White Plume Mountain is about creativity.
Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:24 pm
So I actually had a look at it. It's a standard old school module, aka it tries to murder you arbitrarily.
Let's start with the random encounter tables. Every 10 minutes, 1:12 chance for one of the following.
1: 1 Fuck you, your gear is getting eaten, immune: most of your attacks.
2: 2-5 Fuck yous, you're getting surprised half the time.
3: 2 Fuck yous, immune: non magical weapons and high enough damage to 1-2 round the level 5 PCs it is assuming.
4: 1 Fuck you, you are almost always surprised by an invisible attacker.
5: 1-3 I'm sorry for all the fuck you monsters, come back to me so I can abuse you mores.
6: 1-2 Fuck you, lose a level forever on every hits with Immune: Non magic non silver weapons and a bunch of other stuff.
Right, so once you're in the dungeon proper it goes like this (numbers = room/area count):
1: Amazingly, nothing is trying to kill you.
2: Metagame to pass, otherwise you shall not pass.
3: Fuck you you die and cannot be raised, also it's designed so you won't notice this happening until it already is and the "creative" way of dealing with it explicitly doesn't work, leaving you to cast your one Fireball, centered on yourself to deal with it... if you even have that still.
4: Everything seems normal, until you are sealed in and cannot escape by any means other than what the railroad allows. To even realize what you need to do here you need certain specific abilities you probably won't have, and those explicitly do not detect the permanent stat saccing enemies waiting to ambush you. There's actually a little treasure here, but it's mostly play guessing games and hopefully don't die until you get the right key. There's also an item that actually seems good, but it's just a lie trying to get you to all kill each other over it.
5: Metagame correctly in 60 seconds or die horribly.
6: Have a super high Str or be trapped inside forever.
7: Cross at the wrong time and instant death unless you have super high Str.
8: Because we need more fuck you, instant level loss encounters. Also, you won't know they're there until they are, because permanent darkness that doesn't affect them for no reason.
9: Have multiple characters with super high Str or get nowhere.
10: A nice fuck you surprise encounter that opens up with some Charm spells. And since this is older editions these are closer to Dominates.
11: Amazingly, another area that isn't trying to kill you. It will knock you down though.
12: However something here is... and you just met it. Also more fuck yous, this time on self destructing items.
13: Nothing is trying to kill you! There is something that will annoy you a bit though.
14: What's this? An area that saves you from random death? This feels out of place...
15: Huh? Something that is deadly, but not actively trying to kill you?
16: More old school game designers losing their touch.
17: Oh here we go... any attacks here might randomly kill the entire party if the DM doesn't like you... it specifically encourages the DM to do this. Also, GIANT ENEMY CRAB fights you here. I am not kidding. Also, it has an item of fuck you, immune to psionics that you can't use because fuck you.
18: Something that is obviously, but not actively trying to kill you.
19: Corridor of fuck you, no equipment can pass.
20: Lots of fuck you paralysis spammers that are immune to turning because fuck you.
21: Something that actually isn't trying to kill you.
22: Room of fuck you, instant death. Instant super tetanus. Yes, it actually says that. I am not fucking kidding. You fall into a pit, you die. Did I mention if you walk on the stuff you will slip and automatically fall into the pit and they went out of their way to shut down any means of shutting down the slip and fall in a pit, including flying over it or dimension dooring past it because fuck you? The solution? Guess what your DM is thinking or suck his cock. Even if you try the "correct" solution it won't actually work because illusion wall, fuck you.
23: No death here, but a railroad to death.
24: Ah here we go. We've arrived at our destination. Oh and you have to beat these guys even though they're around 8 levels higher to get past...
25: You must acquire Sir Fuck You's key to pass!
26: Some sort of bizarre zoo. Not going to try and calculate all the ways of having a nice death here.
27: A fuck you caster waiting to ambush you, and a fuck you sword that will kill you or worse if you hit the wrong thing with it (and there are plenty of wrong things with it). Also, this entire module is loaded with intelligent weapons. Did I mention those things love railroading their users into destroying each other and each other's wielders? No, I won't say it this time.
And then at the end they throw in one last fuck you with a forced ambush or worse... and then it's finally over... and you can play something that doesn't suck.
Total encounters solvable by player creativity: 0 (about 2 or 3 if you consider metagaming as creative).
Total encounters with specific mechanical requirements (stats, spells, items): Too many to count.
Total encounters where, even if you do everything right you'll still probably die: At least a half dozen, likely many more.
Myth busted!
