More game happenings

Here are some more interesting things that happened during D+D games:

1. Our mission was to go to a place several days travel away to meet a friendly tribe of goblins to retrieve part of a set of artifacts we were looking for. As we traveled around the road, we ran into several groups of goblins from a different, enemy tribe, which we were able to defeat. Also according to the module (a module is a published "adventure book" for D+D) , "the journey along the road is long and arduous" so ever day of travel we had to make an Endurance skill check and if we failed the skill check we lose a healing surge. We all made fun of this , and our group's ranger, who was riding a horse, thought it was ridiculous that "I"m walking along a road, riding my horse, and I still lose my healing." Fortunately, since the module was "poorly written" (the DM's words) all the skill checks had such a low DC (difficulty class) that most of us made them very easily. (The way a skill check works is that you roll a 20-sided die and add your character's score in that skill, and if the result is equal to or higher than the DC then you pass the check.) And in fact it didn't even matter anyway since you get your healing surges back at the end of each day. But anyway when we got to the rendezvous point, the goblins we were supposed to meet were not there, and in its place were a third tribe of goblins, who had stolen the artifact. They said they would give it to us if we passed their "test" which involved fighting them one-on-one at a time with special rules (no healing allowed, if you push the other guy out of the ring then you win, if you damage the opponent and they don't damage you in one round then you win, there are special "meditation" and "mitigation" skill checks that you can make that give you bonuses). We lost this challenge mainly due to lucky dice rolling on the part of the DM (at one point I think he rolled two or three "natural 20s" on the 20-sided die in a row). The goblins then ran off with the artifact into a cave, and we wrote in our notebook: "Next time, use OUR rules." We pursued them into the cave, but unfortunately the cave ended in a dead end and there was an obelisk that turned out to be a teleportation portal that only goblins could pass through, so we couldn't pursue them any further. Also, we needed information the goblins had in order to complete the rest of our mission, and once the goblins had ran there was no way to get that. (See, the DM wasn't lying when he said the module was poorly written.) We gave up in failure, destroying the portal in order to punish them, and went back to our contact - a military leader - to report back. We were originally planning on claiming that all the goblins were dead when we got there and the artifact was nowhere to be found. However, while talking to the contact it turned out that after we left (but before we arrived at the rendezvous point) they had gotten a letter explaining that the artifact had been stolen. At this point our ranger berated the contact, saying that he should have "used magic" to inform us of the new information while we were on our way and blaming our failure on the "bad intelligence." The scenario ended with us all being shipped off to a far-away land to begin a new adventure ... and we won't know what that will be until Thursday.

2. Our mission was to retrieve a set of four statues that had been illegally smuggled into a city. First we went to a warehouse. While we were on our way the rogue made his Perception check to notice two people following us. Three out of the seven people in the party then made Stealth checks to sneak up behind them, so they immediately ambushed them, killed one of them, and intimidated the other one into surrendering and giving them additional information. The city guards then saw the seven of us standing around a dead body, and obviously wanted to know what happened. The rogue then Bluffed the guards into believing that they attacked first, and the Bluff check worked. Then we got to the warehouse and had to kill more smugglers, though this encounter was easier because if we hadn't killed the other two before, they would have joined forces with the ones in the warehouse. Then later on we found that there was another statue that was being held by a merchant (who was working for the smugglers). The encounter called for us to confront him and then he would run into a building, where we would have to fight more smugglers. However, we dealt with the problem a different way: while he was having tea in an open air market the rogue stole the statue out from under his feet while the rest of the party (including me) attacked and brutally murdered him. Again the guards showed up and this time we Bluffed the guards into believing that he was a spellcaster and we killed him in self-defense since he was about to cast a spell at us. At the end of the scenario, one of the characters whose alignment was "Chaotic Good" decided that "you know what, I might as well just change this right now" and erased the word "Good" to leave just "Chaotic."

3. Our mission was to go through a dungeon to find an evil demon and kill him. The paladin kept using his "Detect Evil" ability on everything as we went through the dungeon to find out where he was:

"You see a circular room with a well in the middle, a gong near the well, and there's a door on the other side."
"I use Detect Evil on the door."
"No, the door is not evil."
"I use Detect Evil on the gong. Is the gong evil?"
"No, no evil there."
"Okay, then let's go down the well."
..later...
"You're all down the well and you see a corridor in front of you. There's a door on the left side of the corridor."
"I use Detect Evil."
"Yeah, there's some evil on the other side of the door."
"How much evil?"
"About two Hit Dice worth of evil."

(Hit Dice are a measure of how powerful monsters are. Our party was made up of several 3rd-4th level characters, so 2 hit dice meant a very weak monster for us. The demon we eventually had to kill near the end was around 10 hit dice.)

On my iPhone (in real life of course) I have an app called the YouMeter. The YouMeter displays a fake "meter" on the screen that you can give it whatever title you want (like "Tragic Fashion Meter") and it goes yup when you push the "Activate" button. (Like all these "gag" apps there's a secret way to control it - where on the button you push it controls how high the meter goes.) So I got lots of laughs by setting it to "Evil Meter" and turning it on the next time the paladin used Detect Evil.

4. I don't just play D+D, I also play board games - the game store had a board game night on Sunday nights. I already talked about realism in D+D, and there's also plenty of realism in board games too. For example one game we were playing was "Power Grid", a game where you build power plants, fuel them, and connect them up. One turn during the "Energy Market" phase we all wanted to buy the oil but there wasn't enough for everyone. Also another game we played was "Automobile" where you play automobile company owners, and at the end of the game nobody had made any money. (Too bad there's no "Bailout" phase in the game.)