Neffier's page

A while back James Jacobs posted up the Spells/ritual required to create an Ulgurstasta that didn't make it into the Fiend Folio. Does anybody remember what was involved?

Also what do you think is involved in creation of some of the other Hounds of Kyuss like the Mindkiller scorpion, Eviscerator Beetle and Earthcancer Centipede?

A friend of mine is getting ready to send off his 3.5 campaign world (to get ready for a 4.0 relaunch a few centuries down the road). To end it with a bang, he's running a high level evil game over the next couple of months to plunge the world into a time of darkness. I decided to throw my character's lot in with Kyuss and bring about the Age of Worms if possible.

I would also welcome any ideas folks might want to contribute.

My Item went as followed. Comment as you will.

Cauldron of Pliant Flesh.

Mine fell into thinly veiled campaign plot. I was hoping it would spark some interesting plot usage ideas. But that wasn't what you all were looking for. And apparently I wasn't alone, and that makes me feel better. Many Great minds thought alike, and that brings me some comfort.

And I now have a plot for game that just fell into my lap thanks to my Cauldron of Pliant Flesh.

I think maps would be difficult to say the least. With the possibility of images not making it, or links breaking down and not showing. I think it would hinder the writing and rules side more than help. One good map would be better than 100,000 words in picking the winner. Especially if the entries are far too wordy.

Lets face it, the community has less than a week to review all 32. I think most folks would, if faced with 32 ten page entries would run out of time. Or worse read one or two, get bored and vote then.

I think a lot could be done with 1000 words or less. Lincoln summed up the Civil War in 10 sentences.

Well now that you guys are done. A day and a half early no less. Tomorrow you should take a break and watch some cartoons and eat some Ho Ho's, you deserve it.

Neffier wrote:

I've gone back to school to finish a degree and move on.

But to get money to buy food for my head hole, I Temp.

For the last few months counting venetian blind slats into piles of 100.

Oh God. Dude. Thinking about that gives me a headache.

Yeah but it pays almost 30% more than my old gig which was customer service, and gives you time to think about things. Things like D&D, or school, or the fact that it takes about 2 min to count out 100 slats and box them. That's about 50 cents a box.

Man it's like a Sisyphisian task in hell.

Actually it's not that bad. If you've ever done assembly line work your mind just goes off to wander and it's fairly guilt and stress free.

I've gone back to school to finish a degree and move on.

But to get money to buy food for my head hole, I Temp.

For the last few months counting venetian blind slats into piles of 100.

I'll say this for myself, IP be damned. I don't really care who owns my ideas if they get better because of it. If anything this contest gave me the courage to open my ideas up to critique on a larger scale. I've DM'd continuously for over a decade and and while I'm a big fish in my very small pond. I think that to become a better GM and writer for my own table, I need to step up to another level and get some real feedback in the larger gaming community.

So I plan to start my own campaign blog and keep writing on it, open to critique and feedback. Also I plan write an entry for each round of the competition and post it as well.

I've found that since 3.0 and 3.5 (and especially Paizo's work over the last few years), I've been continually gobsmacked by ideas and rules work I've seen. AOW and STAP were especially beautiful in their simplistic and clockwork brilliance that made me rethink how a long term episodic storyline should work. I had discovered a new plateau to work for.

So I'm thankful for this competition in getting me to try to take my work to the next level,for getting me excited for the game, and taking pride in my work at the table even more.

I'm still missing issues 137 and 138. I called over 3 weeks ago on 137 and never recieved a call back. I emailed over 2 weeks ago and I recieved an email saying it would be shipped out.

Now Aug 4th and I haven't gotten the issue that shipped in June or the issue that shipped on July 18th 138.

This is the next avenue that I'm trying. I can't find my Subscription number but the subscriptions are connected to this account.

James I had a couple of plans to expand on the adventure in Kings of the Rift. Whenever you have the words Dragons and City in the same sentence I think burning city. But in this case there is only one red dragon and the city is made of stone. So with so many acid breathing dragons I have a plan for bucket chains of bugbears and giants using water from the city well to try to dilute the acid eating away foundations of the city. This thread should culminate in the eventual colapse of a section of buildings causing a major avalanche sweeping residents and maybe some polky PC's into the rift. "Oh the Demi Humanity"

I also had a plan for the bridge to the citadel of weeping dragons. The thin stone bridge, which at the end of a combat between the pc's and the fang dragon Xyzanth who will upon dying plunge to bridge and destroy a large section of it trapping the PC's there. I had to switch around the areas of influence of Xyzanth and Vermirox but I think the idea of 80 odd tons of plummeting dragon should be exciting enough to be worth it. This might not be the death of this city but the PC's should certainly think it is.

I had a couple of questions about the city though. Is there any way we can get a city statistics write up for the city. (you know population and such)?

Neffier, I've been planning to do this for some time, although with the modification that there be two DMs (one is DM for Good/PC for Evil and vice/versa). Glad to know the concept worked well for you, though I'd be interested to hear further thoughts on what worked/didn't work, especially as relates to metagaming (players deciding they like their good characters better, for example, and purposefully nerfing their evil; that sort of thing).

Well my game started off with the premise that nobody ever ran a high level D&D game that allowed people to truly be cheesy. The game was supposed to be a send off for 2nd Ed. 3rd had just been released and I wanted to say goodbye to 2nd and all of its craziness. So I posted up a flyer at my local store and got two 6 man parties (12 folks total) all with set stats and allowed to do whatever they wanted. Six months later we switched to 3rd and the store sold through player’s manual like 4 times. Since the theme of the world was one of my own and the players were supposed to be extra planer invaders trying to conquer/corrupt/indoctrinate the world I allowed any Wizards D&D 3rd rules at face value, and any 3rd party gaming materials after approval. I worked out a deal with the game store owner and got myself a slight discount and players in the group got one as well. In return we would post up rumors of the game and I would allow any players who wanted to join so long as there was room. (At one time I had a total of 15 players and 3 more on the waiting list). I allowed players to remake their characters for a loss of 10% exp. We played through 3 to epic and 3.5. The store sold through 10 of each book each month and sometimes more (for example epic and vile darkness sold out like crazy) I had emails and answered questions during the week via email, and taught people about rules especially when epic entered play.

My suggestions to you if you play a game like this are to set up a deal with a store if you can to draw in more players and get product, it’s beneficial to both sides if you can hold up your end of the deal. If you run the game for 3-6 months regularly with the store as news board/recruiting center then you can approach them with a discount deal if you want. Games like this, even if not run in the store can generate interest in a game that doesn’t get enough exposure in the usually, and helps out your local shop. (I also have a ton of green ronin stuff that players bought for me in the hope that I would allow rules into the campaign.) You can also get new players which are the lifeblood of creativity as well as new friends which nobody has enough of.

Set up the campaign in an episodic style, at least in the beginning, it allows you to set up games in advance and get a bit ahead. Believe me you will fall behind and this allows you a bit of a safety net. I would play in your world you don’t have to create any details. Desert kingdom 1 LG ruler, human will do. The players will discover it and allow you to create the kingdoms they like, both in style of game and story, as you go I had a small villain who became large because the players loved him. The good party would kill him and the evil would resurrect him, and on and on.

Email: Tell the other team what the competition is doing, not the details but at least the basics. I was able to re use the same materials several times. I got to use the same dungeon twice, which was magical. Knowing what the other side is doing fosters competition and excitement. It takes less than 5 minutes to send an email on Mon morning to inform everyone what happened. If you answer questions via email, answer them the day after you receive it otherwise you’ll end up in an email discussion group which people can miss and can waste time better spent on other GM duties. Some folks can’t read their personal email at work, and may feel left out if they cannot chime in. A day will give people reasonable time to chime into the group. Lastly set a day to work on the game I usally worked on a group the week after they played, it allowed me time to miss if something came up.

I ran an evil campaign for more than 3 years a little while ago. I ran two parties in the same world at the same time; one good, one evil on alternating Sundays.The theory was that both groups were high level and one be working against each other indirectly while during a world wide conflict. What I found is as follows.

First of all your evil party faces a lot fewer options in options in character archtypes unless you open up monsterous classes to them.

Secondly you need a mature group of people to pull it off. I ran 6 people but only 4 of them stayed around the whole time. The another 4 people came and went, each one for one reason or another didn't enjoy the experience. We had one character who was a bully to the others, and ruled through terror, at least until he was weakened during one fight and perished in the "fog of war". (Fog of War became the battle cry of the campaign) another character who wasn't directly involved quit because I allowed a player to kill another one.

Evil will work together against a larger threat or rivalry but they need direction.(like a good party, as each session or so started with rumors about the other party) They will work together but Cliques will form and some people will do better together than others. (my best example was a pair of undead characters who were united in thier hatred an mistrust for the necromancer character.)

Finally enemies for evil are a lot more difficult, and allies are fewer and far between. Solars will give even an epic level character pause. And try to get help from any fiend or priest of an evil diety.

But if you can pull it off, it is a blast. Ahh the memories of a player animating another player as a zombie and having him haul loot until you could get to somebody who could raise them, memories of a character charging for healing until the fighter types charged for the killing of monsters. Nowadays I run a smaller campaign and most of my former evil players now run lawful good and enjoy it more than anyone should have the right too.