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JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Why can't you just, dunno, spend 6 months masturbating in a cabin or posting on future dead comedy forums? Or is it easier to stack cold deaders instead providing a capsule hotel amount of space and some area to walk around? I mean, you still need to supply the popsicles with oxygen and some nutrients, so how much space/energy do you save?

Also, did I miss an update that pointed out what GEO is or why dolphins are now friends called cetes?

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Dallbun
Apr 21, 2010
Goons have a natural 80% resistance to

The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 41: The Deck of Pegasi, Pteryons, Polymorphed Wizards, and Piercers

246: Captured Beauty

A pegasus has gotten caught by a mechanical bear trap-type thing placed by a hunter. It’s panicking, struggling, and getting itself hurt more. It’s likely to inadvertently kick and trample any PCs who try to get close to the trap to free it. It will be grateful if freed, though, and come to their aid whenever they’re within 10 miles of that location. Which might be smack-dab out in the middle of nowhere, but I guess that’s how it goes.

Fine. I’d say keep, but...


247: Damsel in Distress

The PCs are in a forest, and find a pegasus with its back leg trapped between two tree roots. She’s injured herself trying to escape. The pegasus is panicked, but if they can help her, she’ll offer to grab some buddies and fly them where they’re going.

Hold on a minute, this is basically the same encounter as the last one! Down to the details! They’re both Medium Temperate Forest Monster Encounters. They both award 250 XP for helping the pegasus, and 0 XP (and an hour-long argument over whether people are “playing their alignments” properly”) if you kill the pegasus. They’re even adjacent numbers on the checklist! What happened here?

I guess I’ll keep this version because flying the PCs somewhere is a better reward? It’s as good a reason as any, and I’m certainly not keeping both.


248: Heart's Hunters

The PCs are walking along the side of a mountain or rocky hill. It’s one of those trails with a sheer cliff on one side. It’s actually not perfectly vertical, but slopes inward, apparently: there’s a 10-foot wide “sheltered area,” somewhat concealed with vines, at its base. There’s a peryton nest down there. The perytons attack the party two at a time, the three males trying to drive off or kill folks, the one female trying to grab someone and drag them down to the nest. Killing the female will cause the others to break, but they’ll stalk the PCs for revenge later. There’s about 270 gp in mostly small coinage (who carries around 1200 copper pieces other than PCs?) and a dagger +1 down in the nest.

Well, it’s just a random combat encounter, but at least there’s a little terrain to make it (somewhat) more interesting. Points taken off for +1 weapon proliferation, as well. Keep, but just barely.


249: Scammed

When the PCs are near a wizard’s tower, they are approached by the spellcaster himself, who, apparently not understanding basic economics, wants to hire them for 10,000 gp to retrieve a jade circlet worth 5,000 gp as a material component for a spell. He knows that a young dragon who lives in a cave nearby has one.

The cave is “scattered with golden coins, various weapons, and scrolls,” (all of them actually “worthless copper and ordinary junk”) and the circlet is prominently displayed in the back. When the PCs go in, a HUGE dragon (actually the shapechanged wizard) lands outside. It offers to trade them the circlet and their lives in exchange for, basically, everything else they own. It’ll flee if attacked.

What the hell, man? You’re an 18th-level wizard, and this elaborate, highly-dangerous scam is how you’re deciding to spend your time?

Incidentally, the jade circlet (which was the material component for the shapechange) “blackens and cracks within two turns after [the PCs] leave.” My, that’s a very idiosyncratic interpretation of how material components work. And one that, strangely, helps the DM pull one over on the PCs in this one specific instance! Weird! I stand corrected by Prism - this is explicitly how shapechange works. And I thought I knew my obscure D&D trivia.

I imagine the players would pile on the dragon and kill it, causing their rear end in a top hat DM to go red in the face. Then they’d go loot the tower. And honestly, even though I'm not a fan of the premise of this encounter, that is a pretty nice lead-in to a wizard’s tower dungeon. Is it worth it? Jury?


250: Piercers at the Gate

There’s a ancient portcullis at the entrance to a “ruined castle or underground fortress.” It’s raised, and it’s been there so long that many of the teeth have been encrusted with stone. Some have broken off over the years. Many of them are actually piercers, but they’re not that good at staying exactly in a row, so it’ll look very strange to any PCs who study it. They’ll also notice a big gap in the teeth on the left side that they can safely pass under.

It needs a rather specific setup, but other than that I like it fine. Keep.


251: Troubled Waters

There’s an underground lake or river, and there must be no bridge over it, since the PCs are going over it on a boat. The ceiling is covered with piercers, who will drop and attack; if they miss, they may punch holes in the boat. Under the water are the remains of other victims, about 1500 gp in coinage and gems, and a potion of healing.

“Piercers are mollusks and have no trouble existing underwater.” So… they’re so dense that they’ll punch holes in wooden rowboats, but they can swim? Seems strange. EDIT: It's been suggested that they must crawl along the bottom of the water and then up the walls. Makes sense, especially if they're above a relatively narrow underground river rather than a huge lake. And I would add some visible boat wreckage to give the PCs a clue. That in mind, I guess I it’s a keep.

Dallbun fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Nov 29, 2017

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

I don't think they swim, just crawl. Like snails.

Young Freud
Nov 26, 2006

JcDent posted:

Why can't you just, dunno, spend 6 months masturbating in a cabin or posting on future dead comedy forums? Or is it easier to stack cold deaders instead providing a capsule hotel amount of space and some area to walk around? I mean, you still need to supply the popsicles with oxygen and some nutrients, so how much space/energy do you save?

Also, did I miss an update that pointed out what GEO is or why dolphins are now friends called cetes?

The latter. Near-dead humans don't breathe, don't eat, don't drink water, and don't need as much comfort to maintain mental health, or at least as much as a fully awake person. That way, you could stack them like cordwood at minimal energy, expense and, more importantly, weight.

kommy5
Dec 6, 2016
Dungeons and Dragons ecology continues to baffle me. I can understand some dickish wizard making these kinds of creatures but I have no idea how they can possibly survive and reproduce without an inexhaustible source of stupid, low level adventurers.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

kommy5 posted:

Dungeons and Dragons ecology continues to baffle me. I can understand some dickish wizard making these kinds of creatures but I have no idea how they can possibly survive and reproduce without an inexhaustible source of stupid, low level adventurers.

In early D&D, that was exactly what the standard early PC party was, and they were exactly that inexhaustible, too.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Dallbun posted:

249: Scammed

When the PCs are near a wizard’s tower, they are approached by the spellcaster himself, who, apparently not understanding basic economics, wants to hire them for 10,000 gp to retrieve a jade circlet worth 5,000 gp as a material component for a spell. He knows that a young dragon who lives in a cave nearby has one.

The cave is “scattered with golden coins, various weapons, and scrolls,” (all of them actually “worthless copper and ordinary junk”) and the circlet is prominently displayed in the back. When the PCs go in, a HUGE dragon (actually the shapechanged wizard) lands outside. It offers to trade them the circlet and their lives in exchange for, basically, everything else they own. It’ll flee if attacked.

What the hell, man? You’re an 18th-level wizard, and this elaborate, highly-dangerous scam is how you’re deciding to spend your time?

Incidentally, the jade circlet (which was the material component for the shapechange) “blackens and cracks within two turns after [the PCs] leave.” My, that’s a very idiosyncratic interpretation of how material components work. And one that, strangely, helps the DM pull one over on the PCs in this one specific instance! Weird!

I imagine the players would pile on the dragon and kill it, causing their rear end in a top hat DM to go red in the face. Then they’d go loot the tower. And honestly, even though I disapprove of everything about the execution of this encounter, that is a pretty nice lead-in to a wizard’s tower dungeon. Is it worth it? Jury?

I would not keep this one. It's a dumb trick for a high-level wizard to do and there are plenty of other ways to get the PC interested in exploring a wizard's tower. (For one, you could tell them the guy's collecting 5000+ gp jade circlets.)

However, as a minor note, while that's not how most magical components work, it is actually how shape change works.

PHB, Shape Change posted:

The material component is a jade circlet worth no less than 5,000 gp, which shatters at the end of the spell's duration. In the meantime, the circlet is left in the wake of the shape change, and premature shattering ends the spell immediately.

Prism fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Nov 28, 2017

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

kommy5 posted:

Dungeons and Dragons ecology continues to baffle me. I can understand some dickish wizard making these kinds of creatures but I have no idea how they can possibly survive and reproduce without an inexhaustible source of stupid, low level adventurers.

Dragon Magazine #72 posted:

The ecology of . . .
The PIERCER
by Chris Elliott and Richard Edwards

Being the text of an address given to the Wizards Guild of Kabring by the Wizard Pyrex, shortly before his unfortunate demise. . . .
“Brothers and sisters in the arcane arts: “There can be few here tonight who at some time in the course of an expedition underground have not had to leap out of the way of a piercer launching itself from its roost high in the shadows above. If the piercer misses, it is usually smeared across the cavern floor. If it hits, it often does so with deadly accuracy. Because of these aspects of its existence, few people have any real idea of the creature’s true nature or life cycle. For instance, in the Bestiary of Xygag, the sage has this to say about the piercer: “ ‘Ye Piercer doth look like unto a stalactyte, and hangeth from the roofs of caves and caverns. Unto the height of a man, and thicker than a man’s thigh do they grow, and in groups do they hang. If a creature doth pass beneath them, they will by its heat and noise perceive it, and fall upon it to kill and devour it, though in any other way they move but exceeding slow.’
“Hardly pushing back the frontiers of scholarly analysis, I think you would agree. Unanswered therein are such questions as: How does it move? How does it feed? How, if it attacks only by sensing noise and heat, can it be so deadly accurate? And how, once it has impaled its prey, does it regain its lofty perch? “Well, we now have the answers. After much careful and often dangerous research and observation, I have established the life cycle of this remarkable animal, which I shall now relate while a number of my assistants illustrate with conjured images.
“The piercer is a mollusk, hatched from an egg the size of a hen’s, laid in clutches of six or eight in crevices on cavern walls or floors. “When first hatched, it resembles a slug with a rather more pointed tail than usual, but soon its abrasive tongue is scouring from the walls not only the fungi on which the young feed, but grit and sand. Gradually the grit and sand are secreted into a rocky shell around its body, growing from a thin, sturdy point to a cone as thick around as a man’s thigh, as it grows. When the piercer is about a foot long, it develops the distinctive adult oculars or eye stalks, which can be extended from the shell to point back along it.
“After slowly making its way to the roof of a cave, the adult piercer hangs there by its sucker foot, oculars alertly canted, waiting for its prey. Great patience is required, but when a creature passes immediately underneath it, down it plummets with fearful accuracy. Normally, its rocky shell will penetrate most hides, and it makes a kill.
“What then? I hear you ask. How does it feed on its prey, and how does it surmount the more immediate problem being stuck bolt upright in a skewered orc?" Fair questions, indeed.
“What in fact happens is that the piercer must briefly leave its protective covering, and eat its prey while clear the shell. Now is when it is at its most vulnerable — save for when it mates. Whenever possible it prefers to partially extrude itself from its victim, overbalance, and then pull its shell clear. This done, it can feast at leisure on the corpse, before crawling back to the roof to begin again the long wait.
“From time to time, two piercers will make their way to the cavern floor, where they perform a slow and intricate courtship, tracing labyrinthine trails in the dust. At the end of this ritual, they emerge briefly from their shells to consummate their union, and then laboriously return to their rocky roosts. In due course another clutch of eggs is laid, and a other generation of these remarkable gastropods emerges to continue the cycle.
“Fellow thaumaturges, I give you the piercer!”

At this point a rabbit was released, and was prompt impaled by a small piercer previously unnoticed in the roof. Amid general uproar, the piercer was revealed to be an illusion, which was small consolation to the rabbit, but was generally agreed to be a stylish and highly professional finish to a fascinating address.



Leraika
Jun 14, 2015

Luckily, I *did* save your old avatar. Fucked around and found out indeed.
I do like the wizard shapechanging thing, mostly because the idea of wizards going to incredibly convoluted lengths to amuse themselves is one that's always funny to me.

I'd probably have him drop the act if the PCs fell for it or they were too close to killing him, though.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

18th level wizards have won at D&D, have very little left to do, and at that point what can you do but gently caress with adventurers for sport?

unseenlibrarian
Jun 4, 2012

There's only one thing in the mountains that leaves a track like this. The creature of legend that roams the Timberline. My people named him Sasquatch. You call him... Bigfoot.

Night10194 posted:

18th level wizards have won at D&D, have very little left to do, and at that point what can you do but gently caress with adventurers for sport?

This literally why the old wizard endgame was to build a tower and dig a dungeon under it to fill with monsters.

Well, that and you needed overflow space for when you started using taking two unrelated animals, infusing them with demon ichor, and crossbreeding them.

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Angrymog posted:

I don't think they swim, just crawl. Like snails.

Maybe they can use jets like squids do. The old Castle Greyhawk module had a level that featured a variant species, the horizontal jet-propelled piercer.

SpiritOfLenin
Apr 29, 2013

be happy :3


Wizard doing stupid poo poo as a scam is such a wizard thing to do. The execution of that card ain't the best, but the idea is pretty solid.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!
Make Wizard Trump: flipped flopped through life with barely any troubles because of inheritance and pro wizard bias, fell rear end backwards into near ultimate power... and then used it fool's gold scams or whatever.

JackMann
Aug 11, 2010

Secure. Contain. Protect.
Fallen Rib

Dallbun posted:

251: Troubled Waters

There’s an underground lake or river, and there must be no bridge over it, since the PCs are going over it on a boat. The ceiling is covered with piercers, who will drop and attack; if they miss, they may punch holes in the boat. Under the water are the remains of other victims, about 1500 gp in coinage and gems, and a potion of healing.

“Piercers are mollusks and have no trouble existing underwater.” So… they’re so dense that they’ll punch holes in wooden rowboats, but they can swim? Seems strange. It works better for me if they’re on a relatively narrow underground river, where the piercers can crawl up the walls back to the ceiling more easily. And I would add some visible boat wreckage to give the PCs a clue. That in mind, I guess I it’s a keep.

Does it actually say they swim? Maybe they just crawl along the bottom like sea snails.

PoontifexMacksimus
Feb 14, 2012

Alien Rope Burn posted:

The very notion of a "war for souls" as posited by some Medieval Catholics (and part of the mindset that would lead to the early Inquisition) already led to horrific results in the real world; the notio of performing battlefield conversions on enemy soldiers and then killing them before they could recant was seen as a very practical matter. That's part why you wanted confessions from heretics, so you could then go and execute people after they admit their wrongdoing and hope that their souls entered God's ledger instead of Satan's. Of course, that's also why heresy had to be stamped out before it could spread, because souls going to the other side was untenable. The notion that one is tallying a score for Heaven that'll get counted in the Apocalypse - and one we better win if we're going to come out of that proper - I think is more horrifying for what it leads people to in life than the notion of what might happen after it, which is pretty abstract.

A friend of mine ran a game where a lot of Medieval Catholic theological notions were correct (even if the positions on such weren't necessarily "right"), and that resulted in one of the more creepy and eerie settings I've played in at times. But it was still essentially anthropocentric - horror came from somebody perpetuating heresy or engaging in the occult, not just from random forces assaulting our universe. The idea of an entire region becoming quite literally damned had literal, not just spiritual consequences, and such places often could feel like worlds where alien invasions had won. You don't even really need modern deconstructions of religion to get to the point of horror - some religious beliefs were plenty horrific enough in and of themselves when you take them to their "logical" conclusions.

seriously, medieval monks, you had entirely too many hangups involving demons and penises

Hello! I was reading through my backlog on this thread, and this very much caught my eye, so I cautiously wanted to ask if you had more to share about it?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



JcDent posted:

Why can't you just, dunno, spend 6 months masturbating in a cabin or posting on future dead comedy forums? Or is it easier to stack cold deaders instead providing a capsule hotel amount of space and some area to walk around? I mean, you still need to supply the popsicles with oxygen and some nutrients, so how much space/energy do you save?

Also, did I miss an update that pointed out what GEO is or why dolphins are now friends called cetes?
I imagine "cete" is because our whale and dolphin friends need to be referred to collectively without insulting them to the point where a dolphin repeatedly slams you in the nuts next time you get near the water.

Also, gotta have that good good cyberpunk.

Wapole Languray
Jul 4, 2012

JcDent posted:

Why can't you just, dunno, spend 6 months masturbating in a cabin or posting on future dead comedy forums? Or is it easier to stack cold deaders instead providing a capsule hotel amount of space and some area to walk around? I mean, you still need to supply the popsicles with oxygen and some nutrients, so how much space/energy do you save?

Also, did I miss an update that pointed out what GEO is or why dolphins are now friends called cetes?

Not yet: That whole section is an in-universe fiction of a "Welcome to Poseidon!" immigration vid thing, so they don't explain a lot. Basically the GEO (Global Ecological Organization) is a UN created multinational organization created to stop the Blight, a massive crop plague that nearly wiped out humans. It's just by time of the game, the GEO has grown to being the default world government. Cetes are not explained yet, but they're uplifts. Cete is just short for Cetacean because it includes Orca, Bottlenose and Common Dolphins, Belugas, and Pilot Whales. They get a whole book to themselves (Ancient Echoes) which is basically mandatory to read to play a cete.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

anti_strunt posted:

Hello! I was reading through my backlog on this thread, and this very much caught my eye, so I cautiously wanted to ask if you had more to share about it?

Any part in particular? (I don't have more to say about the penis demons, if that's what you're asking.)

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

Nessus posted:

I imagine "cete" is because our whale and dolphin friends need to be referred to collectively without insulting them to the point where a dolphin repeatedly slams you in the nuts next time you get near the water.

Unless that's your thing of course. I'm not here to judge.

JcDent
May 13, 2013

Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Any part in particular? (I don't have more to say about the penis demons, if that's what you're asking.)

A pdf of the homebrew would help!

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
Is anyone familiar with the Midgard setting by Kobold Press? I know they did a 13th Age Bestiary for it, and it looks like they're publishing more books on it (for 5e). What's the lowdown on it?

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Now that the festivity bird has been eaten and I've levelled Astrologian for a while, it's time to return to



The Creatures book briefly gives you the capsule stat block for a Kzin or a Puppeteer but refers you to the Explorers book for more deets.

Then we get the Outsiders, which is where things become, briefly, truly bananas.


no, no - you're not a virus, trust us. we're much closer

The Outsiders are beings with liquid helium for blood, or its blood equivalent. They live in the space between stars, by necessity. They seem to gain energy by having part of their bodies in shadow and other parts in starlight. They are not just cold, but fragile: an Outsider in lunar gravity would probably die within an hour. They travel, pursuing mysterious "starseeds" through relativistic space, watching things and taking their time. They seem to get along with most people, perhaps because they are so intensely alien that they pose no threat or rivalry. The one valuable thing they seem to have is information.

Rather than lurking in a shady bar and selling you plot coupons through their mustaches, the Outsiders in large part swap technology and, occasionally, services (ferrying the stranded and so on). You get credit from them by telling them things. You spend that credit to get important information, though in peaceful areas they may also lease remote iceballs - they lease Nereid, the moon of Neptune, from the United Nations in Known Space.

As discussed elsewhere, humanity bought the hyperdrive from them. The Puppeteers bought a reactionless drive from the Outsiders long ago and are still paying in installments. The way that the Outsiders work on their slower-than-light sojourn is that they get in touch with intelligent life forms as they pass through the areas of space they control... do their deals... and move along. Presumably they got the hyperdrive - and the Puppeteer reactionless drive - from somebody else, or put it together from other technologies they traded for. (Individual Outsider lifespans are ballparked at a million years.) The Outsiders are de-centralized; they have common habits, but they don't all keep in touch.

There are no Outsiders on Ringworld... as far as is known. It is technically possible for an Outsider to visit, in a gravity-suppressed vacuum capsule... and they would, of course, have no issues with the OUTSIDE of the Ring.

Statistically speaking the Outsiders are very frail and weak, although they have a relatively generous Appearance statistic for a weird cryonic space squid (3D6, average 10-11). They also do not have a record of weapons.

The Trinocs.



The Trinocs are weird looking guys who largely live on the "other side" of Known Space. They were only recently met by Humans (indeed, Louis Wu ran into them - if you want to talk about author-insert characters...) although the Kzin knew of them. The Trinocs were able to fend off our big ol' tabby cat friends, and the Kzin may not have had much interest in them compared to humans or Pierin - Trinocs, you see, are methane-breathers, as well as having a complicated internal metabolism and biochemical structure that - well - I'm going to just quote from the rulebook here.


"so what you're saying is that they're not good eatin'."

As is typically the case, the United Nations has cut a deal with the Trinocs, who have a small outpost on Titan. Earth has agreed to respect Trinoc space and avoid terraforming Trinoc-friendly worlds. In Earth-like environments, Trinocs need breathing suits or special facilities. Their weapons are very good, probably in no small part due to their adjacency to the Kzin.

Trinocs are not statistically treated as very different from Humans and lack special powers, beyond a different hit location table. They don't even have innate armor, although the environmental suit a Trinoc will probably be clopping around in if it comes to the Ringworld may well.

We're going to call a halt here because from here on out it's all zany Ringworld hominids. We'll begin with the City Builders, who may take up an entire update. They were truly forward thinking individuals, who changed the face of the Great Arch!


our founder, john q. rishathra

Nessus fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Nov 29, 2017

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Well, one power. Trinocs can rotate their neck 180 degrees.

Dallbun
Apr 21, 2010
1d3+4 random encounters are disgorged in this thread every day, due to the presence of a natural portal to the Elemental Plane of

The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 42: The Deck of Puddings, (Tomie De) Paola, and PC Fatalities

I admit, sometimes the alphabetization is a stretch.


252: Black on Black

It’s a dark stone corridor with large frozen pools of water in it. One pool is actually a black pudding. But the PCs aren’t supposed to notice this, because the ice looks black against the dark stone as well.

As they move past, the black pudding will lash out with tendrils. If they fight, it’ll try to ooze around them and cut off party members. The PCs may also slip on the ice. It’ll stop attacking if it gets one victim. There are “three small diamonds (600 gp)” in the pudding.

Give the PCs some chance to notice the pudding, and I’m okay with it. It’s a relatively interesting combat terrain, which is good. Keep.


253: Pudding Peril

In a dungeon, in a room with wooden flooring (uh… the abandoned mansion sort of dungeon, I guess), there's a black pudding down under the floorboards eating away at them. The compromised wood will collapse and dump a PC 2-3 feet below into the pudding. It's pretty dang deadly, actually - puddings aren't that bad when you can evade them or burn them out, but when one's right on top of you? Ouch. Considering that, I appreciate that the encounter awards 5000 XP instead of the Monstrous Manual-standard 2000.

I also like that "the DM may choose to place a hidden door or passage beneath the wooden flooring." I'd definitely throw some extra secret passage into my dungeon map as recompense for dissolving some poor schmuck's armor (and also their legs). Keep.


254: I Am the Cheese

This is a reskinned version of Strega Nona. Everyone’s read that story, right? Do I even need to describe what’s happening? Big Anthony The wizard’s apprentice started a magic cheese-making pot and couldn’t stop it, and her master won’t return until half the town is covered in cheese.

It’s fondue, actually, so it’s hot and causes 1 hp damage per round if you’re in it. The PCs are intended to wade through the cheese for about 15 rounds until they can reach the magic pot. The command word is inscribed on it. (So why on earth couldn’t the apprentice stop it? Poor pronunciation?)

On the one hand… the pot makes that much cheese, that quickly? Can we make more of these pots? How does that not warp the entire economy of the region and/or world? On the other hand, those are dumb nitpicks when you can run an encounter where a town is engulfed in fondue. Keep.


255: A Sticky Situation

This is a Grimtooth-style trap. I can’t really reword it, so just take a look.



If your game supports elaborate dungeon deathtraps, this… certainly is one. Not my style, though. Pass.


256: Suspended Animation

In a dark, narrow corridor, the PCs see a shabbily-armored man floating slowly towards them. He looks fuzzy and indistinct. It’s not a ghost, though - it’s an upright corpse being digested by a gelatinous cube that’s coming straight at them. But of course they might not realize that until it reaches them, because that is the conceit of the gelatinous cube. Keep.


257: Moss Grows Fast

In a mossy cavern or chamber, there are not one, not two, but three green slimes hanging on the ceiling. “It will be very difficult for the party to spot the slimes, and they may only do so if PCs specifically state that they are examining the mosses above them.” They’ll drop down on any PCs that fall underneath and try to murder them in their unique, cheap-rear end way.

This works in the kind of paranoid dungeoneering D&D game where the PCs burn all moss on sight, just in case. AD&D 2E doesn’t feel like that game to me. Or at least I don’t want it to be. Pass.


258: A Slimy Mess

It’s a natural, but worked earthen chamber (but not completed, judging from the tools left around). There are (apparently fairly large) mounds of earth around, one of which has a two foot-long stone statue it. This exposes a green slime that has spread through a network of rodent tunnels within the mound, and it spills out on the PC. “This is not a trap and cannot be detected by a thief.” Because we really need to nerf 2E thieves, I guess. “However, if the PC states he is standing to the side as he frees the statue, there is only a 25% chance the slime will touch the character.” I guess if they don’t, it’s a 100% chance?

Not a fan of green slime. The only interesting gameplay is the DM grinning maliciously while the PCs describe how they’re quickly setting their friend on fire. Pass.

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

Dallbun posted:

254: I Am the Cheese

This is a reskinned version of Strega Nona. Everyone’s read that story, right? Do I even need to describe what’s happening? Big Anthony The wizard’s apprentice started a magic cheese-making pot and couldn’t stop it, and her master won’t return until half the town is covered in cheese.

It’s fondue, actually, so it’s hot and causes 1 hp damage per round if you’re in it. The PCs are intended to wade through the cheese for about 15 rounds until they can reach the magic pot. The command word is inscribed on it. (So why on earth couldn’t the apprentice stop it? Poor pronunciation?)

On the one hand… the pot makes that much cheese, that quickly? Can we make more of these pots? How does that not warp the entire economy of the region and/or world? On the other hand, those are dumb nitpicks when you can run an encounter where a town is engulfed in fondue. Keep.

So they realize the party's going to take the pot, right? The decanter of endless, burning hot cheese is a magic item anyone would want.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

Reskinning Strega Nona and Big Anthony is always acceptable.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Dallbun posted:

249: Scammed

I imagine the players would pile on the dragon and kill it, causing their rear end in a top hat DM to go red in the face. Then they’d go loot the tower. And honestly, even though I'm not a fan of the premise of this encounter, that is a pretty nice lead-in to a wizard’s tower dungeon. Is it worth it? Jury?
Coming to this late. I generally agree with the take that high level D&D wizards are exactly the sort of people to pull some nonsense like this, BUT if your setting is a bit less gonzo Dying Earth, I still like it with a modification. Namely, make the tower part of the scam. The scammer found it abandoned by its real master and can't figure out how to get into the interesting sections. So now he's using it as a front to make this other scam seem more legitimate. That also lets you tweak the power level of the scammer independently of whatever you want to do with the tower, and also explain why the scammer didn't use any good loot in the tower against the PCs.

Dallbun
Apr 21, 2010

Mors Rattus posted:

So they realize the party's going to take the pot, right? The decanter of endless, burning hot cheese is a magic item anyone would want.

Would you willingly make an enemy out of Strega Nona?

Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer
These days I'd replace the fondue with some kind of entangling, creeping pasta.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Mors Rattus posted:

So you're saying that the evil wizard is dancing naked on a mailbox.
He never sleeps, and he will never die.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

I assume, at a certain point of intoxication the wizard is capable of being arrested, at which point the guards will know hes sobered up after a good nights sleep when he teleports out of the jail cell

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
There is a scene in a Dying Earth story where these godlike wizards explore an ancient city, discover sealed jars of booze and, after getting quite drunk, realize that it was probably embalming fluid.

Prism
Dec 22, 2007

yospos

Halloween Jack posted:

There is a scene in a Dying Earth story where these godlike wizards explore an ancient city, discover sealed jars of booze and, after getting quite drunk, realize that it was probably embalming fluid.

I really don't remember that - well, I remember them in the city, just not the embalming fluid. Maybe I should reread my Dying Earth collection.

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Dallbun posted:

Would you willingly make an enemy out of Strega Nona?

Like at least wait for her to show up again and buy one off her because holy poo poo an endless pot of hot cheese would legitimately be useful.

Comrade Gorbash
Jul 12, 2011

My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.
Dying Earth wizards are essentially goons.

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

Bieeardo posted:

These days I'd replace the fondue with some kind of entangling, creeping pasta.

So you’ve read Strega Nona.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!

Comrade Gorbash posted:

Dying Earth wizards are essentially goons.
There's another story where they literally get laid with holographic "recordings" of long-dead women, so this checks out.

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.
Dark Matter: Xenoforms



Introduction:

I’m going to cover two things today, firstly the actual book’s introduction and structure, and second some quick information on the Strangers in the campaign setting that might come up in Xenoforms.

It starts by clarifying that yes this is essentially a monster manual and things that are also in-scope of cryptozoology but wouldn’t need combat stats maybe aren’t covered. The book is laid out by origin, going through the continents first and then things that aren’t really tied to any specific location for whatever reason. It explains how to read the stat blocks for a while which is nice if kind of pointless given you’re supposed to be familiar with the rules in theory to even be using the book.

It then includes the rules for overpowering from the gamemaster’s guide after noting that animals tend to want to knock their opponents to the ground and maul them rather than try to fight straight up. It’s got a loving darling section next on coming up with names for xenoforms when you want to create your own, so you can more easily distinguish if it should be the Beast of the Land’s End at the Kansas City Mall or the Kansas City Mall Land’s End Monster. It then gives some final guidance on actually running encounters and making sure to, horror-movie like, neglect to describe things as much as you can get away with to preserve a sense of mystery.

So now to some background that we’ll want for later, as noted.

Stranger Factions:

The Greys: Little grey psychic fuckers. They showed up in a generation ship ages ago and have been meddling ever since. They’re a maybe friendly Stranger faction in that their end goal seems to be to get humanity to a state where they’d be chill with the Greys ditching their ship and moving to Earth. Sasquatches work for them, that is totally a thing.

The Kinori: Lizard people, but specifically not David Icke ones. They’re short, reasonably quick, vaguely humanoid reptiles. They come from another dimension and they’ve got some pretty advanced genetic technology and magic. They’re pretty antagonistic to most but have been allied with human factions in the past.

The Etoile: Weird mechanical lifeforms. An Etoile looks kind of like a ball of wires. They’re nasty as gently caress but equally don’t show up very often, and usually act through the Sandmen, cybernetic zombies they create using a nanite virus. Incredibly advanced and probably hostile.

The Ekimmu: An extradimensional microorganism that is what vampires actually are. Being a vampire is just all the changes the microorganisms make to your body so it’s a better host for them. There’s not a lot of them and they’re not nearly as good at propagating as mythological vampires so they’re pretty irrelevant.

The Elohim: Incredibly advanced Strangers that may or may not be angels. Angels with like plasma rifles and poo poo, as well as Faith FX. Not ones to mess around with.

Luciferans: Advanced Strangers that look like but are not actually demons. They actually also have Faith FX (EDIT: This isn't true, Enochian is an Arcane FX), though it’s a different flavor than the Elohim. Speaking of, the Elohim hate them and will definitely kill the gently caress out of you if they find out you’re dealing with them. Which sucks because these guys are actually pretty friendly and willing to trade some cool poo poo for the right price.

Next time we start on the Xenoforms themselves, with some delightfully goofy poo poo right from the heart of Africa.

Feinne fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Nov 30, 2017

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Bieeanshee
Aug 21, 2000

Not keen on keening.


Grimey Drawer

Green Intern posted:

So you’ve read Strega Nona.

*wikis*

Oops. Maybe, when I was little? I was just going for a cheap creepypasta joke. :shobon:

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