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The Fury
2013-12-02, 01:16 PM
Since Trekkin is no longer writing the SUE Files, it's been suggested that I (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReplacementScrappy) continue the Wally stories on my own. Obviously compared to the Marty stuff it's fairly tame, but here we go.

This is a continuation of the campaign from this (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/11/backstory-induced-madness.html) post. Let me just start by saying that this campaign was actually awesome! DM'd by none other than Beer Mug Paladin himself, Harris, this campaign gave us all a chance to shine as players. Though this is about the bad stuff and the crazy stuff. However this will provide some context to the people involved so I'll go over the events in brief.

While there's a wizard bringing an arch demon into the world and plunging an entire city into eternal winter, some interloping nation is bringing in an army strong enough to stomp any other military in the setting. The rogue, Katrine is the one prophesied to fight the arch demon when he appears again. After slaying demons in a desolate frozen city, we found the weapon which could destroy the arch demon forever. Katrine defeats the arch demon, the party tracks down and finally defeats the wizard that summoned him, we find an ancient airship and are able to stop the invading army. Along the way Jin proved his worth despite being built as an in-story joke, the other samurai, Gai, (yes,) wrote his own theme song and Sally learned more of her origins. And it was glorious!

Then came the sequel campaign. By the end of all this we were all epic level and had learned that the wizard was just an errand boy for a much more dangerous demon queen and he was laying the groundwork for her invasion which was still coming. Thankfully our newly acquired ancient airship could fly us through the massive portal in the sky and get us where we needed to go to put a stop to it. So how do we stop it? Well, there's a maguffin in a dungeon somewhere... I forget the details of what it does exactly but we need it, I guess. So who's up for a dungeon crawl? Now, I get that some players love their dungeon crawls-- Wally thought they were great. As for me? I... tolerate them. This dungeon though was The Cube Dungeon! So named because it was inspired by the film, "The Cube." I guess all you really need to know about this is that the dungeon was full of monster, traps and was nigh-impossible to navigate but I'll include the twist in a spoiler tag for those of you who haven't seen the movie: The rooms moved, the only way to escape was to figure out which order the rooms moved in.

I would also be remiss to mention that we learned that there was a Demi-lich in there. So seeing as how we needed to find the quickest way in and out, I had the bright idea to try and draw a map. What I ended up with was an incomprehensible mess of doors that went into different rooms at different times and eventually gave up. After blundering around in the dungeon for a while the only real strategy discussed around the table was how to escape the Cube Dungeon. A few things kept happening; being a poorly optimized character I needed to get creative just to make minor contributions to the combats, Wally's CoDzillas kept dying and getting replaced and Sally started acting uncharacteristically strange and outright mean. The party actually remained in the Cube Dungeon for months-- in real life, which wouldn't have been so bad if I weren't cut out of the strategy discussions. I think Wally might have actually told me to stay out of it. It got bad enough that Harris actually told the party, "[The Fury] actually has some good ideas, maybe you should try listening to them." They didn't, of course.
During one notable encounter Wally actually told me to not get into melee with the enemy and stay out of the way. My character's a samurai-- there isn't much else I can do so I put away my sword and watched Wally and Sally throw some crazy spells around until the last guy standing tried to run for it and Wally got the idea we could capture him and interrogate him as to how to get out. So he shouted at me to take my attack of opportunity. I nearly rolled for it when I remembered, I don't get an attack of opportunity when I don't have a weapon equipped-- I did put my sword away. Wally wasn't too happy about that, I recall him telling me, "You had ONE JOB!"
To which I replied, "Yeah, and you told me not to do it."

Next time: The Escape!

jindra34
2013-12-02, 04:06 PM
Wow... Wally was a jerk idiot. And at least the DM didn't draw on the Hyper Cube for inspiration...

Sith_Happens
2013-12-02, 04:43 PM
nigh-impossible to navigate

O RLY?:smalltongue: (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/findThePath.htm)

Mewtarthio
2013-12-02, 10:13 PM
For some reason, when I look at this topic title, all I can think of is http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/784/260b.png (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/802/260b.png/)
:smalltongue:

Seriously, though, why was Wally so dead-set on excluding you?

The Fury
2013-12-03, 01:22 AM
Wow... Wally was a jerk idiot. And at least the DM didn't draw on the Hyper Cube for inspiration...

Indeed. Though I think Harris wanted something that we could, in theory, figure out.



Seriously, though, why was Wally so dead-set on excluding you?

I don't really know. I think it may have been a combination of Wally taking on a competitive mindset despite the situation calling for a cooperative one and worrying that I'd accidentally trash his plans. Also, like I mentioned earlier I think Wally wanted to be the guy that solved the scenario so he tended to cut everyone out and not share his plans with anyone-- this only made him seem more crazy.

By the way, if you want to imagine me as a pyromaniac cosmonaut that's fine by me.

The Fury
2013-12-04, 01:31 PM
I was considering having some sort of schedule but what the heck? I'll just post these as soon as I finish them. Here we go.

When we last left our "heroes" they were stuck in the Cube Dungeon. In fact we were stuck in the Cube Dungeon for so long that I started calling the campaign "The Cube Dungeon." I remembered that we went in to find something... I guess we found it but I forgot the details of what we needed it for a long time ago. Harris kept insisting that we were close to solving the dungeon for months but we never did. It became very routine, 1: Enter room, 2: Fight bad guy when applicable, 3: Have Katrine search for traps and disarm them 4: Quietly hope that we don't find the Demi-lich. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Wally was having fun though. To address the existence of spells like Find the Path, I think the reason why it wasn't used was because the characters that could cast it didn't think to. I have reason to think it wouldn't have worked anyway, but I'll get to that. The only character I'm certain could cast it was Wally, and using magic to know stuff wasn't how he rolled. He was the CoDzilla that would cast crazy buffs on himself and Leroy Jenkins his way to victory. Healing and buffing the party generally fell to the party's Bard. It's also worth noting that the Cube Dungeon was dimensionally locked so teleportation didn't work.

One day Wally came in certain that he had the Cube Dungeon figured out; each room had an identical square floorplan, with a door on each of the four walls-- East, North, West and South. Wally was convinced that if we took the left door every time we'd eventually find the exit. I guess he heard about constantly taking left hand turns in a labyrinth can be helpful in solving it-- it helps identify the dead ends quickly and such. Though the impression that I got is that he seemed to think that it would automatically solve it. I was long past caring at this point and it couldn't hurt to humor him so I went along with it. When we ended up just making a big circle we stood in the room and tried coming up with a new plan. It was then that it was revealed that one of our party, whom I'll call Miles, had a wish he got from a Deck of Many Things earlier in the the campaign. A few of us, including me demanded that Miles use his wish to find the way out. Wally insisted that this was cheating and Miles said he wanted to save the wish for something more important. Eventually Miles relented and wished to know the way out and he got... a simplified diagram consisting of a three by three grid with a clockwise spiral drawn over it. That's it? I'm supposed to figure out the Cube Dungeon with this? To Harris's credit, he seemed genuinely confused that we seemed more baffled by the supposed solution than the puzzle. We sat around the table and bickered for a solid ten minutes, what we said exactly I don't remember but it went something like this:

Katrine: "Hmm. Most confusing indeed."

Miles: "Yeah, I don't get it."

Me: "I don't even know what this is! I mean, we figured out that there are nine rooms but the spiral..."

Wally: "Maybe it's upside-down."

Me: "Oh, like that makes a lot of sense! Look," *spins diagram around*

Wally: "Cut that out! Which way did it go again?"

Thankfully Sally was a lot better at this kind of stuff than the rest of us and figured out the solution right away. When we enter a room, choose the North door, in the next room choose the West door, in the next room choose the South and so on until we eventually get to the exit. Sally, I should note, had been becoming increasingly hostile and mean since learning of her origins. I found out later that she was becoming more influenced by her darker nature. At the very least Sally deserves props for introducing some actual roleplay and character arc into what was an otherwise tedious hack 'n slash dungeon crawl.
Wally seemed a bit put out that Miles and Sally were the ones to figure out the Cube Dungeon. Maybe he felt that they stole his thunder. I'll grant that he was a good sport about it though.

As for the next one... Well, I could do the conclusion of Sally's character arc or Wally as the DM. I'm sort of torn between the two, what do you guys think?