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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8116337" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dungeon Issue 5: May/Jun 1987part 3/5The Stolen Power: Our third adventure also has a sense of humour about itself, albeit of a very different kind. The clerics of the local god(s) of love have noticed stuff being stolen from their churches recently. Now it's escalated to nabbing a major magical item and a paladin. Divinations have revealed the name of the culprit, but no-one's powerful enough to do a scry and teleport, so it falls to the PC's to do the lengthy overland trek to get there, and then explore his stronghold and engage in righteous killing and taking of stuff. Turns out they've been kidnapped to be sacrificed to Shami-Amorae, demon queen of shameful degrading sex, who in sharp contrast to the average goddess of love or lust only accepts hot guys and ugly girls as her worshippers. I guess it's easier to get to godhood when you pick a highly specific niche that has fewer rivals for the portfolio to split worshippers amongst. So this is a fairly standard adventure in terms of encounters, with a wilderness bit and then a dungeon bit, but with a plot framing of "tee hee, kidnapping and rape is funny when it's woman on man." Which is a bit gross, really. I'm somewhat surprised that got through their code of conduct, and it looks even worse in hindsight. I guess Roger's already caused one sexism flamewar by being a condescending dumbass while thinking he's being helpful and progressive, and there's no-one higher up who's any better or paying attention enough to deal with his blind spots. It's all rather unfortunate. Somehow I really don't think I'll be using this one.The Kappa of Pachee Bridge: Another single-monster trickster encounter, this time for Oriental Adventures. This time, precisely what it is isn't a spoiler, as it's been hanging around the village for years being a nuisance, but only recently started eating people again. As usual the PC's are asked for help. The catch is that they can't just kill it, as even a Kappa currently in disfavor with the celestial bureaucracy has a pretty nasty death curse if you do. An excellent example of privilege in the form of in-groups who the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups who the law binds but does not protect (ie, the whole of humanity, who are nothing but straw dogs in the eyes of heaven) So the easiest approach is to use trickery, as despite millennia of lifetime, it's still reckless and emotional, and has several folklorish weaknesses for players to capitalise upon. However, that won't get you honor points the way beating it (but not killing it) in a fair fight and then forcing it to swear an oath will. All depends on your party composition, level and alignment leanings. A pretty flexible adventure that'll reward roleplayers over hack-and-slash players, and feels like the original story while changing just enough that players who've read the source material can't just cheat their way through. That's the kind of thing I approve of.</blockquote>

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