Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Carrion Crawlers Do Not Actually Want Our Women
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So, to you, this thing is just a carrion crawler, the kind of thing you'd expect to see in any old dungeon.
However, to the girls, through the magic of this finely re-imagined mini plus having not grown up with a house full of TSR crap, this is...well who the fuck knows?
What is it? How dangerous is it? Will it tentacle-rape us?
That last one honestly hadn't occurred to me. Honest. I'm so used to carrion crawlers as an essentially motiveless, quietly discreet vermin that lives in the C section of the monster manual that it would never occur to me that one might be so uncouth. But, y'know, they don't know that.
Frankly, if I was an Alternately-Limbed American I might be a little upset at the blatant bigotry that assumes that just having tentacles puts you under suspicion of being a sexual deviant. These Japanese hentai-monsters are giving the rest of the community a bad name.
Also, as a male adult performer, I roundly despise these illegal aliens for coming to our planet and taking our jobs at the very time we need them most.
In mechanical notes, you'll see I gave Frankie an intelligence roll to see if she knew some monster lore. I figure you can give people who haven't been playing that long a roll to see if they know stuff that players who have long since memorized the monster manual would know. It's fair to know stuff other people don't because you've played more, I don't think it's fair to know things other people don't just because you've read the books. Unless what they think is more interesting than the truth.
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19 comments:
I'm so behind. Guess what I'm doing on my lunch break?
Unless what they think is more interesting than the truth.
One of the other players in Trollsmyth's LL game is good for this. Apparently, he misreads the messages the DM sends him about stuff his character knows about plants, poisons, wildlife, and such fairly regularly. Now he's convinced our newest (and very new to D&D) player that bullywugs are poisonous, along with who knows what other tidbits I'm not in a position to be able to catch. New players are so much fun. ;)
"...as you run..."
"AWWWwwwwww...."
I like how much use they are getting out of that mushroom table.
I really like new players; the "first time" wonder if fun, even second hand.
Great to have a good example of adjusting the rules to your players' needs and experience.
I'm not sure if a rulebook is the completely wrong place to emphasize this, but it needs to get out there somehow, as something that's OK to do.
I'm sure octopuses are pissed. Can octopuses be pissed? If they can, I bet they are.
Not squid, though. Squid just don't give a shit about nothin'.
LOL!
I love this site (Hot Chicks who actually play D&D? You've gotta be kidding me? ^_^).
This reminds me of an 'issue' of one of my favorite web comics, "Ghastly's Ghastly Comic": http://www.ghastlycomic.com/d/20010510.html
Hmmmm... I may have to come up with an image of a Carrion Crawler and a hapless she-drow myself sometime :-)
With regards to Octopuses being pissed, I'd say very likely, they are extremely smart. I know that can be bored. Otto the Octopus has 'juggled' fellow tank mates and shorted out lights that he didn't care for.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3328480/Otto-the-octopus-wrecks-havoc.html
And Uncle Ghastly's comic, too bad it's on indefinite hiatus.
I think this was the most engaging episode yet. The filming and editing better reflected the girls' engagement with the game and the GM than previous episodes. Excellent.
It occurs to me that carrion crawlers, having multiple tentacles and the ability to paralyze with a touch, almost suggest tentacle rape. It's only the lack of intelligence that would make xeno-dillydallying less motivating than treating their captive as a protein source. Mind flayers, on the other hand, are intelligent and perverse enough to do something like that. I remember reading color text in a Dragon article that had the victim of a mind flayer attack experiencing feelings of pleasure and odd taste-like sensations. He slowly realized that the flayer was eating his brain while mind-linked to him, and broadcasting the shared experience to his cohorts as a form of entertainment. Very Hannibal Lecter. If they find that kind of thing amusing, tentacle rape would be a light aperitif -- just something to prepare the palate, as it were.
Yeeaaah... but toss rape into a campaign and I think the fun level drops significantly. In real life no one's village has ever been slaughtered by a lich, but conservative stats suggest one in six women will be raped. Personally I'd rather leave that one in the real world.
The tragedy of the Carrion Crawler; they *love* to play tag, but their newfound playmates always go still and boring. This saddens me.
Not squid, though. Squid just don't give a shit about nothin'.
Fact: giant squid can hide behind sheep. You see a single sheep, especially near water: just run!
Fact: giant squid can hide behind sheep. You see a single sheep, especially near water: just run!
There's always a 25% chance the squid is baked out of its mind and will just ignore you, though.
In fairness that carrion crawler mini is quite repulsive, compared to the DCS III-rendered fellow in the old Monster Manual...
I once chatted with a Norwegian woman who seemed oddly intrigued at the thought of being tenticle-raped by a mind flayer. Given how self-identification sometimes works over the Internat, I'm still not sure if she was serious and trying to see if the idea turned me on, or if she (or he) was messing with my head hoping to enjoy a little good old-fashioned schadenfreude.
One the one hand, I could see that a race of hyper-intelligent creatures grown from tadpoles that do the 'Wrath of Khan' thing inside a mammal's head wouldn't have sex be a very high item on their cultural totem-pole. On the other hand, depending on what creature was used to create a new mind flayer, and how much of that original creature's 'animal' brain remains after the new mind flayer is 'born' (for those who don't know how mind flayers reproduce, see the Wikipedia entry for 'Illithid'), individual mind flayers might have all kinds of odd kinks and urges.
Something to think about.
This was the first episode I watched, now I have seen them all, it is still my favorite. I recommend using this one to get D&D people introduced to the series. The players all just so into the game, emotionally, and the discussion is all D&D, like "do I have that in my inventory" and "I don't have any spells", so the game looks good. And there are lots of moments where we see people's personalities -- stuff that would only be in character for porn stars to say, and just basic coolness that makes you say "These would be really cool people to game with. What a great game."
You're also doing a great job on the cuts, it's amazing how people are learning to make Internet video these days. This is better paced than most reality shows.
I forwarded this episode to all my D&D friends, and I even put a link up to show my family, because it makes my hobby look really cool. Thanks a lot.
I'm a little leery about ANYTHING that comes out of the "C-section" of the Monster Manual...
Hey, what was the deal with the carrion crawler causing euphoria with its touch? KK and Justine loved it, and it made the monster interesting, and it worked great with the tentacle rape idea if that had been your idea, but... it's not in my Monster Manual (3.5). Did you think Mandy would like it that way, or did it have some kind of in-world justification to it, or what?
@noumenon
Yes, and goblins talking backward isn;t in the monster manual either. I throw in stuff to make it interesting--doesn't everybody?
I thought it was worth asking -- it could have been something 3.5 cut out, it could have had an in-depth "why" behind it like the backward talking did. I noted it in my "monster ideas" file already because it was a perfect fit.
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