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    It's like The Sixth Sense, but reversed. You are not a ghost, but everyone else is.



  • @The_Quiet_One I ran a D&D dungeon with that premise once--the library seemed occupied just fine. The people acted weirdly though, often looping (like a bad gif) if the party asked them something wrong. The computer (ok, the enslaved soul of a little girl stuffed into a magitek crystal) simultaneously thought that there were no employees/residents and that everyone was in they're normal place. Turns out they were all delusions and sensory illusions being created by the computer who had been tricked 200 years ago into killing everyone. Oh, and the computer wasn't the bad guy there. They did have to shut her down to prevent BAD THINGS from happening to the rest of reality though...



  • @Benjamin-Hall sounds vaguely like the plot of The Matrix.



  • @anotherusername Sorta-kinda, except everyone was really and truly dead (and had been for centuries). They were all (except the player characters) ghosts in the machine. I can never honestly claim to be original in my plots/scenes--everything I have is an amalgam of things I've read/seen/heard + tentacles. Somehow it always comes back to tentacles for my best monsters...


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @Benjamin-Hall ...which is just fine until one of your party members decides to play an anime schoolgirl.



  • @masonwheeler said in No Posts:

    @Benjamin-Hall ...which is just finenot as good as it could be until one of your party members decides to play an anime schoolgirl.

    FTFY



  • @izzion said in No Posts:

    @masonwheeler said in No Posts:

    @Benjamin-Hall ...which is just finenot as good as it could be until one of your party members decides to play an anime schoolgirl.

    FTFY

    To both of you--:vomit:

    Actually, these are more the squamous rugose Lovecraftian or body horror types of tentacles. Note--if the dragon has multiple tentacles growing out of its back and is perched on the surface portion of the bad guy's underground nest/base, it probably doesn't want to talk to you. I'm not so much for the :giggity: type of tentacle.

    There is that one cult that is all about sexual perversion though--mostly of the torture/pain type. Had one priestess who when the player smacked her (trying to get her to talk) had an "interesting" reaction. She had also decided to wear an illusion of being naked and covered in blood (actually she was sensibly wearing armor that was covered in blood). Cultists are freaky.


  • Java Dev



  • @PleegWat said in No Posts:

    @Benjamin-Hall

    0_1495051722972_wow___dragon_soul___madness_of_deathwing_by_byorrsingyr-d4innno.jpg

    Oh come on, you hear "tentacles" and go for Deathwing instead of Zhaitan?


  • Java Dev

    @ben_lubar said in No Posts:

    Oh come on, you hear "tentacles" and go for Deathwing instead of Zhaitan?

    Never heard of him. Typically lovecraftian horrors in warcraft would give you C'thun, but he's not very high-def. Y'shaarj doesn't really have a proper appearance anywhere since he's long dead (ish, not nearly dead enough), and I'm not sure any official art even exists for N'zoth. I could've gone for Yogg'saron, but @Benjamin-Hall specified a dragon.



  • @PleegWat Yes, but with much less fire. @ben_lubar, more fleshy. This was a mutated green dragon--the whole area it was in forced all life in it to mutate for "art." The Demon Prince that had influence there had a thing for tentacles (and had a few himself, kinda an octopus with a central eye/horribly mutated face instead of a body). Re-purposed an Elder Brain to serve as his lieutenant.




  • Java Dev

    @Benjamin-Hall Nope, although since recently warcraft does have a corrupted green dragon, Ysera was corrupted by the Emerald Nightmare, which originates with the Burning Legion. That does not tend to involve tentacles, and between her corruption and her death there wasn't enough time for significant deformation anyway. Also, although she is a green dragon her dominant colours became metallic blue and red rather than green after her corruption.


  • Impossible Mission - B

    Speaking of draconic horrors...

    This was part of my longest D&D campaign. It was pretty homebrewed 3.5, and we had the perfect mix of personalities. They also seemed to really appreciate all the work I put into writing for them.

    The one thing they all hated, was the fact that it's nearly impossible for me to write without hiding puns in the content. It's compulsive. Even in my English classes, I would pepper in sentences that contained the most absurd puns.

    It's a problem I've no intention of correcting.

    So, in this game, the players have gotten to level 8 or 9, and they were exploring a new city. There were tons of things for the characters to do, NPCs to talk with, and thousands of little threads for them to pull on, but the one they went after most was this mysterious, humongous library.

    Unbeknownst to the players, my DM notebook contained the helpful reminder "something something mad god's library" and the stupid punchline. That's it.

    So, flying by the seat of my pants, I came up with this crazy layout. Eventually I sat down and wrote out a huge backstory for it, but it was still with the one gag in mind.

    All the shelves were made of faded books, and all the readable books were in the wrong places. Any time they wanted to find something, it was inevitably in a different section: a famous NPC's history in the home and garden section, research on dragons in the fantasy section, poisonous alchemy in the cooking section, ect. This confused the shit out of them, and almost every second of down time they got was devoted to exploring this weird library.

    There was a tall, creepy librarian (often the only other person in there) with a graying hair-bun and a hooked nose. She wore a black gown, and seemed to glide everywhere she went. She hardly spoke to them, but would point as a means to answer questions, and shush them if they got too loud.

    Eventually the players found a back room hidden behind a bookshelf. It had a "Members Only" sign on it, and when they asked the librarian about it, she quietly handed them a long form to fill out. (There was no trick here, but my players know better than to trust something that seems easy.)

    Rather than get a library card, they resort to stealing books and replacing them after use. They soon noticed that if they left a book out of place, it would inevitably wind up in its randomly specific location. This weirded the rogue out most of all, and he convinced the fighter and the cleric that their best option was to break into the members only area in the middle of the day. Naturally, the rest of the party followed along.

    When they got to the other side they found this impossibly gigantic labyrinth of bookshelves. As they walked around, they noticed that the shelves were moving and changing on their own and they had no idea where to go. Well, two of them could fly (cleric and the fighter) and one was a teleporter (rogue,) so they scouted above while the others (witch and samurai) walked below

    The rogue immediately noticed that the librarian was coming after them; shelves moved to make a path, and she seemed to glide straight to the people on the ground.

    Well, never one to let a good idea come between him and an irrational impulse, the cleric took off in a dive straight for her, and brandished his warhammer with a natural 20 toward intimidation. The terrified librarian shrieked and collapsed onto the ground, pulling books down on top of her and spasming in shock.

    Ever the honorable helper, the samurai leapt into action; pulling a syringe from his jacket. (Ok, so about that syringe... It fully heals and negates all status effects... But it also sends you into an uncontrollable rage) The samurai plunges the "health potion" straight into her heart, and fully injects the serum.

    The table went silent, apart from my laughter, and the fighter said "I can not believe you just did that."

    Before they could really reflect on the choices made, the librarian let out a howling screech that knocked books off the shelves, and shook the floor. As the samurai backed up, he saw the librarian's torso crack and push outward. Still screaming, her face began to elongate, and her hands stretched into massive claws. Her back arched, and as the skin was stretched to its limit, wings shredded through where her shoulder blades had been.

    At this point everyone was spending so much time arguing in character about what to do, no one did anything. The woman's face was shredded as a mouth in the shape of a humpback whale pushed out; its baleen resembled the fanned pages of a paperback. As the monster grew, it started standing up on all fours. Huge cracks ran the length of the floor where it stepped. The librarian's skin was shredded like a bad sunburn to make room for leathery scales. Along its joints, and down its spine were golden bookbindings. Its huge wings fanned out to reveal feathered pages of arcane script, scrawled haphazardly.

    The witch was the first to act. She ran up to the now 15 foot monster, and was backhanded into the bookshelf the rogue was standing on. In a single round, the monster had grown to over 30 feet tall, its weight started putting a huge strain on the ground. In the next round, the floor gave way and everyone who was not flying began to tumble into darkness.

    Thinking quickly, the rogue reached out with his ability and saw that the floor was almost eight hundred feet down. He began teleporting the non-flyers to safety while the cleric and the fighter used their illuminated weapons to battle the slow-falling giant; it's enormous, leather bound claws, raking and clasping for them.

    Dodging debris, and fighting a leathery whale-dragon, they eventually got within range of the witch, who proceeded to send torrents of flame up at the monster (and them.) The cleric used his warhammer to cripple its wings, and send it plummeting. When it landed, it roared up just as the fighter came down, rolling a perfect 20 and sailing bastard-sword-first into the creature's mouth, and out of its throat.

    Pages began to burn away as the monster crumpled in a heap. Bleeding and weary, our adventurers found themselves in a massive underground cathedral. Deep, slow laughter came from the darkness all around them.

    "So," said the god of madness, "I see you've defeated my bookwyrm."

    Silence.

    The rogue started laughing and shaking his head. The witch looked incredulous. The cleric put his head on the table. The samurai just smiled and tried to tell if I was serious. The fighter pushed his chair back and said "I'm going to smoke. You are the fucking worst."

    As soon as they heard it, they knew that the past two months of their gaming lives had been an elaborate set up to the dumbest shit I could think of. I honestly would be hard pressed to find a moment where I made myself laugh harder. Just, the sheer amount of time and planning it took for that payoff was so worth it. I had tears streaming down my face as they left my house. The beautiful stupidity of it makes me smile to this day.

    We took a week off and picked up from where we stopped. The game went on for another year and a half.



  • @PleegWat been there, killed that (I say as I have Wow up on another monitor...). This was D&D and entirely the product of my diseased imagination.



  • @masonwheeler A single upvote is not enough.



  • @Arantor agree. That's the kind of thing I'd try to pull off if I had more presence of mind. That's epic.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in No Posts:

    Turns out they were all delusions and sensory illusions being created by the computer who had been tricked 200 years ago into killing everyone. Oh, and the computer wasn't the bad guy there. They did have to shut her down to prevent BAD THINGS from happening to the rest of reality though...

    Dr. Who episode.



  • @xaade Silence in the Library, yes, sort of. There were intrusions from the astral plane and other issues, but yeah. As I said I tend to amalgamate stuff from all over. True creativity is hard.



  • @Benjamin-Hall said in No Posts:

    True creativity is hard.

    Turning an episode into interactive version is creativity.

    I don't know if anyone could really create something with no source of inspiration.


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