I cannot tell you how happy i am to be the scribe of this legend.
Our Epic begins on a late summers eve, in the town of many tales, the great place of paladins, the mysterious meeting of mages, the many beer-halls of heroes…the town called Beledain.
Now picture this: The warm fires of home and hearth burning in the local pub, the hovel of Berkelda, barmaid to the Wolves Head. And there, among the last of the mighty who have stumbled to their beds, we see our heroes, plus one…
There is Bach, the legendary Swordthain of Beledain! And possibly the only serious character to come to this game. Alongside him stands Uno, the Walker of the Sands of Sethrim, and legendary man of Endurance, renowned also for his tremendous ineptitude's in pretty much every other stat. Propped up next to them is the Metal-Man called Chuck Bowlcut, who's tales are told with pride when mentioning the (i'm not kidding) SEVEN BLUE DICE worth of armor upon his stalky four foot frame. With them, as always, is their only sister, Lyric, who is the other serious player/charcater in this legend. And, yes, they are all related. Because that's what makes an adventuring party stay together.
As they drink the last of their sorrows to simmering calm, they look to the only other character in this game so far (since i didn't want to play Berkelda, because it's getting close to 2 AM and i'm on auto-pilot.) In the background you can hear the mythic applause of Werewolf LARPers. And, if your imagination is strong enough, you can almost hear the sounds of some Tom Waits song playing on the jukebox at the back of the Wolf's Head. So anyway…they look at the only other character in this game so far: Cain the Elder from Diablo II.
"Long ago, in ages before Beledain was a town, strictly speaking, and it's lots were still being zoned," Cain (t.e.f.DII) began, "A strange fate came to the few who had nested here. Each woke one morning to find they had all been given a gift in the night which appeared from nowhere. But inside were Monsters!"
After this Cain (t.e.f.DII) drank the last of his ale and passed out in his own vomit. Jesse (who was playing Bach, and was the only serious character in this game) helped the drunken NPC to his favorite chair. Where he burst into flames and died. Because i was sick of playing him.
"What do you think this ominous tale could mean for us?" asked Jesse, who played Bach, the only serious character in this game. He managed to gloss over the fact that Cain (t.e.f.DII) had just vaporized.
"You're not sure," i make mention in response, "But you are all baffled that you each received gifts this morning. Along with everyone else in Beledain."
They all looked at each other. Ogre tried a voice on for his character, but didn't like it.
"I open mine," Jesse attempts to explore the mythos…
Having prepared in thorough for this game i plucked the first page from a pile of shuffled monsters, "A swarm of Firewhisps jump out! Role Perception!" It was brilliant. So brilliant Lukas decided to go to bed.
Let's take a moment to measure the playing field, shall we? We have on one hand, Bach, swordthain, and a decent smattering of stats. We have Lyric, who is young, but not inept. Her wizardry is at it's neophyte stages, but magic is magic. Then we have Uno. Who, i'm not joking, rolled a ONE in every stat but Endurance and Command. Being a genius of the future, Jordan opted to show this off by taking ZERO BLUE DICE for any armor what so ever. All he had was twelve damage boxes and the Ability "Tireless" which allows him to keep fighting without endurance checks up to the point of not-death. Okay. Fine. But let's not forget the pill-box with a war-bow, Chuck Bowlcut. Chuck has an impressive endurance of his own, due to a layer of leather, chainmail, plate, gauntlets, helm, and …i don't know. a trashcan lid or something. He's toting the biggest bow in the game, ready to strike down anything that hasn't toppled him on the ground like a giant soup-can. Yeah. We're ready for this.
Save that Firewhisps are intangible.
In a few rounds Jordan had lost all but a handful of Uno's Hitboxes due to being set on fire. Lyric had coated her sword in beer, trying to harm them. And Bach had done some impressive narration of cool fight moves that we're going to ignore. Coldly. Because credit for cool is not being given out in this game. Instead we'll cut to the chase. Using Trickshot Chuck managed to 'shoot a giant pot' down onto them, 'trapping' the Firewhisps inside. Then Lyric and Bach beer-sworded them to death.
Yeah, i just typed that. Beer-sworded. Even triggers the spell check in Firefox. Awesome.
Now recuperated from such an unexpected surprise attack, the other three look at their presents.
"These things are dangerous!" Lyric shouts, and begins to vigorously smash hers to bits. I flip a card. Awesome: it's a Shardling - a magic mirror that becomes a golem of razor-sharp glass shards when it's broken.
"Roll Perception!" i chant with glee.
They throw a lot of damage at it pretty quickly this time, while Jesse, who is Bach, the only serious character in this game, tries to break out the windows to escape the still-slightly-burning bar. I'd narrated in the beginning that Berkelda locked them in so they wouldn't go out and do something stupid while they were drunk. I pulled that one out as soon as the Firewhisps were loose so the whole story wouldn't get out and do something stupid. In the end Uno got his face clawed off (but was still fighting, even in End Check damage boxes) and Chuck had figured out the secret.
"What's your Command?" Ogre asked Jordan.
"Six."
"Okay," then to Jesse, "What's your Command?" He takes a survey of the table, tallying up the odds. He's already hatching a plan.
"So, guys," i say, shaking off another yawn, "Two of you have gifts left…"
(see if you can gauge how much defeat was in his voice from this next line of dialog) "I open mine," says Jesse, who is Bach…
I flip the card, "Awesome…the uh…Mystwights of the Shrouded Hills jump out." (I rolled them up for a game two weeks earlier). Another intangible with Drain and Frighten. They are still trapped in the mildly burning bar. Uno is almost dead. Their swords are Beer-swords. This game has reached it's apex.
"Hey guys," Ogre has tried on his new voice for Chuck Bowlcut, a breathy, whiny lilt, "Command me to shoot the chandelier."
Now look at the formula, because it's what turned the tides in this campaign: Setup = 3 Command + 1 Trickshot = >Lots of Red Dice.
And that's how they beat the monster. "Hey, Guys," Chuck whimpers, "Command me to shoot [fill in the blank]." It's a good thing we were in a Tavern. A tavern with a chandelier, a bookcase tied to the wall, a magical holy symbol loosely hanging on another wall, and giant barrels of beer, along the back wall. Had this gone on any longer the Tavern would have suddenly had wall-mounted fire extinguishers, bells, mounted nets, floating rings, and apples on every villains head.
It was a glorious challenge! Even when they skipped all forethought and actually opened the last present for no damned reason. Sure, a 7 XV "Gorthar of Shalewood" leapt (?) out of the gift. But by leaving the now burned, shredded and frozen-to-his-last-checkbox Uno "barely conscious" enough to throw Commands along with Bach and Lyric, the crackshot Chuck Bowlcut managed to knock every last plausible inanimate object into a pile of crap that buried every villain they unwrapped. That's right. Three guys (one who was actually a girl) sat at the bar shouting "Go go go!" at a retard in the metal gear of an entire platoon while he did damage to the monster by not actually shooting it directly.
Single handedly the best game of StWT i've ever run. If you can check a game's cool by seeing if it runs a good Jedi story, then you should be able to tell a good D&D spin-off by how well it makes you laugh when you quit trying and dial the stupidity up to eleven. And this game has mastered that.
Fun. With a capital F.