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Xiahou Dun posted:I gotta admit, I always thought Crowley was kind of a chode, but he did just get three points in my estimation now that I know he also enjoyed a good vindaloo. he was a creep and a cop he probably came closer than anyone else has to somehow making conservatism look cool, but when second and third place are Anton LeVay and Ayn Rand that's not that much of an accomplishment
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Feb 11, 2020 07:21
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The Dragonlance recipes (or at least the ones in the first Leaves as that's the only one of the three I have) are kinda interesting in that most of them are pretty basic things that you could actually expect a random fan to try out on a whim and successfully make something that is edible and not entirely flavourless. Most of them use ingredients you could reasonably expect to find in a suburban grocery, they're not overly-flourished with fake ingredients, and the few that are written in-character include practical translations. Having spent a lot of time reading through midcentury "themed" cookbooks commissioned by Kraft to sell a specific ingredient, these at least all seem like recipes someone has actually made before and eaten. Really the oddities are the extremely midwestern stewed woodchuck and the meatballs with evaporated milk. Raistlin's tea calling for mullein, burdock, and coltsfoot also sands out for being actually kinda hardcore, given that in 1987 you almost certainly would have had to source from a garden centre and grow yourself. Also, yeah, the first Leaves From The Inn of the Last Home was published February 1987, so this came out hot on the heels of DL14 and probably hit shelves before Dragonlance Adventures (can't find a publication month, my copy just says 1987). More Leaves and Lost Leaves wouldn't hit shelves until 2000 (the second time Weis and Hickman returned to Dragonlance) and 2007 (the Weis flying solo era) respectively. I do want to track down Lost Leaves purely because I have a list of the recipes and I'm curious what the lore is behind the Nerakan Fruit Puff, seeing as Neraka is a dry steppe surrounded on all sides by mountains.
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Feb 11, 2020 08:28
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FoldableHuman posted:The Dragonlance recipes (or at least the ones in the first Leaves as that's the only one of the three I have) are kinda interesting in that most of them are pretty basic things that you could actually expect a random fan to try out on a whim and successfully make something that is edible and not entirely flavourless. Most of them use ingredients you could reasonably expect to find in a suburban grocery, they're not overly-flourished with fake ingredients, and the few that are written in-character include practical translations. Having spent a lot of time reading through midcentury "themed" cookbooks commissioned by Kraft to sell a specific ingredient, these at least all seem like recipes someone has actually made before and eaten. According to google: "This pastry confection has diagonal slashes revealing the fruit filling inside. It gets its name from the fashion at one time in the region of Neraka, where ladies’ dresses woulod have large puffy sleeves slashed to show material of a contrasting color beneath. After the Dragonarmies occupied Neraka, the dish was given a more graphic name: Dragonslash Pie. Troops dubbed it this for the way a victim would bleed from similar diagonal slashes made by a dragon’s talons."
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Feb 11, 2020 08:38
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PantsOptional posted:We have got some wildly different copies or something, because that's definitely not in my copy. These are the "Dwarven Tide-Me-Overs", right? In mine they're a pretty basic meatball, albeit one that's probably oddly sweet since it calls for evaporated milk. I was mocking the Solamnic meatballs. I keep getting 85% to posting and then just going “It’s a loving lovely stew recipe with some bad prose to make it be about ugh gully dwarves. What have I gotten myself into.”
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Feb 11, 2020 12:08
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Nowadays, if you want an easy way to generate fanciful recipes, shove a few hundred cookbooks into a GPT2 text algorithm. The madness that comes out can be easily edited into a wild, but not necessarily edible, recipe. https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1225901037464117249 https://twitter.com/JanelleCShane/status/1225877322420506624 Alternatively, https://twitter.com/marywellesley/status/1222210742880997376
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Feb 11, 2020 17:46
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Look, sometimes you just need some crossbows on the way home from the shop.
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Feb 11, 2020 17:52
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"Dearest, Mathilde is doing well in her studies, but I fear her equipment is rather outdated and would fare ill should bandits or large rodents appear"
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Feb 11, 2020 17:55
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I see they've found the shopping list for the Red Wedding.
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Feb 11, 2020 18:10
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When you don’t know if you’re gonna be inviting the neighbors over for cake or if you’ll be having an argument about where you dig your moat.
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Feb 11, 2020 18:43
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Selling weapons in a grocery store? Just like in america!
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Feb 11, 2020 20:29
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No real pushing or hurry but I find myself feeling eager to read the next Dragonlance review.
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Feb 14, 2020 15:01
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None of those recipes are safe for house rabbits!!!
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Feb 14, 2020 15:13
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My only exposure to Spiced Potatoes is through Hello from the Magic Tavern, and I'm a bit disappointed the Dragonlance recipe isn't "pull potato from the ground, roll it in spices without washing or cooking, eat."
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Feb 14, 2020 16:05
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And hey, good news, one of the responses fixed the problem that the original text and tweet weren't gross and thirsty! https://twitter.com/lfresh/status/1222642929535266816?s=20
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Feb 14, 2020 17:01
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Circa 1448? Good lord no, he'd have drowned her in cloth if he could afford it. That was a sign of wealth and power.
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Feb 14, 2020 17:47
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Everyone posted:No real pushing or hurry but I find myself feeling eager to read the next Dragonlance review. I had back-burnered it slightly, but I'll expect to get it out within a week if someone's eager for it.
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Feb 14, 2020 20:45
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PurpleXVI posted:I had back-burnered it slightly, but I'll expect to get it out within a week if someone's eager for it. I admit that I'm eager for it, but at the same time I'm completely fine waiting another week or two if you've got something going on that takes precedence.
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Feb 14, 2020 22:22
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Mors Rattus posted:Circa 1448? Horny-on-main cares not for your historical accuracy.
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Feb 17, 2020 12:19
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Dragonlance DLE2: Dragon Magic  So at least the cover's reasonably cool. To recap, we learned in DLE1 that Takhisis' weird demi-goddess daughter was out to gently caress over all of Dragonkind and was using magic sex to destroy the moons and stars. The PC's prevented this from happening by killing her boyfriend and temporarily banishing her from Krynn, but were left with several Mystery Questions: What the gently caress was with the weird dragon sky city? What weird disease was specifically murdering silver dragons? The dragons refused to answer anything just so a full month could pass since the last adventure, thus wasting valuable time on the dragons trying to solve the problem themselves(and inexplicably failing, but a lot of things are inexplicable about dragons in these modules and Dragonlance in general). The module starts up by giving us some more HOT SPICY LORE that retcons established Dragonlance cosmology and is referenced in no other sources. Firstly, it keeps referring to "neutral dragons," none of which have existed or been statted thus far. The Monstrous Manual has neutral "gem" dragons, but they're basically never used in any games ever, and they don't seem to be what Dragonlance refers to as Neutral Dragons, though it would make sense that there would be neutral dragons for the neutral gods, it also kind of makes sense that there aren't, because the neutral gods are painfully irrelevant in Dragonlance, and so they even get forgotten in terms of handing out dragons for them. Secondly, the neutral dragons are apparently suborned to the mighty ASTRAL DRAGON, who is now the forefather of all three branches of dragonkind(metallic, chromatic and undefined neutral). Non-neutral dragons are forbidden from visiting the Astral Dragon's realm, but good dragons are allowed to know where the portal is as a final escape hatch because they're more honourable than evil dragons. Apparently Takhisis 'plot is to sever the connections between good and neutral by assassinating the Astral Dragon, which would presumably do gently caress all since, once again, the neutral forces of Krynn never do anything. So now she's tasked Artha with finding out where the portal is so she can assault it, her primary suspicion being that it lies in Cirulon, the magic cloud city of the dragons. Prologue: Ears of Corn  So the good dragons know what Takhisis' plans are in general terms and ask the Astral Dragon if they can help her out by garrisoning her plane with good dragons to assist in the defense. The Astral Dragon says no on principle and sends her emissary, Abriele, to tell them further no. The good dragons then say: "Hmmm well okay, but we're still getting our asses kicked, maybe we should ally with some good mortals and ask them to help us defend Cirulon." and Abriele suggests that it's a good idea but warns the good dragons not to tip things too far in favour of good. Which... Uh.  It hurts me every time someone parades neutrality as the true choice rather than destroying bad things and replacing them with good things. Anyway, the PC's have Mystical Dreams courtesy of Saramber, the nice silver dragon lady that they helped give a burial in DLE1. First she gives them a clip show version of what happened in the first adventure, then she shows them Cirrulon being hit by a magic cruise missile(a giant black tower floats over to it and explodes), then she shows them their hometown getting nuked by a similar magic cruise missile, and then after being emotionally blackmailed the PC's wake up with Saramber's voice asking them to please donate their time and hit points to saving the good dragons. Also directions to a nearby meadow of violets where the PC's show up in time just to interrupt some teenagers who are about to gently caress but otherwise irrelevant to the story, so it's really just an excuse for a bunch of grizzled murderers to embarrass some kids. Eventually, assuming the PC's submit to railroading, Abriele shows up: quote:You turn your head to see a strange creature hovering at eye level. “Hold still,” it says again. The creature resembles a dragon about the size of a house cat, but instead of scales, fine gray fur covers it from head to toe. It has leathery wings, a blunted snout, spindly arms and legs, and huge bulging, black eyes. It is using a stylus to engrave intricate symbols in a thick, red tablet. It rapidly glances back and forth between you and the tablet, the engraving instrument moving deftly in its hand. She's apparently a "ko-dragon" and is busy making sketches of the PC's, exaggerating their most prominent or embarrassing features, not because she's a dick but just because that's the kind of weirdo she is. She also apparently has a pouch like a kangaroo that she uses to store stuff in, including her art supplies. Imagine spilling paint in there. Gross. She also keeps her baby in there right next to sharp instruments needed to shaping clay, toxic paints, etc. Abriele is not really a good parent. Also her breath weapon is a Shrinking Gas attack, which is at least moderately funny. If the PC's put up with her evading their questions aggressively and sketching them for a while, she eventually goes: "okay we can get on with the game now" and escorts them to the MAGIC STAIRS that lead them to CIRRULON. What the PC's don't know is that Abriele and Saramber's ghost are planning to give them MIGHTY MORAL TESTS to determine whether they deserve to go up the stairs or are gonna get hucked over the edge. The first test is whether you're gonna take a bunch of gems lying around if there's a fence in the way, the fence indicates that it's STEALING, so don't. The second is whether they'll kill a bunch of dying silver dragons to shorten their suffering, killing them is wrong because someone asked them to do it, explicitly. The third test is whether you will fight an octopus to save a kid, fighting the octopus is the correct response. For passing the tests, the PC's get a vague hint, some magic wings(irrelevant for now, can't be used yet), a Staff of Curing(which of course does not heal the Mystery Silver Dragon Sickness) and knowledge that they can later find a Dragonlance in Cirulon. Abriele also gives them a bag of CURSED CORN which is supposed to be a vast clue that will very vaguely help them in the third chapter if they remember it and don't just toss the moldy garbage away. Chapter 1: City of the Clouds  The party hoofs it to the top of the stairs and enter CIRRULON which is proper hosed. Most of the city has been destroyed by repeated evil dragon breath weapon strafing runs and other similar bullshit from Artha's forces, and only a small section is in any way safely explorable. Also everything is made of compacted cloud material, which has no actual bearing on anything, but the book still insists on giving us a bunch of details for it because it's tedious. Most of the dragons are hiding in their bunkers underneath the still-intact buildings, and the ground is soft enough that most of the corpses and other debris have slowly been absorbed into the weird cloud material, which is probably gonna be real gross in a couple of weeks once decay starts setting in proper. The primary points of Chapter 1 is to learn more about the Good Dragons and why they're loving awful and deserve to be destroyed, as well as collecting as much loot as possible, not being destroyed themselves and convincing the good dragons that the PC's should be allowed to help them(the good dragons). Why Dragons Suck There are five art galleries in Cirrulon specifically dedicated to philosophies that define each of the five types of "good" dragons. Copper Dragons posted:This room represents copper pragmatism, the fundamental precept of ancient copper philosophy. This is the belief that philosophy must change as times change. Various portions of the work symbolize the copper dragons’ adoption of gold, silver, bronze, and brass philosophies throughout the ages. In order to determine the correctness of a philosophy, says copper pragmatism, one must first consider the practical consequences of adopting it. Bronze Dragons posted:This is a representation of intuitionism, the fundamental precept of the ancient bronze philosophy. Intuitionism is the belief that all knowledge comes from within. Concepts such as good and evil can be understood intuitively through meditation. Logical reasoning and independent testing are not necessary. Gold Dragons posted:This represents gold dragon rationalism, the fundamental precept of ancient gold philosophies. Rationalism is the belief that all knowledge comes from the intellect. The gods do not furnish knowledge directly; knowledge is acquired from observation, experience, and reason. Brass Dragons posted:The bronze philosophies (no longer discernable) represented in this room had to do with the innate superiority of some dragons over others and the importance of allowing these naturally superior dragons to flourish, even at the expense of the inferior. Silver Dragons posted:This is a representation of silver dragon spiritualism, the fundamental precept of an ancient silver philosophy. Spiritualism is the belief that all knowledge comes directly from the gods, who also direct the flow of history. Only the gods give knowledge; truth can come from no other source. So, Copper Dragons aren't too bad. They're mostly just about how you can't stick to one rigid code for every situation and expect it to always work. Bronze Dragons are loving idiots who disdain empiric evidence and testing in favour of logically concluding everything from the MIGHTY INTELLECTS they wield. Gold Dragons at the very least believe in research, but on the other hand they sound like the sort of researchers who're going to be very surprised when it turns out that emotions actually play a large role in how things turn out in the real world. Brass Dragons are just dragon nazis, like, holy poo poo these are meant to be the good guys? And Silver Dragons are as dumb as Bronze Dragons except with the added bonus of refusing to be held responsible for any moral or ethical decisions they take, instead offloading those on the gods. Notable Encounters Kemija and Terrilyn, either when the timer runs down(at which point chapter 2 starts) or the PC's manage to attract their attention, these two silver dragons will show up and will activate the silver wing magic items for any female party members, painfully grafting them on and allowing said party members permanent Flight. Male party members have to arbitrarily wait till the start of Chapter 3 just because the male of the two silver dragon siblings is sulky and grafting them on to a male humanoid requires a male dragon, and vice versa for female humanoids. Izark: Amazingly enough, an encounter with an evil(white) dragon that can be resolved peacefully. Izark really doesn't want to be in Cirrulon and will tell the party when Artha's magic cruise missile is timed to arrive if they tell him the way out of Cirrulon(over the side? anywhere?) and will actually leave without attacking or otherwise backstabbing them. I think that this and the wounded draconian in the swamp lab in DLE1 are about the only two times I remember Dragonlance PC's being able to legitimately negotiate with evil NPC's except as pre-combat maneuvering. The Treasure Pool: There's a big pile of gems and gold for dragons to swim around in Scrooge McDuck-style which Artha has sabotaged by putting... a giant... constrictor... snake... in it... this thing is hardly scary to a PC except for a big pool of HP, much less to a dragon any stronger than a loving hatchling. The Nursery: Despite being sentient beings, the dragons still more or less treat their hatchlings like livestock, just locking them in a nursery with a watering trough rather than, y'know, caring for them individually or whatever like you'd expect sentient brings to. About all the PC's can do here is make sure the hatchlings are watered and fed, this has no real impact on anything or tangible reward, but it will probably make the PC's feel better about themselves. The Map Room: A big ol' dragon locator that the PC's can use to check for concentrations of metallic dragons of specific types that haven't turned Privacy Mode on. None of it's too interesting, most of the dragons are scattered around Krynn or on the Dragon Isles to the north, but it's notable that there are a shitload of Silver Dragons on... the... moons? On the Neutral moon, Lunitari, specifically. Gonna be real surprised if DLE3 doesn't have any moon dragon adventures. The Council Chamber: This is where all the Big Storyline Dragons are hiding out and they all refuse to come out and talk to the PC's until after the cruise missile has arrived and been disarmed. This is for extremely vague reasons that can be summarized as: "the good dragons are useless assholes." The Bronze Philosophy Gallery: This one has a soft-lock/potential TPK. There's a dragon named Moonscale locked in with one of the magical artworks because the attacks disrupted it, causing anyone looking at it to be drawn into a hypnotic trance. The PC's can knock him out of it if they walk in with their eyes closed/averted and poke him or drag him out or otherwise prevent him from looking at it. But if they just bumble in like morons and all look at it and fail their saves, then the PC's and Moonscale both will be standing there until the GM can frantically think of an NPC that might drop by and save them. The book does not acknowledge that this might happen and offer any potential solutions. Mostly Chapter 1 exists for the PC's to bumble around Cirrulon being awed by DRACONIC ARCHITECTURE and DRACONIC PHILOSOPHY and collecting small amounts of loot that the dragons won't whine at them for taking until they've wasted about 48 hours there and Artha attacks in earnest so the PC's can stop the attack and get the dragons to trust them for long enough to continue the plot. Chapter 2: Night of Fire Eventually Artha's big cruise missile lumbers into view and the dragons are like "wow brave heroes we are useless how about the lot of you go on a suicide mission by crawling inside this large flying tower and disarming it for us then maybe we'll trust you." and the PC's, being gullible rubes, will certainly do so. The tower is four levels of being attacked by low-level undead that the PC's can clear out in a single combat round if the party's cleric doesn't just Turn them all and make them jump out of the windows to their re-deaths. There's a single Red Dragon guarding the outside, but at this point, with flight-capable PC's and a Dragonlance, that's going to be chump change to ice and kick down the doors, the party has four hours to sort this out before the tower explodes and nukes all of Cirrulon. The GM is meant to discourage the PC's from fighting the red dragon without one of the good dragons supporting them(with the obvious candidate being a cyborg gold dragon, so okay), but a flying 9th-level Ranger with 18/35 strength(one of the pre-gens) wielding a Dragonlance could likely annihilate the red dragon in two combat rounds unless the dice really hated her, with two flying allies and five party members supporting with ranged attacks and spells from the ground. The only notable encounters inside the tower are Crouse and Kroghir, the navigator and pilot, respectively. Both are cowards and will more or less run away the instant the party initiates combat or acts faintly threatening(Crouse chugs a Potion of Flying and leaps out the window, Kroghir puts on a Helmet of Teleportation and warps away), leaving the party free to pilot the tower to a safe region of sky and then jump out so it explodes impressively at a safe distance. A good dragon or just the flying 3/8ths of the party should be able to get everyone to safety once they decide to jump out. This meat of this "chapter" should end in roughly five minutes unless the PC's are incredibly boneheaded. But of course then there's an extended cutscene where the DRAGON COUNCIL finally deigns to meet with them and like half of them are all "GNARRR, I AM RACISM DRAGONS, NON-DRAGONS BAD, WE SHOULD JUST EAT YOU OR PRETEND YOU DON'T EXIST. GNARRRR, AN ELF ONCE PUNCHED MY GRANDPA." They'll also grill the party mercilessly if they did anything that's not Perfectly Good, i.e. being distrustful of racist dragon assholes or collecting loot from collapsed buildings. As a fun surprise the more rear end in a top hat members of the council will also grill them about why they did things that were Perfectly Good, like risking their lives to send the tower away from Cirrulon before it exploded. Once the interrogation is over the PC's get to ask their own questions which the dragons will, once again, more or less refuse to answer. They won't elaborate on who Abriele is or in fact anything plot-relevant that might shorten the module with something wacky like trust. No matter what, of course, unless the party was bathing in dragon blood and cackling like gleeful children, the dragons will huff and go: "WELL I GUESS WE CAN TRUST YOU TO SAVE OUR LIVES, LIKE, GOSH." and allow the module to continue by telling them to go to a small island to find a cure for the Killing Silver Dragons Real Dead Disease. Chapter 3: Garden of the Dead  This chapter starts with some real spicy loving lore about the origins of the KSDRDD. So ONCE LONG AGO, on this island that the PC's are headed for, there were a bunch of silver dragons and also a bunch of tribesmen. The tribesmen were assholes, using the power of "spear" and "emu mounts," they successfully hunted dragons enough to make all their clothes from dragon skin, their weapons from dragonbone and to have a more or less exclusively dragon-centric diet. Including DL6, this is two occasions now where hunting dragons has been casually easy enough that neolithic or bronze-age tribes could make an industry of it(white dragons in DL6, silver dragons here), strongly undermining the idea of dragons as something exceptional or cool. But then one day a tribal leader goes: "hmmmm.... hunting dragons.... bad?????" and begs the good gods for a solution. The good gods don't answer him. Then, exasparated, he begs the evil gods for a solution. Chemosh answers by giving the dragons all a disease that makes the tribe unwilling to hunt them. The tribal leader then begs the good gods to solve THAT, too, and they suppress(but don't cure) the dragons' disease, while also damning the tribal leader's soul for all eternity. Holy poo poo are the Dragonlance gods ever incredible assholes. The disease suppression was broken when Artha and Khardra hosed back in DLE1. The local tribespeople are called the Wemitowuk, and these days they're inoffensive farmers, and like the Lor-tai they feel kind of borderline-stereotypically tribal, in that their tribal... customs are so deeply indoctrinated that not a single one of them is capable of deviating from it. They can't talk to anyone who doesn't follow their customs, for instance, and they have no concept of "small talk" or ever talking about anything that isn't extremely direct and specific. Again, less offensive than the Lor-Tai from DLE1, but it still feels real stupid. So Terrilyn and Kerrija, the two silver dragons, escort the party to the Wemitowuk island, though at this point the party should be all flight-capable on their own(at the end of Chapter 2, the male sibling relents and grudgingly gives the male PC's their wings, too). They touch down on the beach and one of the silver dragons goes exploring when, all of a sudden, SCREAMS OF AGONY come from over the hill where he went. The party goes to explore and, oh no, look what laid him low! A bunch of loving porcupines. No, seriously. He stuck his snout into a porcupine burrow and got stung up real good and has to sit out the rest of the chapter with his sibling caring for him, his stung nose and his incipient case of KSDRDD. Welp, anyway, the party goes on to the island which has no features of interest at all except for the Wemitowuk village. The two solutions here are to either play along with their rituals to try and wring a bit of PLOT out of them and then wave the corn from the prologue at them, or to randomly wander the island until the party finds a field of CURSED CORN and investigates it for lack of any other points of interest whatsoever. Playing along with the Wemitowuk gets them directions to the corn, while otherwise it's just a % chance for every hour they spend walking in circles. It turns out that there's a CURSED CAVE under the CURSED CORN, which at first contains little of interest(except for some spooky noises and evil straw dolls), until the party finds a helpful skeleton that assumes they're here to get ETERNALLY BURIED FOR THEIR CRIMES and digs a passage to the CAVE OF ETERNAL CRIME BURIAL for them, then has a nap until the next criminals come along. The CAVE OF CRIMES is also full of CURSED CORN, btw. Anyway, all of the LEGENDARY CRIMINALS of the Wemitowuk are locked up here as zombies and wights, and the party can go visit them and kill them. Here's the LIST OF SHAME: Pavasusu: Got drunk and broke some HOLY CORN, the gods cursed the tribe with starvation. Which gods is undefined but I can only assume the good ones. Qahitlog: Messed with necromancy and got the whole tribe attacked by some Pet Sematary poo poo. Tohopote: A Wemitowuk drill sergeant who accidentally got his trainees eaten by giant ants after setting their legs on fire for being too slow. Chupchus: Attempted to replace divine healing with aromatherapy. Hurricopah: Made a bunch of creepy straw dolls so they'd make her a potion that would let her seduce her sister's husband. Also then the dolls went on a murderous rampage. Talawillona: The original guy who wanted to help the dragons, isn't a zombie, but is cursed to be eternally trapped in time, slamming out sick beats on a drum until the PC's either carry him bodily out of the CAVES OF THE CURSED CORN or the GM aggressively hints that they should copy the Wemitowuk villagers' greetings to awaken him. Eventually the party will abduct Talawillona out of the caves one way or another and haul him back to the Wemitowuk village where he will slam out divinity-summoning beats on his drum until Mishakal shows up and is like "oh my loving GOD, are you still around? fine, gosh, i'll let you cure all the silver dragons" and turns him into a ball of light that cures silver dragons with his eye lasers, which means that the "good" gods could have just done that in the loving first place, making this entire adventure yet another consequence of their being loving useless shitheads. Chapter 4: Isle of the Dragons  So the party goes back to Cirrulon to be praised for doing good, which they do in fact get, including Cirrulon citizenship so they're allowed to come chill with the dragons and listen to their grandpa-racist rants any time they want and bathe in gems. However Abriele admits that she was the one who gave the PC's the CURSED CORN CLUE, which pisses off the good dragons rightfully since she reveals that she knew all along about the origins of the disease that killed hundreds of silver dragons and how to cure it. Before they can skin her alive for being an rear end in a top hat, though, it's revealed that a second cruise missile is headed for the besieged Dragon Isles! Time to rush the PC's over there and resolve it again. After a quick scene transition, the PC's show up on the beaches which are littered with chromatic dragon corpses and a lot of alive and smug metallic dragons who are clearly winning the fight, until Artha's tower surfaces from the sea and uh oh, looks like Artha has fetched Khardra's ghost and used it to make the tower do that trick from DLE1 where their combined presences blind dragons that look at the tower. Abriele then teleports the PC's inside to disarm this one as well, and it's basically the same story again. A lot of mediocre encounters, except this tower is waterlogged and also hauling Khardra's ghost back has kind of fused the tower with both his and Artha and so it's kind of an explosive meat tower full of organic features like tentacles and breathing spiracles and... it's still not threatening. The PC's should be able to fight their way to the upper level in roughly five minutes and steer the stupid thing out to sea to explode ez pz. Just as it's about to explode, however, they hear Artha screaming "EEEE HEE HEE HEE I HAVE FOUND THE PORTAAAAAL NYAR HAR HAR HAR" and etc. etc. and after it explodes they see her ghost and Khardra's fly towards Lunitari(the neutral moon). With the tower gone, the good dragons clean up those evil dragons that didn't flee, and Abriele takes the PC's back home, dumps her baby on them to take care of and runs away. Dragons are assholes.  Kree! Why is being undead a punishment? Stop stereotyping us!I wholeheartedly agree that we need more helpful skeletons in modules. Next up: DLE3. Moon dragons, I guess????
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Feb 19, 2020 01:59
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quote:If the PC's put up with her evading their questions aggressively and sketching them for a while, she eventually goes: "okay we can get on with the game now" and escorts them to the MAGIC STAIRS that lead them to CIRRULON. What the PC's don't know is that Abriele and Saramber's ghost are planning to give them MIGHTY MORAL TESTS to determine whether they deserve to go up the stairs or are gonna get hucked over the edge. The first test is whether you're gonna take a bunch of gems lying around if there's a fence in the way, the fence indicates that it's STEALING, so don't. The second is whether they'll kill a bunch of dying silver dragons to shorten their suffering, killing them is wrong because someone asked them to do it, explicitly. The third test is whether you will fight an octopus to save a kid, fighting the octopus is the correct response. For passing the tests, the PC's get a vague hint, some magic wings(irrelevant for now, can't be used yet), a Staff of Curing(which of course does not heal the Mystery Silver Dragon Sickness) and knowledge that they can later find a Dragonlance in Cirulon. In this secret moral test, do the silver dragons seemingly consent to voluntary euthanasia, or is it entirely at the behest of the ghosts going "come on, kill 'em, it's what's best after all?" Also I'd like to point out that the Dragon's Graveyard from the first adventure is a pretty big plot point in the Key of Destiny Adventure Path, and has a cooler scene: five islands with the five skulls of progenitor dragons amidst a sea of bones. Various villainous factions seek to use the Key of Destiny to unlock the secret door into the Graveygard for their own purposes. Gellidus wants to use the graveyard to empower his skull totem and gain all the virtual age categories* and become the mightiest dragon on Krynn. An arch-cleric of Chemosh, Kaeldor, wants the Graveyard to raise an Undead Dragon Army. Lothian, a Silvanesti elf ghost, was a creepy ex stalker of the woman who made the Key and thinks that opposing Kaeldor will make him a Big drat Hero and win her favor (spoilers, it won't). *a real mechanic from the Age of Mortals sourcebook. Also the Wemitowuk's status as dragon hunters are referenced in further DL sourcebooks, such as War of the Lance. The island in question is Schallsea, north of Abanasinia and south of Solamnia. Said island would later become the HQ for a school of mysticism run by Goldmoon.
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Feb 19, 2020 02:32
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Libertad! posted:In this secret moral test, do the silver dragons seemingly consent to voluntary euthanasia, or is it entirely at the behest of the ghosts going "come on, kill 'em, it's what's best after all?" quote:The fabric of the starry sky above you begins to rip. A gigantic bony hand extends from the rip, reaching down to enfold you in a gray void. When you are next aware of your surroundings, you are standing on a steel platform hovering about 50 yards above a huge covered pen. The pen contains dozens of listless silver dragons, each with at least one purple stain. The only movements any of the dragons make are occasional restless stirrings. With further context that so far, as far as the party knows, there's no cure, and every single dragon they've seen with the disease has been destined for a relatively rapid and agonizing end if it wasn't already dead.
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Feb 19, 2020 02:41
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PurpleXVI posted:With further context that so far, as far as the party knows, there's no cure, and every single dragon they've seen with the disease has been destined for a relatively rapid and agonizing end if it wasn't already dead. As I recall, the PCs can (lie their asses off) claim that they roasted the silvers because "we thought we were hearing the voice of our god." And since all the gods are either useless (neutrals) or utter assholes (evil but especially "good" gods) that's a completely fair defense. I did like the Dragon art kind of hammering home that "these are not humans in big lizard costumes." It's great that there's really no benefits to "solving" the dragon art and a lot of potential harm, but it was still pretty cool. I think this was my favorite of the three modules, because of the Dragon Council meeting. When the one ultra-racist a-hole dragon (Strato) accused our party of going after the clearly going to explode tower to steal it, Dobson's response to him was "Please find some other willfully idiotic way to embarrass your species aside from impugning our honor."
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Feb 19, 2020 03:26
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My DM read over DLE1... any number of times, and ran it so smoothly that I went out and bought the second and third when I saw them on the shelves. I still have vague, fond memories of Cirulon and that weird flesh-tower encounter, probably because we didn't have a cleric in the party. We never ran the third, because he claimed it'd end in a TPK. I think he just didn't want to.
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Feb 19, 2020 13:16
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I never hated the fantasy concept of "dragon" before but I'm definitely going there. TV programming for toddlers has better design and internal consistency.
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Feb 19, 2020 14:41
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By popular demand posted:I never hated the fantasy concept of "dragon" before but I'm definitely going there. Read you some of James Bennet's Ben Garston books. As far as this DLE series goes, dragon racist assholery aside, these modules are still a notable improvement on the "classic" series. Plus, they came out over thirty loving years ago (on the first days of February, September and November). What else was a thing in 1989? Michael Jackson. The biggest show on TV was The Cosby Show starring Bill "I present myself as a paragon of morality and also like to drug women so I can rape them" Cosby. Paula Abdul was still an actual signer/dancer instead of "the other nice judge" on American Idol. The original World of Darkness RPG from White Wolf was yet to be a thing. Of course these modules are going to tend to suck a little bit.
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Feb 19, 2020 19:33
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Yeah but the Ghostbusters RPG had been out for 3 years at that point. Not all good games design was discovered in the 90s.
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Feb 20, 2020 00:56
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Tibalt posted:Yeah but the Ghostbusters RPG had been out for 3 years at that point. Not all good games design was discovered in the 90s. No, it wasn't. At that point in 1989 I was part of a campaign in the West End Game Star Wars RPG (after the first few months playing rebels, our GM saw that we were all getting a little tired of playing in a situation where the big drat heroes were not, ultimately, going to be us. So he engineered a "hyperdrive malfunction" and we basically jumped galaxies into a kind of alternate Star Trek setting where the Federation never formed and there was constant warfare between the Klingons, Romulans, Terrans and, honestly, pretty much everyone, up to and including Cylons out of Battlestar Galactica. It was a blast and a loving half). So, yeah, drat right I know there were better games out there. Hell, in November 1989 (when DLE3 came out) we were just a few months away from TORG.
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Feb 20, 2020 02:00
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ALL HAIL KING TORG
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Feb 20, 2020 02:55
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Pretty sure Ghostbusters RPG was out by 1989. No way it was released more than 5 years after the movie. In fact, wasn't the Star Wars RPG based the D6 system that started with Ghostbusters, or am I getting my RPG evolution history wrong? Edit: To add context to this conversation to anyone who might be reading this thread and isn't familiar with West End Games/WEG, the D6 system was the first major system (I think?) to use proto-Fate Points, dice pools, and "cinematic" rules (no rules for movement rates, weapon ranges, etc). It directly inspired Vampire: The Masquerade and Over the Edge. I'm pretty sure someone did a F&F where they talk about it a lot more. Tibalt fucked around with this message at 03:17 on Feb 20, 2020 |
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Feb 20, 2020 03:02
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Ghostbusters RPG came out in 1986. 89 was the 2nd edition Ghostbusters International ruleset. Star Wars 1E was 1987.
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Feb 20, 2020 03:18
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Huh, if that's 1986, and WHFRP1e was 1986, it's interesting to see multiple games getting on 'hey why don't we give PCs metacurrency/extra lives' at the same time.
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Feb 20, 2020 03:23
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Tibalt posted:Pretty sure Ghostbusters RPG was out by 1989. No way it was released more than 5 years after the movie. In fact, wasn't the Star Wars RPG based the D6 system that started with Ghostbusters, or am I getting my RPG evolution history wrong? I remember that the Ghostbusters RPG existed but while I loved the movie, I didn't get really excited about the game. I think it just seemed too... small to me. Granted that I never actually played. I just couldn't see how it wouldn't end up as "the movie but with more dice rolls and worse dialogue." Star Wars was at least huge. You could put together your own rebel cell/party, fight the Empire or just get into all kinds or stuff. Our group's stuff took us out of the Star Wars story line completely. And, God, I Floved the WEG SW rules. I'd come out of AD&D with all the move, 3/2 attacks. "I hit thuh orc. The Orc misses me. I hit the Orc a sec-ond time. The orc hits me. For a third time I hit thuh orc. It dies. I hit another orc..." To go from that to "Jeb runs across the tavern floor, snaps a blaster shot each at two of the stormtroopers and then combat dodges by diving behind the bar" was loving amaze-balls. I really felt like I was in the world of the SW movies, because the game let me do the same poo poo (to a lesser degree) that the Star Wars characters did in the movies.
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Feb 20, 2020 03:53
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I found a local used book store in the last 6 months or so that had a huge collection of the Dragonlance novels, so I decided to re-read them and some of the side stuff I've never read through before. I've been enjoying myself, mostly just reading while I take mass transit. Reading the writeups for the modules is absolute insanity. I can't imagine if you got into the D&D via the novels and then picked up one of these modules. It's like reading a novelization of a movie that was based on a book. I guess Weis deserves a ton of credit for her work, considering that she was the editor of the novels and had been an outside hire by TSR. Even more amazing, there was an external author working on the first novels that was fired because his writing wasn't up to the level they expected.
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Feb 23, 2020 05:25
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Everyone posted:I remember that the Ghostbusters RPG existed but while I loved the movie, I didn't get really excited about the game. I think it just seemed too... small to me. Granted that I never actually played. I just couldn't see how it wouldn't end up as "the movie but with more dice rolls and worse dialogue." Star Wars was at least huge. You could put together your own rebel cell/party, fight the Empire or just get into all kinds or stuff. Our group's stuff took us out of the Star Wars story line completely. It's impressive in its singular focus and dedication to missing the humor style of the movie entirely. I suppose it could be said to have some innovations in metacurrency and the like, but it'd be like if someone invented a rolling device for the express purpose of crushing orphans to a pulp and then people credited that as the first car. Like yeah, it used a brownie point system instead of an XP system, but the mechanics were intentionally punishing so as to be funny. And it used a custom D6, but just because the 6 face on the die was a ghost, and the ghost was basically a message to the DM of "gently caress with the players if you roll the ghost, but if the players roll the ghost... gently caress with the players." The examples were all looney tunes poo poo like Venkman rolling low and eating his own tie, or Stantz slipping on ghost goop, flying out a window and bouncing off a balcony, and then finally landing in an angry linebacker's hot tub.
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Feb 23, 2020 08:54
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syzpid posted:I found a local used book store in the last 6 months or so that had a huge collection of the Dragonlance novels, so I decided to re-read them and some of the side stuff I've never read through before. I've been enjoying myself, mostly just reading while I take mass transit. The weird thing is that some of the modules were based off the books, and some of the books were based off the modules. "The first Dragonlance novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight was written after modules DL1-4 were completed. However, as Hickman and Weis felt this was too constraining and made the novel feel too episodic, they reversed the process for Dragons of Winter Night and Dragons of Spring Dawning and completed the books before the related modules." And strangely enough it'd be hard to tell which was which without having read up on it, because there are post-book modules that are wide open and full of exploration and pre-book modules that are linear as gently caress. Though yes, I will give them credit that they made the books more enjoyable than the terrible modules, but that is not exactly a high bar to clear.
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Feb 23, 2020 10:38
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theironjef posted:It's impressive in its singular focus and dedication to missing the humor style of the movie entirely. I suppose it could be said to have some innovations in metacurrency and the like, but it'd be like if someone invented a rolling device for the express purpose of crushing orphans to a pulp and then people credited that as the first car. Oh, wow, so giving this a miss was a very good thing, then? WEG lost the Star Wars license in the early 90s and Wizards of the Coast picked it up and used it to create a prototype for the 3.5 AD&D system with Feats, etc. So Star Wars went from a fun, fast-paced action game in which Force abilities were more of a minor novelty than anything really super-useful to a slow, plodding "I shoot thuh Stormtrooper. The Stormtrooper shoots at me. I shoot the Stormtrooper a sec-ond time..." And Force powers were a major thing in a "Jedi are better than everyone else" way.
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Feb 27, 2020 18:59
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I thought it was more of an adaptation or prototype of the D20 Modern rules since both of them share the same kind of wound system. Or perhaps that was a later edition of the WOTC SWRPG.
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Feb 27, 2020 19:08
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The first edition of Star Wars d20 and D&D3 both came out in 2000. SWd20 honestly was a much more exciting and interesting platform for what they were doing with the basic system, what with the Force points and Vitality/Constitution (or whatever they called the "critical" hit points), and having social-focused class features with actual heft right in the core book. (I may be misremembering that last part since I'm much more familiar with the second edition or revised or whatever they called it from 2003. Maybe they didn't have diplomats and nobles in the first core.)
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Feb 27, 2020 19:55
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I know I played one version very, very briefly with a pair of friends but I can't remember if it was the first one or the SAGA one.
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Feb 27, 2020 19:58
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Cooked Auto posted:I know I played one version very, very briefly with a pair of friends but I can't remember if it was the first one or the SAGA one.
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Feb 27, 2020 20:05
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