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<blockquote data-quote="Deuce Traveler" data-source="post: 5942926" data-attributes="member: 34958"><p><strong>Going Legit, Round 2: Deuce Traveler vs ender_wiggin</strong></p><p></p><p>Round 2: Deuce Traveler vs ender_wiggin</p><p></p><p>Name: Going Legit</p><p></p><p>Author: Deuce Traveler</p><p></p><p>Game Engine: DnD 3.X or Pathfinder</p><p></p><p><em><strong>Ingredients:</strong></em></p><p></p><p><strong>Bundle of Straw</strong>: An item that Nine Finger’s diviner foretold would be of great importance</p><p><strong>Forlorn Cyclops</strong>: A lone cyclops guarding the dismal remains of a once great flock of two-tailed cows on Oester Island</p><p><strong>Gaudy Gangster</strong>: Jimmy ‘Nine Fingers’ Octon, a middle-aged half-orc crime boss tiring of the violence and wanting to keep his hard-won wealth</p><p><strong>Abandoned Foundry</strong>: Failed foundry purchased by Nine Fingers</p><p><strong>Powerful Suit</strong>: The court action, “The People of Sunnyvale vs Jimmy ‘Nine Fingers’ Octon”, which Nine Fingers lacks the financial means to defend against.</p><p><strong>Drum</strong>: Used to coordinate Islander attacks against the party on Oester Island.</p><p></p><p></p><p>The party is contacted by Jimmy ‘Nine Fingers’ Octon, an infamous and quite wealthy half-orc gangster who runs a lucrative smuggling business. Jimmy has grown accustomed to a lifestyle full of tailored clothes, expensive dinners and polished jewelry. He has grown soft and sees the new generation of hungry and violent criminals as a force against which he lacks the energy and means to handle. Jimmy plans to go legit, and poured some of his wealth into an abandoned foundry on the outskirts of the ritzy town of Sunnyvale. The gaudy gangster hopes to use the foundry as the basis for a high-end limited edition jewelry business, recasting himself in the process as an entrepreneur.</p><p></p><p>There are two problems. First, the abandoned foundry is not in working condition as it was built more than two centuries ago by an eccentric inventor who believed that manure from a species of two-tailed cows would be better for the foundry than importing expensive coal. There haven’t been any two-tailed cows in these parts for seventy years, and the species is considered extinct. Ranchers found their dietary needs to be too complex when compared to the single-tailed cow.</p><p></p><p>Attempts to use other kinds of manure have ended in failure, and Jimmy lacks the funds to retool the plant to function for other kinds of fuels. A diviner hired to solve the problem had a vision of an island of two-tailed cows in the direction of a constellation, and a ship carrying straw. Desperate, Jimmy hires out a sloop and crew, orders a large bundle of straw for the ship and requests the heroes guard the bundle and ship for the voyage, with the intention of them bringing some two-tailed cows back to create manure for the foundry.</p><p></p><p>The second problem is that Jimmy is not wanted by the Sunnyvale community, nor is a working foundry. Over the last few decades manufacturing and farming was steadily pushed out of this small territory, and coastal Sunnyvale became a very expensive community of financial employees and employers who were able to enjoy the long periods of sun and surf without the stench of coal or agriculture. The Sunnyvale foundry was an ivy-covered tourist attraction until Jimmy was able to show a questionable title of ownership over it. A working foundry run by an infamous mob boss would be both a distraction and a threat to property values. The community brought a powerful suit in law against Jimmy, stating that he inherited decades of back taxes that he owes to the community as the title holder. Of course Jimmy lacks the money to pay such an exorbitant amount, but believes he might be able to bribe some town officials, and threaten the rest into compliance if he can get his business up and running before the back taxes and accumulated late fees from the suit come due.</p><p></p><p>The party is hired when the straw shipment makes it into the town. This tightly packed bundle of straw is two feet thick and six feet long, and weighs five hundred pounds, though it comes in a specially made canvas sleeve with multiple handles for carrying. It has been specially treated with an ancient solution found in old agricultural books that are supposed to provide healthy vitamins for two-tailed cows. The party needs to protect the shipment for two days and two nights, while facilitating the local health inspectors’ inspection of the ship, followed by an inspection of the straw. </p><p></p><p>Because of the obvious importance of this endeavor, the local government sends in the health inspectors with the intent of hitting Jimmy with more suits in order to shut him down financially. The party must make a difficult local knowledge check and spend time at the town library in order to understand the set of regional byzantine regulations that the inspectors may choose to employ against them for the ship on the first day, and the bundle of straw on the second. Two successful checks equates to the party members anticipating the inspectors, who grudgingly give a passing grade and allow the expedition to proceed. For each failure, another suit is slapped onto Jimmy and the expedition delayed for a full day to give the party a chance to fix discrepancies before the inspectors come back again armed with more obscure requirements. Jimmy docks the party a third of his promised pay each time they fail, as he needs the money for the new legal fees incurred by their failure. If the party fails three times, Jimmy is wiped out from the suits and the adventure is over. </p><p></p><p>There are also elements within and outside of Jimmy’s organization that do not want him to leave his life of crime. They are hoping that his attempt to become a legitimate businessman fails so that he returns to the fold. There will be an attempt to destroy the treated bundle of straw each night that the expedition is waiting to deploy. These attempts are made by lackeys hired through intermediaries, as no one wants Jimmy to track down their efforts to sabotage him. Treat each of these attempts as an easy encounter, which the party should have little problem thwarting as long as they take reasonable efforts to guard the straw each night.</p><p></p><p>The crew of the sloop plans to head out the morning after the party finishes dealing with the inspectors. The sloop complement includes thirty crew members, six shady-looking porters (one of which is another hired saboteur who intends to destroy the straw if he can do so without being implicated) to transport the straw, and the party. The sloop heads towards the direction of a constellation as foretold by Jimmy’s diviner and will encounter the uncharted Oester Island on the twelfth day.</p><p></p><p>Oester Island is a circular mass frequently punctuated with large-headed statues. When they arrive onto shore, the party and deployed porters will find signs of abandoned dwellings, complete with partly cooked fish and dwindling fires. Many dwellings have a fanged face with a single large eye painted upon their surface, as an obvious symbol of worship.</p><p></p><p>The islanders scattered at the sight of the incoming ship and headed deeper into the isle and into a network of caves. The land is barren, and if the characters make a moderate nature check they will realize that the natives have been using up the surrounding grass in their cooking fires to the point that only occasional tufts can be found. The most prominent feature of the island is a single, spike-shaped mountain in its center, where there still appears heavy vegetation. Travel to the center should take two days, as the porters will have to carry the bundle of straw over treacherously sharp rocky ground. The sound of a large drum can be heard coming from the mountain and echoing across the island. The drum beat being used was an audible signal telling the islanders to flee for the cave networks. Once the party begins heading towards the center of the isle, the drum beat will noticeably change. The call for evacuation has now been changed to a call to war.</p><p></p><p>There are three island chiefs in competition with one another on the island, though they form a temporary alliance in order to expel the intruders travelling towards the mountain. The center of the island is considered sacred, as it is the residence of the island’s deity, a forlorn cyclops that only the three chiefs and their various shamans are permitted to visit by island law. The law gives the chiefs sole access to the cyclops’ two-tailed cows, and one of the only remaining sources of meat left on the resource scarce island.</p><p></p><p>The now elderly cyclops came to this island a century ago with his parents. They raised a large flock of two-tailed cows on a land abundant with trees and grass. Years afterwards, the first islanders arrived in large numbers and began to quickly use up the island resources in order to create statues in honor of the vain leaders. It was too late by the time that the three cyclops had realized that most of the trees suitable for creating large boats for transporting them off the island had been used. They attacked the islanders in an attempt to drive them off, but the humans were too numerous, though the attacks did solidify the community’s cultural fear of the giants and their isolation from them. Eventually the two parents died, leaving their offspring alone. He came into an agreement with the chiefs, offering the occasional cow in exchange for a supply of fish and some conversation to ease his loneliness. The cyclops also asked that the chiefs keep the islanders away from his grazing land, as desperate people have been pulling up grass needed by his dwindling and sickly herd. The chiefs eagerly declared the cyclops to be a deity and his grazing land to be holy land, and if anyone violated the cyclops sanctuary, they would bring ruin to the island. The party’s drive threatens their access to tasty cow.</p><p></p><p>The three chiefs and their shamans wait at the top of the mountain where they coordinate attacks upon the party using their huge drum. The islanders wear no armor and use inferior stone spears, and are little threat to armored veterans. Therefore they will attack en masse, trying to overwhelm the party. Treat them as a swarm of humans. The chiefs will have the attacks come every few hours in an attempt to deprive the party and porters of rest, hoping that the combination of exhaustion and swarm attacks eventually wipes them out. If the party retreats back towards the ship, they will be allowed to flee unmolested. If the party makes it to the cyclops or can somehow find a way to destroy the drum, the attacks will also cease as the chiefs accept their loss and decide it is time to parlay. The cyclops can be understood as he speaks a rough dialect of common, though the islanders speak a foreign tongue and can only be understood by gestures or magical means.</p><p></p><p>The cyclops is eager for company and is willing to barter with his fourteen remaining cows. He will part with half of the entire herd for transportation back to land if the party can bring a boat large enough for his herd and him, an outcome that is probably unlikely in the short term, and would likely reignite the island chiefs to violence. If the party was able to bring the bundle of straw, the relieved cyclops parts with two of the herd, a male and female, and thanks the party for saving his flock with the food. If they have any other objects that would be of value to a lone giant stuck on an island, he may part with a single cow. He also tries to make a trade agreement for manure shipments in exchange for continued imports of straw and news of the outside. If the party agrees it would be enough to solve Jimmy’s fuel crisis, but they will also have to deal with the islanders who place themselves as intermediaries. If the party deals with the chiefs, the chiefs ask for a shipment of metal weapons with each trade ship, as each chief wants to settle their overpopulation problem through a war each believes he would win. If the party decides to take the unorthodox decision to negotiate separately with the regular islanders, they will find that the islanders will be willing to ignore their chiefs’ calls to war if they could receive goods that would allow them to fish for food, such as metal hooks, wood for boats and fishing line. Finally, the party can choose to kill the cyclops, take four cows that would fit on the sloop and which would provide a bare minimum amount of fuel for the foundry, and fight their way off the island. Their decisions will dictate the islanders’ ultimate fate.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Deuce Traveler, post: 5942926, member: 34958"] [b]Going Legit, Round 2: Deuce Traveler vs ender_wiggin[/b] Round 2: Deuce Traveler vs ender_wiggin Name: Going Legit Author: Deuce Traveler Game Engine: DnD 3.X or Pathfinder [i][b]Ingredients:[/b][/i] [b]Bundle of Straw[/b]: An item that Nine Finger’s diviner foretold would be of great importance [b]Forlorn Cyclops[/b]: A lone cyclops guarding the dismal remains of a once great flock of two-tailed cows on Oester Island [b]Gaudy Gangster[/b]: Jimmy ‘Nine Fingers’ Octon, a middle-aged half-orc crime boss tiring of the violence and wanting to keep his hard-won wealth [b]Abandoned Foundry[/b]: Failed foundry purchased by Nine Fingers [b]Powerful Suit[/b]: The court action, “The People of Sunnyvale vs Jimmy ‘Nine Fingers’ Octon”, which Nine Fingers lacks the financial means to defend against. [b]Drum[/b]: Used to coordinate Islander attacks against the party on Oester Island. The party is contacted by Jimmy ‘Nine Fingers’ Octon, an infamous and quite wealthy half-orc gangster who runs a lucrative smuggling business. Jimmy has grown accustomed to a lifestyle full of tailored clothes, expensive dinners and polished jewelry. He has grown soft and sees the new generation of hungry and violent criminals as a force against which he lacks the energy and means to handle. Jimmy plans to go legit, and poured some of his wealth into an abandoned foundry on the outskirts of the ritzy town of Sunnyvale. The gaudy gangster hopes to use the foundry as the basis for a high-end limited edition jewelry business, recasting himself in the process as an entrepreneur. There are two problems. First, the abandoned foundry is not in working condition as it was built more than two centuries ago by an eccentric inventor who believed that manure from a species of two-tailed cows would be better for the foundry than importing expensive coal. There haven’t been any two-tailed cows in these parts for seventy years, and the species is considered extinct. Ranchers found their dietary needs to be too complex when compared to the single-tailed cow. Attempts to use other kinds of manure have ended in failure, and Jimmy lacks the funds to retool the plant to function for other kinds of fuels. A diviner hired to solve the problem had a vision of an island of two-tailed cows in the direction of a constellation, and a ship carrying straw. Desperate, Jimmy hires out a sloop and crew, orders a large bundle of straw for the ship and requests the heroes guard the bundle and ship for the voyage, with the intention of them bringing some two-tailed cows back to create manure for the foundry. The second problem is that Jimmy is not wanted by the Sunnyvale community, nor is a working foundry. Over the last few decades manufacturing and farming was steadily pushed out of this small territory, and coastal Sunnyvale became a very expensive community of financial employees and employers who were able to enjoy the long periods of sun and surf without the stench of coal or agriculture. The Sunnyvale foundry was an ivy-covered tourist attraction until Jimmy was able to show a questionable title of ownership over it. A working foundry run by an infamous mob boss would be both a distraction and a threat to property values. The community brought a powerful suit in law against Jimmy, stating that he inherited decades of back taxes that he owes to the community as the title holder. Of course Jimmy lacks the money to pay such an exorbitant amount, but believes he might be able to bribe some town officials, and threaten the rest into compliance if he can get his business up and running before the back taxes and accumulated late fees from the suit come due. The party is hired when the straw shipment makes it into the town. This tightly packed bundle of straw is two feet thick and six feet long, and weighs five hundred pounds, though it comes in a specially made canvas sleeve with multiple handles for carrying. It has been specially treated with an ancient solution found in old agricultural books that are supposed to provide healthy vitamins for two-tailed cows. The party needs to protect the shipment for two days and two nights, while facilitating the local health inspectors’ inspection of the ship, followed by an inspection of the straw. Because of the obvious importance of this endeavor, the local government sends in the health inspectors with the intent of hitting Jimmy with more suits in order to shut him down financially. The party must make a difficult local knowledge check and spend time at the town library in order to understand the set of regional byzantine regulations that the inspectors may choose to employ against them for the ship on the first day, and the bundle of straw on the second. Two successful checks equates to the party members anticipating the inspectors, who grudgingly give a passing grade and allow the expedition to proceed. For each failure, another suit is slapped onto Jimmy and the expedition delayed for a full day to give the party a chance to fix discrepancies before the inspectors come back again armed with more obscure requirements. Jimmy docks the party a third of his promised pay each time they fail, as he needs the money for the new legal fees incurred by their failure. If the party fails three times, Jimmy is wiped out from the suits and the adventure is over. There are also elements within and outside of Jimmy’s organization that do not want him to leave his life of crime. They are hoping that his attempt to become a legitimate businessman fails so that he returns to the fold. There will be an attempt to destroy the treated bundle of straw each night that the expedition is waiting to deploy. These attempts are made by lackeys hired through intermediaries, as no one wants Jimmy to track down their efforts to sabotage him. Treat each of these attempts as an easy encounter, which the party should have little problem thwarting as long as they take reasonable efforts to guard the straw each night. The crew of the sloop plans to head out the morning after the party finishes dealing with the inspectors. The sloop complement includes thirty crew members, six shady-looking porters (one of which is another hired saboteur who intends to destroy the straw if he can do so without being implicated) to transport the straw, and the party. The sloop heads towards the direction of a constellation as foretold by Jimmy’s diviner and will encounter the uncharted Oester Island on the twelfth day. Oester Island is a circular mass frequently punctuated with large-headed statues. When they arrive onto shore, the party and deployed porters will find signs of abandoned dwellings, complete with partly cooked fish and dwindling fires. Many dwellings have a fanged face with a single large eye painted upon their surface, as an obvious symbol of worship. The islanders scattered at the sight of the incoming ship and headed deeper into the isle and into a network of caves. The land is barren, and if the characters make a moderate nature check they will realize that the natives have been using up the surrounding grass in their cooking fires to the point that only occasional tufts can be found. The most prominent feature of the island is a single, spike-shaped mountain in its center, where there still appears heavy vegetation. Travel to the center should take two days, as the porters will have to carry the bundle of straw over treacherously sharp rocky ground. The sound of a large drum can be heard coming from the mountain and echoing across the island. The drum beat being used was an audible signal telling the islanders to flee for the cave networks. Once the party begins heading towards the center of the isle, the drum beat will noticeably change. The call for evacuation has now been changed to a call to war. There are three island chiefs in competition with one another on the island, though they form a temporary alliance in order to expel the intruders travelling towards the mountain. The center of the island is considered sacred, as it is the residence of the island’s deity, a forlorn cyclops that only the three chiefs and their various shamans are permitted to visit by island law. The law gives the chiefs sole access to the cyclops’ two-tailed cows, and one of the only remaining sources of meat left on the resource scarce island. The now elderly cyclops came to this island a century ago with his parents. They raised a large flock of two-tailed cows on a land abundant with trees and grass. Years afterwards, the first islanders arrived in large numbers and began to quickly use up the island resources in order to create statues in honor of the vain leaders. It was too late by the time that the three cyclops had realized that most of the trees suitable for creating large boats for transporting them off the island had been used. They attacked the islanders in an attempt to drive them off, but the humans were too numerous, though the attacks did solidify the community’s cultural fear of the giants and their isolation from them. Eventually the two parents died, leaving their offspring alone. He came into an agreement with the chiefs, offering the occasional cow in exchange for a supply of fish and some conversation to ease his loneliness. The cyclops also asked that the chiefs keep the islanders away from his grazing land, as desperate people have been pulling up grass needed by his dwindling and sickly herd. The chiefs eagerly declared the cyclops to be a deity and his grazing land to be holy land, and if anyone violated the cyclops sanctuary, they would bring ruin to the island. The party’s drive threatens their access to tasty cow. The three chiefs and their shamans wait at the top of the mountain where they coordinate attacks upon the party using their huge drum. The islanders wear no armor and use inferior stone spears, and are little threat to armored veterans. Therefore they will attack en masse, trying to overwhelm the party. Treat them as a swarm of humans. The chiefs will have the attacks come every few hours in an attempt to deprive the party and porters of rest, hoping that the combination of exhaustion and swarm attacks eventually wipes them out. If the party retreats back towards the ship, they will be allowed to flee unmolested. If the party makes it to the cyclops or can somehow find a way to destroy the drum, the attacks will also cease as the chiefs accept their loss and decide it is time to parlay. The cyclops can be understood as he speaks a rough dialect of common, though the islanders speak a foreign tongue and can only be understood by gestures or magical means. The cyclops is eager for company and is willing to barter with his fourteen remaining cows. He will part with half of the entire herd for transportation back to land if the party can bring a boat large enough for his herd and him, an outcome that is probably unlikely in the short term, and would likely reignite the island chiefs to violence. If the party was able to bring the bundle of straw, the relieved cyclops parts with two of the herd, a male and female, and thanks the party for saving his flock with the food. If they have any other objects that would be of value to a lone giant stuck on an island, he may part with a single cow. He also tries to make a trade agreement for manure shipments in exchange for continued imports of straw and news of the outside. If the party agrees it would be enough to solve Jimmy’s fuel crisis, but they will also have to deal with the islanders who place themselves as intermediaries. If the party deals with the chiefs, the chiefs ask for a shipment of metal weapons with each trade ship, as each chief wants to settle their overpopulation problem through a war each believes he would win. If the party decides to take the unorthodox decision to negotiate separately with the regular islanders, they will find that the islanders will be willing to ignore their chiefs’ calls to war if they could receive goods that would allow them to fish for food, such as metal hooks, wood for boats and fishing line. Finally, the party can choose to kill the cyclops, take four cows that would fit on the sloop and which would provide a bare minimum amount of fuel for the foundry, and fight their way off the island. Their decisions will dictate the islanders’ ultimate fate. [/QUOTE]
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