Order of Magnitude Recording: I've Got Wood-Based Puns

Starting off with a selection of terrible puns. They're not related to the game, but if I had to suffer through them then you do to. But I'll spare you the intermission where I straight up read XKCD's What If's while waiting for a player to get back from the store.

Plots and Puns

Recordings of Magnitude: Down Came The Rain

Due to some technical difficulties the first 10 minutes or so of the session didn't get recorded. What you missed: the fire (started by Jack) is starting to spread and the Order is seeing the problem with having only offensive capabilities (and also forgetting that they have a decanter of endless water buried deep in one of their bags of holding). Fortunately an orcish druid shows up and summons up a rainstorm.

And so here we go: #10

Recordings of Magnitude: The Eye of the Giant Spherical Monster

In this episode the players face off against one of their nastier opponents ever: a beholder (or "pinata of terrible"). Sadly no PC deaths but the monster probably would have been more effective if I remembered that it could fly around.

Revenge of the Shit Bag



If anyone is interested, here's the Savage Worlds stats for the beholder:

Beholders (WC)
Agility-d6, Smarts-d10, Spirit-d8, Strength-d10, Vigor-d10

Skills: Fighting-d8, Intimidation-d10, Shooting-d12, Notice 1d12+1
Parry: 6, Pace: 5" Flying; Toughness: 12 (3)

abilities:
Size +2
Armor +3
Anti-Magic Eye: The beholder's large central eye projects a cone of anti-magic which prevents all spellcasting, automatically dispels existing spells and causes all magical items and constructs to stop functioning until removed from the area. This includes the beholder's eye beams.
Level-Headed: Beholders draw two cards and act on the best. 
Eye Beams: The beholder has 10 eye beams, all of which have a range of 6/12/24. Only 4 beams can be directed at a single target. If the Beholder hits with a raise the victim suffers a -2 to resist the power.

• Puppet: As the Power, 10 minute duration. 
• Telekinesis: As the power, lasts indefinitely so long as the eye remains focused on the target.
• Sleep: Make a Spirit roll or fall unconscious. Lasts 10 minutes or until forcibly awoken.
• Flesh To Stone: Resisted with Vigor, if the target fails make a hit location. Torso or head hits inflict complete petrification, limbs hit will only petrify the body part (making it unusable).
• Disintegrate: Inflicts 1d10 damage, plus 1d10 for every raise on the shooting roll. ignores armor.
• Fear: As the Power.
• Slow: As Sluggish Reflexes.
• Pain Beam: Inflicts 3d6 damage, 4d6 on a Raise. 
• Death: Target must make a Vigor roll or become Incapacitated (rolling Vigor again to see if they survive). 
• Paralyze: The target must make a Spirit roll become Paralyzed for 5 turns.

Recordings of Magnitude: Cleaning Up The Ashes

In this session we've got failed attempts at strong-arm bargaining and lots and lots of puns about people burning to death. Enjoy!


Episode 8: Mad Scie...I Mean Magic


PS: For those who are curious about the picture everyone's talking about around the 30 minute mark here's the picture I used to illustrate my vision of Merrix D' Cannith:

Source

Recordings of Magnitude: SAVAGE edition

The Order has been playing again for several months now and I'm only now managing to get around to editing and posting their new adventures. The biggest news is that we've decided to change systems after the downtime, going from Pathfinder to Savage Worlds.

Unfortunately we also lose a lot of players from the original Order. Magnus has gone to the Lord of Blades, Glorin and Sahath have retired and Shara has been murdered. In their place the Order is joined by another adventuring group, The Band of Eston: Ulrick (an officer from Cyre), Jin (a crack archer), Frank (an extremely elderly elven priest) and Cupcake (a gnomish bard).

Savage Adventures pt 1

Recordings of Magnitude: Adventures In Xendrik

These are mp3 recordings I've made of the Order's adventures, specifically their adventures in Xendrik

Part 1: The Order arrives in Xendrik and makes preparations to pursue the Emerald Claw into the jungle. Unfortunately this was made using a crappy little mp3 player as the recording device and it ran out of memory halfway through the session.

After the recording gave out the Order battles a Froghemoth, loses Tayin and heads back to Stormreach to take a different boat. They're attacked by more vampiric hounds and are helped by Sahath, a Silver Flame Inquisitor who joins up for the time being. They head back out and make it a few days before they're ambushed by giants in the jungle. The battle takes a sudden turn when Magnus comes up from belowdecks and the giants suddenly stop fighting, shocked into awe by the metal man and insisting that he come with them to meet their god. Magnus agrees and he and the rest of the order are taken into the jungle by the giants who place Magnus and Glorin on a giant block of stone that turns out to be powerfully magnetic...and then their god shows up. A 6-story tall Rust Monster.

Part 2 and Part 3: The Order battles the giant's god...and then replaces it. There's some attempts to censor language and the like, before I completely give up in later recordings.

Part 4: The Order stumbles around an ancient giant temple full of monsters and monkeys (yes, yes I know gorillas would be great apes...and I don't care).

Part 5 The climax of the adventure in Xendrik and Part 6 where we wrap things up.

At this point there is a long, long period downtime as one of the players leaves for college (unfortunately he ends up moving away permanently) and we try out a different game. However, in time the Order returns!

The Text Ages 4: The Final Paragraphs

So the order had just finished a major job, leaving crushed enemies and smoking wreckage across 3 or so countries in their wake. Magnus is fully engaged with research with House Cannith working to examine the two ancient schema pieces they've examined so far. This will take quite a while and it'll lead to the longest downtime for the Order so far (and with Magnus occupied possibly the quietest).

So other than a few minor personal projects (Nolan hunting through Sharn for great restaurants and exotic recipes and Jack trying to convince Magnus to help construct an Alchemy golem using a Manual they found in the Whitehearth facility) the Order had little plans for the glut of time they were left with and considering the last time they had time to kill they ended up causing labor riots...I needed to find something for them!

The Text Ages 3: tl;dr

So the Order succeeds on their mission, turns in Lucan's dessicated (but still technically "alive") corpse to the Black Lanterns and are generously rewarded. They take the opportunity to pump some more gold into Magnus to turn out handy haversacks and other such utility gear for the party. It's around this time two new party members join up: Pesky (gnomish cleric) and Tayin (human druidess).

Continuing the Xulu series of adventures this one is Shadows of the Last War. Technically it's the second in the series and designed for players of 2nd level. The Order is currently 7th so needless to say I did a lot of editing for this one. Why the writers thought a trip to the Mournlands was appropriate for level 2 characters I'll never know.

The Text Ages 2: The Order Vs The Wall of Text

For this session I decided to try something experimental that ended up being a lot of fun. I started the session with a specific, brief event involving one of the characters (Magnus in this case) then flashed back to earlier in the same day to reveal what caused the event. It worked well in this case but I'd definitely recommend that techniques like this be used sparingly and only with PCs who don't have any trouble playing along. Also make sure that there are several different events that could potentially lead to the final event, lest things go completely off track. 

In this case I started the game describing most of the party (excepting Magnus) gathered together at an inn, examining the (blank again) Cannith book and the rune-key. While they were discussing their travel plans to reach Sharn there was a sudden shattering of glass as Magnus is flung head-first through the tavern's largest window and lands in the center of the party's table. 

The Order of Magnitude: The Text Ages

The Order has a long, crazy history and it's always most fun to experience in audio format with the terribly puns and insane arguments. However, when we began our adventures I did not have any good recording equipment so much of our adventures went unrecorded.

If you're not interested in reading and just want to skip straight to the audio then go right ahead and you can pick up the Order's adventures in Xendrik. If you'd like some background on the Order's adventures or enjoy my despair as my plans are torn to shreds over and over again then read on!

Introducing the Order of Magnitude

The Order of Magnitude is my current gaming group, specifically a group that I've been running in the Eberron setting using Pathfinder (and later Savage Worlds). This blog is meant to serve as a repository of their adventures and craziness.

Before we get to that I should introduce the members of the Order:


Magnus (AWOL)
The raving heart and soul of the Order. Magnus is the one who founded and named the adventuring party (everyone else was quite drunk at the time) and his personal brand of lunacy is the driving force behind many of the Order's misadventures. Although most of the team would love to get rid of him due to the chaos he creates, his talents as an artificer makes him invaluable (the Order loves their personalized handy haversacks). Unfortunately he is no longer a member of the team that he founded, having pulled a "Vader" and joined up with the Lord of Blades (although who knows how long the LoB will tolerate him).




Nolan (Current)
The moral compass of the group who keeps the Order afloat and out of jail, Nolan is the main counter to Magnus' raging id. Nolan is a deadly martial artist and a dedicated gourmand. If there's any chance a problem can be solved by cookery he will take it, and if that fails he will start punching faces. With the recent changes, Nolan and Jack are the only founding members of the Order remaining and (since Glorin left) the sole Good aligned member.







Glorin (Retired)
 The Order's requisite axe-weilding dwarf. Glorin was a stout warrior who was unfortunately a little bit too easily swayed by Magnus. Unfortunately his player has gone off to college and thus Glorin has retired from the Order, taking up a position in Breland's Redcloaks and working for the crown.






Jack The Black (Current)

Jack serves as both the Order's primary healer, possessing surgical skills and the Dragonmark of Healing (in my version of eberron I swapped the races for Healing and Handling), and their main arcane spellcaster. He's a sorcerer with a bit of a creepy vibe and a grab bag of spells that somehow manage to be just right for disrupting my plans. He and Nolan are now the only two founding remembers left in the Order. During his time with the Order Jack and Magnus collaborated on the creation of an Alchemical Golem that Jack has dubbed "Nurse". More recently Jack has decided that Nurse should get a sheath of preserved flesh and an illusion to make "her" appear relatively human (although a 7', expressionless and silent human).

Shara (Dead)

The party rogue and ranged combatant (theoretically). Shara was an impressively tiny (4' 9") half-elf who never seemed to catch a break. Bad luck and bad rolls tended to cause her plans to flop and unfortunately she was murdered shortly after leaving the Order by members of the Emerald Claw (the player wanted to swap characters and I needed a plot hook).

Pax (Current)

Pax is the Order's current "big gun" (especially since Glorin has left), a shifter berserker. Pax also has the least convoluted but most mysterious backstory of any Order member. He exploded out of a dead rhino summoned by an enemy's Bag of Tricks. He won't ever explain how or why he ended up there, prefering to try and forget. Pax is there whenever an enemy needs to be slaughtered or a door bashed down (and often there when these things don't really need to happen all that much).

Ulrick (Current)

Ulrick is the leader of a group of adventurers known as the Band of Eston and a formery Cyran soldier. He and his followers worked for Merrix D'Cannith exploring the Mournlands for artifacts and any information on the Day of Mourning. He has a fanatical hatred of the Lord of Blades and is less than thrilled about warforged in general. After the Order lost Magnus, Shara, Sahath and Glorin following their adventures in Xendrik Merrix decided that the two groups should be merged, creating a fresh new Order of Magnitude.

Jin (Current)

Jin is a crack archer and member of the Band of Eston who joined up with the Order along with Ulrick. Although incredibly unlucky at most things his truly insane levels of skill with his bow means that he'll never really screw up when it comes to filling enemies full of arrows.

"Stein" (???)

A truly ancient old elf from Arenal (actually a drow, but raised among the Arenal elves), "Frank" (no one seems to want to use his elven name) is a powerful priest of the Undying Court who has come to Khorvaire (along with his Undying bodyguard) and apparently decided to pal around with a bunch of human adventurers. It's eventually revealed that he may actually be getting tired of life after nearly a millenia and is itching to move on to become one of the ancestors, leading to some unwise choices. "Frank" got in a bit of hot water after attacking a Blood of Vol priest in his home at Sharn and the player has temporarily moved away, leaving his future with the Order in question.

Cupcake (Retroactively non-existant)
A gnomish bard/reporter/spy, Cupcake is a tiny, extremely cute and extremely pink woman. Created as a master of support spells and social-fu, Cupcake has only participated in a session or two before her player had to drop out due to excess work. Cupcake's existance has been retconned out until the player decides whether or not they will return.

Peski (Dead)

A very appropriately named Gnome priest who hooked up with the Order after they had a few adventures. Although valued for his powerful party-boosting spells and summoning abilities Peski met an unfortunate end...eaten by a giant mechanical dragon. However, he had the honor of being the first in-game death of a PC during the Order's history.

Tayin (Dead)

A druid who joined along with Peski. Tayin loved to hurl wild animals at her foes and served the Order well, and a bit longer than Peski. Unfortunately she snuffed it when she decided it would be a good idea to pursue a fleeing Froghemoth underwater.

Sahath (Retired)

An Inquisitor of the Silver Flame and a skilled archer Sahath was an expert at smiting evil from afar. She joined up in Xendrik and helped the Order raid an acient temple in the jungles but once the Order returned home to Breland she went her own way and returned to Thrane.