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In order to inject a carefully-allocated measure of randomness into the routine of the plane of Mechanus, each day a Monodrone enters a sealed chamber and draws a single card from The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 25: The Deck of Arcanes, Abishai, and Banshees So, I thought only the first part of the deck was listed alphabetically by monster. But no, here we go again. 143: Arcane Knowledge The PCs hear it through the grapevine that a blue-skinned giant is hiring bodyguards/servitors. The giant is an Arcane, and it’s assumed that the PCs aren’t familiar with the race. It’s looking for rare equipment to fix its spelljamming ship. It offers a “more than fair“ price and doesn’t haggle or answer questions about itself or its purpose. If the PCs impress it favorably, it will ask them if they want to extend their service by bodyguarding it on its way back to its ship. The card notes that this could lead into a spelljamming campaign. It could use another hook, like someone trying to rob or murder the Arcane. But I love these mercantile weirdos, and assuming that I’m willing to introduce spelljamming into the campaign through a random encounter card, this is fine. Keep. 144: The Guardian In a small magical circle in a cavern, there’s a chest and a red abishai throwing itself against the binding spell keeping it there. He says that a wizard bound it to protect the chest for 10 years as revenge for attacking them. It offers to split the treasure with the PCs if they free it, but obviously it’s lying and will try to kill them (if they seem weak) or flee with the treasure (if they seem too strong). The DM needs to come up with the large treasure, though. (Also, why is it just being left in a chest in the middle of nowhere, anyway? I guess I can have the room be secret, or the passageway only recently uncovered, or something.) It's kind of a pain that they offload the treasure on to me, but I guess if I needed to I would just give it a treasure type and roll within sight of the players. That always gets them excited. OK, keep. 145: By Spell Bound Basically the PCs follow some growls of rage and find a summoning circle containing a black abishai. (The summoner had a heart attack when he saw it, and died.) That's it, though obviously the abishai will start trying to make deals for its release. Since it's a Lawful supernatural creature, that could even be tempting to some. In a vacuum, I’d be fine with this. However, it’s PREEEETY similar to the previous encounter, except with even less of a hook. I guess that one was for a dungeon, and this one is for hills, so… that’s something? But pass anyway. 146: Sorrow A banshee is going to approach any elven PCs to tell them a story! She was an elf (as were all AD&D banshees), and she and her fiance were killed by barbarian humans - him first, in front of her. Now she’s undead because she’s pissed… though she’s not as cold and rageful as most other banshees. She wants elven PCs to help give her fiance a good burial, and also maybe have someone go murder the barbarians in revenge. Then she’ll dissolve into mist and rejoin her beloved, leaving behind only 8.000 experience points. Keep, I guess, though the body of this scenario might be tracking down the murderers, about whom the card gives essentially no information, which would make this hard to run in practice. But hey, maybe I have somewhere I want to point the PCs to anyway. Easy enough to replace “barbarian humans” with whatever group I want. 147: Rage The PCs hear rumors of a terrible spirit hiding in the nearby hills! (This card is marked as a Hill encounter, though, not a town one - I guess a pair of wandering monkey woodcutters will tell them.) It’s a banshee, a former drow priestess who came here leading a warband and got offed by a multispecies group of adventurers. Now she hangs out in a blighted area killing anyone she can. She’s cunning but can be goaded into anger easily. I like it. There’s no innate reason for self-centered PCs to go after her, but that’s not a problem in the least. The players can choose to pursue what interests them. Keep.
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Nov 11, 2017 14:28
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Green Intern posted:If I was playing a paladin, I’d actually really dig having my god-boss call me into his office to chew me out for being a loose cannon once in a while. Murtigs, you are off the case! I dont care how many chaotic evil humanoids you think are in the building, you cant interrupt the planar ambassafors party. Ive got the higher celestials so far up my non existient rear end Im gonna learn how to eat. Give me your sword and shield and youre on hiring adventurer duty until I can figure out how to smooth this over with some very pissed off parents.
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Nov 11, 2017 18:07
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Who do you pair with a loose cannon paladin? A dwarven cleric stubbornly counting his days to retirement?
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Nov 11, 2017 19:55
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Who do you pair with a loose cannon paladin? A dwarven cleric stubbornly counting his days to retirement? Young elf fresh out of the academy who thinks everything should be done by the books.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:00
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Has a crisis of faith when he realizes that books are made out of paper.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:22
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It's fantasy Medieval times, the books are probably made out of... that leather thing. Ed: after playing Warlock the Majesty 4X game, I was inspired by Paladins of Dauros to make paladins who are scary because of how emotionless and cold they are, to the point where mind reading them only gives you silence, but I guess cold, passionless paladins are just lawful instead of lawful good. JcDent fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Nov 11, 2017 |
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Nov 11, 2017 20:33
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JcDent posted:It's fantasy Medieval times, the books are probably made out of... that leather thing. Vellum? RPGs need more messing around with old documents and deeds. Real history is full of people claiming princedoms on dubious provenance; you'd think with magic around, there'd be whole secret wars between forgers and librarians.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:37
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Who do you pair with a loose cannon paladin? A dwarven cleric stubbornly counting his days to retirement? You'll definitely need a young, edgy gnomish tinker ready to HACK THE PLANET as a supporting character Optional variant: a young, edgy ORCISH BARBARIAN ready to HACK THE PLANET as a supporting character
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Nov 11, 2017 20:49
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Loxbourne posted:Vellum? Yeah, that would be rad. When it doubt, go obscurer.
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Nov 11, 2017 22:02
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Night10194 posted:I think the thing is 'Divine Loose Cannon' is different from 'Lose all your special abilities and mechanical powers'. Getting called in to get yelled at by your God and he takes your badge and gun but there's an archangel in internal affairs who has your back and keeps feeding you Smites until you clear your name would be great. Man I want to play a game of God Squad so bad now.
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Nov 12, 2017 02:33
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 Part Three: Alison BRIE MOOOOOOODDDDEEEEE Okay, no suggestions from the audience, but I came up with a few ideas anyway. First, we’ll make a wrestler.   Ruth Wilson was a struggling actress in LA, going to auditions, finding no good parts, and living off Cinnamon Toast Crunch. She answered an open call for something called GLOW- and found out it stood for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. And the rest- is on Netflix, it’s actually a pretty good show. Her wrestling gimmick is Zoya the Destroyer, a Soviet superwoman with a grotesque Boris Badenov accent. She is here to crush your decadent Western capitalism, and fill your swimming pools with borscht! For Trademark Moves we’ll put down such combos as the Hammer and Sickle and the Rough Toilet Paper, and her finishing move is a devastating piledriver she calls Vodka For Breakfast. Anyway, so, as a Starting Wrestler Ruth gets 12 points for her stats. For Wrestling, we’ll give her 2. She’s just barely been trained, but based on some of her moves I’ll say she’s basically competent. Still has some way to go. Mic Skills get maxed out to 5- she’s a drat good talker. Work Rate is 3- she’s a little better at reading psychology and keeping the crowd engaged, she sorta gets the wrestling thing, but again, still green. That leaves 2 for Clout- she’s basically happy to have a job, is smart enough to be aware of things, but is not yet throwing any weight around. Like all Starting Wrestlers Ruth begins with 5 Heat. Flaws and Assets come next. For Flaw, we choose Tainted Past- Ruth has slept with her best friend’s husband (well, former best friend, and former husband, basically), and not only has that tainted that relationship, it’s kind of a cloud on her in general. Also the guy still shows up sometimes so that’s a problem. To balance that out, she gets a level of Acting/Performing Experience: she’s no star, but she’s an actress by training. That bumps up her Mic Skills to 6, so yeah, she’s going to be cutting a lot of promos. So to summarize: Name: Zoya the Destroyer Real Name: Ruth Wilson Character Type: Starting Wrestler Wrestling: 2 Mic Skills: 6 Work Rate: 3 Clout: 2 Trademark Moves: Hammer and Sickle Rough Toilet Paper Finisher: Vodka for Breakfast! Gimmick: Russian Superwoman Assets: Acting/Performing Experience Flaws: Tainted Past Heat: 5 Injury: (Nothing yet) Let’s try something else, next. A Manager! I was kinda stuck on this, but I recently saw this movie again so:  Ian Faith is a veteran. He knows it’s a bastard of a business out there- okay, technically he’s used to managing rock stars, but wrestlers are basically the same, right? Overgrown teenagers who like to drink, do drugs, and contract STDs. I see this guy as working for comedy midcarders, doing the dirty work while their backs are turned, that sort of thing. No signature moves or anything, but he does like to carry a cricket bat.  So we’ve got 18 points to work with, which is yeah, quite a lot. For Wrestling I’m thinking as low as 1- he’s basically a Jim Cornette type, will take some spills but not actually perform moves. Mic Skills are 6 (remember, managers ignore the upper limit.) Work Rate, I’ll give a solid 4- he may not know any moves but he’ll be good for hustling around the ring and distracting refs and so on. This leaves a whopping 7 points for Clout- he can bullshit his way around backstage like nobody’s business. Starting Heat is 10. One major Flaw I can think of for this guy is simple- he’s not really much of a guy to promote himself. He’s nothing without someone to back. So, I’ll give him Lackey. This means that after the promotion is created and the roster’s been decided, he picks a wrestler who is basically in charge of him. At any time, that wrestler can force him to either initiate or cancel a Clout roll. What would be a good Asset to balance this? This has nothing to do with anything in Spinal Tap, but I’m actually thinking Financial Security. Ian doesn’t have to worry about his own money- the typical financial struggles of being an independent wrestler simply aren’t his concern. The description specifically says this doesn’t make a character rich, it’s just that money troubles won’t come up. So here the system isn’t quite able to describe all the nuances of the character- there’s nothing to mark someone as temperamental, for example (guy also seems to have some issues with women and there’s the one time he drops a line about “the local Hebrews”- but maybe that's best kept away from the table). You don’t necessarily need specific Flaws for every character quirk but if you’re already dealing with some intangibles for a character, it seems the list could be more comprehensive. Name: Ian Faith Character Type: Manager Wrestling: 1 Mic Skills: 6 Work Rate: 4 Clout: 7 Gimmick: Hard hustling agent/manager shielding his wrestlers from the effects of their own stupidity. Assets: Financial Security Flaws: Lackey (as yet undetermined) Starting Heat: 10 Injury: 0 And you know what, let’s do an Untrained Talent. Let’s do a commentator! Commentary is an important part of wrestling- good commentators can turn even the most routine match into The Most Important Event In The History of Our Sport, while bad commentators can ruin everything.  Buck Laughlin should not be here. He knows nothing about wrestling, but he is a beloved sports personality, he benches 315, and the promotion got him for cheap because the network also runs a dog show. He’s a color commentator, he’s supposed to tell the story of the match while the play-by-play guy calls moves. So as Untrained Talent Buck has 6 points, but the good news is we need to invest exactly 0 points in either Wrestling or Work Rate. He’s not going up there, ever. This means we just have to split between Mic Skills and Clout. He’s not COMPLETELY hopeless when it comes to talking, so I feel like giving him a 2 allows for him to occasionally amuse someone with a good line. Clout, then, gets 4. Starting Heat is 1. Now in theory “Half Hearted” should be this guy’s perfect flaw- he’s a complete outsider here for a payday. The problem is that mechanically this reduces his Work Rate by 1 and he’s already at 0, and so- I mean I’m assuming you CAN just take it and have it stay at 0. But the other consequence is “his matches all loses (sic) 5 Heat” and since Buck is an announcer this could basically mean EVERY MATCH, and the promotion isn’t that suicidal. This points to another problem, most of the Assets and Flaws have wrestlers in mind- some just don’t work for Managers and Valets and the like. Sure wrestlers will be most of our characters but it does mean slim pickings for other guys. But there are two Flaws that look quite attractive. One Trick Pony is great for Buck. He cannot be anyone other than who he is. His Clout is 1 higher in regards to changing and altering his gimmick, 1 less in all other cases- so most of the time he’s only got an effective Clout of 3. The man’s not gonna change! Don’t ask! And the other is Poor Judgement. This is sort of a catch all, as I said earlier. Buck is gonna hang out with bad people, make bad career choices, and almost certainly incur the occasional problem with S&P. This does kinda rely on a good GM to make sure this has consequences, but such is rules light. Assets to balance! It’s kind of amusing that I’m having a harder time with Assets than Flaws but then again I’m choosing characters from heavily improvised ensemble comedies. Established Fan Base is the best way to describe Buck’s prior sports familiarity (I forget what it is he’s actually done)- people know who he is and like him for it. He gets 5 extra Heat and 10 “Nostalgia Heat”. Nostalgia Heat is defined much later in the game- it’s a sort of Phantom Heat in that it counts for contract negotiations and backstage maneuvering, but can count against Match Heat (this gets complicated and I’ll explain it when we get there.) Thing is, Buck is never going in the ring ever so who cares. He now has an effective Heat of 16. He’s hotter than anyone in this company! Oh yeah they LOVE this guy backstage. And honestly this guy would get nowhere if he weren’t so likable, so Natural Charisma is the most advantageous thing here. This gets you an additional die in either Mic Work or Clout, and we’ll go with the former- representing the fact that even though this guy has no loving clue what he’s talking about, the audience just kinda forgives him, you know? But yeah, we’ve got a lovable, completely out of place buffoon who is frankly bordering on untouchable. We’re stuck with this guy. Fred Willard is OP. Name: Buck Laughlin Character Type: Untrained Talent Wrestling: 0 Mic Work: 3 Work Rate: 0 Clout 4 Assets: Established Fan Base, Natural Charisma. Flaws: One Trick Pony, Poor Judgement Heat: 6, + 10 Nostalgia Heat Injury: None And wow that’s a long update, so NEXT TIME I will actually finish the Character Creation chapter. It’s not really very long. Next, no, seriously, the last of Character Creation Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 09:28
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welcome to earf *poonch* Now we visit the planets from which your human explorer can hail! First of all,  Earth is ruled by the United Nations, who presumably have fully instituted the New World Order and fed Alex Jones to the Kzinti. Agreements with the Belt (about which more shortly) give the UN ownership of Earth, the Moon, Titan, Mars and its Moons, and rights in Saturn's rings and mining on Mercury. The UN is also gradually terraforming Venus, which has gotten less nasty to the point where there are a few hundreds of thousands of settlers. (I assume they have umbrellas.) The Moon is the only one of these with a significant semi-autonomous population. There are about 1.1 million people in habitrails on Mars, which is also not being terraformed in deference to the probable native ecosphere. (There WERE martians - who killed some of the earlier colonists - but Jack Brennan dropped a water asteroid on Mars, and the resulting water enrichment of the planet killed them. Jack Brennan, of course, was insane and mutated.) Jupiter and Uranus, along with their moons, are shared between Earth and Belt, with an Outsider base on Nereid and a Trinoc embassy over on Titan. There are also a few gas giant type planets past the orbit of Pluto, which are mostly remarkable for being outside the range of Earth's "hyperdrive singularity," which is basically "hyperdrive doesn't work too close to a star; something happens, and you die." Earthicans are usually called "flatlanders" by the natives of colony worlds, who see them as pampered babies who live in a planetary environment that cossets them. Nevertheless, off-worlders enjoy visiting Earth. It feels right, somehow. (It's like your ancestors lived there.) Earth's population of 18 billion live in crowded but well-kept cities which have a growing homogenety throughout the world due to cheap "transfer booth" international teleportation. There are still wide wild tracts in Australia, Canada, Africa, Siberia and the Amazon basins. The oceans are in pretty good shape and largely under Dolphin management, although bubblecities underwater are common. So much for Earth. On to  the Belt! After a guide through the rise of the Belter culture group (summary: Earth thought asteroid mining was dumb; turns out, they were wrong, and it's real hard to boss meteor miners, see also: Gundam), we get to the meat and potatoes, which is basically that they are a space-based human civilization that largely shares the Solar system with Earth and the United Nations. There's a cool list of unique and specific developed asteroids for people to encounter or be from. Belters are, in general, rugged frontier types, or at least, were, and are now still pretending they are. Fortunately, they're all in space, so they can't hurt anybody but themselves. Belters also opted not to go execution-happy to get organ supply back when that was a thing, and they consider this a sign of their cultural superiority. Canyon, which does not get a joke gif Canyon is a borderworld which was marginally habitable until a massive weapon, used as part of the Third Man-Kzin War, ripped a hole big enough that, once it cooled down, atmospheric pressure was breathable inside of it. It is close enough to Kzinti space that the bottom of the titular canyon has been kzin-scaped, not earth-scaped, and they get a tourist trade from both species. Population is about eight and a half million. Down Down is a tidally locked but habitable world with a large moon, around a red dwarf star. The moon's tidal friction helps keep the planet generally habitable. It was seized because the Kzinti were using it as a naval base; it was conquered largely by forces from We Made It, who had also liberated Wunderland. It's very reddish and has a lot of Australian and Asian human settlers. There are also the Grogs, sessile organisms with powerful mental abilities. They hid from the Kzinti and only reached out to humans because humans had built prosthetic limbs and such for Dolphins and Bandersnatchi. Locals are friendly with Grogs; the UN is taking no chances and has kept an emergency "induce a solar flare" equipment set near Down's sun, just in case the Grogs try to mind control everyone. There's a neat sidebar here which I will incorporate at some point which is basically "here's like, five paragraphs on cool places to be a low-life in Known Space." Gummidgy Jungle planet. It is described eloquently, but that's the long and the short of it. Home Home was an Earthlike planet which had not developed much land-based life, though there was a thriving marine ecosystem. Unfortunately, when it had a population of a little under four million, some kind of mysterious plague happened here and killed literally everyone. How horrible! The planet was resettled a few centuries later, recently enough to kind of retain a "frontier character." Shame about that plague though. I wonder what happened there, JACK BRENNAN. Jinx The most autonomous and perhaps most powerful non-Earth planet in human space, Jinx is a high-gravity world (1.78g) with two "temperate" zones suitable for human habitation, a super-dense "equator" zone whose ocean often edges around 200 degrees F, and "ends" that protrude into a near-vacuum state. The planet (actually a moon, really) looks like an egg - it's that stretched out. Nevertheless. Jinx has two billion inhabitants, enough economic strength that everyone (except maybe Earth internally - it's not clear) denominates their money in Jinxian "Stars," and hosts the top university of Known Space, the Institute of Knowledge. The main downside in being from Jinx is that you end up looking like Mark Henry and even boosterspice doesn't help you as much as it should. Margrave Yukon Planet. The planet is named after a psionic engineer who discovered it, crashed, awaited rescue, and eventually died. The natives all want wide open spaces and cold weather, and it is noted that they may even be carrying firearms. There is some implication that Margrave had a Moon like Earth or Home, but that it was destroyed, perhaps as recently as a few hundred thousands of years ago... Plateau Plateau is centered on a - well - plateau that juts out of a too-dense atmosphere (for humans) into one that's just about right, as well as being breathable. This vast plateau, also known as "Mt. Lookithat," has habitable space comparable to that of California or Japan, and hosts about 100 million humans. They have taken pains to be mostly self-sufficient, and apparently produce a lot of sports stars. Plateau was notable in the past for a brutal caste system, where the descendants of the crew of the ramships that brought colonists to the planet thawed out colonists one at a time and essentially informed them that they could either agree to be second class citizens, OR get to find an exciting new career as an organ donor. This state of affairs continued for hundreds of years and finally the "Covenant of Planetfall" was nullified, in no small part due to advances in medical science. The marks of this cultural rift remain. Silvereyes Hawaii Planet. The name comes from entire islands with runaway growth of Slaver sunflowers, essentially living solar concentration mirrors that can and will fry your rear end if you try any poo poo. Local life is evolved to deal with the Slaver sunflowers. Population is about 170 million, not bad for Hawaii Planet. We Made It While habitable, this planet has immense and massive winds throughout much of the year. The initial colony ship also nearly crashed, DID crash on the planet's moon, and later staggered back down, hence the "crashlander" epithet. For complicated reasons, many of them were also considered undesirable under the UN's fertility board laws, so they had a chip on their collective shoulders. They dug underground and used local resources well, including making use of the truly atrocious surface winds. Now, We Made It is... dare I say it... California Planet, who are thought to be indolent anarchists if creative and intelligent. They are specifically said to be good explorers. An example of good mythmaking comes from an aphorism in the planetary capital's park: When first we arrived, there was nothing but sand and sea, wind and sky; Know that all you behold is here because We Made It Wunderland A bucolic fairytale land where everyone had wonderful rural estates slightly tinged with a Germanic overtone of aristocracy and snobbery. They were conquered by the Kzin, who ate a lot of people. We Made It bailed them out. Wunderlanders are often fat and portly if not of refined, elven-rear end aristocratic birth. They even have wiggly ears. Wunderland is apparently free-wheeling and legally flexible, and they have a recurring aesthetic fascination with asymmetry. Well, that's that. I'll spare you editorializing about what these planets suggest, and I can answer any more specific questions folks may have, but next time we'll get to what the people want, what the people demand:  Kzinti character rules.
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Nov 12, 2017 12:18
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Side note, the reason Kzin can eat humans and not die is that all current intelligent life in the solar system except Bandersnatchi descend genetically from the same source - specifically, the algae Bandersnatchi eat, IIRC. This is because the defeat of the Slavers required use of a psionic superweapon that killed all non-Bandersnatch sentient beings in the galaxy. (Bandersnatchi were specifically engineered to be psi-dead because otherwise the Slaver rebellion would have been impossible. The Bandersnatchi served as the secret coordinators for their rebellious but psi-enslaved creators.)
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Nov 12, 2017 13:58
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How many Man-Kzin Wars were there by the time of this book being published? Because I read I want to say number 5 or 6 and it was just dire and wikipedia informs me tere are like 13 books in the series now.
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Nov 12, 2017 14:42
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Barudak posted:How many Man-Kzin Wars were there by the time of this book being published? Because I read I want to say number 5 or 6 and it was just dire and wikipedia informs me tere are like 13 books in the series now. None. The Man-Kzin Wars books first appeared in 1988; the Ringworld RPG was published in 1984.
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Nov 12, 2017 14:44
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No! Don’t look this in the eye! Now you need make a save or your favorite D&D adventure will be polymorphed into The Deck of Encounters Set One Part 25: The Deck of Basilisks, Beholders, Believers, and Bugbears 148: Looks Can Kill, Part 1 of 2 In a city, the PCs are invited to dinner by an eccentric noble, who questions them over dinner about the strange creatures they’ve encountered. Then he shows them his garden, which is filled with incredibly-detailed stone statues of all kinds of creatures. A servant brings news. The noble invites the PCs to watch from an overlooking room as the servants drag out a displacer beast in a cage, put it in a good spot, and it turns to stone. Then the noble proudly shows them the enclosure with a fat, blindfolded basilisk. If they’re upset, he threatens them with his political influence if they try to expose him. Fine, fine, let’s see where they’re going with this. 149: Looks Can Kill, Part 2 of 2 Having not murdered the noble, the PCs are summoned back to him at a later date. His basilisk escaped, and he wants their help killing it before it can be tracked back to him. He’ll pay them big, unspecified bucks. If the PCs tell anyone it was his, he’ll counter that they brought it into the city to kill him. The PCs I guess these cards are fine. They give the PCs a chance to exact swift justice, take down corrupt government jerks, or gain influence through blackmail, depending on what sorts of folks they are. Keep. 150: The Eye Tyrant The PCs enter a large, open cavern with ten gas spores and one beholder in it. “The beholder comes here to play with the spores and to pretend that it is a master orb, with the gas spores as its servants.”  It moves them around with telekinesis, bosses them around, etc. It’s careful not to come within 20 yards of them, of course. If it sees the PCs, it’ll TK the spores towards them as weapons. The card specifies that the TK beam is invisible, and of course there’s a 90% chance they’ll mistake gas spores for beholders themselves at first...Kind of a cruel encounter to the players, but adorable. Who’s a precious megalomaniacal xenophobic genius horrorbeast? You are. Keep. 151: The Stoning Small-down villagers accost the PCs and start grilling them on their religious beliefs - are they "true believers in the second coming of the great prophet Zerkwon"? If so, "Reformed, or Orthodox?" So far, this is fun! Less fun is that "no matter what answer the PCs give, it is the wrong answer and the wrong faction."  Then they run into the opposite faction shortly after, except these ones "will fall upon them with clubs" if they're given the wrong answer (which was formerly the right answer). Religious people, am I right? Presumably, after the slaughter is over, the DM will then announce that the party Paladin has fallen because he murdered innocent villagers who were trying to club them to death over vaguely-defined religious zealotry that came out of nowhere and has no significance in the game world. This encounter has no interesting gameplay, and is actually quite offensive. Pass. 152: Undesired Servants Some caves in the mountains house bugbears. The bugbears (just five) are getting ready to move. They’re gathering their stuff and herding goblin slaves (eight of them). They attack the PCs on sight but won’t stick around if they’re obviously outgunned. The slaves will be left behind, and will promise to serve the PCs. “The goblins cannot be dissuaded from this, as they’ve been slaves of the bugbears for a long time and their spirits have been thoroughly broken.” Even if driven off, they’ll follow the PCs, clean their campsites, and catch small animals. Geez, I don’t want to run these goblins. It’s weird and uncomfortable that they’re apparently so enslaved and abused that they’re now... completely selfless? I’ll keep the encounter, but the obsequiousness is a front - the goblins are really just trying to stick as close as possible to the heavily-armed PCs so they can get out of the mountains and back to whatever passes for safety for goblins.
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Nov 12, 2017 15:21
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Oh yes human, we are totally loyal. Completely broken. Not a shred of independent thought. Now, just for our general knowledge when do you all go sleep and where are the knives?
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Nov 12, 2017 15:28
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Are goblins evil or neutral in DnD?
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Nov 12, 2017 16:27
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Evil.
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Nov 12, 2017 16:40
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And now I want the goblins to immediately spout libertarian philosophy and attempting to bargain with the PCs for a time limited employment for protection. 
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Nov 12, 2017 16:46
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:And now I want the goblins to immediately spout libertarian philosophy and attempting to bargain with the PCs for a time limited employment for protection. Seems evil enough. And why would you want evil slaves/indentured servants/enthusiastic serfs anyways? Can you use them to check for traps?
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Nov 12, 2017 17:23
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JcDent posted:Seems evil enough. And why would you want evil slaves/indentured servants/enthusiastic serfs anyways? Can you use them to check for traps? Paladins can fall but Goblins...
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Nov 12, 2017 17:24
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Betrayal at House On The Hill, 7 Well, if you thought the dragon was silly.. The Phantom's Embrance Trigger: Find the Girl in the Balcony, Kitchen, or Master Bedroom. .. how about one that doesn't even make sense? The player to the left of the haunt revealer is obsessed with the Girl. He has locked her in the basement, and summoned a Phantom to guard her. Also, he's turned the house into a trap for anyone trying to find her; the house is rigged to blow. If the Heroes can't disarm the bomb, then the whole house will go kablooey. With the Girl and the traitor inside. I mean, what the hell? Is this supposed to be Phantom of the Opera? It's turned into something that seems like one of the jokes from the Junkrat/Roadhog Overwatch short. They do know that the Phantom wasn't an actual ghost, right? And that they were only going to blow everything up if the girl rejected him? You'd think maybe there'd be some freaky together-in-the-afterlife thing going on, but there isn't. The flavor text for the traitor winning just says "Tick, tick, BOOM." Anyway, that'd be fine if it was a fun Haunt, but it isn't. At the end of every round, the traitor rolls one more dice than they did last round. If it comes up higher than 11 minus the number of players, the house blows up and they win. Any time the heroes discover a new room in the basement which would normally have an Event or Omen, they instead get a glimpse of the Phantom and Girl and can fight him. He's Might 6 Sanity 5, but he dies instantly if defeated, leaving the Girl behind; if he beats the hero, he teleports away with the Girl to appear next time the condition is met. Then, they can either disarm the bomb in the room where he died (Knowledge 7) or take the Girl to the front door and open it (Might or Knowledge 6), to win. If the entire basement is explored, then the traitor instead gets to put the Phantom in any room he hasn't been in before in his turn. I could say how awkward it is to have a Haunt with a variable number of turns before death. I could say how silly it is to tie that to player count in this adventure, where higher player count doesn't mean increased movement and where the heroes will only want the most qualified character to fight the Phantom because they only get one roll. I can say how little fun it is to create a Haunt where the players at any given moment have only one choice on how to proceed. I can say how unreasonable it seems to trade having to move the girl to the entrance in a limited number of turns against one pip on the dice. But even the daft plot lost me on this one. A Breath of Wind Trigger: Find a Ring, Skull, or Spear in the Junk Room. I Am tHe pOlTerGeIst. I HaVe AlL ThE PoWeR oF the SpIrIt wOrLd. So WhAt I'm GoInG to Do iS.. knOck thIs MuG oFf thE TV! HaW haW hAw. It'S thEir FavOritE GarFieLd MuG As WeLl. So, Poltergeist. Speed 3, Sanity 4, and variable Might. Their Might starts at 4, but it can pick up and steal items like anyone else, and for every extra item it picks up it gains one more Might. It can pick up an item for free any time it enters certain rooms, one of which is the Junk Room where it started. It can't be attacked physically, but it can be blown up with the Dynamite, in which case it drops everything it's carrying and can reform, although it starts at Might 3. Heroes can also try to snatch items out of it with Speed (which oddly, RAW, doesn't reduce its Might score) or you can attack it with Sanity if you have an item that lets you do that (which does lower its Might). The heroes are trying to perform an exorcism. But not like the previous ones. This one is all about candles. In four particular rooms, they can make a Speed 3 roll to find a Candle. They can find more than one in each room, and there's nothing saying they can't carry more than one, so, hmm. Once you have Candles, you need to set them on the same floor of the house where the Junk Room was; any room will do, but it takes a Knowledge 5 roll to get the placement right, or the candle is lost. A properly set candle can't be moved by the traitor or poltergeist, and once a number equal to the hero count are set properly, the poltergeist is exorcised. Uh, oh yes. There's a traitor. This is another Haunt where the designers may have forgotten that. Whoever was to the left of the Haunt revealer is.. friends with the poltergeist, and they want to help get rid of the people that have disturbed his rest. That's all it says. They can attack or they can go get items to add to the poltergeist, which is actually a reasonably interesting choice. Oh, and if they win, the text says "you can sit down for a quiet chat with your old friend..." So you can talk to the poltergeist? Strange no-one else did that. Plus, I thought the aim was to let him rest. So, apart from the general problems of having a random map and the second-fiddle role of the traitor, this could be OK, I guess. It's at least got some interesting mechanics and a few choices, although again it depends heavily on the candle-bearing rooms not being on the same floor as the Junk Room. United We Stand Trigger: Get bitten in the Abandoned Room, Gallery or Kitchen. Rather strange name. The person who got bitten has just turned into a flesh-shifting monster. Their Might gets set to 5, and their Speed to the number of players plus one. They roll dice for movement like a monster, are immune to physical attacks, and any time they kill another explorer they absorb them into their shifting flesh, gaining 1 Might and Speed. Their goal is to kill at least two heroes and then leave the house. So, what could be a dull combat Haunt will be livened up by what the traitor doesn't get to know. The Heroes need to make it to the Furnace Room in the basement and make a Knowledge 5 roll to overload it. Once that happens, next turn the Furnace Room tile gets destroyed (flipped) and from then on on every turn, including the traitor's, a tile adjacent to a destroyed one must be flipped too. The heroes can then escape by opening the front door with a Knowledge or Might 4 roll. But the flesh monster can reach through outside-facing windows and the front door and pull them back in again, with an opposed Might roll! If the Foyer and the starting areas of the house are destroyed by the fire, the whole house collapses and everyone dies, but this counts as a win for the heroes, because they only need to kill the flesh monster; it doesn't matter if any of them escape. So, as usual. Interesting idea, but terrible fit for a random map, and really awkward to replay because of the amount of hidden information on both sides. If you play it unknowingly, it seems awfully easy for the heroes to just try to lure the flesh monster down to the furnace, which makes a certain amount of sense but can't happen on anything but the first play. Escaping out of the front door might actually turn out to be a bad idea for the heroes, because the monster can pull them back into its own room.. but they don't get to know that either. It's presumably supposed to give the hero players a fright when it happens at the table, but it also potentially screws them over for doing what they thought was correct, when hiding in distant parts of the house would have been a much better idea. Oh, and the text for when you pull a hero back in reads "you can do this multiple times during your turn until you fail an attack". So the monster can pull all the heroes outside in, in one turn? Ouch!
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Nov 12, 2017 17:34
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Barudak posted:Paladins can fall but Goblins... Can also fall Into pit traps Instead of the Paladin
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Nov 12, 2017 17:48
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hyphz posted:United We Stand We pulled this one after maybe two rounds of exploration, and the survivors still managed to win. One of the first rooms pulled was the basement stairs, and we managed to find the furnace room in two pulls after the haunt manifested. That stupid house went up like flash paper. The monster's player was really unimpressed, especially after being made to sit on her thumbs while we pored over the hero rules.
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Nov 12, 2017 18:15
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Dallbun posted:148: Looks Can Kill, Part 1 of 2 The villagers don't know what happened to him, but they're glad that that jackass Noble stopped levying excess taxes on them. Some say the old keep is cursed. Also, for some reason, mirror prices are marked up 1000% in town. What could be lurking in the mysterious ruins of the Noble's keep?
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Nov 12, 2017 19:13
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Barudak posted:How many Man-Kzin Wars were there by the time of this book being published? Because I read I want to say number 5 or 6 and it was just dire and wikipedia informs me tere are like 13 books in the series now. Mors Rattus posted:Side note, the reason Kzin can eat humans and not die is that all current intelligent life in the solar system except Bandersnatchi descend genetically from the same source - specifically, the algae Bandersnatchi eat, IIRC. This is because the defeat of the Slavers required use of a psionic superweapon that killed all non-Bandersnatch sentient beings in the galaxy. (Bandersnatchi were specifically engineered to be psi-dead because otherwise the Slaver rebellion would have been impossible. The Bandersnatchi served as the secret coordinators for their rebellious but psi-enslaved creators.) The Slavers did seed a lot of worlds with a raw food micro-organism which they then harvested for slave fodder. When it got too mutated to be edible they'd release Bandersnatchi on the planet to chow down and become meat animals. I don't think it's clear why the Bandersnatchi were made to be intelligent - Mors's stated theory, I think, is plausible, but another is that it is simple accident and the Slavers just really liked the taste. Nessus fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 19:51
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The Man-Kzin wars are basically a 50ish year period for people to write in, and some of the stuff that's been turned out isn't half bad. The Bandersnatchi are definitely sentient by design. Their creators, the Tnuctipin (say that 5 times fast) were working on a long term plan to kill all the Slavers, and a psi-immune general predator was part of that. Fun fact about the Tnuctipin: their word for "alien" meant "food that talks", and they're the smartest species ever to exist. It's probably for the best that they're gone.
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Nov 12, 2017 21:04
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Nessus posted:There were four of them, but Niven opened up the setting for other people to write material in, which got wrapped up and packaged as story collections. I think he himself only wrote like one, and some of them are goofy, but Man-Kzin Wars XIV: A Realm Reborn is short fiction during/shortly after the wars, not a sign that there were fourteen of 'em. I imagine Niven allowed it because while he was done, other people were having fun, and I bet it got a few people their SFWA credentials. Nah, the Suicide Amplifier and the Bandersnatchi are both explicitly Tnuctipun War things. The suicide amplifier killed the Slavers, too.
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Nov 12, 2017 21:07
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Mors Rattus posted:Nah, the Suicide Amplifier and the Bandersnatchi are both explicitly Tnuctipun War things. The suicide amplifier killed the Slavers, too. It killed them because Slavers are rather dumb, and found themselves unable to support their population or operate their technology after killing off all their workers.
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Nov 12, 2017 21:27
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Yeah, the Slavers were explicitly dumber than humans/kzinti - if not, like, subsentient or anything. They just had really powerful mental domination skills, which they used to enthrall people, like the Talking Pets in Star Control.Mors Rattus posted:Nah, the Suicide Amplifier and the Bandersnatchi are both explicitly Tnuctipun War things. The suicide amplifier killed the Slavers, too.
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Nov 12, 2017 21:35
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 Starfinger Alien Archive Part 01: "Not all of the creatures in this book are aliens in the traditional sense — after all, everyone’s an alien to someone else, and who’s to say you’re not just as bizarre to a gelatinous barathu as it is to you?" Only 158 pages, with only 120 pages of monsters? After all the talk in interviews about there being no way you could fit this in the corebook? Ha! Double Ha!  Jason Keeley, Starfinger Development Lead, Paizo Blog posted:By now, many of you have seen the myriad of interesting and incredible creatures found within [Starfinger] Alien Archive (and if not, what are you waiting for?), but you might be wondering how we went population this book. So it's finally time to review the Alien Archive in the interest of completing our tour of Starfinger. But there's a thing or three to get out of the way first. First off, it's worth mentioning Paizo's Free RPG Day offering, First Contact. If you, like I was, are frustrated the corebook doesn't have any creatures in it, it's freely available as a PDF and has ten monsters in it. All of them are replicated in these pages, so it really just serves as a preview of the Alien Archive. I considered reviewing it separately, but there's not much point with nearly all the creatures (minus the space pirate) making an appearance here. For the record, those monsters are:
 Now with that mentioned in the sake of fairness, let's get down to how they've changed how Alien Archive is marketed compared to the old TSR / Wizards of the Coast Monster Manuals. Unlike previous books, twenty-two of the creatures here are available as player races. In addition, many have pieces of equipment potentially available to player characters. As such, this is intended as a book to try and sell to all Starfinger players, not just gamemasters. While this is a lesson Wizards applied liberally to their books as well - which is why Forgotten Realms region books eventually became loaded with new races, classes, feats, and spells - but they never quite did it so much with monster books (though some, like Draconomicon, did have plenty of player material). Still, Starfinger Alien Archive is unusual in that it tries to have player material in most of the monster writeups. There's a concept in marketing known as tying, or product tying, where you bundle two products together. This is how old "double features" worked in the movie industry, where you'd have the movie everybody wants to see - the A movie, and the movie that the theatre knew wasn't going to be too popular, the B movie. For players, getting a bunch of monster stats, rules, and guidelines is the B movie. And with the attempt to bundle their products together more and more, Starfinger really does want to sell you everything. In addition, summoning spellcasters need the creatures and summoning rules in this book- their spells simply don't function just using the core rules. Mind, if you just picked up this book randomly, there is an interesting note - two of them, actually - that Paizo is like "Oh, you don't have to buy the book necessarily, you can refer to the Starfinger SRD", and they give a web link. Which is interesting. I don't know how practical it is, but I'll write "interesting" for the third time. Of course, there's a catch for Starfinger Society players - most of the races in this book aren't available to you folks. No space goblin PCs for you, at least not yet. We haven't gotten one supplement in before the Society starts more or less banning material, though a few can be "unlocked" through playing through a set number of scenarios. Some will only be available by the region you play in, but if you aren't in the region a race is available they're be rotating them out-  Well, at least they're keeping to... balance... in... Starfinger... organized play... yeah... that's a thing. That is certainly a thing. Well, forget about that, this is Paizotown. (Really, one of the reasons is just to have a carrot for organized play folks.) Lastly, I just want to bring up the art: it's going to be a bit of a mess in the posts, and I apologize for that. Pulling art from Paizo PDFs has... unpredictable results, and sometimes I could clean up the mess going on behind the scenes and sometimes I just did the best I could. If the pictures look "dirty", that's why - I did what I can with the time I'm willing to commit. In addition, for those with the PDF, if the art was reversed for purposes of layout, I reverted it back to its original artist's orientation as opposed to the book's orientation. But before we get to monsters, it's time to confront this book's systems. Next: X is for Appendix. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 22:45
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Goddamn Paizo and their Badwrongfun policing and distribution of content across multiple books. Makes me appreciate the old d&d box sets all the more.
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Nov 12, 2017 22:51
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Did they raid the old Spelljammer appendices? Because 'contemplative' in this context sounds awfully familiar.
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Nov 12, 2017 23:15
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Yeah Paizo does a thing that I think WOTC does too, where you can 'unlock' things for your characters through continued attendance of organized play events. Which is yet another reason to just ignore organized play.
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Nov 12, 2017 23:23
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wiegieman posted:The Bandersnatchi are definitely sentient by design. Their creators, the Tnuctipin (say that 5 times fast) were working on a long term plan to kill all the Slavers, and a psi-immune general predator was part of that. Fun fact about the Tnuctipin: their word for "alien" meant "food that talks", and they're the smartest species ever to exist. It's probably for the best that they're gone. This bit sounds like a Star Control RPG. Juffo-Wup fills in my dice pools and I am turgid.
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Nov 12, 2017 23:31
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Yeah, I can't help imagining the Grogs as looking like hairy Talking Pets.
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Nov 12, 2017 23:36
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Known Space is a loving amazing setting and I love it. I mean, you gotta accept that Larry Niven wants to gently caress aliens, a lot, but for a sci fi author that's like, not even the start of being weird.
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Nov 12, 2017 23:45
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Halloween Jack posted:Ringworld is really weird. Known Space is very weird. Like, so drat weird. Dolphins as the main consumers of robot hands and voice boxes, okay. Insanely murderous cat-people who only got civilized once the worst of them suicided into humanity, fine. Aliens who "see" through radar, scent and sounds (one of whom is the local region's most renowned sculptor, and did a piece of how hyperspace really looks) and now we're getting kinda out there. The Outsiders are downright bizarre. They hang out in raw vacuum because atmospheric pressure might (or might not) kill them. Their ships have small imitation stars surrounded by what looks like a root structure where we would have crew quarters, because they lay one end of themselves in shadow and one in light and eat via photosynthesis. They look... something like a cat o' nine tails with a large and intelligent handle and move around by jetting liquid helium. Their ships appear suddenly and without fanfare because their drive is perfect and reaction-less, and they never, ever lie. wiegieman fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 23:50
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 20:47 |
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Yeah, there's a considerable amount of Niven almost directly lifted into Star Control. It's just lifted and applied very well.
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Nov 12, 2017 23:51
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