|
Nehru the Damaja posted:The Kender in the UA aren't kleptomaniacs. Their pockets just sort of fill up with stuff and nobody knows where it comes from. I think you could read it as like an implied benign absent-minded theft, like the kind of guy who accidentally winds up with a collection of bank pens. But it's pretty clear now that it's not an excuse to play a sociopath. theironjef posted:Kender might be one of those "Damage already done" things about D&D. Like how second edition defined Chaotic Neutral as "You're a literal walking coin flip and might just jump off a bridge or change sides in a fight" and even though it's been better written ever since, there's still a core contingent that always choose it and pretend it's been the lolrandom alignment the whole time. Theironjef has the right of it, Kender is just a poisoned well and should really be abandoned. Even a reimagined pseduo-Hobbit kleptomaniac with denial is still going to carry a lot of baggage from its time as a pseduo-Hobbit kleptomaniac with denial. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Mar 8, 2022 |
#
?
Mar 8, 2022 22:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 09:28 |
|
|
Out of the abyss recap: To scrounge up some money (and a pearl), the party's bard bet Jimjar that they could take my fighter (a former gladiator) in a sparring match. We're both level 3 and I took the blind fighting style, so I even offered to do it blindfolded and barehanded. So we took some downtime in a tunnel and despite half of the group trying to convince us it was a waste of time, we squared off right after waking up. Even using all of his spell slots I beat the poo poo out of him handily with paltry 4 damage slaps change my name fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Mar 8, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2022 22:42
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:The Kender in the UA aren't kleptomaniacs. Their pockets just sort of fill up with stuff and nobody knows where it comes from. I think you could read it as like an implied benign absent-minded theft, like the kind of guy who accidentally winds up with a collection of bank pens. But it's pretty clear now that it's not an excuse to play a sociopath. They're the guy who always ends up with your lighter. This presentation is more true to the fiction than encouraging kleptomania, anyway. Aside from the comic relief with Flint, Tas doesn't infuriate the party by constantly stealing their poo poo. What does happen is that Tas just happened to pocket something that is now useful, like the magic glasses of read languages that play an important role in the beginning of Winter's Night.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2022 22:50
|
|
|
One of my old coworkers would tell me about when she would play as a kender and accidentally take important poo poo like maps and then “forget where they put them”. Seemed pretty annoying but the person was kind of annoying as well. Like any PC race though, it’s fine if the player is fine.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2022 23:12
|
|
|
Was there a discussion at any point about how Monsters of the Multiverse completely changed hobgoblins? Like since they're getting away from prescribing a culture onto any player race, and hobgoblins were just uber-goblins with a martial culture, they nixed the whole thing entirely. Now they're like house-goblins, like ouphes or brownies. It's a hell of a 180, but I do think I like the possibilities more of bringing in more folklore aligned stuff.
|
|
#
?
Mar 8, 2022 23:56
|
|
|
I felt it was a pretty good change as goblins and hobgoblins have their origins in folklore as fey creatures (please correct me if this is wrong) instead of the more Tolkien-esque view we are currently operating under. I'm pretty stoked for Monsters of the Multiverse as a whole.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 00:04
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:as someone who never read the dragonlance books, can someone give me a summary of what makes it worth considering as a setting? it seems like generic high fantasy to me, but i'm prepared to be corrected It's fairly generic. If you like reading books where the NPCs say things like "I cast pheatherfall!" because they're casting the spell featherfall, then you're the target audience. To be fair they came out in the 1980's when the generic was still new. There are some neat ideas buried in the mix and there have been a few good video games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonStrike_(video_game)
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 00:24
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:Was there a discussion at any point about how Monsters of the Multiverse completely changed hobgoblins? Like since they're getting away from prescribing a culture onto any player race, and hobgoblins were just uber-goblins with a martial culture, they nixed the whole thing entirely. Now they're like house-goblins, like ouphes or brownies. I linked the pages about Hobgoblins earlier. And they still have the martial culture for the most part, but Goblinoids as a whole are fey descended.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 00:26
|
|
|
Here are the pages again. Yusin posted:Interesting thing from Monsters of the Multiverse relating to Hobgoblins and Goblinoids in general (Namely they are now Fey aligned) I left the book at home, but I can go into details about Bugbears and normal Goblins when I get home.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 00:29
|
|
|
Azathoth posted:as someone who never read the dragonlance books, can someone give me a summary of what makes it worth considering as a setting? it seems like generic high fantasy to me, but i'm prepared to be corrected Arivia posted:That's most of it. People SAY the Forgotten Realms is high fantasy, but Dragonlance actually IS - custom-designed for epic, sweeping giant storytelling plot campaigns, originally started with one in late 1e. It's got some okay remixes on some staples of D&D - wizards are three separate groups, elves are weird goths, minotaurs are a thriving warrior culture - but it's hard to really find a great reason to say "THIS IS WHY YOU SHOULD PLAY DRAGONLANCE IN 2022." But maybe there's some turbo-fan of the setting in this thread akin to me for FR, so I'd be interested in their take.  I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED! High fantasy is a bit hard to define genre-wise, given it was originally applied to novels and not tabletop RPGs. As Wikipedia defines it, stories told from the viewpoint of one main hero runs counter to the nature of tabletop. But even so, the important themes of good vs evil, a world-threatening plot, and the antagonist having a personal vendetta against the hero while also being a huge threat to everyone else is also important. Arivia is right in when she says that Dragonlance is more "high fantasy" in this regard than the Forgotten Realms. As for if Dragonlance is worth it, and how to sell it? I'd say it is, but it takes some work to get done, although nothing overtly onerous. Over here on the FATAL & Friends wiki I reviewed a poo poo-ton of Dragonlance products, including some addendums to PurpleXVI's reviews of the original Dragonlance adventures, explaining what changed in later Editions. The 2nd Edition 15th Anniversary Edition of the original adventures is actually a great series, which did its due diligence in taking care of the original version's problems with railroading to be closer to a halfway-open Bioware RPG. The best aspects of Dragonlance "as they are" is the fact that the PCs really are special in the grand scheme of things. Even post War of the Lance there have been major adventures centering them on a world-altering plot, such as the Key of Destiny adventure path for 3rd Edition. Much of the setting is pretty solidly set in a low-magic world where a lot of the grandest artifacts and supernatural stuff is the province of fallen civilizations, hoarded by the continent's power players, or in the possession of powerful beings such as dragons. Monsters are still plentiful as in any setting, although it's rare for PCs to run across fellow Wizards, Clerics, and other capable magical classes unless they're an important named character to the plot. While there is definite dumb stuff that tries to artificially impose limits (PCs that hit level 18 getting whisked away by the gods), in more modern Editions such things have been removed. And when it subverts the lower-power low-magic feel, it manages to do it in a more believable way. During the Age of Despair/War of the Lance, the big Evil Empire is able to gain so much ground due to the fact that they were the only power on the continent that gained access to divine magic along with the aid of dragons for aerial warfare. They attacked the elven nations for being one of the few civilizations able to stand up to them with magic of their own, but this was a costly battle that resulted in serious losses for the Empire (and near-annihilation of the elven peoples). And during the Age of Mortals which is the "current year," dragons are still rare due to being the subject of a great purge but the survivors are taking pains to work their influence in the world so they still feel a bit wondrous to encounter. One example is when some brass dragons enter into defense pacts with local villages, being titled "mayor" but otherwise letting the bipedal races run things. This acts as a great counter to bandits, as most are loathe to attack a city with a supposed dragon ruler. And yes, the chromatic dragons act as a counterweight; the blue dragons are heavily entrenched with the Knights of Neraka (the evil knighthood in the setting), and the key of destiny adventure path has an evil Dragon Overlord (super-wyrms from another plane of existence who decided to conquer Krynn) that the PCs fight against in the last half.  People already talked about the draconians, but they are definitely a high point of the setting that isn't just confined to novels. They served as the orc stand-in for the setting, artificially-created soldiers from metallic dragon eggs for the Dragon Empire. When the good guys won the draconians found themselves leaderless, and reacted in different ways. While many still fell in with other baddie groups, the treatment of draconians by the Empire wasn't ideal so a lot of them had little love lost for their former masters. Currently the draconians' greatest hope is Teyr, a newly-formed nation of their own which has a lot of adventure hooks and political tension. I detailed it in my review of Dragons of Krynn in the FATAL & Friends link above. Later novels and Editions have been more willing to play with the greyness and multiple perspectives among the monstrous races; for example, there's a nation of non-evil goblins in the west who get along fine with their neighbors and who the Dragon Empire initially attempted to recruit to their cause yet apparently failed. There's also a new knightly order, the Legion of Steel, who is the "neutral" counterpart to the Knights of Solamnia's goodlyness and Neraka's Evil, being more open in using guerilla warfare and skullduggery but also open to the largest amount of races and magical traditions which gives them an advantage. Finally, recent books acknowledge indirectly that the "goodest groups" such as the Kingpriest of Istar and the Silvanesti elves aren't actually of Good alignment. Not explicit so as to contradict canon, but enough to answer the critics in realization of the needless suffering caused from the self-proclaimed champions of light. Case in point, the Kingpriest's crown gradually causes whoever wears it to shift towards evil alignment, and was being worn by the big bad of the War of the Lance, Emperor Ariakas. The crown was originally a throwaway mention in the novels, but there's more overt comparisons between the Lawful "Good" Empire of Istar and the Dragon Empire that became prominent during the War of the Lance. While the War of the Lance gets a lot of love, the Fifth Age has several things going for it as well. The new Big Bads are the Dragon Overlords, all of whom died during the novels save one, who the PCs get to battle in the Key of Destiny. There's less emphasis on the necessity of the gods, given that there is new magic that mortals themselves can harness via Chaos being released into the world, and groups such as the Wizards of High Sorcery are having mixed reactions in how to deal with independent relative newcomers who can credibly challenge their magical monopoly now. Chemosh the God of Death is gaining more power after Takhisis' fall, and the minotaurs who had a Roman-style empire in the eastern islands have now invaded the mainland.  Finally, the setting has several alternate timelines detailing changes in the setting. For instance, one where the Cataclysm never happens since the Kingpriest (tyrannical lawful stupid emperor who sought to destroy all evil and placed himself above the gods) managed to enslave the gods. Or ones where instead of retreating into their towers the Wizards of High Sorcery helped rebuild civilization in the wake of the Cataclysm. These are detailed in the 3e Legends of the Twins book, but it's a nice touch for those who want "Dragonlance but X" campaigns. I also wrote up a series of blog posts, Dragons of Renewal, about 5-6 years ago discussing important setting concepts and how to change things for the better for games set during the War of the Lance. I got quite a bit of positive feedback, showing that you can change enough in the setting without making it something entirely different. Okay, that's a lot! Apologies if this is a bit scattered, but as someone who's read a helluva lot of Dragonlance material and has some fondness for the setting in spite of its flaws, I wanted to answer this question posed. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Mar 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 02:14
|
|
|
I was actually going to bring you up as I knew you knew a fair amount about Dragonlance.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 02:22
|
|
|
Between myself and PurpleVXI, I feel at once horrified and proud at being seen as one of the two local Goon experts for all things Dragonlance. Also I edited some more material in the above post; nothing huge, but felt to include more interesting examples in case you wanted to give it a second look.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 02:30
|
|
|
That's an interesting rundown there, thank you! I'll be interested to see if they produce adventures that go beyond the usual 12-15. My current group is sad that our current campaign will be wrapping up at 13, and I've been looking at modules to run next and it's legit funny that there's literally only one official module that goes there.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 02:43
|
|
|
Nehru the Damaja posted:Was there a discussion at any point about how Monsters of the Multiverse completely changed hobgoblins? Like since they're getting away from prescribing a culture onto any player race, and hobgoblins were just uber-goblins with a martial culture, they nixed the whole thing entirely. Now they're like house-goblins, like ouphes or brownies. You would think in a multiverse book they would go out of their way to say "in some parts of the multiverse hobgoblins are like this". Rather than do some kind of retcon
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 03:35
|
|
|
Might as well just change it and move forward with it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 03:37
|
|
|
I have never read the Dragonlance books, but I have read about the setting. So for fun a little of the settings history from memory of summaries. From what I recall the biggest event of the setting was the Cataclysm. It happened because of the Kingpriest, the head priest of the Gods of Good and ruler of the continent’s greatest nation. The Kingpriest had overtime transformed into a power mad tyrant obsessed with destroying evil. He started ordering the purge of creatures he viewed as evil and turned his nation into a crazy police state that had mages and clerics under his command scanning and arresting people for having evil thoughts. Naturally his craziness caused the good gods to start distancing themselves from him and his followers, with their clerics servants starting to speak out against him. This made the Kingpriest denounce the gods he was followed and declared them part of the problem. But he figured if he was to eliminate evil from the world he needed the gods power. So he created a powerful ritual that would cause the gods to be enslaved to him, who would then elevate him as the top god of creation so he could wipe all the non good people from the world. All the gods were naturally quite against the Kingpriest getting his way and sent out signs, and warnings that the Kingpriest needed to be stopped or they would bring down divine wrath on him and his followers, but this largely fell on deaf ears. Eventually the powerful Knight Lord Soth was contacted directly to defeat the Kingpriest which would also redeem his sins. (He was guilty of a spousal murder so he could get with his current wife) Soth went on a journey to defeat the Kingpriest and save the land, but suddenly encountered some former companions of his current wife that hated her. They told Soth that his wife was cheating on him and his son wasn’t even his. So in a fit of paranoia he turned right around and went home. Then he murdered his wife and child while cursing them for betraying him. As Soth was doing that instead of stopping the Kingpriest the gods ran out of time and so dropped a meteor on the Kingpriest wiping him out along with his Kingdom. (Soth’s home was in the blast radius so he died too, but his regrets and evil caused him to reanimate as a Death Knight) The gods angry that no one tried to stop the Kingpriest then abandoned the world causing everyone to lose access to Divine Magic. Years passed and eventually Takhisis, the Queen of Chromatic Dragons and most powerful of the Gods of evil, decided to return feeling that with the other gods ignoring the world she could take it over before they decided to do something to limit her. She contacted a bunch of evil and ambitious people offering them divine magic and the support of many Chromatic Dragons. This resulted in the creation of the Dragon Armies who then with Takhisis’s help stole thousands of Dragon eggs from the greatest threat to them the Metallic Dragons. They then threatened the Metallics into remaining neutral in the upcoming conflict threatening the destruction of eggs if they helped the Dragon armies enemies. Upon getting the deal they immediately broke it Deciding to use the eggs for themselves. A ritual was created that allowed them to turn one dragon egg into many soldiers forming the Draconian army that would make up the bulk of their fighting force, with a resource they were in no danger of running out of soon. With the Dragon Armies attacking across the continent the War of the Lance started which is where the books and modules of Dragonlance started at as well.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 03:40
|
|
|
Yusin posted:I have never read the Dragonlance books, but I have read about the setting. So for fun a little of the settings history from memory of summaries. Cool! Thanks for the write-up - that sounds interesting. Never really had much to do with Dragonlance myself, so that sounds like a potentially interesting twist on the FR stuff I'm more used to
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 04:12
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Finally, recent books acknowledge indirectly that the "goodest groups" such as the Kingpriest of Istar and the Silvanesti elves aren't actually of Good alignment. Not explicit so as to contradict canon, but enough to answer the critics in realization of the needless suffering caused from the self-proclaimed champions of light. Case in point, the Kingpriest's crown gradually causes whoever wears it to shift towards evil alignment, and was being worn by the big bad of the War of the Lance, Emperor Ariakas. The crown was originally a throwaway mention in the novels, but there's more overt comparisons between the Lawful "Good" Empire of Istar and the Dragon Empire that became prominent during the War of the Lance That seems needless, Istar's whole thing was LG isn't this monolithic nice guy image and someone with great intentions can lose the plot when they make sacrifices for the greater good. Taking away the Emperor's agency and making it the result of a cursed item kind of blunts that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 04:39
|
|
|
poo poo ignore.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 04:45
|
|
|
Macdeo Lurjtux posted:That seems needless, Istar's whole thing was LG isn't this monolithic nice guy image and someone with great intentions can lose the plot when they make sacrifices for the greater good. Taking away the Emperor's agency and making it the result of a cursed item kind of blunts that. I don't know if this is the case but i interpreted the Kingpriest's crown curse as a curse descended from the Kingpriest's fall, not the cause of said fall? Like the crown is cursed to push its wearers into the same repetition as the Kingpriest. Feel free to correct me if it's dumber than that.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 05:31
|
|
|
Saxophone posted:My tinkerer is flavored as a bartender/foodie and wants an improved prestigiditation spell. What would mass/greater prestigiditation look like? Googling turned up no results so I’m gonna probably homebrew but thought I’d pick your brains
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 10:19
|
|
cowboy
|
Macdeo Lurjtux posted:That seems needless, Istar's whole thing was LG isn't this monolithic nice guy image and someone with great intentions can lose the plot when they make sacrifices for the greater good. Taking away the Emperor's agency and making it the result of a cursed item kind of blunts that. Malpais Legate posted:I don't know if this is the case but i interpreted the Kingpriest's crown curse as a curse descended from the Kingpriest's fall, not the cause of said fall? Like the crown is cursed to push its wearers into the same repetition as the Kingpriest. It's a bit vague, so my interpretation may be off. Here's the relevant description from the 3e Dragons of Spring sourcebook, which I was going off of.  Looking back at the 3e War of the Lance sourcebook, it's a bit more detailed, although it hints that it MIGHT be the crown worn by the Kingpriest as a rumor albeit one with good evidence: quote:This relic is a powerful artifact of evil, designed to represent absolute and total control of one person over another (or many others). It is said that whoever wears the crown will rule Krynn in the name of the Dark Queen, Takhisis. The Crown of Power is rumored to have originated during the Age of Dreams, when it was worn by the ruler of the ogres. It disappeared following the Fall of the Ogres and has been hunted by tyrants and dictators ever since. Other reports say that it is the crown worn by the Kingpriest Beldinas during the last years of the Empire of Istar, but whether this is the case or not is a matter of conjecture and debate—though speculation that the Temple of Takhisis was once the grand Temple of Istar lends credence to this belief. Finally, the Dragonlance wiki makes mention of several sources including the above and hews close to it being the crown worn by Kingpriests as part of the line of succession, and that the start of its corruptive influence was pre-Cataclysm. Apologies if I was speaking on authority for something that turned out to be vaguer. But what it seems like is that the writers wanted to at least be more open to fanon and alternate takes and interpretations on the setting than the original canon.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 11:13
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:
Ok, yeah, this is a fair point. I've never played dragonlance tabletop but I've played a lot of the old dragonlance video games and read some of the books. One thing about dragonlance is that it isn't afraid to give the PC's genuinely powerful magic items. See, e.g., the titular Dragonlances: quote:As per Dragonlance Adventures
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 13:34
|
|
|
Libertad! posted:Apologies if I was speaking on authority for something that turned out to be vaguer. But what it seems like is that the writers wanted to at least be more open to fanon and alternate takes and interpretations on the setting than the original canon. No, it sounds like you had the right of it. The fact that Hickman and or Weiss had a hand in that change certainly seems in line with their inability to leave well enough alone. It completely takes the teeth out of the Cataclysm and changes the narrative. Like, Othello isn't a tragedy because he kills Desdemona, it's a tragedy because he allows fear to rule his mind and anger to rule his body. At any point before the climax he can stop and take stock of his actions. It's a different story entirely if Iago is just mind controlling Othello throughout the play.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 16:52
|
|
|
Well that's the least obnoxious version I think I've seen of Kender. Deliberately defanging the "steal from others" element, instead replacing it with a "kender have random stuff" element. It's a kender version that I wouldn't simply ban for being a kender. The lunar sorcerer looks excellent although might be fiddly in play. At least it solves the sorcerer core problem of Too Few Spells Known. Can't say I like the feat chains tho.
|
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 19:36
|
|
|
We're having a tournament arc in my sunday game; and in the round me and one of the players are in, we needed to dive into a shark tank to collect golden keys. I was clever and used Blink to avoid the sharks (mainly to avoid the evil lich that's also participating who killed me once before and who I sicked some other group of baddies after) but then at one point one of the players whose just watching from the stands semi-cheats and is casting spells to help his NPC girlfriend who is also participating with us; first using Eldritch Blast, but next round casts Banishment on the shark! "Oh no no no oh nyo what have you done!?" I exclaimed, and the DM starts laughing his rear end off because my exclaimations put the idea in his head to have the banished shark appear right next to me where I am in the ethereal! It looked at me. It didn't have a chance to attack me though, as we resolved the challenge before I ended up blinking back over to it; but I think it's still there, searching for me. Macdeo Lurjtux posted:That seems needless, Istar's whole thing was LG isn't this monolithic nice guy image and someone with great intentions can lose the plot when they make sacrifices for the greater good. Taking away the Emperor's agency and making it the result of a cursed item kind of blunts that. I assume you mean the Kingpriest? Unless there's backstory regarding Ariakas; I assumed that dude was always ambitious/power hungry and took Takhesis's offer for power the first chance he got and the crown didn't change anything about him. theironjef posted:Kender might be one of those "Damage already done" things about D&D. Like how second edition defined Chaotic Neutral as "You're a literal walking coin flip and might just jump off a bridge or change sides in a fight" and even though it's been better written ever since, there's still a core contingent that always choose it and pretend it's been the lolrandom alignment the whole time. I like Kender as an archetype that I think most closely matches who my "ideal" player character is, someone who is cheerful, always managing to rub things in at the wrong time to the wrong people, loves adventure and wandering around, extroverted, a mischievous scamp who can pull out clever tricks in a pinch; the perfect bard character for me. Narsham posted:Not much to add to what others have said. The one really worthwhile element to their world, IMO, is the Towers of High Sorcery, which essentially is an organization of arcane spellcasters that acknowledges there's room for good, neutral, and evil casters and that they should all be working together to benefit magic as a whole and fend off all those people who want them dead for various reasons. How you take that is strongly dependent on the extent to which you like the alignment system, but I appreciated the idea that a specific kind of community grouping can essentially cross moral and ethical boundaries in terms of getting people to work together. Along with Kender and Draconians, and kinda sorta the roman minataurs, I loved the Towers of High Sorcery and the Conclave; especially the very heavily implied idea in some novels that outside of the tower you had more of a free for all; good wizards would often work to stop evil wizards; and neutral wizards doing whatever; but; if at any point an outside force threatened magic as an institution they would drop their current quarrel and work together. And inside the Towers of High Sorcery regardless of how they may have fought outside the tower, Black Robes/White Robes act like they were always friends/colleges. It's interesting. In the novels when Nuitari (the God of Dark Magic and also the invisible/Dark moon) found and rebuild a tower of high sorcery in secret this was a huge betrayal and I think is meant to be reflected in campaigns to reinforce that no, white robes and black robes can fight. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Mar 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Mar 9, 2022 19:55
|
|
|
Raenir Salazar posted:I assume you mean the Kingpriest? Unless there's backstory regarding Ariakas; I assumed that dude was always ambitious/power hungry and took Takhesis's offer for power the first chance he got and the crown didn't change anything about him. Yeah I meant Kingpriest. I'm probably due a reread.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 03:42
|
|
|
change my name posted:Out of the abyss recap: To scrounge up some money (and a pearl), the party's bard bet Jimjar that they could take my fighter (a former gladiator) in a sparring match. We're both level 3 and I took the blind fighting style, so I even offered to do it blindfolded and barehanded. In our game, Jimjar became the party bank. At the end of every session the DM would roll a d20 to see if he gambled the party loot away (and whether he became indebted to any particularly horrific underdark crime syndicates) or whether he’d actually get lucky and win some extra cash.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 13:49
|
|
|
Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Yeah I meant Kingpriest. I'm probably due a reread. I think there's also an entire novel about Ariakas. I presume it's the most boring thing because he is the most boring big bad.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 15:24
|
|
|
I once saw an interview with Joe Mangienello where he called Dragonlance the Star Wars of fantasy series. And he was certainly right about the every boring hald mentioned character getting their own spin off book part at least.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 21:11
|
|
|
Macdeo Lurjtux posted:I once saw an interview with Joe Mangienello where he called Dragonlance the Star Wars of fantasy series. And he was certainly right about the every boring hald mentioned character getting their own spin off book part at least. to be fair modules written for forgotten realms in 5e randomly have popular forgotten realms characters from long ago show up expecting the audience to give a standing applause due to recognizing the character
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 21:38
|
|
|
pog boyfriend posted:to be fair modules written for forgotten realms in 5e randomly have popular forgotten realms characters from long ago show up expecting the audience to give a standing applause due to recognizing the character Sometimes I'll throw in a famous wizard to impress my players. But I always choose one who has spells named after him in the players handbook, cuz come on I can't expect my players to care about fantasy wizard lore as much as I do. Or Acererak, only because I've built him up as my own character, an immortal lich obsessed with making absurd death dungeons appropriate for character level 7+
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 21:43
|
|
|
I'm fine with throwing old FR characters into campaigns, so long as they're portrayed as someone players can engage with/find memorable, rather than as pog boyfriend put it "remember Minsc? He's back, in pog form!" Told this story before but I played in a campaign with a relatively new but good DM who had no idea who Elminster was, so he made his character "cool archmage who treated us regularly to homebrewed magical shots that made us roll on the wild magic table".
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 22:50
|
|
|
pog boyfriend posted:to be fair modules written for forgotten realms in 5e randomly have popular forgotten realms characters from long ago show up expecting the audience to give a standing applause due to recognizing the character this is gonna be 20% of Exandria campaigns for the next fifty years
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 22:56
|
|
|
As someone who generally enjoys FR/DL/etc novels I actually kinda have an aversion to playing in those worlds; it makes me anxious, like suddenly finding myself in a store full of antique chairs. Sure chairs are for sitting but what if I break it? I dunno how to put it to words exactly but it kinda feels like the setting and the characters within them aren't really mine, but the authors and my responsibility is to be a reader and not a participant. So I prefer homebrew campaigns where that kind of character fanservice is instead reserved for our previous characters showing up as NPCs. The most notable being last campaign our Cleric turned evil and became a demon and now she's like a recurring Big Bad and its awesome. I like that a lot more, because it makes the setting feel lived in and real. Our actions in previous campaigns carrying forward into the present campaign.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 22:57
|
|
|
Blooming Brilliant posted:I'm fine with throwing old FR characters into campaigns, so long as they're portrayed as someone players can engage with/find memorable, rather than as pog boyfriend put it "remember Minsc? He's back, in pog form!" This song but every time SHOTS! is said, the characters hair, skin, or eye colors change. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNtTEibFvlQ Raenir Salazar posted:As someone who generally enjoys FR/DL/etc novels I actually kinda have an aversion to playing in those worlds; it makes me anxious, like suddenly finding myself in a store full of antique chairs. Sure chairs are for sitting but what if I break it? I dunno how to put it to words exactly but it kinda feels like the setting and the characters within them aren't really mine, but the authors and my responsibility is to be a reader and not a participant. So I prefer homebrew campaigns where that kind of character fanservice is instead reserved for our previous characters showing up as NPCs. The thing I like about the more established settings is that it lets players do more character backstory development on their own without me. Like, my partner got really into creating her cleric and did a shitload of research on the pantheon and ended up coming up with a Cleric who has semi-heretical beliefs about a certain god and was part of a small schism in the church. She wrote out like 20 pages of backstory on this sect/cult and it turned out really awesome. I guess what I'm trying to say is, be careful about RPing with Lutherans playing Clerics.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 23:20
|
|
|
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/necro-fr-jdcorleys-293-pages-of-forgotten-realms-adventure-seeds.228229/ is a classic rpg.net thread of adventure seeds that was made in response to that concern about an abundance of metaplot, it's p funny and also a solid set of ideas
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 23:20
|
|
|
I think the only book character my players ever really connected with in my campaigns was Jarlaxle. I guess technically Ranaer Neverember had a book about him, but I haven't read it so I just played him as I felt like. I did pull in some NPCs from a podcast to make a team of Harpers, but I'm not sure that counts. To be honest I think a far better idea with this sort of thing is for the DM to just do what these old designers did and put their own PCs in as NPCs. When we started out on 5e with my players completely fresh to the game, I slotted in a whole bunch of PCs from my time playing D&D as a kid and including PCs I made for some D&D video games. Now that we have a few campaigns under our belts, the PCs are increasingly bumping into NPCs they've personally interacted with in older campaigns, as well as their own previous PCs. We did a christmas break from our main campaign to run Lost Mine of Phandelver, and I switched up the ending to have a competing group of Waterdhavian adventurers also seeking out the mine, and the final battle of the campaign was against this group who had followed the party to the mine, and was--surprise!--led by one of the PCs from our first campaign. Everyone went wild when he walked into the room, it was one of the best "holy poo poo" reveals I've ever done.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 23:25
|
|
|
Reveilled posted:I think the only book character my players ever really connected with in my campaigns was Jarlaxle. I guess technically Ranaer Neverember had a book about him, but I haven't read it so I just played him as I felt like. I did pull in some NPCs from a podcast to make a team of Harpers, but I'm not sure that counts. to be fair though jarlaxle is cool as hell, Pattonesque posted:this is gonna be 20% of Exandria campaigns for the next fifty years frankly looking forward to reading about it. its already starting to happen in critical role itself so it will be happening way more in fan campaigns
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 23:32
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 29, 2024 09:28 |
|
|
pog boyfriend posted:to be fair though jarlaxle is cool as hell, Hell yeah He showed up at the end of our campaign to give a "villain" speech explaining why he should get the macguffin, why the party should just turn it over without a fight rather than dying in a fight he would easily win, and offering them asylum and new work in Luskan. The party's response was "loving sold, we give Jarlaxle the goods". The closest thing to a dealbreaker was his insistence on them giving back his +3 rapier.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2022 23:49
|
|