I've found that if I catch them early enough, I can make 'em shorter and easier with a sudden application of sugar, caffeine, ibuprofen, and Bob Dylan.
The only painkillers that are reliable against the pain of a migraine, in my experience, aren't things my metabolism can handle.
But lie down with some Coke or really sweet coffee, pop a couple ibuprofen, close my eyes and let Dylan's sweet cigarette-clogged pipes serenade me, and I can weather it in an hour instead of six hours.
If losing large patches of my vision and the feeling on half my body while a squad of sumo wrestlers attempt to break out the front of my skull isn't a migraine, I'd like to know what is.
@SimonGill It's... unpleasant and rather debilitating.
A section just off the middle of my visual field vanishes, and the vanished bit gets slowly larger. One side of my tongue, or one hand, starts to tingle like it's falling asleep, and as that spreads across that whole half of my body, then the pain starts.
Everybody's migraine is custom-made, but that's mine.
Well. to me its baffling. to someone more knowledgeable it would be easy. If it were the same error in VB id have it Fixed immediately. but for some reason its showing an error.
@Novian You know the bug report triad, don't you? "What did I do? What did I expect? What happened instead?" It's very useful to use that when you describe a problem because people don't have to guess anything...
system-agnostic has been bugging me lately, and I think it's because it's become a meta tag, at least in how it's commonly used now.
In The Death of Meta Tags, they're described thus:
meta-tags […] do not describe the content of the question. They describe some other aspect of the question,...
The goal is to make good answers whenever possible. By asking the question, you're implicitly telling people that it's not as good as it could be, and you're pinpointing actions that could be taken to improve it.
That's better. Throw in a please and you're good to go.
(It never hurts to be polite, especially when you're potentially making someone look bad.)
@Lord_Gareth It's always better to ask "Hey, where did you learn that?" than to say "Hey, you're wrong!" People are more willing to respond, it creates a culture that encourages better answers, and if you're wrong then you don't look like a doofus jerk.
I have my next session on Friday night. It's 3.5 hours (or longer if we want to keep going) so I'm hoping to either have quick or no combat. There's going to be cliffs, an earthquake, and possibly hounds hunting the players.
Maybe I'll let them emerge from the cavern to see a huge gang of dogs running down a winding path toward the tunnel, accompanied by some other elementals they don't recognise, and then say: "What do you do?"
A couple of diamond dogs are terrorizing the local encampment, the party hears the fight. They come running up and the dogs leave because they didn't expect so many enemies resisting so well.
There is one, but I haven't developed him. He is going to mess them up sometime early on if I find a reason he would fight them - then I can give them a lesson that not everyone can be beaten, but then they can kill him later and taste the sweet nectar of feeling like they've grown.
At least, maybe. If I stat it they can kill it, etc.
Threaten something the PCs love - in a formalized, duelist sort of way. A messenger from their new, mysterious enemy appears and says that in [Time Limit] their home/fortress of doom/home town/family pets will be destroyed and demands that the PCs be there to meet him in glorious battle
The elementals were drawn to an artifact on the island, @BESW. They may also be drawn to the activity of the impending fire elementals, and trying to investigate what the heck is happening in the material world.
Is he a brute who threatens the party with the destruction of their boat? Does he have a low and generalized opinion of humanoids and tries to bribe them with gems?
Well @BESW, I think being nice didn't really work out.
""Hire" is a grossly misleading term for the use of PC's... You're conjecturing far more wildly than you accuse me of, and doing so by personification of the dark powers when the materials in the actual rulebooks specifically avoid doing so, and explicitly instruct not to do so as a GM. "
And a downvote to go with the angry comment to boot
Being nice always works out, because it means you don't look like a raging jerk.
Unless you have a cited response to his claim that the rulebooks tell the GMs not to personify the powers, you've staked your claim and now it's up to others to evaluate its worth.
If you have something that makes your answer better in relation to the question asked, edit that in. Otherwise drop it and be content that you contributed a good answer and made a suggestion to try improving the answers of others.
I re-stated my previous position in a new way. Here, lemme quote it at you to see if it should be edited in:
"Hire seems, to me, to be an accurate enough term; a group of adventurers is brought in to solve a problem (such as Soth's lethargy, causing damage to Sithicus), is permitted to take bounty and booty from solving that problem, and is then permitted to leave (or, in some cases, thrown out bodily like unwanted trash). This pattern occurs in many, though to be fair not all, published Ravenloft modules and happens without enough frequency to form an identifiable pattern of behavior. "
Should that go into my answer? Stand as a comment?
In my setting, elementals earn their leadership positions by fighting for them, so the higher up you are, the more brutal and powerful you probably are. Plus, an earth elemental warlord has to keep his subordinates from tearing each other apart for new positions in the hierarchy, otherwise they'd lose some subordinates, and their leader might take issue with their lack of leadership, so to speak (and give them the boot from their position and/or life).
@BESW I think he's objecting to my "Some Patterns may be observed" bit, which is less characterizing the Dark Powers and more, "This is how they've behaved in the past"
I think > This pattern occurs in many, though to be fair not all, published Ravenloft modules and happens without enough frequency to form an identifiable pattern of behavior. may need some work, as I think it says the opposite of what you want to it say.
And I think SSD probably has a really good point.
You're attributing to characterization what is actually a necessity of design.
Things are smoothest when the two meld neatly, but that's pretty rare.
@Lord_Gareth He would however be smart enough to use the letter of his words to throttle his enemies, still. "Don't dare impugn me honor, boy! I agreed she go free, but it was you who failed to specify when or where."
Acknowledging the conflict and framing your answer explicitly in those terms would make it a better answer regardless of what one person disagrees with.
@BESW He could ask them what they're after, and just let them in to take it. What they're after is... they forgot to ask, and I didn't realise that at the time. But they're after engine parts, and the crane to get them down is broken, so they could strike a ceasefire to let a few people up to repair the crane and get the engine parts (under very watchful eye of elementals.)
It would go smoothly, but someone might go and decide to try to attack an elemental for killing their buddies.
The comments, if they're relevant. I'm just saying that the conversation shouldn't continue in the comments the way it's going.
If there's more to be discussed rather than added to answers, it should move to chat.
I'm not saying the content of the comments is bad. Just that it's quickly reaching (though not yet reached) the point where comments aren't the right place for that conversation.
@BESW Hm. There's the Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice: Eurydice dies on her wedding day with Orpheus. He travels into the underworld to bring her back, requests an audience with Hades, and sings a song so moving he allows him to take his wife back from the dead. There's one condition: she must follow behind him, and he must not look back until they have both reached the mortal world.
Orpheus takes her out, resisting the temptation to look back all the while - until he steps out of the afterlife. Then, finally, he turns to look at his wife... but she has not yet left the afterlife, and so she suddenly and tragically disappears. Orpheus does not get a second chance.
Not saying I've got the ability to speak ex cathedra or anything, but... asking him to provide clearer citations is a lot different from asking him to provide clearer citations because you think he's wrong.
The original telling of the tale doesn't make it clear, but there's speculation that Hades set that restriction knowing Orpheus would fail, to punish him for his hubris and to avoid setting a precedent.
@JonathanHobbs That's a good place to draw from, very nice.
@Lord_Gareth I've bumped opinions with the same guy a couple times, including half an hour ago. His style is always blunt and declarative, and it's easy to take offense when that's pointed at me but I try to remember that he treats everything that way.
@JonathanHobbs Alternately, you could turn the tale on its head.
What if Orpheus instead demands something more from Hades?
@Lord_Gareth I've only GMed 5 sessions with my players to date (and only one from this campaign) and this is a sandbox game where the players are simply inserted into events which are presently unfolding, and they're the x-factor which will tip the scales. I am willing so long as I don't set a bad tone about how I will GM and how the campaign will work.
Alright. What if the request or command made by this elemental being was for an object or kind of object that's relatively rare where he's from, but is all over the Prime Material? Let's say, oh, Sulphur or something. The elemental asks for it because he thinks it'll keep the mortals out of his way, and in the meantime the PCs are losing their minds trying to figure out why this guy is hunting after sulphur everywhere but where sulphur is and trying to decide if they should hand it over or not
When, really, it was just a goose chase that got all weird because culture difference
Is there something on the ship that the earth elementals would valuable or find useful to their goals?
Or!
What if he requires the PCs to take with them not only all the annoying mortals, but all the [insert common or heavy/bulky item offensive to elementals here] too?
Wait, wait, I think I've got the offensive item the PCs could be forced to hunt for. Do you do the traditional air opposes earth, fire opposes water setup?
@BESW Earth elementals are replaceable, but not easily replaceable, and because of the brutally competitive culture, none of them get very attached to each other.
@Lord_Gareth I think in 4e they all just oppose each other, but certain titans have nemeses, and the most famous Fire Elemental and the most famous Ice Elemental mutually despise each other.
@aramis I never intended to make the broad, sweeping generalizations that you're attacking, and the comments are inappropriate for my attempts to clarify that position. I asked the question in good faith, so please let me know how I can rephrase it so that it's relevant to those FATE games which have a "guest star" phase in their CGen (and those groups which choose to use it).
(Based on the rest of your answer, you clearly feel it's a question worth responding to constructively, so I'd like your input on how to re-write it so as to provoke more constructive answers.)
(And yes, I'm not as familiar with SotC as with the others, and probably misremembered that one. Not sure it's exactly germane though, as the other examples still mean my question has an audience of players who use the "guest star" conceit.)
The leader challenges them to a fair fight. There may be people in trouble - and if the party chooses to rescue them, the fight will be pretty intense, but stop a couple of rounds in. Because the leader says so. Specifically, he yells: STOOOOOOOOOOOP!
Every elemental will stop and turn.
His voice sounds like a landslide.
He'll challenge them to a fair fight: his guards in the tunnel up were outnumbered two and a half to one! Shouldn't there be even stakes?
He proposes that if he wins, the PCs have to follow his terms (the ones that are still alive, anyway. They'll get to leave with the islanders, to boot. If the PCs win, they get the parts they need, as long as they follow his rules.
(Either way, he's being very diplomatic: he's letting them have it his way.)
system-agnostic has been bugging me lately, and I think it's because it's become a meta tag, at least in how it's commonly used now.
In The Death of Meta Tags, they're described thus:
meta-tags […] do not describe the content of the question. They describe some other aspect of the question,...
