A 1970 Corvette

A lot of the questions were backwards such that you couldn't just google the name of the creature/spell, so instead of "what is the material component of a telepathic bond spell" it was "what spell uses an eggshell as a material component". It was still possible to cheat, but harder, and I had a soft timer in the form of the Polygnomials who were quite slow to answer questions about stuff that wasn't magic. I wasn't very happy with my scenario if the party lost (it would be discovered that the Polygnomials used Legend Lore to cheat and would be straight up murdered in front of the party) so I'm glad the team aced it, and everyone provided at least one answer.
 
Beasts and Creatures (we had encountered a fair number of these playing DnD already, but since a few of us had monster manuals at hand, I figured we might have some people who were knowledgeable about others)
 
Spells and the Arcane (same as above, really. the alchemy jug and chaos bolt questions were gimmes)
 
History+Geography (aka the Have You Been Paying Attention round)
 
 
Bands+Songs (a little like the above but there was a much greater potential for using logic. all the band profiles were available so it was a case of matching the titles to a genre like metal/idols/parody, aside from Elvish Presley, which I think someone actually figured out. If I loved anything about this part it was the Weird Al expy parody song titles, like you can imagine this centuries-old order singing a metal ditty about the return of an immortal god-beast and then a shitty halfling responds with a song about his last barbeque)
 
Name that Instrument (yeah this was the funniest one for me because I quickly figured out that you could see the name of the audio file being played in Roll20. so rather than just make them all blank I thought it'd be better to fuck with anyone who thought they were being clever. left is the name of the file i used)
 
Only thing I regret about the game show bit is that Hans Duller for a headless horseman is probably the best joke name I came up with out of the entire adventure.
 
 
 
But really though I felt it dragged on much longer than it needed to, it was a really good experience as my first time DMing for more than one session. I put way too much effort in than I felt everyone got out of it and it was way too railroady for something that long. I learned a lot, especially about how far ahead to plan, since I think some of the best parts of the dungeon were ones that I came up with based on the players' progress. I think ending a campaign with a EBA-esque power of friendship/hope/love tropey bullshit ending was near the top of my bucket list though, so there's that.
 
Also Corvette of note is that this is the individual who brought about the first TPK of 2+ years of us playing ttrpgs:
 

 
and also her Druid BFF who Wild Shaped into an alpaca and fucked everyone up:

Alrighty, I can give this a go, but it'll probably be a little rambley and meandering, but that kind of fits what our journey was just fine.
 
As I said, this was an all-bard adventure. I had previously run a two-session all-monk adventure inspired by this greentext and we all expressed interest in doing something like that again. Alex soon after called dibs on an all-bard adventure since he had some ideas. Come the end of our first campaign run by @Raze (still get nostalgic listening to that Fate song, thanks for getting me into ttrpgs, buddy), we took some time to do what Alex assured us would be about 4 sessions worth of content in his setting, Jinnen, before swapping back to the Sunset Heroes campaign run by @Insectan, which is what Orque and Rhea are in. It didn't last 4 sessions!
 
The campaign began with Alex starting the scene in a tavern. A lone bard strumming on a lute pulled up to fire and began speaking to a group of kids. He said he would tell them a tale of a music festival 150 years ago. A festival at which a quirky group of bards managed to save the realm from despair. And the scene flowed into a certain band's wagon travelling to a city.
 
Basically, every year in Jinnen, a large music festival called Soliloquy occurs to celebrate peace and the end of a great war decades ago. It inevitably turns into a full out battle of the bands every year, with the various groups slated to play duking it out to claim the top spot. This year's festival was held in the city of Kalkus, a gnomish city.
 
We played the band M.I.L.K., who were a bunch of has-beens who specialized in shitty boomer metal and was vaguely dairy themed. Raze (Josh) played Sylark the Songseeker, a silver Dragonborn who played the ocarina who was mostly interested in finding ancient texts and stories and weaving their lore into magical songs. Also he was gay. He ended up as a Swords Bard/Paladin multiclass. Insectan (Zach) played Goolaz Nod, an Aasimar who was a kinda slimy cross between Ozzy Osmond and Dr. Facilier who played the trumpet and was our vocalist. He somehow ended up as our leader and spokesperson despite causing the most trouble out of all of us. He teetered on the line of death often and literally never took his suit off. He just went straight Whispers Bard. @Primal Phoenix (Courtney) played Easy Water, a Kenku who was partly entering the competition to fuck up one our rival bands, the Kenku Noise Crew, a bunch of Kenku who mostly performed rips of other bands' hits. He ended up just going straight Swords Bard and was probably our strongest hitter. I played Vimak "Fool's-Game" Markakanau, a drummer Goliath who was all about fucking up people who tried to abuse their power. He outed his tribe's leader before falling off a mountain and then joining the circus to become a clown/acrobat. I tried to style him as some kind of unholy combination of a juggalo, a member of KISS, and a general troublemaker. He ended up as a Satire Bard/Giant Soul Sorcerer multiclass, mostly because I wanted to get the best feature in all of DnD 5e. We were brought to Kalkus and immediately started fucking everything up.
 
After some general rabble-rousing and exploration of the city, we noticed some things were going haywire. The city relied on some sort of transmutation magic to transport people between its districts, and they were malfunctioning pretty hard when we got there. We even tried to sneak into the venue for Soliloquy but it had suffered some structural damage in addition to the magical entrance being broken down. So we got lost in some kind of noneuclidean liminal space trying to find our way back to our hotel when we were set upon by our first rival band, 9-Puri, a group of eastern princesses of various trade kings who were mean and had hordes of rabid fans. They threatened us with breaking our instruments if we didn't drop out. Goolaz ended up killing fucking 5 of them. We lost to their monk's fury in the end, but Goolaz had slain five celebrity members of royalty, so in the morning when we woke up groggy with our instruments shattered and destroyed, we were immediately arrested and brought to the mayor of Kalkus' office. We explained that the law called for our punishment, but he'd be willing to pardon us if we checked out New Kalkus, the new venue for Soliloquy after the last one broke down. He mentioned that something odd was happening in there, and that the rest of the bands had already gone in there beforehand to check it out. And with that we went to clear our names. When we entered, we were immediately locked in and greeted by a powerful bard who introduced himself as the Rhythmancer, a man who claimed he would take over Jinnen and use the power of song to conquer.
 
So yeah, we were trapped in a megadungeon for the rest of the campaign. A lot happened so I won't go into everything that happened. I'll put the map I gradually made for the party to smooth travel out. If you're interested in a section, ask and I can tell the story.
 

 
To sum it up, we traveled this dungeon and we did the following things:
We clashed with other bands in combat, through puzzles, and various other challenges. Some of them were enthralled by the Rhythmancer, some were just assholes. In general it just cleared our path and earned us the tickets we needed to face the Rhythmancer himself. We found various notes and logs giving us the lore behind the places we visited and on the Rhythmancer's story.  We completed various puzzles to gain keys, which we later found opened rooms that granted us powerful musical artifacts. The short story is that the Rhythmancer used to be a normal bard. He worked as a scribe and practiced performance and worked on his bardic magics on the side. One day his performance caught the eye of a princess being escorted through town. The King then hired the bard, Ragged Tom, on as a court jester to please his daughter. Tom soon discovered that the king was using his daughter for a nefarious purpose. In Jinnen, the goddess of dreams, music, and art, Gahari, used to have a pet. The Songbeast, an ancient creature of metal, creation, and music used to roam the skies of the material plane and Gahari's domain of the Feywild. It used to race, spreading inspiration where it went and filling the skies with color and beauty. The King managed to train his daughter in singing well enough to lure the beast in and capture it for his own collection. The beast soon grew crazed, and it rusted and lost its luster and song. Tom discovered this and arranged to use his bardic magic to free the beast and spirit the princess, who he had fallen in love with, away. He managed the latter at least, but the Songbeast was eventually killed and its body parts spread across the realm. The body was tracked and held secure by an order of metal-playing paladins called the Knights of Rock, but that becomes relevant later. Anyway, Tom was execute by the king, and was eventually sentenced to a few centuries of undeath in the castle's dungeons. He was put there and though the kingdom fell to a war during his sentence, Tom abandoned his humanity and eventually formed a lute with his own bone and sinew, before using it and his bardic arts to free himself and begin raising the dead in order to find the pieces of the Songbeast and use it for his own purposes, hoping to find the princess and exert his revenge on the world.
 
So turns out, the Knights of Rock failed their mission. We met their last member (actually our band's forgotten 5th member, an Aarakocra) in the labyrinth, who warned us of the Rhythmancer's plans before dying, and when we had prevailed and gained the tickets needed to enter the big guy's lair, we saw he had succeeded. The Rhythmancer was waiting for us on a stage built for his own band, RAGNAROK. He had pieced together the Songbeast part by part, and its rusted corpse stood over his band, a bunch of undead ex-members of the other bands we had faced. He said he was hoping we would perish so he could raise us as well and use our magical talents to power up the Songbeast further. We fought his band and VERY narrowly succeeded, mostly due to clutch uses of magical items and the fact that Polymorph is a VERY good spell. We watched as his form dissipated and the labyrinth dissociated, all of its parts aside from the stage we were on returning to the parts of the multiverse they were taken from.
 
And so we returned to the mayor of Kalkus, who congratulated us on the reclamation of the venue and on our defeat of the Rhythmancer. He explained that the loss of the other bands (all missing since the labyrinth dissipated) and the disasters surrounding it had brought the population of Kalkus and the attendees of Soliloquy to despair, and that we needed to keep the festival on to celebrate peace as much as we could. So we chose the crumbling stage that still held the Songbeast's corpse as our venue, since the body of a monster of metal and song is a pretty fuckin METAL thing to play under. After we had set up the stage, we began playing and started making performance checks to try and get the crowd out of their funk. After a bit we managed, and Alex described how the crowd gradually began to regain its mirth. It reached a peak where Alex described how everyone, for one split second, felt as one, in harmony with each other in the inspiration of the music. And it was of course at that time that the incorporeal soul of the Rhythmancer decided to seep into the Songbeast's corpse, animating it and immediately raising every corpse in the surrounding few miles as undead.
 
The crowd immediately started to panic, of course, given the beast's roars and the zombies everywhere. We were level 9 at that point, and though we could hopefully take it on, so we began attacking, with Sylark and Easy Water taking the frontline and Goolaz and Fool's-Game slinging spells from the back. We were proven wrong because we were fighting the corpse of a dead GOD possessed by a powerful Bard. Wanna know this thing's rough stats? This shit had like 25 AC, over 1,000 HP, and could stun all of us with a roar, do like four multiattacks in a turn, and we were all fucking Bards with our puny d8 hitdice. Even though Sylark managed to hit it once or twice, we were having to like use all of our resources to even touch the thing. There was a moment where we and everyone else decided to kind of give up and hope to hold the beast long enough for a few civilians to escape.
 
But then we noticed our faithful roadie Eddie standing off to the side of the stage, tapping his toes and acting like everything was fine. Almost everyone else through the adventure had given us shit, but not dear, sweet precious Eddie. Now here's something I neglected to mention at the beginning. This campaign had a few special rules for Bardic Inspiration since everyone was playing a squishy support caster. You were able to give Bardic Inspiration as a reaction to another bard making a saving throw, an attack roll, or ability check. And they could stack. So for example if Goolaz were making a really important saving throw (even a death saving throw), Fool's-Game, Sylark, and Easy Water could all give him an extra die (we all had either d6es or d8s) to the result, almost guaranteeing a success. We had used it handily through the advenutre, but pretty sparingly since everyone wanted to use them for Swords Bards' flourishes and Whispers Bards' psychic blades. Eddie threw us a thumbs up and inspired us, returning each of us a use of Bardic Inspiration.
 
From Eddie's confidence we figured out what we had to do. Every time Sylark or Easy Water would attack the Songbeast, we exploited the rule, allowing them to feasibly hit the 25 AC mark with consistency. And when they were attacking and tanking, Goolaz and I had the bright idea to try and hype up the crowd and inspire them, so they would in turn inspire us. Goolaz started belting out Jumpin' Jack Flash and restarted the concert. Each time we succeeded on doing something like that, the crowd would become more confident in us, restoring our Bardic Inspiration. Their inspiration also seeped into our attacks. As we hyped them up, our weapon attacks would tap into their cheering, and we would start doing extra d6es of damage to the beast. It reached the point where attacks started looking like this:

And each time we did something to hype the crowd, we would find another gust making their way to cheer us on.
Melbin, the magic item shop owner we bought scrolls from at the beginning and promised to sponsor jumped from the crowd and gave us all Shield scrolls, as well as calling our pre-show ad for him shit. Coobie, an albino Lizardfolk we met in the labryinth and asked us to perform plays for us jumped in and informed Sylark that the "Holy Avenger" that he had been thinking was a prop the entire adventure was actually a real Holy Avenger. Basically the sword had had a function where Sylark had needed to fail a Wisdom saving throw to believe that the sword was real at the start of his turns, Coobie confirmed that it was, and so it was. Hinton, a gnome we met in the maze who offered hints on how to progress in return for various things, showed up. Throughout the adventure, we had all given up the knowledge of one of our songs and a gold piece to figure out what to do, and Fool's-Game had given up his proficiency with bagpipe and the usage of the Fool's Insight feature I built him to get and that I was sad to have given up. He returned these to us. I promptly used it to do just what I had hoped to one day, and I immediately used it to make the BBEG pass gas in front of everyone. The ghost of one of the Knights of Rock, either our 5th member or their leader who was enthralled by the Rhythmancer, showed up and blessed the magical pair of gloves they had given Fool's-Game with a +5 bonus to hit. This was relevant a bit later. So-Matic, an urban dance group who we trounced in a rap-off and drinking contest showed up to say that if we could beat them, that this guy was a piece of cake. Neuroseptic Goreplague, an emo metal band who we had to leave behind to a vampire, showed up and strngethed our resolve, restoring a majority of our lost HP. Strange Tim Tuggapole, a halfling one-man band who turned out to be a silver dragon in disguise that was enthralled by the Rhythmancer, flew overhead and froze the Songbeast, paralyzing it for a round. After Tim paralyzed it, we knew we were getting close. We were all running low on spell slots, smites, and health. I was fortunate enough for the rest of the group to set Fool's-Game up for the finishing blow. Those magical gloves could basically perform a Falcon Punch. You could sacrifice your movement and take a penalty to the attack roll ranging from -5 to -15 to add additional fire damage to the punch. I decided to go for the big one, the -15. Here was my attack roll with advantage:

But thankfully, everyone gave me a smattering of Bardic Inspirations and I had the +5 from the blessing, resulting in:

 
An attack roll of 36, totaling for a crit damage roll of:

 
Time seemed to stop for a moment as the Songbeast's rusted exterior exploded. In an instant it was returned to its previous luster. It roared and its flesh shone chrome, it spouted color, and raced into the sky. We watched as it tore open a pastel, dreamy wormhole to the Feywild and raced through, to spread inspiration and music to the world again.
 
And the Rhythmancer, reduced to his former crumbling self, sat in a pile. He mumbled that he was doing it for love, and that he only wanted to see his beloved again. As if on queue, she showed up, brought down by the Songbeast's magic and gently told him that though his intentions were pure, they had been tainted by hate and wrath. (Turns out we could have inspired him or boosted some Charisma checks he was making and could have had the two reconcile, but since all the members of M.I.L.K. are kind of assholes, we were mostly intent on him just fucking perishing.) And he died having known that he absolutely freaked it.
 
And there the scene froze, M.I.L.K. victorious. The lone bard in the tavern ended his story of the legendary bards to the kids. In something really special, Alex included a few cameos. Josh and I already have characters planned for Alex's long form campaign whenever it's his turn, so Alex narrated that a gruff silver Dragonborn Paladin listening into the story returned to his drink and that a fussy woman, a Cleric, ushered the kids off to bed. I'm really hyped to play her so that moment really sticks in my mind. Really makes it feel like our accomplishments as M.I.L.K. had lasting effects on the setting and I can't wait for us to visit that tavern. And with that the bard adventure ended after about four and a half months, about three months longer than planned.
 
Again, if anyone's interested about any parts of this adventure or any of our other campaigns, I'd love to share our stories. 

A fun edit of the previous post to tide you over until I finish a big (BIG) drawing I'm working on:

 
Somehow this look suits her. I won't lie, it's something I've had in the back of my head for some reason for a while now. Also, that helmet is a fun challenge to draw.

The real highlight was the Duck Hunt Dog being a mega-faggot, as he does best. Oh, I guess Banjo and Dragon Quest Guy was cool, too.

Last night I had a really fucking LONG dream. Like a dream that lasted several dream days. Which wouldn't be so bad if the entire dream weren't just me going to school normally. And I was aware the whole time, so I just like "oh my fuckin god let me wake up already"

How to Doom Your Game
------------------------------------------------
1. Politics

Thank you youtube recommendations:
 
 

I'm not trapped in here with you
 
you're trapped in here with me

There's a pinball hall of fame out here in Vegas and it's pretty sweet. I heard they're even expanding so I may have to go back over there some time.

Firefox Jake spilled coffee all over the servers and disabled all my (and a shitload of other people's) add-ons. Saw an ad on Youtube just now. An ad - can you believe it? These are the end times.

Hearing someone switching between proficient English and proficient Japanese is so surreal.  I'm condition to expect one to be butchered.
 
 

I'm gonna play kayogee's version of the game because it allows me to ruin the game for everyone.
 
 
 
Scout: Shortstop, Madmilk, Wrap Assassin
I hate the Scout, and because of this it is my firm belief that he shouldn't be allowed to do any meaningful damage because he's an annoying little shitter. And his play-style should reflect that.
 
Soldier: Liberty Launcher, Gunboats, Market Gardner
If I've learned anything in my days off TF2, it's that the Trolldier is the most popular loadout of all time. Well, what of we had a Soldier/Trolldier hybrid?! We can please all the Soldier mains!
 
Pyro: Dragon's Fury, Shotgun, Hothand
Afterburn has way too many counters so I say we cut Pyro's over-reliance on it. Only then can Pyro become the best class. Also, the Hothand because that's the best weapon in the game .
 
Demoman:
Bootlegger, Tide Turner, Persian Persuader
Demoman is pretty cool as is, but I was thinking it would be cooler if we turned him into Pirateman by default. If you must have your explosives, the Loosecannon can be interchanged with the Bootlegger.
 
Heavy: Brass Beast, Dalakohs Bar, Fists of Steel
Heavy is a tanky dude and therefore his only choice of weapons should reflect that.  With these, he could become the unstoppable Force he was always meant to be!
 
Engineer: Widowmaker, Short Circuit, Gunslinger
Let's also make it so ammo boxes don't give any metal, therefore making Engineer completely useless, as he should have been from the start.
 
Medic: Blutsauger, Quick-Fix, Solemn Vow
With this new change, the balance of TF2 will be flipped on its head! Certainly an exciting and welcome change to any game. Battle Medics, unite!
 
Sniper: Sniper Rifle, SMG, Kukri
Everybody already hates Sniper so I don't think I need to make any changes to his stock loadout to ruin the game.
 
Spy: L'Etranger, Big Earner, Cloak and Dagger, Red Tape Recorder
Let's just make it so Spy is invisible forever.
 
 
 
Valve, please hire me.
 
 
 

Kit(ten) car.

idk, idk but nice gun, Kinomoto? Sakura, what looks to be a gup
idk, a naruto character, is that the girl from welcome to the nhk?, idk
idk, Kawajiri?(not sure if she took his name) Shinobu, Izumi Sakurai, idk,
idk, idk, idk, idk but she's familiar
 
Now, round 2, anime boys:
 

Recognized five but only could name two
 
Beat that, nerds

Like I said, I dropped it after Kaban appeared, so I really dunno what happens afterward but I assume it's more of the same (the discussions I've seen seem to confirm that)
 
She literally does nothing. There was a microscopic tease that Serval was the same Serval as Season 1 who lost her memories, but literally nothing happens with it when Kaban shows up, her blandness almost seems like she's just given up on the world. It's just a complete insult to everything before it. Kaban also seems to have no attachment to Serval at all. Why the hell did they even connect it to season 1 at all?
 
It always kinda tried to clumsily hint at something, but it anticlimaxes it every single time. The episode before the Kaban episode ends with a dramatic reveal that it's a grown up Kaban, and she saves the original party from a wild Friend (called Beast, which I assume becomes the final antagonist since it is more or less following the party around since the start) by throwing a paper airplane, and it's all pretty cool seeming.
 
But then the next episode, all she does is sit in a lab with the two owls (who also lost all their fun character bits) and spouts some exposition for the plot that anyone could have already guessed. Then the "conflict" of the episode doesn't even really concern her at all, and the end is just her waving with dead eyes like she's probably a few bottles of whisky away from just staying in bed 'till she dies. None of the cool inventive Kaban that was in S1, or even the image of "the charismatic human that can control or befriend animals" that seemed to be an overarching theme for the second season. She was just some girl in a labcoat.
 
If it were in a vacuum the show would have been brushed aside as a kinda airheaded kids show about animal girls but the fact that it makes so many callbacks to season 1, yet faceplants every single time it does, makes it seem almost mean spirited. Not to mention that the animation quality is almost worse than season 1's irodori brand animation, and the character models look much more awkward despite being more smoothed and clean.
 
to summarize, it's the soul-soulless meme but pretty much true

You have FIVE (5) seconds to explain why you aren't watching Kemurikusa right NOW

t. gringo

There are more frames in this fan video than in all of Kemono Friends season 2:
 
 

Ownership of the Funko Pickle Rick figure is considered justification for homicide in all first world nations.