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The old "illusion of damsels" dungeon ruse
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<blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 4914249" data-attributes="member: 463"><p>There are two famous old examples:</p><p></p><p>(spoilers, I can't find how to do spoiler tags...)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>1. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess - Illusion of the Decapus - the (pretty mild) picture of the illusionary damsel being tortured got the module recalled!</p><p></p><p>2. Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits - Buxom caged damsels, actually shapechanged evil lycanthropes.</p><p></p><p>It was so common it was a cliche, and having an actual rescuable damsel almost counted as a trope inversion! </p><p></p><p>I have tended not to use damsels-in-distress (rescuable or trap) in my tabletop games much recently, it can make some players uncomfortable - same with child NPCs. If I'm running a Conanesque online game (chat or pbem) there will be plenty of damsels, though; eg I recently used a captive queen who needed rescuing from a dragon in two separate games, and a damsel being chased by a giant ape in a third! </p><p></p><p>I find there's a problem with D&D in that players tend to treat '0th level' type NPCs as cardboard cut-outs, so if a damsel NPC is going to stick around for any time at all I'll usually give her a class and levels. Eg a low-level Cleric who can heal the party as a reward for rescuing her (the Queens, above), the damsel chased by the ape was 'Stranger' class - </p><p><a href="http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/08/grognards-grimoire-stranger.html" target="_blank">GROGNARDIA: Grognard's Grimoire: Stranger</a> </p><p>A bland, uninteresting damsel is a waste of a good NPC opportunity.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="S'mon, post: 4914249, member: 463"] There are two famous old examples: (spoilers, I can't find how to do spoiler tags...) 1. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess - Illusion of the Decapus - the (pretty mild) picture of the illusionary damsel being tortured got the module recalled! 2. Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits - Buxom caged damsels, actually shapechanged evil lycanthropes. It was so common it was a cliche, and having an actual rescuable damsel almost counted as a trope inversion! I have tended not to use damsels-in-distress (rescuable or trap) in my tabletop games much recently, it can make some players uncomfortable - same with child NPCs. If I'm running a Conanesque online game (chat or pbem) there will be plenty of damsels, though; eg I recently used a captive queen who needed rescuing from a dragon in two separate games, and a damsel being chased by a giant ape in a third! I find there's a problem with D&D in that players tend to treat '0th level' type NPCs as cardboard cut-outs, so if a damsel NPC is going to stick around for any time at all I'll usually give her a class and levels. Eg a low-level Cleric who can heal the party as a reward for rescuing her (the Queens, above), the damsel chased by the ape was 'Stranger' class - [url=http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/08/grognards-grimoire-stranger.html]GROGNARDIA: Grognard's Grimoire: Stranger[/url] A bland, uninteresting damsel is a waste of a good NPC opportunity. [/QUOTE]
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