Just for fun - A non-gripe about our current game.

[Greenfield]

Our current game is set in something that's essentially Scotland circa 550 AD.

Our current DM transported our characters, via a series of portals, to the middle of the Arizona desert. We're 5th/6th level, so no fast transports spells to get home.

We departed just before sunset, and landed eight time zones west, meaning when the sun was low in the eastern sky. Morning.

The land is completely unlike anything we've ever seen. The people here (small settlements sparsely placed) speak languages that none of us have ever heard. The plants, animals, even the local precious stones, are things we've never seen (Turquoise doesn't occur in Scotland.) They shot at us when we experimented with languages we knew in an attempt to speak with them. (Orcish is apparently familiar enough to tick them off, and our asters apparently can't cast Tongues.)

Simple tasks like gathering firewood are somewhere between difficult and impossible and pretty much everyone is hostile, even when we're offering gifts. The local "cattle" (Buffalo) are huge and fierce, and we have no way, currently, to get home. Even the people we managed to talk to (some speak a rough version of Dwarvish, possibly as a trade language) give us bad or incomplete information, no matter how Diplomatic our Bard is. Even the Water Elemental we encountered in a stream was rude, even as it shared information.

One of our characters, the Warmage, has decided that we're on the Demi-plane of jerks. (Consider a demi-plane that mixes the Lawful Evil plane of Fire and a material plane. People with red skin and bad manners, and an inhospitably hot and arid landscape.)

I suspect that it's going to stick, and forever more in our campaign we'll be certain that a "Demi-plane of Jerks" exists.

 

[Ranes]

Given that so many of your encounters are hostile to some degree, is it possible that your party is somehow displaying something or acting in a manner that causes the indigenous people to react so? Holy symbol on show? What about colours? Is your clothing markedly different to those of the natives? Does your party include male and female characters? If so, could it be a patriarchy/matriarchy clash?

Can your casters cast Alter Self? Have you tried Detect Evil on the locals (maybe your Warmage is onto something)?

 

[Greenfield]

As for clothing/appearance: We're an armed and armored party in European style clothing, visiting a stone-age culture. Metal arms and armor are all but unheard of here. Any one of us is wearing more metal than most of these people have seen in a lifetime.

Holy symbols? Many of us have one, and our Cleric displays one boldly, as does the Paladin. But the Indians have as much chance of recognizing them as we do of recognizing theirs: None at all. This is about a thousand years before Columbus, and 500 years before the Vikings, and 2,000 miles from where anyone will ever meet or see them in the centuries to come. There is no common ground for a Knowledge - Religion check, according to the DM.

Our arcane caster team consists of a Warmage, a Cleric with the Magic domain, and a Bard. Nobody has Alter Self, or pretty much any kind of utility spell. (Tongues would be awful nice.)

We have one female character, the Cleric, but she tries to pass herself as a man.

Like I said, though, that wasn't a gripe. I just thought the "Demi-plane of jerks" was funny.

 

[gamerprinter]

By the early colonial period in North America, any European that wanted to deal with the natives is almost expected to dress like the locals - consider any mountain man like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett where wearing buckskins is an expectation. Consider the 1995 movie of the Scarlet Letter and Robert Duval's character (the husband of the protagonist - Demi Moore) that had spent most of the previous year among the natives. While the rest of the community are dressed as English Puritan colonists, Duval's character is in buckskins. When in Rome... if you want your party to gain a better reception among the natives, dress like the locals - people in history knew that it mattered, so why can't your PCs do so as well.

 

[Ranes]

I understand it's not a gripe and you are effectively on a demi-plane of jerks (love it). I was just fishing for the cause of the hostility. Given your response to my queries, I suspect that gamerprinter's suggestion is worth looking into. All that metal you're wearing could be seriously hampering your ability to get more favourable reactions from those you meet.

 

[Dandu]

They shot at us when we experimented with languages we knew in an attempt to speak with them. (Orcish is apparently familiar enough to tick them off, and our asters apparently can't cast Tongues.)

Simple tasks like gathering firewood are somewhere between difficult and impossible and pretty much everyone is hostile, even when we're offering gifts. The local "cattle" (Buffalo) are huge and fierce, and we have no way, currently, to get home. Even the people we managed to talk to (some speak a rough version of Dwarvish, possibly as a trade language) give us bad or incomplete information, no matter how Diplomatic our Bard is. Even the Water Elemental we encountered in a stream was rude, even as it shared information.

One of our characters, the Warmage

Oh for the love of Gygax, doesn't he realize that everything that's causing you problems is flammable?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Oh for the love of Gygax, doesn't he realize that everything that's causing you problems is flammable?

"It seems like a reasonable response to me. As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." ~Vaarsuvius

 

[Greenfield]

Well, we found a way to implement that idea.

While, in the real world, the first mention of coal being mined was in the year 1200, there are large layers of it in the American southwest. Some are revealed in cliff faces and the sides of mesas and canyons as layers thick as 10 to 15 feet. (Yes, I know the Chinese were using coal much earlier, and there is evidence that the Romans made some use, but not much.)

So here we are, a bunch of Scots and English from about 550 ad in Arizona, looking for "Stones of Fire". We thought we needed brimstone (sulfur), but we encounter a hefty vein of black rock in a cliff face, and are advised (by a local deity) that that is what we need, "The rock that burns".

There are coal mine fires in the US that have been burning continuously for over a century.

We could so light that bloody mountain on fire!

Setting those thoughts aside, the Dm realized that he had given us clues to the puzzle, but they referred to things that weren't known in England or Scotland at the time. In character, the puzzles were insoluble.

So he resolved the issue in the classic fashion, as was so common in ancient Greek plays and tales: He had a god show up and give us the answer. (He also had that god veto the alternate solution we had come up with on our own.) So we're off to the last piece, and our way off of the Demi-plane of jerks!

 

[Ranes]

Great news! However, before you leave, can I just remind you of Dandu's suggestion, above?

 

[TarionzCousin]

Peyote: the friend-maker.