Dragons and Dice

[schneefink]

D&D campaign update: To gain the trust and loyalty of Kord's followers, our cleric, the new and only saint of Kord, had to prove her strength. For that reason Kord's high priest (who doesn't think much of her because when they met and fought our cleric had terrible dice luck) suggested she fight a colossal dragon monster. Our party decided to accompany her, and we even got official permission to go.
So, dragon hunting! We spent a session and a half getting to the valley that is its territory and trying to learn more about it and planning how to defeat it, including talking with its offspring and rival, and when we couldn't decide on any strategy our druid decided to lure it to where we were, in the hopes that the offspring would fight on our side. It worked out at first when the monster attacked its offspring first, however later in the middle of the battle the offspring decided to attack us, so that could have gone badly.
The fight went surprisingly well! We were lucky. The monster had not only a very high armor class (fortunately a low touch AC), but also very high spell resistance, a problem we'd never faced before to this degree. It also had level-draining abilities and could cast level nine spells, and we were very lucky it rolled badly on Time Stop. Our most important weapon: daze. My character used Limited Wish to get Assay Spell Resistance and then cast Wings of Flurry (my favorite spell), our other sorcerer used Orb of Fire which ignores spell resistance and can also daze, we had buffs on our spell save DCs and I used Fatespinner abilities to further increase the odds of it failing its saves, and then while the monster, and later its offspring too, couldn't take any actions for almost the entirety of the fight (the monster even fell into the lake and almost started to drown, unfortunately in that area the water was too shallow) the rest of the party had time to deal damage. Our cleric dealt a very dramatic killing blow against the monster, then when it survived thanks to a Contingency spell our druid burned it to a crisp. (I was very disappointed because that meant we couldn't use the corpse as a zombie or even just for materials. Boo. What a waste.) In the end only one member of our party was even seriously wounded (though we lost two thirds of the minions who insisted on coming along but couldn't even survive one breath weapon attack.) If the monster had had the opportunity to actually retaliate, it would have been a lot worse... We were accompanied by a skald for the sole reason of spreading the tales of the heroics of Kord's saint, so hopefully this victory will gain us many allies.

With a different group, I played Shadowrun for the first time. I've wanted to try out the system and it was fun; as far as I can tell so far, I like the world of D&D better, but I also like variety. We spent six hours creating our characters and four hours playing, and the most difficult part was choosing our equipment. I play a hacker ("decker"), and I quite like her. The plan is to play a few more times, I look forward to it.

Comments

[dancing_serpent]

Oh, I loved playing Shadowrun! It's one of the first Pen & Paper RPGs I've ever played, about 25 years ago. I also loved the world a lot and read tons of Shadowrun novels. *g*

[schneefink]

I think I would have enjoyed it more a few years ago, when I wasn't as angry about capitalism yet and also enjoyed less optimistic worlds more, but (from what little I've seen) it's a fun world to play around in :)
Any books you would recommend?

[dancing_serpent]

I read so many, but the three that stayed in my mind the most are Streets of Blood, Nosferatu and Black Madonna - all by Carl Sargent & Marc Gascoigne. I didn't know they were connected and read them out of order at first, but I remember enjoying them anyway.

But yeah, you have a point with that: when I wasn't as angry about capitalism yet and also enjoyed less optimistic worlds more. I feel similarly today, and I believe my love for Shadowrun and its world is mostly nostalgic.

[schneefink]

Thanks, I'll keep those in mind for when I want more of this world :)

[dancing_serpent]

Nosferatu was my favourite. But back then I read lots and lots of RPG novels even if I hadn't played them, like Battletech for example. *g*

[naye]

Oh man I spent a good decade (ages 18-28) playing a lot of Shadowrun, starting with 2nd and moving on to 4th edition. I have so many Shadowrun feelings and so much Shadowrun group-canon (like headcanon, but shared!) that the game you're playing is probably pretty far removed from what I remember, but still. I'm glad you're enjoying it! What year did you guys start? I have a preference for playing through some of the huge events from the 2050's, as they are hella fun, but I understand that later Shadowrun might have tried to tone down the legacy from Earthdawn? (If that makes no sense: Shadowrun is the Sixth World, Earthdawn is the Age of Legend, the previous cycle of magic before the one that started in 2011. They were both games by FASA, way back when. Now the two properties belong to different companies, so Shadowrun stopped doing Earthdawn "crossovers" or whatever you want to call it when characters who were alive back then show up in Shadowrun.)

Oh yeah. That reminds me. When I was playing Shadowrun, all of the dates like "2012" were still incredibly futuristic! I mean, this was back in the late ninties, when a date like "2005" felt impossibly far away...