TRPG General Chat

12:00 AM

The thing is that items with the same name don't stack, so it makes sense that both rings are only called Ring of Protection.

Shalvenay

@nwp yeah -- think of the "rank" of an item as a modifier tag basically

they'd have the same name, but different SKUs ;)

Asteria

12:21 AM

@nwp oh hey that's pretty cool!

Shalvenay

12:43 AM

hey there @Asteria

and hey as well @daze413

daze413

@Shalvenay ohai! Did you figure out what you wanted to do with... the thing we were talking about

Shalvenay

@daze413 got a future plan in mind for it, yes :)

daze413

@Shalvenay Great stuff!

Shalvenay

xD

daze413

Got a game with Miniman and Ben later tonight, struggling to share the spotlight with the Cleric

Shalvenay

12:53 AM

also, "in Faerun, blink dog adopts you"

Ben

@daze413 When is that btw?

daze413

@Ben tonight! :o

cc:@Miniman

same time

Ben

Ok :)

Asteria

hey hey @Shalvenay long time no see

Shalvenay

yup, how've things been?

Asteria

1:09 AM

great! ran my first session as a GM last night, so feeling pretty good. what about you?

Shalvenay

alright here, how'd it go? and what system?

nitsua60

@Baskakov_Dmitriy @godskook By "we" I mean "the interwebs." (Sorry I had to run--turns out the boy's got strep.)

Asteria

@Shalvenay Call of Cthulhu. None of my players had ever played before so I had some fun things like them decided to throw dynamite into a truck window to stop someone from getting away.
Needless to say they are all very injured haha

trogdor

@nitsua60 oh no! I had that. It was unpleasant

godskook

@nitsua60 Not really, personally, I'm not seeing it. People rarely fight "better" around him in any kind of notable way and worse, he makes far more enemies than friends. I daresay he's among the least-liked characters in LotR, among protagonists. Basically, he strikes me as having zilch for Charisma.

nitsua60

1:18 AM

@godskook Could be a low-CHA bard. A little bit of fighting, a little bit of magic, mostly just a flashy showman with little bite to his bark, maybe once did something actually impressive.... (Sketchy on the details, though; really just came back with a different outfit.)

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Stratford and Shelton

Look like brother is on, off to roll20

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Ah, right. Sikorsky, no?

@KorvinStarmast Have fun!

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 as in Igor? heheheh

nitsua60

@Shalvenay Yes.

Sikorsky Aircraft

The Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation is an American aircraft manufacturer based in Stratford, Connecticut. It was established by Igor Sikorsky in 1925 and was among the first companies to manufacture helicopters for civilian and military use. Previously owned by United Technologies Corporation (UTC), in November 2015 Sikorsky was sold to Lockheed Martin. == History == Sikorsky was founded in 1925 by aircraft engineer Igor Sikorsky, an immigrant to the United States who was born in Kiev. The company, named "Sikorsky Manufacturing Company", began aircraft production in Roosevelt, New York, that year...

Shalvenay

also -- I think Gandalf is glad that Sauron and the Balrog are the worst things he's had to deal with.

nitsua60

1:21 AM

TIL: Lockheed bought Sikorsky!

Shalvenay

finding out the hard way that the shooting star you just wished on was carrying a thermonuclear payload....

Ben

1:47 AM

So... I learned something today

However, following the answer, I think this might be better suited over on English.se

Ryan

1:59 AM

Has anyone had any success with Adventurer's League? Is this new to 5th Edition or did it exist before?

nitsua60

@Ryan D&D certainly had Organized Play before 5e; I forget when the "Adventurers League" brand came about.

Anyone know if Dungeon started renumbering itself at some point? I.e. is there a Dungeon #80 hanging around both from the 80s and from some later date?

Ben

Was just talking to someone about being a dad. He said he hates it when people come up and ignore you, and talk directly to the child, asking "where's your mum today", so he responds by saying "uhh, please don't bring up the mother, it was a big night, and we don't know who the mother is."

Usually the response is "Ohh, I'm so sorry!", then they do the double take after you leave haha

Ryan

hahaha im going to use that... with my nephew since I have no kids

nitsua60

@Ryan As for "success," sure. I've met new players and GMs by doing it and played more than I would otherwise, but I've also played in it a version of D&D that doesn't quite feel like the "real thing" to me, a grognard.

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 I take it 5e is just different enough to make your grognardness tingle a bit?

Ryan

2:04 AM

@nitsua60 It seems really badly implemented at least here. I finally found a Tier 2 table after leveling to 5. The tier 2 table just messaged me that most players are around level 9 with many leveling up to 11 and that I should just level myself up before coming

nitsua60

@Shalvenay It's not the system, it's the playstyle favored when we're not really able to run our "own" campaign because off-book activities and XP other than murdering-things-with-statblocks is verboten. And bunches of other things....

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 ah

Ryan

tracked down another table and it says right in their description: Curse of Strahd [APL 4, levels 1-10] - DM Canon

Rise of Tiamat [APL 12, levels 8-15 only] - DM Liam

Ben

My answer on the "Dungeon crawl etymology" question is getting some mixed reviews. Anyone care to help me understand why? Is it because I gave an english definition, rather than some kind of history about the phrase in relation to RPGs?

Ryan

like yo kids, you can't say APL and then cross tiers. It breaks the entire system

godskook

2:10 AM

@Ben No idea, I upvoted you. Was about to do what you're doing myself.

Ben

@godskook You mean ask for clarification?

godskook

@Ben Well, my description was a tad more....Irish, but yeah.

Ben

@godskook Oh right

BESW

@Ben That sounds about right, yes.

nitsua60

> Does someone have a pointer to the origin of 'crawl' in 'dungeon crawl'?

@Ben I'd upvote an answer that has some research done into when the term entered popular (RPG) usage, or some early story of it's notable use.

Your answer reads (to me) like "crawl means this, so it's an apt term" which doesn't strike me as the "definitive answer" to the "origin" question presented.

Ben

2:15 AM

That makes sense :)

nitsua60

Jon Peterson's Playing at the World doesn't have it (indexed), and I'm not having luck tracking down the text of an old Wargamer's Digest from 1974 that may use the term.

This may just be a hard question, that goes a while without a good answer =)

Ben

Same, I'm having trouble finding any reference to the "origin" of the word in the genre, it just seems to have been applied to the genre.

nitsua60

(I may have to read another decade's Dragons to get a lead!)

BESW

> Curmudgeon Doll. When you leave this grumpy-looking toy somewhere, it will make a +4 mental attack against the next person to enter that area. At the end of the scene in which it attacks, the doll disappears from that location and appears near you, making the same +4 mental attack against you.

Ben

I did find this, which is apparently the "first dungeon crawl", but it doesn't have anything about the application of the word

Miniman

2:29 AM

> Thorough reader. When you use the Lore skill, you can automatically succeed if you spend a number of weeks equal to the opposition reading old magazines.

Ben

@nitsua60 It's also possible that this may not have an answer... I mean, when was the first time someone called "Robert" "Bob"?

Just as a random thought

It's possible that it may have just been slang that caught on.

nitsua60

Even then, I'd say there is an answer, even if we expect that answer is unknowable. After all, there was a first utterance of "Bob," even though none of us think anyone could ever make a credible claim to know when it was =)

Miniman

A nice thing about our hobby is that most of these questions do have answers, even if they're often hard to find.

BESW

@Ben Probably in the 12th or 13th century, which was a good confluence of "we like rhyming nicknames" and "we have a hard time with the 'r' sound" in England.

Miniman

After all, "dungeon crawl" is a pretty recent thing. Depending on who you ask...

BESW

2:47 AM

That's a wild ride from 1550 to 1700.

nitsua60

3:23 AM

I believe that somewhere, on those ^^ shelves, lies the answer.

(That's Jon Peterson's collection of pre-, proto-, and early D&D publications, IIRC.)

BESW

I will never not read that as "irk."

Miniman

@nitsua60 I was just typing out a message about how I was going to disqualify myself from being a real nerd by asking who either of those people are.

nitsua60

@Miniman I wouldn't know what he looked like, either. In fact, I'm only somewhat-sure that Peterson's the one on the right.

There was an ENWorld article by Mike T-whatever--who seems to be reading Playing at the World at roughly the same "one chapter per quarter-year" pace I am--where I remembered seeing this image. Searching ENWorld's pretty rough, but after I gave up Mr. Google helped me.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 Sikorsky, Yes. Story for a few beers in person.

@nitsua60 RPGA started early 1980's.

Joel Harmon

@Miniman Knowing who strangers are based on their pictures demonstrates social awareness and skills. Real Nerds (tm) don't go in for that kind of thing.

nitsua60

3:36 AM

@KorvinStarmast Well, sure. And I suppose there's some continuity there, but my impression is that RPGA was mostly a con-thing, no? As opposed to the "push it out to the stores" model that Encounters --> AL is?

KorvinStarmast

RPGA was an attempt to have 'competitive' D&D ing, and I am not sure of its success. I never joined.

@Ben Dungeon crawl; i have already answered that previously

nitsua60

(Though I never joined RPGA back when it existed. But I do know that when WotC took over D&D they grandfathered people's RPGA memberships in some way.)

KorvinStarmast

@Ben here is where it comes from ... as I see it.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast you mean this?

94

A: Why does “dungeon” mean the places adventurers go to kill stuff?

It began with "Dungeon Crawl" during the development of the game Dungeons and Dragons. According to Gary Gygax (in an interview with Dungeon #112), the first dungeon crawl1 was part of a wargame in which the invading force entered the enemy's castle through a former escape tunnel dug from the...

If so, I think there's some citogenesis brewing: the first blockquote you have there says "dungeon crawl" is from an interview EGG gave in Dungeon112, but best I can tell that's not true. Dungeon112 reprints a May 1974 WGD article EGG wrote describing the new style of "Sword and Sorcery" wargaming campaigns that he+Kuntz and Arneson had been running for 2 and 3 years (at the time of the writing).

But the section reprinted in Dungeon112, at least, doesn't say anything about dungeon crawls.

I haven't been able to find the text of May '74 WGD to see if elsewhere in that article the concept is mentioned.

(Hence the picture of Peterson's study ^^ up there!)

David Cook uses the term in a review of Oriental Adventures (1985), which is the earliest I've found this evening. But the way he uses it it must have been common parlance already....

The phrase isn't used in the 1e DMG.

KorvinStarmast

Yeah. But the way he uses it it must have been common parlance already It was. I suspect that if you do a word search on all Dungeon mags and Dragon Mags you'll find a usage well before 1985.

nitsua60

3:53 AM

This bit of wayback claims to be reprinting the whole May '74 WGD article that's also quoted in Dungeon112; if it's correct then the Dungeon112 reprint is the whole WGD 5/74 article, and there's no mention of dungeon crawls, as is asserted in the WP quote.

So reference to that Dungeon112 article seems to be a false lead.

@KorvinStarmast Hmm... not quite ready to read another decade of mags. I've got ToA to prep for next month =)

Maybe next year....

Miniman

@nitsua60 But how can you prep for it?

nitsua60

@Miniman Umm... [sweats nervously] =D

Miniman

@nitsua60 Actually, sweating would be good practice for Chult, so that works I guess.

nitsua60

@Miniman Speaking of distracting you from the perfectly valid question you had, is there an easy way to search one's own comments for a word or phrase?

Ben

4:17 AM

@KorvinStarmast I saw that quote in my searches too.

Miniman

4:29 AM

@nitsua60 Yep, your goth status is confirmed.

nitsua60

tx

Ben

@Miniman facebook.com/cherdleys/videos/1256554637800628/…

Miniman

5:21 AM

@nitsua60 Oh hey, when browsing for a completely different reason, I happened to come across the Morse Code Incident we were reminiscing about the other day.

2

Asteria

@Miniman that was beautiful

Baskakov_Dmitriy

6:07 AM

@godskook Not possible in Pathfinder?

@nitsua60 OK, so those fireworks and smoke rings could be bardic performance, lol?

@nitsua60 Oh, that's bad. Visited a doctor already?

Ben

7:12 AM

Did a blurb about one of the D&D Characters from our game: facebook.com/groups/1432137587094602

Baskakov_Dmitriy

8:33 AM

BTW, what level of D&D Wizard would wizards from Tales of Earthsea have?

@Ben Are you using singular they or plural they in this text? :D

Ben

Uhh... can you give context?

daze413

@Baskakov_Dmitriy system?

I don't know why I asked, I'm not familiar at all with Earthsea

Ben

@daze413 the Tales of Earthsea is a series of books bout a wizard called Ged or Sparrowhawk

daze413

@Shalvenay !!! I just read a comment on this link that is relevant to... the thing you're working on. Scroll down or ctrl+F to Jon Vallerand's (August 1 9:46 AM) comment about playing through the 1E Slave Lord series

@Ben And I hear it's good

Ben

8:48 AM

Very :) I have re-read it multiple times, more than Harry Potter lol

That, and the Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathon Stroud

Would highly recommend both series :D

Secespitus

@Ben I have read that Trilogy. It's been a few years, but I loved the sarcastic annotations

BESW

Misspeak of the day: "resignation" instead of "resonance."

daze413

@BESW Would love to hear the context.. or is it coming up next?

BESW

Oh, it's a caller on a local radio show about paranormal credulity.

So something about the sympathetic resignation formed by doing things that you were born to do.

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@daze413 Let's say, Pathfinder or 3.5e

Ben

8:59 AM

@Secespitus "djinni function of multiple planes of thought simultaneously, however, the best I can do for you is the use of footnotes"

Baskakov_Dmitriy

If someone wants (probably @Trish?), could probably be translated into the Mage system from WoD?

BESW

@daze413 A lot of people whose judgement I trust say it's very very good, but I can't get past the first few pages because the prose style feels like reading uphill.

But based on what I know, I'm pretty sure that, like most any fantasy world not directly inspired by a D&D edition, it's difficult-to-impossible to map its characters or magics to a D&D system in any really useful way.

Secespitus

@Ben Now I want to re-read the series...

But I have so many other books I have to read for the first time.

BESW

(Now I kinda want to see someone try to explain orogenes as D&D characters.)

godskook

12:53 PM

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Should be?

NautArch

morning @godskook

nearly got tpk'd last night

godskook

@NautArch Good morning. I shall speak to your DM about how to properly run a TPK post-haste.

T.J.L.

"You step through the door, enter the Elemental Plane of Fire, and die immediately."
"You turn the corner, expose yourself to the radiation from a Chernobyl Medusa, and die tommorow."

NautArch

@godskook hahaha. It was getting really close. Arena fight with custom fighters that had legendary actions and crazy reactions. I was down to 3 HP,thought I had avoided contact until my turn and then a compatriot came in, attacked and the bad guy hit a reaction that had a save and still did half damage. Made the save (on a crit), still took 5 damage and went down. Our other healer was down, too so now 1/2 the party is unconscious at end of battle.

kviiri

Yeouch.

NautArch

1:03 PM

yeah, team had no way of reviving us. I knew I should have used a lucky to reroll my initiative to go earlier :/

kviiri

13th Age has this optional rule where PCs cannot die by minor enemies' hands, only by significant NPCs.

doppelgreener

@T.J.L. "The medic informs you that your glowing magical swords are all highly radioactive and that you all have three days to live."

2

kviiri

Ten thousand orcs get Aragorn in coma or in a dungeon at worst.

NautArch

DM started the first battle with custom frost and fire giants. We took down the frost giant ridiculously quickly (2 crit sneak attacks and I dropped a 5th level Heat Metal on the magical plate wearing dude for guaranteed 5d8 damage/turn)

T.J.L.

@doppelgreener I could totally see doing that to a Shadowrun group. That's the kind of thing that happens when dealing with toxic elementals. You stick your shiney metal weapon focus in the elemental radiation being, and bad things happen.

doppelgreener

1:06 PM

@T.J.L. oh no XD

kviiri

@doppelgreener crawl.chaosforge.org/Plutonium_sword

T.J.L.

@doppelgreener Of course... Weapon foci are pretty much the only good way to deal with spirits in Shadowrun, so... shrug Toxics are nasty business.

B. S. Morganstein

Morning friends!

Baskakov_Dmitriy

@godskook What do you mean?

godskook

@Baskakov_Dmitriy Ok, I'm not entirely sure what you had meant previously, so....?

NautArch

1:16 PM

@B.S.Morganstein howdy!

@godskook I tried to resist... but you had to go there. :)

NautArch

...and we have a running joke

godskook

@T.J.L. Its TRADITION

I can't just ignore TRADITION, can I?

T.J.L.

@godskook Some traditions are best honored by the breach thereof. ;)

Adam

1:18 PM

@B.S.Morganstein good morning

NautArch

@T.J.L. FYI - in case you're considering standing toe-to-toe with a legendary creature with your bard...I don't recommend it. Especially when you have 3 HP.

B. S. Morganstein

lol @godskook

T.J.L.

@NautArch He he he... No, generally not. When possible, her technique would be to hammer it with Charm Person from her Staff of Charming until she's reasonably certain she's burned through any Legendary Resistance it may have, then follow it up with her inherent Suggestion. No spell slots consumed.

NautArch

@T.J.L. I had a get out of jail free card ready (staff of swarming insects), but the creatures reaction on being attacked by someone else took me out before my turn :/ Worst part was the friend that attacked was our warlock (also at 3 HP), that i had just polymorphed into a T-rex(who missed his first 3 attacks by rolling 3s and 4s) and then came in to attack it. Attacks, reaction, I drop, Poly drops.

T.J.L.

@NautArch Doh.

NautArch

1:28 PM

@T.J.L. It was a horrific fail sequence. My next turn I could have gotten out of the way and revived our druid with a healing word.

T.J.L.

I'll actually be playing her tomorrow, first in a T1 DDAL module which will bump her to L5, then in an Epic. Before the Epic, I've got a pile of DM XP to apply to her, to make her L6 and pick up Counterspell and Revivify.

nitsua60

@T.J.L. I stopped counting DM XP somewhere around when I could create an L15 from scratch... =\

godskook

"DM XP"?

T.J.L.

@godskook In D&D Adventurers League, when you DM, you get XP to apply to your own characters when you're a player.

godskook

Oh, they do that.

Anybody in here interested in a 3.5 homebrew-thingy I put together for a friend?

T.J.L.

1:32 PM

@godskook Yeah, there's other benefits, too. DM enough and you're allowed to assign magic items you've given out as a DM to your own characters... free Scrolls of Raise Dead, free potions of healing... things like that.

It's so that a person who predominantly DMs can still have a viable character when they go to play.

@nitsua60 For clarity of book keeping, I like to burn it all away at the end of the season and start the next one fresh.

nitsua60

(turns out that recruiting players and esp. DMs gives a boatload of XP--since I've got three tables at my location that I'm basically claiming all the credit for...)

T.J.L.

@nitsua60 Yes... Yes it does. There's a big lump on your birthday, too. :)

kviiri

I don't know anyone (outside this chat) who plays AL. I wonder if it's a localized thing.

T.J.L.

@kviiri Not even slightly localized.

nitsua60

@T.J.L. I think they've got it pretty well tuned, too. It's not so much that you could consider it "farming" XP, but it's enough that, as you say, you can step into a game with a viable character if you're only occasionally able to play.

T.J.L.

1:34 PM

@kviiri The existence thereof, that is. Your lack of exposure may be a function of location.

nitsua60

@T.J.L. Do you log it all on paper, or some more-clever system?

T.J.L.

@nitsua60 I use the MorePurpleMoreBetter character sheet from DMs Guild for all my characters. He has an AL-log-only sheet, too. I use that for DM XP tracking.

kviiri

@T.J.L. Judging by the fact that WotC's "where to buy and play" only accepts Zip codes, it dose sound fairly localized.

nitsua60

@T.J.L. I use MPMB for characters, but hadn't thought of using it for DM XP. Do you just have a "blank" character whose logsheets holds DMing?

T.J.L.

@kviiri Most of the major gaming conventions feature DDAL play.

@nitsua60 Like I said, he's got a version that is just the log sheet - no character attached.

kviiri

1:37 PM

Well whaddya know. Turns out my postal code worked despite not really being a ZIP code. Poor UI design.

nitsua60

@T.J.L. Ohh... you mean MPMB has a log-only document. Got it.

kviiri

Heh, there actually is one store in Helsinki running AL games.

If I wanted, I could also take the boat to Estonia to play in Tallinn :)

T.J.L.

@kviiri As a former disgruntled postal worker - I was a technician, not a carrier, but still... I can safely say most people don't understand postal codes anyway.

@nitsua60 I'm probably going to switch to some sort of Excel sheet next season. Just haven't crafted it yet.

kviiri

@T.J.L. I was rather shocked to learn that "going postal" is actually a reference to postal employee rage a few years back.

nitsua60

@T.J.L. Formerly disgruntled, still a postal worker; or formerly a disgruntled postal worker?

godskook

1:41 PM

@nitsua60 Or a still-disgruntled former postal worker?

T.J.L.

@nitsua60 Gotta love English, huh? I was disgruntled before I was a postal worker, and am no longer a postal worker. Stitch those facts together how you please.

@godskook That's probably the best assembly.

nitsua60

This reminds me of counting bullets in Clue =)

T.J.L.

@nitsua60 WHATEVER! THERE IS ONE MORE BULLET LEFT IN THIS GUN!

godskook

@T.J.L. Wait, is your disgruntled-ness completely irrelevant to your postal-worker-ness?

T.J.L.

@godskook Yes; existential dissatisfaction is core element of my being.

That, and caffeine... which my doctors have instructed me to cut down on. I think the caffeine ration was replaced by more existential dissatisfaction.

@kviiri Yeah... it's a thing. The USPS is a very strange place to work. In light of the inefficiencies I saw at the plant I supported, I am amazed that the mail gets around as efficiently as it does.

godskook

1:45 PM

Monty Python - always look on the bright side of life (with lyrics)

►

kviiri

@godskook I really need this in my life now

Ten friends came over for sauna yesterday and now I have a ton of dishes to do...

Not a literal ton*

godskook

@kviiri Have your friends help with dishes before they leave.

NautArch

@kviiri you know us too well

kviiri

@godskook Hmm, a convenient idea!

T.J.L.

@kviiri This country (the US) needs more saunas...

godskook

1:51 PM

@kviiri Right? Be prepared for pushback if you've got.....less-than-great friends, but honestly, its just right and proper to help clean a mess one helps make.

kviiri

@godskook Aye!

godskook

@kviiri Hell, its Gibbs rule 45, even.

kviiri

@T.J.L. I hear there's a healthy appreciation of the sauna culture in the Finnish descent areas near Lake Superior :)

T.J.L.

@kviiri If wikipedia is accurate, there's a 5:3 people:saunas ratio in Finland. It sounds like a good idea to me. :)

godskook

@T.J.L. Can we use the money for Flint's Saunas to fix their water instead?

T.J.L.

2:03 PM

@godskook Don't even get me started. People should be going to prison for life due to Flint-related actions.

NautArch

@T.J.L. oh 'cmon. What we need is less regulation! That'll fix everything!

godskook

@T.J.L. I only have the barest cursory understanding of the situation, so I don't really care to discuss above my "weight class" on it, but I do agree with the general tenor that everyone outside Flint seems to agree with: "This needs to be fixed".

T.J.L.

@godskook Indeed.

Adam

Hey Guys, my 5e party finished The Sunless Citadel adventure about 1 in world month ago, and they're considering going back down there. After so long, I feel that the place should be changed somewhat, and I was wondering if you all had any ideas of a direction I should take it. When the left, they beat the BBEG, killed the goblins, and basically left the kobolds alone down there.

godskook

@Adam #Tucker's Kobolds?

Also, a MONTH?

Nature abhors a vaccum, but a month ain't a long time.

kviiri

2:11 PM

Kobolds are rather fast little buggers breeding-wise, though, aren't they?

Yuuki

@Adam You can never go wrong with an invasion of eldritch abominations.

Adam

5 or 6 weeks actually. They went on a trip out to an abandoned stronghold that took two weeks in both directions. And they spent a bunch of downtime in town before they left.

godskook

Me, as DM - Scalen cuts at least a day off that, but Xain and Beisusu can explain to you why they don't want to go to Scalen.

Beisusu - Certain people there might be looking for me. And I don't necessarily want to be found.

Xain - I am unsure if it is murder charges
the scale of 1 to acused of murder was uninformative

kviiri

Not sure if they mature in that time, but you'd probably have eggs or something already.

Adam

@Yuuki See, I was thinking about something from the underdark making its way up there, but I also don't want to just slaughter them.

Yuuki

2:12 PM

@kviiri Eldritch kobolds!

godskook

@Adam, imho, without a story-reason driving the shift, I don't think its the best idea to violate versimilitude by fully or over-fully repopulating a "keep"-thing the PCs cleared out so recently ago.

T.J.L.

@Adam Might be amusing for them to encounter another party of adventurers... disappointed ones, too, if the place has already been swept clean.

Adam

@godskook Yes, but with multiple access points to the underdark and the kobold's arch enemies completely wiped out, it would break verisimilitude just as much to have nothing change.

godskook

@Adam Which is why I jumped to Tucker's Kobolds :P

kviiri

Why are they going back there anyway?

Do they think there's something interesting there?

Adam

2:17 PM

@kviiri Part of the dungeon was barred with a magically locked door that they never found the key to. Also...They may have sorta found a white dragon wyrmling and are afraid it's going to grow up and eat everyone in town :p

godskook

@Adam what level is the party, and what level of threats are you looking at?

Yuuki

Sooo... they're planning on raising the white dragon wyrmling in the citadel?

Are they perhaps planning on making a homebase there?

Adam

They're all 3rd level. Whatever challenges they face need to be reasonably dangerous enough that it could kill any of them. This ain't supposed to be no cake walk.

kviiri

Well, in that case, Kobolds should work nicely. Have them reclaim corners left by the goblins.

godskook

@Adam OH GOD

Adam

2:21 PM

@Yuuki Not really. The white dragon hates them. One of them is afraid that it's a threat to the town. They haven't mentioned wanting to make the citadel their stronghold, but I'd let them do it if they wanted to. It'd be a very strange stronghold though since it's buried in a canyon somewhere

godskook

Don't use Tucker's Kobolds against 3rd-levels

That'd be cruel.

I assumed 6th-12th.

Adam

@godskook Nope. Sorry, that was my fault for not bringing it up earlier. The time between adventures for them tends to be relatively long.

Ben

@daze413 @Miniman rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/46947/…

godskook

Well, you can dial-down Tucker's Kobolds and have an excellent story-driven dungeon.

kviiri

The 5e Volo's Guide version of how Kobolds fight is not that far from Tucker, but I don't think it works that well in practice.

Volo has these really cool maps of the dens of various beasts and humanoids but doesn't give a hint on how to make fun encounters out of them.

T.J.L.

2:26 PM

@kviiri The biggest problem with Tucker's Kobolds is that from a player perspective, it can look really unfair. The reality is different - it's not so much unfair as fiendishly smart - but player perception is important.

kviiri

@T.J.L. Yep.

And even downplaying the ambush-happiness, if I were to use Volo's maps for kobold dens, I'd get really bad encounters, I think. Narrow, winding pathways aren't usually very fun.

godskook

@kviiri This entirely depends on the fun you're peddling.

Yuuki

For decades people have said our business model will be our downfall and you know what? We have to commend them on their spot on analysis.

Tweeted by loneblockbuster on June 7, 2017 at 7:23 PM

godskook

If you're peddling "challenge", there's probably nothing so fun as Tucker's Kobolds for the CR.

nitsua60

I have ideas--because I'm dealing with this now, too.
First and most important question (in my mind): in your instance of Sunless Citadel, what was the relationship between Belak and the goblins like? Because that linchpin's been pulled.

Yuuki

2:29 PM

@godskook Even if I like challenges, I still don't like I Wanna Be The Guy.

kviiri

@godskook I don't mean difficulty-wise, I just find players getting bored at being unable to act in a battle because the corridor is narrow enough to allow only one PC to actively fight.

Adam

@nitsua60 Well, they used to have an agreement. Goblins would send down prisoners for experimentation and goblins to help in the labs, and Belak would do his druid stuff to help them against the kobolds. Now though, the goblin leadership is dead, and so is Belak. Sir Braford and Sharwyn were rescued (I let the party use half of the red apple to save them)

nitsua60

I mean, when you remove Belak perhaps the goblins stop getting distracted by his tasks and can really go to down on the Kobolds. Or perhaps the goblins devolve without that external pressure holding the group into a coherent mass, and the in-fighting leaves an opening for the kobolds. Maybe the kobolds made a daring raid to grab the wyrmling then dropped down into the U-dark to get away.

In any case, I'd also check out theangrygm.com/schrodinger-chekhov-samus

Go ahead and stat up the kobolds and one or two groups of goblins as factions, then game them out week-by-week.

Yuuki

Or... eldritch abominations from beyond the stars infect and mutate all parties involved.

nitsua60

The Keep on the Borderlands

The Keep on the Borderlands is a Dungeons & Dragons module by Gary Gygax, first printed in December 1979. In it, player characters are based at a keep and investigate a nearby series of caves that are filled with a variety of monsters. It was designed to be used with the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, and was included in the 1979–1982 editions of the Basic Set. It was designed for people new to Dungeons & Dragons. The Keep on the Borderlands went out of print in the early 1980s, but has been reprinted twice; a sequel was also made. A novelized version of the adventure was published in 2001. The...

doppelgreener

2:34 PM

i love that game!

nitsua60

You can also take a look at that ^^ as the canonical example of "how an ecosystem evolves in response to adventurers' ~~murderous rampages~~ actions."

Adam

@Yuuki I planned to throw some cranium rats in there at least. I have no doubt that the mindflayers are interested in what's going on over there. I'm just not sure I want to be so heavy handed as to have them start making moves in the game.

@nitsua60 Will do. Thanks!

nitsua60

@Adam I don't even know that you need to go that far. Why introduce a new element, when you've got plenty to go on?

One, possibly two goblin groups. Kobolds. Wyrmling. Lotsa twig blights down below. Skeletal gardeners that follow the twig blights' leads. Fire snakes that aren't getting their placation. Hobgoblin down below. Did they kill mama-giant-diseased-rat?

Adam

@nitsua60 Because I think it's fun. And I deserve to have fun too. Plus none of the players even know what a cranium rat is.

@nitsua60 The dragon and the kobolds survived. As did the majority of the goblin commoners. Pretty much everything else is dead except for the stuff behind the magically locked door.

nitsua60

Do take a look at that Angry article when you get a chance--it's about exactly your situation.

QuantumDM

2:45 PM

Hello all

Mike Q

@QuantumDM Howdy. How's it going?

Adam

@nitsua60 Will do. Thanks again!

@QuantumDM Hello!

QuantumDM

Pretty good. Came here from the Question section, since my Q was too broad and opinion based.

Which was a fair assessment.

But since I can't start a thread yet, here I am!

nitsua60

Quandary of the week: I've got a $20 dollar product sitting in my RPGNow cart, that doesn't look terribly appealing to me. How much do I trust the judgment of "six-months-ago-nitsua" vs. "today-nitsua"?

Adam

@nitsua60 What product is it?

nitsua60

2:47 PM

1

Q: How are spells made permanent in 5e?

As we all kn0w, the golden-age era of spellcasters having access to spells like Permanency is now over with the arrival of 5E. However, I am now DM'ing a top-tier campaign, and several of my PCs are casters, who have requested a way of making several spells permanent. What I have found so far: I...

for people's reference, here's the question @QuantumDM is talking about.

QuantumDM

@nitsua60 Yep, that's the one. And thank you for the comments, by the way.

nitsua60

@Adam Blade of the Iron Throne

@QuantumDM no worries--glad you could make it =)

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 Iron of the Blade Throne

QuantumDM

@nitsua60 Wouldn't miss it. As an aside, would you yourself have a possible idea for my quandary?

Adam

@nitsua60 If it were me, and I wasn't excited about it anymore, I probably wouldn't buy it. I would trust today-nitsua

nitsua60

2:50 PM

@doppelgreener Theretofore No Hind Lab.

godskook

@QuantumDM what are you trying to do, suhc that you need to make spells permanent?

nitsua60

@QuantumDM You're looking for spells that would be nice to make permanent?

@doppelgreener Tan Feline Brotherhood

@doppelgreener Hobo Elf in Tetrahedron!!!

(done)

QuantumDM

@nitsua60 @godskook Well, the list of spells that could be made permanent was the less important part of the question. The way to go about making them permanent is the main focus. A lot of characters don't have access to Wish, and I wanted to make permanency accessible to all casters.

I was thinking of creating various rituals, or certain objects that can extend the duration of spells.

nitsua60

So if we look to existing precedent... Guards and Wards (VI) cast daily for a year becomes permanent.

Mike Q

@QuantumDM I looked at the 5e version of Permanency on the D&D wiki. What about it did you dislike?

nitsua60

2:54 PM

Same with Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum (IV).

Adam

If you're characters are the crafting type, you could have them spend time creating their own spell that will become permanent until dispelled if cast enough time.

nitsua60

Same with Teleportation Circle (V).

True Polymorph (IX), 1 hr concentration makes it permanent.

QuantumDM

@nitsua60 I'm already aware of spells with permanent durations, that's not what I'm looking for. I want to add permanency to certain spells.

nitsua60

I'm creating a taxonomy of them so that we can see what might be in- or out-of-balance.

...and that's it for canonical permanency.

Adam

Should be your, not you're, perception failed :(

QuantumDM

2:58 PM

@MikeQ The spells it covers are fairly unbalanced, but also it lacks a certain RP flavor that I'm seeking.

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 soon to be found on a knockoff Link toy's packaging

nitsua60

So the obvious suggestion seems to be "for a level 6 or below, cast daily for a year. For a L9, concentrate for an hour. Levels 7 and 8 TBD--p'raps daily for a month (7) or week (8)?"

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