Oh dear god. I just finished reading Start of Darkness.
…
Wow.
Incidentally (via the GITP forums) - the Monster in the Dark? Psammead?
[ol]
[li]Ugly, but in a goblinesque kind of way (the goblins in SoD think it’s awesome rather than ugly)[/li][li]Gets tired after wishing[/li][li]The circus performers in SoD say “‘IT’ is getting away”[/li][*]Rich never said it was a D&D monster, but he did say someone else invented it (paraphrased)[/ol]Almost certainly wrong, but it’s a better guess than anything else I’ve seen. The third is my favourite clue, as it feels like a Rich Burlew kind of hint.
No, that’s right. However creative and original and full of initiative the individuals may be, sit them around a table for an RPG session, and often they turn into a bunch who can’t do much more than open the next door in the dungeon and roll dice and go through the GM’s content in the most stolid and straightforward way.
Of course. You’ve given them this more or less free and easy way to increase their personal power that involves downtime from the game.
So you can either eliminate downtime by having things constantly happening, or you can eliminate the free power boost from downtime, and at least motivate player initiative in the world (admittedly this is tough to do, but you might as well not discourage it, at least.) So I would vote for the latter…
Yeah, my DM always makes us do our crafting stuff “between sessions” and just has us update sheets before we start playing.
[/li]
I used to think MITD was version of a Tarrasque. After the Wishcapade, I am not sure at all. Certainly if it were a head-fake by Burlew and someone else be responsible, it could still be true, though. Although his being asleep afterward might lend itself to one thinking he needed to recover, post-effort.
Dean
2766
Actually, whenever there’s significant downtime it moves quickly, as in, “You’re going to have some time here, what do you want to do?” There’s the weeks/months downtime for crafting that’s built into the game, and then there is the “time enough to investigate” downtime which is usually days where there’s a parallel timeline for the bad guys.
Trust me, I know how to play the game.
The Tarrasque. And MITD has a dad.
It’s a juicy mystery, to be sure :)
Heh, I wonder if he’s subtly making fun of the new Star Trek movie what with key characters literally falling out of the sky in the locations most convenient for the plot?
noun
2771
I like how O-Chul gets a full Heal and V gets nothing.
Will V show up on a Detect Evil check now, I wonder?
Standard D&D logic at play here. He’s obviously out of commission until the next day when Durkon can memorize the proper spell to fix lich paralysis. Until then he’s not going to be in any fights or losing any more hit points so there’s no point wasting perfectly good healing magic on him.
Looks like we’re getting close to the end of the book, huh?
Dejin
2775
I thought O-Chul was fibbing about the destruction of the gate, but going back, it looks like he is technically accurate – it was his sword and he had made the decision to destroy the gate.
In an unrelated matter, did Rich upgrade his server? It seems very snappy now.
He did, and also Erfblurf moved away.
I think in D&D you can commit an evil deed without actually turning evil unless it is pretty well over the top, and even a paladin will only lose powers, as I recall, if they slip up, unless they really glory in it. In RL that genocide spell would be pretty awful, but in D&D-land, after all, all those black dragons were in fact evil themselves. Wantonly slaughtering evil creatures is universally defined as good in that world, as has been ironically commented on in the strip before… And anyhow, signing up for infernal power to save your family from an evil creature is only technically evil, however much spooky laughter and ominous fashion statements may also have been involved.
But I would certainly expect some consequences, anyway, since V now has this annoying obligation which will certainly be used for evil goals at some later date…
Rimbo
2778
V has at least repented and gone back to the good side.
O-Chul has joined your party!
Dean
2780
Well, there’s also the Atonement spell. You have to convince a cleric that you’re worth blowing XP on, then you confess and all your sins are forgiven.
Once we were well and truly fucked, and our party wizard used a piece of a meteorite to gain ultimate power and save our bacon, but it turned him evil (oh, and he killed a whole bunch of innocent bystanders while killing the bad guys). He asked for Atonement and we bonded for a day of therapy where he cried over having had to do such awful things.
