Outlaw Shizzle - The Story so far (episodes 4-6 recap)

Been a bit behind with the story of Outlaw Shizzle.  Lots of stuff going so what I present here is just a quick recap of what occured in the last 3 episodes.

Episode 4 - The Fall of the Fox
The group manages to fight their way through the Fox's undead minions and his magical traps and eventually confront the Fox in his lair.  A vicious fight ensues with the elite undead guards of the Fox and the Fox himself.  The adventurers use every technique in their arsenal and manage to bring the Fox down.
Looting his lair, they learn that the Rage's family has been sending food stuffs and other supplies to the denizens of the Northern Reaches, a mountain chain east and north of Babel Gilga.  In return, necromantic reagents are being smuggled into the city.

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 3 - How they found the Fox

Alright, so it's been a while since I wrote about Outlaw Shizzle mostly because it's been a while since we all got together.  To give an idea of our group, we're all old gamers around our 30s (maybe not as old as some gamers and definately not as young as some) so we've got obligations outside of gaming.  Being a teacher, I tend to have a bunch of stuff to mark or plan (and this planning isn't about what monster or insane dungeon to throw at the party) so some weekends just don't work for me.  Others in the group have out of town jobs or kids or work late or whatever.

We're all still gamers at heart so we try to get together as often as our schedule permits to game out.  If we can't get together, well there's a lot of online games we play (lately the group has been playing a lot of League of Legends).  Speaking of League of Legends (or LoL as it's come to be known as), I've been playing the game since it got out of beta off and on and I am amazed at how popular it has become as well as the plethora of champions available (I remember when Udyr, the first non-beta champion, came out). Currently I've been playing as a jungler with Xin Zhao or Jarvan IV mostly because of their way awesome Warring Kingdoms skins.

Anyways on to a recap of Outlaw Shizzle Episode 3 - How they found the Fox.

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 2 - How they got the Silver

This week's adventure was interesting considering the last adventure kind of ended on a sour note with the Fox getting the better of the group.  It was the first time I think I ended a session where the PCs thought they had the victory but it turned out it was what the villain wanted.

When last we left Outlaw Shizzle they had finished burning down The Red Herron in the southern district of Babel Gilga.  However, from the ashes of the burning tavern the group saw the dead patrons rising up from the inferno as zombies with the Fox taunting them in the background.

Now the group had not only the Fox to deal with, but a newly arisen army of the dead....

Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 1 - How they met Anvil

In my last post about Outlaw Shizzle I remade some of the characters to fit the new playtest package.  However, after consulting with some of the players we went with a slightly different route for some of them.  The following characters are different from what I posted earlier in the Outlaw Shizzle retcon post.

Grudge Jr.

• Race:  Hill Dwarf
• Class:  Cleric - Lifegiver
• Background:  Bounty Hunter
• Specialty:  Hedge Magician

Angel Ripper the Third

• Race:  Wood Elf
• Class:  Monk of the Phoenix
• Background:  Thug
• Specialty: Two-weapon fighter

Pretty Boy Ray

• Race:  Halfling Lightfoot
• Class:  Rogue - Scout
• Background:  Artisan - Blacksmith
• Specialty:  Expert

Similar to what I decided but Grudge is now a full on healer (the players were joking he's like Dog the Bounty Hunter now, trying to make people turn good) and Angel Ripper is a better thug (kind of reminds of the Tattooed Men from the Legend of the Five Rings setting).  We also changed the Masons to be more of an underhand of the government of Babel Gilga so the Masons are now an organized crime group that works for the government.
Unfortunately for the Masons, and by extension Outlaw Shizzle, the Syndicate is trying to gain a foothold in Babel Gilga and threatens the prosperous relationship the Masons have with the city-state's government.

Outlaw Shizzle Retcon time

Just as I started my new D&D next campaign, Wizards of the Coast goes and releases a new playtest package (https://www.wizards.com/DnD/DnDNext.aspx) which is great and all but changes some of the classes a bit and actually removes some too.  Soooo I'm going to go and retcon some of the characters to fit the new playtest materials.

For reference here's the original cast as rolled with the previous playtest package

• The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
• Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
• Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
• Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
• Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades
• Anvil - Human Wizard Knight Lurker

Thankfully the races haven't been changed to much so there's not much to do there.  With the new classes, backgrounds and specialties I think I will change the cast to the following

Outlaw Shizzle - The Pilot Episode

This past Sunday saw the reboot of my D&D campaign with my old play group.  To recap, I had my players roll their race, class, background and specialty all randomly and they were given a random wrestler name from one of the many wrestler name apps out there.

Here's what Outlaw Shizzle ended up being.

• The Rage - Stout Halfling Cleric Guardian Noble
• Grudge Jr. - Hill Dwarf Warlock Bounty Hunter Healer
• Slater Jr. - Human Fighter Thief Acolyte
• Angel Ripper the Third - Wood Elf Sorcerer Thug Necromancer
• Pretty Boy Ray - Halfling Lightfoot Rogue Blacksmith Jack of all Trades
• Anvil - Human Wizard Knight Lurker (was originally a High Elf but I had a cooler looking human wizard model so I changed him to a Human)

How the party came together was quite interesting.  I used the strategy of having one player connect their character with the player to their left or right and then go around the table (I think it's from one of the 4th edition Dungeon Master Guides) and this is what we came up with:

• The Rage is a cleric of war who comes from a prominant noble family in the city the campaign is based out of (name of the city is Babel Gilga).  He knows Grudge Jr. because Grudge happens to be his family's groundskeeper/personal security (sort of like Higgins from Magnum, P.I.).
• Grudge knows Angel Ripper as one of his underground contacts for finding bounties or getting new contracts.  Grudge may or may not know about Angel Ripper's ties to the Masons (one of the two major organized crime groups in the region) mostly because I forgot to ask the two players to clarify that part of their relationship.
• Angel Ripper knows Slater Jr. because they are both in the Masons.  Angel's thug-like attitude allowed him to get into the criminal organization and the two are often deployed together.  Slater as muscle while Angel Ripper as the diplomat (whopping 18 charisma)
• Slater Jr. is a trained thief for the Masons who has also become a devoted follower of the Church of War.  He knows The Rage because they are part of the same religious group and Slater is studying as an acolyte under The Rage and will smite the foes of his church.

The players for Pretty Boy Ray and Anvil weren't around so we just made up a story for them that would fit well.

• Pretty Boy Ray runs a blacksmith for the Masons which is sometimes used as a safe house, hideout or even to launder money.  Being a rogue it made sense for this character to have ties to the Masons.
• Anvil is a vigilante in the lawless parts of southern Babel Gilga keeping the peace as best as he can.  The group will meet up with him later as they continue to adventure in Babel Gilga.

Running an organized crime adventure group is kind of out of the norm as most adventurer groups operate on the other side of the law.  However, I envisioned the Masons not so much as evil organized crime but more of a keeping the status quo type of organized crime.  They maintain order in their parts and as long as the regular authorities keep out of their way, the Masons will keep their activities under the radar.  Of course this will change when the Syndicate (the other major crime group in the area) wants to change the balance of power in their favour.

I'll post a little more about the setting in a future post so some of these names, places and organizations make more sense.

Anyways on to their first adventure in which they are introduced to one of the Syndicate's capos.

The Adventures of Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 2 "Conspiracy Uncovered"

Got together with my friends again for another night of D&D (see first episode here).

Prior to starting I showed them some figures I planned on ordering to properly represent their characters. I never realized just how diverse Reaper Miniatures is with regard to the types of models they produce. Anyways, I picked up the following models to represent the following characters

• For Jack Crusher, I picked out Bledsoe the Evil Cleric. I figured he would make an appropriate Invoker of the Raven Queen. I might try and replace the skull on the staff with a bird.
  
• For Andre Zodiac, I picked Thorgram, Dwarf Warlord. This was more because I needed a general to lead my future dwarf army and Thorgram looked really cool.
• For Sergeant Enforcer, I picked Goldar the Barbarian. Not really a ranger looking character but the way Enforcer is played, the barbarian model makes more sense. Plus he's one of the only goliath looking models I've seen.
• For Cardiac Bison I am using Audt, Reptus Sergeant. I might replace the sword as it looks silly in my opinion.
• And finally for Mr. Hunter I picked Balthon, Overlords Cleric. Thought he would make a great Cleric of the Raven Queen. Might try to replace the skull with a bird though.

Hopefully they get here soon. Looking forward to having more character appropriate models. Anyways on to their second adventure.

The Adventures of Outlaw Shizzle - Episode 1 "The Great Escape"

Haven't had any time at all to play any kind of wargame and I'm so dissappointed I missed the Remembrance Day Challenge. But that's life I suppose.

Instead of being too down that I can't get my gaming fix, I decided to start up a Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition campaign with my old playgroup. We haven't played an RPG in a long while and 4th edition D&D seemed like a great place to start. The ruleset is quite straight forward and there's a lot of variety to keep everyone happy. Not to mention we were all itching to play some kind of RPG again.

One of the things we always hated was character creation as it took a while if no one knew what they wanted to be exactly. So we decided to assign a role to everyone (each player took on the role of striker, controller, leader or defender) then roll for random classes in each role and then finally random races. We ended up with some interesting combinations and shortened character creation time considerably (no looking through each book to figure out what to be).

• The defender of the party is a dragonborn warden named Cardiac Bison
• The striker of the party is a goliath ranger named Sergeant Enforcer
• The controller of the party is a human invoker of the Raven Queen named Jack Crusher
• The party has two leaders (we had a fifth player who rolled his role randomly), one half-elf cleric of the Raven Queen named Mr. Hunter and one dwarf bard named Andre Zodiac.

We were all fans of the WWE at some point and one of the players had a wrestler name app on their iphone and named everyone in the party (and the party name too) using it, so the names of the characters are kind of strange (the app did speed up the character creation as well)

The party was balanced and the players got to play characters they haven't played before. Not surprisingly being veteran gamers my players all did their best to min/max their characters to be the best they could be.

Anyways what follows is a recap of our first adventure.