Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Knight of Fools]

What NPCs?

[monk12]

What NPCs?

ba-dum *tish*

[Lovechild]

No.137 is up.

[monk12]

That's a reasonably sinister looking Dobby there.

[Mephansteras]

That's a reasonably sinister looking Dobby there.

Indeed.

[Lovechild]

No.138 is up.

[Lovechild]

No.139 is up.

[Knight of Fools]

That's hilarious.

The bad guy has been turning people into stone, so people automatically assume it's the bad guy when the players turn someone into stone.

I wish my DM let me get away with stuff like this.

[Lovechild]

No.140 is up.

[monk12]

That's actually a bit of advice I use myself. All Myths are True is such a pervasive trope that I like to mix in Scooby Doo type plots about half the time, and once in a blue moon it really is a red herring.

[IronyOwl]

See, the trouble I have with that kind of reasoning is that it's basically deciding something is less interesting when it could be more interesting. I can never quite manage to have an unreliable drunk talking about a creepy barrow without deciding there should really be Ur-Ghouls in there anyway.

[Descan]

What if it's actually full of rainbow spewing gnomes who want to give your companions cookies and quests?

[monk12]

Exactly, it's not that there isn't something interesting going on at the Old Mill, it's just that all the casually mentioned superstitions about ghosts and cider-loving apparitions are just that- superstition. So when the PCs show up loaded with flasks of Holy Water and all manner of anti-Ethereal weaponry, they are very surprised to find the evil Gnoll Army has been using the abandoned building as a base for their scouts, and the Gnolls are hardly going to let the PCs get away to warn the town!

[Knight of Fools]

You can't make it too hamfisted, though. It has to make sense that the drunk guy would reasonably conclude that the Old Mill was haunted, only to have it turn out that whatever he saw was the result of the gnolls throwing a smoke screen over their operation (Or even an actual haunting that the gnoll clerics fixed!). For example, Homeless Joe sees glowing figures outside of the Old Mill and concludes it's haunted, while it's actually the side effect of gnoll magic cast on their scouts/sentries to help them see better or even frighten intruders. Bonus points if you don't have to invent a spell to have this effect.

Radiation is not a spell, by the way.

[Kadzar]

I would love if there was a villain who used magic to make himself look like a ghost to cover up a smuggling operation, and then, when the PCs have him tied up and use Dispel Magic to reveal his identity to the town guard, he'd say, "...and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling PCs and their  mangy Dwarf."