In our Friday night Hackmaster game we have both an MVP award and a GM award that give extra XP for good play. MVP is voted on by the players and the gM award is obviously awarded by the GM. I feel like last night I may have pressured the GM for an award that he may not have wanted to give to me -
Here is the scenario. We are doing a dungeon crawl, which I despise, seeking out a specific item: The tears of a Demi-Gawd (Hackmaster doesn't have Gods they have Gawds). My preference would be and has been to get in, find the tears, and get back to the main storyline. Others in the party disagree. We have argued about it a few times and I finally just said fuck it and I have pretty much just been sitting back following passively until combat. This has been my M.O. for a few weeks now, not that my character was particularly gregarious before, but I think it's noticeable.
That kind of shows you where we are in the game overall, now last night we had a couple incidents of combat. First against and animated statue and then against a bunch of Drow Elves who were basically suicide bombers with fireballs. In the second fight I took a buttload of damage. First from the fireballs (70 pts after some successful saves) and then from the monk in our party who fumbled and hit me (13 pts) that left me with one hp and the healer wasn't healing at that point, I don't remember why. The Drow on the side of the room I was on had retreated into a cell and it was my attack. The cells had solid walls so I am thinking if I can follow him into the cell and kill him he wont get to fire his fireball and I will be protected from the fireball coming from the other side of the room by the solid wall. I started to carry out this action and the GM messaged me and said, "if you go into that cell you will eat a fireball and die" the mage was already at -8 hp so I changed my mind and retreated. Two more fireballs went off, everyone who hadn't retreated took more damage, the Drow were killed and the game ended.
Part 3 of what is turning into a long saga - So, the game ends XP are awarded and the thief announces they have made 13th level; with the XP from this game I just made 10th. I know that different classes advance at different rates but this seems a bit out of whack so I ask how many Xp each person has. Huge discrepancy between the thief and my character. Not necessarily an indicator of anything wrong but the monk is very close to the same number of XP I have so it indicates that I am in the ballpark on my count. While trying to reconcile I say "OK, I haven't won GM or MVP in a year" but even that doesn't account for a 300,000 point difference. UNFORTUNATELY - the GM hadn't announced the GM award yet. When he did he gave it to me, because he had to talk me out of a suicide run. (The GM award is awarded for stuff that the GM finds amusing or really good game play).
Here's the problem(s): First, I feel like I may have put some pressure on the GM with that remark. It wasn't my intention. I was just trying to figure out how the hell the thief was up at 700K XP. Second I feel like the GM may have misinterpreted my actions. I wasn't planning a suicide run. I was just trying to get my character out of the line of fire and kill that damn Drow. Third, when I thought about it this morning I realized I had misspoke. I did get an MVP award a couple weeks ago for killing a gollum like character, and I think I got a GM award a few months ago.
Don't get me wrong - I am happy I got the award and I have no intention of giving the XP back, but this has been bothering me all day; mainly because I feel like I should have said something when the GM gave me the award. It's a small thing yeah, and it's just a game, but there is a principle involved (not enough principle for me to give back XP but still principle). Also like I said I feel like I may have come off like I was bitching about the awards and that really wasn't my intent. That isn't to say there haven't been quite a few times when I felt like I deserved one or both of the awards and got neither, but I recognize that kind of thing is subjective so I congratulate the other guy and move on. If people (and by that I mean me) are just going to bitch about awards then the game stops being fun. I want to avoid that.
So now I am on paragraph 7 of describing what was basically a 5 minute slice of life last night. Kind of telling on how pathetic my life is isn't it? On the other hand this is truly a first world problem and gives starving villagers the world over something to aspire too.
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