|
Sage Genesis posted:I assume that's the distance on the battle mat, not in-character real world distance. Magically returning from less than a foot of distance is of... limited usefulness. Ratpick posted:The elements are: Also a secret door.
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 14:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 22:08 |
|
|
FRINGE posted:There were no "battle maps". Those came in when WotC tried to make another layer collectible stuff to go with their CBG. grog.txt is thataway <---
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 15:19
|
|
|
FRINGE posted:For people that are sticking with 3e rules - werent Duskblade and Warmage better than Eldritch Knight? I had a dude play an Eldritch Knight in a campaign and I think after a while he wished he just played a straight caster. Once we got to the "sweet spot" levels in 3.5 he was pretty underpowered next to the party's Archivist and Warblade.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 15:30
|
|
|
Really Pants posted:Manticore NPC who really wants to be a sphinx. The manticore is smug and not very bright, and all his riddles are like "How many big rocks in river?" and "Where sheep go?"
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 16:25
|
|
|
FRINGE posted:For people that are sticking with 3e rules - werent Duskblade and Warmage better than Eldritch Knight? Duskblade was good for exactly one thing: Doing lots and lots of damage in melee, especially after level 13. Other than that, they were pretty unexciting. Warmage was just bad. Really bad. You simply had the worst of the entire spell list to work with and the class didn't give you enough support to make them good. Eldritch Knight wasn't great, but you had a lot more flexibility to bring to bear with the spell list.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 16:53
|
|
|
Ratpick posted:I might consider applying, but the list of provided elements you have to use is giving me a headache. I was going to try this but then I realized that even if I won, which I wouldn't, I'd end up getting 4 cents a word to work for a company that I don't actually like. Also the guidelines for every adventure would probably be laden with incredibly generic fantasy stuff like the items they listed, and that would drive me up the wall.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 17:12
|
|
|
Ratpick posted:
The players are escorting an elven noble, the famed Archaeologist Winsome Yarrowstalk, to the Temple of Bangstop-Heavy perched high in the mountains above an abandoned gnome settlement. As they cross the treeline, they find a massively wounded orc lying on the pass. The orc warns them of a Manticore who is in the area, a formerly neutral creature who turned on their tribe and slaughtered them as they travelled up the mountain. The manticore is a deadly foe, keeping its distance and hammering foes with its tail spikes until they are exhausted, and then picking up huge rocks and dropping them on people, but it can be avoided if you move fast enough. Encounter one: Manticore is off screen providing artillery fire. Players and NPC must negotiate a winding mountain pass while evading the fire of the manticore and find the doorway to the temple. Just inside there is an open spike pit studded with the remains of some orcs that must be bypassed quickly, as the open doorway provides a good target for the manticore. Fixtures and fittings provide options for climbing, bridge building etc as well as jumping or edging across the wall. Use of pre-existing orc corpses to build crossing platform entirely encouraged. Once inside the temple, Elven Noble begins studying the writings on the walls and taking copious notes. Players can search and loot various shrines and offerings, elf doesn't seem interested in the material possessions. Temple is full of odd clicking. After a while, elven noble activates a hidden switch and a whole section of the wall slides into the floor revealing the small horde of skeletons behind who were bumping up against the wall! Encounter two: Skeleton (10) fight 6 skeletons will move to engage the players in melee while 4 more hang back and open fire with their shortbows. Elven noble cowers behind the party and lets them go to work for a few rounds, then attacks the rearmost party member with his rapier because he's obviously evil I mean COME ON. Success: Party gains ~150 gold in assorted temple statuary and gems, the noble's personal gear (3 potions of healing, 1 antivenom, 50gp in coinage) including a magnifying glass (worth 100gp) and two rare books (25gp each), gloves of missile snaring and a +1 Bow of the Manticore Slayer that grants +2d6 damage against manticores.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 17:54
|
|
|
Lot of corpses lying around in that scenario. Why not have some fresh orc skeletons join in halfway through?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 18:48
|
|
|
I don't see why this encounter is so difficult to make. We already figured out the secret to awesome encounters, hell they even remind you in the guidelines. Make the orcs skeletal orcs. Boom, two for one, double the awesome. What's that you say? The encounter still sucks? Alright, we know the solution to this. The elf noble's a skeleton. The ruined temple's a skeleton. The spike trap and secret door are both skeletons. 'But what about the manticore?' you whine. 'It's still gonna wipe parties!' Well, the manticore's a skeleton too. How's it fire spikes at that point? No clue, but that's a DM judgment thing. We're just making guidelines here, see? A framework for the players to build their own story. A... skeleton, if you will. Plus the Cleric gets to spam Turn Undead the whole adventure. That's gotta count for something, right?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 18:52
|
|
|
The spikes are shards of manticore skeleton.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 18:54
|
|
|
Making the manticore a skeleton would probably ground it, so it's a tempting option.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 18:55
|
|
|
The manticore has hired the party to kill skeletons, since - as is traditional, and tradition is the most important thing - they're immune to piercing damage.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 18:58
|
|
|
goatface posted:Making the manticore a skeleton would probably ground it, so it's a tempting option. Giant magic monsters fly all the time despite it making no physical sense, there's no reason why a winged skeleton can't fly. Can undead dragons still fly?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:01
|
|
|
Some skeletons have hired the party to kill a manticore squatting in the temple of Kelemvor, but the Orcish arm of the League Against Monstrous Extermination are leading a protest outside against the action. Elf noble news reporter Swedish Jackson has always wanted to be a war correspondent, and so is trying to foment violence by telling both sides lies about the other, encouraging the players to sneak in the back of the temple and murder the manticore in its sleep, and lobbing flasks of noxious gas into the temple to anger the manticore.. Eventually the manticore goes berserk, storms out of the temple and attacks everything nearby. The orcs and skeletons blame each other and begin fighting amongst themselves, the crowd of civilians who had gathered to watch the protest are in danger and Swedish Jackson has a huge smile on his face as he orders his sketch artists to try and capture the look of terror in that child's face as it watches its brother get eaten.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:16
|
|
|
AncientSpark posted:Warmage was just bad. Really bad. You simply had the worst of the entire spell list to work with and the class didn't give you enough support to make them good. Yes, but a Warmage + Rainbow Servant was amazing if you could pull it off, since you now had access to metric fucktons of spells at will. My favorite 3.5e spellcaster was the Beguiler, since illusion/enchantment was fun to mess around with, and skills were fun to use as well. Not as objectively powerful as other classes, but a neat kit to play with. Binders and any Book of Nine Swords class were also amazing, simply because their abilities were metered per encounter rather than per day (Binder was technically on a cooldown).
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:18
|
|
|
Elven prince Harbie Silverchins has been stolen from his home. Even crude detective work by the party will lead them to a clearing where the rather portly bound prince lies next to a similarly bound manticore, surrounded by orcs engaging in an unfathomable ritual. 6 orcs will turn to attack the party. When they die, the orcs decay at hideous speed, rising again as skeletons just two rounds later. Once the battle is won, the party can investigate the two bound creatures. They have been mind-swapped for reasons they do not understand. Nothing in the clearing suggests what purpose the orcs were trying to achieve. The mystery is never solved. The ex-elf doesn't mind as he's now got a kick-rear end manticore body, but the ex-manticore is really depressed and kills himself two weeks later.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:33
|
|
|
The Monstrous Fighting Championship has come to town, bringing the glory of personal combat between semi-intelligent creatures to the masses, at only a fraction of the risk. The Steel-Fist, an orc bare-fist legend, is fighting a Manticore named Steve for the inter-city unarmed title. The bout takes place in a great cage surrounded by temporary seating, but the press of the crowd means that most stand. Security at the events is maintained by a ring of skeleton security guards whose rigorous orders mean they can be trusted to watch the crowd and not the fight. The Party are hired by the elven noble Gin Priss. They want the fight stopped in the third. They're not too bothered about how.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:51
|
|
|
FRINGE posted:That was a 2e reference. Depending on the game/house thats either 90 feet or 90 yards. (Basic book rule was: 90 feet indoors, 90 yards outdoors - suspend disbelief.) There were no "battle maps". Those came in when WotC tried to make another layer collectible stuff to go with their CBG. Here is a 1982 picture that seems to show dungeon tiles. Here is an ad from 1980. I don't know when the first battle maps were used exactly, but it was obviously more than a decade before WotC even existed, and probably 20 years before WotC got their hands on D&D.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:53
|
|
|
As the adventurers approach the temple they discover a small party of orcs using a spiked pit to defend against a horde of skeletons. An elf riding a manticore watches the fight from above, seemingly directing the skeletons. If the adventurers try to intervene, everyone immediately stops fighting and gets angry at them for interrupting their historical re-enactment of The Siege at Agarah Temple. A few successful social checks (difficulty based on the amount of damage they did) allow the adventurers to smooth the whole thing over and possibly even join in! Afterward a secret door opens to reveal the refreshments, hidden from view during the battle to increase versimilitude. Success: Lemonade, several +1 Cakes of Deliciousness, and an invitation to come back next year if they promise not to stab anyone this time.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:56
|
|
|
I got my wet-erase gridded map from my mom who used it for AD&D. The only problem is the squares are slightly too small for modern miniatures.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 19:58
|
|
|
The Temple of Pain was a spiked pit with a plank to kick sacrifices off. The plank has been snapped off. To one side is a secret trapdoor that covers a tunnel used to clear out the remains when it got a bit full. A Manticore hires the party to clean out the skeletons who have formed at the bottom of the pit so they can use it as a nesting site. An Elf Noble hires the party to recover the ring that was worn by their father who was thrown in the pit. After fighting down a thin tunnel they wipe out the skeletons and find the ring, but when they get to the top again there is a dispute happening between the manticore and some orcs about ownership rights of the pit and surrounding land. With a successful persuade or intelligence check, both sides can be convinced to go to independent arbitration and the matter is peacefully resolved.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:05
|
|
|
Jimbozig posted:Here is a 1982 picture that seems to show dungeon tiles. Here is an ad from 1980. I don't know when the first battle maps were used exactly, but it was obviously more than a decade before WotC even existed, and probably 20 years before WotC got their hands on D&D.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:18
|
|
|
Gangs of local youths have been having a turf war. The temple of Silvanus has been covered in graffiti and Silvanus is so pissed that he has sent a Manticore into the city to gently caress people up. After defeating the manticore by luring it into the well-trapped tomb of Herbert Stronk, spiked pit merchant to the stars, thoughts turn to the turf war. Unfortunately, because of the racisms, everyone assumes that this is the fault of the local orc gang, and so the party are sent into the orc district to give the kids a stern talking to. There they find the orc kids have a kidnapped elf noble teen, locked in a room hidden by a secret door, who was the real culprit behind the graffiti. Everyone learns a valuable lesson about racial profiling.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:19
|
|
|
goatface posted:Gangs of local youths have been having a turf war. The temple of Silvanus has been covered in graffiti and Silvanus is so pissed that he has sent a Manticore into the city to gently caress people up. 10/10 would play
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:21
|
|
|
I vote that Goatface should be the only person allowed to write and publish official D&D adventures from this point onwards.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:24
|
|
|
homullus posted:The manticore is smug and not very bright, and all his riddles are like "How many big rocks in river?" and "Where sheep go?" WHAT AM WALK ON FOUR LEGS IN MORNING, AND WALK ON THREE LEGS IN DAY, AND WALK ON TWO LEGS IN NIGHT A COW BECAUSE I EAT LEGS OR ALSO A HORSE
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:39
|
|
|
I'm struggling now. The four players of skeletons, orcs, manticore and noble elf are quite hard to fit in to just two encounters. If there was one less, and the spiked pit and secret door were just a trap and an important hidden feature, it would flow so much better. They're going to get a whole bunch of near-identical responses because the pieces only fit together in so many ways that make narrative sense. Which, to be fair, might be exactly what they want.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:44
|
|
|
goatface posted:I'm struggling now. The four players
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 20:50
|
|
|
Splicer posted:A party consisting of an orc, a skeleton, an elf, and a manticore find a temple. The elf wizard polymorphed the fighter into something more useful
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 21:03
|
|
|
goatface posted:I'm struggling now. The four players of skeletons, orcs, manticore and noble elf are quite hard to fit in to just two encounters. If there was one less, and the spiked pit and secret door were just a trap and an important hidden feature, it would flow so much better. Yeah it seems like the options they give are designed to make as generic a quest as possible. Props for coming up with some narratives that follow their rules and are all infinitely more entertaining than the one they inevitably choose will be. Actually this raises the question: why bother farming this out to people at all? It's obvious it'll end up being something like "Elf asks you to recover a MacGuffin from Manticore den, Orcs want it too, the den is filled with resurrected corpses of people who also want the MacGuffin". Why not not just write it themselves? Are they really that lazy/under-staffed?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 21:52
|
|
|
The thing is, the two encounters don't even have to be connected if I'm reading this correctly. You're just limited in scope to those elements in making your two encounters. Having said that, I agree, goatface should be sending these to WotC.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 22:57
|
|
|
Given their test strongly suggests you purchase a DMG to "pass" with your adventure, maybe it's less actually looking and more backhanded DM conversion/selling DMGs and Monster Manuals? If they find some decent freelancers bonus for them? Edit - Although I suppose people actually writing adventures for the new edition probably have the books already, but if I wanted good writers/designers I'd want to see what they could work with prompts alone. ScaryJen fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Feb 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:10
|
|
|
It could simply be a means of looking for particularly clever writers who can take any premise and work it into something cool, but somehow I get the impression that this is their normal mode of operation and that you're going to be working with lovely premises forever. Someone dartboards a few monsters, they check off the 'combat' and 'social/exploration' boxes (note how they combined two of the three pillars into one encounter), and off it goes to print.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:20
|
|
|
I'm not sure how they're going to find whatever it is they're looking for with what they've given. It's meant to fit on two pages, but they admit to aiming for people with previous RPG writing experience. There's no space to fit in world or character building, nowhere to develop any artistic flourishes. Maybe they just want someone with encyclopaedic knowledge of the Forgotten Realms, Someone to fill every scene with a dozen callbacks to previously published work.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:31
|
|
|
The pessimist in me is that they really don't want any clever ideas. Hoard of the Dragon Queen seems to be based on a pile of cliches after cliches. Real D&D is about exploring ruins and killing all the monsters and taking their stuff, being murder hobos under the employ of a noble to find some sort of artifact. Something like, The Elf Noble is a mad wannabe Paladin who heard that a manticore is lurking in some old ruins, and wants to claim credit for slaying it. It's skeleton infested, but it turns out the manticore is just sort of a loner, and the skeletons can't really do anything to him(no one gave these skeletons bows, so fighting them is a big brawl to off set the potential manticore ranged-favored fight). He preys on a local band of orcs for food, the orcs known to be causing regular trouble for trade routes, so overall he's doing civilization a service. While being a nice twist(if a bit unoriginal) on a cliche, doesn't seem to be the their bag. Hoard of the Dragon Queen has a bunch of issues with just strictly relying on cliches. "Two Black Dragons Can't Work Together! It's Unheard of!" makes me roll my eyes hardcore, and makes me think the writers sort of racist since as far as I understand, intelligent creatures in the D&D Multiverse have free will, so two black dragons tag teaming for both their mutual benefit shouldn't be such an extreme thing to believe. It's taking it to an extreme, but it comes at me as sort of "I don't believe your story. If someone dropped a coin on the ground, the Jew has to pick it up. Has to. It's unrealistic if they don't." The Manticore must be evil. The skeletons are his minions and you fight orcs on the way. That's what they want.
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:36
|
|
|
Yeah, if I was looking for something in the vein of heroic fantasy, I'd be pointing to books/authors in the genre as well as previously published game material. This kind of laundry list isn't exactly uncommon in game development with a publisher, though, to be fair. They might want to generally see if they can find candidates willing to work around those kind of restrictions. ^ Also, that's the kind of throwback I've been seeing in 5th that's turned me off the published material quite a bit. I was more of a late 2nd ed fan, but back then it was encouraged in the literature to think outside the tropes and stereotypes presented. They seem to be less about "getting back to the basics" and more about pushing a stale, outdated narrative. ScaryJen fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Feb 21, 2015 |
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2015 23:40
|
|
|
Ratpick posted:The thing is, the two encounters don't even have to be connected if I'm reading this correctly. You're just limited in scope to those elements in making your two encounters. Only one of them needs to contain all of those things as well apparently. So make one with Orc Skeletons fighting a Maticore in a room with a spiked pit with a secret door that leads to a Elf Noble. Then go wild with the other and have it be Modrons fighting a Red Slaad or something.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 00:16
|
|
|
PublicOpinion posted:I got my wet-erase gridded map from my mom who used it for AD&D. The only problem is the squares are slightly too small for modern miniatures.  Splicer posted:This towel is from 1982.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 01:10
|
|
|
A town council made up of a good manticore, skeleton, and orc, want the party to defeat a rampaging horde of elf nobles.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 01:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 22:08 |
|
|
Along the way they encounter a stealthy mimic and a hole full of ropers.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2015 01:34
|
|