Why Am I Tossing This Game Product Aside In Disgust? Roll D20
1. Stats for 9 NPCs, no reason given why they're interesting or I couldn'tna just made them up.
2. Kobolds.
3. 2 sentences in a row explaining what a barn is.
4. Boar's Hoof Tavern described like I was going maybe have lunch there rather than, say, have a made-up person go there in a game.
5. Paragraph with backstory stretching back 5 years explaining why there's...4 medusas in a room.
6. "Greater" version of monster given stats and shit like it's a new monster.
7. Villain's business model based on casting Cone of Cold over and over.
8. Sentence "The merchants do a bustling business in olive oil, kank nectar, and the decorated pottery produced by the city’s famous potters" considered worthy of inclusion.
9. Gully dwarves.
10. Random encounter table full of giant spiders, giant rats, and skeletons
11. "Including two Wands of...".
12. Boxed text.
13. Long paragraph detailing organization and ethos of fictional institution used to explain it is identical to organization and ethos of extant and common real-life institution.
14. Towns set up to handle dungeoneers as if they were 49ers.
15. NPCs that talk like 49ers.
16, Human-animal hybrid monster accompanied by that same animal it is hybrided with like as if they met because they were next to each other in the dictionary.
17. Expectation-undermining twist replaces a thing that's cliche-because-it's-exciting with less-exciting-but-hey-not-cliche thing.
18. Villains are just some guys in robes.
19. "Any character donning a gargoyle cloak is able to fly, attack, etc. as if a gargoyle, just as did the zombies."
20. Shaman with implied sandals.
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7 comments:
Please forgive my cultural ignorance but what is a 49er?
Also - "Shaman with implied sandals." somehow this really tickles me, but I don't understand why I find it so funny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush#Forty-niners
49er is cultural shorthand for a whole lot of ripple effects from sudden wealth related to resource extraction. Read about it, it's good for you.
Today's sponsor message lacks the usual vivacious frothing. More of a resolved, sense of duty denouncement lacking in real passionate vitriol (vitriol yes, passion - not so much). Almost like the Commissar is watching. And now I've got that damn '80s tune in my head.
Wow. "I think he should be removed from the rest of humanity" presumably for a really petty and/or disingenuous reason
Well, at least he has the "curtesy" of allowing Zak to "self-eject"... :P
Anyway, some of the items on the table would not make me toss the product away. Depends on the circumstances, I guess. On the 49ers, I think I read some arguments about how D&D is more of a wild west frontier setting anyway and less of a middle age fantasy thing... *shrugs* maybe I'm just too much a wuss for not throwing things around when I'm mildly annoyed. ;)
I have done the "Gold rush type town springs up around a site where a lucky few have pulled treasure out of the ground," thing. It was born out of the question "All this treasure hunting, what does it do to the local economy?"
I don't think it was a bad thing to think about used as a limited kind of satire of the D&D, go - kill -loot style.
Gully Dwarves on the other hand, those guys suck.
1. Satire lives or dies on being clever and 40 year old jokes aren't clever
2. If a dungeon is treated as a tourist attraction where people"pull treasure out of the ground" then that sucks all the mystery and beauty out of it
Thanks for that, - web search for "49ers" just swamped me in sports-team references.
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