Reading "Tides of Dead," I'm fairly certain that one of the PCs will end up provoking a duel with Manthalay, esp. because there is little chance of them passing enough Diplomacy checks to sway the election unless they spend all 2 months campaigning for Vanerboren. Manthalay himself will be annoyed that Avner was a casualty of the Olman trap in HTBM, and may even agree (the fool!). I'm not crazy enough to let them duel to the death (I have a tentative plan to tie votes to the outcome of a non-fatal duel), but still would be interested in Manthalay's abilities, items, etc. Any ideas?
dont have the adventure yet... hell, even missing HTM!! (bloody slowpoke post/retail..!!!)
Anyway, cannot Lavinia make those checks herself.. she's after all maxed out her diplomacy. Add a diplomacy +10 item ... and she should have the job in her back pocket.
dont have the adventure yet... hell, even missing HTM!! (bloody slowpoke post/retail..!!!)
Anyway, cannot Lavinia make those checks herself.. she's after all maxed out her diplomacy. Add a diplomacy +10 item ... and she should have the job in her back pocket.
Sorry for those missing mags... esp. during this AP! Your idea has a lot of merit, esp. because it looks like the PCs might be busy elsewhere. Still, one must always plan ahead when dealing with hot-headed players.
dont i know that, lol
those that start out as kobolds are even whackier in their ideas than most others.. hehe.
Like those two extra ships captured.. filling them up with kobolds (150/ship).. and then laying out breeding plans for the whole 3 months.. ouch..
And so far they have presented some production tables on how much those ~5000 kobolds will be producing with their craftskills working 16hrs a day (yeah kobold babies can work.. albeit limited).
And thinking they can be overwhelmed by a few dinos? Think again, swarming.. thats 100 kobold-swarms. Scary..
Its fun to predict, and yet ill have several of those.. "you were thinking of doing WHAT??!?". Glorious!
dont have the adventure yet... hell, even missing HTM!! (bloody slowpoke post/retail..!!!)
Anyway, cannot Lavinia make those checks herself.. she's after all maxed out her diplomacy. Add a diplomacy +10 item ... and she should have the job in her back pocket.
Seriously. This is the second time this has happened to me. 13 Days and it's still not here. :(
It's the Kobold Love Boat. Ole 2 head's gonna get swarmed by 10,000,000 kobolds at the end. A Savage Tide of kobolds eating everything in its path.
Like those two extra ships captured.. filling them up with kobolds (150/ship).. and then laying out breeding plans for the whole 3 months.. ouch..
You realize, of course, that Vanthus' shadow pearl will inevitably be found by some precocious kobald youngster (too many of them to supervise properly), who will accidentally activate it while showing off for his litter-mates, resulting in 1,000,000 savage kobolds that destroy all life on the Isle of Dread...
Talk about your end of the world scenario.
One million cannibal kobolds, yearning for innards.
No more scary than chaperoning a school dance these days...
I'm picturing Manthalay more like Harvey Keitel in Ridley Scott's "The Duellists." "You have deprived me of the command that was rightfully mine! I demand an apology!" He'll have a few of the more uncharismatic characters in Farshore as "seconds." This is gonna be fun!
After buying the magazine, I think of Manthalay as an aristocrat with levels of perhaps ranger or fighter to reflect his time on the Isle of Dread. He's been there longer than the Vanderborens and likely takes to sport hunting as a hobby, rather than excessive partying like the other Meravanchis. I would focus on archery for him, making him a kind of colonial hunter, minus the pith helmet. The kind of jerk that would shoot elephants for fun and then enslave the natives for economic prosperity.
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After buying the magazine, I think of Manthalay as an aristocrat with levels of perhaps ranger or fighter to reflect his time on the Isle of Dread. He's been there longer than the Vanderborens and likely takes to sport hunting as a hobby, rather than excessive partying like the other Meravanchis. I would focus on archery for him, making him a kind of colonial hunter, minus the pith helmet. The kind of jerk that would shoot elephants for fun and then enslave the natives for economic prosperity.
Read Heart of Darkness? Remember the guy that was retconned to be the Aircav guy in Apocalypse Now played by Robert Duvall? The guy that doesn't care that bombs are falling all around him, and isn't affected by any of it, that you know NOTHING bad will ever happen to?
That's him.
He actually did it! The duel was set for dawn, with scimitars; I added monsoon rains that morning, so that the PC bard and Manthalay were slogging it out in knee-deep mud, half-blinded by rain and shouting at each other. Manthalay lost the duel... barely... and the PC is now VERY happy that the sneak attack with the dagger in his left hand only put the guy to -8, and didn't quite kill him. The cleric PC healed Manthalay immediately, but as Meravanchi came to, he realized the election was already lost: "We said before that Lord Meravanchi's policy of subjecting the Olmans, of 'might makes right,' was wrong. Even if that saying is true, you now see that he's still wrong, because he lost."
heh...heh...now he'll prolly sell out to the other side!!!
I hadn't even thought of that! Thanks, Heath! Heh, heh, better start statting a Lemorian half-fiend Manthalay...
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Yeah...you need to give him a lil' quasit. Maybe a 2-headed quasit for foreshadowing, I don't know. And the quasit can tempt him to turning against Farshore, and taking over once the pirates liberate them from Vanderboren's crazy sister who will only lead Farshore into failure.
And the quasit can give him instructions, and serve as a gobetween, flying from the fleet and back to carry messages.
Yeah...you need to give him a lil' quasit. Maybe a 2-headed quasit for foreshadowing, I don't know. And the quasit can tempt him to turning against Farshore, and taking over once the pirates liberate them from Vanderboren's crazy sister who will only lead Farshore into failure.
And the quasit can give him instructions, and serve as a gobetween, flying from the fleet and back to carry messages.
One day, if fate permits, you and I need to co-DM a campaign.
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I always liked that idea-and wanted to create a campaign world with a "papal bull" designating certain regions as belonging to different dm's.
I could never sell anybody on it though; the logistics are bizarre, and I guess I'd have to find people whose brain operates in a way that like that kind of bizarre. I was always wondering how or if it would work.
I think the main problem was d.m.p.c.'s converting between p.c. and d.m.p.c. Then there's the problem with the other guy creating something that you just HATE, and you don't have the gamemaster's immediate veto power because it's not just in your head, it's in another human being's head where your power of immediate veto has no presence.
I would so be in on that, Erik, if you ever wanted another hand. (Insane logistics aside.)
Awesome regarding the duel, I might have to yoink the entire idea if the PCs don't get very involved in the politics. They've been.... domineering of Avner thus far in HtbM. Many 30+ diplomacy checks to *ahem* "get him to shut the hell up".
He's been rather subdued, but he hates that they've "stolen" his "authority". Maybe he can whine to Uncle when they get there, and Manthalay might regard it as a good opportunity. Besides, the only PC he would reasonably challenge would be the sorceror! Who wants to duel an ice troll? Or a druid, for that matter? And cleric in duel = owned. So yeah. Nice.
I always liked that idea-and wanted to create a campaign world with a "papal bull" designating certain regions as belonging to different dm's.
I could never sell anybody on it though; the logistics are bizarre, and I guess I'd have to find people whose brain operates in a way that like that kind of bizarre. I was always wondering how or if it would work.
I think the main problem was d.m.p.c.'s converting between p.c. and d.m.p.c. Then there's the problem with the other guy creating something that you just HATE, and you don't have the gamemaster's immediate veto power because it's not just in your head, it's in another human being's head where your power of immediate veto has no presence.
That would be half the fun, I think. You'd need to get to know each other pretty well (or, as you mentioned, just be in synch) to get it to work, but man, it'd be cool if it did.
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You gotta understand Manthalay's mindset, I can easily see him being one of those sympathetic villain characters. He's been there trying earnestly to make a go of it at the colony while the Senior Vanderborens (in his mind) were "gallavanting" around in Sasserine. Overseeing a little colony like that is a lot of work.
He has no help from the outside whatsoever, and he's STILL kept Farshore up and running.
NOW, along comes Lavinia with her crew of 8 THUGS, who depending on how the story unfolds may or may not have KILLED his kinsman. Okay, now Lavinia's here with her bleeding heart to be friends with the natives, and she has her enforcers if you don't like it. The natives, who go around arbitrarily animating their dead ancestors for some reason.
Everything's going to be hunky dory now for Farshore, thanks for minding the store for me Manthalay, I'll be Lord Mayor now, here's a biscuit.
Oh, heeeeeeeell no.
I would so be in on that, Erik, if you ever wanted another hand. (Insane logistics aside.)
Count yourself in, if geography can ever be worked out. But I seem to be semi-nomadic, so if not, wait a few years and we'll check again!
Awesome regarding the duel, I might have to yoink the entire idea if the PCs don't get very involved in the politics.
Feel free. In fact, I've got CR 7 and CR 9 stats for him that I'd be happy to email, if you don't feel like working him up yourself (though you'd probably need to tweak it a bit for your players; through vague hints, I had the rogue/bard player CONVINCED that I was going to kill off his PC with this thing).
You gotta understand Manthalay's mindset, I can easily see him being one of those sympathetic villain characters. He's been there trying earnestly to make a go of it at the colony while the Senior Vanderborens (in his mind) were "gallavanting" around in Sasserine. Overseeing a little colony like that is a lot of work.
He has no help from the outside whatsoever, and he's STILL kept Farshore up and running.
NOW, along comes Lavinia with her crew of 8 THUGS, who depending on how the story unfolds may or may not have KILLED his kinsman. Okay, now Lavinia's here with her bleeding heart to be friends with the natives, and she has her enforcers if you don't like it. The natives, who go around arbitrarily animating their dead ancestors for some reason.
Everything's going to be hunky dory now for Farshore, thanks for minding the store for me Manthalay, I'll be Lord Mayor now, here's a biscuit.
Oh, heeeeeeeell no.
That's pretty much the attitude I gave him; if the female wizard PC hadn't been back-storied as a childhood friend of Lavinia's, I could easily see them supporting Meravanchi instead (they were kinda sympathetic to him after Sense Motive-ing his reaction to Avner's death by Olman spear-trap). But as it went, well, we'll see what develops.
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That's pretty much the attitude I gave him; if the female wizard PC hadn't been back-storied as a childhood friend of Lavinia's, I could easily see them supporting Meravanchi instead (they were kinda sympathetic to him after Sense Motive-ing his reaction to Avner's death by Olman spear-trap). But as it went, well, we'll see what develops.
That's how I've seen evil nurtured and grow in real life. It often seems to have it's own logic and rationalization; it festers into bad fruit. One flawed tenet builds upon another. Like in Buddhism when they say a small diversion from the true path ultimately grows into a great one.
That's how I've seen evil nurtured and grow in real life... One flawed tenet builds upon another. Like in Buddhism when they say a small diversion from the true path ultimately grows into a great one.
Amazing synchronicity of minds here. As a Buddhist (albeit not a very good one) and one who has seen evil grow, I'm on exactly the same wavelength, Heath.
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I'm not a Buddhist, but I took Karate long ago. Also, rp'ing seems to inevitably turn many into students of history and culture on some level. The kind of individual that goes off on a National Geographic from 1962 because they have an article about "present day" Mongolian nomads, or a new archaeoligical dig in a temple complex in Peru.
Also, rp'ing seems to inevitably turn many into students of history and culture on some level.
Yeah, I'm a total history dork, I admit it. A student of culture seems more from moving around a lot that from gaming, though.
I always liked that idea-and wanted to create a campaign world with a "papal bull" designating certain regions as belonging to different dm's.
I could never sell anybody on it though; the logistics are bizarre, and I guess I'd have to find people whose brain operates in a way that like that kind of bizarre. I was always wondering how or if it would work.
I've tried it before. It works best if you get together ahead of time and agree on the ground rules of the setting (allowable races/classes, deities, expansion books, specific setting quirks like firearms or taint), sketch out a history/mythology, and create thumbnail descriptions of the cultures/nations (orc horse nomads based on the Mongols, dwarf cantons based on the Swiss, etc.). A rough map should also be developed, placing the various large-scale terrain features and cultures/nations.
Then, divide the areas among the DMs for detailed development. Any deviations from the "cannon" established above should be discussed with the other DM developers. Each developer will share a brief overview with the other DMs, similar to a pre-game player's handout for background and character creation.
For running games in the setting, you have two options. Option one: Each DM runs a party that stays in one area (maybe using the Eternal Champion campaign model, detailed on UA pg. 217), with the possibility of multiple parties banding together against world-wide threats. Option two: One party travels between areas, with each DM running sessions in their area. Option two can cause problems, but as long as the DM keeps the setting "cannon" and party composition in mind, they can be dealt with.
rp'ing seems to inevitably turn many into students of history and culture on some level.
The converse is true, also. People with an interest in history and culture can be drawn into roleplaying. I was interested in history, mythology, and science fiction growing up. Roleplaying for me is an outgrowth of that. I've also become an information junkie, following current events and politics. It's much more understandable if you know something about the history and culture of countries involved. I sometimes get annoyed with the distortions, omissions, and simplifications that occur in the media, though.