We've had some oddball concepts in our game and some of them made me think about the potential for Kender to played for more than laughs without verging into afflicted territory (the Nightstalker character from Amber and Ashes is another step in the right direction)
* We had a Kender Ranger of all things that I think was loosely based on the Legend of Zelda's Link. Aside from the oddity of wielding a HUGE sword that was enchanted for him to wield and looking like Yoda when he fought (giant jump skill), the character was played as an essentially totally good person but neither naive or especially humorous.
he even spoke of the kender's odd view about property in somewhat Vistani way "If you're not using it then you don't own it."
* We have a limit on fast talking gnomes in our games and largely any that has dealt with humans for some time has developed normal speech patterns. Merely for our sanity than anything else.
* We had a gully dwarf assassin of all things in our games who stated that Gully Dwarves were mostly uneducated and many mentally deficient because of inbreeding than being merely 'stupid.' The player did his best to establish that there was nothing funny about Gully Dwarves and it was prejudice that had destroyed their race.
Are the humor aspects irreplacable parts of the characters?
In the novels they do appear to be a bit silly or there for comic relief but they are a perfectly plyable race. Just like with any character you have to find out what motivates that character and play off that. Granted Gully Dwarves are a bit more difficult than most other races to play.
Two Words: Heck Yes!
In the novels they do appear to be a bit silly or there for comic relief but they are a perfectly plyable race. Just like with any character you have to find out what motivates that character and play off that. Granted Gully Dwarves are a bit more difficult than most other races to play.
I think that's actually the least true. Gully Dwarves are creatures that just have appalling stats and live in mire. There's nothing cultural I think necessarily about their situation.
and there's plenty of opportunities to play a NASTY Gully dwarf
I'm currently writing an article about how tinkering is a philosophy and not a class. Any class can be a tinker, as it is a mindset. I hope to finish it some day =)
I faintly remember a short story where a gnome had difficulty speaking in a gnomish way having spent too much time around humans.
I'm currently writing an article about how tinkering is a philosophy and not a class. Any class can be a tinker, as it is a mindset. I hope to finish it some day =)
Said the gnome with three years worth of paper work on his desk. ;)
Said the gnome with three years worth of paper work on his desk. ;)
You did remeber to put the new cover sheet on the TPS reports. You did get the memo.
It was fun, watching this poor 2e kender slowly go mad from grief as he lost all his friends, one by one....--so, call me a visionary :P NB
A gully dwarf assassin...! :D
Not as ludicrous as you might think. A gully dwarf can get at least to intelligence 9 without too much difficulty, and who would suspect them? A thing to also understand is that gully dwarves are often corrupted very easily because of their lack of intelligence. They are often depicted as amoral or even immoral simply because they don't have a sophisticated ethical philosophy to appeal to. It seems to very much be a matter of instant reward and gratification.
So you take a village headman. He tends to have a problem with various clerics of the gods of light. So his agent, a gully dwarf assassin, makes himself look wretched, and begs the cleric to be allowed to serve him in exchange for food. The cleric takes pity on the poor creature, and gets stabbed in his sleep for the trouble.
It would make an excellent 1st level adventure, trying to find this assassin, or it would be an excellent way to make the PC's hate the person who sent the assassin.
If you are interested in other villain ideas, Gnomes can substitute very well for cold, scientific evil. A vivisectionist. Gnomes at war with a local tribe of Kagonesti because they are poisoning the local environment. Gnomes which are selling arms to various sides. Necromancy and golem tech. All that is required is inventiveness and an ideology of "progress" untempered by human compassion or suffering. (If you think about it, the fact that gnomes are willing to accept loss of life as a necesary side effect of replacing stairs is pretty chilling).
I've said much about how Kender could be made evil without losing the kender flavour in other threads on this board (think giggling psychopath here) so I will not go into it again.
Now heroes... heroes might be a bit tricker. I think I'll devote a new post to this.
1) What do you do when players aren't funny?
2) In playing a comedic race, it is necessary to be an annoying stereotype?
These two questions are very closely related to one another. After all, most of us are not comedic geniuses and tend to imitate humour rather than create it. In popular culture, Simpsons quotes invariably find themselves woven into conversation. In dragonlance circles, we have the term "Tas-clone" for those players who use Tasselhoff as a model and seek to imitate his more outrageous movements constantly.
To this end, I think the key thing that has been forgotten by all of us is "a light touch is best". The stereotypical character traits can (and perhaps should) be an element of the character but they should not be the defining character trait.
Since the *common* image of a gully dwarf is still Raist's little offshot (Bupu?), I imagined her looking at me (similar to the illustration from my DoAT book) wielding a dagger and crying hysterically 
... I must confess that playing such a character as a NPC sounds really interesting; as a player, for me personally it would be too hard, I think... :lightbulb The more I think of it, the more I find this idea intriguing...I played a kender *in the old fashioned way* for about a year and a half *till he had a VERY BAD experience with a VERY angry Lord Soth* and I can honestly say that he was the most *vivid and funny* character I ever played in DL. (My first rpg character ever, IIRC.)
Currently, I am designing an encounter for my adventure party (all CE knights of Takhisis) that is supposed to take them to Marak Valley's treasure chests... That will be fun... (Note: Marak kender, as I see them, are small folk similar to that guy from Southpark who was fed with coffee since his birth... My kids will *LOVE* to hunt them down... :evillaugh)