Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 12 Feb 2004 to 13 Feb 2004 (#2004-40) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 14/02/2004, 19:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 6 messages totalling 337 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Adenture Scenario: The Lesser Evil (3) 2. The Web Spell 3. WotI campaign, at last! (WotI's and MoA's spoilers) (2) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 03:19:51 -0800 From: Herve Musseau Subject: Re: Adenture Scenario: The Lesser Evil > From: "Francisco V. Navarro V" > Now, the local citizens are threatened by nightly attacks of > these dark-skinned elves. Ahem, dark-skinned elves are from another setting, SE and SA are pale-skinned. And the SE are not that bad, anyway. There are many dark things lurking in the underworld, though, that can be used instead of elves. > *Second Note: Nyx would be a perfect Immortal who would advocate such a > balance of evil with a lesser evil. The humanoids or medusae could be > worshippers of Nyx, placed there by the Immortal to preserve the Entropic > ecology. Yeah, Nyx is an interesting immortal. > (a practitioner of the unstigmatized, perfectly acceptable Glantrian art of > "Necromancie Applique" or "Practical Necromancy") That would be Nécromancie Appliquée > practice of magic actually prevented the entrance of brain-eaters and yeah, brain collectors! > mindflayers... but no more. again not often used in Mystara, but that may be a fun way to incorporate them into Mystara, and use those "forgotten" modules... > devils, lawful evil fiends never before seen in the Mystaraverse! It is then > theorized that the reason that some long forgotten Entropic Immortal (or > even perhaps an Old One) assigned these demons there are to prevent the > entrance of devils into this dimension. And now a tie-in to PS, it must be cross-settings day! But you know, you might be unto something: maybe those lesser evils are indeed there to keep the greater evils of other multiverses at bay, and it can be a way for DMs who'd prefer to add elements from other settings to Mystara to have them introduced to the setting in an explainable fashion (rather than just drop them there). It even has some kind of private joke element to it, since the Old Ones can be interpreted as being the DMs, so the Old Ones who prevented the settings from meshing together are the hardcore Mystaran DMs and the PCs may overrule them (PC action rules!) and undo it. ===== ___________________________________________________________ Herve Musseau http://www.geocities.com/hmusseau/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 21:21:41 +0800 From: "Francisco V. Navarro V" Subject: Re: Adenture Scenario: The Lesser Evil Hail Mystarans! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Herve Musseau" I am honored by the response of one of our Old Ones! > Ahem, dark-skinned elves are from another setting, SE and SA are pale-skinned. > And the SE are not that bad, anyway. > There are many dark things lurking in the underworld, though, that can be used > instead of elves. And I am duly humbled by the throat-clearing coughs of our Old One! I apologize. My ignorant ideas of shadow elves come from the "Shadow Over Mystara" video game... > > *Second Note: Nyx would be a perfect Immortal who would advocate such a > > balance of evil with a lesser evil. The humanoids or medusae could be > > worshippers of Nyx, placed there by the Immortal to preserve the Entropic > > ecology. > > Yeah, Nyx is an interesting immortal. Indeed! She/He truly is! > > "Necromancie Applique" or "Practical Necromancy") > That would be Nécromancie Appliquée Gotta get me them punctuation marks on the email program! Spelling noted. > > practice of magic actually prevented the entrance of brain-eaters and > yeah, brain collectors! Ooops! Must have been struck by one! Can't get spelling right! > > mindflayers... but no more. > > again not often used in Mystara, but that may be a fun way to incorporate them > into Mystara, and use those "forgotten" modules... > > > devils, lawful evil fiends never before seen in the Mystaraverse! It is then > > theorized that the reason that some long forgotten Entropic Immortal (or > > even perhaps an Old One) assigned these demons there are to prevent the > > entrance of devils into this dimension. > > And now a tie-in to PS, it must be cross-settings day! > > But you know, you might be unto something: maybe those lesser evils are indeed > there to keep the greater evils of other multiverses at bay, and it can be a > way for DMs who'd prefer to add elements from other settings to Mystara to have > them introduced to the setting in an explainable fashion (rather than just drop > them there). It even has some kind of private joke element to it, since the Old > Ones can be interpreted as being the DMs, so the Old Ones who prevented the > settings from meshing together are the hardcore Mystaran DMs and the PCs may > overrule them (PC action rules!) and undo it. > Thank you, Herve! This is a brilliant idea of how to introduce the *alien* elements! Never thought of it that way... Kit Navarro Mystaran Speculator on a Bad Dictionary, Bad Encyclopedia Day ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 08:31:51 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: The Web Spell > > From: Dan Eustace > Date: 2004/02/12 Thu PM 11:41:22 EST > To: MYSTARA-L@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM > Subject: Re: [MYSTARA] The Web Spell > > I use a save vs. spells. Otherwise it is imbalanced. > Example: 1st level MU can web a L36 Fighter, when there are few other spells > that could even hope to stop him. Hold person gives a save, dance requires > a hit roll, power words have hp restrictions, etc. > A save was the easiest and made the most sense IMC. > I have used saves vs. Dragon Breath to avoid touching the strands and getting stuck. It still is an effective "blocker", but a 36th level fighter should have the strength to whack at its webbing and get through within a round. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 08:37:40 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Adenture Scenario: The Lesser Evil > > From: Herve Musseau > > But you know, you might be unto something: maybe those lesser evils are indeed > there to keep the greater evils of other multiverses at bay, and it can be a > way for DMs who'd prefer to add elements from other settings to Mystara to have > them introduced to the setting in an explainable fashion (rather than just drop > them there). It even has some kind of private joke element to it, since the Old > Ones can be interpreted as being the DMs, so the Old Ones who prevented the > settings from meshing together are the hardcore Mystaran DMs and the PCs may > overrule them (PC action rules!) and undo it. > > ===== I have seen this joke played out before, funny to think of, but in the end we get a whole new game that is not Mystara. But my Mystara will never be yours and yours will never be mine, I guess that is for the Old Ones to record each event repeating itself in different ways for thousands of endings, but only one begining. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 15:31:08 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Havard=20Faanes?= Subject: Re: WotI campaign, at last! (WotI's and MoA's spoilers) --- "Vinicius R. de Moraes" : > 1) Is there anything else that deserves to > be read? Wchich "history" > books, stories, maps, campaign settings? Know as much as you can about Mystara, especially the Known World. Keep in mind that you have to fill in alot in between the WotI campaign and the more you are able to design smaller adventures and tie it up to the "big picture" the better. :) > 2) I have never fully understood the TIMES > and PLACES concerned to ED'A's > Radiance study and Rheddrian Artifact as a whole: it > was a spaceship > engine, then the big implosion came, it got buried, > was found by a dragon, > who took it to its lair, was taken from it by a > Dragonslayer, and then > what? Has ED'A studied it at the Dragonslayer's > castle (I can't imagine > Etienne "working from 8 to 5" no studying the > Artifact and taking the "bus" > - teleport w/o error, actually - to and from home > everyday...)? Or has he > taken it to the Chateu to do it? What is the > relation from this to Corran? > The many references, along the adventure and the > History part of "The > Immortals' Fury", are confusing, if not > incompatible. 1)Spaceship FSS Beagle arrives on Mystara. It is destroyed, its engine turned into the artifact known as The Radience and moved to Glantri. 2)Rheddrian's Shield, another artifact made from the FSS Beagle is found by a dragon and brought to Corran. Rad/Etienne does not know about the Shield at all. He only knows about the Radience, located under Glantri City. > 3) Would it be nice to read "Castle Amber" > as well? If you have the Glantri Gaz that would be more helpful. > 4) Has radiance transformed normal zombies > (pre-existant, created out of > the Corran's bodies as well as their servants') in > Lightinig Zombies OR the > has Radiance did it all alone? If the 1st is > correct, who made them zombies > in first place? I cant really remember what made the lightning Zombies. But im pretty sure it couldnt have been the radience. Some radioactive energy must have though. But yeah, they were human first and then transformed directly into lightning zombies. They weren't simply Zombies at any stage. > 5) What has really happened to Lillian > Corran (Baron's wife, page 20, > three last lines)? She was abducted by a Vampire and later turned into one herself. She returns later in the campaign as the high priestess of Hel. > 6) Do I have to ask something special of the > players? Something like: > "Please, during character creation, if one of yuo > are Alpathians, the > others must not me Thyatians and vice-versa"? I > think trying to conduct > players like that is bad for RPGing. Anyway, would > it be an extra piece of > adventure, of healthy danger to have PCs from > countries that are in > opposing sides during the war? Or would it give tto > much of a headache, > more than fun? I think it would be preferable to have characters from the Known World, ie not Alphatia. > 7) Any other hints? Think about the ending. I really _hate_ the Day of Dread- I dont like what happened to the Alfheim elves. I dont like Clerics being allowed in Glantri. I'm not sure how I feel about Alphatia disappearing. (Although I am planning on returning it IMC) Håvard ===== *** Håvard R. Faanes havardfaa@yahoo.no www.stud.ntnu.no/~havardfa ______________________________________________________ Få den nye Yahoo! Messenger på http://no.messenger.yahoo.com/ Nye ikoner og bakgrunner, webkamera med superkvalitet og dobbelt så morsom ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 23:44:54 -0800 From: Andrew Theisen Subject: Re: WotI campaign, at last! (WotI's and MoA's spoilers) Most of the rest of these questions have already been answered, but I thought I'd give my take on this one... "Vinicius R. de Moraes" wrote:4) Has radiance transformed normal zombies (pre-existant, created out of the Corran's bodies as well as their servants') in Lightinig Zombies OR the has Radiance did it all alone? If the 1st is correct, who made them zombies in first place? The radiance is indeed responsible for transforming the corpses into the Lightning Zombies- much like a lot of campy horror films have "radioactive" zombies roaming the countryside in post-apocalyptic storylines and things. They were not previously zombies. However, for myself, I preferred to play these things as zombies, not as intelligent, self-aware zombies (as they are presented). I find the whole "opening" sequence to the WotI works a lot more interestingly (and creepily) as a mindless dungeon-crawl, except with radioactive zombies (as opposed to necromantic ones). These glowing, mindless, shambling undead hulking around and clawing at the PCs- yet proving strangely immune to the cleric's turning undead attempts (my rationale: rather than negative, entropic energies animating them, they are animated by the radiation of the shield, and thus are not "conventional" undead). Makes for a different twist, and I dunno, I've always had a soft spot for zombie movies, so this is my way of working them into a fantasy setting (as opposed to the more sci-fi conventions that they are found in movie-wise). ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 12 Feb 2004 to 13 Feb 2004 (#2004-40) ***************************************************************