(no subject)

And now an extraneous, minor, overlong, petty rant about more obscure game stuff.

I don't actually like Dragonlance. Thanks to TSR's attitude of this-is-a-modern-classic-equivalent-to-Tolkien while I was growing up, it took me years to realize that that weird feeling in my head wasn't minor crankiness but full-on dislike. Hate's a bit strong for a fictional series. Thanks to TSR's attitude while I was growing up, I have no idea whether I am a weirdo or preaching to the choir.

I admit to being suckered in by Larry Elmore's art - it is pretty awesome - and especially by that beautiful, beautiful, beautiful map of Xak Tsaroth. That map was more seductive than the map for freakin' Ravenloft, that's how gorgeous it was. But here's what I don't like;

• The plot twist. Morgoth and Sauron want to take over Middle Earth and once they get the place it's gonna be permanent. Much as I like hot women who also are multiheaded multicolored evil dragon-goddesses, it was sort of a disappointment to find out that all she's really after are gemstones stuck in some dude's torso, and that whole send unstoppable evil armies to bring darkness and fear across the world is only a feint.
  
  
• The comic relief. Whole races are comic relief. The kender are comic relief, the gully dwarves are comic relief, the gnomes are comic relief, Fizbin the Magnificent is comic relief, knights with gigantic droopy mustaches are comic relief, the dwarf's fake allergy to horses is comic relief, whasserface hitting bad guys with a pan is comic relief. So much of the series tries so hard to be funny that it flops.
  
  
• In related news, racism. Whole races are like the single type specimen you run into. Nowhere do you ever run into a kender who loved adventurous tales of the good Solomnaic Knights and who decided that she, too, was going to stomp around in armor fighting evil. Nowhere do you ever run into a gnome who, frustrated by the continuous malfunction of steam tech, turned to the dark faith of Takhisis. When the minotaurs are the most individually diverse non-humans out there, your AD&D campaign's got some problems...
  
  
• A weird lack of hope. I know this is going to sound weird for a good-guys-triumph series but... you have the gnomes. They make bizarre tech which doesn't work, and yet they never turn around and save the day with it. You have the kender, and their tendency to pick stuff up and be curious doesn't turn around and save the day. You have Sturm who dies bravely and it's a waste, his honor doesn't save the day; you have Flint Fireforge, and when he goes because people get old, there's no real tradeoff that Flint's age helped him save the world or whatever. You have Tanis who theoretically should be the hero in danger of falling to darkness and being redeemed, and yet he isn't very interesting. And you have Raistlin, who theoretically should be the hero in danger of falling to darkness and being redeemed, and guess what? He's eeeeevil evil evil. It does not help here that all of these kinda tank-brained wholesome folk get to be the good guys, and the smart guy's evil. The whole thing is sort of wabi-sabi through the wholesome midwestern filter.
  
  
• The ongoing adventures. Gah. I can't even track everything going on in middle-earth or Lankhmar, let alone the glut of Dragonlance everything that TSR spewed forth unto the world. It's a little like Star Wars that way, except Star Wars was mostly cool. At some point the source of things should give way to the imaginations of the fans, maybe - especially with stuff that came out of a roleplaying game.

It took me the longest time to realize this minor, stupid, pointless thing. Thank you.

Let Me Tell You About My Game, session 6

With trying to pace games, I figured that I would have some adventures which would be really compact little modules, and others which would last several game sessions.

The last time we met our paladinic heros, they'd just returned from finding an ooze cult deep in the hills, wiping it out, and finding the mind-warping journal of the cult's chief priest. The journal talked about how the priest had a religious awakening at a much older cultic site, and about how he'd been commissioned by a "Red Lady" to revive two particular people as terrifying undead as well as finding information from their brains.

The PCs resolved that they'd set out for this old ooze-temple and wipe it out, but when they returned to their home base in Baltwell, they were confronted by a half-orc who flung herself on their mercy.

This was "Grandmother Mush." Probably not her real name. If she ever had another name time and the residents of Baltwell had completely forgotten it. A large axe scar down one side of her face, and her particularly well-kept collection of weapons suggested that she didn't start out running the town's orphanage, but it was what she'd been doing for as long as anyone could remember - there are a lot of orphans in Baltwell and Grandmother Mush was pretty much the only person to protect their well-being.

Which means that when a giant construct of bone, scroll and wood burst through the orphanage wall and kidnapped a (literal!) handfull of children, Grandmother Mush handed the oldest and strongest kids all the weapons she had and went to get help from the most sympathetic people in town, the paladins.

Our heros took off at top speeds despite the rapidly falling temperature to make sure the construct's prints were still there to track. They followed the tracks deep into a much swampier part of the area, a natural moisture catchment between hills.

They were quite surprised when they were ambushed by nasty little gremlins known as pugwampis. Pugwampis aren't very tough, but they're surrounded by an aura of bad luck and with lots of cover all around and while trying to avoid a pit full of punji sticks, the paladins fought a much tougher adversary than they'd expected.

Even though the watery ground really ruined any tracking ability the characters had, it wasn't hard to figure out where the construct had gone - a small keep apparently lying on its side in the swamp. Sometime during the great war to the south between the magic-throwing countries of Nex and Geb, this place had once been a great sky-fortress sailing the skies on arcane energy, practically unassailable from the ground. What sort of mighty magic was required to bring the place crashing to the ground? Centuries later, it was just a huge ruin, but far from lifeless.

Our heros clambered into the wrecked fortress, avoiding the shards of glass from once-beautiful windows in the entry hall, and made their way down a ramp into what was once the keep's great hall - now turned so that the former floor was one high wall, and passage along the "floor" was difficult thanks to alcoves and balconies turned to big pits. As the characters explored, they noticed that someone had refurbished the interior of the great hall with a rickety ladder leading to a now-sideways door about halfway up the "wall," and a batch of worktables with constructs in various forms of repair.

As they explored they were beset by huge bone constructs - artificial giants like the ones they were chasing - and things got worse. Combat was joined by the constructs' creator, a tiefling witch.

At this point the players insisted that instead of being a silent character sniping at the characters, the villain needed a monologue. So... the tiefling introduced herself as the great Turibyala Andorat, flew into midair, cloak billowing, and promptly hit Yland with the effects of her evil eye. Most of the rest of her spells and abilities were easier to save against, so most of what she did in combat didn't hurt the characters at all. Instead, her most effective attack was summoning up hellhounds to attack the party. But as constructs and hellhounds fell before the paladins' holy might, Turibyala decided that whatever she was getting paid wasn't worth dying for, and she took off flying - literally.

The heros searched the rest of the keep. They found a magical helmet - once a possession of the keep's captain of hippogriff cavalry - which was basically one of those "nice extra" items (wearer can't fall out of saddle, can breath air freely in any environment, has feather fall several times daily). In a high, high chamber that used to be a tower, accessible easily to a flying witch but not so much to anyone else, the paladins found four of the five frightened children.

The kids were able to tell their rescuers that Turibyala talked to herself about how she'd been hired by a Red Lady to kidnap a specific child, even though being too specific wasn't possible until that batch of kids were captured. One of the boys - a 10 year old with a big, stylized eye marking on his shoulder, similar to Paiva's mark only in black where hers is golden - was handed over to Mournhorn slavers, who whisked the child off to the Citadel of Three Brothers.

So that's where the party decided to head next.

Next time; obnoxious railroading gamemaster! The Citadel of Three Brothers! And lots of monsters!