hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

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JonSetanta
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by JonSetanta »

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1191941971[/unixtime]]
Are you sure it takes a lot? One race outbreeding the others isn't much.


They are the Eberron Changelings, a race with natural form looking like grey poop molded into a human and given bug eyes.
If they looked like some kind of faerie, sure, but not silly putty.

Imagine a Changeling naked.
Hence the "ew".
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Voss »

OK, freaky natural form aside... they don't actually ever have to look like that. They're only ugly if they want to be, which is more than most people can say.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Catharz »

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1191906963[/unixtime]]
RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1191880044[/unixtime]]
They're creatures of chaos, they're not supposed to make sense.


Oh, I know that, it's just surprising that until that point it *does* make sense.

Ah, remember how crazy-random those guys used to be? All of those near-identical giant frogs had a RANDOM TABLE of traits to roll on!


Xaos isn't the same thing as randomness. Xaos is like a random number generator that goes "9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9..." (or possibly "frog frog frog frog...").
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JonSetanta
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by JonSetanta »

Maybe Slaadi are so random in their evolution that they hit the possibility that they all spawn as a concise, orderly race of colored toads.
Once evolved as such, they hit the probability that they stay like that, more of less.

You know, the infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters theory... aka "Infinite monkey theorem".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Captain_Bleach »

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1191742088[/unixtime]]Nah, Gygax would just be confused why you were talking about breeding and not just killing everything in the dungeon and taking their stuff.


Or he'll just tell you to keep your crossbreeding fantasies to yourself.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Maxus »

Speaking of the slaad, Planewalker.com (nice website), has this little gem about them...
http://www.planewalker.com/entry.php?intEntryID=10905
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Maxus at [unixtime wrote:1193925077[/unixtime]]Speaking of the slaad, Planewalker.com (nice website), has this little gem about them...
http://www.planewalker.com/entry.php?intEntryID=10905


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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Maxus »

The formatting needs to be cleaned up, but I can express admiration for the old-time story flavor, along with the parenthetical comments and death threats.
Which I'm attracted to, because after making several futile efforts to try to have games with a group of triple-gestalt powergamers whose response was pure hack-and-slash...well, let's just say that if something has real flavor, I'm probably going to like it.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.

--The horror of Mario

Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Any =/= Real when it comes to flavour.

The flavour is... so-so.

The story falters when it tries to explain "Death Slaad"; since the author can't answer the question, so he has the narrator act as if it's part of his story-telling method/style/recollectio of the story.

That's pretty much it though.

The talking style of Planesgaters is annoying to read.

I think that people prefer Orc over Planesgater is that anyone speaking Orc is not taking themselves very seriously, planesgaters take themself seriously when they talk like that; somehow thinking that a place with more cultures would have some sort of unified accent.

Unless the NPCs that the PCs meet all speak gutter common?

I'm not that well-versed in Planescape adventure material.
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virgil
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by virgil »

I think alot of people, when trying to portray Slaadi as creatures of chaos, have trouble with the Death Slaadi. Many Planescape fans try their best to have them act more nonsensical, blissfully ignoring current canon where they're undirected violence (which they consider CE, not CN). However, the Death Slaad is even more of a hurdle, as it's the most powerful form of a slaad and is most definitely CE.

By the by, I've noticed Planescape fans tend to try and have their paragons of CN be forces of surrealism/dadaism.

Although, if you go off of the fact that belief=reality in old school Planescape, then the definition of insanity could actually work. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting results, what happens when you have a creature of chaos (where chaos is defined as insanity) where it does the same thing over and over and actually DOES get different results?
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Prak »

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1191906963[/unixtime]]
RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1191880044[/unixtime]]
They're creatures of chaos, they're not supposed to make sense.


Oh, I know that, it's just surprising that until that point it *does* make sense.

Ah, remember how crazy-random those guys used to be? All of those near-identical giant frogs had a RANDOM TABLE of traits to roll on!

I remember that... I actually considered buying a used copy of the 3.0 mm just for that table...
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Prak »

virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1193969126[/unixtime]]I think alot of people, when trying to portray Slaadi as creatures of chaos, have trouble with the Death Slaadi. Many Planescape fans try their best to have them act more nonsensical, blissfully ignoring current canon where they're undirected violence (which they consider CE, not CN). However, the Death Slaad is even more of a hurdle, as it's the most powerful form of a slaad and is most definitely CE.

By the by, I've noticed Planescape fans tend to try and have their paragons of CN be forces of surrealism/dadaism.

Although, if you go off of the fact that belief=reality in old school Planescape, then the definition of insanity could actually work. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting results, what happens when you have a creature of chaos (where chaos is defined as insanity) where it does the same thing over and over and actually DOES get different results?


y'know... if we're going to talk about slaadi as literary movements and genre... I'd think they'd be post-modern... satirical, vaguely random, sacriligious, and a good chance of running into a slaad with multiple personality disorder...
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by virgil »

Great, and now I'm imagining modrons as modernism. Their speech consists of single words that convey entire conversations, their goals are performed en masse yet seemingly inconsequential while also being somewhat controversial (50 modrons labour to make a public bathroom in the middle of Baker's Row) that end up through a series of coincidences to cause larger change in the immediate environment.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Prak »

actually, I think that works.... Modrons might even think themselves all unique... while Slaadi know that though they look different, they're all the same decaying vaguely-organic planar matter.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Catharz »

Now I'm imagining some sort of agonistic slaadi-modron parliament.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by virgil »

I wonder about something similar to that insanity quote, where you do the same thing over and over and expect different results. What do you call it when you do different things each time and expect the same result?
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Prak »

well, if doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results... would that be normalacy?
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by virgil »

How would you describe modernism though? To an extent, I think it would be a mistake to try and place slaad as post-modern. Aren't those two heavily dependent on the local culture/tradition and are largely designed in response to them? What would be considered sacriligious in one culture would be par for the course in another.

And that quote is a bit hard to understand if you think about it too much, because I don't know of many examples of insanity where it could actually be described as 'doing the same thing over and over and expect different results'. With further thought, I suppose it could work on an esoteric level. The reverse of that quote is what's got me stumped, as I'm trying to put it in a similarily esoteric model...creativity? adaptability? understanding?
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by tzor »

If you ignore the bad dice humor of the modrons (which really is so close to the 3D alternate universe from the famous flatlands that I the bad die jokes tend to go over my head every time) the basic modron society is so alien to normal thinking that we just flat out ignore it. Honestly I think that is a mistake because the modrons are more fascinating than the borg. (Original borg not later borg which really became humanized in order to be made into easy plot points.)

In fact I never bothered to prove that modron society could even exist at all, the extreemely heirarchical black box layered structire of the modrons sound so logical that it simply has to work, but it only can work perfectly if it is infact perfect.

That's why ironically you might be able to have a parliment of slaadi but not a parliment of modrons; the whole notion of a parliment is so against the heirarchical modron model that it is beyond the ability of the modrons to understand. (Just as the concept of "freedom" was an impossible concept for the original borg collective.)

On the other hand every time I hear about the types of sladdi I keep thnking you have your "caesar slaadi," your "greek slaadi" and your "chicken slaadi" not to mention the "macaroni sladdi" and "potato slaadi."
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by CalibronXXX »

As interesting as the main body of that post was Tzor, the end of it reminded of this horrible joke about a "chicken slaadi sand-witch" so now I hate you.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Catharz »

Ok, so the slaadi are agonistic. The modrons can't even conceive of conflict, which is why they're so confused when they cause it wherever they go.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by tzor »

Calibron at [unixtime wrote:1194119148[/unixtime]]... so now I hate you.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by Judging__Eagle »

Calibron at [unixtime wrote:1194119148[/unixtime]]As interesting as the main body of that post was Tzor, the end of it reminded of this horrible joke about a "chicken slaadi sand-witch" so now I hate you.


I think that it's a pretty good use of situations that lead to a pun.

Most puns are pretty simple and thus dumb.

A good pun takes thought to work.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by JonSetanta »

virgileso at [unixtime wrote:1194039445[/unixtime]]Great, and now I'm imagining modrons as modernism. Their speech consists of single words that convey entire conversations, their goals are performed en masse yet seemingly inconsequential while also being somewhat controversial (50 modrons labour to make a public bathroom in the middle of Baker's Row) that end up through a series of coincidences to cause larger change in the immediate environment.


Modrons = Chinese.

And I prefer curry slaadi, actually.
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Re: hot hot halflingxgnome and elfxorc axxxtion!

Post by tzor »

The last movement of P.D.Q. Bach's "The Four Seasonings" is "To curry favor, favor curry."

That work also has one of my favorite lines, "Open sesasmie seed and seed what you see, seed what you see."
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