Gnomish Wanderer
2013-02-27, 09:09 PM
I posted this initially in the troll thread, but with discussions I've had about it I got two main reactions. One was 'Ha, that's hilarious' and the other was 'OMG, that's horrible'.
Firstly, if you have a pink monk in your game, or if you have a dragonborn named 'Bronius', do not read further.
Two stories of two different parties set on two different continents of the same campaign world happening during the same time frame. Both have a pretty headstrong paladin at the head of the group. Important to note?
Story OneHere's a bit of backstory for my 4e game:
The party knows of the Big Bad's plan to use people tainted by mushrooms under his control to gather an army to steal the Holy MacGuffin from different avatars of godly powers. I wanted to show the effects of the mushroom and give them some foresight, so I decided to have the goddess play quantum leap with the party.
Basically they were transported into the bodies of a different adventuring group amidst cooking mushroom soup. They quickly discovered that they weren't in their own bodies by using their reflections, and decided to eat the soup while they figured out why they had been transported. This is when they find a journal and realize they're actually a few weeks in the future just south of a town a few weeks distance from where the party's real bodies are.
Heh. To be fair, I did mention how starved they were and I didn't flat out mention that the soup was made of mushrooms, but still. The party then decides to possibly check what is was they were making that tasted so good and then finds the remnants of cut mushrooms. Here comes the panic.
They find where the mushrooms were picked, growing from strange white stones, only to realize that the 'stones' were a decayed corpse of a mushroom person.
The party doesn't start feeling ill right away or anything, but they are under the impression these future people are now certain to die. Lucky for them, that's when they spotted the forefront of the mushroom people army moving through the forest. They attack a bunch, but even with the low ac and hp the army is outnumbering them and the party is being tinked to death.
So they decide to cut their losses and run to the village, hoping to warn them rather than dying just to make a dent in the army in this forest. Good plan, save they left the horses thy had just discovered behind and ran on foot x.x
Here's where I get a bit troll-y. As they start running away, I began to describe how the forest itself was darkening, the trees looking more malicious. The party even started to notice the skin discoloration common of the mushroom poisoning in their party members' reflections.
Well, when they got to the town, they were kinda freaked out by the forest and monsters and sure they were dying, and that's when they noticed the 'thing' climbing down from the guard tower. It was wearing guard armor, but its eyes were bloated and red, and its mouth looked blended and raw while a long tongue slipped out of the hamburger meat-like opening. It raised one hand with fingers stripped to bones, a sound like a scream coming from what you would call its mouth.
The party freaked and attacked it as it slowly got closer. It screamed out as they finished it off in under a round, but as they did they looked up to see a bunch of the doors opening to the small village and more of the beasts shambling out. After a moment of the creatures screaming, a couple more in guard armor attacked the party.
They made short work of the creatures, noting that other ones shambled back into their homes and attacked the few that were still in the street against the walls of the building. One ripped off its own foot and threw it at the party as they killed the monsters on the street. Another one was eating a child like a snake would a live mouse, so they killed the monster and then mercifully executed the dying child within.
After that they made it to a holy temple at the end of town, broke inside, and saved the goddess from losing her mask (her seat of power) at the cost of her life, but died from attacks from the BBEG and were sent back to their real bodies.
So back in real time the party is trying to make it in the town before the army to warn the goddess, ironically enough. The problem is, what they're going to see is going to be a very different story then what they experienced.
First, they are going to use some magic to get there early and will notice a single mushroom-person scout. They will kill him, of that I'm sure, and I'm reasonably certain they will leave the body behind to be the white stones that the future selves collect the mushroom from, seeing as they'll be chasing down a second mushroom person.
Regardless, once the future selves get to the town, the 'real' party will see the future selves attacking guards at random, killing innocents, seeing one girl desperately throw a shoe in panic pressed against the wall, see the future selves kill a mother trying to shield her daughter and then kill the child, see townfolk desperately holding doors closed to keep the future party outside, and perhaps see the wild mushroom-tainted eyes of the future selves that they may not even try to stop for risk of interrupting the future party from actually saving the Goddess.
Yeah, it's going to be epicStory TwoThis is a little more straight, seeing as I didn't 'cheat' with illusions to make the party commit genocide but used in-game lies instead. To note, this 3.5 game could also be aptly called 'D&D CSI' considering how often they have tried to solve murders so far
Yo see, the BBEG is taking over the main frontier town the players started in/most of them grew up in. He's doing it systematically by eliminating the bigger businesses and filling the holes he leaves. For reasons bigger than the party knows, that's his plan.
Anyway, a tribe of orcs recently moved into the forest nearby. They're actually more true neutral than evil as a band and left to find a better life in the thick forests of the elves rather than live with the chaotic and generally evil orcs of the mountains they hail from. Still, orcs are seen as bad news, especially bad for business as it makes the town seem more risky to send traders through.
So the BBEG has a plan to eliminate the orcs, but doesn't have much in the way of soldiers besides this one merc group, but can't use them because they're otherwise preoccupied. So he decides to hire the adventurers from town, hopefully to gain a bargaining chip from the good party's evil deed as well. But the only way to convince the party to attack them is to implicate them in something evil. And he already has someone else living in town that he wants to get rid of.
So he kills the girl and carves orcish symbols in her body, dumping her outside of town. The players examined the body and the dig site, and luckily they were under the impression that the body was planted to implicate the orcs, which is the truth.
However, the girl wasn't the only way the BBEG decided to ensure the orcs were destroyed. He wanted the orcs to have evidence on their person of evil, so he had his personal bodyguards kidnap an orcish woman and 'accidentally' leave a human woman magically unconscious and nearby, with her skirt ripped up to make her look raped.
The orcs decide to use the woman to trade her back for their woman, hoping to make a peaceful argument in the morning. However, they decide to wear armor and bring weapons, given that they don't know why these humans randomly captured one of their settler outpost's women and they're orcs, albeit more peaceful ones.
Cue the party walks in on a bunch of orcs, preparing for battle, while an unconscious human woman tied and bound in the middle of their camp that looks raped.
They immediately killed the cleric with 'speak with tongues' and then offered the rest of the orcs a chance to surrender. The orcs didn't speak common but didn't attack seeing as the party's paladin was trying to communicate with them. The surrender almost worked.
Almost.
The rest of the party got restless and opened fire. The party massacred a group of orcs whose only crime was being manipulated by the BBEG. Go Team!
Would you be upset by either of these scenarios? Do you think the party would be mad at me personally for bringing these situations about? I honestly thought both sets of players would enjoy it, so to speak, so finding out it could be upsetting sorta shocked me.
Firstly, if you have a pink monk in your game, or if you have a dragonborn named 'Bronius', do not read further.
Two stories of two different parties set on two different continents of the same campaign world happening during the same time frame. Both have a pretty headstrong paladin at the head of the group. Important to note?
Story OneHere's a bit of backstory for my 4e game:
The party knows of the Big Bad's plan to use people tainted by mushrooms under his control to gather an army to steal the Holy MacGuffin from different avatars of godly powers. I wanted to show the effects of the mushroom and give them some foresight, so I decided to have the goddess play quantum leap with the party.
Basically they were transported into the bodies of a different adventuring group amidst cooking mushroom soup. They quickly discovered that they weren't in their own bodies by using their reflections, and decided to eat the soup while they figured out why they had been transported. This is when they find a journal and realize they're actually a few weeks in the future just south of a town a few weeks distance from where the party's real bodies are.
Heh. To be fair, I did mention how starved they were and I didn't flat out mention that the soup was made of mushrooms, but still. The party then decides to possibly check what is was they were making that tasted so good and then finds the remnants of cut mushrooms. Here comes the panic.
They find where the mushrooms were picked, growing from strange white stones, only to realize that the 'stones' were a decayed corpse of a mushroom person.
The party doesn't start feeling ill right away or anything, but they are under the impression these future people are now certain to die. Lucky for them, that's when they spotted the forefront of the mushroom people army moving through the forest. They attack a bunch, but even with the low ac and hp the army is outnumbering them and the party is being tinked to death.
So they decide to cut their losses and run to the village, hoping to warn them rather than dying just to make a dent in the army in this forest. Good plan, save they left the horses thy had just discovered behind and ran on foot x.x
Here's where I get a bit troll-y. As they start running away, I began to describe how the forest itself was darkening, the trees looking more malicious. The party even started to notice the skin discoloration common of the mushroom poisoning in their party members' reflections.
Well, when they got to the town, they were kinda freaked out by the forest and monsters and sure they were dying, and that's when they noticed the 'thing' climbing down from the guard tower. It was wearing guard armor, but its eyes were bloated and red, and its mouth looked blended and raw while a long tongue slipped out of the hamburger meat-like opening. It raised one hand with fingers stripped to bones, a sound like a scream coming from what you would call its mouth.
The party freaked and attacked it as it slowly got closer. It screamed out as they finished it off in under a round, but as they did they looked up to see a bunch of the doors opening to the small village and more of the beasts shambling out. After a moment of the creatures screaming, a couple more in guard armor attacked the party.
They made short work of the creatures, noting that other ones shambled back into their homes and attacked the few that were still in the street against the walls of the building. One ripped off its own foot and threw it at the party as they killed the monsters on the street. Another one was eating a child like a snake would a live mouse, so they killed the monster and then mercifully executed the dying child within.
After that they made it to a holy temple at the end of town, broke inside, and saved the goddess from losing her mask (her seat of power) at the cost of her life, but died from attacks from the BBEG and were sent back to their real bodies.
So back in real time the party is trying to make it in the town before the army to warn the goddess, ironically enough. The problem is, what they're going to see is going to be a very different story then what they experienced.
First, they are going to use some magic to get there early and will notice a single mushroom-person scout. They will kill him, of that I'm sure, and I'm reasonably certain they will leave the body behind to be the white stones that the future selves collect the mushroom from, seeing as they'll be chasing down a second mushroom person.
Regardless, once the future selves get to the town, the 'real' party will see the future selves attacking guards at random, killing innocents, seeing one girl desperately throw a shoe in panic pressed against the wall, see the future selves kill a mother trying to shield her daughter and then kill the child, see townfolk desperately holding doors closed to keep the future party outside, and perhaps see the wild mushroom-tainted eyes of the future selves that they may not even try to stop for risk of interrupting the future party from actually saving the Goddess.
Yeah, it's going to be epicStory TwoThis is a little more straight, seeing as I didn't 'cheat' with illusions to make the party commit genocide but used in-game lies instead. To note, this 3.5 game could also be aptly called 'D&D CSI' considering how often they have tried to solve murders so far
Yo see, the BBEG is taking over the main frontier town the players started in/most of them grew up in. He's doing it systematically by eliminating the bigger businesses and filling the holes he leaves. For reasons bigger than the party knows, that's his plan.
Anyway, a tribe of orcs recently moved into the forest nearby. They're actually more true neutral than evil as a band and left to find a better life in the thick forests of the elves rather than live with the chaotic and generally evil orcs of the mountains they hail from. Still, orcs are seen as bad news, especially bad for business as it makes the town seem more risky to send traders through.
So the BBEG has a plan to eliminate the orcs, but doesn't have much in the way of soldiers besides this one merc group, but can't use them because they're otherwise preoccupied. So he decides to hire the adventurers from town, hopefully to gain a bargaining chip from the good party's evil deed as well. But the only way to convince the party to attack them is to implicate them in something evil. And he already has someone else living in town that he wants to get rid of.
So he kills the girl and carves orcish symbols in her body, dumping her outside of town. The players examined the body and the dig site, and luckily they were under the impression that the body was planted to implicate the orcs, which is the truth.
However, the girl wasn't the only way the BBEG decided to ensure the orcs were destroyed. He wanted the orcs to have evidence on their person of evil, so he had his personal bodyguards kidnap an orcish woman and 'accidentally' leave a human woman magically unconscious and nearby, with her skirt ripped up to make her look raped.
The orcs decide to use the woman to trade her back for their woman, hoping to make a peaceful argument in the morning. However, they decide to wear armor and bring weapons, given that they don't know why these humans randomly captured one of their settler outpost's women and they're orcs, albeit more peaceful ones.
Cue the party walks in on a bunch of orcs, preparing for battle, while an unconscious human woman tied and bound in the middle of their camp that looks raped.
They immediately killed the cleric with 'speak with tongues' and then offered the rest of the orcs a chance to surrender. The orcs didn't speak common but didn't attack seeing as the party's paladin was trying to communicate with them. The surrender almost worked.
Almost.
The rest of the party got restless and opened fire. The party massacred a group of orcs whose only crime was being manipulated by the BBEG. Go Team!
Would you be upset by either of these scenarios? Do you think the party would be mad at me personally for bringing these situations about? I honestly thought both sets of players would enjoy it, so to speak, so finding out it could be upsetting sorta shocked me.