Rel
Liquid Awesome
As the Garth Brooks song says, "It was bound to happen and one night it did." Last night as a matter of fact.
My Eberron-Sharn campaign finally ran across the show-stoppers that are the Changeling Prostitutes of Firelight. The trail of intrigue that the characters were following led them to the doors of "Ellabella's", one of the finer brothels of Middle Menthis. And there we lost a good 45 minutes of the session to crude humor and all the baffling implications of shape-changing hookers. I'd almost feel bad about it if I wasn't among the worst offenders with the jokes.
This was made all the more difficult and laughable by virtue of the fact that we couldn't just completely handwave the activities that took place inside. Each of the three PC's present had "issues" that had to be addressed.
The Halfling led things off by specifically requesting, "Large (meaning typically Medium sized) women. Race is not important." This was very shortly followed by some speculation about the mating habits of those native to Talenta where "conservation of fluids" was of paramount concern.
The Warforged bodyguard had to remain in the waiting room where he spent his time rearranging the furniture to a configuration more in line with his ideas of "Eberron Feng Shui".
His charge, the Artificer, was the one who was actually trying to get some information out of one of the prostitutes. Again, we couldn't completely "skip to the end" because he wanted to get her tied up in order to better get some answers to his questions. In the end (*ahem*) he couldn't bring himself to be at all forceful with her about answering his questions and basically said he had a fun time and asked nicely for the info (which, me being a RBDM, I uncharacteristically allowed to work).
When all was said and done, they made it out of Ellabella's with information that allowed the adventure to continue and everyone around the game table was drying tears of laughter from the corners of their eyes. A good time was had by all (both in game and out) but it has led me to a new maxim that I'll pass on to other Eberron GM's for future reference:
"Always expect to lose an hour of the session when the PC's first run into Changeling Prostitutes."
My Eberron-Sharn campaign finally ran across the show-stoppers that are the Changeling Prostitutes of Firelight. The trail of intrigue that the characters were following led them to the doors of "Ellabella's", one of the finer brothels of Middle Menthis. And there we lost a good 45 minutes of the session to crude humor and all the baffling implications of shape-changing hookers. I'd almost feel bad about it if I wasn't among the worst offenders with the jokes.
This was made all the more difficult and laughable by virtue of the fact that we couldn't just completely handwave the activities that took place inside. Each of the three PC's present had "issues" that had to be addressed.
The Halfling led things off by specifically requesting, "Large (meaning typically Medium sized) women. Race is not important." This was very shortly followed by some speculation about the mating habits of those native to Talenta where "conservation of fluids" was of paramount concern.
The Warforged bodyguard had to remain in the waiting room where he spent his time rearranging the furniture to a configuration more in line with his ideas of "Eberron Feng Shui".
His charge, the Artificer, was the one who was actually trying to get some information out of one of the prostitutes. Again, we couldn't completely "skip to the end" because he wanted to get her tied up in order to better get some answers to his questions. In the end (*ahem*) he couldn't bring himself to be at all forceful with her about answering his questions and basically said he had a fun time and asked nicely for the info (which, me being a RBDM, I uncharacteristically allowed to work).
When all was said and done, they made it out of Ellabella's with information that allowed the adventure to continue and everyone around the game table was drying tears of laughter from the corners of their eyes. A good time was had by all (both in game and out) but it has led me to a new maxim that I'll pass on to other Eberron GM's for future reference:
"Always expect to lose an hour of the session when the PC's first run into Changeling Prostitutes."
In one D&D game we played last year, the halfling of the party wound up with a teenage human WIFE out of his trip to the brothel. Through judicious party protection, she's now his 6th level Fighter cohort.
