game tale, bunnyoid, d&d, d&D game tale, dungeons and dragons, eye of the deep, game tale, lobster beholder, montreal gamers, montreal geeks

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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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