Best Version of DnD?

[TheAuldGrump]

17 minutes ago, Unruly said:

 

For all you knew I could have been DEAD!

What are you, mashugana? You could get hurt running out there without your armor! Now stand up straight.

 

The Auld grump

[Pingo]

Oh, don't worry about me.  I'll just sit here, alone, forgotten, in the dark, in my little corner of the crypt.

[TheAuldGrump]

I got a lot more mileage out of the embarrassing liche than I would have from a dangerous liche....

 

But, being evil, the liche would sometimes try to... simplify... its descendant's life.... 'So, this high priest in your temple, he is causing you... problems?...' 

 

He did a lot of damage by being helpful.

 

The Auld Grump - the paladin caught on quickly, but never did realize that the first murder was done by his ancestor... he caught on only about the lesser incidents, when the liche used intimidation or bribery....

Edited May 28, 2017 by TheAuldGrump

[BlazingTornado]

4 hours ago, TheAuldGrump said:

So, play with Ares a bit - change him from being a god of slaughter to a bad guy wrestler -

 

*Clouds gather, thunder rolls and a voice rings out as the darkness parts*

Here he is, the Legend, the Myth, the one and only GOD OF WAR! Are you ready to RRRUUMMBLLE?!

*The word Rumble echoes with the thunder*

 

The Auld Grump - when a paladin in my game had a liche ancestor, I made it an embarrassing liche ancestor... 'You don't call, you don't write... of course I come find you! Have you found anybody special yet? I wouldn't mind seeing some great-great-great grandchildren....'

Well he's already got a pretty... showman-y presence I guess, as he was punting the corpses that were warped with the party and they'd just fly over the non-horizon of the Astral Plane... and grew in size, twice, as he talked with the party.

But it's less him coming back as an antagonist and more the player converting his worship AND the party owing him big for the rescue.

So how do I get that favor aspect in, without it devolving into "slaughter villagers and puppies in Ares' honor".

I was toying with maybe having him restore one of the city-states formerly ran by warrior-kings who worshipped him, that slipped into decadence and was taken over by a vile mageocracy, called Thayatis (no cookies to get what things that name references), which could at least be a "replace one evil with a slightly less evil one" kind of heroic victory if they succeed...

[TheAuldGrump]

Ares wants his name out there - no need to become Achilles: Slayer of Kittens - so, any time they have made a bloody mess - whether it is killing goblins or bugbears - he will be happy when they cry out his name, and dedicate the slaughter to him - as long as it is a dangerous encounter.

 

What they are killing does not matter, as long as they are either outnumbered (goblins) or outmatched (dragons above their CR), or both (an ogre stronghold).

 

And if one of the PCs fall, and the battle is still dedicated to the name of Ares?

 

Even better.

 

Ares was a god of battle - bravery matters. Slaughtering villagers and killing puppies only counts if you are left controlling the village afterwards, and are seen to be victorious.

 

*EDIT* In other words, sending the PCs out on suicide missions, in the name of Ares, would be perfectly acceptable.

 

*EDIT 2* For extra nastiness - any PCs killed during one of those suicide missions cannot be raised or resurrected - they are claimed as sacrifices to Ares. Or, the body gets back up when raised, but it is not the same soul in charge of it.... Turn the character into a ringer, if you can trust the player with being a double agent.

 

Minerva/Athena by contrast, was a planner of battle - of the art of war.

 

The Auld Grump

Edited May 28, 2017 by TheAuldGrump

[BlazingTornado]

Oh for sure, if the cleric doesn't start dedicating victories to Ares' name he might start being scolded in his dreams.

 

But the deal for their rescue from the Astral Plane WAS that they'd owe him one... So he's definitely coming back to collect that favor once the party gets a few more levels under their belt.

[Auberon]

It sounds like you have a plan for Ares, but if you ever want to mix things up, keep in mind that when we speak of "Greek myths and legends" what we are really saying is "Athenian myths and legends."  Between the Athenians writing stuff down and later the Romans having a thing for Athens it is predominately their version of the myths that have made it down to us today.  Greece was not a singular entity though, and which gods were in favor depended on which city state you found yourself.  Case in point, the Spartans rather liked Ares.  The very qualities the Athenians wrote about as a negative the Spartans viewed as an important component of being a warrior. In fact they considered Ares to be the model warrior.  A lot could be said about Spartan culture, but chaotic is usually not one of them.  So if you wanted to, you could shift Ares away from chaos you could go with the Spartan version.  I don't know the nature of this hymn, but it is certainly of a different flavor that his pop culture portrayals.

 

Another option would be to have Ares hand to party off to his daughter Adrestia.  Her portfolio would still provide plenty of violent options without necessarily being "evil."

 

As an amusing aside, the premise of the first God of War really only makes sense if Kratos were Athenian.  As a true Spartan he would have actually stopped by Ares' very nice temple on the way out of Sparta, probably made a sacrifice to him before the battle, and generally been OK with calling out to him in battle.

[Pingo]

To the Athenians, Ares was the god of foot soldiers, toughs, raging, and thoughtless violence.

 

The intelligent war god was Athena, god of battles, generalship, planning, logistics, and paying attention.

 

The Romans were such big fanboys of Greek culture they mangled and warped their old agricultural farmer god Mars into a militaristic clone of Ares.  The "Campus Martius" ("field of Mars") remained the major public gathering place in Rome for centuries, but it lost its original pastoral associations.  The Romans also made Mars cooler; Ares was often the butt of jokes in Greek writings.

[Auberon]

He was the butt of jokes in Athenian Greek writing.  It is highly unlikely that the Spartans would have chained down their statue of Ares so that victory could belong only to them if they thought he was a joke.  It is possible that the Athenians attempted to denigrate their rivals respected god in their versions, but I haven't really followed the scholarly side of things. 

 

At any rate, the point is that the non-Athenian versions of Greek myths and legends are generally incomplete and fragmented giving you the DM some leeway to modify the gods a bit if you like.  Well, you always have room to modify but this grants you some cover from "that player."

 

Edit: Something worth pointing out is that Athenians and Spartans had a very different type of foot soldier.  The spartans were supported by the helots, so their foot soldiers were essentially professionals.  The athenian foot soldiers were commoners that got conscripted whenever needed.  This could also have led to a differing view between the city states.

[Pingo]

It's interesting to see how much the Athenian writings dominate later understanding of the Greek gods.

 

There is fascinating information giving completely other views embedded in Greek artworks, vase paintings and coins (ye gods, the coins ...) and the like.  Writings are not the only source of information about mythology.

 

(Indeed, some of my favorite depictions of monsters come from Greek vases and coins.  There's a vase from Eleusis depicting gorgons with a known type of decorative cauldron for head.  I love that!)

 

[Auberon]

I suspect it is something similar to how Herodotus dominates our understanding of the Greco-Persian wars.  At times our only written sources are Herodotus and... Herodotus.  Historians then need to look at the archeological record and try to figure out how factual he was being and how much he was embellishing things for his audience.

 

With the myths it is likely that several different versions of a particular god are true, they simply came from traditions that were separated by 100 years and more miles than the average citizen would travel in their lifetime.  So-and-so was the daughter of Zeus over here but the daughter of Ares over there.  Those gods got around after all.

[Unruly]

Spent 10 hours playing D&D today. We ended the current DM's arc and are now ready to move on to the next one whenever we get to play next.

 

Points of note for this session were that we had 3 new people join us giving us a full party for once, lots of Rule of Cool and other rules misreadings resulting in epic stuff, random loot rolls are always a Good Idea^TM, and the vampire spawn hat.

 

First Rule of Cool, combined with what I'm pretty sure was a rules misreading that continued throughout the game, was the hasted monk getting 10 attacks in a round. We just started calling him Goku after that.

 

Next Rule of Cool was letting my dwarf drop prone and toss a lightning bolt through the legs of all my allies so that it wouldn't hit them but would fry the horde of ghouls that were climbing over each other to get at us through a narrow hallway. I rolled well and fried 20 ghouls on the spot with that one, while also seriously injuring another 10 or so. Combined with the hasted monk, we cleared out something like 40 ghouls, 10 ghasts, and a homebrewed ghast lord(legendary ghast) in 5 rounds of combat. I think they hit us less than 5 times total, because we were able to apply disadvantage at all times. After Goku's first turn we fought the rest of the combat to "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. I did a happy dance when my lightning bolt ripped through everything.

 

Further Rule of Cool was when a vampire spawn rolled 4 1's in a row, so the DM decided that he failed so hard the Negative Energy Plane opened up and swallowed him. One of his other spawn allies saw that and tried to run, only to be outpaced by the hasted monk and barbarian, who then tag-teamed to drag her off the ceiling with a grapple and onto the guillotine trap blade that the barbarian had decided to take and use as his weapon.

 

Another vampire spawn was split up the middle and worn as a hat by the guillotine wielding barbarian.

 

The DM used random loot rolls for what we found. One of those things was a decanter of endless water. We were fighting vampires. He regretted that roll immediately after it landed. He also came to regret the boots of striding and springing that he rolled, because the paladin took those and put them to excellent use in the final fight. He jumped up and divine smited the flying boss vampire for half of his health. This was followed by Goku beating the crap out of him with 10 attacks. And then the barbarian also did half his health worth of damage in a single attack. The only reason he lived was because of regeneration and legendary actions letting him try to run away.

 

I say attempted, because I recast haste on the barbarian, who then gave chase with 80ft of movement. The barbarian used both of his actions to grapple the vampire, giving Goku time to catch up and hit him with the decanter of endless water. Then the cleric finished him off with the sacred flame cantrip, which the vampire automatically failed to save against because of the grapple and the fact that he was out of legendary actions.

 

We had a blast.

Edited May 30, 2017 by Unruly

[TheAuldGrump]

15 hours ago, Pingo said:

To the Athenians, Ares was the god of foot soldiers, toughs, raging, and thoughtless violence.

 

The intelligent war god was Athena, god of battles, generalship, planning, logistics, and paying attention.

 

The Romans were such big fanboys of Greek culture they mangled and warped their old agricultural farmer god Mars into a militaristic clone of Ares.  The "Campus Martius" ("field of Mars") remained the major public gathering place in Rome for centuries, but it lost its original pastoral associations.  The Romans also made Mars cooler; Ares was often the butt of jokes in Greek writings.

It is also worth noting that when the Athenians gave the images and statuary of their male gods and the titans large *AHEM* it was not a compliment - it meant that those gods were prone to thinking with their *AHEM*.

 

It was the gods and titans shown with small *AHEM* that were being complimented - that they used the heads upon their shoulders, not the ones lower down. (Haephestus was portrayed both ways.... depending, I think, more upon the artist.)

 

The Auld Grump - because it was either *AHEM* or *HARUMPH*....

 

*EDIT* Ares was portrayed as *AHEM*, *HARUMPH* and *OH, MY*. (Yes, I stole the Oh, My From George Takei.)

Edited May 30, 2017 by TheAuldGrump

[TheAuldGrump]

Letting Jon & Julie know that there is a sale at RPGNow - the complete Known World from the old TSR BECMI D&D is $15.... All the Gazeteers and the Rules Cyclopedia.

 

Heck, I'm grabbing it.

 

The Auld Grump - I actually like Mystara a lot more than I did either Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms - almost as much as Wilderlands.

[BlazingTornado]

Mystara always appeals to me, but man does the geography of the Known World just make no sense.....

(also it suffers a bit from In Search Of Adventure sticking every single module in Karameikos... Even Rahasia with its distinct arabian flavor that'd belong more in Ylaruam)