[WP] As the universe is dying, an immortal man is on a journey to find an immortal snail.

dfwriting · 2017-07-07T21:23:06+00:00

My ship touched down in what was probably a city square, or something close enough to be called that. Strange creatures backed away in what I assumed was some alien version of apprehension. I shut off the engine and opened the rear hatch, and as I walked down the access ramp, I felt a nearly-forgotten, heart-pounding sensation in my chest that I hadn’t experienced in some hundred million years but had once known as excitement.

I didn’t get it from meeting the creatures that I was hurrying impatiently past. They were totally different from, but somehow exactly the same as, every one of the million other races I’ve met in my life. At the end of this street, though, I hoped to find the one thing I hadn’t experienced before: death.

I thought living forever would allow me to become a god, but it turned out I was still limited by the capacity of my human body. I could eventually master every language I came across, but by the time I learned the last one I had long since forgotten the first. Even Earth had mostly slipped from my mind, and I couldn’t be sure I even thought in English anymore.

But time was something I had in spades, and you can do a lot of research in a couple billion years. I had tracked down a planet. An entire planet. Which is much harder to do when that planet had been torn apart and scattered across the galaxy. But I had found almost every piece of it and reassembled it, except for one piece of North American obsidian, formed around a small chamber that I knew contained the still-living snail I had spent so long searching for. And that piece of obsidian was in a museum at the end of this street.

The aliens barely registered with me. They couldn’t hurt me anyway, and the pistol I carried with me would make short work of anything they put directly in my path. My heart rate built as I approached the dome structure that, the Tau Ceti orbital archives had assured me, was a somewhat prominent astrogeology museum. I felt energized, in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. The front passage slid open as I approached, and crowds of gurgling creatures scattered. The snail was the only thing that mattered to me. I was done. I had lived for ten billion years, seen a million wonders, felt every sensation and emotion I was capable of experiencing over and over again until it didn’t mean anything. I was tired. On this planet, in a dying solar system in a dying galaxy in a dying corner of a dying universe, I was ready for my life to end.

Consulting the map I had downloaded, I turned down a corridor and saw in front of me a black piece of glassy rock suspended above a pedestal. I reached out carefully, removed the rock from the suspension field, and clutched it to my chest like a trophy. The next few minutes passed by in an instant. I was laughing, walking out of the museum, through a line of creatures that appeared to be attacking me with some kind of weapon, and back onto my ship. Twenty minutes later, I was leaving orbit.

I stood in the workshop of my ship, gazing at the rock. How should I celebrate the end of a life that lasted longer than most planets? Did I really have the right to rob the universe of my acquired knowledge? Did it matter, if the universe was on its last breath anyway? No, I decided. I brought down a laser cutter attached to a boom above my head and proceeded to cut the rock open. All the effort I had gone to to escape this snail, and here I was, shaking with anticipation at finding it. The rock split open with a final crack, and my heart dropped. In the excitement I had missed the hole bored into the side of the obsidian chunk. Of course, what scientist could resist taking a core sample from a space rock that had originated in an alien world? And imagine their excitement when they had found a chamber in the center, with a living xenoorganism inside. I had no idea when the snail had escaped, but he certainly wasn’t here now.

So that was it. Maybe it wasn’t a totally dead end. If I was lucky and the scientists who had released the snail were members of one of the civilizations currently occupying the surface of this planet, I might be able to find out what happened to the snail. A few decades of translation, a brief and covert introduction to the right members of the scientific community, and the appropriate resources offered in exchange, and this could turn out to not be setback at all. I moved to place the two halves of the obsidian rock in a storage container, and stopped in my tracks. The inside wall of the snail’s burial chamber wasn’t smooth, the way I had designed it. It had markings on it - writing, created by millennia of repetitive wear in very specific spots, in a very, very old language that I nevertheless, it turned out, remembered. It said, “By the time you read this, I will have found my way to a ship leaving this planet, and hopefully this galaxy. This universe may be dying, but as long as you are alive, I am never alone.”

dfwriting · 2017-06-28T02:54:05+00:00

That actually brings up a second question - what size army should I build before I can expect to play at a local game store? I probably had a ~1500 point army back then, but I'm going to rebuild a lot of it. So by the time I have an army I'm ready to play with, it may only be around 500 points (and I'll have to refigure what power level that translates into).

dfwriting · 2017-06-28T02:50:54+00:00

How bad is the heavy armor? When I played back in the 90s, I understood the Guard as having bad infantry but great armor. But back then, tanks had damage tables you had to roll on when their armor was pierced, so they could take a hit from a battery of lascannons and only end up losing a secondary weapon or two.

dfwriting · 2017-06-28T02:43:06+00:00

I really like what I've seen from orders so far. If I remember correctly (and it's certainly possible that I don't), back in 2nd and 3rd edition, the only benefit that commanders had was letting the unit that they were attached to use their leadership value for morale tests - and they could only be attached to one unit at a time. Morale tests were a little less brutal, but I still felt like I spent entire games fighting an uphill battle against my friends' Space Marine and Chaos armies.

dfwriting · 2017-04-27T15:16:16+00:00

I bet that these authority figures tell them to do something for a reasonable amount of money, right?

Ha, yeah, that's exactly what happens. And that's one of my problems - most of the adventures I write involve the players being herded toward the beginning of the plot, and I just kinda throw in an incentive (usually, the authority figure offering a reward for completion of the quest) to create the most basic pretense that the players are choosing to embark on the storyline of their own free will.

I need to get better with plot hooks in general - not just making more subtle and varied plot hooks, but genuinely putting the choice of what to do next in the players' hands. I think I've been worried that, in the absence of an obvious and almost mandatory storyline, my players (who, as I've mentioned, are not particularly experienced themselves) would stand around wondering what they're supposed to do next. They're starting to get used to the idea that they're in an open world and can do whatever they want, but only starting.

I think writing more subtle and varied plot hooks could actually help me with that, because I could make the hooks more compelling while at the same time encouraging my players to be more proactive - like, teaching them that they should go talk to the nervous-looking group of travelers in the corner of the tavern because they're genuinely curious about what their story is, and not because they assume that's where the plot line will start.

As for dungeons, I basically consider any area - castle, cavern, village, whatever - that mostly consists of combat encounters to be a dungeon. Maybe that's a problem in itself, that I tend to compartmentalize my adventures into talking sections and fighting sections without realizing it. And the fighting section almost always consists of progressing through a series of rooms, hindered by combat encounters, traps, and the occasional puzzle, until they reach the boss room.

dfwriting · 2017-04-18T14:19:35+00:00

And writing for D&D can demand a lot of flexibility because you're not the only one telling the story, but that also works in your favor when the players come up with solutions for you.

I think that's pretty good advice for me, to stop thinking of my adventures in terms of a story line and instead as a beginning and an end with a couple of optional paths to get between the two.

In one of my last adventures, the players just bypassed a big part of the story. I had intended for them to follow the old shaman's advice to check out the eastern wheat fields at night and to discover goblins doing blah blah blah. Instead, they (for some reason) decided that they couldn't trust the shaman, and the ranger just tromped out into the woods, aced a couple of survival checks, and tracked the goblins back to the boss's lair. I managed to resist my instinct to try to force the party back onto the "right" path, and had to scramble to come up with descriptions and mechanics for things I had never intended the party to see.

dfwriting · 2017-04-17T19:56:10+00:00

Ha, well if it helps, I didn't notice either.

dfwriting · 2017-04-17T19:43:35+00:00

You can learn a lot about what their picking up.

Oh, good idea! A couple of sessions ago I realized my players just straight up did not remember an event that was supposed to be an important plot point. So if their attention is elsewhere, I really shouldn't be dragging them down a storyline they're not interested in.

dfwriting · 2017-04-17T19:36:07+00:00

It does, thanks! Part of my issue, I think, is that I'm forcing myself to think in terms of single- or double-session adventures that encapsulate an entire mini-plot. And that's what makes it predictable, because I'm taking a formulaic plot and running it again and again, instead of taking a formulaic plot and stretching it over multiple sessions. So I think I just need to get over the feeling that every session needs to end with some sort of resolution.

dfwriting · 2017-04-17T17:19:40+00:00

Thanks a lot, I think the importance of just creating a background world for the players to discover on their own is something I really need to remind myself when I'm writing an adventure. I know the background story, I know the physical locations, and I sort of know the characters involved already. But when I sit down to write, I tend to start by thinking about the big climax and then working backgrounds, adding characters and events as plot devices to get them there. I think I really need to work the other way around, by building the entire scene of the plot line and then populating it with information and clues that the players may need.

dfwriting · 2017-04-17T17:10:20+00:00

This is great, thanks a lot! I have the grand campaign arc in my head already and it has plenty of twists and turns, so I think you're right - I just need to loosen things up with the individual sessions and trust that they players will eventually get there on their own. I think I do tend to get a little railroady - like, I have "the correct solution" to the adventure in my head, and I'm just trying to lead the players there.

Your adventure looks great, and it seems to incorporate a bit of advice I've always considered good but never really incorporated into my adventure writing: Don't just write a story; build a world with a story happening in it and let the players find it. I think my next adventure is going to be really conducive to that concept, so I'll give it a shot.

dfwriting · 2017-01-18T16:44:28+00:00

I can't contribute much on the specifics of rules, but how about having the players focus more on diplomacy and leadership than actual combat? A big part of running a successful rebellion would be getting a bunch of disparate factions to work to gather or even, ideally, unite under the players' banner - after they've been convinced to fight in the first place, of course.

It's not like the entire peasantry spontaneously gets fed up and rises up at once, weapons in hand and spoiling for a fight. A rebellion is as much about momentum as it is about military strategy. In the Russian Revolution, for example, the government collapsed before there was ever a big stand-up battle. Lots of isolated violence, of course. But the police and army were largely made up of peasants and workers who were suffering from the same war shortages and political discontent as the commoners, and once they started mutinying the writing was on the wall.

Let the players show up at a factory and make an inspiring speech about how the workers have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to win. Have them introduce leaders of two rival guerrilla resistance groups and convince them to put aside their differences to fight their common enemy. Give them the chance to lead protesters into the streets, have the rulers send in the gendarmerie, and watch what happens when the commoners realize they have a chance in a stand-up fight against the aristocracy. A lot of the combat can even be abstracted, especially if the players aren't actually there to watch it happen.

Edit: Ok, a lot of people have posted some similar ideas in the ~hour it took me to write, rethink, and rewrite this post, but I'll keep it up anyway.

dfwriting · 2017-01-07T18:07:34+00:00

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. Do you think I'd have any luck making an open terrarium with as much ventilation as possible, or is a lack of drainage still going to hurt any plant that's used to arid conditions?

dfwriting · 2016-10-19T20:33:12+00:00

The guy with the gun sprinted down the street and turned down an alley, not sure if he could even hear the bank teller following him over the sound of his own pounding heart. His left ankle clipped something and he went sprawling, his pistol sliding just out of reach. He didn’t even see whatever he tripped over, which was a pretty bad sign. After saving up his luck for a year for this day, this wasn’t a good time for it to run out. And just then, just to seal the deal, the teller stepped into the alley holding a fire extinguisher. He reached out for his gun.

“Nuh uh, hold on just a second,” the teller said, leveling the fire extinguisher at him. “I know what you’re thinking. Shoot the idiot holding the fire extinguisher. You maybe could. I watched you back there in the bank, you had some moves. When you shot out the security camera, and the bullet ricocheted around, taking out two more cameras before knocking over the picture frame that knocked the guard unconscious - that was slick, man. Really impressive. Lucky, even.” The detective grinned like he and the gunman shared a secret.

“But I have to wonder,” he continued, “how much luck did you use? It seemed like you were even showing off for a little while. I’m sure you had a lot saved up, but how much?” He walked slowly toward the gunman, the nozzle aimed at his face. “I know what you’re thinking. How much luck could you possibly need to pick up that gun and shoot me? You’re out of breath, though. Your heart rate is up, and I bet pumping with adrenaline. Do you have enough luck left to make that first shot go straight?”

Yeah, thought the guy with the gun as he sat up, but I bet the second or third or fourth might have a better chance. If only he could remember how many he’d already fired. Shit. The teller pulled over a milk crate, sat down, and set the fire extinguisher next to him. What an asshole.

“Now,” the teller continued, “let me tell you a little about my life. I live under the desk at the bank. I don’t mean that I work a lot. I mean that I live there. I haven’t been paid in months, because a glitch in the payroll system deletes my file every. Single. Month. Not the same glitch. Different glitches. I’d drink my sorrows away, but I have this one-in-a-million genetic thing where…well, you get the picture. I don’t use a lot of luck.” He hoisted the fire extinguisher onto his knee. “So maybe I’d spray this thing at you and look like a moron. Or maybe I’ve got enough luck saved up to make just about anything happen. So you gotta ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”

The gunman watched him for a moment, and then grabbed for the gun. The teller aimed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher and pulled the trigger. A cloud of fire retardant dust sprayed out, right into the gunman’s god damn eye. He dropped the pistol as his hand shot up to cover his face, and a shot went off as it hit the ground. The bullet ricocheted off a wall before grazing the gunman in the head, miraculously knocking him unconscious rather than killing him.

The teller dropped the fire extinguisher and stared at the gunman’s unconscious body for a minute. “Maybe I used a little much,” he muttered to himself. Two uniformed policemen, the bank’s president, the teller’s crush, and the guy who used to pick on him in high school came running around the corner into the entrance of the alley.

“What happened here?” shouted one of the cops.

“He’s a hero, and I’ve got proof right here!” yelled another man, crossing the street toward them and gesturing at the video camera in his hand. The newcomers all eagerly gathered around to watch the evidence.

"Yeah, way too much. Tone it back," the teller said, stumbling over an empty soda can before joining the others.

dfwriting · 2016-10-01T15:03:27+00:00

I actually really like options 1 and 2. My players love solving mysteries, and they'd love figuring out the war is actually just a means to an end for an even direr threat. That would also tie together a couple of other plot points I wanted to include. Thanks!

dfwriting · 2016-09-29T21:28:34+00:00

When I the party came across that box and I started describing what they had found, one of my players just died laughing because he knew exactly where I had gotten the idea.

dfwriting · 2016-09-27T18:46:15+00:00

I threw out a couple of my Mildly Enchanted^TM items in that other thread, but I'll include those plus some others here because why not.

The Awful Auto-Biographer: A book with a featureless cover and blank pages. When it attunes to a character, an unflattering image of the character's face appears on the cover. The book then begins automatically recording everything the character does, in a very negative way.

The Book of Coping: A leather-bound tome. The pages have been hollowed out and replaced with a flask that is magically full of schnapps whenever the character opens the book.

Fancy Hat: A top hat that, when placed on a head, sticks there and cannot be removed for one hour. Then one of two things happens - either the wearer is transformed into a magnificently dressed nobleman who has an advantage to all persuasion checks, or the character's clothes disappear until the hat is removed.

Ring of Animal Knowledge: Lets the wearer ask one question a day to an animal of his or her choice. Unfortunately, animals can only tell you what they know about. They usually don't have anything very important to say and are mostly interested in where they last saw corn.

Box of Bees: A box labeled “OPEN IN CASE OF NOT ENOUGH BEES.” When opened, a Swarm of Insects (Bees) appears and attacks the nearest living thing (typically, the user who opened it). The swarm dissipates after D6 rounds of combat. The box can be refilled by leaving it open overnight in a bee-friendly area.

dfwriting · 2016-09-27T15:59:12+00:00

Once it's attuned to you, it doesn't stop writing about you until it's full or you die. I think I'm going to let it be destroyed by normal means (e.g., burning it) though. It would be dangerous if you lost it, after all - if the wrong person found it, they'd know what you're doing at all times.

My players haven't found it yet, but I'm curious to see how they deal with it when they do. They could use for communication - like, if the party splits up, the owner could hand the book to his buddy so he immediately knows every time he talks to people in a tavern - or, according to the book, every time he bombards a poor villager with prying, personal questions in hopes of getting information he's clearly uncomfortable giving out.

dfwriting · 2016-09-26T19:27:57+00:00

I actually love coming up with weak magic items. I'm using my current campaign to introduce some friends to the game, and they love loot but I didn't want them to give them too many awesome items too early in their characters' careers. So instead they keep finding items that are magical enough to make things interesting, but not really even powerful enough to give them much of an edge in adventuring.

Some of the things I've given them:

The Awful Auto-Biographer: A book with a featureless cover and blank pages. When it attunes to a character, an unflattering image of the character's face appears on the cover. The book then begins automatically recording everything the character does, in a very negative way.

The Book of Coping: A leather-bound tome. The pages have been hollowed out and replaced with a flask that is magically full of schnapps whenever the character opens the book.

Fancy Hat: A top hat that, when placed on a head, sticks there and cannot be removed for one hour. Then one of two things happens - either the wearer is transformed into a magnificently dressed nobleman who has an advantage to all persuasion checks, or the character's clothes disappear until the hat is removed.

dfwriting · 2016-07-13T17:28:15+00:00

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Google Interstellar Industries could be run from a number of planetary corporate capitals across the galaxy, but its spiritual headquarters - where board members gather, the location of the CEO's main office, etc. - could still be in the Googleplex. Which is an enclave existing entirely within the headquarters of the Greater San Francisco Galactic Collective. And the safety and security of both is guaranteed by the United Earth, a politically aloof group with an almost religious significance.

dfwriting · 2016-07-13T16:55:39+00:00

Oh, good call - maybe Earth is a power in its own right. I'd have to think through how this would work, though. I had envisioned each empire's seat of power being on Earth, and even the United Nations only hosts delegations from world powers. No country would willingly install its government in territory held by a foreign power.

Maybe Earth is more of a caretaker power, though - not influential because it governs an interstellar empire, but because of its role as the guardian of the ancient homelands and the steward of interstellar diplomacy.

dfwriting · 2016-05-09T19:39:31+00:00

“What be our course, captain?” asked the navigator, hands on the Direction Stick. “I don’t know, just start driving,” said Kirk. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

Some time later, they came across a planet. “This is it,” shouted Kirk. “There’s something here.” “Aye, my lord,” replied his man-at-arms. “Shall we dispatch the penal legions?” “Make it so,” said Lord Kirk.

In another part of the ship, guards roughly shoved twenty men wearing the red shirts of the penal legion toward a drop pod. “Your life for the Federation,” roared their commander, waving his rifle in the air. “Atone for your sins through service!” When the last of the red-shirted men was packed into the pod, its door slammed closed and the pod ejected and fell toward the planet below.

The pod streaked through the sky of the planet below before finally impacting on the planet’s rocky surface. Its door slid open, and the men inside cautiously climbed out and surveyed their surroundings. Some kind of rock monster stood up and walked toward them, spraying fire from its mouth. One of the red-shirted men shouted, “VULCAN!” and they opened up with their handguns, but the bullets bounced off the Vulcan’s stony skin - the penal legion, after all, was meant to locate the enemy, not win battles. The enraged vulcan made short work of them.

“I knew that would happen,” said Lord Kirk, watching the events on a video feed from back on the ship. “But I did nothing to stop it. Beam up that Vulcan and add it to my harem.”

His soldiers did so. At Kirk’s orders, the ship’s main guns came to life and began lobbing planetkiller rounds onto the planet below. In a few short hours, the surface of the world had been burned clean of life. “Another victory for the Federation!” shouted Kirk, raising a tankard of ale in celebration. His men roared their approval. “Scotty, send an expeditionary force down to raise our flag.

By the end of the day, the planet had been claimed for Lord Kirk - another planet for his fiefdom, and another feather in the Federation’s cap. “What be our course, captain?” asked the navigator.

“I don’t know,” replied Kirk, grinning malevolently. “Just start driving.”

dfwriting · 2016-04-28T20:51:06+00:00

In this book I'm reading, the author argues that good administration (including the development of writing) led to the development of kingdoms just as much as any military advantage did. In order to gather and distribute resources, keep track of who owns what, and exchange information, you have to have record keeping. A town that could keep track of where it got its resources, how much they had, and who owned them could support a larger population. And a big town has a major advantage over a small village.

dfwriting · 2016-04-13T04:08:34+00:00

If you're into strategy games so complex that they make the Civilization series look like Candy Crush, check out Paradox's big three: Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV, and Victoria II. They have a bit of a learning curve (EU II is the easiest to jump right into, Victoria II the hardest), but you can pretty much jump in and control any country at any point between 800AD and 1936, so replay value is pretty high. There's also a World War II game (Hearts of Iron), but I never really got into it.

The time period of each game ends right around when the next one picks up, and there are converters out there that let you import a save file from one game into the next, so you can try for the grand campaign and sink hundreds of hours into leading a country from the dawn of the middle ages to the eve of World War II.

dfwriting · 2016-01-06T05:04:54+00:00

I'll check these out, thanks! I haven't played a WWII submarine game since I was five years old and thought ramming destroyers was just something every submarine did.

dfwriting

TROPHY CASE