Corian of Lurkshire's page

About as common as robots, eh? So, how does that rate compared to the frequency of, say... turbines? =)

I can't really speak for Varisia, but in our world, the seven deadly sins predated the seven virtues. And of course, much has been lost in translation. The seven deadly sins were deadly sins because when you committed one, you let something else become more important in your life than God. And lust, always so maligned, originally meant to follow your desire in the sense that you did not act in a planned, orderly way. Taken in a modern setting, a typical lustful act would be shopping, eating and drinking exquisite and expensive stuff, excessive attention to your own body, and so on. The focus is much more on your lifestyle, not on being unfaithful or the like.

Even so, lust is more or less equated with sex, porn and other such concepts today.

I'd just like to say that done right, a higher maturity level does add something to an adventure or story, and I hope this thread doesn't put you off so that you decide never to feature R-rated content again. People complain about it, but the numbers will tell, as you say. They say that "it's not necessary". But with more quality writing, you'll get many more copies sold, NO MATTER if it's R or PG-13. And quality writing means accepting the maturity level that the story demands.

When you sit down to tell a story, you need to understand what kind of story it is, its theme, its style, its setting and so on. You can't tell an epic love story in four pages, for example. And to my thinking... if Karzoug was bad because "his alignment says so" and for no other reason, why should anyone in Varisia care that he returned, or took control of the region?

My list of suggestions:

City of Ravens, Crypt of the Shadowking, the Alabaster Staff, Cormyr. These are one-offs that rank very highly, to my thinking.

Jeff Grubb's and Kate Novak's books. These include the Azure Bonds trilogy (Curse of the Azure Bonds, the Wyvern's Spur, and Song of the Saurials), and the two follow-ups Finder's Bane and Tymora's Luck. The latter of these become somewhat esoteric, but still great.

If you want to read something by Ed Greenwood, my suggestions would be Spellfire, Cloak of Shadows, or Elminster in Myth Drannor. These are all parts of trilogies, but stand out in quality and can be read alone without losing too much.

Elaine Cunningham's Elfshadow, Elfsong and Silver Shadows are excellent reads, as is Evermeet.

Dealing with RA Salvatore, try the Crystal Shard. If you like that, keep reading his books.

I would! That said, it would be a good thing if it either followed d20 Modern, or was rather simple to run system-free. =)

What I am worried about is Shayliss the vampire... that encounter will not go down well with my players.

You killed Nualia! You bastards!

In the "slowly unfolding mystery" vs "those are the bad guys, you just can't go fight them yet", I just have to say that both approaches have problems. Mystery campaigns can have a hard time holding players' interest, but this should depend on the quality of the adventures. I am not worried on this point for RotRL. The other style, IMO, faces a worse problem. Sure, at level 1, characters are pretty weak. But at, say, level 6-7 or so, they really have quite amazing resources if they know what they are supposed to be doing. So, take the Tarrasque as an example, then. The heroes find out that Big T is a focus of the campaign. They think a bit, and decide that it really is quite vulnerable to touch attacks and flying opponents. So, they start making scrolls of low-level spells such as ray of frost and levitate etc, and outfit every cleric, wizard and other spellcaster they can find with these, in the "city threatened by T rampage" adventure... and kill it (this might not be a workable strategy for real, but you get the idea), keeping a few dozen people on corpse-chopping duty afterwards. What then?

Consider a RotRL situation. Nualia has a brooch from Karzoug saying "Keep up the good job, employee of the week! /Runelord Karzoug of ancient Thassilon. Rising happens in a few months, new empire to be founded at midsummer at the latest." What would your players do? Mine would start obsessing about it, putting in an enormous effort to figure out each word in turn about this. They would start asking people in Sandpoint. "Uh... Thassilon, you say? I heard there was a tavern in Korvosa they called Tassy games...?" Then up comes Magnimar. "Rune what? Karzoug... Thassilon? There was a tavern...?" Okay, they will find the investigation stumped. Then they will go talk to people in power about this, and face "Runelord? I am sure it will be no problem. We have lots of soldiers to protect you, citizens." And... at that point, they will feel frustrated and angry with the stupid adventure path. So... I am all for breaking the news a little at a time.

Oh wow!

That list is very impressive... But what really blows my mind is that you actually managed to make rust monsters scary in their ecology article. That's one of the biggest feats I've seen pulled off. =)

I am slowly agreeing that perhaps we should change the topic... but it seems I was misunderstood. When I said that I felt there was a place for gritty adventures and such in the forest of sanitized ones that have been published for ages, I meant that the standard in all ways has been to kill "monsters" because their alignment is written as "always CE". This was even brought up as a good example earlier in the thread. I have found Pathfinder to be excellent in more or less all ways I can think of, and there are good examples of adventures in earlier production, such as The Styes. Funny how almost all of those adventures that dared to be more mature, or with more emotions/atmosphere/stylish, remain classics people remember today.

What adventurers do never changes, really. It's only a question of why they do it... and how it's described. For a fun mental image, think about what a 23-point critical with a warhammer does to a 4 hp kobold. Now, certainly there isn't anything inappropriate in this, I mean, he just turns into a puff of smoke before disappearing, right? =)

I seriously doubt the envelope will continue to be pushed very far. Escapist fiction has grown darker and more gritty these last few years, just like it did in the 80's. For a comics example, anyone remember Ghost Rider? It's not a coincidence that that movie was just made. Eventually, this too will turn lighter.

I think perhaps the problem is not the ever-fuzzy concept of "objectionable", but rather that, as has been said, people expected one thing and got another. And expecting standard Dungeon fare, I'd say that it's understandable that some people were not prepared for more atmosphere, more thought behind the events, and yes, more grit. When I started reading RotRL, I was pleasantly surprised to feel that I could involve my players emotionally in the story. It is a good thing, but not necessarily if all you want is a standard dungeon crawl.

Show showing snuff flicks to 5 year olds makes them better people? I jest (a bit). I hear what you are saying about the dubious links between violence and sex in the media and in people's behaviour, and largely agree - a nutter is a nutter, and is drawn to violent imagary, rather than is made by it (largely - there could be feedback going on). I don't really see the discussion as one of censorship (imposed) but what is good taste to depict (authorial and editorial self-censorship). It's basically about whether I want to go "Yuk!" while reading an adventure, and whether it is actually necessary for the adventure to be good or set the tone.

Now this is a more balanced viewpoint, that deserves a different reply. I am not a fan of censorship. To me, I see for example the Comics Code as one of the darker parts of public entertainment. It was more or less forcibly applied under the guise of self-censorship, and the results were appalling. Some decades later, this code was watered down, and comics started to make some kind of impact on the public again. For example, Watchmen with its critique of society and government could not possibly have been printed during the heyday of the Comics Code. Given this, I find that I much prefer that censorship stays out of entertainment, even (or perhaps especially) self-censorship. The fact is that we live in a world that is at times both cruel, monstrous, unfair and horrible. It is only fair to our children that we let people depict it that way. Children have parents, who should be the judges of what their children partake of.

Pertaining to RotRL, then, I say that it is an extremely impressive work, far beyond what I have come to expect from publicised adventure modules. It illustrates society in a largely positive way, as exemplified by the description of Sandpoint, and much more than usual, it pushes for that society giving a positive response to those it sees as heroes. It describes rather realistically the actions and reasons of the villains, and how their actions impact the world around them. Now, much of what it does, it achieves THROUGH, not in spite of, the horror involved. So... if it isn't your cup of tea, fine. Nobody forces you to use any of it. But there is a place for grim, gritty adventures that touch on mature themes in between the forests of simplistic, sanitized dungeon-crawls that have been the fare for decades.

I'm not sure who you've caught making a secondary effects argument, but whatever...

doppelganger. =)

What well-conducted research that exists in the area says is more or less that violence, including violence done by minors, has dropped drastically the last decade or so, which hardly supports the "secondary effects" argument, since those young during this period were generally less censored than earlier generations of youths.

To be precise, some violence has become more available, but this says nothing about the lifestyle or child-rearing these children have experienced. Besides, American culture has been violent for far more that the last ten years. Probably, we would be better off talking about the relationship between crime and economics. But that is neither here nor there, we have been talking about Nick's vivid portrayal of sick ogres and whether or not it offends people.

Statistics about violence in society shows clearly that all over the western world, violent crime has made a definite drop since the early 90's, including in America. And I agree with you that crime and economy is the real relationship, not crime and uncensored stuff for kids. But no, when you start talking about how "some things are not good for kids to see, and leads to early sex experimentation etc", that's not about whether the material offends people. It has become "won't someone please think of the kids".

It also shows that teen pregnancies is more correlated to low availability of contraceptives and to absence of good sex ed in school. It is probably just coincidence that most people touting "secondary effects" want youths to practice abstinence and get no sex ed.

Nice grammar, dude. You're talking about teen pregnancies, not whether or not 16 year olds decide to have sex. In fact, there is a correlation between kids seeing explicit material and having sex at a young age, but whether it is causative seems questionable.

Okay, I am terribly sorry. I should have said "teen pregnancies ARE more related". =)

"Secondary effects" is nothing more than a bunch of people with very conservative views wanting to censor things they don't like by saying "stuff like that hurts our kids".

If you want to totally overblow what has been said here and insult some of the posters on this thread, you've done great! I think we have all agreed that PF is not for kids and that isn't what the argument is about here.

It's regrettable if people get upset by what I wrote. And no, I agree with you that RotRL probably isn't for kids. Even so, there's nothing in it that's really worse to a kid than watching the news. At least in an RPG, there is the escape that it's not for real.

Ah, the old "secondary effects" argument. Children are to be shielded from everything that could be offensive, or they become juvenile delinquents. And what could be offensive is to be determined by the user of the argument, without backing in any serious research.

What well-conducted research that exists in the area says is more or less that violence, including violence done by minors, has dropped drastically the last decade or so, which hardly supports the "secondary effects" argument, since those young during this period were generally less censored than earlier generations of youths. It also shows that teen pregnancies is more correlated to low availability of contraceptives and to absence of good sex ed in school. It is probably just coincidence that most people touting "secondary effects" want youths to practice abstinence and get no sex ed.

"Secondary effects" is nothing more than a bunch of people with very conservative views wanting to censor things they don't like by saying "stuff like that hurts our kids".

Okay, I'll take your word for it. =)

When I first saw the image of Seoni, the iconic sorceress, I felt that it was an odd image for a first level character. Admittedly, it's going to be the same image for the entire level progression, but it still felt strange. However, looking then at the writeup in PF #1 of the Runelord of enchantment, Sorshen, I had a sneaking suspicion that Seoni's image originally was meant to be of Sorshen.

Any thoughts?

Thank you! =)

This is great stuff, and much will most definitely find a home in my evolving Ethereal/Inner Planes/Demiplanes campaign. Even so, if anyone has more theories, please feel free to put them here.

I find that there should be more to some of them than merely a reference to an artifact. For example, the Rod of Seven Parts is more or less common knowledge. The keepers need an associated mystery to protect, and just thinking about the Rod, I figure that perhaps it's the pattern for its appearances, or what happened to Miska the Wolf-Spider? Or perhaps the reason it was made, and other legacies related to it, presumably on the plane of Air?

Because, it's not such a stretch to think that all the keeper groups take care of various parts of the whole mystery, the one they were originally set to guard.

Having recently read the excellent ecology of the Keeper article, I thought about the groupings of the keepers. These make up a good summary of odd mysteries of the D&D universe: the Apotheosis, the Draeden, the Final Gate, the Iron Flask, the Maze, the Mists, the Gray Path, the Seven Parts, the Ur-Fiend, the Unliving God, and the example character's grouping: the Colorless Pool.

So, with what we all know or can find out, what are these referring to? I have a good idea about many of them, but it would be exciting to see what you guys can come up with. In many cases, the challenge is to see what the associated mystery is.

So, open floor. Take one mystery, see if you can develop it, if there are good sources for this, and how to use it in a game?

And this is spoiler marked for a reason.

My players didn't figure out the lich hiding in the unlife nexus (or whatever it was called), so I had Kaurophon point it out to them. After that, they breezed through the encounter. When they reached the final room, one of the players threw himself in the geyser first thing he did. This suited me fine, since it's the warlock of the gang. This effectively resolved the situation. =)

I was trying to add something to the discussion... But cracking the moon in half is fun too.

Add to this speculation the fact that the next adventure after Cormyr and Shadowdale is called Anauroch: The sundering of the world. Considering the adventure theme of unstable/dead magic, perhaps Shar finally manages to oust Mystra's weave from certain areas of the world?