Stop making me wanna play DnD. I can’t find anyone here too play with.

Great tips Spoony!

“Think of it like a jump-scare in a movie; the best ones only happen
once, maybe twice in the film. Any more than that and you’re just
screaming loud noises and pissing people off.” – My thoughts on Drag Me To Hell.

Something one of my player did once was to tell a guard that another one was calling him a wuss. And in a game a played we had to get inside someone’s house. I knocked on the door (with my friends shocked) and said : I sell cookie for the kids club (Crit on Bluff).

Can’t wait for the dirty tricks and tactics video – thats what i’m waiting for!

Beverly Hills Cop 2, by far Eddie Murphy’s best movie.

“What would Axel Foley do?” From now on I’m going to ask that question every time I encounter a problem in my life.

It’s so amusing to watch Oreo. She reminds me of my dog.

If you play a lawfully-aligned character with Diplomacy and the likes; have your character own something like a fancy outfit. This especially works if your character is a woman: a dress that fully covers the body can hide a suit of armor and weapons. Roll Diplomacy to hide this in case people ask why you rattle. You can take this full-throttle by having two of your party members (make sure to get matching uniforms, and that they are roughly the same race) carry you around in a litter. Perfect for infiltrating an upper-class party.

Next, if you’re a shapeshifter: use it! Changelings/Doppelgangers can turn into people. Use this to send this guy in if you need to be somewhere and you’re sure that the original guy won’t walk in himself (because you got him hostage/dead). Of if you’re playing 4e, a Shardmind can shapeshift into non-natural shapes. Use this guy to hide your weapons in if you need to go somewhere without weapons. Don’t forget to bring cheap decoys to hand in when you’re being searched. You can easily fit a one-handed weapon or two for every party member inside of him. Even better about Shardminds is that they can take nearly any form: turn into a living bridge! Or a wall and have your healers constantly cast on you to keep the enemy away! Go Green Lantern up in this mother!

Great stuff, once again! Some time after you posted the Counter Monkey episode about “Tandem’s last ride” I was invited to join a friend’s pirate-themed campaign. It was on very short notice, so I improvised a character more or less based on how you described Tandem. I made him a retired pirate chieftain, like an older Jack Sparrow past his prime. He was bored and wanted to get back into the game, so I played the character like a very experienced trickster-archetype who used his knowledge of sailor life, dirty fighting and general bullshitting to compensate for his advancing age. He was essentially a conniving and manipulative bastard, who knew how to impress young people with his reputation and how to make himself seem smarter and wiser than he actually was. It helped that the character had his Rapport skill at 5, which is the highest ranking one can have any skill in the FATE-system.

Heh, I used to use the “bardic knock” with my favorite monk character.

My problem with the “I use diplomacy” stuff is that I’m just not all that social in my real life, so I’m not particularly good at doing it in role play. Sometimes I come up with stuff on the fly, but normally I end up slowing the game way down trying to think of how to do things. I generally play characters who are smarter than I am, that can be a problem. I tend to do a lot better in that respect with PBP games, if I have to to think and write out stuff, I’m pretty good. It’s when I’m on the spot that I’m not too hot.

I’ve only ever been involved in one table top rpg and even then only for a few months, I really want to get back in but my uni life is really hectic and while there is a club most of the members are way more experienced than me and given the heavy book load on my course I just don’t have time.

Anyway I was playing a charismatic thief the kind who forges, lies and befriends people to get to his target, I was the guy who always talked to the bar tender for gossip. The DM had set up a personal quest for my character based on his back story. I’d lost a locket in a fight and a fellow thief who could help me find it had just been caught.
We ran into the prison and immediately had our backsides handed to us, by the time we cleared the first room we were all down on health and we knew there were more guards in the cell area. We all knew that if we went in and duked it out some if not all of us were going to die. Then our bard came up with a plan which he told us in a whisper so the DM got taken by suprise.

Me and him stole a couple of the guards uniforms from the bodies and went to the cell block door. Then we got our fighters and mages (two of each) to go absolutely insane, smashing the desk throwing chairs, I think one of them threw a bottle of alchemists fire at us as we bolted through the door and slammed it behind us. They started attacking the door and slamming axes into it being all threatening and freaking the guards right the hell out. Me and the Bard start yelling that there’s a mob out there who have a vendetta against the prisoner and won’t leave without him. To them we are two guards covered in blood and heavily injured. We convinced them that the only way to survive was run out the back and leave the prisoner to die. When they did that we just walked him out the front door and legged it down the street.

I imagine a bard or wizard pulling out their travel-sized spellbooks and claiming to be encyclopedia salesmen, then dropping a Charm Person on whoever answers the door.

You make me want to start to play again

Bardic Knock Spell…I had to pause the video I was laughing so hard. That is fucking brilliant :D
As for the socially charismatic, I had to be a charismatic ranger character once. Despite probably smelling like animal droppings I managed to wiggle my way into a prision escape route thanks to a little swing of the hips and ye-old-damsel-in-distress talk against “big-strong-men”. guess it helped that they were loaded, but still XD.
And if all else failed I could have knocked his head into the wood. maximum strength can do wonders…

I played a Bangaa Sohei who despite his mediocre charisma and Diplomacy skills talked the groups way through several layers of Oriental Amalgamated Hell. Good rolls, good talking by me. I’ll tell the story sometime.

A story of my greatest bard lie:
Our group was on its way to infiltrate the capital city of this highly militarized country. The only way in was to have a special pass, akin to the golden ticket to Wonka’s factory. In the town before the capital, I (stupidly) let slip the name of the guy we were working for and get us into massive touble.
To get my group out of trouble I claimed to turn spy against our benefactor and told the mayor of the town we were in that our boss was gonna incite an uprising in the capitol and if he could get us a pass into the city, we could stop it. It worked and we were able to stroll into the capitol.
Unfortunatly I don’t think the DM liked it very much cause nearly every attempt I’ve made sense then to use my social skills, he has been highly resistant to letting me get away with anything.

Pissing myself in anticipation of the dirty tricks episode

I remember playing a Cavalier in 2e where i bought a fancy cape which i would only wear when going into town after an encounter or mission. Quickly became the most popular person in the party (to NPCs) since i appeared to always return from the fiercest fights in decent condition compared to my friends. Also i remember trying to sell a bunch of goblin javelins by stating that “The crude construction here sir is only a disguise for the true effectiveness of the design! The rough barb tip makes it difficult to treat and the brittleness of the shaft makes it impossible for the enemy to retrieve it and return fire!” Sold 150 of the things XD

I remember one campaign, it was actually our last 3.5 campaign before 4th edition came out. It was Gestalt set in the world of Final Fantasy VII. I had rolled up a Duskblade/Rogue and that dude stealthed and bluffed like a champ. Our first big mission was to infiltrate this Shinra power plant or something and detonate a generator, kind of like the first mission of the game, but not hopping straight off a train.
So my guy sneaks in running aside a big truck, like a personnel carrier or something, meanwhile the rest of the party is faffing about outside. I sneak up on a dude, conk him out, and steal his uniform. Just when I think I’m safe to walk about freely with my new disguise, I get swept up in this tide of moving soldiers and get lead to a control tower for a meeting of some sort, I think they were preparing to mobilize because the rest of the party was basically prank calling the security depot outside. I slink my way to a panel and look for buttons to press. I find the door controls and activate them with a sleight of hand, then shout “THEY’VE BREACHED THE DOORS, SIR!” The soldiers storm out and I slink off again in the confusion.
I make my way towards the generator, peek around a corner and see a couple soldiers guarding the entrance. So, I took a second to think before I came tearing around the corner shouting “Can’t you guys hear the chaos out there!? Avalanche is here, c’mon! We need reinforcements!” The guards look at each other a moment, turn back to me with rifles cocked and we start running back out together. As we went, I gradually slowed down and lagged behind them until they were far enough away, then I lobbed a grenade from the soldier’s uniform I stole in front of them, killing those guys. I swipe their grenades and make back for the generator thinking I’ll need the extra kaboom for it.
I get to the generator and start setting up my explosives, when the DM tells me that with what I have I won’t be able to destroy the generator alone, I’ll need at least two other players’ allotments of explosives. I basically would have cleared the entire encounter by myself if it wasn’t for that just by thinking outside the box and being a sly bastard. Although, I did get to do the smug “What kept you?” line when the party finally caught up, so there’s that.

I can’t wait for the dirty tricks vid.

I love that picture you see before clicking play on the video. What a perfect expression Oreo has there.

Noah forced me to go out and find a group of strangers sow I have someone to play with!

With my group I think it’s somewhat hard to find the middleground between “just using a skill by rolling it” and “using a skill by roleplaying it out completely without rolling the dice”. The first one never happens but the second one is what most of our GMs go for and I don’t think it’s completely fair. I am not my character. I am not as good in bluffing as my character might be. In real life I am a bad liar, simply because I despise lying. So in roleplaying games what I say might not come across like a good bluff but it’s not how my character would say it, it is how the player says it. And because I fail, my character fails without even considering his skills…

But I can see how the middleground is hard to accomplish too. Imagine you as player do a good job of bluffing, you are convincing and use good arguments. Then you roll the dice and it’s a fumble… While roleplaying the target of your bluff was completely following along but after the roll of dice he does a complete 180 and goes like “are you fucking with me?” all your arguments are now useless…

I actually had an opportunity to try something like this in my 4th edition DnD game last night. We were trapped behind a locked door, with the mechanism on the other side, too far above a hole to reach normally. Now, I play a changeling Hexblade (and the party’s designated lock-picker) and our heavy hitter is a pixie fighter. (Who can’t pick locks) We knew there was a bunch of Ettercaps in the room, and that these kind had an insanely high propensity to stun us repeatedly. (We’re level 4 with at most five magic items between us all) So what do we do? The Pixie ‘rides’ my hand which I turn into a snake looking thing and elongate the arm enough to reach the lock, which she guides my hand too. (and I rolled a 30 on my bluff check) We botched the sneak checks (plan A) but they were so confused as to what on earth was going on they just stood there. Then, to add insult to injury (and give me some darkness to work with) I put the ‘snake’ back through an ‘spat’ an Eldritch Bolt at one of the room’s magical lanterns. At that point they tried to hack it off, but only two of them, so we promptly burst through the door and dropped them before the rest really knew what was going on.

One problem with roleplaying a good bard(or any cha based character)is that you can overshadow the rest of your group if they are more fight oriented.Youll end up doing practically the whole adventure with the gm,and the rest of the group will get bored and hate you.Of course,if the gm is good,he will incentivise the rest to roleplay as well.

When will we get more pathfinder dnd? The game was just hitting it’s interesting point with everyone hitting level 2.

If you’ve ever read “the name of the wind”, the main character is awesome at this. If you haven’t, you should.

Ohh, to add, I gave up on D&D a little while ago. I used to play with a pretty good group that was very RP orientated. However, going to more and more cons to promote my stuff I tried to play a few games with groups who only wanted to kill stuff and get loot and actually got offended when you tried to rp your character.

Spoony you seem almost more focused and able to speak very well. I am glad to see the medication is working.

This remined me of a the last game I was in. we has 2 rouges rouge/mage a warrior, clearic and I played a ranger. We were playing as Pirates and needed to get a charter. So we waited until night to scale the wall. The rouges keep on fauiling their stealth rolls. rolling 1 or 2′s making it so we had to fight the guards at the front door. After a good battle we killed them, to find the front door fucking locked. So the rouges tried to pick the lock but keep fauiling at it. After a little while I had my person walk over to the front door guard to search his corpes for a key to the door. No one even thought of it until after I found the key. It made the DM pretty happy. But after watching these video’s I am getting a much better idea on how to play my characters. just need to find a group. last one I was in disbanded

I was a terrible player when I played D&D… which was when AD&D 2nd Edition was the most recent. I leaned too frequently into the goofy direction and just couldn’t take it serious enough to maintain composure for a decent amount of time to make it an intriguing enough experience for everyone else. Some of my friends were no different. We just get going and can’t settle down to concentrate on playing the game. I get what you’re saying though, Spoony. Some people need a bit of a nudge to start ad-libbing if they even can. No me though, I can ad-lib at the drop of a hat whether it’s coherent or not… ANOTHER reason I’m a terrible player. HAHA!!

I think I’d have to just observe a game session in progress that doesn’t involve me or anyone I know playing, hahaha!

One of my favourite characters I’ve played was Dir, a dhampir rogue type character. I did everything I could to add to my bluff skill and ended up with 40+ base on my bluff checks. I had gone over this with my GM and I’d looked at the Epic Handbook which stated that on high enough DCs bluff could be used to achieve results of a lesser geas, which was what I was aiming for.

He was so much fun to play. Though I played him right out of the campaign since if I wanted to roleplay my character properly, eventually I had to backstab the party. We had a ship that could travel on the astral sea, and each of us had a brooch which would let the wearer immediately teleport to the ship. Earlier in the campaign we got hold of a ring of three wishes, which of course I held onto. Because I was trustworthy I guess.

Anyway, eventually shit went down and my character felt like it was time to ditch these crazy people and join up with the necromancer who threw T-rexes at people (another PC that deserted). So I stole another party members brooch while they were fighting said dinosaurs the necromancer left behind. I used the brooch to get onto the ship, then wished for every such brooch in existence so the party couldn’t follow me. Then I used the ring again to get me to wherever the necromancer went, leaving the ship stranded in the astral sea with all the brooches and the two world chakras we had collected.

If you’re gonna backstab, best do it with style.

I’m proud to say that my master thief in Exalted is partially based on Axel Foley and has often pulled off the exact sort of things you are talking about in this video.

Haggling:
“Can you do 10 on this?”
“Do you have a better price for it?”
“I can’t do 30 on that, can you do lower?”
Flea Markets. Yes, flea markets, are where I learned how to haggle IRL. You’ll get better at haggling as things go on, but it’s one of the few places where you can still negotiate the prices for things. The insulting part doesn’t have to be overt, but the “Can you do ___ on this?” is the line I use most often. It’s not rude or showy, and it’s showing that you’re still willing to pay for it.

It’s been a loooooong time since I’ve played D&D and I’m surprised that people to ‘I roll whatever skill’ instead of coming up with a little blurb. I feel kinda old when I think that those things were the motive I played.

a friend of mine actually did something like this except he striped naked and sold rocks he claimed to be cookies to an evil wizard

We as a roleplaying group whenever we want to use a diplomatic skill will role the dice first, see the result, then roleplay the result to the best of the abilities. You may get bonuses/minuses based on how well you describe it.

It’s good fun, and it stops the “I hold my blade up to the mans throat, “your money or your life”" roles a 1…
The sniveling peasant starts laughing at you with your blade to his throat, and declines and wishes you a nice day.

I had completely forgotten about the Bardic Knock spell Brilliant stuff. On the next occasion I play, I’ll make a note to please the DM by asking about rumors. Think I’ll also consider giving my favorite sorcerer Intimidate and add some magical light shows to back up his threats.

i tried that exact same thing, with the boa, and the dm stopped me anyways… it was stupid and aggravating

I started a Warhammer Fantasy roleplay 2nd edition campaign (The enemy within campaign) with 3 friends recently and one of the NPC (A french Gambler named Philippe descartes) stayed with the group and i used the tips given in this video….. “How do you open the door?” I saw the “Ohhhh sh!t” expression on the fighters face …. I … uh …. search for traps …..” At one point I stepped in with the Gambler (I play him as a Jack Sparrow type) and did the Bard knock spell ….. The group loved the bit ….. Thanks Spoony for these videos !!!

I had a character named Michael Spalding, I pulled him out of thin air in about 30 minutes and he became my favorite character. A friend invited me to join a World of Darkness game with a unique setup: we all started as regular humans and everybody had one major and one minor derangement chosen by the GM. So this GM who has never met me before decides to go easy, and gives me Obsessive-Compulsive and Verbalization. My character hates things that aren’t perfectly organized, and thinks out loud without realizing it.

Then I got the idea for Michael Spalding. He was a child prodigy and super-genius, rich, charismatic, attending MIT at the age of 17 when he was in a car accident and took a nasty blow to the head. Now his ability to concentrate is shattered, and his social skills in the toilet. Stat-wise he had mental resistance, quick healer, and 4 dots in Composure. He was meant to be super-resilient to Vampire mental effects because certain parts of his brain simply weren’t there.

So we get into the campaign and our group is broken out of a mental hospital by a Vampire hunter who wants to use our second-sight in her fight against a prince in Chicago. We’re sent to the city, which has been overrun and the population decimated, and we end up in Elysium with the prince. We tell the prince he has to come with us, but it soon becomes clear that we have no hope of beating him, in fact we’ll be lucky to escape with our lives. The prince haughtily tells us to turn tail and run away, and maybe he’ll let us go.

As we’re about to leave, something occurs to Michael Spalding (and me of course). The Vampire hunter KNEW we didn’t stand a chance, but she sent us anyway. And for the first time since I created him, he gets angry. I didn’t really plan it, it just made sense at the time: he was such a goofy character all the time but that was because he had learned to suppress his pride.

Figuring it couldn’t hurt anything, he turned around and marched right up to the Vampire prince’s throne. He placed his hands on the throne on either side of the prince and whispered in his ear, “I have 1.2 liters of nitroglycerin in a pouch in my stomach. Either you leave with us right now, or we all die in a massive fireball.”

It was the greatest RP moment I’ve ever had. Everyone just stopped dead, then I rolled composure and spent a point of willpower to boost it, and got an insane roll, I think it was 9 successes. The prince flopped, getting 3 successes on 7 dice. He went with us.

Of course the GM was peeved that I threw her campaign plan out the window (He was supposed to get the hint and come see the Vampire hunter, at which point an alliance would be struck to take down a rival prince) but I was happy. The funny thing is, when I tried the bluff I didn’t know that Fire is a vampire’s greatest weakness. I (and thus Michael) only learned that after the fact.

I think it would be awesome to, when the guy says “None shall pass” or something, have the bard launch into Spoony’s epic “I’m the god damn Avatar!” rant from his UW1 review.