Author Topic: Not just D&D  (Read 1524 times)

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Offline B Hanson

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Not just D&D
« on: January 24, 2018, 12:14:57 PM »
https://kotaku.com/goblin-fights-in-d-d-are-the-worst-1822301602#_ga=2.249168263.1287931395.1516812707-1130930110.1490127395

I would say that's true for any "fodder monsters" in any game system. At least in RM the Goblins can roll a critical!
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Offline jdale

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Re: Not just D&D
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2018, 03:02:18 PM »
That has everything to do with the GM and nothing to do with the fodder monsters.

I'm playing in a D&D 3.5 campaign currently and the party advanced from level 3 to 10 fighting goblins. But not just any goblins, these were goblins in a cave and jungle environment led by a goblin wizard and mastermind ("the Engineer") modeled after a real terrorist leader. They used explosive runes, glyphs, skull alarms, and all manner of mundane traps. The goblin caves for the most part had 4' ceilings. They dumped rot grubs on our camp from the backs of giant vultures hundreds of feet up. They came at us out of hiding with preserved skulls enchanted with metamagicked explosive runes doing 50-60 points of damage, half of it Vile (unhealable outside of a consecrated area). They lined critical areas of their tunnels and caves with starmetal that suppressed magic, then practiced shadow magic which worked in those areas. They built starmetal tunnels under our encampment. Their elite acolytes sniped at us at night in our encampment (fully optimized 9th-10th level crossbow snipers do a heck of a lot of damage, they killed a lot of our people that way) and assailed us with magic. They made bargains with dark gods and with demons. (In fact the Engineer's mother was an undead avatar of a god of murder.) When we finally found the Engineer's chambers, he was one step ahead of us and had fled his base. We tracked him by scent, only to find that once he got outside he polymorphed into a hawk and was flying away. We used divination to pinpoint his location, teleport ahead of him, and finally blast him out of the sky.

The worst part was that his essential cause, stopping the enslavement of goblins for use in the drug trade, was something we were basically sympathetic to, if it hadn't been for the dark gods, demons, and suicide bombing. I suppose that says something about the GM; our current foe is an 18th level wizard/vampire running a school of necromancy funded primarily by running a clinic for laraken malarial cancer (using controlled doses of negative energy essentially as radiation therapy).



In our RMSS game, we fought kobolds for a while (not nearly as long as the goblins in the other game). In that case we simply refused to go into their caves at all. Eventually we figured out that what they were really after was a rooster so their chickens would start laying eggs again. It was easier just to give them one. So ended the Great Chicken War. (Later, we recruited several hundred dwarves, and kobold caves were no longer a problem.)
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Offline intothatdarkness

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Re: Not just D&D
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2018, 09:43:59 PM »
I tend to agree with JDale. Anything can be fodder (goblins, 1st level thugs, wild dogs, rabid hamsters) if the GM uses them that way. But those same opponents can be a very different proposition if the GM uses them that way.
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Offline Dragonking11

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Re: Not just D&D
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2018, 07:43:31 AM »
I also agree that the GM plays a large part in any game or game systems for making things interesting by using what are normally low level creatures, monsters or mundane NPCs.

Every NPC put in a game or story can either be generic and boring, or well defined and really interesting. Dealing with the town's blacksmith in buying a new broadsword is nothing to be excited about. But if instead you deal with the blacksmith Tonrac, the guy with all the rumors going on about. Strangely, he seems to disappear for a few days once in a while. Nobody knows why and he never speaks about it. It is said that if he thinks you will misused your sword, you will pay the price. Tonrac is in fact a normal funny guy that gets possessed once in a while. He will look for you and even follow you around and try to cleave you to death while you sleep with his precious magical Two-Handed Battleaxe. The axe in fact contains the malevolent spirit of a demon that always whispers to Tonrac in order to urge him to go on a killing spree.

So in short, anything can be interesting if the GM puts the time and efforts in fleshing out an interesting story


Offline Nightblade42

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Re: Not just D&D
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2018, 09:50:43 PM »
I really like that idea, Dragonking11.  Remind me not to buy anything from Tonrac!

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