|
Agrikk posted:I am the god of knowledge for a fantasy world. I have built twelve libraries across the globe. These twelve libraries are magical edifices such that any book, or scroll, or piece of writing brought into any of them are instantly “read” by the building and the contents therein are now accessible by anyone attuning to any one of the buildings- representing a global data store. Also, any mortal standing on a specific dais in one building can communicate telepathically with someone standing on a dais in any other library. If you are standing on one of the dais before two other people step on their respective dais, do they know you are there? Because that's a built in system for listening in to telepathic communications. Something that should be very difficult. Is there anything in the area that tells you what other location you are communicating with? A circle with 11 (12?) sigils that light up to indicate that someone is listening at various locations. But maybe one is always lit, and everyone just off hand assumes that their location is the one that's lit up. Maybe that's not the case? And you haven't explicitly stated that these libraries are sentient, but you also haven't specifically stated that they are not. So, "What else can these libraries do?" Listen and report back. To who? The God of Knowledge? Maybe, but if he knows everything, why would he want to listen in?
|
#
¿
Feb 26, 2024 18:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 04:05 |
|
|
Admiralty Flag posted:While shitposting in another thread I was reminded of the Library of Alexandria. If you made port at Alexandria, soldiers would come on board your ship, search for written materials, give you a receipt for them, and a functionary would come by sooner or later and tell you something like, "two weeks." About two weeks later, a courier would bring back your written materials, right? Nope, you'd get hastily-copied versions; the originals would go into the Library. I really like this, but crank it up to ludicrous and you have a way to damage or hurt the library (or the whole system). It's magic based, so rather than needing to confiscate physical materials and have a scribe make a copy, the library has an enchantment that can magically read and copy any written material. You bring in a book, the library senses it, reads it and in some corner gets to work making a copy of that book. And as part of that, like a real library, the books would need to be catalogued based on subject matter, so a lot of history and reference. That way you know where the new book is supposed to go. And the automated system is smart enough to recognize that it already has a copy of a particular book, so no need to have multiple copies of one book. And, some information can be dangerous (powerful spells/scrolls) or seditious, and maybe that gets put away in a secured area. But not everything written is in books. So what happens if you walk in with a decree from the king? There's a copy stored somewhere. A love note? Copy. Shopping list? Copy. Now let's say you want to get through the magical defenses of said library to get to a restricted section. Well, all you have to do is walk in with a satchel full of receipts, writs, love notes, letters to Santa, wanted posters and the fantasy equivalent of post-its that say "Meeting: 3pm". You magically DDOS the library, slowing things down by choking it with reams and reams of useless information, that must be, by rule, scanned for content, catalogued, copied and stored.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2024 15:27
|
|
|
Maybe the BBEG grabs the crown, and it magically grows fingers/claws that slowly and painfully bore into the guys head, causing massive physical trauma to him (and maybe a minor constitution check to not get nauseous at the sight). Yes, it makes him more powerful, but it's also clearly a parasitic/demonic creature that is using the able body as a host. And it's a very one sided exchange. Post fight, if they want the crown, they can either pry it off (a very slow, very messy, and crunchy activity), or they can remove the head with the crown still attached to turn it in for the quest rewards. If at that time, after everything they just saw, one of them wants to tempt fate and put the crown on, you've basically thrown up all the red flags you can.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2024 17:46
|
|
|
This is maybe a bit more work, but what if you did something a little more thematic to tarot card reading for the major arcana? For minor arcana, orientation doesn't matter, a five of cups has the same meaning if it is upside down or right side up. But the major arcana meaning is inverted if the card is inverted. So you deal a card from the top of the deck to one player and they turn it over left > right in front of everybody, so that the way they are looking at it determines the orientation. If the card is right side up, it is a positive influence on the ritual (wild card). If it is inverted, it has a negative effect. So at a low level, it takes up one of the available slots in the hand size limit. At a higher level of negative effect, each inverted card makes the failure worse. The teleport spell is off by 5 miles > 10 miles > 15 miles. If you really want to put time and effort into it, you can have the major arcana affect the spells thematically instead. A few examples off the top of my head: Magician - Always a positive effect, regardless of ritual cast. The Tower - Positive effect: For teleportation, negates negative effects of other major arcana. Negative effects: Will point teleportation target to the next closest 3+ story structure The Lovers - Resurrection spell Positive: The target's lover/partner can be used to provide another hand slot (so 6 total slots instead of just 5). Negative resurrection: Target's lover/partner receives the curse/dies in exchange Death - Resurrection spell Positive: Bonus max HP or +1 to multiple resistances. Negative resurrection: Complete failure, target remains dead, cannot be resurrected, and if you want to really ramp it up, someone else also dies. (Attempting to defy Death at an amateur level comes with a higher cost due to your hubris) The Devil - Exorcism Positive: Target receives a low level demonic boon (dark vision, can read/speak abyssal/infernal, some basic lv1 cantrip regardless of class) with no side effects. Negative exorcism: Something like a fae pact, where the target knows they would not be here if not for demonic intervention, and must change their alignment to evil and choose a new evil deity.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 19, 2024 16:25
|
|
|
It's kind of like some of those Sci-fi/Fantasy shows where the team is under a spell or in a simulation, but they don't realize until there's one little thing that clues them in. "What just happened?" "Uh, you were kicking his rear end with some thunder magic, then we woke up here. Why don't you do that all the time?" "That's the problem. I don't know thunder magic."
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2024 15:05
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 17, 2024 04:05 |
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:They don't know it but they've currently got a couple artifacts from the same curse civilization complex on board, one a knobby silver bracelet they took off an alien mummy in a big jar and one a sword that is clearly of Yu'Vath manufacture (Bad with a capital B) but they haven't really bothered to look at it before chucking it in storage. They've become kind of jaded with this loot and I'm looking for a way to bite them with it. Any ideas? It sounds like your players are the type who in a zombie scenario are telling everyone if they get bit, and will cut off the offending limb. Or in a Lovecraft story they burn every piece of writing without reading it. So if they are dealing with it by not dealing with it, make the situation happen because they aren't dealing with it. Like that fridge from Control, where if you stop looking at it, things go really, really wrong. By themselves, the bracelet and sword would be a minor artefact. But together, they are 2/3 of a set, and the set wants nothing more than to be completed. You don't know what it does, the players don't know what it does, but I bet you there's a cult that knows exactly what it does. And what either of the items does immediately is paint a target on the cargo hold. You can have the crew try and off load the cursed artifacts to some random vendor, but no one wants to take it, because they know it's bad news. And bad news can travel quickly through the black market networks, bringing a spotlight on their ship for exactly the wrong type of people. I'm not familiar with the RT world, but I imagine the ship is staffed by an NPC crew? Then maybe have one of them mention something about organizing/inventorying all the items currently in storage. If the players take an active interest in that activity, then you can try and drop breadcrumbs to get them to do something to interact with either object. If the players delegate the inventory to an NPC, then that person (people?) is influenced by the cursed object and goes digging down that sealed corridor or starts behaving oddly.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2024 15:16
|
|