Sunday, March 11, 2012

Dangerous Adversaries

Eons ago, I bought a new (at the time) book written by Gary Gygax about all these sorts of monsters. I think the older folks understand what I mean. There was a monster in there - I can’t spell it and I certainly can’t pronounce it, but it was like the creature from the black lagoon, only from the deep seas. From what I remember, one paragraph was devoted to the description of the creatures and several paragraphs were devoted to how many troops each type of noble led.
See it through my 13yo eyes for a moment: “Hey - That’s 40,000 of these things! That is going to be the most boring battle ever! 40,000, underwater with no fireballs, my die rolling hand will cramp up.” I used them, but in a very altered form
See it through my 40something eyes now: “40K troops? How many fishermen do they need? Even if it’s only 200K fishermen, why aren’t they bumping into everyone else? They’re really aggressive and raid, so they should be a common nuisance. They are tougher than humans, elves or dwarves. Why haven’t they taken over the world?”
I ask that a lot. When I was building Fletnern and wanted to put in something that seemed super powerful, I had to ask - Why haven’t they taken over the world?
So that’s what A Baker’s Dozen Dangerous Adversaries (still working on that title) is going to be about - Why haven’t they taken over the world. Hopefully you’re familiar with our Baker’s Dozen books by now. They’re a few pages fully developing an idea, typically a person, a group of people, or some setting. Obviously there are 13 of them. In many ways, these are source books or perhaps you might think of them as summary source books. Tons of info to get you thinking, and enough details so you don’t have to work that hard.
Each entry in Dangerous Adversaries will lay out a couple of different paths by which one of these seemingly unimportant races could pose a threat to the world at large. It will lay out their powers, their weaknesses (assuming they have some), and some strategies that just might gain them world domination. As a GM, you don’t want to use them all in your world, but a legitimate threat to the “human-elf-dwarf” world might be just what you were looking for to spice things up in your campaign world.
Look for it soon! and if you have a better title suggestion - I’m all ears!!

No comments:

Post a Comment