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Ooh, a full Realms Gold Box LP, ambitious! I played the PC version, so I'm still kind of in shock how much better this version looks. On the other hand, that font is truly loving atrocious.
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Oct 9, 2019 21:52
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Tylana posted:It looks like the PC versions I played (Mostly the Krynn games) looked to me? It's pretty much just Pool of Radiance where this was an issue (maybe Azure Bonds), and specifically on older computers (or poorly set up on newer computers). It looks like this, but as pointed out by others, the entire color scheme traveling around town was pink and blue.
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Oct 10, 2019 09:01
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Huh, Norris is looking a little... different... than I'm used to. 
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Oct 15, 2019 01:37
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This LP has made me reflect on my previous experiences with this adventure. Playing the game itself, reading (though thankfully not playing, because dear loving God in heaven no!) the module it's based on, Ruins of Adventure, and converting and expanding that module to make my Pathfinder group play through (we went off the rails quickly). As a few interesting notes: A) The madman is, and I quote, "mad (in the best Hollywood fashion), he doesn’t make a lot of sense, babbling on about anything that comes into his head. However (again in best Hollywood fashion) he does have some useful information". The module gives a few examples of hints that he can drop about the final boss. Of them, the only thing carried over here seems to be "Don’t go there! Don’t go on the hill!”, which doesn't make a drat bit of sense in either context. He's a little less of a pain in the rear end if you bring him back to town though. "The madman will reluctantly accompany the player character back to the settlement, but only if they insist. Doctors, surgeons, and clerics who examine him will concur that the only effective way to cure the wretch is for him to forget all that happened to him, to totally blank his mind of his terrible experiences. If not cured, he becomes a problem for the community, unable to control his actions or stay out of violent trouble." B) The basilisk is just as randomly out of nowhere here as it was originally. The module gives you a bag of holding for beating it, I'm fairly certain they don't exist in PoR. C) The librarian specter may be optional, the module only mentions him being in one room. I as the DM would obviously do what the game did and have him attack if you try to leave with any books, but directly as written, an argument could be made for being an optional fight to come back and do later, like the trolls and ogres. D) Speaking of, the fight with the trolls and ogres wasn't there in the module. None of the scripted fights in the slums were there, it's nothing but random encounters. I like the way the game handled it better, all things considered. E) All of the library books quoted for journal entries are taken verbatim from the module. By this point, the players should have a fairly good idea of what the boss is, what the Pool of Radiance is, and how the one is connected to the other if they've been paying attention. Oddly enough, in the module all of the joinable NPCs in town are working for Cadorna, with the goal of bringing him any actionable intel on the Pool. That never really came up in the game. F) Unrelated to the Library, but after the Kuto's Well section I brought up how different Norris the Gray looks between the Amiga and PC versions, but I'd forgotten that originally, he looked like this https://i.imgur.com/UlQBBPE.png Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 10:04
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Chokes McGee posted:Woo yay 187 XP. And no magic gear. Sure am glad that 30 minutes of my life was wasted! Unsurprisingly, those two things are related. As I'm given to understand ye olden tymey rules, experience was calculated based on the difficulty of the strongest monster in the encounter and the value of the treasure, with very little weight given to how many monsters were actually involved. That's why all those treasure piles also give shitwhacks of experience, but huge armies of low level monsters are worth piss all. The Ruins of Adventure module doesn't say specifically when to send players to the keep, but it does specify "The council will propose this mission only after the bulk of the island has been cleared", and you can't get the mission to clear the textile house until it's done, because council politics are an actual relevant thing in the module and you actually have to interact with them instead of just getting jobs from Sash and then occasionally somebody else shows up.The keep is definitely not the very next thing to do after the slums like the game would have you believe. In lieu of the copy protected scroll, you're just upfront given the words "Lux" and "Shestnik" (why they shortened it, your guess is as good as mine), but the scroll was rotted, so you only got half the last word, "Samos...". I can't remember if it held over to the game or not, but on tabletop zombies make up for being otherwise total garbage by being immune to all your paralytics. No hold, no sleep, no charm, nothing, in addition to being immune to cold damage, which I don't think ever comes up in this game. Interestingly, the module calls out that not all of the undead are human, they're a mixture of races. I like the kind of attention to detail. As some people suggested should happen, during the final battle in the module (35 orcs and 15 hobgoblins there), any undead that you haven't killed will join in, on your side if you use the password, or attacking indiscriminately if you don't. The text actually states that the enemies should try to make a fighting retreat if they take 20% casualties, and rout entirely at 50%. Fighting 50 dudes is less frightening if you get undead backup and they bail after the first 10 are dead. Not sure why the undead backup wasn't available in the game. A few optional fights didn't make it into the game, most notably a Slithering Tracker near the armory. It's invisible, has 5 hit dice, higher than most things you've fought up to this point (though Mendor and other spectres have 6), has a chance to paralyze targets on hit, and anything paralyzed dies in 6 turns (but otherwise deals no damage). But you needed to go into the room it was in to find the full "Samosud" password to be able to skip undead fights on the way out after the orcs/hobgoblins battle.
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Nov 27, 2019 06:29
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Surprisingly little to note about the Ruins of Adventure version of Kovel Mansion, it was just kind of there. Interestingly, the ambushing thieves there are drawn directly from a pool of 18 thieves, three of each level from 1 to 6, with every ambusher being the lowest level thief available, and if you kill him he's gone and the next lowest level is drawn next. Once you've killed all 18, the mansion is clear and you've completed the mission, no final fight, no dying man with critical information about The Boss. The traps and treasures are just as thick, though the cabinet full of spell scrolls isn't nearly as great on the face of it, but it does have much higher level spells, despite this mission being intended to be done here between levels 3 and 5. There's also a room full of expensive rugs valued at minimum 14000 gold with each rug having a 10% chance of being worth an extra 5000. There's also sacks of hundreds of coins, and the caskets contain jewelry worth thousands more. I think this place is simultaneously meant to make the party flush with cash and also weight them down with so many coins the thieves become serious threats. In the version I ran, I replaced this, the slums, and another area that hasn't appeared yet with a series of residential districts where the party went from house to house clearing out squatting goblins and orcs, culminating in an attack on an abandoned and repurposed wizard's laboratory.
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Dec 7, 2019 06:47
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That line about the headman being "the biggest, meanest, dirtiest nomad" in the camp is directly from the module, as is most of the rest of the text they used in-game here. Nearly half the text devoted to this adventure is devoted to explaining how you have to fight a hundred angry dudes if you act hostile towards them, but if you offer a gift, or are nice to the chief, or "do anything else that is remotely civilized" (again, direct quote), they'll greet you with open arms. The talk around the fire lists a few more of the hostiles in the region, all of which are still in the game, but I guess the developers didn't want to give too much away in one conversation. The kobolds, kinda surprisingly, are directly from the book as well. They only attack in one wave (the "kobold wave" is described as the only battle tactic the undisciplined, disorganized, and desperate kobolds know). 150 kobolds attack your party and the 50-90 nomads (the module gives a breakdown of the camp as being 50 men, 35 women, and 10 children, and that the children don't fight, which suggests that the women do, but it never says so outright). The kobolds break and run if 100 of them die, the nomads only bother to chase them if their own casualties were light. Your reward here is based directly on how many nomads got killed, if they take under 20% casualties, they give you a magic sword, a pile of gold, and the pile of gold the kobolds were carrying. If they take over 20% casualties, they hold back the sword and most of their gold. If the chief dies, you only get the kobolds' gold. Best case scenario, you walk out of the camp with 8000 gold and a +2 sword. The most interesting change here? In the module, the kobolds have nothing at all to do with The Boss. The nomads are just worried about a large band of kobolds in the vicinity and ask you to stick around and help out. I also thought the kobolds were kind of a letdown, and so in my adaptation of the module I changed out the entire attack on the camp. Instead, the party represented the Council in a series of tests of strength against a party representing the Boss, and whoever impressed the nomads more would sway them to their side. The party lost, because the Boss's side had giants (I never suggested the games wouldn't be rigged against them), but they sort of came out ahead by making inroads with the giants and eventually get them to swap sides.
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Dec 20, 2019 07:56
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Hobologist posted:Is there any abbreviated combat rules for large groups in the 1st edition? I would think a battle with about 250 participants would wear the edges off your dice. None that I've ever seen, although I wouldn't put it past Gygax to have buried it somewhere next to the random dungeon generator. Recall that AD&D1e is only a couple versions and a handful of years removed from being a tabletop combat game. Really, it's not that much worse than playing a high point value army of weak mooks in modern Warhammer 40k. Commander Keene posted:Knowing early ed. D&D, there's probably a chart you roll on where the PCs actions have only a slight effect on the outcome. Or yes, they just flat-out expect you to actually run a combat with 200+ participants. OG D&D had a lot of BS like that. Nope, you are flat out expected to run the whole combat, controlling all the damned nomads and double-damned kobolds, and keep enough track of what the PCs do to determine if they "significantly contributed" to the battle. Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Dec 21, 2019 |
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Dec 21, 2019 01:26
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PurpleXVI posted:If large enough you could use the somewhat groggy and detailed BATTLESYSTEM(tm) which was published alongside 1E and 2E AD&D. *Cracks open a PDF with an eye-seering red cover* Wow. No. Just no. I may just be the guy vicariously enjoying this stuff by reading the modules and manuals thirty years after the fact and playing vintage video games, but I refuse to believe that anybody ever actually used this thing. I've never really seen anything present a good solid handle on adapting regular combat rules to mass combat (I had some luck with Malhavoc Press' Cry Havoc, but it doesn't scale well at all, Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign is... awkward still, but a little better, and doesn't feel like I'm doing math homework at the game table). PurpleXVI posted:Otherwise some modules, like the execrable Dragonlance series of dogshit productions, occasionally had some light rules that were basically opposed morale checks the PC's could affect with heroic actions and the like. I've used this method myself a handful of times. It makes more sense than having the heroes take on entire armies single-handedly, armies of kobolds notwithstanding. The idea at least works out better as one feature among many in future mass-combat alternate rules, such as 3.5e Heroes of Battle and the aforementioned Ultimate Campaign.
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Dec 21, 2019 01:53
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gently caress Yarash's teleport maze so very much. I nixed that poo poo entirely in favor of a slightly less bullshit maze involving switches that made doors appear and disappear.Chokes McGee posted:And lo and behold, the river isn't filled with toxic waste anymore! Most major waterways need at least a few years to filter everything out and probably corrupt the groundwater for decades afterwards but nope, everything's great here. Also, we can now cross the Stojanow on horseback without any issues, which saves us a few plat from hiring a boot. Hooray? This is actually explained (or at least hand-waved) in the module, where the poison is "truly bound into the soul of the water", which is why nobody can do anything about it except stopping it at the source. Your party is also the eighth group the Council has sent to deal with it, with nobody else ever coming back (this is meant to be a suicide mission when Cadorna is getting antsy about you, considering the party loose ends any time after the library is cleared and you bring him the information on the Pool). The first problem in the adventure is getting to the island, since the lake is also full of poison (which automatically kills you on a failed save), and at any point trying to bypass it you might be attacked by mutant sahuagin. The poison's actual purpose is to "alter the subtle in the waters in the Moonsea", there's no explanation onwhy, save that it's related to Yarash's plan to create freshwater sahuagin and dominate the region. The teleporter maze is functionally the same bullshit as seen in game. Yarash himself attacks the party alone, but is a level 10 wizard with enough spells to be dangerous, and has his wand here too.
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Dec 29, 2019 12:03
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So, the buccaneer camp? Entirely original content to the CRPG, so nothing to talk about there, save that the animal stampede is always my go-to for clearing it. The module does have a roving band of buccaneers that hangs around in the same approximate area as the camp, led by a fellow named Lanyard o' the Sail, but they're just a recurring villain with no interesting encounter or loot. The lizardmen are pretty much exactly the same (their lair is supposed to be on an island called Sauros Island, it's kind of hard to tell from the in-game art) are different as well, with different outcomes depending on if you freed Yarash's prisoners or not. If you go to Sauros before hitting the pyramid, the lizardmen are all hostile and set up ambushes as soon as you approach, you have to pick your way through being constantly jumped, but can find some decent treasure. The real reward is if you go after, since you learn the lizardmens' "special friend word", which thankfully doesn't involve a code wheel, and can use it to get them to back off. This leads to you being mobbed like celebrities by every lizardman and lizardwoman in the camp, you get invited to a feast in your honor, where the chief gives rewards to every party member who was present in the attack on Yarash, vastly outvaluing the treasure you'd get just from looting the place, along with medallions identifying you as freinds to the lizardmen that prevent any lizardman from attacking you unless you attack him first.
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Jan 22, 2020 06:41
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Hey Chokes, does your game have music? My collection has what claims to be the soundtrack for the Amiga version, but I don't seem to recall any music from my extremely brief attempts at playing that version. Also has a much more robust soundtrack from the PC-98 version, which makes me smile imagining Japanese kids getting into American CRPGs at the same time American kids were picking up Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.
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Jan 27, 2020 22:15
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Peanut Butler posted:I never thought about the music, I originally played these on an 8088 with no sound card The PC version we're familiar with didn't have music. The PC-98 was an 80s-90s 16 bit Japanese computer that had a pretty decent library of games, including a surprising number of ports, including a version of Pool of Radiance that looked and sounded like this. Oddly, the sound effects are actually worse. We weren't exactly missing out.
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Jan 29, 2020 00:55
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Gilgamesh255 posted:Oh, I see they took some music from the NES/Famicom version. For the sake of comparison: https://youtu.be/O8own2gNwZk Yeah, as far as I can tell they have the same soundtrack, though I think the PC98 predates the NES release by a couple years, though I can't find a date to confirm that. Both ports were done by the same company, FCI, who also ported a bunch of other western RPGs to the NES and SNES, including the Ultima series.
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Jan 29, 2020 06:58
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Commander Keene posted:I like how the dragon on the boxart in that video isn't so much using his breath weapon as he is shooting a fire laser beam from his mouth. That particular variety of dragon's breath weapon is almost literally a fire laser beam.
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Jan 30, 2020 02:53
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It's funny because I totally expect Chokes to show off the automatic game over from the entire party agreeing to join Big T's Merry Men before the final boss fight
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Jan 31, 2020 00:51
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The funny thing is that not going to the graveyard is even more of a running gag in the module than it is in-game. The very first fight you get into is against a group of skeletons and zombies controlled by a wight (it specifically gives instructions not to have the wight hit any of the party members). From then on, every time you complete a mission, the Council starts bitching about more and more undead building up and begging and bribing the party to deal with it. As you complete missions, they start telling you about, in order, skeletons raoming around and breaking poo poo, zombies roaming around and breaking poo poo, and wights roaming around and kidnapping people. The bribes include the same two handed sword +3 vs undead as seen here, but also a bounty of 50 gold per undead head. As Chokes noted, the number of undead in the graveyard increases exponentially, doubling with every two missions you complete.
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Feb 1, 2020 23:32
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Zurai posted:I don't remember AD&D rules very well but it's more likely that she hit for 4 which got halved. This is exactly the case, skeletons take half damage from edged weapons.
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Feb 2, 2020 01:41
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Glad to see this team of chucklefucks made it through. This game has always been near and dear to my heart, but I freely admit that Azure Bonds is the better game (with an even higher Bullshit Quotient than Radiance), so I'm looking forward to when you reach it.
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Feb 10, 2020 08:27
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Radiance definitely scales up encounter sizes based some arcane formula that probably involves characters' levels and stats, but I've never heard of any of the later games doing it.Official PoR Cluebook posted:The characters in a party do not need such amazing scores to win the game. In fact, any well played party should be able to win. The computer is smart enough to gauge the power of the party and it often modifies the number of monsters in an encounter to give the party a good fight regardless of their power. Beginning characters with very high ability scores look to the computer like high level adventurers. This may put them at a disadvantage. 'Any well played party' my rear end, I tried an all magic-user run once, it was a loving disaster. EDIT: At least one internet rando claims that the formula is: code:Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Feb 11, 2020 |
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Feb 11, 2020 05:15
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Straight White Shark posted:I am amused but not particularly surprised that the game seems to track AC and THAC0 internally as basic positive modifiers (and also apparently on a much larger scale??) According to the post on another forum that eventually led me to that post, AC is stored as 60 - the actual AC value, with something similar for THAC0 possibly to avoid having to used signed integers because it's 1988 and every byte is precious.
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Feb 11, 2020 07:18
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Chokes McGee posted:Welp, didn't take long to find our culprit. You'll note his hangout is in the shape of a cross which... raises more questions than answers, quite frankly. This whole section is kind of dodgy as far as undead lore goes. Some of that may be due to first edition D&D, whose sole motivation for undead monsters was "gently caress you and the horses you literally rode in on." Scattering holy bits in the vampires coffin to negate it is pretty standard vampire lore (by which I mean Bram Stoker probably made it up), but I don't know what the game devs were on when they decided to put the coffin inside a giant stone cross. That's unique to the game, it was just a square black marble crypt in the module. Speaking of, the module makes it more clear (to the DM, the players are expected to figure it out themselves) that the scroll and the broken crosses and holy water vials were all put there by the vampire himself to trick you into thinking that somebody beat you to the punch. achtungnight posted:The first time I played this, I thought the paladin and priestess mentioned in the journal entry already killed the vampire so I didn't have to kill him again. It was quite irritating to find out I was wrong. Yeah, like that. Choke's joke about he vampire being irritated by the light is kinda funny because in the module he turns on the lights himself when you enter his chamber. Then he welcomes you to his home, and then immediately lays into a random party member with his charm glare. If the wizard is with you, he nails as many targets as he can with Hold Person, after having activated several traps on the way to the vampire's lair, and then the fight starts. After you beat him, you have the choice to either loot the room or immediately chase after him, if you take the time to loot you get some decent treasure, but he has enough time to raise new spectres to replace the ones you killed, and they go back to raising skeletons, zombies, and wights. The ghost that gives you treasure is actually cool and unique because he's a repeatable encounter. He's the ghost of a long dead knight who used to protect the city, and he gives out specific rewards depending on your class type, and any time you bring a new character to him, they get that reward as well, presumably as a means to help you re-equip new characters after your previous guy got his head ripped off. The downside is that you have to fight spectres every time you want to see him, with the size of the spectre mob increasing by 3 every visit.
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Feb 23, 2020 07:45
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Since you're jumping directly from Radiance to Curse, I suppose this means the mad solo adventures of Sternn in Hillsfar are completely out of the question?
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Mar 3, 2020 03:22
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Chokes McGee posted:oh my loving gods the amiga version of curse is a mess At this point, depending on how much time you've already invested, maybe you'd be better off recreating the party in the DOS version? Curse was when the DOS versions finally stopped looking hideous at least. Chokes McGee posted:Absolutely. The four main games are on the menu right now, and Curse is slowly grinding me down and we haven't even gotten to the worst parts of Blades Ah well, a man can dream (of making somebody else play that game so I can live vicariously through them without having to touch it myself). Also, mentioning the worst parts of Blades suggests that there are good parts, I need to mention this is not the case. No part of Secret of the Silver Blades is good, some parts are simply less bad than others.
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Mar 3, 2020 07:56
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Chokes McGee posted:I'm probably going to do this in all honesty: Make our guys in Bonds, edit them with a hex editor to get them exactly the same, down to the spellbooks, and then turn them loose on the DOS version. This buys us a number of really good things, including battles happening at Warp 9 and fast restarts. I'm fairly certain you could do all those things in like a tenth of the time with GBC, but I've only ever poked around with it at best, so I can't say for certain. If you're more comfortable hex editing it, you do you boss.
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Mar 4, 2020 00:09
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Alpha3KV posted:I think I remember Dirten giving a very quick "My job's done now, bye." if he survives the Mace battle. Other way round actually, it's more "Your job's done here, you can go report quest complete, I've gotta get to work scrubbing bits of orc off the temple and consecrating unholy symbols of Bane with my holy piss". And you never see him again and it's safe to assume 40 more orcs came through and murdered him. Oh boy, the module version of this area. Would you believe that the writers expected you to do this without Fireball or Hold Person? You were expected to be able do this quest at a minimum of level 2, although Dirten himself (who is oddly a gnome) only approaches you about it at 3 or 4. The quest here is all about the treasure, some of the artifacts were made by gnomes and Dirten wants to retrieve them, while you can keep the rest. As Achtungnight stated, Mace also wants the treasure, and his guards are instructed to not fight you unless you start one, and to let you into the Temple. If you find the treasure, Mace and 40 orcs jump you immediately. If you wander around for two hours, he decides you don't know anything and likewise rush inside. If you try to leave without the treasure, you get jumped at the door. The treasure is a hell of a lot better here, in addition to the Dust, you get scrolls of high level mage and cleric spells (including a fireball and ice storm that you'll probably need to use to get past the Mace Company if you actually do try to do this at level 2), a pile of magic weapons, and some handy potions and wands. The text straight up says that if you show up at 4th level or lower you will probably loving die if you don't find the treasure and use the scrolls and stuff to win the fight. Oddly, the empty buildings that Chokes mentioned do serve a purpose here, Mace's army is hiding out in them waiting for the signal to swarm you. The option to move from building to building killing small groups isn't brought up at all, presumably because the party isn't supposed to think about there being an ambush here and the DM is supposed to railroad them into getting ambushed. I kinda prefer the way I ran this area in my campaign, wherein Mace killed himself trying to summon an avatar of Bane to deal with the party. He failed miserably, but did draw Bane's attention long enough to give the party paladin the back of his hand before dispatching Haask, Voice of Hargut, a character who doesn't actually appear in this game but has some cool lore in the journal and got expanded on later, to deal with them.
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Mar 7, 2020 04:06
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Chokes McGee posted:I like the idea of Bane rolling up and being all "you're beneath my notice except that guy, gently caress that guy specifically," it made me giggle As I'm given to recall, it was more because the paladin was in mid-charge trying to end Mace right there and happened to bounce off the briefly appearing image of Bane. But "gently caress you specifically" ended up being a running theme with him, he sort of turned himself into the hostile and angry version of the party face when dealing with all their enemies and more than a few of their allies. Also, there's one more interesting bit from the module worth mentioning. One, count it, one of the many outbuildings around the temple is Mace's house, you can attempt to kick in the door and wreck his poo poo, fighting past waves of guards from room to room. But the entire thing is pointless, because the DM is specifically instructed that Mace must always be able to escape and show up at the temple later. At the very least his name leads to sort of better treasure here, since it turns out he collects jewel-encrusted silver maces, worth thousands of silver pieces each, as an extra gently caress you.
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Mar 7, 2020 05:02
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Chokes McGee posted:Oh, by the way: we're penalized during each and every single one of these fights. Didn't I mention that? Anyone who isn't a dwarf, halfling, or gnome is operating at a THAC0 and movement penalty. These are kobold caves, which means they're made for tiny folk, not lumbering oafs like us. Also, we're dealing with all of this and a second dump truck of kobolds. I like sweeping seven of the little bastards at once as much as the next sadist, but all those plinks and arrows add up. Movement cut in half, -2 penalty to attack and damage rolls, +2 penalty to AC, if they're using the same penalty from the book. Speaking of, at least there are no boars or trolls or wyverns in the module version of the Kobold Kingdom. Instead, it has Kobolds! Specifically, 321 Kobolds spread across a slightly more interesting fortress, usually in groups of 10 that the party can easily chew up and spit out, but the final fight is against 75 of them (in waves of 25 each), after 10 ballistas shoot into you. Then while you're fighting them, the ballistas keep firing, and every kobold in the side rooms if you didn't clear them out first bursts out from behind you. Unlike the game, you actually do get to kill the king, who still bails out with his elite guards once it's obvious the party is going to win. If for some dumb reason you decide not to chase him down and end him, he rounds up a hundred more kobolds and ambushes you at night in the wilderness. On the other hand, the loot here doesn't suck. It's a massive pile of gold and silver and gems (to go with the other massive piles of gold and silver and gems this module throws at the players), along with a magic bow and arrows. And then it's worth another massive pile of gold from the council in Phlan. Also enough mundane weapons and shields that you could probably outfit your own army, and enough rations to keep them fed for a long campaign. As for Zhentil Outpost, I'll reserve my commentary until Chokes finishes it, since I can't rightly remember which details the game sees fit to inform the player of and I don't want to spoil anything. Instead, I'll just point out that the players are expected to go bar-hopping in Phlan before leaving for the outpost and learn ahead of time that the Zhents might not be the most trustworthy of folks. This was back in the old days of course, when the Forgotten Realms had only been an offical product line for a year or so, and even the people who had been playing D&D for a while might not have heard of Zhentil Keep or the Zhentarim.
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Mar 19, 2020 06:49
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the silver bottle with the efreet is entirely an invention of the PoR devteam and is only loosely connected to anything in the source material. Instead, that had a magic bottle contained in the treasure hoard of a hobgoblin lair you had to clean out (I don't think this made it into the game at all, at least not as anything more than a minor monster lair with a few fights and some crap loot, like the dozen or so others). The party never actually gets to use the bottle or even find out what it does, since a mage who tricked the party into going in with him to get the treasure (or bribed them if he had to abandon tricking them) steals it and teleports out immediately.
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Mar 19, 2020 08:22
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Chokes McGee posted:Our final fight is against whomever's left working the mess hall, a named mage, and the Commandant himself. I... don't know who that mage is, by the way. I think we run into him later? I'm sure there's deep and exciting D&D lore attached to him Oh, yes, he's critically important in a lot of material, such as... actually not a god damned thing, unless he's in the novel. It's kinda weird that the game placed him here since, as you stated, he shows up in the endgame, only appearing there in the module. There is a mage in the module version of Zhentil Keep, but he's unnamed. Actually, the commandant has an entire team of unique dudes, including a high level cleric. His javelins of lightning are directly from the text too, as are the dwarf's guantlets. Like in the game, the party is given the chance to either escape or slaughter everybody. Slaughtering them to the last man gets you a hefty pile of basic magic gear (+1 swords and chain mail), which I guess is handy to keep in a safety deposit box in case of total party wipe. The game dances around what the hell just happened, but it's pretty clear that Cadorna was behind the Zhent's attempt on your life. The module is more direct to the DM, but how much the players learn is based on if they read the documents they're delivering, which is totally an option here, or interrogating the commandant before killing him, or interrogating any Zhent soldiers in the area if they escape without killing the commandant, because operational security is a joke. The papers are a hefty pile of legal bullshit that takes an entire day to read, but this is the important bit: Porphyrus Cadorna posted:Lastly, to demonstrate desires and competence, we request that you shall slay these messengers who have come bearing these papers. Thereupon send their heads back to us as proof of your actions. Of course, since it's a sealed envelope, you then have to convincingly reseal it if you're going to make the delivery without getting caught. The gist of this situation is that there are three interests at play, the Phlan Council, Cadorna, and the Zhents. Cadorna is a member of the council, but is throwing in with the Zhents, probably selling out Phlan to them in exchange. The Zhents were willing to play ball, hence sealing the deal with the party's heads. The whole reason you get to hang out in the keep and have dinner with the commandant? He didn't actually read the papers until after dinner, the night ambush was him trying to get poo poo done quickly and quietly, since he thinks there are enemy spies in the keep (in fact, if the party approaches the keep without being on this diplomatic mission, they get a 'friendly invitation', which if denied turns into an order, which if ignored turns into being captured and interrogated). There's a fair amount more detail, but it would spoil the last mystery the keep has left to offer, so I'll sit on it for now. Amusingly, in the module Cadorna starts out as the most junior and least respected guy on the Council, but he throws his backing behind the party, and your successes are directly responsible for him rising in status and power throughout the adventure, having been promoted to the head by the time you're sent to Zhentil Keep, and now immediately pulls a 'you have outlived your usefulness' on the party. Guy's a dick.
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Mar 26, 2020 07:18
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Chokes McGee posted:And inside, we find... The thing I think most players don't get about Cadorna. The devs wanted you to at least consider the possibility that Cadorna and Tyranthraxus are the same dude up until now. Yes, yes, you can take your time to laugh about how stupid that idea would be. But then think about it. Cadorna has been the ones pulling your strings all this time, sending you to rescue shady agents like Skullcrusher, and to get information on the Pool of Radiance from the library. The Adventurer's Journal even has fake entries to mislead you into believing that Cadorna is evil and possibly a literal demon. Cadorna's rapid rise to prominence in the council is only briefly touched on in one obscure journal entry in the game, but is meant to make you stop and wonder in the module. Also, the game doesn't bother to tell you what the hell Cadorna is even doing chained up here, the module makes it clear that Tyranthraxus captured him and is holding him for ransom, the final adventure to enter the castle actually starts with the council authorizing the party to deliver the ransom, although nobody actually gives a rat's rear end about Cadorna himself (Tyranthraxus is using him as bait for the party, the council wants to put him on trial, the party wants revenge or to uphold the law or get paid or level up or whatever is motivating the players). So what the hell is his deal? Porphyrys Cadorna is the last remaining descendant of a line of successful cloth makers (hence the ancestral family textile house that gave Chokes and every other player fits), and he wants to rebuild the family name and wealth, first by getting in on the ground floor of the New Phlan government, then using the party to get his family's business back. At some point, he got really into the Pool of Radiance and started trying to gather information on it, using the party to do so directly by gathering documents from the old library, but also paying off thieves and other shady types, up to making his deal with Zhentil Keep. Cadorna is pretty sure the Pool is the source of Tyranthraxus' power and wants that power for himself (the player in both the game and the module has enough information to know better, but Cadorna never got to hear the stories from Zhentil Keep because of that whole backstabbing issue). One interesting bit that the game skips: rather than returning from Zhentil Keep to Phlan and instantly having everybody go "Cadorna's a traitor, bring us his head on a spike!", the party returns in the module to find a warrant is out for their arrest, signed by Cadorna in his capacity as head of the council (because module Cadorna is smart enough to have backup plans). If they got the papers back from the Zhent commandant, they can use them as proof of Cadorna's treachery, otherwise the party has to go the rest of the game without council support, getting documents from Tyranthraxus' spies in the central castle to prove that Cadorna is scum. Presumably if you don't even do that much the party probably gets a pardon at the end of the game for saving the city, but the writer's didn't seem to think it was necessary to go into. Of course, none of this matters anymore, because Chokes just killed Cadorna in cold blood. He explained what happens if you don't, but I'll just mention that Cadorna has one more role to play in the endgame of the module if he survives this encounter, which I'll sit on until Chokes posts the endgame of the game.
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Mar 31, 2020 00:03
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drat fine LP Chokes, I look forward to the rest of them. TheGreatEvilKing posted:What happens if the team joins the dragon? Game over, please insert coin to continue (I believe it might have a unique game over screen, but it's been over twenty years since I actually did it). It's also important to note that if, for whatever stupid reason, you're still using the NPCs hired from the training hall by this point, they always join Tyranthraxus. Chokes McGee posted:
Funny you should say that, the module version of Srossar (the dragon) can automatically see through invisibility. Tyranthraxus himself has 150' ESP, which I'm not entirely clear if that also allows you to attack invisible creatures. Speaking of, let's talk about Big T himself. In the module, this might not have been your first encounter with him. If the party is hanging around Phlan after clearing everything but the Castle, Tyranthraxus throws up his draconic forelimbs, screams "gently caress this poo poo!", and sends an army of orcs and goblins to attack the civilized sector, personally lending close air support to their efforts, and landing to fight the players personally if he sees them. He bails if he gets reduced to half health, and the text specifically describes him as "licking his wounds" when you encounter him in the Castle. Genheeris is a fair bit more complicated in the module. He's still terrified of the party murdering him, but also thinks they're assassins sent by his boss to clean up loose ends, if you do anything that suggests you don't actually work for Tyranthraxus, he immediately turns invisible and runs off, opening secret doors and otherwise giving you as a clear a shot at the possessed dragon as he can. Then he waits invisible in the boss room to see who wins, but ends up ambushing the party either way, if Tyranthraxus is winning it's all "Master I've come to aid you!", if the party is winning it's "Haha, now I will destroy all you fools and rule this city myself!". More importantly, Chokes just punched a dragon in the face until a fiery spirit jumped out of it, tried to possess a party member, and got sucked into the Pool by Bane. That... is not what happens in the module. In that version, Tyranthraxus still tries to possess somebody, party members get a save, anybody else doesn't. He goes for Cadorna first if you for some reason let him follow you around. If you weren't that stupid, he goes for any other NPC, in order of who has the most HP left, skipping anybody under half health. If that fails, he goes for one of his guards, with the same conditions (there really are only two guards here, just like the out of battle text said in-game, no idea where the other 18 in the game suddenly came from). Failing that, he goes for whichever PC has the most HP remaining. Any NPC is automatically taken, PCs have to save vs. death to avoid being possessed. No matter who he possesses, he then attempts to run off, and can only be stopped by killing the new host. If you kill his second host, Tyranthraxus' spirit screams and curses at you, then "roars up into a vast flaming cloud, squealing in hatred, then rockets out through the ceiling of the room." None of this being forcibly recalled by Bane bullshit, and the Pool of Radiance is definitely not in the castle, that was a weird change the game made that didn't make much sense. So what the hell was Tyranthraxus? The Zhentil commandant's story during dinner suggests that he was an evil fire spirit living in a pool, obviously the Pool of Radiance, the Curse of the Azure Bonds module describes him as a Daemon. Some of the material made up for the game ended up being built upon by later writers, who established Tyranthraxus as one of the Seven Lost Gods, a group of minor deities who were either killed or subjugated by Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul during their quest for godhood (confusingly, there's a completely unrelated group of deities called the Seven Lost Gods of Westgate). Some of the Seven were reestablished as elemental primordials in 4th edition, but Tyranthraxus wasn't one of them, possibly because the writers never want to give him a statblock. In my Pathfinder campaign, I made him an elemental from the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance who had apotheosized as a minor deity of glory, victory, and conquest. None of this answers the biggest question of all: Why the hell is his name spelled Tyranithaxus during combat?
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Apr 2, 2020 01:09
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...it occurs to me that I should have picked a race that can See Invisible.
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Olesh posted:At least n older editions of D&D (basically 3.5 and earlier), the invisibility granted by Dust of Disappearance explicitly can't be defeated by any means short of Dust of Appearance... not so sure about newer editions. Tyranthraxus's ESP ability would let him know that creatures were nearby, but not their location. Huh, and the Dust was still obtainable in the module too. Welp!
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Apr 2, 2020 21:40
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Again, making a huge assumption that anything on paper translates remotely similarly to the game, but paper Tyranthraxus has a flat 20% magic resistance. It's not out of the realm of possibility that that's the case and you just got screwed by RNG when you tried.
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Apr 4, 2020 04:58
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There's also a small number of monster lairs scattered about. Generic loot, no interesting encounters, overall felt kind of wasted.
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Apr 11, 2020 11:35
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achtungnight posted:Fun Trivia- this game was the unofficial sequel to a D&D novel called Azure Bonds by Jeff Grubb & Kate Novak. The heroine- Alias, the chick on the game title screen- wakes up with a similar issue of weird tats on her arm. There’s also a weird lizard dude following her, but we don’t have that issue. I’ll point out book similarities as we go. It’s a decent novel, a trilogy actually, if anyone wants to check it out. The two follow up books, The Wyvern’s Spur & Song of the Saurials, don’t have any relevance to this or future games. Sort of a sequel, sort of "the whole drat plot of the book all over again but happening to your party this time". It's rather a bit silly. As long as we're talking novels here, I suppose it's relevant to briefly talk about the Pool of Radiance novel, also named Pool of Radiance, one of only two games in the quadrilogy that got novelized (The other being the last, Pools of Darkness, which is the second book in this trilogy, followd by Pool of Twilight, and obviously these events are completely unrelated to the Finder's Stone trilogy Achtungnight brought up that starts with Azure Bonds). Accurately dating this stuff is a mess, but as far as I can tell the game and the module were being developed at the same time, with the novel written after the fact, being released a year later. The book is very much a character-driven narrative, being about a a thief, a priest, and a wizard, and their personal quests that just happen to pit them against the forces of Tyranthraxus. This version of Tyranthraxus ends up with his dragon body ganked by a Ring of Three Wishes, possesses Cadorna, and jumps into the Pool to escape. It's an alright read, Azure Bonds was better, but neither of them is exactly up to the standards set by the Dragonlance team.
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Apr 12, 2020 23:42
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Velius posted:I think Champions of Krynn came out first, but that system was a lot less polished in retrospect. Nope, Champions of Krynn was released in 1990, the year after this game, around the same time as Secret of the Silver Blades. They'd worked a lot of the jankyness out of the engine by that point.
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Apr 13, 2020 05:29
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Chokes McGee posted:Let's not say things we can't take back. Didn't say it was anywhere near all the jankyness.
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Apr 13, 2020 10:12
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PurpleXVI posted:Also gently caress, I was just gonna say: "How refreshing! An FR game without Elminster's useless mary sue rear end hanging around!" To be fair, this whole game takes place essentially in his backyard, it would be weird for there to be no mention of him at all.
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Apr 21, 2020 21:06
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Chokes McGee posted:So, you never find out in this game, but Princess Naganata or whatever is a high level ranger. achtungnight posted:Nacacia is an adventurer, a Ranger specifically, and has lots of friends among the Knights of Myth Drannor. Wrong edition guys, 2e Nacacia's a Fighter/Thief (specifically, the Heroes' Lorebook says she's a fighter, this module says she's a thief but that this was something she recently pciked up, so she probably dual-classed at some point during her adventures). She didn't pick up levels in Ranger (and Purple Dragon Knight, but lost her Thief levels) until 3e. Also, her name is Alusair, this game in particular seemed to just randomly decide to refer to her by her middle name, maybe it was a thing while she was adventuring and shacking up with Gharri. The module frequently uses her first and middle names together, calling her 'Alusair Nacacia', which just seems needlessly wordy, whereas most other sourcebooks just stick to Alusair. Side note: since when are modern sewers even a thing in the D&D tech level? At best, we should just have storm drains here, the fact that they're full of poo poo indicates that this place has plumbing, possibly even actual indoor plumbing and toilets like Chokes joked about. But enough about sewers, let's talk about sewers. So, all that bullshit that Chokes just went through, the sewers full of trolls and poo poo-monsters and all? He had it easy. In the module version of the sewers, Otyughs are a possible random encounter, as are groups of up to 8 trolls, but they also include groups of up to 8 wights or 16 ghouls, and one fixed encounter of 4 spectres and another of 14 ghouls led by a ghast. The trolls and their pet crocodiles are also still here. Funnily enough, the leader of the ghouls and the leader of the trolls both call themselves "king of the sewers" and their forces will fight each other if you lead one to the other. Instead of the group of friendly otyughs who trade you treasure for poo poo, instead there's only one friendly otyugh, specifically a neo-otyugh named Happy Hogun who remains friendly as long as you don't take anything from his garbage pile, but attacks if you do, so you have to decide if fighting him is worth the ring of invisibility you can find in the pile (a thief swallowed it for safe-keeping, and then died and had his body dumped there). If you can make it to the actual Fire Knife hideout proper without any of the Knives setting off an alarm (there are gongs stationed at three checkpoints you have to pass through in the sewers), either by sneaking or bluffing your way through, you can actually bluff you're way into the hideout. If you far more likely fight your way in, the Knives have somewhat more interesting things to fight than just endless waves of dudes, including some visiting hill giants, a pack of hellhounds, and a pet lion that slipped its leash. The hideout also has a visitor from one of the Knive's allied organizations, a priest from the cult of Moander. Giogi and Nacacia aren't initially kept in the same room, and you can feasibly rescue both first, you're specifically compelled to attack Giogi if he does his impression of the king, but he's figured out that people with blue tattoos keep attacking him when he does that, and he's smart enough to not loving do it. If you pick up the princess before attacking the Knives' leader, she demands you hook her up with a weapon so she can fight the leader with you, or jumps him herself if you don't want to immediately charge in guns blazing. The room full of burning books and with a scorched corpse is directly from the module, which actually explains that this was Tyranthraxus' doing. The dead guy, Kybor, was the chief wizard of the Fire Knives, and he was researching this weird fire-based supervillain his boss had partnered up with. In the module, this is where you learn about a number of magic items that are very important to the plot, they're still important in the game but seem to just appear out of nowhere with everybody seeming to just know that they're important and why. Tyranthraxus didn't like the amount of info Kybor was able to piece together on him and killed the wizard to protect his secrets, but failed to torch enough evidence. The fight with the Knives' leader, Radatha, goes different depending on what you did on the way to him. If you didn't rescue the prisoners, they're suddenly being held in his lair (just like in the game, Nacacia nearly has herself free by the time you show up and provide a shiny distraction). If you didn't kill the priest of Moander, he's there. If you didn't kill the guards in the adjacent rooms, they're there. Any other guards or hell hounds you didn't kill you come running in as reinforcements every round. If you somehow managed to sneak or keep bluffing all the way to Radatha's lair, he welcomes you in peacefully, despite clearly knowing who you are, because magic mind control tattoos, duh. If you fight your way in, he's less confidant, but still figures he can control you if he has too, so still plenty of time for villain gloating. Either way, he has a half-page length speech he wants to get through before fighting happens. If he makes it to the end of the speech, he invokes the bonds to make the party members kill each other. Thankfully, the module bonds allow a save vs. spells, but anybody who fails their save will start attacking the rest of the party, at whcih point the whole room turns into a four-way brawl (the non-controlled heroes, Giogi, and the princess vs. Radatha, his bodyguards, his hell hounds, and his reinforcements vs. the Moander priest and his troll bodyguards vs. the mind-controlled characters, who will attack the controlled party members first, but can also attack anybody who attacks them). Every controlled party member is controlled for at least 2 rounds, possibly as long as 8 rounds. After the 5th round, the roof gets blown open by the court wizard Vangerdahast and he rappels in with the king and 20 elite Cormyrian soldiers. If you haven't already killed Radatha by the point, his prior command to kill the king is still in effect, and the party has to save vs. spells again (except for anybody still under the "kill each other" order), with any failures rushing in to kill him. It's actually pretty awesome on paper, but also looks like such a mess that I nixed the whole thing in my campaign. The king, despite the whole "attempted murder" nonsense, does reward you better in the module than he did in game. Starting with covering the cost to have any dead party members resurrected at the Temple of Gond. After that is a list of other boons the king may grant, which ones specifically left up to the DM, including finding the gear the party had before they were kidnapped, stripped, and bonded (this doesn't have to be a party that completed the Ruins of Adventure module, but they should at least have some adventures under their belt, since you're expected to start this module between levels 6 and 9), covering the cost of Filani's consultation if you didn't do that already, giving you the most important notes from the Knives' hideout if you were bad adventurers and missed them (a map of a later area and the notes about Tyranthraxus) and a standing offer to have dinner with him as soon as you get rid of the bonds. Interestingly, it's Vangerdahast, not the king, who has you barred from reentering Tilverton, specifically because he's being a petty rear end in a top hat.
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Apr 24, 2020 00:28
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