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mellonbread posted:[*]There are a lot of people out there who think that the Level 1 experience is the best part of D&D and that the entire game should be like it. See every first party Lamentations module, where treasure is basically non existent and the player characters are more likely to emerge degenerated in some way rather than increasing in power, if they survive at all.[/list] The idea that level 1 D&D is the greatest thing ever feels like some kind of deep, deep weirdness.
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Jul 17, 2020 00:48
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Nice to see the githzerai weathered the transition between “githyanki that don’t ACTIVELY hunt for slaves” and “player character race” pretty well.Night10194 posted:The idea that level 1 D&D is the greatest thing ever feels like some kind of deep, deep weirdness. I know, right? I THINK it’s one of those things where they get higher of nostalgia than playing the game itself, but I bet that’s too uncharitable.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:31
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I think some of it comes out of an observation I had while running A Wizard. While the players coming up with ways to avoid having to roll or get hosed by thinking up solutions was really fun, I think if you enforce people staying at low level with no mechanical power you make that more and more the ONLY thing they can try to do, if any time dice hit the table or an actual fight starts they're hosed. If that's the part of OSR that turns your crank, that's probably part of the thinking. Uncharitably it's also a way to give the GM a lot of power, and a lot of bad GMs/designers also think 'roll 20% to not die' is the height of horror.
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Jul 17, 2020 01:41
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Falconier111 posted:Nice to see the githzerai weathered the transition between “githyanki that don’t ACTIVELY hunt for slaves” and “player character race” pretty well. They're not statted up as a playable race in this book, they're just set up as people you might run into who probably won't be hostile. Even the Planar Handbook, which I'll probably do next and is meant as a companion book to the Manual filled with player-facing options, doesn't have an entry for githzerai. It does, however, have this.  That is an Elsewhale: an intelligent, magical extraplanar whale that can create magic bubbles of breathable air in its mouth and move between planes as innate abilities. They're commonly domesticated and trained as interplanar transport ships that can sail the waters of the planes. Cythereal fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 02:13
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Night10194 posted:The idea that level 1 D&D is the greatest thing ever feels like some kind of deep, deep weirdness. The thing is that... that's the first time. After that you're in. Go out and explore. Constantly trying to recaptiulate that specific magic is hosed up.
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Jul 17, 2020 02:40
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Cythereal posted:That is an Elsewhale: an intelligent, magical extraplanar whale that can create magic bubbles of breathable air in its mouth and move between planes as innate abilities. They're commonly domesticated and trained as interplanar transport ships that can sail the waters of the planes. Domesticated? Screw that. House rule: they're highly intelligent, gregarious, and loving love playing planar tour guide.
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Jul 17, 2020 02:47
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I looked up the ducks. They’re just cartoon ducks, like Donald Duck. Very grumpy, don’t appear to be anything beyond that. I wish it were Duck from Princess Tutu.
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Jul 17, 2020 02:52
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Bieeanshee posted:Domesticated? Screw that. House rule: they're highly intelligent, gregarious, and loving love playing planar tour guide. "Like three fifty gold?" "No. Three fifty squid." "That's three hundred and fifty squid." "I'll make it three-thirty since you got two gnomes but that's as low as I can go. Hup hup, take it or leave it, time is mollusks."
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Jul 17, 2020 03:39
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Nessus posted:One thing that I think Gygax had a point about was being able to have that wonderful experience where you played for the first time. The thing is that this is probably less of a thing now because people are at least somewhat exposed to the general ideas more widely, and also, it's something you do once. His recommendation was even "have the other players take a session or two as level 1 men at arms or something so the newbie can have a grand old time." Speaking from the dim recesses of my not quite fourteen year old self, my experience for the first wasn't wonderful. It wasn't bad, either. It was okay, because it was four teenagers trying to process this thing that had a lot of math and dice in it. Obviously it was fun enough to try again. And again. And I'm now a not-quite 52 year old man still talking about Pen and Paper RPGs. So, sure, fun. Level One was not a lot fun. I like playing magic-users as the figure poo poo out people. At Level One? Sleep Spell! Okay, the Kobolds are all asleep. Throat-cutting commences. So, can we stop so my character can sleep for four hours and re-memorize that spell or should I just act as a party pack mule with my massive Strength of a 7? Pack mule it is. The fun part if D&D doesn't really kick in until Level 5 or so. That's when my wizard gets Fireball. And has maybe enough hit points to not sneeze himself to death. Yep, sneezed to death. My Level One, 1 HP Wizard was with the party going through some low-built tunnels. And the GM was "If you run out of HP, you die." So the also Level One Thief blows his 30% Fing/Remove Trap roll and a dust bomb explodes to make people sneeze. So, I fail my Save vs. Poison against dust, sneeze and bonk my head for 1 fatal HP of damage. gently caress Level One to death with a rusty Holy Avenger, I say. Everyone fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 05:19
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Everyone posted:gently caress Level One to death with a rusty Holy Avenger, I say. But you for a hilarious story about and a very memorable adventure, a story able to be retold forever. Sounds like it was the epitome of a good RPG.
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Jul 17, 2020 11:56
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My secondary skill is The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 9: The Deck of Culture and Hangers-On 42: Blade of Vengeance The PCs walk into a town that’s preparing a lot of food for a festival celebrating a long-dead local hero. In fact, the PCs are asked to help with their choice of the parade, banquet, or dance. When the festival begins, the mayor gives a little speech. The mayor is also supposed to meet the parade at the end of the route, but the PCs notice the glint of steel beneath a float, which is an assassin intending to kill him “to avenge an ancient wrong caused by the local hero.” I could use a couple details about this hero and the grudge, but I can’t get angry at an encounter that invites the PCs to help organize a festival. Keep. 43: Into the Drink The PCs are leaving a tavern when a very drunk man accosts them, says he’s been admiring their talents from afar, and asks to join them. He’s adamant that he’s quite talented in stealth and combat, but his efforts to prove it will result in slapstick. The city watch will eventually pick him up to take him to the fantasy drunk tank or whatever. While being dragged away, he “offers to meet them when he is released to discuss the share of any future treasures.” Sure, why not. Keep. 44: Youthful Ambitions When the PCs are leaving a small town, a twelve year-old jumps out and threatens the PCs with a wooden sword - really, he’s trying to impress them with his adventuring prowess so they’ll take him with them. Logical arguments will not sway him, but the card suggests that redirecting his heroism would be effective: “Perhaps you should remain here to better protect your parents’ farm.” He will not actually be happy on the road, and if he is taken along, his angry parents and other townsfolk will pursue them. Keep. 45: Observer The PCs are near a national border, and see someone waving in the distance. It’s a courteous foreign woman who isn’t completely fluent in the local language, and who asks to accompany them for safety in numbers. She avoids sharing anything about who she is or where she’s from. She’s from the nation across the border (which makes it weird that none of the PCs can place where she’s from). “She assumes there are hostilities between her country and the party’s - which may be true, which is why she’s hesitant to speak about it.” Wait, what? Is it so unknowable whether the two countries are feuding or not? Also, she’ll be surreptitiously writing notes on the local culture, “conjectures about local customs,” etc. in a book at night, but she’s not a spy - “her interests… are purely personal.” OK, but… this country shares a border with yours. Probably your two cultures are fairly familiar with each other? Honestly, I’m just kind of confused by this whole thing. Pass. 46: The Small Con The PCs are shopping in a bazaar, and are approached by a (apparently) nine year-old boy who explains that he was left behind by his weaver parents who came to market to hawk their wares. (It’s clear from his story that he wandered off, but he insists that they forgot about him; cute touch.) His aim is to get them to let him spend the night with them, fill his pockets and abscond, because he is a halfling con artist. Ah yes, just like in Deck of Encounters 1, a con artist encounter that hinges on halflings being indistinguishable from human children. That is not okay, for multiple reasons! Just.. make it an actual human child! Then this encounter is fine. Keep.
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Jul 17, 2020 15:01
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I kind of like the fun, silly little color encounters in these decks.
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Jul 17, 2020 15:09
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Halflings are indistinguishable from human children (if you're a bigoted idiot).
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Jul 17, 2020 15:10
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CASTLE GARGANTUA PART 3: BLOOD In this post, we’ll explore the first of Castle Gargantua’s four dungeon generation tables: Blood. Castle Gargantua, Page 23 posted:Blood environments are dripping blood, literally. They're all about rage, war, and violence, usually haunted with grotesque monsters and fanatical humans. Their rooms, chambers, and corridors are built with a reddish marble-like smooth stone. There are dents and charred bloody stains on the walls and broken pieces of weapons and splintered shields here and there. When there's furniture, it's either sturdy and practical or antique bronze. Places here are warmer than the rest of the castle and the ceilings are 80' high, often painted with war scenes of forgotten battles. The rooms may be lit with blazing torches, braziers, and fire pits when inhabited. We’ll go over the room creation rules from the last section again, both as a refresher and because they didn’t give a complete picture of how the system works. You need a coin and a full set of polyhedral dice.
We’ll go over each table in detail for this post, to show how the system works. ROOMS & CHAMBERS The pick list for room types gives us the following options: Castle Gargantua, Pages 23 and 24 posted:ARENA NUMBER AND TYPE OF EXITS This is what our D4 does. Castle Gargantua, Page 24 posted:1 A single rusted grate, raised Are the exits human size or giant size based on the result of the coin toss? The book doesn’t say. I like to think they are, because it means you can have people running through a giant size portcullis, or climbing through the keyhole of a giant size door. But then, what happens when the next room is human size? Does the hallway narrow down? ROOM & CHAMBER SIZE AND TYPE This is what our D6 tells us. Castle Gargantua, Page 24 posted:1 Small room (2 squares x 2 squares) ROOM & CHAMBER CONTENTS Our D8 tells us what’s in the room. There’s a 4 in 8 chance of nothing, a 1 in 8 chance of a monster/trap and a treasure, a 2 in 8 chance of just a monster/trap, and a 1 in 8 chance of just a treasure. Other themed areas will have slightly different ratios but not depart significantly from this formula. TREASURES There are D10 possible treasure results. The most valuable potential item is a sack of 5D100 electrum pieces, each of which is worth 10 SP (meaning they have the same value as GP in most game systems). The least valuable is a pouch of 3D100 copper pieces. The most common value for a treasure is D100 SP. In addition to the mundane lucre, there are three magical treasures available in this treasure table. Magical tarot cards always start face down. When you pick one up, it has a 2 in 6 chance of stripping you naked and beating the poo poo out of you with clubs, a 3 in 6 chance to turn every NPC in your party hostile, and a 1 in 6 chance to raise your Strength to 18. Magic manacles reduce anyone bound by them to a mindless state, automatically obeying any orders given to them. There’s a 1 in 6 chance every day of continuous use that they break. Ghost weapons ignore supernatural damage resistance, hitting ethereal beings and other magic creatures like normal. They have a small penalty to hit, and age the user 10 years on a natural 20 to hit. Magic items in Castle Gargantua are like the ones in The God That Crawls. They will gently caress you up or kill you dead. Stuff them in your sack, flip them for XP when you get out of the dungeon, and do not under any circumstances use them. And these are far from the worst we’ll see. MONSTERS, WEIRDNESS AND TRAPS This is a D12 table of horrible poo poo. Entries have their armor listed in generic terms, IE “as chain, shield only”, etc. Morale and speed are likewise given in system agnostic descriptors, like “slow” or “superb”. Angry mobs on rye ergot are peasants hosed up on fungi. They’re rabble, meaning they have the same number of hit dice as the average party level, but attack with improvised weapons with a malus to-hit. I like this entry, I think it’s got exactly the right flavor for an are themed on endless war. It’s a serious threat to the characters regardless of level, but not one they necessarily have to fight directly. The peasants can’t exactly be reasoned with, but they can be tricked and outsmarted, or avoided outright. Antique warriors are tough fighters who entered the castle in a bygone era. They are “violent but might be appeased and befriended” and there are D4+1 of them per average party level, and a boss for every 10 warriors. I don’t like this entry, because it scales both the number and the strength of the warriors based on the party level. It’s also not unusual/interesting in the way some of the other entries are. A little information on their motivations would help me decide how they could be appeased and befriended. Bloodthirsty berserkers are battle crazed Norsemen who entered the castle to pillage it, and have been wandering ever since. They’re like Antique warriors with worse armor and better morale. Again, some more personality would have gone a long way here. Caputs decamort are grotesque masses of tentacles, on which dangle human heads. They get up to ten attacks per round, equal to the number of heads still alive. They’re slow and vulnerable to holy stuff, due to being undead. Once more, I would have appreciated a little more info on the ecology of these things. Do they pluck those heads off the people they kill? Do they attack on sight? Flat caps are two dimensional goblins in blood soaked caps. They’re cowardly, stealthy and don’t do much damage, but they hunt in packs. I assume they’re intelligent, since they wear clothes. Hybrid golems are taxidermized monstrosities made from the carcasses of different animals. They get multiple attacks, they’re immune to all physical damage except fire, and they can cast Enfeeblement as a 12th level wizard by screaming. I don’t know how a creature like this even behaves, other than roll around screeching and flailing at anyone who comes near them. Oversized lice are ten feet long. Their bite inflicts a neurodegenerative disease that “affects all abilities at once”, though we aren’t told how. They also deal D6 damage per round once they sink their proboscis into you, and that damage continues after they die because their nervous system is “iron hard”. The only way to get rid of them is fire or immersion in water. I like the idea of a giant louse in an area themed around meat and blood, but I wonder if the degenerative disease is really necessary. D6 damage per round until you solve the puzzle is going to kill most low level characters outright anyway. Stirges are mosquito-pterodactyls. The book doesn’t explain this, it just expects you to know it from D&D. If they drink too much blood they get too fat to fly and become easy targets. Other than that, I’m not a fan. Iron maidens are traps that look like a set of double doors. When someone goes to open them, they swing shut and deal D10 damage per average party level. This is an example of how traps have built-in scaling versus party level. I didn’t like it when it was explained in the first chapter, and I don’t like it here. Rusty spikes shoot out of the walls/floor with poor accuracy and minimal damage due to corroding rust, but also have a chance to inflict “super-tetanus” that deals rapid progressive Dexterity damage. The book explicitly says the spikes “have no telltale sign”, which is bullshit if you ask me. Bloodstone megaliths are traps that endlessly spawn blood blob creatures if any blood is shed on them. The text specifically calls out that this includes atmospheric blood drizzles or other room descriptors. The only way to stop it spawning the blobs is to smash it to pieces, and that has a good chance of breaking your weapons when you try it. Overall this is a cool puzzle/environmental hazard rather than a combat encounter or trap. Vampire magic mouths are mouths painted on the wall in blood. They cast Charm Person to get you to approach them, then bite you and drain you one level. If they roll a natural 20 they transport you to the vampire dimension and kill you instantly. Ah, level draining undead. Does anyone miss you? I didn’t think so. Overall, these aren’t my favorite dungeon hazards in Castle Gargantua. Those will come in later posts. A lot of them are underspecific about what the NPCs actually do, which is a pattern we’ll see in other entries. ATMOSPHERIC DETAILS Our D20 gives us an additional detail about the room, taken from a table of flavor text. I won’t give these for every dungeon area, but I’ll post this one in full so you can see what we’re working with. Castle Gargantua, Page 25 posted:1 A fountain of blood PASSAGES Oh remember how I said we were done rolling dice for this room? ...I didn’t say that? Good, because we’re not done. You need another D6 to determine what the passage the players take out of the room looks like. There’s a chance the door leads right into the next room, a chance of a short corridor, a chance of a winding corridor, and a chance of a flight of stairs. I imagine it all sounds more exciting when you’re being chased. There’s also a small (about 1/24 if you crunch all the if/thens) chance that each transition includes a secret exit leading out of the dungeon. This allows players to “save” their progress on future runs, entering at that point instead of the beginning of the Snakes and Ladders board. EXAMPLES Let’s roll us some rooms. Our first room is a giant sized meat locker, 240 by 360 feet in size, with three grates leading out, only one of which is raised. There are hooks hanging from the ceiling, on which dangle giant size sides of beef, pork, or possibly some less wholesome creature. Next, the human size battlefield stinks of carrion across its 120 by 120 foot floor. A swarm of stirges hovers overhead, eager to feed on living prey who make a run for the four iron banded doors leading out. This open air court is built to human scale, but covers a massive 120 by 180 feet. A hybrid golem rolls and flops among the benches and seats, shrieking at nothing and biting itself with its excess heads. Four bodies lie dead, enfeebled and clouted to death by the thing’s many limbs. A pair of magic manacles sit in the defendant’s box, awaiting a prisoner to attach themselves to. Two smashed wooden doors lead onward. A platoon of antique warriors have made their camp in this giant taxidermy laboratory, defending a fortified position among the enormous chemical bottles on the massive table that stretches most of the room’s 180 foot length. Only a single one of the hides tacked up in the room is worth anything to visiting adventurers. Something wails in agony from the broken doors that serve as exits  How are we doing so far? I think these individual rooms are much more evocative than the ones the Esoteric Enterprises generator spits out. They’re more memorable and have a much wider variety of descriptors attached to them. However, we also had to roll a lot more dice per-room to get there. And the connections between the rooms are totally arbitrary and don’t matter. We aren’t creating a living, interconnected megadungeon here, we’re just stringing tables together in a row. So far, the level scaling mechanics are not great. People like to complain about HP or stat bloat bloat in later editions, but this is basically the same thing - cranking up all the numbers in concert in an endless red-queen race that ensures fights feel the same at all levels, but take longer. That’s going to do it for Blood. Next post is the second themed area: Lust. E: I keep referring to "Lust" as "Flesh" in my head, because there's a pre-baked minidungeon called Flesh later in the module and it's loving with me. mellonbread fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 17:58
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So they're playing the level drain card, but you're level 1 and likely to stay there forever so...aren't those just one-hit kills?
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Jul 17, 2020 21:18
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Night10194 posted:So they're playing the level drain card, but you're level 1 and likely to stay there forever so...aren't those just one-hit kills? They're level 1 characters, anything is a one-hit kill
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Jul 17, 2020 22:43
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At that point, why bother having mechanics rather than just admit you're playing a Sierra Adventure Game and replace any instance of 'had to use mechanics' with 'player dies in a hilarious way'?
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Jul 17, 2020 22:48
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Roll to instantly die any time anything happens, like in KAMB
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Jul 17, 2020 22:51
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Waiting for the module where you're a playing a bunch of wights and roll 8d6 for the number of modules you went through without leveling before you stepped into that negative energy drain trap.
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Jul 17, 2020 22:54
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 Chapter 3: Terra (The Military) First of all, I had to choose between going as high-level as possible and listing the entire Terran order of battle for everything to hold together, so this post will be missing a lot of fine detail. But there’s enough to cover here. In 2170, Terran war planning revolves around a few key assumptions: first, the only reason the Confederation still exists is Vilani apathy towards it; second, the best way to defeat them is to use that apathy against them; and third, the best way to do THAT is to make war as expensive and impractical as possible. Despite a battle record of as many losses as victories, the Confederation has expanded after every war because the Imperium lacks the will to force it to give up the territories it took. So the military favors harassing invading fleets instead of trying to defeat them out right, engaging in commerce rating, and attacking targets of opportunity instead of vital positions whenever possible – unless the target of opportunity is also vital, at which point they dig in as much as possible to protect it.. Obviously, this policy changes later on, but the use of stealth, raiding activity, and bloody-minded defense when necessary remains constant through the end of the period. Admiral Roger Marbury St. John, Terran Confederation Navy (2164) posted:The marines are the point of the arrowhead – they make the opening. The Army forms the two edges of the arrowhead – it widens the hole the Marines make, and carries the rest of the arrow through to the heart of the target. The Navy is the shaft of the arrow, the part that gets the head where it’s going. All the parts work together to accomplish the job. None of them can do it alone. The Terran Confederation’s military has two sections: the Navy and the Army. The Navy is by far the more prestigious; it has first claim on citizens under the Draft that wouldn’t better fit somewhere else, advertises to attract volunteers, and has an entire system to sort out promising personnel not suited to life aboard ship but useful in supply, construction, or any other field into wherever they need to go. Basic training lasts just eight weeks but includes some of the most highly developed educational techniques in history; many recruits don’t speak English (the official language of the Navy) upon recruitment, but they can get them fluent enough to read technical manuals and perfectly follow military etiquette in little over a month. After that they put in another 6 to 12 weeks of specialized training for whatever position they get assigned; this includes officer training, though many officers earn commissions after rising through the ranks. In order to explain those positions, I’d have to get into the whole “order of battle” thing, so suffice it to say the Navy has a massive support staff on and off board – and they also operate the Terran Marines, units drawn directly from national militaries instead of the Draft and used to secure stations and spearhead ground assaults. A substantial chunk of Terran ships are either based on Vilani tech or just repurposed Vilani ships; Terran engineering in general makes use of reverse engineered Vilani principles as much as their more primitive Terran equivalents, and the Navy is no exception. They also employ Vilani defectors (though they tend to be watched closely for signs of being double agents but often end up fully integrated) and makes extensive use of Terrani, Terran citizens with some degree of Vilani ancestry and cultural familiarity raised within the Confederation, as spies, raiders, and often ordinary naval personnel. Command especially likes securing Imperial trade permits for them and has them operate behind enemy lines.  The Navy prefers to fight as much as possible behind enemy lines, avoiding having to defend planets or installations in favor of mobility; it uses its best warships to do just that. The only position it will not sacrifice is Terra itself; anything else can be abandoned if necessary. Aside from that, the Navy also handles escort duty, system surveys, and exploration away from the Imperium – as well as the bulk of the planetary invasion procedure, which includes four parts each with its own designated ships:
Speaking of the Army! While not frowned upon, the Army is considered less glamorous than the Navy; its soldiers often view their service as a way of getting technical education or going somewhere exotic before returning home. Or staying away; soldiers assigned to offworld postings are often given land grants or property on Vilani worlds (which are almost always underpopulated by Terran standards), guaranteeing even simple grunts a measure of wealth after their service. One of the defining elements of the next phase of galactic history is a powerful hereditary nobility of Terran origin, and the book implies these soldier-settlers evolved into them (alongside naval governors who intermarried with the local nobility). With the promise of off world land ownership and prosperity, the Army draws heavily from overpopulated nations in the developing world, especially India.  Recruits are put through eight weeks of boot camp and 8 to 16 weeks of specialist training, much of which resembles naval training but with a stronger emphasis on physical fitness then military etiquette. After graduation, most (though not all) soldiers are sent to bases on Earth far away from home (to keep them from interfering with local politics), though they can be deployed elsewhere depending on circumstances and their specialty. The word “Army” is a bit of a misnomer; the Confederation defines the Army as being in charge of military operations within an atmosphere, meaning it includes the equivalent of the Air Force and terrestrial Navy we’re familiar with. Not going too far into its subdivisions because, well, order of battle. Members of the Army can also be assigned anything from garrison duty, maintaining occupations, to even blue helmet work monitoring regions experiencing unrest, as well as invading other planets. In practice, despite operating under one command, the Army can be divided into two sections: the field and planetary defense armies. The field army covers planetary invasions almost exclusively. A planetary invasion, an operation that can take years and tie fleets down where Vilani armadas can hit them, breaks almost every part of Terran strategic doctrine, but a conquered planet outweighs any other operation in just how much it depletes the Imperial will to fight, so field armies tend to be well-equipped, well-trained, and determined. While Vilani have the advantage in space, Terrans usually have the advantage on the ground, especially with naval support; they want to take and fortify these planets as fast as possible. Other units belong to the planetary defense Army: slightly inferior in combat capability, often recruited from nations without much political pull, and much more experienced in maintaining order than in combat operations (though they do those just fine). These guys do receive training and fields the field army doesn’t, especially in how to occupy places with the goal of peacefully integrating them instead of readying making them beaten-down subjects and how to fight off invasions; the best usually end up garrisoning conquered planets and settling there after their term of service.  The unofficial third branch of the military is the Terran Merchant Marine, commercial ships that enter service during wartime usually used as either transports of various kinds or commerce raiders. The bulk of the Merchant Marine is armed, theoretically to deter pirates but in reality just as much to protect them in combat. The section goes into some detail on shipboard life and divisions of labor (which I’ll probably cover more in the Campaigns section), a bunch of major corporations that honestly have some solid adventure hooks but don’t deserve exploration here, and information we’ve already covered before. And that’s it for the Terrans. Next time, we move to the Imperium and finally cover its functions and society in detail.
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Jul 17, 2020 23:28
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Doublepost for archival assistance:Night10194 posted:At that point, why bother having mechanics rather than just admit you're playing a Sierra Adventure Game and replace any instance of 'had to use mechanics' with 'player dies in a hilarious way'? You're asking a level of self-awareness these folks just don't have.
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Jul 17, 2020 23:29
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Comstar posted:But you for a hilarious story about and a very memorable adventure, a story able to be retold forever. Sounds can be deceiving. Every PC died that night. And they died stupidly. The Thief blew a Climb Walls roll. Everyone else got murdered by bandits because the Thief couldn't take a rope to let them climb over a wall with him and nobody else knew how to climb a loving wall. It was the stupid, rules-lawyer BS of a starting out DM with a bit of power freak tossed in. I stayed in the hobby with that group because next week somebody else GMed and that person had a little more tolerance and flexibility. He tossed out the "dead at 0 HP" bit, decided we all would start at 3rd level with maximum Class HP and went from there. And it was a blast and why I stayed. I don't really like video games with my character dying over and over again. Why the gently caress would I want to play that out in real (RPG) life?
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Jul 18, 2020 00:04
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The idea that the point of a TTRPG is to produce anecdotes that are interesting to listen to, rather than games that are fun at the table, seems like a huge misfire to me. Like, anecdotes are fun, and I want to produce them, but they're not the point. The point is the engagement in the moment, the game that is played. I've played some truly awful TTRPGs and the stories from those are often better than 'yeah everything went well, it was fun, we had good fights and laughed our asses off and had a feel good moment at the end.' Which is the story that comes A trainwreck doesn't make your audience feel like they missed out, for one thing. You can exaggerate how bad it was, or dwell on things that are fascinatingly awful. I played in the hosed Up Hell Building campaign, and while I have plenty of stories from it I wouldn't wish that goddamn game on my fourth-worst enemy (I'm an imperfect person, so sue me).
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Jul 18, 2020 00:15
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Most of the fun stories I have from games come out of times when everyone was having fun at the table anyway.
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Jul 18, 2020 00:17
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Manual of the Planes: 3.5E Pandemonium (Chaotic Evil) Planar Traits: Objective Directional Gravity, Normal Time, Infinite Size, Mildly Chaos-Aligned, Divinely Morphic, Normal Magic Pandemonium petitioners are immune to electricity and sonics, and resistant to cold and acid. Pandemonium is the home of insanity and madness. Pandemonium is a plane of unending darkness and howling winds. Pandemonium is where the screams of the damned echo for eternity. Pandemonium is a vast subterranean realm, not unlike the caverns of Ysgard's third layer but far more expansive through the entire plane. And filled with an eternal wind. The winds of Pandemonium are eternal, omnipresent, and extremely loud: people need to stand close together to be heard when shouting at the top of their lungs, and only a very rare few places in the plane are sheltered enough for the wind to die down to merely a breeze. These winds drive most people mad, and are strong enough in places or in gusts to physically pick up people and carry them away. Normal fires are simply not possible on this plane outside those sheltered spaces, and magical lights in Pandemonium invariably attract the typically insane locals. Pandemonium is, at least, not actively malicious towards visitors: the plane is harsh and dangerous, but no more so for visitors than for anyone else. Most portals in Pandemonium take the form of unmarked dead-end tunnels, sometimes leading to the Elemental Plane of Air besides the normally adjacent planes. Most petitioners in Pandemonium were free spirits of the selfish sort, pursuing their own desires without concern for who it hurt. Others were madmen and lunatics in life, or dangerously out of touch with reality. On Pandemonium, these petitioners quickly lose much of their weight and become gaunt, ragged specters of their previous selves - not undead, and petitioners cannot actually starve to death, but easily mistaken for wights or ghouls at first glance by visitors. Most are also completely insane, driven so by the howling winds and starvation if they weren't mad to begin with. Yet they are sentient, and Pandemonium petitioners who retain class levels from life can be extraordinarily dangerous for how easily they're mistaken for normal madmen, often taking visitors by surprise. Civilization does persist in Pandemonium, but petitioners are only a minor part of it. Pandemonium is home to a race (or confederation of races, at the DM's discretion) from the Material Plane called the Banished. The Banished were sentenced here by some powerful being on the Material Plane, perhaps a god or a very powerful  , and to date no known magic has been able to free the Banished from their curse. Portals simply don't activate for them, and planar travel spells fail. The Banished have built a few cities scattered throughout the plane, in the rare hollows sheltered from the wind, though their survival is always precarious in the extreme. The Banished are not necessarily evil, they are not native to this plane, but most have been driven to such lengths for the sake of survival, and their desperation can make the Banished unpredictable and untrustworthy. If a group of heroes could somehow end the curse on the Banished, the victory would be remarked upon throughout the Great Wheel. Alternatively, if the Banished could build a lasting society truly at odds with Pandemonium's nature, it is in theory possible that they could tear their cities out of Pandemonium and join another plane - or even an entire layer of Pandemonium! Such a feat would be spectacularly difficult and likely trigger all manner of interference from other planes, especially if such a society would take the Banished to the Upper Planes, but it is possible. In theory... Pandesmos is the first layer of Pandemonium, and consists of vast subterranean caverns, some the size of entire continents, linked by winding tunnels. Most of these caverns are empty and overgrown with strange fungus and fiendish vermin that locals hunt and harvest for food, and icy, fast-flowing rivers of unholy water cross some caverns - many of these are tributaries of the River Styx, infernal counterpart to the River Oceanus in the Upper Planes. One such cavern is home to an organization of extraplanars called the Bleak Cabal, and the so-called Madhouse is a relatively hospitable way station for visitors, though most residents are deaf, insane, or both. To be avoided is the great cavern known only as the Halls of Winter. Snow constantly swirls through this cavern in blizzard force, limiting visibility to only a few feet, and the cavern is hunted by winter wolves and frost giants. What lies in the Halls of Winters is a mystery to outsiders, though rumors speak of some deity of dark and cold. Cocytus is found by descending deeper from Pandesmos into narrower tunnels that funnel the winds even more fiercely than in Pandesmos. Strangely, most of the tunnels on this layer show the unmistakable marks of having been chiseled out by hand, the origins of which are the subject of much speculation by planar scholars. At the heart of Cocytus is a site known as the Howler's Crag: an enormous circular dias in a radial web of tunnels, etched with words and numbers in countless languages, many of which are unknown to planar scholars. It is believed that any message screamed from the Howler's Crag can be heard by the intended recipient anywhere in reality, through the Great Wheel or even beyond. Whether this is actually true or not is not known, though fiends and petitioners have learned that the Crag attracts a steady stream of desperate visitors and curious archaeologists to prey upon. Even stranger tales speak of a place in Cocytus called Harmonica, the heart and origin of Pandemonium's winds where some great secret of the cosmos or fantastical treasure is hidden. If Harmonica exists, no magic or expedition yet exists that has even determined its location much less what might lie within. Deeper still into the plane brings one to the layer of Phlegethon. Here, normal gravity rules apply, and the sound of the wind is accompanied by the sound of water - many tunnels in this layer are home to icy rivers, some of which are part of the Styx, while others are wholly submerged. Fiendish marine life that thrives in the darkness inhabits many of these flooded tunnels, and are fished in turn by others. This is where the majority of the Banished dwell, centered on the city of Windglum. Windglum in general is a city of paranoia and suspicion, but visitors can nevertheless typically find safe lodging and trade within the city walls, and Windglum's artisans turn out many surprisingly high quality wares, made from ore mined from the surprisingly rich stone of the plane. On the other hand, visitors would best avoid the Citadel of Slaughter. This is the divine realm of the Greyhawk deity Erythnul, god of malice, panic, and butchery. Taking the form of a vast ruined fortress, the Citadel of Slaughter howls not with the sound of Pandemonium's winds but with the sound of battle: armies of petitioners slaughtering one another in endless blood sport, with the god himself the most dangerous predator in the realm. Almost nothing is known of Agathion, the fourth layer of Pandemonium. Here, the tunnels finally peter out into solid rock. Open space on Agathion takes the form of vast, empty hollows like geodes, typically reached only by gates to specific locations. As far as planar scholars know, Agathion is mainly used as a prison and a vault by gods across the Great Wheel, where they put things they hope to never see again. Next time, the Abyss!
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Jul 18, 2020 00:33
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By popular demand posted:A PC might have a good reason to be able to cast a WMD level spell if a deterrent is required. have you heard of... locate city?
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Jul 18, 2020 00:44
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CASTLE GARGANTUA PART 4: LUST Today in Castle Gargantua, we’ll be exploring our second themed dungeon generator: Lust. Castle Gargantua, Page 31 posted:The true horror of the rooms and chambers found in the Lust environments isn't immediately visible. There are lovely pieces of furniture in the corners and heaps of coins, gems, and jewels in lofty lounges pervaded by the scent of delicate perfumes. In reality, the furniture is shoddy and poor, the coins made of tin, the gems of glass, and the perfume barely covers the stench of body fluids and decay. The stained rooms, chambers, and corridors are built with a whitish claylike smooth stone. They are damper than the rest of the castle, and their ceilings are 60' high. They are lit with lanterns and oil lamps when inhabited. I’m going to go slightly out of order here because this section offers a disclaimer at the end of the monster/trap list. It suggests that if you aren’t interested in any weird sex poo poo in your dungeon, you can just replace Lust areas on your Snakes and Ladders board with Stone areas or some other room type. I support clearly signposting things like this, and giving people an option to sidestep it. Unfortunately, this specific example is a loving lie. Why? We’ll get to that when we do the Wine area. I’m going to do an abbreviated version of the room generation rules, since a lot of them are similar to Blood. Then we’ll create some examples. ROOMS & CHAMBERS The pick list for room types gives us the following options: Castle Gargantua, Page 31 posted:ANTECHAMBER NUMBER AND TYPE OF EXITS Same as in Blood, the number shown on the D4 is the number of exits from the room. In this case, we’ve got tin doors painted to look like brass, wood doors painted to look like wood, and leather doors. TREASURES The treasure list for Lust rooms matches the descriptive text we got at the beginning. Most of the items are fugazi, only worth a few copper pieces but disguised as items 500 times their real value. Glass beads disguised as sapphires, copper coins painted gold, a fake pearl necklace, you get the idea. There are also three magical treasures. The Magical Picture Book has a chance to teach Magic Users one of three spells:
The Magical gold tiara "permanently changes the wearer’s gender", and boosts their charisma. I can only assume this is a riff on the “Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity” from 1E. Or was it AD&D? Anyway, the original item lived on as a meme about the “cursed belt of gender change”, except its actual effect was what we’d call a sex change today. So I genuinely don’t know if the tiara is intended to change the character’s physical sex, or their gender presentation. I think I’m putting more thought into this than the author did. Speaking of belts, the Cursed Chastity belt not only requires a remove-curse spell to take off, it also stabs you with iron spikes every time you take damage, dealing an additional D6 damage and making it impossible for you to move. The book calls putting it on a “very, very stupid idea” and I have to agree - though I’m beginning to wonder if reviewing this module was also a stupid idea. Magic items: still largely useless, and now tasteless as well. Remember kids, sell it to a wizard first chance you get! Let him put it on! MONSTERS The monster selection ranges from interesting, to boring, to grotesque, to grotesque but interesting, to grotesque but boring. Bloated giants are ten foot tall masses of flesh, covered in “mouth-like orifices”. They’re almost immobile and get four low-damage attacks per turn (biting with the mouths), but they’re more interested in sex with anyone who passes by. The reason being, they’ve got a “1 in 6 chance per partner” to turn into a normal person. If denied this, they attack, but being largely immobile there’s not much they can do if you choose to walk away. Rating: grotesque but boring. Bluebeard ghouls are the giant Bluebeard’s wives, who came back from the dead and ate him. As a result, they’ve got long blue beards of their own. They wander the castle, looking for men to take revenge on. Thematically pretty interesting, mechanically boring: they’re just undead fighters who slap you with an axe. They also have good morale and are faster than you, which as I mentioned earlier does not an interesting monster make. Houris are a creature I had to look up. Wikipedia says they’re the women who reward the faithful in paradise according to the Koran, but apparently they also appear in the early D&D editions in the encounter tables. This is something that would have been helpful to include here, because the book doesn’t explain what they are. It just says they’re here to manipulate you into going on missions for them. What missions? No idea, book doesn’t say. They ensorcel you by kissing you. I rate as boring because there’s not enough detail to do anything with. Libertine tribesmen are “naive, friendly and uninhibited” and that’s all the detail we get about who they are and what they do. The book gives us a paragraph of text about how their fingers grant a +1 to all die rolls if chopped off and worn as amulets. If that information were somehow communicated to the players (do Magic Users know this? Clerics? Thieves?) it would make them grotesque but interesting, since it offers the players a chance to flip the script and turn hostile toward the NPCs apropos of nothing, rather than the other way around. Monstrous angora cats like to torment creatures smaller than themselves for hours before killing them. Since they’re four feet tall, I think that only applies to halflings, and maybe dwarves. I would make them a bit bigger and let them hunt normal size people. Rating: interesting. Monstrous pink toads are uninterested in eating the players, but the rubies set in their pink skin make the players interested in killing them. When fighting in self defense, they secrete a neurotoxin with powerful emetic, diuretic and laxative effects, rendering the victim unable to act for one round. This was my players’ favorite monster, because it was gross but also totally believable and not obviously included for shock value. Also because it was their own fault for chasing the toad into his furniture pile and trying to kill him. Rating: grotesque but interesting. Organ treants are seven feet of “flesh, sinewy muscles, and throbbing organs”. I don’t know if the book wants the reader to imagine these as giant dongs. Every player at my table immediately did, and so did I. There’s a 1% chance they’re “in bloom” - covered with fruits that kill you on a failed save vs poison, but raise your ability scores by 1 if you succeed. Why do game designers do this? First of all, the risk/reward is totally opaque to the players unless one of the characters is a botanist or something. Second, the risk/reward is probably irrelevant because the thing only has a 1 in 100 chance to appear. Rating: grotesque and boring. Porcelain golems are 5 foot tall dolls. They’re immune to damage except blunt silver weapons and cleric magic, but move as though they’re severely encumbered. Their attack forces the target to reroll all their hit dice, and take the result if it’s lower than their present total. When I ran the game, the players realized the golem was “invincible” and pushed it into a reflecting pond, which it couldn’t flounder out of. Rating: interesting. Porcine orcs are orcs that look like pigs. They want “women to capture and riches to plunder”. Sidestepping the present “are orcs racist” debate for the even juicier “are orcs a bad hentai cliche” debate. At least they have a recognizable motivation. Grotesque and boring. Slavers are mercenaries, exploring the castle in search of slaves. They’re rabble (equal to your level) led by a boss (your level+3) and they’ve got slaves with them, which the book says are random classes but also level 0. I like this encounter because these guys are basically in the dungeon for the same reason as you: to find things to sell. They just happen to be selling people. It also makes for an interesting encounter, because there are more of them than you want to take in a straight fight, but if you’re clever you might be able to get the slaves to fight or start casting or something (can a level 0 Cleric cast spells? Is there even such a thing?). Rating: interesting. TRAPS There are only two. Mushroom thickets fill the air with hallucinogenic spores. When the players inhale them, they pass out. Then you run another module to see what they dream about. I’m not going to list the ones the book recommends because it’s not my job to advertise for them. When the module is over (because you won or everyone died) you dice to see how many of the bonuses and maluses you accumulated over the course of the adventure also happen to your character “in real life”. This is stupid. This isn’t a first party Lamentations module but it’s duplicating all the cutesy game-within-a-game mail-your-character-sheet-to-yourself horseshit we’ve come to expect from those. Scarlet Scazarin is a pox that disguises itself as a collection of glittering gems, embedded in a bunch of corpses you find on the dungeon floor. The gems are contagious pustules, which damage your Strength and Charisma once they start growing from you. The book says that “Curing the disease requires a remove curse spell”, which I dislike because it arbitrarily short-circuits the cure disease spell. Still, I’m prepared to call it grotesque but interesting. EXAMPLES Let’s roll up four rooms and see what the damage is. A giant sized 120 by 240 foot rectangular boudoir, accessible via a single tin door. A group of five porcine orcs have made their home in the drawer of an enormous vanity set. Their undisputed leader is an orc chieftainess, who wears a beautiful gem studded tiara. The whole room has a sweet, acrid smell, like paint thinner mixed with melted fat. A fishpond occupies the larger part of this 360 foot circular room, accessible via three leather doors arranged in a triangular pattern. The only sign of life are 3 colorful feathers, floating on the scummy water of the pool. A band of seven slavers uses this 120 by 60 foot human-scale asylum as a base of operation for raids further into the castle. They’ve locked their eleven captured slaves in the patient cells, and retrieved three precious sapphires (actually worthless glass beads) from the already pillaged visiting area. They’ve locked the two tin doors leading out, using the leather and wood ones for egress. The whole space is red-lit by sunlight streaming in through the crimson velvet curtains covering the windows. The giant size harem is terraced halfway through its 300 foot length, with a massive set of stairs leading up to the second tier. The enormous couches and lounges sit empty, except for the largest seat on the top level, where an organ treant lies quiescent, secured to the armrest by a sturdy copper collar and chain. The floor of the lower level is slick with grease. When you put it that way, it almost doesn’t seem so bad.  I didn’t notice the heels until I copied this to imgur This section is worse than I remember it being, and I already thought it was the weakest of the four areas. Obviously you’ve got the thematic thing going on here, where everything wants to sucker the characters in with sex, treasure, etc, and then backstab them. I don’t see any players actually falling for it though, unless they’re really committed to roleplaying a Falstaff style buffoon who can’t resist a good time. The players are going to notice a pattern. They’re going to say “I’m not risking my life for another dick scratcher worth 4 copper pieces” and move on. Which is great, except the Lust area can show up again on the Snakes and Ladders board. And again. It’s a shame it’s not better executed, because I do like the concept of “the orgy is over, nobody cleaned up, and the people who didn’t go home at the end got seriously weird”. Instead, we get a few good encounters, a few just there for shock, and a lot that are forgettable. There’s something here that could form the seed of a better adventure if it was more intentionally designed. But then we wouldn’t be reviewing a megadungeon generator, we’d just be reviewing a… dungeon. Anyway, that’ll do it for Lust. Next post, we dig into Stone. Night10194 posted:So they're playing the level drain card, but you're level 1 and likely to stay there forever so...aren't those just one-hit kills? wiegieman posted:Waiting for the module where you're a playing a bunch of wights and roll 8d6 for the number of modules you went through without leveling before you stepped into that negative energy drain trap. But yeah, if you're level 1 it just kills you dead. Night10194 posted:At that point, why bother having mechanics rather than just admit you're playing a Sierra Adventure Game and replace any instance of 'had to use mechanics' with 'player dies in a hilarious way'? megane posted:Roll to instantly die any time anything happens, like in KAMB Falconier111 posted:You're asking a level of self-awareness these folks just don't have.
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Jul 18, 2020 00:48
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I have a weakness for buying OSR modules or lovely random encounter decks because although I know they're largely a steaming mass of poo poo every now and again there's a piece of gold in that poo poo that I can pry out and use in my games and Castle Gargantua is definitely a good example of this. Despite the dumb sophomoric parts of the sex dungeon there's a couple useful bits like the gems-grow-from-your-skin disease. Also, dick treants, because sure why not.
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Jul 18, 2020 01:38
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quote:I think you guys hit on both the reasons why this keeps happening. This is actually one of my complaints about “A Wizard”, despite liking the module overall. Even in a successful run there is zero monetary treasure to collect, and maybe two things that barely qualify as magic items
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Jul 18, 2020 02:04
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Make mature Wizards have an enormous pearl in their mantle.
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Jul 18, 2020 02:19
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I was okay with it because it was a one-shot and them getting 40 crowns for it from a grateful town that acknowledged it could never be enough but it was all they had fit WHFRP to a T.
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Jul 18, 2020 02:32
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mellonbread posted:CASTLE GARGANTUA PART 4: LUST Fixed that for you. mellonbread posted:The Magical Picture Book has a chance to teach Magic Users one of three spells: I could see uses for two of the three. The Succubi way is a useful, presumably difficult to immediately detect way to "debuff" a powerful opponent assuming you play somebody who could reasonably pull it off. Lamentable Conundrum is something I'd actually want to learn. Use Invisibility to move into a room with a bunch of enemies, cast the thing. While the enemies are trying to figure out the riddle, your buddies come in and subdue/butcher-the gently caress-out-of them. As for the Circe one, I could see as a nasty punishment to do to somebody else, but yourself? Maybe the spell creator just had a weird fetish? Still, assuming you knew what you were in for, it would make for an effective specialized distraction/charm effect. It says the caster sees them as feral hogs, not that the caster actually believes that they're feral hogs.
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Jul 18, 2020 02:42
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Man, Castle Gargantua seems like a really interesting idea that doesn't quite pull off the execution. I think it would have been better if they had leaned into the "everything is giant-sized" idea more consistently, and made the Castle itself mappable even if the entrances and exits lead to strange and bizarre locations.
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Jul 18, 2020 03:24
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Tibalt posted:Man, Castle Gargantua seems like a really interesting idea that doesn't quite pull off the execution. I think it would have been better if they had leaned into the "everything is giant-sized" idea more consistently, and made the Castle itself mappable even if the entrances and exits lead to strange and bizarre locations. There's a lot of ideas in this mega dungeon that are hampered by the mentality that says that we have to be dicks for no discernible reason beyond that's what you do when you play D&D. It's some decent ideas mired in petty nerd dick swinging bullshit. Like, a random map isn't necessarily a bad idea, but a random map where you use the randomness to purposefully mess with your players while you snicker behind the DM screen is definitely a bad idea.
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Jul 18, 2020 03:31
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Yeah Lamentable Conundrum seems (likely unintentionally) to be pretty broken a lot of the time. 20' is less distance than most D&D-inspired characters can move in a round and still cast, so in lots of systems you'll be able to run in and hit most/all of the enemies with that and none of your friends, which basically ends the encounter, and unless you didn't note it, it doesn't allow a save. That's without even getting into invisibility shenanigans. Of course that just makes it a bad design in lots of other ways, as the GM is going to have to continually worry about if this spell just boringly ends encounters. Though I suppose if you don't want spells boringly ending encounters you'd probably not be playing most retroclones.
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Jul 18, 2020 04:25
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Ultiville posted:Yeah Lamentable Conundrum seems (likely unintentionally) to be pretty broken a lot of the time. 20' is less distance than most D&D-inspired characters can move in a round and still cast, so in lots of systems you'll be able to run in and hit most/all of the enemies with that and none of your friends, which basically ends the encounter, and unless you didn't note it, it doesn't allow a save. That's without even getting into invisibility shenanigans. On the other hand, the module seems to be going out of its way to boringly, messily end any PCs that play so what goes around comes around. If the designers' plan was to put in some "useless" spells, I'll find a way to use them.
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Jul 18, 2020 08:07
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One of the things I like about the 3.x MoP is how it treats Pandemonium. Compared to the earlier presentation, it actually gives it some quest hooks, even if they're somewhat large-scale. As well as a way to actually affect the planes as a whole, rather than just save one little village or debate a guy into thinking himself out of existence.
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Jul 18, 2020 09:25
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Gary Gygax pitched a sequel to the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, wherein a group of kids are sucked into The Deck of Encounters Set Two Part 10: The Deck of Crimes 47: The Price of Valor Outside a tavern, six rear end in a top hat rakes try to pick a fight by intentionally bumping a PC and claiming insult. It goes pretty much like what you’d expect. Pass just because it could so easily be one sentence on a random encounter table. 48: False Hope In a tavern, a PC is slipped a note telling them to go to a nearby alley at midnight to learn more about [insert quest that the PCs have been discussing here]. Their contact will be a woman in scarlet robes. They’re instructed to go alone, because she’s easily frightened. If they go, nobody will actually show up at the alley all night, but they’ll be jumped on the way back by five muggers who try to beat them up and take their money. They have some silver and a silver brooch worth 25 gp on them. The main sticking point I see is the implication that the PCs were discussing their quest out loud in the tavern, for people to overhear. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t? But actually playing out tavern conversations wasn’t usual at my table, and I wouldn’t want to dictate any of their character actions. Still seems mostly functional, though, I guess? Keep? 49: Sight of Death The PCs wander into an idyllic small village, when a dark-cloaked figure jumps out from under a porch, stabs a shopkeeper, and bolts. Eventually he’s found hiding in some stables, and the PCs are rounded up by the constable to give testimony. However, the nearest Justice is a wandering paladin and won’t be back through for two weeks. Also, the man “has been identified as a member of a rather powerful guild of cutthroat thieves. To avoid the risk of vengeance from fellow guild members, the characters are secreted away in a deep basement, along with another witness, an elderly woman named Kalenya.” The woman will spend the whole time forecasting doom and death. “This encounter may lead to the encounter, Cry for Silence.” Fairly nice. I can take or leave the gang of thieves, honestly - if I was a player, I would not feel threatened by any organization that this fool was a part of. But even if you don’t make the PCs hide in a basement, I love the idea that they might need to hang out in this random village for two weeks so they can give testimony. Plenty of opportunity for good slice-of-life roleplaying there. Keep. 50: Cry for Silence So the PCs are hiding in a basement with a pessimistic old woman named Kalenya. Five thieves will murder the guards and sneak in on the eighth night and try to kill all the witnesses. When the Justice arrives, they may accuse the PCs of trying to break out, if Kalenya doesn’t speak up for them. Uh, this is fine as a second part of the earlier encounter card, but in no way does it stand on its own. So pass on putting it into an actual deck of encounter cards. You could set it aside as an addendum for when you draw the first card, I suppose? 51: Friend or Foe The PCs are in a city, and a young man runs past them, pursued by an older one accusing him of theft. If the PCs pursue the thief, he’ll lead them on your standard merry chase, but dump the goods before they catch him. Then he’ll protest his innocence. He’ll also be thankful if they let him go, and keep an eye out for ways to help them while they’re in town. Thanks, Aladdin! Meanwhile, if they return him to the merchant, he’ll have the kid arrested and give them a 50% discount on his wares (what wares? unspecified.) Short, serviceable. It would be nice to know what kind of merchant this is, and what the guy stole, though. Let’s say… fine hats. Keep.
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Jul 18, 2020 14:14
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Dallbun posted:Gary Gygax pitched a sequel to the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, wherein a group of kids are sucked into Sure, but it could also be an excellent adventure/campaign hook. Five of the "rakes" are trouble-making assholes, but they're the "posse" of the six, who's the son of some powerful lord/wizard/etc. If the PCs just waste the lot of them, they have a powerful, influential enemy loving with them for the foreseeable future. If they defuse the situation non-violently, or better yet just non-lethally beat the poo poo out of the group, they potentially gain a powerful, influential friend/patron who's happen somebody taught his kid a lesson in "etiquette." And of course their friend might ask them to repay some favors he does for them, which lead to a bunch of possible noble/political adventure hook. I'd Keep the poo poo out of this one. Honestly a lot of the ones you've Passed on could be Keeps with a little extra development.
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Jul 18, 2020 15:29
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Everyone posted:Honestly a lot of the ones you've Passed on could be Keeps with a little extra development. It's true. I'm coming from a very lazy DMing perspective - I want cards that create interest without me having to do much work. Unless the card grabs me, in which case I'm fine with doing some work. This one didn't grab me, but it clearly grabbed you. It's all very capricious.
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Jul 18, 2020 15:35
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