
dungeonmaster heathy |

Our party's life reminds me a lot of my army days - short bursts of intense action, followed by loooooong periods of maintenance, working out and performing mundane tasks. And drinking. Lots and lots of drinking.
It's a universal timeless constant.
All in the name of verisimilitude.

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Vattnisse wrote:Our party's life reminds me a lot of my army days - short bursts of intense action, followed by loooooong periods of maintenance, working out and performing mundane tasks. And drinking. Lots and lots of drinking.It's a universal timeless constant.
All in the name of verisimilitude.
It's nice to be able to work on things during downtime, I like that in a campaign. BTW, let me know when I use up the Wand of Mending and if I need more to fix up the house. I figure a house costs 3-4 grand in D&D so I don't mind spending a decent percentage of that towards wands to help fix the minor stuff. Also if we need to hire some carpenters or something let us know.
We also need to start doing something to increase our 'curb appeal' but Riese has a knack for home decor (go figure!). Maybe a nice perennial garden along the walkway. Maybe we can get Stiggy to do a bit of work on the fieldstone fence. I'll start tossing ranks into craft or profession to reflect his blossoming design knack. I'd like to go with a nice sage green for the walls in the entry area. It'll make people feel calm and 'at home' when they enter our place.
dungeonmaster heathy |

There's gotta be a feat in there somewhere; or a way to make one;
scissors cut--you attack with both blades in TWF as one attack; like a freakin rend or something.
I saw Musashi do it once on one of those Toshiro Mifune movie; he was fighting some guy who entangled one of his swords with a kyoketsu shoge or something.

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Hey, Aub! I read the first 50 pages of Lies of Locke Lamora last night. It's been a long time since I read a book and I felt like I was reading for 5 minutes, only to realize I had read 40 pages. It's lovely. It's an addictive read; I only had to stop because it was time for bed and then some.

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I really enjoyed Locke Lamora myself - it's good fun all the way through and I found it great on loads of levels; the central plot, the flashbacks, the sort of "fantasy Venice" of the setting and the juxtaposition of the vileness of the criminal types with the gullibility and greed of the more refined classes. I read it while I was gallivanting about Asia and it really made the flights feel fairly short.
I have the sequel (Red Sails) but haven't read it yet. The reviews were mixed and the general opinion seemed to be that is was weaker than the Locke Lamora.
Another series you might like is the First Law series by Joe Abercrombie, starting with The Blade Itself. I have read that and the second in the series (Before They Are Hanged) and I have to say they offer a really good, sustained read with a series of very interesting, ambiguous characters (especially Glotka the Inquisitor, who on the one hand has a twisted sense of honour deriving from his former life in the army, and on the other spends very large parts of the book inflicting horrible tortures on various individuals - and he is possibly a goodie). What I find especially impressive is the fact that it covers a lot of bases - a sort of Conan-ish barbarian north, a Renaissance Europe-type empire in the middle and an Arabian Nights sort of feel for some other bits - and overlaying it all a sort of black humour, an ever-present whiff of corruption and greed, and quite a lot of fight scenes. Not all necessarily incredibly original in and of itself but put together very well indeed, and grippingly written.

dungeonmaster heathy |

From the module, the mage aboard ship's name is "Punketah," which, if you switch the last four letters around, becomes "Punkhate." I don't know if that was on purpose or not, but maybe the authors didn't like the Sex Pistols all too well.
I like how they were "pirates," but they all had Scandanavian/Viking names; Bjorn, Sigurd, etc...

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Greyhawk's pretty (in)famous for its punny and/or dumb names - Drawmij, Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter and (my favourite) Fonkin Hoddypeaks. By those standards, Punketah isn't so bad.
I assume that was Bjorn's mommy down in the boat's basement? But who's his dad - could it be Sigurd Snakeeyes himself?

dungeonmaster heathy |

I think the question of Bjorn's dad will have to be one of those mysteries that goes unexplained like who or what the Lady of Pain is, or who caused the Day of Mourning in Eberron.
Oh, and I made up Bjorn's mom and his mixed heritage; she wasn't in the module; it was for up to 3rd level, so Bjorn's mom wouldn't have been very balanced.

dungeonmaster heathy |

Can you tell my favorite part of Star Wars was the cantina scene?
(edit)it felt good because I vacillated for months on how to properly present these guys...and when the posts came, they just wrote themselves.
Sigurd is my attempt at Blackbeard, the other guys are who they are.

Kruelaid |

Greyhawk's pretty (in)famous for its punny and/or dumb names - Drawmij, Gleep Wurp the Eyebiter and (my favourite) Fonkin Hoddypeaks. By those standards, Punketah isn't so bad.
I assume that was Bjorn's mommy down in the boat's basement? But who's his dad - could it be Sigurd Snakeeyes himself?
Beek Gwenders of Croodle

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Those silly names were what kept me away from Greyhawk for a looong time.
Sometimes I feel that the old guard (Gygax, Kuntz etc.) get far too much credit. Many, if not most, of the iconic old adventures (Tsjocanth, Tomb of horrors, Keep on the borderlands) are fairly weak, most names are stupid or just weird, and the Kingdom of Iuz is a rather unsubtle copy of Mordor. That Greyhawk prospered despite what its creators did to it speaks volumes about how good it actually was.

dungeonmaster heathy |

Hey now!!!
Kruelly expressed an interest in the Isle of Dread.
The story we're in has an overarching story going on within it, which could hypothetically play out there as well as Keoland.
I've done pretty much all of module U1, with certain additions here and there, such as the slaughterhouse etc.....
U2--I've decided to pretty much deepsix except for the main plot synopsis, and a few encounters, since it is an old school 45 room dungeon crawl. I can either run it really condensed, then U3 pretty much condensed (again, a gazillion room dungeon crawl) and tie up the whole story in prolly 2-3 months, then take the show on the high seas to the Isle of Dread, or I can meander along as I've been doing which would bring us to heading for the Isle o' Dread in 5-6 months, or I could deepsix this whole storyline and take it straight to the high seas.
It's part of the reason I don't like to chart out an entire saga of an AP; it's a b*!@% to invent up a whole massive adventure only to turn around and deepsix it a month later.

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I like the idea of boiling down the next two planned adventures and then setting sail for somewhere else. Having said that, I really think that we have too many loose ends to tie up (Vander Anderhoff, the Resurrection Man, Fort Bale, the map on the ship) to just up and leave. Thus, it could take 5 months to get on that boat...

Ragadolf |

I'm good either way. I have very little knowledge of the original modules (never owned them) And I am just having fun!
Now, I DO have to mention that a trip to an island covered in jungle, and positively teeming with dinosaurs DOES hold a powerful appeal to a certain elvish druid! ;)
But, I do agree that there a few loose ends here that could use a good tying up. First,... ;)

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right on,....maybe I'll have time to develop the island really well.
Savage Tide is an awesome resource for the island's flora and fauna. It even has some good stuff you could cull out to make into adventures.