Sunday, September 15, 2013

30 Day Challenge 14 & 15




14 Favorite NPC

This is a toughie, as none really sticks out in my mind. I guess Fafhrd in a Lankhmar game I once played in my teens. 



He showed up when I was trying to get my character lucky with a barmaid under the table in a bar (I know, lame teenage gamer move), and Big Red smacked my character upside the head and gave him a lecture about treating the ladies. Sure it was a Mary Sue moment, but well done and a bit of a ‘life lesson’ inside the game about how we should comport ourselves outside it. The DM ran it well and it sticks with me as a good example of how to use famous NPCs especially – not to steal the limelight from the heroes, but to make them even more heroic.

15 Favorite Undead

Has to be Liches. Zombies and skeletons are really iconic at low levels, but when you’re ready to face a lich, you know you’re in the big time. 



I have a dim recollection of sitting in on a session at the end of Tomb of Horrors, running a thief and being exhorted by the other players to throw a gem at the lich to finish him off. I still dunno why this worked, and thought this a bit of a lame meta gamey deus-ex-machina, but overall the idea of a lich or crypt-thing waiting in their tomb, plotting and evilly intelligent is one of the scariest concepts in the sometimes absurd world of fantasy games.


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