Boom Sauce!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/us-air-force-hypersonic-glider-_n_924445.html Go to Comment

The seems more like the use of a 30 list to tell story, not by telling a story, but by looking at the characters passively...like a Robert Altman movie. This would be a better submission perhaps if you wrote it as Laird's so-in-so's estate, all adventures big and small.

As it is those, it is a useful submission if you just want to staff a 1920s country house on the fly for one of your games. Go to Comment

I don't know if this is as much of location as it is a concept for a location. The problem with getting around space has been dealt with in many ways by the different sci-fi settings: you have Asimov's FTL concept, the Warp speed/time barrier concept used in The Forbidden Planet and Star Trek, Hyperspace, the use of Drugs to fold space and many others I am sure we are all aware of. Wormhole construction has also been a conceit used by universes such as the Space Rogue galaxy. I think the idea of the Hub in an interesting one, and it might be that various galactic powers each have their own hub. A Traveller may prefer passing through the Manchi hub because
" he likes the crab cakes- as opposed to the Far Arm hub (which as any Traveller knows, offers the lost common denominator of entertainment in every price bracket)"

So while a neat idea, this reads more like pitch for Hubs rather than a description of an actual place.
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So was it the bracelet or the demon crown that made her evil?  Doesn't matter, I suppose when your character mirror mytho-historical figures the facts can kind of float.  It would be an interesting challenge for the PCs, do they save the Queens dignity? Does she deserve this?  Who the queen be once she is freed

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This started out really well....then a photosynthesising vampire......I got nothing against cliche but why does the vampire attack the living? This whole thing is just a mess,

a sunbathing monster could be fun,

people cursed to an endless state of sunstroke could be a darkly humorus bit of foreshadowing for a desert encounter

flesh eating undead sand traps are not without there uses....though wouldn't these things hate being buried...

so would these start their day walking east then around noon turn about and start heading west?

Also at least on this planet (and I will go so far as to say this universe) vitamin D is not produced by the sun and thus not absorbed by people. UV rays trigger the synthesis of viatmin D from cholestrol/sterioid precusors. Does this mean that the Soli also need a healthy diet of cholesterol?

So you got a lot potential here but no meat to it and a best this would be a minor addition to any game. . .which is fine if the idea was interesting or really tightly brought together. Go to Comment

So the plot hook for this item might start something like

"Call me Ishmaeal, when ever I get that restless meloncoly feeling, when every I feel like charging into the square and pulling every beard I encounter, I feel it quite restortive to sign up for a mining crew. It was in one such state that I took the fateful chance of signing up with a crew captained by one old and seasoned mining captain named Ahab. Blind though he was, having encountered a great silver snake of his last dig, he was still a strong looking dwarf of almost 5ft from boot to brow...."

I see why we need this in a game setting. Mining and the underdark in general, just isn't filled with enough drama or peril. When my players and I are having one of those secessions in which we are going through a detailed excavation of precious metals, I often can't find a way to induce tension. But by making every silver vein a potential death trap, the players will think twice before making another pick or hammer check.

This reminds me though


On earth silver is not found in veins generally. It is almost always associated with other metals or found in a silver nitrate ore. So is this post suggesting that silver viens are perhaps produced from the excretions of silver snakes like how the Shai-Hulud contributed to the production of melange. Perhaps mining silver would be safer if the dwarves weren't so regular with their hammer and pick strikes. Or perhaps the silver is the offspring of the silver snake, and the silver snake is just defending its children like the Horta. If only those dwarves could mind-meld.....

I also like how the snake blinds dwarves with its blinding silver orb eyes, not because it needs to....it is so quick and camoflaged that it can kill dwarf even with his blast shield down . . . but apparently just cause it can.


Seriously, I am a torn on this post. Are you trying to be silly, cause it feels silly. Is there some context to this post that I am missing?



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I was not saying that these don't make sense as magical creatures or any creature for that matter need not be based on the constraints of the world they exist. If you really stickler for logic, then base them on the constraints from which the originated. What I was saying by alluding to Star Trek, Dune, Moby Dick and "the dangerous of the deep" is that this has been done.

What I might suggest you change (if you aren't happy with the post as is)

A) You could make it a silly post...
Character #1 "Why do all those stout little men where sunglasses. . . underground."

Character #2 "They say it is because of something called silver snakes, but I really think it is because it makes em look baddass" And in that vein. . .
If were to work this into the game world....I might put silver snakes in but I would make all this stuff regarding them just myth and tall-tails. The snake is just a harmless three foot reptile who happens to have its natural habit in a valuable resource but suffers from really bad PR.

B) Why should players care?
If you envision this as a gaming resource. maybe should focus a little on character interaction with the snakes. If the goal of this creature is just to scare PCs, because the underground isn't threatening enough already then I am not sure it is effective in that area. An "instant death" underground snakes strikes me as a little over the top.
If these are actually thing you want the PCs to interact with, then perhaps the post should focus on that might implemented. If the PCs have to gather these snakes for a magical item then you either front load them with information-"they blind you, are fast and are super poisonous" this way the player can spend 20 minutes discussing how to get around that.

If you don't front the info. then the players have to go through the deadly an painful growing pains of learning about the snake hand on. Either way the player interactions with this could be more developed.

C) Another option would be to play-up the awful and unpleasent nature of being killed by a silver snake. These snakes could just be a really awful way to go, like being eaten by a flock of Procompsognathus. If you want send the slimy greedy villian to his own doom you can leave him the silver he craved but have it be full of silver snakes.

Don't worry about changing the mineral origin, maybe silver comes in veins in your world. Go to Comment

Somebody else did something like this....it was head shaped waterfall or something like that.

But I have to agree that the last idea is my favorite. I like this. Go to Comment

I have often wondered what happened a lost idea. . .

I have heard people wonder

"Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?"

Perhaps it travels through time and recruits your old roommate from the orphanage into destroying your future.

Perhaps it floats across time and space only to misunderstood by the those who find it and sparking generations of war fare, the product of which is swallowed by a small dog.

Perhaps the lost ideas become visions....more empowered versions of ourselves that start fight clubs, murder our ex-wives and encourage use to finish that short story about flying monkeys we started in high school.

In short the unrealized the piece of intellectual effort as a force in and of itself is standard in the world of fiction and in the understanding of the collective psyche. I think it may be that writers themselves must lose so many ideas or have some many ideas that despite effort are never realized that it leads the artists to champion the concept that no idea is ever lost. I also think this concept will strike home with a great many roleplayers. Alternatively the idea of possession as form of creativity is something championed by a fictional Di Vinci and the video game "dwarf fortress" . I think players would take to this also because it will be familar to them. I think your post articulates well something that people struggle with in both life and art. I think this has been an under used plot device in the roleplaying genre. Thanks for bringing it to the surface. Go to Comment

Solid stuff this character has just enough charm and depth to be interesting without being distracting or confusing. I like cleanliness and vanity as the hooks for a goblin crimminal. Go to Comment

I like this, a lot, I kind of feel like passing it a note and seeing if it likes me back

I think this could easily be adapted to a fantasy setting and the idea of the vines growing out of people is both fun and horrible. Go to Comment

I also really liked the flavor text, it gave the fun slip stream feel of this space/D&D setting. Go to Comment

First this is extremely well written (it makes me hate you) and the plot is simple and predictable in a way that will allow players to easily access it. The pillar of the community with a dark secret and the angry undead creature that needs compassion not violence to be defeated are standards of the genre. However the details (cage fights and gambling) add an extra layer of fun to an already fun plot. Overall this is an exceptional and well written submission.

Possible twist, they get the mummy to Arken, and he defeats it easily then comes after the PCs. His lifestyle of body guards and hired swords is because he is lazy and hates physical activity. Go to Comment

I used this in my last campaign, except I had few changes the Arken character was now a larger villain with his fingers in other pies besides the Tavern. Also I placed the PCs in the story at the origin of the tavern. So they were the ones there for the Mummies first rampage and they helped the tavern owner cage it. My players thought the "cage fights" were both disgusting (as characters) and amusing (as players). The imagery of the goblin's head tavern and the mummy in the floor were all well received a remembered on subsequent days. Again it was the details that made this one special, nice work and thanks. Go to Comment

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This has been so over looked, but it has always been right there. For so long the only breeds of dog gamers had were hunting, war and hell hound. While I am with Manfred in that these are too high fantasy for my taste, developing game specific dog breeds that would be endemic to the gaming universe is a great idea and a well executed post to boot. Go to Comment

I think this post if fine the way it is, why would 15 more dogs make it that much better? If you have done good ideas, isn't that enough? Do you often feel that lists are padded just to make them nice round numbers? I think the forces of convention are getting a little restrictive. Go to Comment

Sure blame the crickets! I can't see this excuse ever flying with a detailed theological and biological treatment of the the above mentioned cricket specimen.

But where the did Ziusts go? Did they get absorbed by other cultures? Did they turn into crickets?

Nice work

About the teaser
dusK till dawn

nothing hAS happened Go to Comment

It does feel a little under-done, but while adding more might the reading more enjoyable I think the idea is fully developed.  Extra points for style and the fact that I hate HATE ticks (thus I demonizing theme seems like a natural extension for me).

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I agree with Manfred and Checka, this is a useful item for a RPG campaign, I hope I remember to use it.  You have here in this write up both a spring board for a plot and an interesting item that could offer player both meta game advantages and roleplaying directions.  

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