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White Plume Mountain is about creativity.

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:24 pm
by Mr. GC
:rofl:

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!

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:43 pm
by nockermensch

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 9:48 pm
by Mr. GC

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:56 pm
by Ikeren
I'm not sure what spawned this review. Got a link for me?

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:06 pm
by Mistborn

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:20 am
by Koumei
When I get home from work, is this going to be hilarious?

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:51 am
by nockermensch
Koumei wrote:
When I get home from work, is this going to be hilarious?
It's a touching story about a dwarf necromancer and the actual reasons people remember fondly old shit like this module. May contain kelpie nipples, so you did well to not open it at work.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 1:57 am
by Koumei
Well, I can't anyway - it's blocked.

Also, I know the Kelpie is the weird woman-horse sea monster that drowns people, but I can't help but picture the breed of dog when people talk about how the whole party got charmed and drowned by a kelpie.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:06 am
by hyzmarca
You're doing it wrong. To start with, find a band of orc raiders, preferably both unintelligent and unscrupulous. Fifty is a nice number. Offer them the standard mercenary per-diem and a reasonable percentage of the haul for the survivors. They'll eat that up, and with luck your actual costs will be very small, since you'll pay them on the tail end and there won't be that many survivors.

This is 1st edition, when the fighter hits 9th level he gets enough men to garrison a 5 million acre freehold. Thats thousands of dudes who have no other purpose than to serve as ablative armor for the party in death-trap intensive dungeons like this one.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 11:58 am
by Mr. GC
Ikeren wrote:I'm not sure what spawned this review. Got a link for me?
Grog: White Plume Mountain is about player skill and creativity, you fucks wouldn't get anywhere because it isn't something you can solve with your character sheet.
WPM: You die if you don't have ability x, you die if you don't have item y, you die if you don't have stat z...

:rofl:

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 12:57 pm
by Ted the Flayer
Koumei wrote:Well, I can't anyway - it's blocked.

Also, I know the Kelpie is the weird woman-horse sea monster that drowns people, but I can't help but picture the breed of dog when people talk about how the whole party got charmed and drowned by a kelpie.
"theres a sweet horse at the bottom of that lake. Im gonna go ride it"

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:13 pm
by Ikeren
Who the hell is Grog, and what sort of mental issues does he have?

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:36 pm
by Fuchs
Kelpie is not the horse that lets you ride it to drown you in a lake, it's the kelp that looks like a hot woman that offers to ride you to drown you.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 3:50 pm
by Mr. GC
Ikeren wrote:Who the hell is Grog, and what sort of mental issues does he have?
Grog = Grognard, and I think it better to not ask.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:02 pm
by Ted the Flayer
Wait, wouldn't a more reasonable argument be "you can't powergame in 1E because the abilities recquired are freaking arbitrary and you won't have a clue what to plan for"?

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:17 pm
by nockermensch
hyzmarca wrote:You're doing it wrong. To start with, find a band of orc raiders, preferably both unintelligent and unscrupulous. Fifty is a nice number. Offer them the standard mercenary per-diem and a reasonable percentage of the haul for the survivors. They'll eat that up, and with luck you're actual costs will be very small, since you'll pay them on the tail end and there won't be that many survivors.

This is 1st edition, when the fighter hits 9th level he gets enough men to garrison a 5 million acre freehold. Thats thousands of dudes who have no other purpose than to serve as ablative armor for the party in death-trap intensive dungeons like this one.
This is the "how Lord Robilar seriously 'won' Tomb of Horrors", so lets talk a bit about it:

By now I'm starting to think that Gygax was a huge troll and insisted on running ToH as mercilessly as possible to punish people who didn't "get" that the actual way to win at D&D is to go full Evil Overlord mode and treat the game as an exercise in medieval engineering and minioncraft.

So while people approaching these modules from a "D&D is a fair boardgame" angle are being ground into dust, people who "get it" like Robilar are drinking cocktails from coconuts outside while they roleplay giving orders and getting progress reports. I mean, here's Lord Robilar's goddamn face:
Image

Do I actually need to say anything else here? (other than "PROBLEM, ACERERAK?")

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:44 pm
by hogarth
Fuchs wrote:Kelpie is not the horse that lets you ride it to drown you in a lake, it's the kelp that looks like a hot woman that offers to ride you to drown you.
They're both different forms of the same thing (at least according to the AD&D Fiend Folio).

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:48 pm
by Red_Rob
Actually the AD&D Kelpie could appear as a woman or a horse, both of which would cause men to drown themselves attempting to "mount" them.

What with Kelpies, Succubus', Nymphs, Lamias and all the other male targeting monsters I think "playing a woman" counts as powergaming in 1e.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 5:58 pm
by Whatever
Red_Rob wrote:What with Kelpies, Succubus', Nymphs, Lamias and all the other male targeting monsters I think "playing a woman" counts as powergaming in 1e.
1e still had stat penalties for playing a woman, though. Or lower maximum stats? Something.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 7:39 pm
by Mr. GC
Red_Rob wrote:Actually the AD&D Kelpie could appear as a woman or a horse, both of which would cause men to drown themselves attempting to "mount" them.

What with Kelpies, Succubus', Nymphs, Lamias and all the other male targeting monsters I think "playing a woman" counts as powergaming in 1e.
I think that game really just had a fetish for boobies and bestiality. Most of the women were topless even if they were monstrous. In that adventure you get cat boobs and plant boobs and overall you also get demon boobs and tree boobs and snake boobs and horse boobs and foxwoman boobs...

The 2nd edition book has a half naked woman on the cover. As in literally standing there with their tits out. Obvious neckbeard fanservice is obvious.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 7:51 pm
by Ted the Flayer
The best thing to assume in DnD is that if it has boobs it wants to eat you, enslave you, or enslave you before eating you. And I thought I had issues...

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 8:13 pm
by Mr. GC
I think they were projecting something...

Also, fuck you and suck a barrel of cocks. I am now envisioning a mind flayer with boobs. CANNOT UNSEE!

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 8:20 pm
by Ted the Flayer
Mr. GC wrote:I think they were projecting something...

Also, fuck you and suck a barrel of cocks. I am now envisioning a mind flayer with boobs. CANNOT UNSEE!
/thumbs up

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 9:32 pm
by Orion
Yeah, sounds like GC just sucks at D&D and doesn't understand how to use minions. Heck, your retinue of charmed giants (you DO have a bunch of charmed giants, right???) can deal with all those bullshit strength checks.

Come back when you're ready to play with the big boys.

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2012 9:34 pm
by Mr. GC
Orion wrote:Yeah, sounds like GC just sucks at D&D and doesn't understand how to use minions. Heck, your retinue of charmed giants (you DO have a bunch of charmed giants, right???) can deal with all those bullshit strength checks.

Come back when you're ready to play with the big boys.
:rofl: