Grinchtificer
Honor and glory to Zarhon, who requested this return to the mousefolk village of Brie. I hope you enjoy the totally original composition I’ve concocted for the occasion. Ahem:
Every mouse down in Brie liked Yuletide a lot…
But Artificer, who lived out at sea, did NOT
Artificer Hated Yuletide! The whole Yuletide Season!
Now, please use your head. You can guess at the reason.
It could be her player just wanted to fight.
It could be, perhaps, she was scared of frostbite.
But to me, the most likely reason (I’m guessin’)
She just wanted to game in a non-silly session.But whatever the reason, whether combat or grousin’
She stood there amidships just HATING the mousen.
Staring out from her ship at the village of Brie
At the tinsel-cheese wheels bedecking their streets.
For she knew every pinkie who squeaked ‘neath a tree
Was eager and happy to gnaw on some brie.“And they’re nibbling on cheese straws!” she snarled in rage.
“And peppermint cheddar improperly age.”
She muttered an she paced, all ‘cross her deck.
“These Yuletide frolics have left me a wreck!”
Then she growled, with her robot minions nervously whirring,
“I MUST find some way to stop Yule from occurring!”
For Tomorrow, she knew, the mouse whiskers and snoots,
Would twitch bright and early. And they’d start to pollute
Her beloved game session with cute, cute, cute, cute!
That’s one thing she hated, All the twee silly CUTE!Then the mousefolk, young and old, would begin to make puns.
And they’d pun! And they’d pun! And they’d PUN!
PUN! PUN! PUN!
They would pun about Rat-mas, and deer-mouse reindeer.
Which was something the firbolg had reason to fear.
And THEN they’d do something that filled her with spleen!
Every mousefolk down in Brie, the fat and the lean,
Would sit at their stations, with bright-glowing screens.
They’d sit and they’d type. And they’d start to post memes!
They’d meme! And they’d meme! And they’d MEME!
MEME! MEME! MEME!And the more Artificer thought of the mousey Yule memes,
The more that she thought, “It’s time to get mean!”
“Why, for five whole editions I’ve put up with it now!”
“I MUST stop this Yule sesh from coming! But HOW?”
Then she got an idea! An awful idea!
ARTIFICER GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!
“Bots! Fetch me my craft kit! Ahoy and avast!”
And she made a green Grinchy-fur coat and a hat.
And she chuckled, and clucked, “What an ironic trick!”
“I’ll give ‘em their Yule sesh, but I’ll be a huge dick!”
So what do you say, Handbook-World? Do you side with the mousefolk of Brie in loving your nonsense holiday sessions? Or do you stand with Artificer and her preference for serious-face fantasy? Tell us all about your approach to gimmicky themed sessions down in the comments!
COMIC STRIP OF HEROES DIY COMIC CONTEST! We’ve been threatening to do this contest for YEARS. Now that we have these badass dice trays to give away, it’s finally time to make it happen. Introducing the COMIC STRIP OF HEROES DIY COMIC CONTEST! Your job is to take any previous Handbook of Heroes comics you like. Cut ’em up. Splice ’em together. Keep ’em SFW. Then rewrite the dialogue and paste the result into a comic strip. Enter as many times as you like by posting your work to our social channels. The plan is to ask our Quest Givers over on Patreon to choose the two grand prize winners, then those lucky so-and-sos will get the goods. Deadline to enter is EOD on Christmas, and we’ll announce the winners on New Year’s. So get out there and get to remixing!
JOIN THE HANDBOOK OF HEROES DISCORD! Do you want a place to game with your fellow Heroes? How about a magical land where you can post your dankest nerd memes, behold the finest in gamer dog and geek cats, or speculate baselessly on Handbook of Heroes plot developments? Then have I got a Discord Invite for you!
We had a 11th level Halloween Heist one shot, where I played Gretel of Grey Teeth Mountain (a witch), alongside Ingimundr the Ulfen, witch hating fighter, Dr. Henry Wentworth the Elder Mythos Cultist, Oogie Boogie the Bloat Mage, and Kosall the rogue who stayed out of Ingimundr’s way when it was revealed to him that he was primarily going to be working with spellcasters today.
Basically we were raiding a well known Gold Dragon’s house to get a spoon that created food that a lich could taste. This lich hadn’t tasted food in centuries and was quite mad at this point, but we didn’t mind. Everyone was promised wealth in whatever form they desired to extract this spoon for him. Gretel demanded one dozen fresh plump babies to bake into cookies that she planned to use to decorate the witch hut of her dear husband, Hansel the Maneater (also a witch, they made a lovely couple, or so I described to the table when questioned).
As it turned out, not only were there babies in the payment schedule, but there was a room *full* of cherubs that we found after rooting through the first floor, and Gretel managed to capture some live, wriggling ones for later! mmm-MMM! Many of them sadly perished in the row and were rendered less delicious, and as Gretel has a discerning taste she didn’t bother to pick up the scraps. We went upstairs, found the spoon, accidentally killed the Gold Dragon’s son along with the son’s guards, and then fled the house when we realized that the Great Wyrm Gold Dragon had just gotten notified that his son was dead and was about to teleport back to kick all our asses. Most of us got out, but Ingimundr and Kosall used Oogie Boogie as a distraction to make it back to Hansel and Gretel’s plane-hopping chicken hut, which was our ride for this mission.
Turns out, the spoon worked. Also turns out, apparently what the spoon created tasted pretty awful. However, the lich was giddy as a loon to be able to taste anything at all again and paid us in full, except for Oogie, who got sent to Community Service in heaven until he’d paid for the spellcasting cost that it took for Daddy Dragon to Raise Dead or Resurrect everyone we’d killed, and fix everything we’d stolen or despoiled (except for those lip-smacking cherubs that Gretel bagged, but this is why conscientious harvesters only take a few angel babies from any given habitat at a time no matter how sublime the flavor)
So in a nutshell, Gretel was the big winner, Oogie Boogie got left holding the bag, everyone laughed their asses off, and we got back to Hell’s Rebels the week after 😀
Daww, the Ratfolk look as adorable as ever. And I can tell Laurel liked making that lil’ red holiday coat.
Merry Christmas (and related wintery holidays, traditions or government -mandated days off) to you all!
Ironically I’m the Grinch in our family nowadays. Decorating tires me out too much / feels pointless / doesn’t excite me, and social stuff stresses me out.
As for gimmicky sessions, I don’t mind either approach! Usually the problems is that people tend to be busy/unable to play during said gimmick periods (holiday/family obligations, etc) so the short time window to do them don’t happen.
As for Grinches – let people do their thing, but don’t feel obligated to participate. Or find ways to shut it out.
Yeah, this is always a difficult time of year to be scheduling games… people have office parties, gatherings with other friends, are disappearing out of town on holiday, and so forth.
We don’t regularly do festive games, but we’ve done it occasionally when someone a suitable one-shot they want to run. Frequently, this results in Lovecraftian hijinks, and not just for Halloween.
Dress the seasonal event to fitting for the setting, while they lack tgr christ, unless your world has really wonky physics, equicalency of winter soltice, especially near the equivalency of an arctic circles would be the big thing. 40K for example has replaced Christmas with Sanguinala.
Or just look into any old customs around the world, pretty sure even most serious fantsy people would forgive a sub saharan african seasonal event… pretending to be someplace warm is also nice placebo for freezing my bits and not to worry about showeling snow… man do I miss sun.
Always amused me that Father Christmas showing up in Narnia was foreshadowing rather pure I-wanna-mess-with-JRR silliness.
Did Sanat Claus in The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe strike anyone else as super redneck-ey? Like didn’t he give them all like liquor and hunting knives and stuff?
We’re skipping the holiday session this year because Christmas Day falls on our usual weekly meetup day this year, but we do normally do a holiday session. Last year we rescued Santa from some animated toys…
And then my gnome ranger Gnomely got turned into a plasmoid at the last minute of the session by a wish from his twin brother, and he consumed the brother (who was also a plasmoid) and then Santa and his elves. So we would have saved Chrismas from Gnomely this year.
Keeping in mind the above comment from Tuomari: How do you work it so that Santa fits into your setting?
In the more serious setting, he’s an Archfey. He actually came around one time and flat out gave presents to the party, played straight. He’s the counterpart to Herne the Huntsman in my cosmology.
In the one shot, he’s just there.
I hate whenever any holiday takes over a season. You don’t need Halloween as an excuse to be spooky, be spooky when you want to.
Christmas is already too ominipresent and oppressive, I don’t want it leaking into my game.
Pfft, and just last update I was talking about my Halloween games. I had them dressed up as a Twilight Zone thing called “The Null Device”. (For those of you unfamiliar with Unix and Unix derivatives, /dev/null is essentially a black hole you dump needless data into.) It was essentially pulling a Treehouse of Horror for the occasion.
I also asked my players what their characters (since the system for that game asks that everybody provide a pair) are doing. Got one response: the human is having a nice social life. The program is fighting spam.
When we were still in the military, Christmas was prying a few friends out of the barracks and having a sleepover at our house. Making a Christmas feast for six to nine people is not conducive to DMing, so I never ran over the holidays. Plus we always had some of the group who took leave and went home for the holidays.
Once hubby retired (I got out after 12), most everyone wanted a holiday break (especially the DM) to spend time with family and friends. So no Christmas themed sessions. Hubby did used to run Ravenloft over Halloween, but that was years ago.
We have a Christmas party with a themed one-shot session every year. This year, we played Mutants and Masterminds. Our enemy for the session was the evil Doctor Clockwork. Among those fighting him were Candy Cane, Silent Knight, and Cuddles the Teddy Bear.
Bah humbug! I don’t run “gimmicky themed holiday” sessions.
Also, my games have almost never run in a way that the in game seasons or holiday’s would line up at all close to our holidays, and aside from the few modern and “two weeks int the future” post-apoc games I’ve run, haven’t even had the same holidays. There is usually enough of a difference it wouldn’t work as a “themed holiday” sesh.
The last fantasy game I ran almost every holiday involved sacrifice of animals, resources, or sophonts… and thus wouldn’t have meshed well with “modern sensibilities” for a ‘themed session’.
Many old winter solstices would fit the mold, and make more sence in almost any fantasy setting over the mass of christ, especially the DnD settings with our mythical gods, makes more sence that Norse holidays and customs would be more of Tyr speed than… what ever this is. Modern sensibilities can go suck itselves,
The only “holiday” themed session I ever ran was for Shadowrun of all systems. Before I continue, I must admit that the idea of the run was totally “borrowed” from the great Interwebs.
Our “noble” shadowrunners were given the task of dealing with a disgruntled employee who, upon being let go right before the holidays, let the company know that their first run of a brand new must-have toy was slightly more explosive than advertised. This was especially problematic for the corp because two shipments of those toys had already been sent out: one to the largest orphanage in the city, and the other to the mayor for his kids. Thus, the group had to save Christmas by stealing back all the toys without getting caught (and thus embarrassing the corp).
The players (high school students) absolutely loved it and had their characters go out and buy plenty of toys beforehand so that the orphanage kids wouldn’t be left wanting. There was of course the obligatory moment where one of them got caught by the orphanage’s “Cindy Lou” and had to do some fast talking ; )
I prefer to use the game calendar and have in-game holidays. I thought the best part of the Greyhawk calendar was it baked in season holidays. (And the absolute alignment of years and lunar cycles was total “intelligent design”)
Holidays are opportunity for divine nonsense (God A wants to interupt God B’s ceremonies, God C wants to weaken God D’s religion but wants to blame it on God A, etc, etc). It brings out the finery so thieving opportunities abound. It can be a prime window for a sneak attack by an enemy who observes on a different date. Could be an ally wants to attack an enemy on their festival but PC cleric is obligated to defend the holy day as part of an old pact, setting up political intrigue.
And there’s plenty of rationale for visitors from afar, including the outer planes, as tourists or participants.
I like playing in holiday one-shots. Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from saving the world and do something silly. (Not that we don’t goof off in our regular sessions sometimes, but we do take them more seriously than we take the Halloween and Christmas games.) Also, during the holiday season people tend to be busy with family stuff and whatnot, so if we do a festive and low-stakes one shot then the people who are around get to enjoy a game without making the absent party members miss out on important plot points in our normal game.
Idea for holiday one shot – Santa’s workshop is under attack by Frankenstein’s monster. Fix the situation.
(Because, if you recall from the book, Frankenstein’s Monster ALSO lives at the north pole)
Really clever Nightmare Before Christmas concept actually. Well done that nerd! 😀
I have been between groups for well over a decade now so I don’t have a holiday gaming tradition, but I do have several nerdy items on my Holiday playlist, including the TV adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather” as well as several sci-fi b-movies such as “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”
MST3K version?
The original version, which I impulse bought on sale at K-mart back around the time when I was in college.
My superheroes campaign sessions always began with a series of brief “police radio” encounters for any players that arrived early–sometimes self-contained, sometimes tying into the main plot.
One PC responded to reports of a snowman that would exit a local high school at the end of every school day and consistently ignored the police crossing guard. (This encouraged similar bad behavior from the students and created a traffic hazard.)
The player who took the mission was the only person at the table who didn’t know the lyrics to Frosty the Snowman. Nevertheless, he wound up befriending a teen hero (“Hawaiian Ice”) and serving as his mentor (following a superhero name change to “Iceberg”).
Another player, whose character Black Goat resembled a satyr in KISS makeup with Nightcrawler’s powers, chose to be ironic and took the assignment to help with an orphanage’s Christmas visit from Santa. One NAT 20 on a Charisma check later, the kids loved “Krampus” almost as much as St. Nick and the grim-dark hero was requested to make a return appearance EVERY year.
Another holiday one-shot idea. The nativity story, except it’s the Bhaalspawn.
I have never once been in or run a holiday themed gaming session, nor do I know of any instance of one happening locally.
Not for any particular dislike of the concept, it just isn’t a thing in my local community. In truth I don’t really have an opinion of them.
Personally, I feel like this is a case where both sides are in the wrong. The GM is apparently forcing Artificer to do something she does not enjoy (and Artificer doesn’t seem to have any fellow party members, implying that hers is a solo campaign and there are no other players to take into account), which is obviously wrong. But Artificer turning around and trying to sabotage the GM’s session this way comes across as incredibly petty and immature to me. Even assuming that “tell the GM that you don’t like the cutesy Yule session like a rational adult” has been tried and failed, it seems to me that “just tell the GM you don’t want to play tonight and come back next week when things are back to normal” is a more mature reaction than “be a jackass and sabotage the GM’s Yule session”. If nothing else, just ducking out for the week leaves both parties free to do something else fun.
From my idea notebook:
“santa’s reindeer Donner and Blitzen as Thunder and Lightning from Big Trouble in Little China”