Tuesday, March 27, 2012

two brief FLAILSNAILS items

  • Mike Davison of sword+1 is running a G+ play-by-post tournament.  The players guide PDF is here and the results of the first round are here, but the real action of the event is in the individual threads started by +FlailSnails Jousting Field.  Thirty knights competed in round 1, with 16 in round two (one contest was a tie and both advanced). One brave participant, Sir Polycarp, died from wounds received on the field of battle.  And my guy won 50 gold betting on the results of one contest!
  • I think everybody who plays a wandering FLAILSNAILS adventurer should develop a brief stock intro, just two or three lines that give your character's name, what they reveal about themselves and what is obvious about them from their appearance.  "Donnal MacDonnal is a patchbeard youth clad in ancient scale mail and the tattered remains of a fancy cloak.  He's a fighting man of the spear-throwing, sword-swinging variety.  Donnal is accompanied by his henchman, the idiot-wizard Stanislav, and a magic pet lizard that is absolutely no help in combat or any other situation."  Something like that.  A quick readthru of these intros at the start of a session would really help orient people, I think.

5 comments:

  1. Sir Eusyram is a poor, orphan lad who received his horse and arms from a mysterious benefactor on reaching puberty. He sees the good in everyone and has startlingly refined manners for one so unfortunate. Although this makes him a terrible adventurer, I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to save the world through his innate goodness and fine sartorial instincts.

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  2. Poor Polycarp. No worries, his squire Dog's-Arse sold the corpse to "some guy" for like ten gold. Polycarp might be back someday. :)

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  3. Anonymous7:51 PM

    As kind of an extended version of the three-line intro, our DM recently started a new campaign and we all had to do a "one page intro" that included the standard name and description, but we also had to come up with the same for two groups of 3 NPC's each, one group friendly and the other unfriendly. They may or may not lead to further interaction with the PC's, but it was cool what everyone came up with. There are mentors, rivals, past loves, possible future loves, etc etc. Lots of fertile ground for role (as opposed to roll) playing.

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  4. We need a central gathering point for these; it's too good an idea not to assemble into a kind-of online handout.

    "Sir Bram is a towering sort of figure, well over six feet, barrel-shaped and hairless, with only a pair of bushy black eyebrows and a truly enormous moustache breaking the smoothness of his brown skin. A travelling cleric of the trickster-god Reynardine Torchbearer, given to drinking, carousing, jests, japes, and inappropriate poetry, he is accompanied by his dour, skeletal soldier-henchman, Hobbes. A huge studded mace is slung across his back, and he wears well-maintained but clearly antique red and violet ring-mail."

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