TOOG: Part 2

TOOG: Part 2




The party, such as they are, have yet to decode the scroll they found on the necromancer. Lacking any other leads, they head north, where the Stranger believes there to be a fair.

On their way, they encounter a covered cart on the road. Careful suspicious squinting and creeping reveals that the cart is pulled by a giant lizard, and driven by what appears to be a Kobold with a straw hat and a fake moustache.
He claims to be a Mr Haricot Mungo, of Haricot Mungo's Mystical Emporium and fishing Tackle.

The ladies ask him if he has masks for the rumoured fair, and spend half an hour picking masks while the Kobold enthusiastically assists them and presents random other non-mask objects.
Magic detection reveals that only one mask is magical, and the merchant says that it's prrrrobably cursed (not surprising, given that it's just a creepy oily dark cloth in an unknown shape).

Lhoryn asks Haricot if he's killed any Gnolls. Haricot says no. The next question concerns weapons, and the kobold eagerly provides a selection of objects, most of them even weapons. The creature made of teeth in the goldfish bowl is probably not a weapon.
It's decided that the party does not have the wealth to buy any magical weapons, and they part ways.

The party reach Redstone and wander around what seems like a number of deserted tents and stalls, eventually coming across a short fat drunken man wailing and bemoaning about a loss of fun and spectral curses.
Some moments of bemused questioning later, a woman appears to attend to the drunk and explains.
Apparently the town's founder was interred in a nearby tomb, and had established a tradition of paying him yearly respects. During the great fair, he had gotten wind of all the fun being had and cursed the town to no longer have fun. Apparently most of the town and visitors are busy getting drunk inside. The party is implored to venture to the tomb and fix things.

Franzibald begins to plan how to extort the kobold upon his arrival to the fair, but his plan is quashed.

Lacking any reason not to, the party trudges up to the tomb of Caloric, founder of Redstone.
They see a large stone structure, apparently partly sunk into a swamp.
They also see BULLYWUGS
Battle ensues.

TOOG: Part 1

The Party:
Mialee, Eladrin sorcerer. Orphaned foundling, has a backstory of several incinerated willages (only one of them intentionally).
Franzibald Fitzherbert, Human wizard. Student from a far off land, teleported here with the task of returning to the school. It's a wizard thing.
Lhoryn, Gnoll Fighter. Last of his clan after they were mysteriously decimated, joined the party in the hopes that they'll find out who dunnit.
Stranger, Changeling Cleric. Worships only her own pantheon of dead gods, that she claims speak to her. Accompanied by:
Scissors, Sassy Horse. Screams obscenities and aggressive remarks. Fortunately only speaks Horse.
Glom (Conglomerate), Oldest Basilisk. Blind and older than the world. Spends most of his time sleeping when not plodding behind the party.

Our brave heroes adventurers are currently following a lead on 'magic people' at the request of the Gnoll. Questioning "smelly woman with baby", they now head to the ruins of a nearby wizard's tower.

Skill checks reveal fire near the tower.
Approaching reveals a necromancer overseeing a number of archeologist-trench-digging zombies.
Multiple requests to leave sit unwell with the party.
Necromancer brings out a couple of armoured men from within the ruins of the tower. He continues to be uncooperative and demanding that the party leaves to permit him to continue with his work.
Initiative inevitably ensues.
The party is swarmed by soldiers and zombles, and the necromancer causes the Gnoll's flesh to slough off for the duration of the fight.
Several rounds of careful maneuvering and corpse-beating free the party up to scatter and the fighter to go slap the necromancer around. Much groaning when the zombies keep popping up again.

The necromancer (Helvec) is eventually taken down nonlethally and tied up. Franz tries several times to slap him awake, and fails. He then goes to rummage around and finds a scrolltube with something coded inside, while Stranger tries not to break down from having killed one of the humans (and later sneaks in a heal check to stabilise him).
Lhoryn takes a turn with Helvec and punches him awake.
He proceeds to mock Franz, who tells the Gnoll to torture the necromancer.
JOLLYNESS ENSUES
It is suggested OOC that the cleric could heal the necromancer so that they can break his toes a second time, as he's too busy screaming in pain to answer anyone.
The cleric instead attempts a heal check, critically fails and slays Helvec.
She reasons that it was the will of the (her) gods.
They loot further, and find some money.
Time is spent explaining the concept of money to the Gnoll.
It isn't easy.

Lhoryn grabs Franz and demands to know how come the wizard hadn't told him that he was, in fact, a wizard. What with the Gnoll hunting down Magic Men.
Suspicion remains, but the wizard is not torn limb from limb.
THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP

Veosair, the Art of Knowing

I made up the name on the spot, shut up.

Veosair is the technique employed by the Delving Archivists (I had a better name that I lost, also shut up) to do their thing.

The Archivists thing is to go into the dark places of the world, and rip lost knowledge from the hands of whatever might be clutching at it. And they do this, with Veosair.

To be a practitioner of Veosair, you need a strong and agile mind. And a lot of study time.
The core of the art is to have such a solid understanding of an object or principle that your personal reality supersedes local reality.
A student of Veosair who has grasped the essence of swords can swing him arm around and cut someone who is several feet away. Understanding of armour can help them deflect a blow, seemingly off a shield. In reality, it's their understanding of these things that is so profound that it impact on the material world.

Think wandering battle librarians.



They can either be found in their library/fortress of The Archive, or wandering to/from/in whatever dungeon they think might contain something interesting. Lich lairs, crazy wizard laboratories, ruined cities and whatever tickles their fancy.

A group of Archivists typically contains a couple of apprentices on field experience, a handfull of mid-grade combat capable archivist-Warriors, and one or two well-learned Scholars.
An Apprentice will usually know some basic battle Veosair or have limited understand of an element, a Warrior is fully proficient in beating the shit out of people with mindswords and will know a few useful definitions, and a Scholar will typically eschew weaponry Veosair and stick to something more complex such as Time, Thought, Space.


Individuals always have their own designs, but as an institution, they're only interested in knowledge. They're mostly self-funded from all the other crap they find on expeditions.

Low-light sight colour stuff

Eyes.

Animals see colours differently, different priorities

Assume the humans in the game are the humans that made the game
>don't have low-light vision.

Animals, though, do have "low-light vision" (sort of, shut up)
Animals also see colours differently. Sometimes less actual colours, sometimes some colours are predominant, and any variation in-between.

THEREFORE:
Non-humans see colours differently and/or have different visual priorities.

What could this mean?
Elves have more affinity for plants because green is more vivid, more real?

Some races focus on reds because that's a colour they DO pick up on, and genetic memory means it's a bad colour? (races can have fucked-up primal history, because D&D, dammit.)


Maybe hill halflings can't see yellow.
So some orcish slavers wear canary-yellow suits to hunt them.

If a race can't see a colour, then that colour blends in with other unseen colours.

Some group that destroys anything they see that is brown, or blue.

Animals with really weird, regionally specific colourations.

Wizard with racial infravision doesn't know that his Chromatic Spray is mostly ultraviolet.

Stats, rolls and being a person (ish)

Ability scores.
Stats.
Numbers that make up the character.

You don't get a to-hit bonus for telling the DM exactly what you do in combat. You say "I parry", not "I employ the third variation of Bonetti's Defense on the orc's upstroke".
You don't get to have a mechanical advantage on your character for having personal areas of expertise.
Why would you get a bonus for RPing what you tell the farmer's now-widow? "I comfort her" Okay, roll.
If you're at a table where you need a mechanical advantage to roleplay, then maybe you don't need to be roleplaying.

I play World Of Darkness.
My Changeling storyteller-hobo doesn't NEED to be given magic juice for telling stories or magic rerolls for believing in them. He's going to do it anyway.
Maybe the changeling doctor on the other side of the table needs to be given magic points to go be all gung-ho about some justicin'.
At which point, the game is giving me a mechanical advantage, and dictating to the other person how to play their game.

I don't agree with out-of character favouritism.
Your character SHOULD have stats for his/her/both/unsure/inapliccable intelligence, wits, charisma and so on.
If your character is as socially apt or as smart as you are, then why not be as weedy or asthma-ridden?

It's a game.
You're not being you.
If you want to play a brilliant genius, get a big intelligence score and roll to know things or be smart.
If you want to be a huge barbarian, get a big strength score and lift heavy things and hit some things with some other things.

You're at the table, your character is on the table. Use the numbers.

DWARVES

DWARVES

Because everyone has their own version of stuff.
Here are Dwarves.
Or, rather, what the players in my campaign will refer to as:
DWARVES!

And now it looks weird because I've been looking at the word too much.


They live in mines, caverns, and subterranean dwellings. We all know this.
What else do we know?
Sturdy. Hardy. Resilient. Stubborn. (Alcoholic? What?)

But there are limits to how far you can go, living in the dark.
ASIDE from vitamin C deficiency that makes you go looney.
I'm talking about that most precious material, deep in the dark.

MEAT.

You can only live on fungus for so long.
Cattle (or whatever the collective term for whatever deep dark lunch animal that dwarves has even IS) still eat the same resources you do. At least you (probably) won't know if they've gone completely spare.
But to sustain any reasonable population, you'll find you only have one choice.
Eat the weak.
Eat the sick, the old, the infirm, the useless.
Recycle, reuse or be extinct.

Tough. Adaptable. Cunning. Willful. A little crazy from their... diet.

You don't see old or weak dwarves.
Okay, technically you do, but we call those Hungerlings and they're barely sentient. Starving (literally, ho ho ho) wretches driven forth by both hunger and fear of the Hunger Drivers.
And generally unknowingly infected by the mysterious potion developed in inter-dwarf combat.
It makes you explode in toxic goo after a short while.
Because when two clans war for THE BODIES OF THEIR FOES the logical thing for the losing side to do, is deny the opposing force their prize.

Which serves to push the dwarves to the surface.
The sun kills them.
At least they think so.
Only the craziest (HUNGERLINGS YOU SAY?) head out without heavy gear.
You might see some well-covered dwarven farms dotted here and there around well-concealed tunnels, but you're far more likely to see metal covered, polearm and crossbow-armed (because don't risk your MEAT) dwarves hunting for prey.
Prey being anything that isn't them.

They're not all flesh-crazed mad-people, of course.
You're likely to find a few slavers and slave merchants wandering around with their big hats and filthy beards. Still, there's something unsettling about the way they look at you, and be thankful they don't offer to share their meals with travellers.
Sort of.

Primo, death.

I write stuff.

A lot of stuff.

I mostly hide it in my verbal brain cheeks like a furious paper squirrel. If you don't know what that is, then you have excellent literary taste. Or not. I can't judge, my mouth is full of words.

This particular pile of verbose spew will be related, most likely, primarily to D&D. Also books. And words. And possibly the ulcers caused by HOARDING WORDS LIKE A FURIOUS PAPER SQUIRREL. It will also be full of me trying to sound overly wordy. It happens.

So.

Let us begin, with death. In D&D, specifically, but also in games and stories in a corollary fashion.
I run a 4E game.
Players kill things.
I play in a 4E game.
We kill things.
I played in a 3.5 game.
We killed things.
Adventuring parties kill a lot of things.

Now, I know that 4E's mechanics mean that the game ends up being about a bunch of increasingly ridiculous supramortals.
But, accounting for minions and bosses, a party is going to come up against, over a campaign, about 125%-150% of its own size in 'things to kill'. And it's likely that kills are not spread evenly across a group, either. The Leader is going to have far fewer kills than the Striker or Controller, generally.
Give about 8 encounters a level, and by the time they've hit level 10, there is a damn lot of murder in their past.

3.5 isn't much better.
While the game design is itself not required to have overwhelming numbers and can work better with fewer, tougher monsters, you're still going to see kobold and goblin hordes wiped out.

Either edition is also open to seeing the wholesale slaughter of swathes of comparatively harmless populations. Nothing is preventing a high-level dude going back down to wipe out that tribe of filthy creatures that was niggling them back when he was L2.

Adventuring parties will end up being the cause of much death.
Now, assuming said heroes are in a world where they are not the first adventuring party to stalk its loot-littered lands...
How is death now viewed?
Is that just how things are solved?
D&D is a roleplaying game. Ostensibly it could be played as a wargame or tactics game, but it is still a roleplaying game. And that means stories. And stories mean drama.
And death is dramatic.
As such, law enforcement is trigger-happy.

When there are bands of mystical murderhobos roaming the lands (and there must be many, because otherwise the magic item merchants would be out of business), killing people for 'looking funny' or for being in front of a pile of treasure, then how long before so-called civilisation just throws its hands up in the air and stabs someone?
I'm not saying that the town guard are all going to shoot first and and questions later.
Just that they are far more amenable to solving a problem via the application of thrust into sensitive areas LIKE YOUR FACE

I'm not condoning or condemning the fact that adventurers kill a lot of stuff. I think it's required. Defeat foes. Take their stuff. Feel powerful.
It's a role-playing game, but it's a GAME.

Still. Adventurers make death common. How long before that shapes the rest of the world?



Oh, and welcome to the Pit.