Heathansson's page

The Koga wants to say Dr. Doom, afterall, we have so much in common..

The best thing about Dr. Doom as a villian is the raging contradictions hidden behind that mask in that brilliant mind of his. Not only is he a master of science but of the sorcerous arts; EVERY Halloween he remembers his mother by battling the very lord of darkness for her soul. He is a tyrannical despot whose subjects adore him. He is evil incarnate, but his word is his bond; his sense of honor is warped but he will not sell out his principles.

He is ruthless, but wouldn't harm a defenseless innocent.
That's what, in my opinion, makes him about the most three-dimensional comic villain there has ever been.

The Boogeyman concept, is one which is very emmotive, we all remember having those fears as a child, so a homebrew verson certainly is the icing on the cake for giving your players the creeps.

I wonder...does anyone remember what their personal primal image of the boogeyman was? The one you generated in your mind when you heard the word boogeyman for the first time and asked for a definition? And would THAT be a good pre-campaign interview question for players? This is only the umpteenth great idea I've been inspired with interacting on this board. Must go write now. Vulcrum...how do you kill vulcrum? Silver stake through the pancreas?

... no such comments have been made and that none have been asked to make examples of individuals.

if you say so.

I would submit that should one press to find examples of thus in the posts on this thread one would be able to point out such qualities. That, however, would not be polite.

As ever,
ACE

And in so doing, one's statement would be hyperbolic, irregardless of its fitness for polite company.

I'm using my campaign's version of Orcus, a god of undeath that has been imprisoned for thousands of years. I've not had any problems converting the adventures and changing the references. You're right about the worms- they are obviously mentioned pretty often- but they usually don't play a critical role in the adventure. All I've done is changed to a contagious form of undeath (i.e. recent zombie movies), which has done the trick.

That's a reeeeeally cool idea. I'm getting this DAWN OF THE DEAD Greyhawk style visualization.

Must write now.

My previous sentiment is appropriately qualified. If I had indicated that all of the contributors to this (or any) public forum are dictatorial, unaccommodating, and unwilling to teach and/or learn; then the comment would certainly be out of line.

The adequacy of qualification is not in question. The simple fact is NONE of the contributors to this particular thread have displayed conclusive evidence of being a fool. Not one. In the spirit of politeness, I extended to you, if you will, that you may have overstated the facts.

Heathansson wrote:

That being the case, shouldn't the aforementioned be relieved to be quit of that ship of fools?

Heh, yes. But consider some of the other responses this thread (and others like it) have garnered thus far in this public forum. I'd suggest that some of those fools have docked in this port...

As ever,
ACE

Thats a rather hyperbolic statement of things.

Too often, an individual gamer is cast aside by either a dictatorial DM or an unaccomodating group of gamers without being afforded an opportuity to address issues that individual players or the group has with him/her.

That being the case, shouldn't the aforementioned be relieved to be quit of that ship of fools?

1)Conan the Barbarian
2)The Terminator
3)Aliens
4)Shogun Assassin
5)The Road Warrior

The guy that has EVERY npc hit on/fondle/attempt to coerce your wife's character into lewd behaviours. And then rationalizes it as "that's what they'd do....haven't you seen Braveheart?" Then wonders why my wife doesn't want to play anymore.
I mean, yes, that is what they'd probably do. BUT....unicorns probably didn't exist, and if every powerful npc didn't hit on my wife's character it wouldn't interfere with my ability to suspend disbelief that much.

I had a lot of fun with this actually. Loooooong time ago when I was a wee sprat and Ravenloft was just a module. We couldn't let Strahd r.i.p. after Castle Ravenolft was sterilized. So in true munchkin fashion he kept coming back for revenge, like old 1970's B Dracula flicks. Only the party was stronger and stronger every time. You tend to go up a level or two whacking the granddaddy of all vampires repeatedly. Solution? Strahd rustled up a posse of servitors...Daughter of Strahd, an Anti-paladin, an evil werewolf ranger, etc....The first time I ran them against the Strahd crew was in the under dark between D1 and D2. After that melee, everyone WANTED Strahd to come back with a new crew. So every 3rd or 4th random dungeon encounter was Strahd's latest Drac Pack of evilesque gothic anti-adventurers.
What you can do is give the boss a suitable group of cronies to give the players more of an epic battle. With the Strahd Pack, I'd have a suitable foe for every character, maybe a few levels lower than the character in question if the foe was undead or some form of lycanthrope or half-demon...Like the X-men vs. the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Even Magneto needed a crew, and that Magneto is one bad mutant foe. So give the drow cleric a pair of twin quaggoth bouncers with a few levels of berserker, and a changeling sorcerorwith a ring of invisibility who keeps popping up as someone new in the middle of combat to pop off a few fireballs or whatever. Give the dervish a trio of students who follow her around to learn dance steps and help with chores and pesky adventurers.

Sorry for the above reply wrt quotation problem...early...must..have...coffee....
a 1st level cleric could turn me before I've had my morning coffee.

Heathansson wrote:

I know this person, and she did keep coming to the game and got over this in three or four sessions.

That's cool. I guess I explained the phenomenon wrong. The regular player in question CONSTANTLY would bring new players to MY game, none of whom would ever show up again. Maybe 1 in 5 would come back and join the crew, as it were. I felt like Lurch when all those people would come to the Addams Family house, and run away after 5 minutes, and he has to stand there and hold the door for them. If my friend would've just got them a PHB, said, "read this," then "do this" then brought them over that would have been cool.

I'd like to see some of the old campaign sourcebooks given the same treatment as Dark Sun got a while back. Namely the viking sourcebook.
Planescape would be nice too.....
I know I'm asking a lot. But you asked so there you go.

1) the guy that always wants to be a humanoid velociraptor ninja. Or just a ninja. Or ninja-like. There's no ninjas in 17th century France, much less velociraptors, but he wants to be a science experiment gone wrong. Teenage mutant musketeer veloceraptor over here.

2)the guy that keeps arguing. Not just "rules lawyer" but the guy that wants to take it to the Supreem Courte of the Dungeons and Dragons. Hey, Justice Gygax, how do you rule on this???
One time me and this guy I'm a cavalier--1st ed.--fresh out of Dragon magazine--Unearthed Arcana is heretofore Unearthed,...he's an assassin. We kill like 6 vrock demons. The DM won't let him assassinate or backstab or anything. He argues for 2 hours. 2 hours, we won, lets play...we won, who cares, the vrocks are dead. They're decomposing. On and on they argued. Give it a rest.

3)the dungeonmaster who has to put his ultimate npc in with the party, and the npc has to do everything, and then he talks about how dead we all would've been without his npc there, and he's so narcissistic he doesn't realize we were ALL trying to suicide our characters cause who cares anyway, Theo the mental Onanist has this adventure well in hand.

4)The first time player someone keeps inviting, who takes 10 times as long to roll up a character as normal, who tries to do a real thorough job of coming up with a background, who has to read ALL the classes, just won't be a fighter, wants to know what advantages buying a bullseye lantern would be over a torch, and what's a guisarme-voulge, do I need one? Who cares, you'll never come back and play!!! YOU NEVER DO!!! I want that THREE HOURS OF MY LIFE BACK!!!

5)The guy who always sloughs off any plot hook you throw at him, and accuses you of railroading him into an adventure. "This is too linear. I need more options. What's left? what's right of me? I don't know, another dungeon? That's so overdone. How about a wilderness adventure? Underwater?" Well I'll just whip one up for you on the spot, 5 seconds before you change your mind again. I have the entirety of Faerun completely mapped and generated. If you want to catalogue wildflowers I have that Volo guide right here. How about birdwatching? There's 200 species of finch in Rashemen you know.

Actually, I think that is the Githyank Lich Queen who culls folks before they get strong enough to challenge her. Lolth is already a goddess: a vile, putrescent, loathesome abomination of a goddess, but a goddess nonetheless.

I stand corrected.

I played a lot of rifts... yes rolling up a character is like a phd dissertation. We had it down, though, back in the day to 15 to 20 minutes. Never picked up Paranoia, but liked everything I heard about it.

Darksun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think a sci fi author and an statistician got together and the question came up of immortality. Turns out that even if people end up licking the old death by natural causes quandary, death by misadventure will do them in at about age 500-600. So the longer Mr. Superelf lives, the more likely he will accidently be done in by a tree falling on him. I know that he probably has a high reflex save, but he can fumble...
With regards to drow, I recall hearing that Lolth likes to cull them before they get powerful enough to challenge her suzerainty. There's probably one or two 83rd level elves somewhere in the multiverse, but they're just beyond it all. They're not worried about any of it.

Dealing with problem players? Doing dumb things? Waste them. Tough love, baby. Maybe they'll learn the next time they roll up a character. That's what I love about the Cyberpunk game--everybody full on expects to get wasted sooner or later anyway. Ergo everyone tries over-the-top stuff all the time, and they don't cry if their favorite borg gets a ride from a valkyrie. Next character.....

John Ringo's "There Will Be Dragons" is one of the coolest new books I've read in a while. Really compelling blend of sci-fi/fantasy/end of the world. Lucifer's Hammer meets Dungeons and Dragons. Fun stuff.
My all time faves are Moorcock for fantasy, and Niven for straight sci fi.

We were in Athas, and we had just arrived at an oasis. These surly elves there thought they owned the oasis, so they told us we could drink for a silver each. My mul gladiator says,"we will not give you silver for that which should be free to all." So the lead elf said we could not drink for free. So my mul said, "then we will trade you blood for water." Everybody said, "yeeeeeeeah!" It was like a Worf moment.

My favorite monster isn't really a monster in the monster manual. It's this kinda riff I run on new (to me) gamers. I come up with a homebrew beast that is just baad, and almost nigh-invulnerable like the terminator. Then it just hounds the buggers until I deem they've had enough. They try this, and it doesn't work. They run. They try that and it doesn't work. They run. It's like the boogeyman that chases you in a dream, and you just can't run away because your legs won't move. Then finally something works. It's kinda rules-out-the-window, but it gets people trying new things, and thinking, and everybody has fun. I never let my boogeyman/helldog o' Lochlann/whatnot kill anybody, maybe maim them a little bit. The KEY is to use a homebrew creature, because THAT becomes the most compelling fear--the fear of the unknown. If it was a vampire or a werewolf, hell, they're tough, but you know how to defeat them.
I also like githyanki.

Sorry, I was just going off on a tangent. I read your original rat island exterminator query, saw it was kinda flat, and tried to inject some fizz into it. Now I see what the whole thread is about, and I apologize for going outside the gist of it all.

Sorry, I just figured out what the whole thread was about. I thought it was still about the rat island thing, but now I see it is for people in general who submitted queries to get critiqued. My bad.

Sorry dude. I do that a lot. I read your original proposal and riffed off of it and brainstormed, based on what you presented. That's me going off on a tangent. Back to earth, though. I thought the original proposal was kind of flat. I thought I'd pump some fizz into it, and see what came of it. That's all the help I can offer.

In 16th century puritan America young children were encouraged and rewarded for rat catching. So say you have an evil cult who overtly has monastery on an island which has invited all the urchins from nearby parishes, villages, whatnot to hunt out all the rats on the island-- they're eating the grape vines and ruining the vinyard. The kid who catches the most rats gets a prize. When the contest is run, it so happens that a good number of the children go missing. These all happen to be orphans or street urchins; children actually claimed by their families actually go home from the rat catching event.
Unbeknownst to everybody, the urchins are being infected with wererat lycanthropy, then to be redistributed to the towns they came from as a spy network for the evil cultists.

This is one of the most inspiring adventure backgrounds I have read in a long time. The bow of the hat to the 13th warrior (I assume) wrt 13 going after Oroshar really got the blood pumping. I eagerly await the publication of anything else Viking-themed Kevin Carter has in the works. Especially the storyline herein. Who was the cupthief? Loki? How many loose ends does one really need to spark a saga? The brushwar brewing between the two tribes has the potential for epic campaign material. If Kevin Carter or Dungeon have nothing more to offer with regards to this storyline, at least the embers of Lolgoff's funeral pyre have inspired me and probably others with visions of valkyries and berserkers going merrily about their business. SKORR!!!!!