Oh no! The worst monster!

[ABB]

Looks like the order has been attacked by the worst monster in the entire RPG universe!

The dreaded Railroading GM!

:smallbiggrin:

[Edan]

I have heard that the mysterious falling rocks have been worse, in a few cases. However, in rare cases, the falling rocks can be employed by the Train Conductor.

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/279/fallingrock2oh2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[The Extinguisher]

It's 9.81!
*runs*

I like to make my railroad split. Then reconnect head on. Explosively. :smallbiggrin:

[Liwen]

Nope, sorry but you are wrong here. The worst ennemy a character can have is BEER. Here is the story of one of my last D&D sessions : I was DM, everything was going pretty well. Half the time we were just joking about stuff, but eventually the party made it to 6th level, which, to my opinion, is the line between fairly respectable adventurers and starting to kick@$$ killing machines.

But then, to celebrate, they had to take out the god forsaken beer. And as they drank and drank and drank, they started to fall asleep, or eat their dices and even try to convince me that we should re-roll every D20 until we get a 20, because that would be more realistic, has their characters couldn't be anything else than pure perfections.

Eventually, well pretty much a second after that last suggestion, I gave up and drag them in beds. 11h00 in the morning of the next day, they waked up and felt sorry that about a good 1/3 of the time we had to play yesterday was wasted in permenantly damaging their brains.

Now make up tour choice as who would be the greastest ennemy of D&D, a railroad plot that actually leads to an intresting, yet partially restricted, story or a drunken chaotic buch of dice eaters.

[Tass]

It's 9.81!
*runs*

I like to make my railroad split. Then reconnect head on. Explosively. :smallbiggrin:

9.82

*runs faster*

[Fsi-Dib]

Beer is not your worst enemy! A poor DM always is!

If you're playing some Living campaign (Living Greyhawk for example), the worst thing you can encounter is a DM who speaks out loud all the box texts with horrible English. It hurts your ears and you don't understand anything. In addition the DM generally sucks and no one likes him.

[Trazoi]

It's 9.81!
*runs*
It depends on the altitude of the falling rock!

*runs off a cliff*

[Tempest Fennac]

People getting drunk is definitlworse. On the other hand, railroad plots sound irritating (I tend to take the stance that there should be at least a couple of ways for the players to reach an objective without the plot being restricted so that they only really have one option).

[Laurentio]

Railroads are bad. Beer is mucho pain. But I fear other crimes. Like having a DM using an house rule. Unannunced. At the third session.

Laurentio

[NikkTheTrick]

It's 9.81!
*runs*

I like to make my railroad split. Then reconnect head on. Explosively. :smallbiggrin:
Depends on altitude and location.

As for railroading, of course it is a strong monster. Given masses of trains, getting hit by them is enough to get characters in whatever conditions GM wants :smallbiggrin:

[Tempest Fennac]

The house rules may not be that bad (eg: raising the Int and Cha stats of all animals to avoid being specisist would only affect spellcasters who like to 1-shot anmals with Int reducing attacks, but deciding to limit Wizards to 2 or 3 schools at the most would have a large effect on the game, at least for the Wizard).

[Manga Shoggoth]

Depends on altitude and location.

Indeed. 9.81183 in London.

I memorised that when I was 16. Now I'm 44. Ye gods I'm sad...

[Dib]

oh for... its 9.81 wherever you go so long as you are on earth :smalltongue: gravity doesn't change :smallwink:

[Thufir]

gravity doesn't change
Yes it does.

And in my experience, beer is more an enemy of the DM than of the players (Partly because our DM hasn't quite got the hang of being vindictive to them when they act like drunken idiots)

[Dib]

yeah, when you leave earth it does :smallwink:

[Niknokitueu]

If the Earth was a perfect sphere of radially uniform density that did not rotate, then gravity would be uniform anywhere on it's surface.

The earth is not a perfect sphere. It is generally a spheroid, and has mountains on it...
It does not have radially uniform density (the crust has differing density dependant on where on earth you are).
Climbing a mountain will affect your local gravity.

The gravitational constant is not really a constant in any sense of the word. (Especially as we are continually bombarded by space dust, so the mass of the earth is continually increasing, so gravity is very very slowly increasing too...)
(Urgh - forgot extra things like centrepetal effects, and the slow but inexorable effect of the Earth slowing down, the resultant change to the spheroid shape, melting ice releasing depressed land masses, etc, etc)

The 'dread monster' of a railroad plot is not always a bad thing - when done well it can get the ball rolling when we players have missed clues. It can help us avoid the clue bat by 'guiding' our choices, it can create 'new' roleplaying opportunities, etc.

I am in a campaign at the moment where we are effectively being railroaded - we have certain things we need to do, and a pretty tight time limit in which to do them. We could decide to jump off the plot train if we wanted, but it would create far more problems than it would solve. Hence we are effectively being railroaded by our own consciences.

Have Fun!
Niknokitueu

[Manga Shoggoth]

If the Earth was a perfect sphere of radially uniform density that did not rotate, then gravity would be uniform anywhere on it's surface.

The earth is not a perfect sphere. It is generally a spheroid, and has mountains on it...
It does not have radially uniform density (the crust has differing density dependant on where on earth you are).
Climbing a mountain will affect your local gravity.

The gravitational constant is not really a constant in any sense of the word. (Especially as we are continually bombarded by space dust, so the mass of the earth is continually increasing, so gravity is very very slowly increasing too...)
(Urgh - forgot extra things like centrepetal effects, and the slow but inexorable effect of the Earth slowing down, the resultant change to the spheroid shape, melting ice releasing depressed land masses, etc, etc)

A fine summation, except the gravitational constant (G) is actually fairly, well, constant. It's numeric value is 6.67E-11.

Acceleration due to gravity/local gravitational field (g) is the thing that varies. If I still had my old data book I could have quoted the values for several major cities.

(I spent three years doing that physics degree. I might as well get some use out of it...)

[Laurentio]

The house rules may not be that bad (eg: raising the Int and Cha stats of all animals to avoid being specisist would only affect spellcasters who like to 1-shot anmals with Int reducing attacks, but deciding to limit Wizards to 2 or 3 schools at the most would have a large effect on the game, at least for the Wizard).
Problem is when the DM "remembers" to inform you of a major house rule after you made your character, and played for three session. And the house rule is suspiciously apt to cripple your character specialization, in a way that make it quite useless the least.
Worst, when I'm not the player is not a munchkin and would renounce to spoil a specialization if only asked, and instead is doomed with a character that gets the equivalent of "triple weapon specialization in farting", a nonsensical background and no further goals to pursue.

Top, the same house rule is not applied to another character in the same party, mostly because he didn't optimized it the right way and so made it useless on his own. Best of the best, I couldn't make a new character, or change the skills set (and background, and goals), because it would have made the DM sad.
But why complains? The character unesplicabily died the next session... I still wonder why he made a so stupid and suicidal move. New character.

Anyway, in the process of writing this, I remembered a worst horror. The Recurring NPC. That one. Believe me, you know him.
Do you know that NPC the is strangely similar to a old character of the DM, or his favourite comics character? The one that is always present no matter the place, the time, the amount of efforts you put in avoiding him? The one that someone has no reason to exist in the first place, like Guyver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio_Booster_Armor_Guyver) in a fantasy setting? And is Deus Ex Machina imbibed? And you are supposed to admire, and laugh at his crap humor, and be surprised when he appears, even if is so predicable that you can put a clock alarm the week before? And that is linked to every single plot hook, even your personal one, or the one you make from thin air at the last moment?
You know him? Well, the HELL WITH HIM! DAMNED NPC!

It's so strange that I started playing silly non interactive online game? It's denial (http://laurentio.myminicity.com/).

Laurentio

[Kato]

Hehe... I'm doing my physic degree, so I'll make it completely sure. The gravitational force working on an object (on earth) is determined by the gravitational constant (as mentioned about 6.67E-11 Nm²/kg² if I'm not completely wrong) multiplied with the mass of the object and the earth (here it gets critical, because of changing density and stuff) and divided by the square of the distance to the earth's mass center (to put it easy, the core). gravitational constant*mass of earth/radius of earth² is about the aforementioned 9.81m/s² for a point with about... 6300km or so from the core... not sure about the last, don't have a head for numbers.

Anyway, the worst enemy of a player is definitely a bad mood DM... a Dragon can wait for you around every corner, if he wants him to :smalltongue:

[Niknokitueu]

A fine summation, except the gravitational constant (G) is actually fairly, well, constant. It's numeric value is 6.67E-11.
D'oH! That's what you get for doing a Maths degree instead... :smalleek:
(Forgot that the gravitational constant is not the same as the statement 'constant gravity'...)


Anyway, in the process of writing this, I remembered a worst horror. The Recurring NPC.
Heh. Thankfully my GM actually allows you to kill off NPCs (if you are extremely foolish and/or lucky), but happily re-introduces any that get away...

Also he has a recurring monster: Sturm Wolf (Think big and bitey wolf). Every time a pack of these appear they are heralded by first finding a squirrel that was frightened to death...

The last time it happened was in a fairly new campaign, so we had to send our characters off to bed knowing (OOC) that they were in for a hard night...

Have Fun!
Niknokitueu

[Manga Shoggoth]

D'oH! That's what you get for doing a Maths degree instead... :smalleek:
(Forgot that the gravitational constant is not the same as the statement 'constant gravity'...)

Oooh! Maths Degree! Did you ever see the adverts for "Surplus Applied Maths kits" being sold off by [insert exam board here]? Including such useful items as "massless, frictionless pulleys...


Also he has a recurring monster: Sturm Wolf (Think big and bitey wolf). Every time a pack of these appear they are heralded by first finding a squirrel that was frightened to death...

At one point in a campaign I was involved in, the question "Is your name an anagram of Nyarlathotep" became very important...

[ABB]

So, if people don't mind me, as the OP, asking, just what the frak does gravity have to do with the railroading DM being the worst monster players can face?

Oh, I was tempted to agree that beer (or worse) would be the worst monster, but really, beer and other intoxicants are things players inflict upon themselves and should not be counted as monsters.

Railroading DMs, OTOH.....


BTW, did durkon forget how to use "Thor's might"? It "might" have come in handy.... (Yeah, yeah, I know the pun sucked, don't need you to tell me...)

[Mauve Shirt]

I have heard that the mysterious falling rocks have been worse, in a few cases. However, in rare cases, the falling rocks can be employed by the Train Conductor.

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/279/fallingrock2oh2.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

This is where gravity came from.

[lord of kobolds]

Hehe... I'm doing my physic degree, so I'll make it completely sure. The gravitational force working on an object (on earth) is determined by the gravitational constant (as mentioned about 6.67E-11 Nm²/kg² if I'm not completely wrong) multiplied with the mass of the object and the earth (here it gets critical, because of changing density and stuff) and divided by the square of the distance to the earth's mass center (to put it easy, the core). gravitational constant*mass of earth/radius of earth² is about the aforementioned 9.81m/s² for a point with about... 6300km or so from the core... not sure about the last, don't have a head for numbers.

Anyway, the worst enemy of a player is definitely a bad mood DM... a Dragon can wait for you around every corner, if he wants him to :smalltongue:

OWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW
also, the worst monster is a leeroy jenkins NPC, especially if they are plot-critical.
*shudder*

[NENAD]

Pen and paper version of the escort mission (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EscortMission), everyone's favorite part of any good video game.

[The Extinguisher]

My whole gravity thing was a subtle commentary on how it's easy to derail the GMs train.

Yeah, lets go with that. :smallcool:

[The_Hunting_Enemy]

The Giant could railroad me any day.

[Underground]

It's 9.81!
*runs*


Incorrect. :smallyuk:

Its 9.80665 m/s² :smallyuk:

Or about 9.780 m/s² at the equator to about 9.832 m/s² at the poles. :smallyuk:

Because of rotation and because of the form of the earth (it got a bulge at the equators, again because of the earth rotation).

Oh, and of course theres always local variations because theres heavier underground at some places, then at others.

Anyone got more precise numbers ? :smallannoyed:

[Laurentio]

Anyone got more precise numbers ? :smallannoyed:
Ok, you are smart and did your homeworks. Outstanding. Grats. Maybe, now, back to the thread topic?

Laurentio