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Post by stevelortz on Apr 20, 2009 9:22:24 GMT -9
I was sitting in my usual corner of the Obese Dragon, chomping on an unlit roll of pipeweed, playing a solitaire game of mumbly-pegs on the plank floor with my knife when the dame walked in. She stood there silhouetted in the door while she let her eyes adjust to the tavern gloom. Everybody in the place started letting their eyes adjust to her. She was drop-dead gorgeous with fiery red hair, but the icy stare she gave back reminded the crowd of the number one house rule in the Obese Dragon, "Mind your own business!"
She sauntered over to my table.
"Are you Sir David Ettinburrow?" she asked.
"I ain't no 'Sir David.' Haven't been since they booted me from the Souterrainic Society for inflating my experience points. Have a seat, doll, you can call me 'Dirk'."
Her style warmed up and the icy stare melted.
"I know they expelled you, Dirk. I know why, also, and I know you didn't do it," she breathed out in a husky voice as she lowered her willowy form onto the bench.
That got my attention. The thing she said did too. I sat there chewing on the end of my pipeweed roll, trying to size her up.
"Now we know who I am, babe, who are you?"
"My name is..." she paused for only the briefest moment, "Red, you can call me Red."
"So, Red, how is Cromartius doing?"
"Cromartius is fine, just fine. He's happy with his experience points now."
She was lying through her teeth. She only knew what she'd heard from the town cryer.
"Look, toots, if you knew the real reason I was booted from the Souterrainic, you'd know that Cromartius ain't fine, and you'd know that EPs didn't have one sweet thing to do with it. So level with me, Red, what really brings you nosing around here looking for me?"
"You're the best Dungeon Guide there is, Dirk. We... uh... I want you to lead an expedition for me."
"Twit-herd, sweetie, I'm a twit-herd... or at least I was a twit-herd. Where to?"
"The Dungeon of No Return"
I let out a low whistle. "You sure don't ask for much, do you, babe. What's in it for me?"
"There's one particular artifact I'm interested in. Help me find it, and you get to keep all of the gold, half the jewels... and... and... ALL of the experience points!"
There she went with the experience points again.
"Look, doll, I don't know what your game is, and I don't know what you've heard about me, but I ain't no EP hound, minimaxing my way through life. Sure, the job sounds tempting, but I'm the only guy who's ever come out of the Dungeon of No Return alive, and I'm telling you, there's still a good reason to call it the Dungeon of No Return. I ain't ever going back there again. Find yourself another sucker!"
Something behind me caught her attention. Her big smoldering eyes went wide.
"Wait... No!" she cried.
Then something went thump against the back of my head, the lights went out, and all the little stirgies began to sing.
Excerpt from Twit-Herd in the Dark, a popular romance purporting to be the memoirs of Sir David "Dirk" Ettinburrow, DG
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Post by Floyd on Apr 20, 2009 10:31:52 GMT -9
I like the Casablanca Fantasy-Noir feel.
You've got me interested.
~F
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Post by stevelortz on Apr 20, 2009 10:54:29 GMT -9
I like the Casablanca Fantasy-Noir feel. You've got me interested. ~F Cool! I wanted it to sound like Bogart. I even considered calling him "Rick" at one point. Glad I was able to put it across! Thanks! Have fun! Steve
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Post by Aestelon on Apr 20, 2009 10:55:40 GMT -9
Yeah... a Casablanca film noir feel with a lead who (nearly) shares his name with a famous English naturalist. I'm assuming that's deliberate - is he a bit of a ranger or something, then?
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Post by stevelortz on Apr 20, 2009 11:03:51 GMT -9
Yeah... a Casablanca film noir feel with a lead who (nearly) shares his name with a famous English naturalist. I'm assuming that's deliberate - is he a bit of a ranger or something, then? There for awhile I couldn't remember if it was David or Richard Attenborough. That's when I was considering the nickname "Rick". Sir Lovall Thomas is named after an American, Lowell Thomas, who used to host a nature program, and his squires, Marlin and Perkins, are named after the guy who used to host Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom! Have fun! Steve
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Post by Aestelon on Apr 20, 2009 11:24:15 GMT -9
Ah, right. Yeah, David's the naturalist, Richard's his big brother, and is the actor/director/producer etc.
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Post by boromirandkermit on Apr 20, 2009 23:33:12 GMT -9
What's the stuff about experience points doing in a story? Not sure what you're trying to do there...
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Post by stevelortz on Apr 21, 2009 5:50:23 GMT -9
What's the stuff about experience points doing in a story? Not sure what you're trying to do there... Ulbinazulbia, the seat of the Empire is a city of vast antiquitiy. The current city stands on the top of a large hill that consists of the ruins of previous structures. Beneath the city, the earth is honeycombed with sewers, catacombs, mines, crypts, vaults, grottos, tunnels, burrows, barrows, rooms, galleries, conduits, cisterns, caverns and endless, endless leagues of passageways that extend to an unfathomable depth. This underground complex is known as the "Souterrain". Needless to say, having the Imperial capitol so close to, not to mention actually growing out of, such an extensive dungeon complex has posed some problems down through the centuries. Many, many impromptu and informal expeditions were organized to quell the occassional monster eruption or to go after loot, but during the reign of Empress Ursula VI, she organized a bureaucracy called the Imperial Souterrainic Society to oversee and coordinate exploratory and punitive expeditions into the Souterrain. The Empire requires that all forays into the Souterrain be led by an officially licensed Dungeon Guide. People who obtain a license are dubbed knights or ladies, and are permitted to display the initials "DG" after their names. Some Dungeon Guides are merely tour guides, leading groups of sightseers through the long tamed sections of the Souterrain. Such guides are called twit-herds. The more enterprising twit-herds hire actors to dress as monsters and attack the tourists using foam weapons. But most Dungeon Guides are hardy adventurers delving deep into the unknown, still unexplored perils of the Souterrain. The Imperial Souterrainic Society keeps a list of all officially licensed Dungeon Guides and rates them according to their experience. Shortly after the return of each expedition, the Dungeon Guide is required to file a written after-action report with the Souterrainic Society. This report also forms the basis for the user fees charged by the Empire. Based on what's contained in the after-action report, the bureaucracy awards the Dungeon Guide with a certain amount of experience points. That's why there are references to experience points in the story. The fact that the Imperial Souterrainic Society uses terminology that is exactly identical with gaming terminology is purely an accident and entirely coincidental! Have fun! Steve
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Post by Floyd on Apr 21, 2009 6:31:19 GMT -9
That's why there are references to experience points in the story. The fact that the Imperial Souterrainic Society uses terminology that is exactly identical with gaming terminology is purely an accident and entirely coincidental! Have fun! Steve And quite humorous I might add. I like puns. I used to love the Xanth series of novels...but they (for me) devolved into (nothing but) puns, play on words and double entendres. Steve, great set up for lots and lots of adventures of all different types. From political intrigue & mystery to out and out dungeon delves of every sort. A little something for everyone. I can see a great arc of storied adventures growing out of this. Like reading the excellent Wheel of Time series. But without all the braid tugging and cattiness that more than a few chapters of the later books spent with the Aes Sedai protagonists. Twit-Herd... funny. ~F
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Post by stevelortz on Apr 21, 2009 6:54:18 GMT -9
Twit-Herd... funny. ~F "Twit-herd" was a term we actually used playing D&D back in the '70s. Most of us ran stables of characters instead of just one. Each of us usually had between three and six characters available. We didn't often take them into the dungeon all at the same time, because one of the reasons for running a stable was to soften the blow when one of our characters died. Some times we would send an expedition into the dungeon just to grow characters from our stables. It might be a party of first and second levels PCs. When we did that, we would also send one of our higher level characters in with them. It was the higher level character's job to see to it that the low level characters got back out alive. The higher level character was called the "twit-herd" of the expedition! There were a lot of things back in those days that never made it into the official literature. Have fun! Steve
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Post by squirmydad on Apr 21, 2009 14:28:52 GMT -9
I guess I should remind everyone that the focus of the monster codex is not fiction, but a guidebook to use my miniature designs in Song of Gold and Darkness, and other game systems eventually.
This is much more than I had intended to allow for background or theme. The goal is a universal guide so everyone can plug these monsters into their games.
I chose "the Song of" games specifically because them emphasis is not on story telling, but on the action, which is all I really care about, miniatures, and combat. Not so much of the roleplaying.
The monster codex should reflect this, a generic guide for encounters, and a bunch of standup figures. 99% of people will probably buy the set just for the figures alone. JIM
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Post by stevelortz on Apr 21, 2009 20:48:30 GMT -9
There's no need to get too concerned about what might look like a lot of writing, Jim.
We discussed having the description for each monster take about 200 words, or 1/4 of a page. The goblin, orc and hobgoblin descriptions on the SoGD Monster Codex thread demonstrate how a 200 word description looks and sounds. For a hundred monsters, that means 20,000 words of description, half in third person and half in first person.
The three vignettes I've written are necessary to establish the voices for the three first person narrators. These three voices came to me easily, and I can't think of any more that I want to do for this project.
The three vignettes run about 2,000 words altogether, or about nine percent of the total text, or about 2.5 pages in the final product.
Games are stories. The action is simply dice-assisted story-telling. 99% of the people who buy this product will buy it for the figures. I want 100% of those people to come away from the experience thinking, "When you buy One Monk products, you sure get more than your money's worth!"
Have fun! Steve
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Post by stevelortz on Apr 22, 2009 5:21:40 GMT -9
I can see where a person might misunderstand the intent of my writing in reply #7 on this thread, the origin of the Imperial Souterrainic Society, and think "Man, is this guy going gonzo? Does he expect us to publish a whole fantasy series like, say, Wheel of Time?" No need to worry! I didn't write that piece for publication. I wrote it to answer boromirandkermit's question in a tongue in cheek, writerly way. Writing that was for me like doing an entry for the Forum HOARD, only easier. Speaking of the Forum HOARD, since this month's theme is CYBERPUNK, I was thinking about entering a version of "Q*fink", a cross between the "Q*bert" character from the arcade game of the same name and Big Daddy Roth's "Rat Fink", but my plate is too full as it is. Have fun! Steve
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Post by squirmydad on Apr 22, 2009 6:02:06 GMT -9
My concern is that your losing the intent of the monster book, it's a reference manual for using the figures in Song of Blades and Heroes games. The players don't need a story to use the monsters. I don't want to associate any of the monsters with any pre imagined world, characters or background. That would be a background sourcebook, this is a generic guide to these monsters.
The descriptions should pertain only to the uses in encounters or how to make warbands with them, but no fictional stories, this ios not the right product for that type of thing.
This is why I thought someone else, more familiar with the rules would be a better author for the monster book, I need someone who knows the game and how to fit the special abilities together to make challenging monsters.
I understand what your doing, but it's not what I want for my book. I can totally support you creating a background guidebook for your own game world ,that would be cool, and appropriate for the type writing that I think you want to do.
I hope I'm not across as cranky or anything. I can appreciate the imaginative writing, I just want to stay focused on what I want for my book. JIM
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Apr 24, 2009 15:44:03 GMT -9
I agree with this.
The more generic the better.
I do like the idea of first person accounts of the descriptions of the monsters and their ecology though. Just as long as it stays generic.
onemonkeybeau
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