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Feinne posted:DDS coming up does remind me of how it has one of the best justifications for player power in the series, namely that your party and especially Serph are Sera's Original Character, Do Not Steal versions of people. DDS is goddamn fantastic.
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Nov 1, 2017 00:27
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 Last Exodus the Interactive Story Arc of the Third and Last Dance is a roleplaying game from Synister Creative Systems published in 2001 and designed Sean and Joshua Jaffe. It’s a metaplot heavy, playing card deck using, religious themed urban grunge game. Unless I am otherwise notified it appears to be completely out of print with no digital versions available. Should this be incorrect I will update to include where it can be bought to give the original developers income. Part 10: Proficiency: Sex Picking up where we left off in character creation; after putting your initial 16 points into the 4 primary stats you need to choose what skills your character will specialize in. Skills are grouped under the four primary stats but are noted in the game as not being a complete list. In the case of Spiritual there actually aren’t any skills under it, just a note on all the types of check in the game that will fall under Spiritual. The total number of points you have in a stat totals how many unique skills you can have of that stat's type or how good you can be at those skills. So, for example, if I have Physical 5 I could take one point in athletics, drive, exertion, fight, and melee each or I could put five points into “sex”. Yes, in a game that says its skill list is incomplete it found time to make that a skill, and yes, it is separate from Exertion which is a different Physical Stat skill and Seduction which is a Mental stat skill, so good lovemaking has some multi-attribute dependency and point buy limitation issues. Next step in the process is... not doing this all over again for your Deiform. Or maybe you do? The game is so badly written here I’m not actually entirely sure. I’m assuming you don’t do this process again but with your Deiform stats and instead you're supposed to just ignore the fact that the list of stat skills we just used only ever uses the term for things that can only be used on Earth. I sort of back-solved to get here, basing my assumption on the 3 stated NPCs in the game, but I'll note they're built incorrectly according to the rules we just covered on how you buy skills for a stat so frankly I have no goddamn idea. As a counter to my interpretation, the skill “Dream” notes that in some rare cases using it allows you to travel to Eden from Earth implying that a) this skill only works on Earth and that b) the game has once again undermined its setting by allowing another way to shift without using a millennium religion and being a Scion.  Did “smooth” mean something else in 2001? Did it mean unable to afford functioning televisions, possibly? Let’s just assume that you don’t do this process again and instead just keep the skills you had on Earth. This means, rather explicitly, that Deiforms which can be things like “a corpse of a dragon” and “A Next up is magic. There are three schools of magic, one for each major stat excluding Spiritual, and magic can be used on Eden or on Earth with some penalties. It uses the same rules as the skills, where you score in the matching stat controls how many skills and how good you can be with them. Except, guess what, thats not true at all and it's based off only your Spiritual stat. All that the associated Mental, Physical, or Cultural stat skill does is determine how good you are at using those specific pools of spells while on Earth. Note, you face a 50% penalty to your attempts to use magic on Earth and can only use skills half as strong as what you can use on Eden, and getting better with magic on Earth competes for the exact same points you could be spending on skills so it’s an obvious massive trap option to be a magic user on Earth. It is in fact such a terrible trap option the game itself recommends you not do this. We then get given the lists of magic, divided by what Earth Stat controls them, and all of which get a paragraph describing them. Each then only gets three spells and because the rules are completely indecipherable you may or may not need to take any previous spells to take others in the same pool. There is, unsurprisingly, absolutely no cohesion to any of the spell effects within an overarching Stat’s pool of magic. I also have to talk about the art in this section where we are describing inhuman wonders of magic 2/3rds of the art pieces are a woman with at least one breast exposed and zero magical things happening.  TLE boldly allows your character to be twice as powerful as E.T. Art By: Peter Johnson The spells are as badly thought out as you could possibly imagine: The Many Failures of TLE’s Magic Spells
In closing on the spells section, let me leave you with this quote: ”The technician can “MacGuyver” things like making a laser out of some panties.[...]Subject to Director approval Whats that, a direct invitation to screw over someone who invested literally their entire character into “can create mundane things from seemingly unrelated mundane things?”. Why if that just isn’t TTLESTIODASDSDF. Next Time: It Truly is a Miracle *Only if they’re spiritual though, since that adds a huge bonus to all stats while in Eden. If they aren’t they can only have mediocre sex. SO SAYETH YOUR GREAT AND BENEVOLENT GOD, AHURA MAZDA!
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Nov 1, 2017 01:34
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Barudak posted:”The technician can “MacGuyver” things like making a laser out of some panties.[...]Subject to Director approval Did they mean a laser gun? At this point, I guess it hardly matters.
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Nov 1, 2017 03:11
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I'm dreading this guy's idea of dice mechanics.
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Nov 1, 2017 03:14
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JcDent posted:I never played any WoD but I read oWoDs Mage and Technocracy books in 2012, followed by the nWoD mage book and just started hating how bland the new background felt. Which is sort of tragically funny because oWoD Mage is the one where magic and indeed reality itself bends to the power of belief and anything can be true if you commit to it enough, whereas nWoD Mage has a really cool and distinct cosmology even if the core book goes kinda hard on "ATLANTIS!"
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Nov 1, 2017 03:39
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of course i'm kind of biased because i love lost cities and secret histories and all that pulpy nonsense and hate stories that make humanity responsible for their own misery because they didn't think positively enough
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Nov 1, 2017 03:45
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2e nMage doesn't go hard on Atlantis anymore - there's an explicit black box around what exactly the Time Before, i.e. history before it was rewritten by the tyrannous demiurges of social control, looked like. Ruins from that other world are weird, often inconsistent, involve strange magics, and might well be from multiple mutually-exclusive Times Before, though that's a bit of an outside possibility. Personally I'm a huge fan of the Orders, the Exarchs, the Gnostic cosmology - especially where the gosticism gets combined with postmodern ideas, like the Exarch known as the Eye. Foucault was right, apparently! The Seers are the Technocracy done right, don't @ me. It helps that, like, the Higher Truth is Out There, but individual mages have deeply personal revelations of it and may well disagree strenuously about magical concepts, without everything dissolving into 'oh we're all right because reality is basically not a thing.' I really don't like the idea of consensus reality, for a number of reasons, and oMage definitely did not assuage them. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 04:09
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:of course i'm kind of biased because i love lost cities and secret histories and all that pulpy nonsense and hate stories that make humanity responsible for their own misery because they didn't think positively enough Boy, oMage's metacosmology was aggravating.
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Nov 1, 2017 04:42
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Does anyone actually enjoy that oWOD whiney goth style (and is not a horribly broken person IRL)? I played a short V:TM adventure last year that was about tracking down a vampire that violated the laws of vampires by turning a minor into a vampire. We investigated the club where he frequented, and picked up a lead into a trailer park that was frequented by this hanger-on that that the vampire-outlaw exploited into doing his dirty work for him. We did a SWAT-style break-in to the trailer and got the lackey to divulge the whereabouts of the turned child. We rushed over there, but not before the vampire-outlaw and the child drove off, and a car-chase was on. We had almost caught up to them, before some ... thing ran up to the car and demolished it. By the time we caught up to the car, the vampire we were tracking was already dead and eviscerated, and the child had run off into the woods. I tried to chase her down, and found that the thing that attacked the car was .. a werewolf. I got about two shots off with my shotgun (that didn't even make it flinch) before I got knocked the gently caress out, and by the time I woke up, the child was gone. The game broke up shortly after that because of IRL stuff, but we were just getting ready to get caught-up in some big conspiracy between the vampires and the werewolves revolving around this one very special child. I wouldn't mind playing in something like that again.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:05
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DalaranJ posted:Did they mean a laser gun? At this point, I guess it hardly matters. I genuinely do not know. The game's editing is atrocious and as seen on the back of the book they regularly forget key words and punctuation. I choose to believe that if another spell can turn lead into gold there is no reason you can't transmute panties to lasers.
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Nov 1, 2017 05:35
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I've decided that I will try to do the Desk of Encounters, Set Two, but do people want to wait until deck one is done or do they mind a double dip? Pondering the gimmick of making a party and running them through the cards that are keepers. Having just had a look a a couple, the danger levels are odd - a beggar woman gets the same danger level as three manticores, I'm guessing more due to the XP reward for her encounter and the potential consequences of messing it up rather than the immediate danger.
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Nov 1, 2017 07:07
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Angrymog posted:I've decided that I will try to do the Desk of Encounters, Set Two, but do people want to wait until deck one is done or do they mind a double dip? Excited, I've enjoyed deck of encounters one so far so lets see how these got updated for round two. My only suggestion is try and keep it manageable to what you realistically have time for; building a party and running them through the encounters, even just the keepers, can be a pretty lengthy time investment.
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Nov 1, 2017 07:13
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The one time we tried a brief Vtm campaign back in the 90's we couldn't take it seriously. Not helped by one of the players being a total fuckup generally, and somehow not just bringing that to his character in the game, but the dice seemingly to be actively co-operating in ensuring maximum gently caress-ups from him. E.g. "I'm going to kick the door down". *Botches* Foot goes right though door and gets stuck. Vampire Hunter on the other side blows foot off with shotgun. or "No, see. She'll stop thinking we're working togethor if you hit me. But it has to look real so make a proper attack." Said to the massive Brujah with the multiple levels of Potence.*Rolls maximum damage* Instantly knocked unconcious. to name but a few of numerous incidents. It was fun, kinda, but the whole thing started to feel like we were in a 60's style Carry on Vampires! film.
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Nov 1, 2017 10:07
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I'd totally play a system where everyone is pretentious yet bumbling, The pink panther-men?
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Nov 1, 2017 10:14
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Hah, failpires.
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Nov 1, 2017 10:32
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Prism posted:Rounds in that version were one minute, so there was plenty of time to shift around between actual clinches, I suppose. Or you can maintain the bearhug. For later systems with faster combat rounds you'll need a system that's more in line with indie promotion flippy poo poo. Valatar posted:One of the weird things about nWoD vampires is a section I remember that basically said, "Oh, and vampires don't have souls, so they can't experience new emotions. They think they are, but are actually just remembering emotions from times when they were alive." Rigged Death Trap posted:Beast
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Nov 1, 2017 10:57
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My favorite VtM story was a game I watched at an FLGS where the GM didn't give a gently caress about the game and was goaded into running by the players, who were trying to keep it a very serious game for very serious drama. So far as I know it only lasted the two sessions. The GM set up a mysterious new power player in the shadows of the city, and after a few IRL hours of investigating the players finally discovered it was a sapient ATM who just bribed people into doing what it wanted.
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Nov 1, 2017 11:40
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8one6 posted:The GM set up a mysterious new power player in the shadows of the city, and after a few IRL hours of investigating the players finally discovered it was a sapient ATM who just bribed people into doing what it wanted. loving god machine, man.
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Nov 1, 2017 11:42
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And what pray tell does an ATM want anyway? Drugs and prostitutes?
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Nov 1, 2017 11:46
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That's funny twist, but I'd be pissed if I was playing a serious game.
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Nov 1, 2017 11:52
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:And what pray tell does an ATM want anyway? Drugs and prostitutes? Cats would be my guess.
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Nov 1, 2017 11:53
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I completely forgot about that scene  
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Nov 1, 2017 11:55
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JcDent posted:That's funny twist, but I'd be pissed if I was playing a serious game. That could be totally serious UA. “There’s this ATM. You hit just the right buttons at midnight, and the screen tells you what to do. You do it and get back, you hit the jackpot. You don’t? Next jackpot’s your head.” It even makes sense. It’s a merchant av or a mechanomancer hacking. drat, if in WoD that can only be “silly” because it’s not a Universal monster that’s really disappointing.
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Nov 1, 2017 12:08
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That is straight up a valid and serious NWOD/ChronD plot, especially post God-machine chronicles. And honestly it depends on how the GM frames it as much as anything, it could be entirely cornball in UA too.
unseenlibrarian fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 12:13
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Yeah, that all comes down to how you play it out.
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Nov 1, 2017 12:34
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Warthur posted:Rarely has a game line reflected its creator so perfectly... Fixed that for you, unfortunately.
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Nov 1, 2017 13:34
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unseenlibrarian posted:That is straight up a valid and serious NWOD/ChronD plot, especially post God-machine chronicles. And honestly it depends on how the GM frames it as much as anything, it could be entirely cornball in UA too. One of the nWoD splatbooks has a sample plot about an evil tree that makes squirrels run in circles. This is how it signifies the influence of the Abyss, which is nominally a nether dimension made of horrific false histories trying to become true presided over by parasitic godlings.
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Nov 1, 2017 13:36
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Scientology is basically an RPG, checks out. It's one big LARP.Tuxedo Catfish posted:One of the nWoD splatbooks has a sample plot about an evil tree that makes squirrels run in circles. This is how it signifies the influence of the Abyss, which is nominally a nether dimension made of horrific false histories trying to become true presided over by parasitic godlings. I've seen weirder things in nature. Cordyceps fungus anyone? Or that parasite that mind-controls slugs.
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Nov 1, 2017 13:58
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Angrymog posted:Pondering the gimmick of making a party and running them through the cards that are keepers. Try to construct a short campaign entirely from "keep" encounters, with maybe a few "pass" combat encounters for padding and the minimum amount of original writing necessary to connect the various parts.
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Nov 1, 2017 14:00
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Kurieg posted:Fixed that for you, unfortunately.
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Nov 1, 2017 14:01
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Warthur posted:I never had the impression that Matt had the "inferiority" side of an inferiority/superiority complex. I was more referencing the fact that he's all but admitted to raping an underage girl...
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Nov 1, 2017 14:15
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 burn this thread and start over.
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Nov 1, 2017 14:19
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:One of the nWoD splatbooks has a sample plot about an evil tree that makes squirrels run in circles. This is how it signifies the influence of the Abyss, which is nominally a nether dimension made of horrific false histories trying to become true presided over by parasitic godlings. Inescapable Duck posted:I've seen weirder things in nature. Cordyceps fungus anyone? Or that parasite that mind-controls slugs.
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Nov 1, 2017 14:34
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You may not utilize card-based random encounters unless you have proficiency with The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 15: The Deck of Undead, Unnecessarily Annoying Bullshit, and Unicorns These next three cards could all be R.L. Stine book titles. And just a day late for Halloween... 93: Zombie Zoo A secret collector of zombie animals (?) has allowed his collection to break free, and they’re roaming the streets of a walled city. Five zombie dogs, six zombie cats, and a zombie wolf. The card intends for the PCs to be the ones personally responsible for cleaning up the situation (being hired by the city, or just out of the Lawful Goodness of their hearts), but I don’t see that that’s necessary. It can just be something that’s the talk of the town if the PCs don’t want to get involved. There’s a nice plot hook at the end, that having lost his collection, “their creator may decide to start creating more ‘interesting’ zombies.” Keep. 94: Lost My Head In a tavern in a small town, the townsfolk are telling tall tales about evil creatures. If the PCs don’t seem to take them seriously, they mention “Ol’ Headless,” the town’s very own monster. The innkeeper rebukes them. That night, they see a headless zombie wandering through the streets, bumping into things as it looks for its head. If they try to attack it, the innkeeper runs out and shouts at them to stop. It’s sort of a good-luck charm. Yeah… okay, sure. That might build a little bit of player fondness for the town. Keep. 95: The Repulsive Ring Okay. So. There’s a 10x10 room with a square table in the middle and an open window (leading to…?) on the far end. On the table is a ring, which is worthless, but has continual light on it, so it looks like it could be magic and important. Another spell that’s been cast on it? Avoidance. If someone reaches for the ring, it bounces off the table and “hovers in the air,” actually on an invisible plank that leads to the window.  If the PCs lunge for the ring, it will bounce out the window and be lost. Even if they get it off the plank, the PCs can’t pick it up, since their hands are turned aside a foot away. If they get it in a bag, the ring inside will still be repelled by them. They can dispel it, but “if they cast this spell, both the avoidance spell and continual light will be lost; the ring is worth only 5 sp without the spells.” Yes, because it’s clearly extremely valuable as it is now. The reward for getting the ring? A paltry 100 xp. The real treasure is the feeling of satisfaction you get when you slug your DM in the face for pulling this annoying, pointless bullshit. Pass. 96: Buried Treasure At a rural crossroad between farms, with an oak tree growing. “Ideally, the PCs should have recently left a village where all the talk has been of a vampire that was slain and buried at a crossroads outside of town.” (Because that prevents them from rising again.) Annoying setup, but at least the card is labeled an “urban” encounter, so presumably I would have drawn it in town and planted those rumors then. They see that a patch of earth has been disturbed. Buried underneath is a beheaded, staked body. And buried under that is a chest with the name “Nathaniel” on it with some coinage and an emerald. It’s not a vampire, it’s part of a “plot” by local miserly farmer Nathaniel. “He buried his chest under a traveler he murdered. He then spread the rumor” about the vampire. What? He did that so… people wouldn’t dig up the chest? Why not just… bury it somewhere else? And his name is on it? Either I’m missing something, or this is complete nonsense. Pass. 97: A Friend in Need The encounter takes place “in a small forest clearing, close to a road.” A small forest fire has started in “a large section of very old, dry forest.” A unicorn who hasn’t been able to put it out comes to the PCs for help, because apparently it’s been observing them for kicks before the fire started, and has, “one hopes,” found them “respectful of the forest.” Even though they’ve just been traveling down a road, apparently? Then there are weird mechanics for how long it takes PCs to fight the fire and how much damage they take doing so, even though it also says they’re going to need a plan to fight it at all. And if they don’t help, a lot of the forest will burn down and the unicorn will vow revenge on them personally, attacking them later for their “malicious indifference.” Dude, aren’t wildfires a natural part of the forest ecology? I dunno about this one. It doesn’t seem to hang together. Pass. Dallbun fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Nov 1, 2017 |
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Nov 1, 2017 14:41
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If only the unicorn had been some sort of Forest&Fire themed Solarian who understands that forests growing and burning down are the two sides of the same cosmical cycle. He'd also have a hard-lite sword he wouldn't be able to use. Speaking of Mexican Jumping Ring of Light, is it possible to, say, shoot a (very tiny) arrow through the ring that has rope at the end, make the ring jump up the rope, and then using shenanigans tie a knot? So you could have a float-y, light-y ring?
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Nov 1, 2017 14:57
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JcDent posted:If only the unicorn had been some sort of Forest&Fire themed Solarian who understands that forests growing and burning down are the two sides of the same cosmical cycle.  ?
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Nov 1, 2017 15:19
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Dallbun posted:96: Buried Treasure my reading of this is that Natan the Miser killed some traveler that got too curious about what he was hoarding, so he killed the traveler, then spread a rumor about a vampire to keep the locals from investigating too hard, and put his hoard under the body for good measure so that he wouldn't have to murder anyone else for trying to get into it. I am inferring a lot here but it turns the card into a "who dunnit?" assuming the players are given a reason to investigate the murder in the first place (hired by the traveler's family or whatever). for bonus points: Nathan the Miser is a retired adventurer that is powerful enough to actually have killed a vampire, so his fib to the town is believable, and also he is an actual threat in combat if the PCs unravel his crime.
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Nov 1, 2017 15:35
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95. The actual treasure is a permanently invisible two by four.
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Nov 1, 2017 15:51
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DalaranJ posted:95. The actual treasure is a permanently invisible two by four. Talk about removing the plank from your eye.
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Nov 1, 2017 15:55
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DalaranJ posted:95. The actual treasure is a permanently invisible two by four. See, I found the invisible 2x4 the point at which it went from 'humorous wizard prank' (a ring with Avoidance and Continual Light is an amusing object for about five minutes) to 'why would you ever do this' - but this is a good point! Invisible 2x4 is probably the best tavern brawl weapon you could ask for.
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Nov 1, 2017 15:58
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