Just got back from
Strategicon:Gateway, almost "today (as in we almost got home past midnight last night)" but in retrospect, I am so glad I decided to tag along with J.C..
First day we had not even asked ourselves what we wanted to play when a enthusiastic gentleman began to chat us up. apparently he was running a pathfinder game where the PC's play a band of goblins, a fantastic one shot. I agree to go play. (Apparently it was a one shot for
Pathfinder Society, which I had toyed with signing up for in the past, but had not committed to, as I had not fully researched it.) We assemble and start picking pre-gen goblins, but there is a small army of us, grossly exceeding the encounter CR so we move to a different room and split into two groups as one of the players volunteers to DM. I opted to join the Last Second Group, where I meet "D.J?.", an older gentleman than myself with a goatee and a wicked glint in his eye who volunteered to DM and "H.Hazzard." a bespectabled, well built, prematurely-balding-batman-baseball cap wearing, crazy eyed glaring chap as well.
The goblin crew set out, I opted for the NE cleric of the Goblin God (we were all evil, and, like you do, hate dogs & horses and LOVE fire) and at the beginning of our first combat, before we were allowed to perform any actions, we had to sign our "goblin song (all the pregen's had a quaint little flavor text box)" in order to continue the session. An hour goes by as we get to the dungeon(read:combat grid map section) and barrel through it as H.Hazzard's goblin has a barbarian like rage whenever he smells dogs. Quote "Ah hayt dawgs. Aye smell'um." and as evidence from some of the other parties in character voices, these goblins have cajun accents as our speculated cooking also runs along that vein.
We barrel down into the boss fight as H.Hazzard busts through a floor to get to the dogs, wielding a "goblin sized great club" (a horse joint we hacked off our first major encounter "stompy") and the hilarity ensues. Our alchemist cant stay standing, our rogue, shy from one of the first fights, doesn't make come into the room till round 4, the fighter wont even consider the boss(an evil druid with a Med. Frog companion) until all dogs are rendered unidentifiable, and the bard is doing his/her best to be useful. Seeing as the rogue is wielding a gift from the chief (a +1 weapon) he has a n extra "dogslicer(knife)" and refusing to dual wield with his standard one, I, the cleric, Sleight of Hand it off of him while he's prone, 2 combats previously and am now a dual-wielding cleric.
I get a swarm dropped on me, there are three dogs up as well as the boss & her toad, so, I do what I think any self respecting NE goblin cleric who already blew his burning hands earlier that day would do! Channel negative energy, three consecutive rounds. Even until the last day of the con (four days total) the Goblin MVP's were myself for nearly dropping half of my own party as the CLERIC, and the alchemist from the OTHER group for playing sloppy with the AoE from his bombs. And so, just as I get swallowed by the toad, my group manages to finish off the toad & the druid, all wrapped up in less than 2&1/2 hours. A fantastic introduction to Pathfinder Society if I do say so myself. D.J?. granted us every bonus and accolade he could for that session on the Chronicle sheet.
Second day, I waited around for something, decided to opt out, then was dragged along to a live event called
The Dungeon Master and since I had not yet done any RP that day, decided to sign up to play/perform.
This was a blast. Despite the fact some of our party members had not even hit puberty yet, they were enthusiastic and ready to solve every problem with whatever weapon they had at hand. I felt I presented a slightly better than mediocre display of my wit and wisdom as well as a one shot on the "boss" of the session. Apparently my snark, ability to combine rhymes for pun-tastic couplets, and willingness to contribute to the terrible pop-culture references and inside jokes made me the audience favorite for that session, gaining me free admission to their shows for their next season.
Day Three, I am on a mission to play another game with D.J?. as the DM if he runs one and I have also resolved to join the Pathfinder Society in full and roll up a character. I have done a bit of research and am learning about the world of Golarion so I begin trolling the corner/hole the society had been regulated to. I find D.J?. and he is sitting, eyes closed and chiming in to a game he seemed to be helping with. I tried to chat him up a bit and after hearing simply that he would be running other games, wandered off to begin rolling up a Pathfinder legit toon. I find some amiable gents who've been playing Society for some time, as well as H.Hazzard, and the BSing ensues while I choose what type of ridiculousness Golarion is about to defile its universe.
I opted to join in to a tier 1 game and so my reign of silly has begun. After gaining the approval of 1 and 2 1/2 ninja's (i would say only half approval from two of the three) oh, I'm sorry, "merchants," and noobing it up/messing with our cleric (who was being RPed excellently) I had completed my first real Society mission.
I tracked down D.J?. again, this time he was MUCH chipper (apparently a 6 hour nap has that effect) and agreed to let me jump into a game with a pregen he was running later that eve.
And so, at 8pm we assembled, H.Hazzad was running his crazy high AC warrior (33 AC before buffs), I snagged the Rogue from the core book as my other choice was the warrior, and we already had one. The gal RUNNING a few things at the con decided to jump in as our healer, the Cleric from the core as well. AND to round out our crew we had a fantastic battle-buff-bard/savage skald of serious Nordic flavor. APPARENTLY, this tier was 8-9, the "real" characters were level 8 and the cleric & I were level 7, so we we're technically UNDERpowered for the session. so, about 2/3rd through the first encounter we almost KILLED, like, dead dead, more than -10 plus -your con score, but thankfully, D.M?. re-did some math and realized he was using the higher level stats for the encounter so re-dialed the damage. We were then offered the opportunity to restart the session for a more appropriate adventure, but we opted to be badass, and managed to plow through and complete the task, we might have had SOME help from the DM, but even with some junk rolls and maybe some meta-gaming from the DM and the cleric, we had some great moments. Even so, I think we earned those points.
