#RPGaDay2026 - Day 13 - "Strain"

Day 13 of #RPGaDay and I'm feeling the pressure, perhaps the "Strain?"

If cheesy line about pressure creating diamonds, what does strain create? 

Hemorrhoids.

And I'm the king of being the pain in the ass for my players.

Because I like continuity, I like bringing one-off scenarios, or flavor text back.   Not everything, but just enough to remind the players that the characters' actions have influence in the world, if not outright consequences.  

But as I ponder options to talk about strain with my Monday night gaming group, the winning answer came from the guys who experienced it all happen: "When Echelon and Talis ran a barony..."

Day 8 I talked about Echelon and Steve.    Two strange bedfellows who became the best of friends until each died. The whole barony thing is where it started. 

Spring Semester '99 - College - a few of the players are locals, they'd like to continue the campaign.  I set up a whole wizard from another dimension, trying desperately to go back home.  While the party visited the capital city, Talis wisely set up rooms at a local brothel.   For the last session of the semester, Kannex the Wizards researched too well, transporting him... and everything in the brothel back to his home world of Talislanta.

For the summer, we converted our AD&D 2nd Edition characters to Talislanta and went on a series of missions exploring the realm, but also getting more components and MacGuffins for the return journey home.

I had left Talis, Echelon, and their friend Brutus the Gladiator standing right outside the vanished building. 

What the rest of the summer group didn't realize was that I ran two additional sessions for Echelon and Talis' players.  

They returned to their established base outside of Eding... then they remembered why they left in the first place. 

• The Talislanta wizards, Kannex?  He was trying to help the group stop a wedding to the local lord that had been infiltrated with a race of spider-people doppelgangers.  (Seriously, read Ballad of the Pigeon God... it makes sense, but its weird...).  Let's just say that wildly different magic systems resulted in spell failure and spell explosions often. 

When he wanted to fireball a group of spider people charging the altar... a reasonable response and rolled a max critical success.  

His well-weighed response, causing minimal civilian death or property damage essentially nuked the entire ceremony, guests included. 

The battle turned to healing, hunting down rogue spider-people, and putting out the fire at the Blue Wizard Inn, the only inn in-town. 

The good news was the spider-person bridge was killed.  The bad new was many other guests of high status... including Lord Athelstane himself were killed!  

In the aftermath, the leader of a rival adventuring party, sent a runner to the capital, and essentially declared martial law in the village, taking charge.  

The disaster in the center of town, the deaths of many essential villagers just a few weeks before harvest,  and the ncompetent rule of "Prince William" set the stage for a rough autumn.

• The threat of famine for the winter.
• Tornados and storms threatening what was left of the town.
• The secret BBEG revealing himself to be the brother of the king... and Talis had slept with his daughter. 
• An uprising by some of the surviving peasants.. for all the wrong reason.  They torched the manor house and sent Prince William and his non-so amazing friends scattering.
• Columns of fire descending from the sky (it was a good things, but horrible optics). 

It was Talis and Echelon who kept people fed, purchased extra supplies, rebuilt essential equipment and fought off the various threats to this village.

... And if they didn't do it, they had the benefit of a collection of NPCs that had become their friends help them.  

Winter would be harsh, rations meager, but the village would survive...

And to make the wild session end on an ominous note, it was uncovered that the Chateau D'Echelon, there base of operations was still under a loan, and that individual, one Mister Nebuchadnezzar Tinpenny, was within rights to call in the entire loan, due to a number of "Act of God" contingencies in the agreement. 

We left our duo nearing the due date on the first day of Yule, and them plotting how to commit enough heinous acts on the moneylender and his well-earned good squad... and I left them hanging all summer until we reconvened on move-in day, Fall Semester, for a wonderful reunion, no one had seen coming.  

Strain: So far, what is the heaviest set of RPG things you have carried to play?