Stories of Industrious PCs

[Geordnet]

You know, I always liked A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. There was something about the way Mark Twain described the way The Boss went around modernizing Medieval England, sort of as a psuedo-documentary in memoir form, that really resonated with me.

Yesterday, I read the Tale of an Industrious Rogue (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I), in which a simple mining operation to exploit a permanent portal to the Quasielemental Plane of Salt (set up by the titular PC) expands to a 'trading' company with more influence than many kingdoms, at its peak grossing nearly one million gp a day for the party.

I figured that this story can't be the only one of its kind. I hear so many anecdotal references about the poorly-thought-out long-term consequences of specific spells, magic items, et cetera - and, more importantly, of GMs asking how to circumvent their blatant exploitation. GMs asking this implies that PCs have tried this, and and least a few of their GMs would have played along, instead of resisting.

Unfortunately, my searches have only turned up dozens of settings in which the exploitation is an intentional part of the setting, and is done abstractly in the background (basically, I got the Magitek genre). That's not what I'm looking for: I want to read stories where the characters find something, come up with a way to utilize it in a way that wasn't intended, capitalize on their unconventional designs, and general exploit the "brokenness" of the thing. Like this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0326.html).

It doesn't have to be as epic in scope as starting a full-fledged industrial revolution, although that would be awesome. The object of exploitation doesn't have to be some form of magic; in fact, it'd be cooler if it wasn't. It doesn't have to be a tale from your own group, though you should still link the source.
I just want to read more stories, so please post whatever you have here.

[Âmesang]

A similar thought has crossed my mind, but usually something generally smaller in scale; using fabricate to mass produce alchemical items, drugs, and poisons, then transporting the items around the world via permanent teleportation circles.

DRAGON Compendium has a wide selection of utility alchemical items that could prove valuable in a more commercialized setting, such as alchemist's mercy, ice crystals, powdered water, soupstones, and traveler's solace.

[Keltest]

My party was doing a quest for some druids. It was a pretty trivial quest to go steal a magic rock from a Banshee. Belatedly, I realized that I had forgotten to actually make a reward for them, so I offered them the recipe for Secret Druid Moonshine. What I did not expect is that they would go and buy a tavern to sell this moonshine from. This rapidly spiraled out of control, with the party quickly gaining functionally limitless funds and ownership of a massive tavern empire in every city, town, village and Dwarf Citadel on the continent.

[TheThan]

My friends tend to build brothels in RPGs.

Although once they actually tried to monopolize charcoal. We were playing Iron Kingdoms and they had acquired several warjacks (steam powered robots). They reasoned that charcoal was easier and cheaper to get than regular coal and was only slightly less efficient than coal. So they decided to start deforesting a forest to acquire the wood to make charcoal. All because they didn’t want to pay 5 gold a pound for it (which they could afford) fortunately privateer press made some errata which changed the cost of coal so I was able to convince them not to continue on with their endeavor and get back to the adventure at hand.

They had also acquired a river barge and was slowly converting it into an airship. They had already built robotic manipulator arms to move things around below decks so they didn’t need a crew and used some salvaged warjack cortexes to mechanize the ship further.

They went a little bit nuts with the crafting in that system. Granted they were used to the extremely limited crafting of D&D. so this was all pretty novel at the time.

[Geordnet]

My party was doing a quest for some druids. It was a pretty trivial quest to go steal a magic rock from a Banshee. Belatedly, I realized that I had forgotten to actually make a reward for them, so I offered them the recipe for Secret Druid Moonshine. What I did not expect is that they would go and buy a tavern to sell this moonshine from. This rapidly spiraled out of control, with the party quickly gaining functionally limitless funds and ownership of a massive tavern empire in every city, town, village and Dwarf Citadel on the continent.
That sounds interesting. Do you have more details?

[Keltest]

That sounds interesting. Do you have more details?

Not really. I deliberately kept it abstract because I had no interest in DMing a business simulator. It mostly serves the purpose of a running joke, but when I attacked the city where they got their first tavern, they were genuinely alarmed that it might have been destroyed.

[JAL_1138]

Well, there was the time I invented a fairly horrifying siege weapon. A simple couillard (small type of trebuchet) I built, that fired earthen pots full of green slime. (I'd have kept my stock of green slime up by feeding it livestock, if the DM hadn't quickly shut the idea down so the game could function).
(Sure, fire kills green slime easily, but try burning it out in a city of wooden houses with thatched roofs, when your opponent keeps firing more of it at you and it keeps replicating from consuming people and buildings.)

Or the time I broke the Star Wars universe by turning off the safety-cutoffs that drop ships out of hyperspace in gravity wells. Hyperrelativistic projectiles are more effective planet-busters than the Death Star--according to XKCD, you end up with an explosion so powerful that each individual proton of planetary matter ejected in the blast carries the kinetic energy of a major-league fastball--and anybody with a hyperdrive-equipped ship has one. The GM quickly ruled that the gravity-well cutoff thing was an inherent property of hyperspace, so that the game could function.

[Geordnet]

Well, there was the time I invented a fairly horrifying siege weapon. A simple couillard (small type of trebuchet) I built, that fired earthen pots full of green slime. (I'd have kept my stock of green slime up by feeding it livestock, if the DM hadn't quickly shut the idea down so the game could function).
(Sure, fire kills green slime easily, but try burning it out in a city of wooden houses with thatched roofs, when your opponent keeps firing more of it at you and it keeps replicating from consuming people and buildings.)
You know, I can't help but think that there'd be some sort of natural phenomenon on the surface that kills green slime besides natural fire, otherwise the world should end via blob scenario within a few centuries. Maybe dragons?


Or the time I broke the Star Wars universe by turning off the safety-cutoffs that drop ships out of hyperspace in gravity wells. Hyperrelativistic projectiles are more effective planet-busters than the Death Star--according to XKCD, you end up with an explosion so powerful that each individual proton of planetary matter ejected in the blast carries the kinetic energy of a major-league fastball--and anybody with a hyperdrive-equipped ship has one. The GM quickly ruled that the gravity-well cutoff thing was an inherent property of hyperspace, so that the game could function.
That's an easy one to do in any sci-fi setting in which it takes less than 6 months to travel between planets (without some fancy inter-dimensional or wormhole tech).

[JAL_1138]

You know, I can't help but think that there'd be some sort of natural phenomenon on the surface that kills green slime besides natural fire, otherwise the world should end via blob scenario within a few centuries. Maybe dragons?



Sunlight dries it out and eventually (no timeframe specified in the book) kills it, which is why it's not found on the surface. It can't move (in melee anyway, perhaps it can move very slowly, like a slime mold in real life, otherwise how would it get onto ceilings?), but it's said to "hate light" and doesn't grow in well-lit areas underground either. It's not instant killed by sunlight though, otherwise they wouldn't say "eventually." Of course, even if it dies quickly in sunlight, you can simply use the trebuchet at night...when it's hard to see...and people are more prone to panic...muahaha.

There was also a mostly-harmless little critter called a Burbur that ate green slime (and other slimes, oozes, and jellies), and was immune to slimes (although an ooze could hurt it with an attack).

Oh, and even if you get rid of it, its spores can lay dormant for years, so it tends to come back.



That's an easy one to do in any sci-fi setting in which it takes less than 6 months to travel between planets (without some fancy inter-dimensional or wormhole tech).

Yep. Nobody had thought to do it, though, and the EU explanation (in one of the novels...forget which, had it with me at the time though in case the rules were silent on it) was safety-cutoffs. It's a big issue with interstellar travel, like you say.

[RazorChain]

I once played a Paladin that wanted to run an orphanage. That led me into mining business after clearing out a silver mine. Then I bought the logging rights to a bandit infested forest, then the group cleared out the bandits. Instead of killing the bandits I reemployed them into my new logging business with the terms they would pay indemnities. Now I started a village close to my mining business which was branching out and set myself up as de facto mayor collecting taxes to pay for my reformed bandits who were used as Rangers/Trappers and local milita.

This was all before we entered the city. In short order when the Orcs invaded the northern Realm I bought all mining and logging rights cheaply before we stopped the Orc Invasion. After I helped another PC who was a son of a Dwarven lord to be accepted by his family again and helped the Dwarves with a Duergar problem, I become a Dwarf Brother. I and the other PC became blood brothers. Now with my good standing I had the Dwarves and my fellow PC's, who were sitting on a pile of cash, open the Dwarven Merchant Bank with me as a silent partner.

This I did because I needed a lot of cash for my next operation and loaned it from the bank. During a Pirate crisis I bought myself into lots of merchant houses and invested in shipyards and built privateers. Controlling most of the logging industry in the kingdom helped a lot there and my ironworks contributed as well. Of course the king asked us to help with the pirates (I saw that one coming mile away). So now my shipyards were making lots of money outfitting the Royal Navy. So my Privateers went out after the pirates and came back laden with booty (with the group at helm of course) which I sold to my merchant houses which made a killing from a starved marked.

All the money I used to invest more (especially in crisis situations, just like Crassus, if you don't know the man google him.) and I ran orphanages, schools, shelters for the homeless, charities. Criminals i apprehended I always tried to reemploy and made them pay indemnities if their crimes weren't too heinous. I was the most popular employer because I paid fair wage this set the guilds against me so I took them over with the help of my trusty halfling rogue who was now on the top of a criminal syndicate and the rest of the group of course.

Where did I get all my money from? I always insisted that party loot be valued and split after value, I never took magic items only cash (or we sold magic items) At the start this got so bad that my fellow players started donating magic items to me to use :) At first they were in debt to me...but as the campaign progressed I got indebted to them as I needed cash to invest. It was because of that I opted for my own Dwarven Merchant Bank.

This in the end set my on a collision course with the king...or at least some of the reasons. Who was really the most powerful man in the country? Nightstar, hero of the people, who also was their employer and was the richest man in the kingdom or the king?

[ReaderAt2046]

Or the time I broke the Star Wars universe by turning off the safety-cutoffs that drop ships out of hyperspace in gravity wells. Hyperrelativistic projectiles are more effective planet-busters than the Death Star--according to XKCD, you end up with an explosion so powerful that each individual proton of planetary matter ejected in the blast carries the kinetic energy of a major-league fastball--and anybody with a hyperdrive-equipped ship has one. The GM quickly ruled that the gravity-well cutoff thing was an inherent property of hyperspace, so that the game could function.

I thought that any ship that hit a gravity well was simply destroyed (without having any real impact on normal space), and the safety cutoffs were to drop ships out before that could happen.

[Quertus]

No really good stories, sadly.

* infinite wealth via leadership + rod(s) of wonder
* infinite wealth via metamorphos liquid (via lots of things; molten gold was probably my favorite)
* infinite wealth via continual light + sense shifting
* infinite wealth via trade
* infinite wealth via time travel + investment
* infinite wealth via hacking the account and adding zeros
* infinite settlements via wall of stone at will
* build your own planet via wall of stone at will
* infinite wealth via deck of many things
* infinite wealth via plane of dreams
* infinite wealth via skeletons mining the elemental plane of earth
* infinite workforce via simulacrum

Ok, most of those were only infinite over an infinite time frame, but you get the idea.

[Hoosigander]

Well, there was the time I invented a fairly horrifying siege weapon. A simple couillard (small type of trebuchet) I built, that fired earthen pots full of green slime. (I'd have kept my stock of green slime up by feeding it livestock, if the DM hadn't quickly shut the idea down so the game could function).

Recently my party fought a mad Gnomish alchemist who had a similar idea, she even rigged it so Green Slime would flood her laboratory if a lever was pulled (One of my party members deliberately activated it out of curiosity).

My own character in that campaign has done some things that might fit the requirements of the thread. My brother, with his more extensive knowledge of Pathfinder rules, is often my partner in crime, but I can take sole credit for some ideas. My character is a Gnomish rogue who has plenty of ranks in various crafts and professions and has acquired some minions. I built an airship and equipped it with downward facing firedrakes (basically Greek fire shooters). I don't use it a lot since the campaign is very intrigue/stealth based, but sometimes a situation requires the ability to completely raze a small city. I also like to shrink barrels of Alchemist's Fire with a Wand of Shrink Item, allowing me to carry and throw them as if they were vials. None of this remotely approaches the level of "The Tale of an Industrious Rogue," but it may be of some small amusement.

[ATHATH]

Is there a compendium for really good stories like the ones about Old Man Henderson, the Industrious Rogue, and the Guy Who Destroyed Psionics?

[Inevitability]

Is there a compendium for really good stories like the ones about Old Man Henderson, the Industrious Rogue, and the Guy Who Destroyed Psionics?

1d4chan has most of the stories.

[Granhyt]

Search in the "awesome" category of 1d4chan, it's narrower than "stories".

[ATHATH]

Search in the "awesome" category of 1d4chan, it's narrower than "stories".
I already checked both of them, and Awesome is filled with miscellaneous stuff and Stories is filled with WH40K fanfiction.

[Geordnet]

I already checked both of them, and Awesome is filled with miscellaneous stuff and Stories is filled with WH40K fanfiction.
...Which is the reason I made this thread in the first place, because I couldn't find more stories.

[Inevitability]

...Which is the reason I made this thread in the first place, because I couldn't find more stories.

The circle hath been completeth!

[Geordnet]

The circle hath been completeth!
...You've got your inflection wrong. It's either "the circle hath been completed", or "thus completeth the circle".

[Ceiling_Squid]

I thought that any ship that hit a gravity well was simply destroyed (without having any real impact on normal space), and the safety cutoffs were to drop ships out before that could happen.

IIRC, you are correct. Hyperspace has "gravity shadows" that correspond to realspace gravity wells.

"Hyper-relativistic" projectiles aren't even a thing in Star Wars, because the "jump to lightspeed" is a huge misnomer (a misleading bit of writing by Lucas). They're moving through another dimension, and lose all that extra "velocity" when dropping into realspace. Relativistic speeds outside hyperspace are just impossible. I think the poster is arguing in ignorance of setting technobabble/handwave, which is against the spirit of a soft sci-fi/fantasy setting like Star Wars.

Besides, this concept was explored in the old EU already, with the Galaxy Gun (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galaxy_Gun). It's firing payloads through hyperspace, and they aren't moving at such ludicrous speeds once they drop out of hyperspace right next to their targets. The benefits of this system were unprecedented range and surprise, not hyper-relativistic projectile nonsense. If it were possible in-setting to retain such speeds while in realspace, it would have come up with the Galaxy Gun, or not at all.

[Demidos]

I have two suggestions, both quite in depth stories --
Kaveman26's Chaotic Goodfellas, in which a 6th level party of con-men take on a city and ridiculously CR'ed encounters and win.

Sepulchrave 's(sp?) Tales of Wyre, wherin a paladin's quest to save a single fiend ends up defining an entire campaign world.

The first can be found on this site via google/in Kaveman26's sig (along with a host of other great stories) while the second can be easily googled.

[Geordnet]

I have two suggestions, both quite in depth stories --
Kaveman26's Chaotic Goodfellas, in which a 6th level party of con-men take on a city and ridiculously CR'ed encounters and win.

Sepulchrave 's(sp?) Tales of Wyre, wherin a paladin's quest to save a single fiend ends up defining an entire campaign world.

The first can be found on this site via google/in Kaveman26's sig (along with a host of other great stories) while the second can be easily googled.

Well, I can certainly say that while not exactly what I was looking for, these certainly haven't failed to provide ample reading material. Tales of Wyre in particular; I'm not even halfway done with it yet.

[JAL_1138]

I thought that any ship that hit a gravity well was simply destroyed (without having any real impact on normal space), and the safety cutoffs were to drop ships out before that could happen.

The books are pretty inconsistent anout the results. A much later bit of EU (in the late '00s or early '10s, I think?) actually had a planet get wrecked that way, although not to the full scale of vaporized like it should have been (it was still uninhabitable though).

Of course, hitting a planet with a freighter at 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 c, just shy of lightspeed and thus not actually in hyperspace, would still blow it up...

[goto124]

Of course, hitting a planet with a freighter at 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 c, just shy of lightspeed and thus not actually in hyperspace, would still blow it up...

According to What If? xkcd (http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/), pitching a baseball at 0.9 c will result in

http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/1/04.png

"The shell of x-rays and superheated plasma expands outward and upward, swallowing the backstop, both teams, the stands, and the surrounding neighborhood—all in the first microsecond."

http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/1/05.png

[JAL_1138]

According to What If? xkcd (http://what-if.xkcd.com/1/), pitching a baseball at 0.9 c will result in

http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/1/04.png

"The shell of x-rays and superheated plasma expands outward and upward, swallowing the backstop, both teams, the stands, and the surrounding neighborhood—all in the first microsecond."

http://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/1/05.png

The "Diamond" What If? on xkcd gives some values on what fraction of c would destroy an entire planet. (The description of one of the fractions of lightspeed it discusses--tearing a huge crater all the way down to the mantle and rendering the planet a lifeless rock--is almost exactly what happened to the Quarren world destroyed in the hyperspace accident in that later EU source, coincidentally). The diamond in question is much larger and denser than a freighter, 100m of solid carbon, but with a large enough fraction of c you can make up the difference in mass with the additional kinetic energy.

If you can't use a 100m-diameter diamond going as fast as the "Oh My God!" particle, the fastest mass-possessing object ever recorded (a single proton going fast enough to have the kinetic energy of a baseball), then you can use a somewhat-less-massive large freighter full of dense metals going a half-dozen significant digits faster, and whatever you hit is going to be so thoroughly obliterated as to make a lot more "Oh My God!" particles. At a certain point, going faster than lightspeed isn't even going to matter--when you've converted much of the planet's matter to energy and converted the rest to radioactive plasma moving so fast each individual proton has the kinetic energy of a baseball, you really can't blow it up any worse than that in any way that's comprehensible to physics.

I've also tried strapping engines to an asteroid and ramming a planet at a lower fraction of lightspeed, say 0.99 c, to cause a Chicxulub-or-worse scale mass extinction.

I'm not allowed to try to use physics in Star Wars anymore. :smalltongue:

[Straybow]

Yesterday, I read the Tale of an Industrious Rogue (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I), in which a simple mining operation to exploit a permanent portal to the Quasielemental Plane of Salt (set up by the titular PC) expands to a 'trading' company with more influence than many kingdoms, at its peak grossing nearly one million gp a day for the party. Yeah, 1d4chan... these kinds of things should be called "Tale of an overly permissive GM and people who failed the word problems in math." Back in the day we called 'em "Monty Hall DMs" (What's behind door number two? A fountain spewing molten gold!). The writer said he could be a "harsh" GM. I doubt it. :rolleyes:

Let's start with the characters. How does a 7th level human rogue get Cha 20? There's more than one thing wrong with that. He's a rogue, Cha is not going to be his highest stat. He's only gotten one ability bump, so even if he did start at 18 it would only be 19. A cleric who brags that he doesn't heal anybody? Only one arcane spellcaster (the bard doesn't count), and he's multiclassed and only Sorc 4 when the exploit is well under way? How did this party survive to be 7th level? I doubt it.

"Early in the campaign" the party delved the dungeon with the salt plane rift. The exploit begins when they were at level 7, so they were maybe level 3-4 at best to be called "early." In Part II he reveals that one room in the salt dungeon had a bunch of mummies. They survived the mummies at so low a level (cleric 4 can probly only turn one mummy, and no cure disease for the mummy rot)? The barbarian is scrambling to find a place to dump a metal box of fleshspawn-denizens, he decides the mummy room is a good place to go? At level 10 (based on the monk 6/sorc 4 reference) the barbarian, alone, doesn't even consider a squad of mummies a threat, and can safely grab them and toss them into a pit? I doubt it.

Then there's the economics. A pound of salt is 1 gp?! That's just a smidge less unreasonable than d20 salt being 5 gp per pound; at 1 gp per pound it's still twice as valuable as copper and 10 times as valuable as iron! 1 gp is more than a peasant earns in a day.

OK, salt is about 135 lb/cubic foot, so a 2½" clump is a pound (that takes 5 seconds to google, and a few clicks to calculate). So, how long does it take a miner to dig 1 pound of salt out of a salt layer to earn his 1 gp pay? 10 minutes if he doesn't have any tools and just bangs on the face of the bore with a rock and sweeps up the debris? 1 minute with a shovel? One hit (one standard action = ½ a round = 3 seconds) with a pick? Wow, makes for a short workday for the peasant.

Think, man, THINK! These are the guys who score a 142 on an internet IQ test and believe it.

[goto124]

The "Diamond" What If? on xkcd gives some values on what fraction of c would destroy an entire planet.

I nabbed a 10-word summary (http://what-if.xkcd.com/20/) for the 0.9999999999999999999999951c diamond:

"the planet is blown into an expanding cloud of plasma"

[JAL_1138]

I nabbed a 10-word summary (http://what-if.xkcd.com/20/) for the 0.9999999999999999999999951c diamond:

"the planet is blown into an expanding cloud of plasma"

I think that undersells it a little. The plasma is so energetic that the sun flares and the surfaces of neighboring planets are scoured clean. (Hit a planet in the Corellian system with it and you could possibly take out two more, maybe all five habitable worlds).

"And in the distant future, an alien astronomer on a world hundreds of light-years from Earth frowns at a beeping detector, and wonders what violent event could make a particle move so fast."

[mikeejimbo]

Yeah, 1d4chan... these kinds of things should be called "Tale of an overly permissive GM [...]"

No such thing. :p

[Geordnet]

Probably shouldn't bite, but even arguments keep the thread bumped...


The writer said he could be a "harsh" GM. I doubt it. :rolleyes:
I don't know, it didn't look like he pulled any punches any time the PCs made a mistake. And he rarely let anything the PCs planned go off without a hitch.

For example, what good did the fountain of gold actually do them? It took weeks to set up, during which they had to repel a full-fledged invasion triggered by their upsetting of the national economy. Transporting that much gold attracted hundreds of bandits, sponsored by greedy nobles. There was already significant inflation, so trying to spend it all would likely have precipitated a total crash in gold's value. In the end, it really did was make running the city they already owned a bit easier.

Do not mistake willingness to allow the PCs to accumulate unusually large amounts of wealth and power, all of which they had earned in-character, for softness.


How does a 7th level human rogue get Cha 20? There's more than one thing wrong with that. He's a rogue, Cha is not going to be his highest stat.
Why not? He's explicitly a conniving ******* who fast-talks out of every situation. How would you build that, if not as a Charisma-focused Rogue?


He's only gotten one ability bump, so even if he did start at 18 it would only be 19.
Probably has a +1 Cha boost from a magic item, or was given one as a reward somewhere along the line.


A cleric who brags that he doesn't heal anybody? Only one arcane spellcaster (the bard doesn't count), and he's multiclassed and only Sorc 4 when the exploit is well under way? How did this party survive to be 7th level?
You don't have to be min-maxed to "survive" a non-"killer GM". A good GM adapts the challenge to the party's ability. In fact, deliberately avoiding the "optimal" method is often a good way to have fun.


"Early in the campaign" the party delved the dungeon with the salt plane rift. The exploit begins when they were at level 7, so they were maybe level 3-4 at best to be called "early." In Part II he reveals that one room in the salt dungeon had a bunch of mummies. They survived the mummies at so low a level (cleric 4 can probly only turn one mummy, and no cure disease for the mummy rot)? The barbarian is scrambling to find a place to dump a metal box of fleshspawn-denizens, he decides the mummy room is a good place to go? At level 10 (based on the monk 6/sorc 4 reference) the barbarian, alone, doesn't even consider a squad of mummies a threat, and can safely grab them and toss them into a pit? I doubt it.
Well, perhaps these mummies don't use the stat block from the Monster Manual, but instead are a 'lesser' variant more appropriate for a group of low-level characters to encounter? That's what I would do, if I wanted to put a level-appropriate encounter in a low-level "tomb robbing" type of adventure.


Then there's the economics. A pound of salt is 1 gp?! That's just a smidge less unreasonable than d20 salt being 5 gp per pound; at 1 gp per pound it's still twice as valuable as copper and 10 times as valuable as iron! 1 gp is more than a peasant earns in a day.
Salt is worth far more in a pre-refridgeration economy than you think. Without salt to act as a preservative, all food (with a few exceptions, like grains) has to be eaten the day its harvested, slaughtered, or caught. Without shipments of food, cities cannot exist. Without cities, civilization cannot exist. Salt is also needed as a diet supplement for livestock, and is an essential element in basic chemistry.

I'll grant it that the relative value of it and other metals is off, but that's more due to the other metals being undervalued. One pound of salt being worth more than a day's wages is actually pretty reasonable.


OK, salt is about 135 lb/cubic foot, so a 2½" clump is a pound (that takes 5 seconds to google, and a few clicks to calculate). So, how long does it take a miner to dig 1 pound of salt out of a salt layer to earn his 1 gp pay?
About 5.8 hours, assuming he can swing a pick every 10 seconds and each pick strike releases 0.1 cm^3 of salt (rocks are hard, and salt is no exception).

Add to that all the work in the mine, shoring up shafts and mining rocks which aren't salt, in order to get at the salt. And to allow air to get down to the miners. And also, pumping out any water that seeps in. And don't forget to account for the hazards of natural gas, which is often trapped inside salt deposits.

The salt which is mined is usually impure, unfit for human consumption. It needs to be dissolved in water, then have the water boiled away so it recrystallizes (a bit of blood or egg white helps trap the impurities). The boilers are large, and require constant fueling, so that cost has to be accounted for too.

Finally, the owner of the entire operation will take the lion's share of the profits. It is in his interest to allow wages no higher than slightly more than what is considered average in the local area, such that anyone who complains about being paid little in comparison to the value of what they produce is easily replaced.


Think, man, THINK!
Honestly, the only thing that seemed shortsighted of the GM was the fountain of gold. But since it was only one of many dreams the PCs were examining, and was rolling for the location of each dreamer, he probably made it up on the spot, without knowing that it would be the one the PCs would get. In which case, it adds to the GM's credit, that he was willing to live up to his own words, and allowed the PCs to have the sort of cash flow a fountain of gold would realistically provide.


Besides, if it makes sense in-universe and everyone is having fun with it... Why not?

[Ceiling_Squid]

The books are pretty inconsistent anout the results. A much later bit of EU (in the late '00s or early '10s, I think?) actually had a planet get wrecked that way, although not to the full scale of vaporized like it should have been (it was still uninhabitable though).

Of course, hitting a planet with a freighter at 0.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 c, just shy of lightspeed and thus not actually in hyperspace, would still blow it up...

Yeah, but sublight engines in Star Wars simply cannot attain that speed. It isn't a case of hitting 88 mph and wooomph, you're in hyperspace. Getting to hyperspace is not a the result of hitting lightspeed, it's a function of the hyperdrive activating.

[Geordnet]

Yeah, but sublight engines in Star Wars simply cannot attain that speed.
Yes, they can.

In space, any engine can be used to attain any speed, if you're willing to wait long enough (and have enough reaction mass, but Star Wars engines need little to none of that).

Strap an X-Wing's engine to a Saturn V's fuel tanks and aim it at where Alderaan will be 20 years from now, and you get biosphere destruction for but a microscopic fraction of the cost of a Death Star. And harder to defend against as well, for by the time the projectile gets near the target (like, within 100 AU) it'll be going so fast, only the Force has the potential to stop it.

(Note: if a Force-user is sensitive enough to stop Relativistic Kill Missiles, he or she can also throw Relativistic Kill Missiles.)

[JAL_1138]

Yeah, but sublight engines in Star Wars simply cannot attain that speed. It isn't a case of hitting 88 mph and wooomph, you're in hyperspace. Getting to hyperspace is not a the result of hitting lightspeed, it's a function of the hyperdrive activating.

Which is why you disable the safety-cutoffs.

EDIT: Assuming you aren't willing to wait twenty-odd years for nigh-constant acceleration to get you to relativistic velocity.

ALSO EDIT: And you do need to be going at c or faster to enter the dimension of hyperspace. Which engines get you going that fast is irrelevant, since you're not in hyperspace until you reach c. And until you're in that dimension, you interact with normal matter, not mass shadows.

[goto124]

How does anything or anyone even survive the high speeds anyway?

[Inevitability]

How does anything or anyone even survive the high speeds anyway?

Well, there's nothing inherently harmful about moving at high speed (you're on a rock hurtling through space at 67000 mph right now), it's high acceleration that can kill you. If you accelerate slowly enough, you should experience only minimal discomfort.

[goto124]

it's high acceleration that can kill you. If you accelerate slowly enough,

and deceleration too, I suppose? Unless the word 'acceleration' covers that already.

Then the issue would be how to accelerate safely without sucking up a good amount of a human's life. Maybe if you take those elves who live up to 10k years...

[JAL_1138]

How does anything or anyone even survive the high speeds anyway?

Star Wars ships have a handwavium-powered device called an Inertial Dampener. Running at full, you don't feel any effects of acceleration or G-forces (other than the ship's own artificial gravity). Pilots tend to run them slightly lower so they can get a feel for the maneuvers they're doing (and if the inertial dampener fails, you usually die horribly). The inertial dampener also (edit: depending on the source; sometimes it's just hsndwaved instead) explains how SW ships can stop in space without having to reverse direction and burn the engines to decelerate (and why they don't constantly accelerate despite constant thrust), and why they turn like aircraft instead of behaving like actual spacecraft.

[Ceiling_Squid]

Yes, they can.

In space, any engine can be used to attain any speed, if you're willing to wait long enough (and have enough reaction mass, but Star Wars engines need little to none of that).



If you're being technically-correct, sure.

That said, ludicrous reaction mass requirements is exactly why I said it was impossible. Carrying that much reaction mass also increases the amount of mass one is attempting to accelerate, and the problem is further compounded. As one approaches light speed, the energy required is absurd. There's a reason for real-world interest in a "warp drive" or similar workaround.

Though, perhaps I ought to have specified "practically" impossible.

Also, Star Wars is still technically operating under some sort of equipment/fuel limitations, because attaining near-lightspeed on sublight engines isn't even hinted at. And while the depicted spaceflight suggests highly-efficient sublight engines, starship fuel is still a thing:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel_cell/Legends

[Ceiling_Squid]

(Accidental double post, pay me no mind)

[JAL_1138]

Considering that you can pack enough fuel into an X-wing to achieve escape velocity multiple times, engage in multiple dogfights, and perform long-range sublight travel, without refueling, and with the sublight engines constantly burning (given the way the ships are depicted onscreen), reaction mass doesn't seem to be a major weight or size concern. Not to mention all those lost starships that have been flying for decades or centuries they keep finding that still have enough fuel for the protagonists or villains to use without gassing them up.

They do need fuel of some kind, but apparently it's extremely energy-efficient stuff.

[Geordnet]

Also, Star Wars is still technically operating under some sort of equipment/fuel limitations, because attaining near-lightspeed on sublight engines isn't even hinted at.
That's more a plot hole than a real limitation. We know from observation that the engines are like a trillion times more efficient in the Star Wars universe than in real life (and that's not hyperbole). Engines like that would make practical planet-killers within reach of anyone who can afford a decently-sized starship. And there are untold trillions of people in the galaxy...

All it takes is one crazy person on one backwater planet to destroy Coruscant in an act of terror that makes 9/11 look like a house arson. How has that not happened yet?


(Accidental double post, pay me no mind)
Psst! When you go to edit your post, there's an option to delete it.


They do need fuel of some kind, but apparently it's extremely energy-efficient stuff.
It isn't fuel that matters, so much as reaction mass. As in, mass that must be shed in order to satisfy Newton's Third Law. And the engines in the Star Wars universe must be shedding it at unimaginably high speeds, in order to do the kind of things they do with less than 10% mass ratios (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_ratio).

Seriously, the X-Wing's exhaust should be irradiating the launch pad every time it takes off.

Hm... Maybe we just figured out where the Oh My God Particle came from.

[JAL_1138]

That's more a plot hole than a real limitation. We know from observation that the engines are like a trillion times more efficient in the Star Wars universe than in real life (and that's not hyperbole). Engines like that would make practical planet-killers within reach of anyone who can afford a decently-sized starship. And there are untold trillions of people in the galaxy...

All it takes is one crazy person on one backwater planet to destroy Coruscant in an act of terror that makes 9/11 look like a house arson. How has that not happened yet?


Well, I tried. The DM put the kibosh on it.



It isn't fuel that matters, so much as reaction mass. As in, mass that must be shed in order to satisfy Newton's Third Law. And the engines in the Star Wars universe must be shedding it at unimaginably high speeds, in order to do the kind of things they do with less than 10% mass ratios (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_ratio).


My point was more that you don't need to worry how you're going to get enough propellant onto a large cargo freighter to actually accelerate it constantly for 20 years, with a little work to automate replacing spent fuel cells with new ones from cargo bays. You can't put 20 years of fuel on an Earth rocket burning liquid oxygen, for instance; your propellant mass is too high to actually move the rocket with the thrust it's got.



Seriously, the X-Wing's exhaust should be irradiating the launch pad every time it takes off.
Which is why they use antigravity units until they're at a safe distance to kick in the sublight drive.



Hm... Maybe we just figured out where the Oh My God Particle came from.


"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." --Larry Niven

[Hamste]

and deceleration too, I suppose? Unless the word 'acceleration' covers that already.

Then the issue would be how to accelerate safely without sucking up a good amount of a human's life. Maybe if you take those elves who live up to 10k years...

Acceleration and deceleration are the same. Deceleration is just acceleration in the opposite direction you are going.

Searching it up a human can survive about 45 G of acceleration before we die (Forward or backward, side ways or up and down will kill you from not being able to get blood to the brain. This is a theoretical number as you have to be positioned perfectly and a turn will probably kill you but I will use it). The speed of light is 300 000 000 at 45 G you reach that in under 8 days. Ignoring that, it requires you to constantly accelerate for 8 days straight there is still a problem. Thanks to time slowing down relative to you the closer you reach c you will never reach light speed. As you approach it time slows and slows resulting in you never reaching it. The difference between someone who lives 70 years and 10 000 is miniscule in this situation as time it literally slowing down as you approach it. Someone better than me at this stuff can try to explain why exactly this happens as I only have a very basic understanding.

[SorenKnight]

Allow me to introduce you to the All Guardsmen Party (https://09cd64678bddc0198cca7fef0df8ce7b359fff2d.googledri ve.com/host/0B3Z9sXPTD9rpN2owNGdVWmdFWXM/agp.html), a party of Inquisitorial personnel recruited entirely from a Imperial Guard regiment. They attempt to solve the problems of the Inquisition's cloak-and-dagger work with the mindset of common foot soldiers, to often hilarious results. A lot of what they do would fit this thread, especially Twitch and Tink.

[Elxir_Breauer]

I'm currently playing a Tiefling Artificer in a Kingmaker-inspired campaign, he's going to work with the colony we're founding in order to bring the tech level up to roughly modern standards over time, then attempt to spread that tech level to the rest of the kingdom once we're established and have trade routes going back to the main kingdom. It's going to be pretty fun making refrigerators and steam engine vehicles. (Heat Metal and Chill Metal primarily).

[FocusWolf413]

(Note: if a Force-user is sensitive enough to stop Relativistic Kill Missiles, he or she can also throw Relativistic Kill Missiles.)

It depends how you define "stop."
If stopping means decelerating it to 0 m/s, then yes, they can launch the missiles.
A more likely and more efficient method of stopping the death missile is gentle redirection. A change of direction of even half a degree at long range is enough to make a missile miss a planet.

[Geordnet]

Allow me to introduce you to the All Guardsmen Party (https://09cd64678bddc0198cca7fef0df8ce7b359fff2d.googledri ve.com/host/0B3Z9sXPTD9rpN2owNGdVWmdFWXM/agp.html), a party of Inquisitorial personnel recruited entirely from a Imperial Guard regiment. They attempt to solve the problems of the Inquisition's cloak-and-dagger work with the mindset of common foot soldiers, to often hilarious results. A lot of what they do would fit this thread, especially Twitch and Tink.
Ah, yes. Thanks for reminding me of that one; I hadn't noticed the recent update yet.


It depends how you define "stop."
If stopping means decelerating it to 0 m/s, then yes, they can launch the missiles.
A more likely and more efficient method of stopping the death missile is gentle redirection. A change of direction of even half a degree at long range is enough to make a missile miss a planet.
"Gentle Redirection" isn't going to cut it. Even half a degree of deflection will take 2,600 km/s delta-v. Don't even bother flying the X-Wing, Luke, just Force Throw it at the Death Star.


I'm currently playing a Tiefling Artificer in a Kingmaker-inspired campaign, he's going to work with the colony we're founding in order to bring the tech level up to roughly modern standards over time, then attempt to spread that tech level to the rest of the kingdom once we're established and have trade routes going back to the main kingdom. It's going to be pretty fun making refrigerators and steam engine vehicles. (Heat Metal and Chill Metal primarily).
Keep a record, and tell us all the details! :smallbiggrin:

[Velaryon]

I can think of a few stories that more or less fit this topic.

First, there was the time in a Star Wars campaign (set in an alternate timeline of the Knights of the Old Republic games) where our capital ship pulverized an entire mountain range to kill one Sith Lord (in our defense, he had proven remarkably slippery in several previous encounters). When the planetary authorities became understandably concerned, my Gand negotiated a deal to purchase the entire area from the planetary government (to the tune of several million credits). To make back our lost fortune, we turned the resulting seven-mile-deep crater into a tourist resort and left one of our associated NPCs in charge of it. It generated a steady stream of income for us for the rest of the campaign.


Another Star Wars campaign with a different group, this one set during the OT, found two of our characters (my Zeltron gunslinger bounty hunter and his business partner/drug dealer Quarren crime lord) opening a casino in the Rebel Alliance base. It was frowned upon by the Rebel leadership but they didn't stop us. The game ended early due to one of the players moving to another state though, so I don't know how that would've turned out.


During a 5th edition D&D game, my Tiefling sorcerer started a shipping business to make some gold on the side while our adventures took us from one city to another. It began as a single wagon, which I loaded up based on rumors of what was in short supply at our destination. Soon it grew into a whole business with multiple wagons headed for multiple cities, which threatened to hijack the whole story in favor of the Spice and Wolf-style economics simulation I had inadvertently started. I haven't played in this game for awhile, but if I get the chance I plan to hand off the reins of the company to the NPC bard my character hired to be his personal musician so we can get back to the actual adventure.


There's also another Star Wars campaign where my Sith character is planning a takeover of the planet Thyferra by destabilizing the local government via planted riots and manufactured political scandals while his master (another PC) transforms the native alien species (that manufactures the entire galaxy's bacta supply) into his personal army via Sith alchemy. But that's a little outside the bounds of what we're looking for in this topic I think. Or at the very least it's a long story.

[TeChameleon]

I'm not sure my story is a perfect fit, but it's at least in the same general ballpark.

I've been playing a pyromaniacal wizard (okay, maybe that's a tautology, but you never know...) for more than eight years real time now, over the course of a campaign and a half, maybe a little more. Due to a four-century timeskip after the first campaign, during which I was the only player who elected to keep their PC (apparently he was hibernating in a secluded corner of the elemental plane of fire for that time), and a lot of complicated nonsense during that first campaign, I got to see a bit more of what my actions had resulted in than the average player tends to.

Aside from the usual PC shenanigans, I had my character end up buying a handful of taverns and inns and whatnot, and found a small colony/school of arcane magic users.

Brief bit of backstory: in this world, the largest of the good-aligned nations looked down rather sharply on arcane casters, courtesy of a wizard-king in the distant past who had either had a run of stupefying bad luck, been seriously incompetent, or a bit of both. My character was from the nobility (youngest son of a noble house, something like 60th in the line of succession or some such silliness), and a caster, causing a certain amount of... shall we say friction... with his family (... put it this way, when a villain was monologuing and threatened my character's family, my character attempted to fireball him before the villain had even finished his sentence), and a major goal of his was to return being a caster to the realm of respectability.

Fast forward four or five centuries (the actual length of the timeskip wavers between 350-500 years, depending on what the DM remember...), and thanks to his own actions and the members of his school ending up being a major portion in the final defense against the incarnate Orcus and his armies of undead, and the school is now the single largest institution of arcane learning in the hemisphere, with power and influence to rival some of the smaller nations. And the handful of inns and taverns I bought somehow managed to become the world's first franchise of restaurants, making my character one of the twenty richest beings in the known world.

Thing is, that's just the start of things.

With that wealth, and thanks to the DM having watched Stardust while developing the second campaign, my character has expanded into the airship industry, mainly lightning-catching (... you know, I'm not entirely sure what the electricity is even used for at this point, four plus years into the campaign..?), although I'm working on expanding into both the courier industry and the shipbuilding industry, thanks to using permanencied Enhance Vessel and a whole lotta castings of Mordenkainen's Joining to make each airship's hull into a single piece, reducing weight (no fastenings needed), drag (one streamlined piece) and making them a heck of a lot stronger.

Currently, my character (in between setting everything that annoys him on fire) is working on mass-producing Sending Stones, in an attempt to jumpstart mass telecommunications, and looking into using golems or warforged labourers to create an assembly line.

Could be sort of interesting... :smallamused:

[Elxir_Breauer]

Keep a record, and tell us all the details! :smallbiggrin:

I just might have to now, lol. For the record, the world is based loosely on Game of Thrones, with some adjustments. We're starting a colony on another continent in the southern hemisphere, just before winter.

[Geordnet]

There's also another Star Wars campaign where my Sith character is planning a takeover of the planet Thyferra by destabilizing the local government via planted riots and manufactured political scandals while his master (another PC) transforms the native alien species (that manufactures the entire galaxy's bacta supply) into his personal army via Sith alchemy. But that's a little outside the bounds of what we're looking for in this topic I think. Or at the very least it's a long story.
I don't mind. I'm here for stories, and those are hard enough to come by without being picky about them.



Due to a four-century timeskip after the first campaign, during which I was the only player who elected to keep their PC (apparently he was hibernating in a secluded corner of the elemental plane of fire for that time), and a lot of complicated nonsense during that first campaign, I got to see a bit more of what my actions had resulted in than the average player tends to.

[...]

Currently, my character (in between setting everything that annoys him on fire) is working on mass-producing Sending Stones, in an attempt to jumpstart mass telecommunications, and looking into using golems or warforged labourers to create an assembly line.

Could be sort of interesting... :smallamused:
It does sound interesting, got any session notes?


I just might have to now, lol. For the record, the world is based loosely on Game of Thrones, with some adjustments. We're starting a colony on another continent in the southern hemisphere, just before winter.
Remember, the most important part of telling a great story is having a story to tell in the first place. :smallwink:

[TeChameleon]

It does sound interesting, got any session notes?

Unfortunately not- most of my attempts at reshaping the world are happening in the background of the main campaign (which is currently revolving mostly around returning the rightful heir of the dragonborn empire to the throne, preferably via the messy and rapid death of his patricidal/fratricidal/regicidal brother, although we've gotten a bit distracted, as per the usual for PCs :smalltongue:), often just by chatting in the car (and using a phone dice roller if rolls are needed), since the DM is my usual ride. The funny part is, he's worried that I'm going to try to modernize the setting by trying to mass-produce the ancient magitek laser weaponry (... primeval war between the dwarves and the elves, apparently?) that we've found. I... don't know that he's necessarily thought much about the long-term ramifications of widespread instantaneous televisual communication on his setting... especially once it's opened to inter-planar communication, trade and diplomacy <.<

The funniest part about the whole thing is that my character is mostly doing this so that everyone will have something to distract them, and will go away and leave him alone. Being a borderline messiah-figure is a bit awkward when your character is a grumpy misanthrope :smallamused:

[Geordnet]

I... don't know that he's necessarily thought much about the long-term ramifications of widespread instantaneous televisual communication on his setting... especially once it's opened to inter-planar communication, trade and diplomacy <.<
http://images.paperbackswap.com/xl/93/7493/9780746027493.jpg
Be careful with extraplanar contact, though; you don't want your world ending up like 19th-Century China.

(Or maybe you do; it's up to you.)

[Mr Beer]

Searching it up a human can survive about 45 G of acceleration before we die (Forward or backward, side ways or up and down will kill you from not being able to get blood to the brain. This is a theoretical number as you have to be positioned perfectly and a turn will probably kill you but I will use it). The speed of light is 300 000 000 at 45 G you reach that in under 8 days. Ignoring that, it requires you to constantly accelerate for 8 days straight there is still a problem. Thanks to time slowing down relative to you the closer you reach c you will never reach light speed. As you approach it time slows and slows resulting in you never reaching it. The difference between someone who lives 70 years and 10 000 is miniscule in this situation as time it literally slowing down as you approach it. Someone better than me at this stuff can try to explain why exactly this happens as I only have a very basic understanding.

Humans can't survive 45g of sustained acceleration, my google-fu is weak but suggests something more in the order of 5g. OFC, if we are using tech capable of putting out 45g for 8 days, maybe we have better tech to help our humans.

[Geordnet]

Humans can't survive 45g of sustained acceleration, my google-fu is weak but suggests something more in the order of 5g. OFC, if we are using tech capable of putting out 45g for 8 days, maybe we have better tech to help our humans.
I think the sources concerning "sustained acceleration" mostly consider "sustained" to be three seconds to a minute, since that's the longest anyone can realistically be subjected to such g-force with modern technology (experienced by jet fighter pilots during maneuvers and astronauts during liftoff).

If you want to know how much gravity humans can sustain for days or longer, look up theories about how humans would fare on high-gravity planets. (Since a constantly accelerating reference frame is identical to a uniform gravitational field.)

(Thanks for bringing this up though, I missed this from before...)

The speed of light is 300 000 000 at 45 G you reach that in under 8 days. Ignoring that, it requires you to constantly accelerate for 8 days straight there is still a problem. Thanks to time slowing down relative to you the closer you reach c you will never reach light speed. As you approach it time slows and slows resulting in you never reaching it. The difference between someone who lives 70 years and 10 000 is miniscule in this situation as time it literally slowing down as you approach it. Someone better than me at this stuff can try to explain why exactly this happens as I only have a very basic understanding.
That's one way of looking at it, but the heart of the matter is that acceleration is not universal. The acceleration an observer on a ship would measure, α, is different from the acceleration an outside observer in an inertial reference frame (read: some random planet) would measure, a. The equation relating the two is: α=γ3a, where γ is a term called the Lorentz factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_factor) (it depends on the relative velocity of the ship and the planet, v, and approaches infinity as v approaches c).

The short explanation is that while you may experience 45g of acceleration for 8 days or more, an outside observer would measure your acceleration as gradually decreasing as you approach the speed of light. No amount of acceleration on your part will translate into enough acceleration to go faster than light relative to anyone else, while from your point of view photons are still traveling three hundred million meters per second faster than you are.

I did some math, and ended up with a complex equation to determine what a hypothetical spaceship launching from a planet's relative velocity would be if it had a constant proper acceleration (acceleration as measured by an observer on the ship, α) after a given amount of coordinate time (time as measured by an observer on the planet, t). In this specific case, with 45g for 8 days, the final velocity is .7132c. If you go for 8 days as measured on the ship (proper time, τ) instead, then the result is .7688c instead.

Bear in mind that I may (read: probably) have made some errors in this calculation, but hopefully you get the general idea (no pun intended).

[Straybow]

A duel? Then, have at it!

Probably shouldn't bite, but even arguments keep the thread bumped...

Then there's the economics. A pound of salt is 1 gp?! That's just a smidge less unreasonable than d20 salt being 5 gp per pound; at 1 gp per pound it's still twice as valuable as copper and 10 times as valuable as iron! 1 gp is more than a peasant earns in a day.
Salt is worth far more in a pre-refridgeration economy than you think. Without salt to act as a preservative, all food (with a few exceptions, like grains) has to be eaten the day its harvested, slaughtered, or caught. Without shipments of food, cities cannot exist. Without cities, civilization cannot exist. Salt is also needed as a diet supplement for livestock, and is an essential element in basic chemistry.

I'll grant it that the relative value of it and other metals is off, but that's more due to the other metals being undervalued. One pound of salt being worth more than a day's wages is actually pretty reasonable. Not so. Even before refrigeration people kept fresh foods for days in clay pots, and later glass jars, placed in cool spring water. I can go to my ancestral family farms in North Carolina and show you the spring houses they built to keep out the critters and keep in the cool air. Then there's the root cellar, where carrots, turnips, and rutebagas are stored for months. Fruit was dried and kept in pots or jars for months as well.

Second, you mistake the notion of salt having a necessary and vital place in life with "valuable like silver and gold." Only a small portion of salt was used for preservation of meat. Ancients used about 100 lb/yr per capita in an era when meat per capita was about 40-50 lb/yr, which would take about 2-3 lb of salt to preserve.

And how much was it worth? It took about a minute to flip through a half dozen sites after googling "price of salt in ancient times" to find the fabled Edict of Maximum Prices of Diocletian. (I would have directly googled "Diocletian price list," but I wanted to know how hard it was to find for those with no idea what to look for.)

Price per modius (abt 8 liters, 0.28 cu ft):

alfalfa seed.............................................. . 150
barley............................................ ............ 60
barley, cleaned.......................................... 100
beans............................................. ........... 60
beans, crushed........................................... 100
chickpeas......................................... ........... 100
flaxseed.......................................... ............ 150
hayseed........................................... ........... 30
lentils........................................... .............. 100
millet, crushed........................................... .. 100
millet, whole............................................. .. 50
oats.............................................. .............. 30
peas, crushed........................................... .... 100
peas.............................................. ............. 60
rice, cleaned........................................... ..... 200
rye............................................... .............. 60
salt.............................................. ............ 100
sesame............................................ .......... 200
wheat............................................. ........... 100

So, salt prices are comparable to other foods, neither cheap nor expensive.
Compare to meat prices, per lb (Roman pound = 326 g, 0.72 lb av):

beef.............................................. .............. 8
chicken........................................... ............. 60
fish, freshwater........................................ .... 12
. . . . . . . second quality................................... 8
fish, saltwater......................................... ...... 25
. . . . . . . second quality................................... 16
goose, fattened.......................................... ... 200
. . . . . . . not fattened..................................... 100
goat.............................................. ............... 12
lamb.............................................. .............. 12
pheasant, depending on variety................... 125-250
pork.............................................. ................ 12
sausage, depending on variety...................... 10-16

The currency unit cited is the denarius communes, or "DC"
It was originally a silver coin, but by Diocletian it was debased to about 1/20
DC = 1 bronze coin (the laureate)
exchange rate was silver = 25-100 bronze, gold = 24 silver
Note the bronze, silver, and gold coins were not the same weight.
The bronze laureate was about 10-11 g.
Gold coins (almost never debased) were 4.5 g.
Silver coins were debased, silver content was maybe half the weight of the gold (12:1 standard).

Net result:
37ish lbs of salt for about 2½ lb of bronze coins, that is 15:1 by weight.
For silver, using the lowest exchange rate, abt 1875:1 by weight.
For gold, again based on the lowest silver rate, 22500:1 by weight.



OK, salt is about 135 lb/cubic foot, so a 2½" clump is a pound (that takes 5 seconds to google, and a few clicks to calculate). So, how long does it take a miner to dig 1 pound of salt out of a salt layer to earn his 1 gp pay? About 5.8 hours, assuming he can swing a pick every 10 seconds and each pick strike releases 0.1 cm^3 of salt (rocks are hard, and salt is no exception). I can only conclude that you've never swung a pick in your life, and that you've never handled rock salt. Rocks may be hard, but rock salt splits and crushes easily. A single swing of a pick could probably dislodge a 2½" clump. Your calculation is way off, even for my example of pounding on the salt layer with a rock in your fist.

[Straybow]

We have a device that fits in your hand that can access the sum total of human knowledge.
We use it to look at pictures of cats and argue with strangers. :smallwink:

I don't know, it didn't look like he pulled any punches any time the PCs made a mistake. And he rarely let anything the PCs planned go off without a hitch.

...Honestly, the only thing that seemed shortsighted of the GM was the fountain of gold. But since it was only one of many dreams the PCs were examining, and was rolling for the location of each dreamer, he probably made it up on the spot, without knowing that it would be the one the PCs would get. In which case, it adds to the GM's credit, that he was willing to live up to his own words, and allowed the PCs to have the sort of cash flow a fountain of gold would realistically provide. Really? Ancient plutocrats had no back-up plans? They controlled bronze golems with jewels that had the "password" engraved in them so any idiot could take control of them? Hassan swung by them on a flying carpet and snatched the jewels from them, like a cartoon?

Really? The whole story of a permanent rift to... anywhere, that isn't lame? Rift redirected to the deep ethereal by a bomb? Calling up dreamscape from the ethereal to the prime? The only trouble they encountered was a few night hags??? Balloon transporting a 6500 lb aboleth with swamp gas? (You'd need 188,000 cu ft, just for the weight of the aboleth, add another 20% or so for the gasbag.) For 2000 miles? And keeping it alive?

Yes, it's all so reasonable... and that's just the highlights.

And these guys aren't so bad, ya know. They only kidnapped one child from his home. All they wanted to do was torture him to death. It was for a good cause, ya know, money. For them. And they're good, ya know, so it's good for them to have money they got by torturing an innocent child. Yes, they also tortured hundreds of other people, too. But not personally, no. They just put them in the hands of the night hags. For money.

If one actually good NPC (such as a mid-level cleric of Desna) got curious and really wanted to know what was happening, they'd be found out. Scrying is cheap and easy. Finding out that these guys (supposedly CG for most of them) were buying kidnapped people to torture them to death, they'd have a high-level, scry-and-die reception in very short order. They'd never see them coming. Or perhaps they'd be taken alive for public trial before being painfully executed, disintegrated, and scattered to the winds.

[Straybow]

It isn't fuel that matters, so much as reaction mass. As in, mass that must be shed in order to satisfy Newton's Third Law. And the engines in the Star Wars universe must be shedding it at unimaginably high speeds, in order to do the kind of things they do with less than 10% mass ratios (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_ratio).

Seriously, the X-Wing's exhaust should be irradiating the launch pad every time it takes off.

Hm... Maybe we just figured out where the Oh My God Particle came from. Ummmm, who says X-wings, or any spaceships in the Lucasverse, use Newtonian rockets?

No, they use reactionless whoosh thrusters (that's why they make a whoosh sound in outer space). They use nano-cold-fusion to control zero-point energy motors to generate power for the whoosh thrusters. It's far more efficient than useless, dirty, direct matter to energy conversion. :smallannoyed:

How else could they power a megawatt lightsaber with a power cell the size of a D battery?

[TeChameleon]

http://images.paperbackswap.com/xl/93/7493/9780746027493.jpg
Be careful with extraplanar contact, though; you don't want your world ending up like 19th-Century China.

(Or maybe you do; it's up to you.)

...

Not sure we'd end up with newspapers of any variety, since as far as I know, the printing press doesn't exist in-universe yet (and my character isn't the sort that's likely to come up with any variant of it- he's far more likely to try to create some sort of mass Amenuensis spell or something).

And as far as extraplanar contact goes, the other planes seem to be more interested in bickering than conquering the prime material, at least at this point. Well, aside from the elven kingdoms that did a trans-planar exit, stage right already! when Orcus' armies were about to roll over them. They've been getting manipulated by psychotic immortal devas and/or rakshasa in some corner of the Feywild for four centuries and are now deranged (cannibalistic?) xenophobes with giant armies of extraplanar slave-creatures who want to EXTERMINATE the prime material. Should be fun...

[Hamste]

Humans can't survive 45g of sustained acceleration, my google-fu is weak but suggests something more in the order of 5g. OFC, if we are using tech capable of putting out 45g for 8 days, maybe we have better tech to help our humans.

John Stapp showed that you could survive 46 G force (Not clear on how ok he was afterwards and it wasn't extremely long.). It certainly wouldn't be comfortable but if everything is properly supported to distribute the force to non-important parts, perfectly straight and the person was very healthy I could see people surviving in 45. Though it doesn't really matter as this is all theoretical and even at 5 g you would get to those speeds with in a lifetime easily enough.

[Geordnet]

Second, you mistake the notion of salt having a necessary and vital place in life with "valuable like silver and gold."
I'm not looking at its value relative to metals, since fantasy RPGs (read: DnD) are notorious for having way too much gold going around. I was comparing it to the value of manual labor and other necessities... In which, you have made your point. Baring the possibility of some unusual pressure increasing the price of salt (alchemy, maybe?) or significant general inflation, 1gp per pound is a bit too much.

Still, I don't think you should be calling out the GM on that. I highly doubt he did any research on the historical value of salt ahead of time; more likely, he was caught by surprise and had to come up with a number on the spot. And you yourself said its less unreasonable than the 'standard' price in d20. After that point, he merely stood by his decision.

Or would you prefer that he retcon it after a player devised a business plan around exploiting it?



I can only conclude that you've never swung a pick in your life, and that you've never handled rock salt. Rocks may be hard, but rock salt splits and crushes easily. A single swing of a pick could probably dislodge a 2½" clump. Your calculation is way off, even for my example of pounding on the salt layer with a rock in your fist.
I suppose I was a bit too conservative with that estimate, but I feel like you're missing my bigger points: that there is far more work involved in a mining operation than chipping away pure salt, and that the workforce would not be paid according to the value of what they produce.


Really? Ancient plutocrats had no back-up plans?
None that were ready to deploy within a month or two, at least; perhaps if the world hadn't ended they would've been able to do something.


They controlled bronze golems with jewels that had the "password" engraved in them so any idiot could take control of them?
There was a trick to reading it, so only someone already "in the know" could figure it out. In any case, it's better than no password at all, which is usually the default for magic items.


Hassan swung by them on a flying carpet and snatched the jewels from them, like a cartoon?
It's mid-level D&D. The monk can defy gravity, the cleric can walk on water, and the barbarian can sleep off a dozen stab wounds. Heck, the rogue could probably steal your underwear.


Really? The whole story of a permanent rift to... anywhere, that isn't lame?
Probably why it was a totally unimportant and forgotten detail of a side quest dungeon to explain where a few monsters came from.


Rift redirected to the deep ethereal by a bomb? Calling up dreamscape from the ethereal to the prime? The only trouble they encountered was a few night hags???
You just listed two other major troubles. And they're just the tip of the iceberg.


Balloon transporting a 6500 lb aboleth with swamp gas? (You'd need 188,000 cu ft, just for the weight of the aboleth, add another 20% or so for the gasbag.) For 2000 miles?
If you have a problem with fantasy airships, then this is not the setting for you.


And keeping it alive?
It takes only a handful of low-level spells to allow people to live practically anywhere, from the hottest desert to the bottom of the ocean. Why should keeping a giant fish moisturized be impossible?


And these guys aren't so bad, ya know. They only kidnapped one child from his home. All they wanted to do was torture him to death. It was for a good cause, ya know, money. For them. And they're good, ya know, so it's good for them to have money they got by torturing an innocent child. Yes, they also tortured hundreds of other people, too. But not personally, no. They just put them in the hands of the night hags. For money.
No, they're horrible people; and with the exception of the Bard, they all know that they're horrible people.


If one actually good NPC (such as a mid-level cleric of Desna) got curious and really wanted to know what was happening, they'd be found out. Scrying is cheap and easy.
So are anti-scrying measures. And 'disposing' of the curious. Not that the PCs allowed many rumors of their deeds to form in the first place.


Finding out that these guys (supposedly CG for most of them)
...Did you even read their descriptions?


Finding out that these guys were buying kidnapped people to torture them to death, they'd have a high-level, scry-and-die reception in very short order. They'd never see them coming.
Except that they were in the middle of a desert that was also a no-teleport zone the size of a nation.


Or perhaps they'd be taken alive for public trial before being painfully executed, disintegrated, and scattered to the winds.
Dozens tried.


Ummmm, who says X-wings, or any spaceships in the Lucasverse, use Newtonian rockets?
Well if they don't, then every x-wing is potential planet killer.

[Geordnet]

Not sure we'd end up with newspapers of any variety, since as far as I know, the printing press doesn't exist in-universe yet (and my character isn't the sort that's likely to come up with any variant of it- he's far more likely to try to create some sort of mass Amenuensis spell or something).
Nah, think magic Facebook.
Then watch as it devolves into 4chan...

But seriously, you need to find a good bard to be the world's first newscaster.

[Mr Beer]

John Stapp showed that you could survive 46 G force (Not clear on how ok he was afterwards and it wasn't extremely long.).

For less than a second and suffered life-long vision problems thereafter.


It certainly wouldn't be comfortable but if everything is properly supported to distribute the force to non-important parts, perfectly straight and the person was very healthy I could see people surviving in 45.

I'm confident you'd be dead in less than 5 minutes without some special equipment that doesn't currently exist. A comfortable couch and a flight suit wouldn't cut it. There is no way any human is taking 45g or anything like it for days on end.

[hifidelity2]

In a current campaign our party was without a Cleric (AD&D) so we (apart for very little healing magic - only a paladins abilities) had issues with food as we were travelling a lot and were always running out / having to stop to hunt etc

I persuaded the DM to let my Wizard research a “Dehydrate Food spell”. This turned any food items into dust. Add hot (or cold) water and it became the food again. – so cast it on a roast dinner you got a small pile of dust – add water and you got a full roast dinner etc

It also worked on liquids (wine etc)

So apart for being useful for the party I set up a couple of businesses

I sold wands of Dehydrate to people to use (Mainly armies to help their supply situation) – bring the wand back and we will swap it for a new one (fully charged) for a fee
Also the shipping business esp wine – want to move 1000 gals of wine – I can do that with a small backpack and reconstitute it at the other end

It has allowed the Character to fund a major magic school

[DM Kroft]

Haha! I didn't know people were still reading this story so many years later!

I was perusing the forums as a visitor and accidentally stumbled upon this topic. Figured I'd register to try and help answer some of the doubts, if it's not intruding too much!


Let's start with the characters. How does a 7th level human rogue get Cha 20? There's more than one thing wrong with that. He's a rogue, Cha is not going to be his highest stat. He's only gotten one ability bump, so even if he did start at 18 it would only be 19.

He put an 18 on CHA, used his ability bump and had a bonus from a magic item (can't recall which one. It's been several years now!). The main idea behind the character was one of guile, charm, and manipulation, so CHA was the logical stat of choice. He was generally pretty bad in combat (and with his horrible luck when rolling HDs, he had a ridiculously low health pool).



A cleric who brags that he doesn't heal anybody?

Yes! And this wasn't the first of his clerics like that. The very first character he ever played was also a cleric who charged the rest of the party for healing. Our current campaign -set in Planescape- has his wife playing the healer, and he's constantly perplexed as to why she's so generous about it!



Only one arcane spellcaster (the bard doesn't count), and he's multiclassed and only Sorc 4 when the exploit is well under way? How did this party survive to be 7th level? I doubt it.

It's not like we were running random encounter tables 13 times per session. Getting to 7th level with any party composition sounds perfectly reasonable to me. It all depends on the kind of story and how smart the players are about dealing with their limitations.



They survived the mummies at so low a level (cleric 4 can probly only turn one mummy, and no cure disease for the mummy rot)? The barbarian is scrambling to find a place to dump a metal box of fleshspawn-denizens, he decides the mummy room is a good place to go? At level 10 (based on the monk 6/sorc 4 reference) the barbarian, alone, doesn't even consider a squad of mummies a threat, and can safely grab them and toss them into a pit? I doubt it.

The mummies were not meant to murder the characters when they first encountered them. In fact, they ended up talking with one of them after they put a crown on its head.



Then there's the economics. A pound of salt is 1 gp?! That's just a smidge less unreasonable than d20 salt being 5 gp per pound; at 1 gp per pound it's still twice as valuable as copper and 10 times as valuable as iron! 1 gp is more than a peasant earns in a day.

A pound of salt is actually worth 5 times more in Pathfinder! I used 1gp because it's the value we used in other campaigns when salt got bought or sold.




Really? Ancient plutocrats had no back-up plans? They controlled bronze golems with jewels that had the "password" engraved in them so any idiot could take control of them? Hassan swung by them on a flying carpet and snatched the jewels from them, like a cartoon?

That's how the Aluum work. The control gems have runes etched on them and they allow whomever holds them to control the golem in a fashion similar to Dominate Person. The only difference here is that this was a master control gem, allowing the Pactmasters to order multiple aluum at the same time (regular control gems are attuned to a single aluum, though they can exert a small degree of control over others. This gem was just a more powerful version of that).



Really? The whole story of a permanent rift to... anywhere, that isn't lame?

I suppose it's a matter of taste. Being a big fan of Planescape, I'm used to including portals to other realities. In this particular case, the rift was just there to justify the big pool of salt at the bottom of the Ossirian temple (there was also a trap room underneath that was supposed to fill with salt from the rift, but they never visited it). The rift was merely there for dungeon decoration, not as an important part of the story (the temple itself wasn't essential to the story either. It was mostly set up so they could cure Jack from his absolute muteness, caused by a spoiled potion Valanar gave to him like 4-5 sessions into the campaign).



Rift redirected to the deep ethereal by a bomb? Calling up dreamscape from the ethereal to the prime?

Aye. The idea was that, since the Ethereal acts as the transitive plane between the Prime Material and the Elemental Planes, the severing of the portal left both ends connecting to the Deep Etheral rather than their original destinations, as the ancient device that made the portal happen wasn't destroyed in the process. Hence why it accidentally tapped into some of the many dreamscapes wandering around those parts of the plane.



Balloon transporting a 6500 lb aboleth with swamp gas? (You'd need 188,000 cu ft, just for the weight of the aboleth, add another 20% or so for the gasbag.)

On the one hand, it was a fantasy airship made from dinosaur skin intended to make an aboleth fly that I allowed chiefly because I thought their idea was very amusing, so absolute precision was not a factor. On the other, 188,000 cu ft is about 5,000 cubic metres, which you can fit inside a 22-metre wide balloon. A huge balloon, certainly, but we're already dealing with far more unlikely stuff.



For 2000 miles? And keeping it alive?

They kept Slimy sort of alive by constantly conjuring water. Furthermore, aboleth do not really die from dehydration, but instead enter some kind of deep slumber as giant tentacled prunes.



And these guys aren't so bad, ya know. They only kidnapped one child from his home. All they wanted to do was torture him to death. It was for a good cause, ya know, money. For them. And they're good, ya know, so it's good for them to have money they got by torturing an innocent child. Yes, they also tortured hundreds of other people, too. But not personally, no. They just put them in the hands of the night hags. For money.

Oh, they were pretty bad. Everyone constantly alignment-shifted into progressively deeper forms of evil, and suffered severe penalties for a while until they came to fully embrace their new ways. And they were completely aware of how bad they were. Some of them had their occasional bouts of guilt, mainly Vorgok and Rakhim, but there was no doubt in the players that, if their characters died for good, they would end up as crawling maggots somewhere in the Lower Planes.



If one actually good NPC (such as a mid-level cleric of Desna) got curious and really wanted to know what was happening, they'd be found out. Scrying is cheap and easy. Finding out that these guys (supposedly CG for most of them) were buying kidnapped people to torture them to death, they'd have a high-level, scry-and-die reception in very short order. They'd never see them coming. Or perhaps they'd be taken alive for public trial before being painfully executed, disintegrated, and scattered to the winds.

Many tried! The later parts of the campaign had many, many groups of avenging adventurers sent from all over the world to try and deal with them. It was a lot of fun turning the trope of "Five brave adventurers are hired by the king to stamp out evil" on its head and having the PCs be the targets rather than the heroes themselves. That's why they ended up turning their palace into a labyrinthine fortress filled to the brim with traps and monsters; they figured, if they were being besieged by adventuring parties, they might as well build their own dungeon!

And you have to consider that a lot of the plans they worked with (the story I told at /tg/ only focused on the bigger ones. It was a very long campaign, with I think more than 40 sessions of 6+ hours) were aimed at dealing with the consequences of their actions. It's why they were so desperate to keep the Prince and other investors so happy (and then kidnap said prince when things went awry), as it was the tool they had to stand against the continuous efforts of the Merchant Court and other organizations from both Katapesh and beyond to get rid of the STC. Assassination attempts against then were a constant threat, and protecting themselves from that was one of the key reasons they had to permanently hire the Brass Legion.

Managing Saltspit was more than just roleplaying SimCity (admitedly, for me that was the most entertaining part of the campaign, having them deal with the day-to-day issues of the town); it served as a shield against their ever-growing number of enemies. They were also spreading cash far and wide across the trading ports of the Inner Sea, maintaining a sizeable network of spies, informants, and hitmen precisely to make sure they weren't going to be caught pants down. Yet they still did, more than once. The orbital golem thing happened when Hassan realised they had already become the villains, so they might as well go full throttle and threaten everyone before they could threaten them.

[Straybow]

I didn't read much past the mere mention of orbital golems...

I'm the supergeek who, playing DnD for the first time in 1976 as a teenager, found the economics the most irksome part. The circles in which I played had gentlemen's agreements to neither exploit the ridiculous things as players nor punish players with the ridiculous economics as GMs.

So while using a 1 gp/lb value for salt is slightly less unreasonable than srd/pfsrd, making the rift pour it out by the ton is an entirely separate matter. The rift doesn't have to be permanently open and active to let in salt paraelementals for the original dungeon. Just because players look for a way to open the rift more doesn't mean it's possible for character of such modest level, or even at all. The GM can't think of anything worse than paraelementals coming through the rift. Just because the rift connects to the plane doesn't mean the rift is in a position to pour granulated salt to the material plane, like the valve at the bottom of a storage silo.

The fellow writing the story (DM Kroft?) says he's a "harsh GM" yet he seemingly doesn't put a clamp down on anything, even just for the sake of "no, that's just not going to happen." And if he can't figure a way for high level NPCs (or archons mentioned in the later parts of page 2 that I glanced over, and other mediaries of Good outer planes that would object to the mining of Celestial Sea, etc) to defeat these guys, he's not worth his salt (pun intended).

[Inevitability]

giant tentacled prunes.

I'm going to use that the next time I describe an aboleth.

[Straybow]

That's only for aboleth that have been airlifted by gas balloon for 2000 miles. Otherwise they wouldn't be considered pruney.

[DM Kroft]

I'm the supergeek who, playing DnD for the first time in 1976 as a teenager, found the economics the most irksome part. The circles in which I played had gentlemen's agreements to neither exploit the ridiculous things as players nor punish players with the ridiculous economics as GMs.

Their plans were never meant as an exploit; as I mentioned in the original tell of the story all those years ago, there was a lot of OOC discussion regarding the stuff they did. We've been playing together for almost two decades, so we're at that point where it's easy to know the desires and limitations of each person involved in the game, and they value the creation of a good story above individual progress of each character.

For instance, we have a tacit rule of not to interfere with other PCs story in a grave manner unless previously discussed. So situations like Rakhim's transmogrification and the final confrontation where everyone was trying to murder everyone happened because the players allowed it.

I often DM in a very sandbox manner, and I like to take a "deal with the consequences of my decisions" approach, meaning that I try to be as consistent as I can with the stuff I rule, regardless of where that takes us; and since I improvise a lot, it generally means I have to carry on with a choice I made on the fly. However, that approach works with this group because not only we've been playing together for twenty years, but also because we've been friends for thirty, so I don't have to tell them to be careful; they know I'll give them absolute freedom to choose their path even if I have a specific story in mind, and they return the favour by helping make that story happen, even among all the divergences that take place. Coupled with the knowledge that our campaigns often last at least 2 years, they often play with extremely long-term ideas in mind, and put a lot of careful thought into them outside of the game.



So while using a 1 gp/lb value for salt is slightly less unreasonable than srd/pfsrd, making the rift pour it out by the ton is an entirely separate matter. The rift doesn't have to be permanently open and active to let in salt paraelementals for the original dungeon. Just because players look for a way to open the rift more doesn't mean it's possible for character of such modest level, or even at all. The GM can't think of anything worse than paraelementals coming through the rift. Just because the rift connects to the plane doesn't mean the rift is in a position to pour granulated salt to the material plane, like the valve at the bottom of a storage silo.

True, none of those things needed to happen; there didn't have to be a rift, but there was a rift. It didn't have to permanently connect into the Negative Quasielemental Plane of Salt, but it did. The rift didn't have to be fixed to a specific point in space, thus allowing them to dig underneath it to allow the salt to flow freely, but it did. Pretty much every single thing in the story didn't have to happen.

But I made those calls, and when the PCs figured out a way to use them to further their plans in a manner that both them and myself found interesting, I stood up by that call.

For me, a big part of the fun of being the DM is in presenting players with a situation and having them surprise me with a solution I hadn't thought of before. These guys know how I DM, and I know how they play, so it creates a virtuous cycle of each part making sure the other gets the things they most enjoy. This campaign in particular took a turn for the unexpected when Hassan proposed to start mining the rift; from that point onward, it was a constant and concious attempt on their part to really push the limits on their creativity, and on my part I promised them I'd try to be as fair and consistent as I could with the world, that I would try to have them face both the rewards and consequences of their actions. And while I'm certainly not a perfect DM by any measure, I think the result was very satisfactory for all involved. It was the most fun I've ever had running a campaign.



The fellow writing the story (DM Kroft?) says he's a "harsh GM" yet he seemingly doesn't put a clamp down on anything, even just for the sake of "no, that's just not going to happen." And if he can't figure a way for high level NPCs (or archons mentioned in the later parts of page 2 that I glanced over, and other mediaries of Good outer planes that would object to the mining of Celestial Sea, etc) to defeat these guys, he's not worth his salt (pun intended).

As I said, I do not claim to be a perfect, or even a great DM. But I do think I made a constant point of having the PCs deal with the consequences; every single time they did something that could cause problem, it caused problems; the only thing that truly allowed them to survive and thrive was how ingenious they were, which is what drove me to write the story in the first place. Precisely what made the whole thing so fun for me was seeing how they managed to find an opportunity in pretty much every issue they had to confront, until they couldn't anymore and everything started crumbling down.

[Straybow]

I see. My opinion was prejudiced by the opening claim to being a "harsh GM," which to you means something quite different from what it means to me. Like I said, a harsh GM would clamp down on ridiculousness, just by rule 0 as I described. The game is too easy to break with stuff like that.

I'm also curious about the statement that your gaming group speaks Catalan, but your location says Chile. Not that it has any effect on the discussion, just curious.

[Straybow]

Finding out that these guys were buying kidnapped people to torture them to death, they'd have a high-level, scry-and-die reception in very short order. They'd never see them coming.
Except that they were in the middle of a desert that was also a no-teleport zone the size of a nation.
No, Alkenstar is in the mana wastes. None of their magic would work if Saltspit was in the zone. There are literally hundreds of people coming and going from Katapesh to Saltspit, almost none would be able to afford full time anti-scry measures except the main characters. If they did spend a huge amount of their resources buying up protection for every laborer and outhouse, that alone would attract attention. There are laborious ways to circumvent magical protections when the location is actually known.



Ummmm, who says X-wings, or any spaceships in the Lucasverse, use Newtonian rockets?
Well if they don't, then every x-wing is potential planet killer. No, just because you aren't using Newtonian (reaction mass) rockets, that doesn't mean unlimited energy and velocity is magically available. Every X-wing is capable of city killer velocities, and kinetic mass missiles would be as well (no need for a kamikaze). Orbital bombardment is a beatch.

[DM Kroft]

I see. My opinion was prejudiced by the opening claim to being a "harsh GM," which to you means something quite different from what it means to me. Like I said, a harsh GM would clamp down on ridiculousness, just by rule 0 as I described. The game is too easy to break with stuff like that.

I can understand. In my view, a harsh DM is one that doesn't pull any punches and has the PCs deal with the results of their actions, whichever they may be. Sometimes this means they will lose all their fancy gear to a rust monster because they didn't check, and others that they'll become filthy rich by striking an oportunity that the DM didn't foresee. Upholding the integrity of the story's internal paradigm, to use fancy words.


I'm also curious about the statement that your gaming group speaks Catalan, but your location says Chile. Not that it has any effect on the discussion, just curious.

Oh, not Catalan, but Castilian (coincidentally, my great-grandparents were Catalan). Castilian is how we call Spanish in places like Chile, Argentina, and parts of Spain. Technically it's the correct name, but it can be a point of severe discussion in some places, haha.