Open to all G&T Adventure Team members and closes on Sunday right before the first F1 race of the season (mostly picked as an arbitrary time) so that you may have time to play some RE before the launch of the new one in March 24th.
Also you're wearing a thousand pound suit of Iron Man armor and have a gun that fires low yield nuclear bombs.
Doors in Fallout have some incredible engineering behind them.
I want to make a classic Resident Evil style game where you're trapped in a giant mansion or whatever and the first time you come across one of the "This door has a lock with a symbol of an elephant on it, you need the elephant key" puzzles the character's thought response is basically "Well I have a shotgun".
The ways I have been thinking about to justify the blow out the lock/find the key being an actual decision instead of just blowing out the lock (or even kicking the door in should your character be of sufficient beef) is that the noise might attract monsters (or set off some sort of alarm that would massively attract them until the player found a way to turn it off), or that alternately if you break a lock instead of opening it with a key than monsters that spawn later in the original room you left that would normally not be able to travel through that door would now be free to do so, causing you to have more areas in the environment where you could encounter them.
Alternately the game is set in a lab or a police station or [some other environment] that might have the majority of its locked doors be secured, and you would be required to find the correct keys/keycards/whatever to access those, but you can choose to blast or kick in the lock on the occasional office/supply closet/break room door to give the player some moments of catharsis in between all of the key hunting.
Hitman has doors that you can open with a key, or a lockpick if you have one (but don't let people see you), or you can use a crowbar (but don't let people see you OR hear you), or you can use explosives/breaching charges/etc. So there is a push and pull between stealth and strength.
Hitman has doors that you can open with a key, or a lockpick if you have one (but don't let people see you), or you can use a crowbar (but don't let people see you OR hear you), or you can use explosives/breaching charges/etc. So there is a push and pull between stealth and strength.
I have to this day never actually played a Hitman game, but I have heard a lot of good things about the series (especially the newer games) giving you lots of opportunities to pick your preferred method of assassination, as well as letting you be fairly creative if you choose to be.
Werewolf2000adSuckers, I know exactly what went wrong.Registered Userregular
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
Hitman has doors that you can open with a key, or a lockpick if you have one (but don't let people see you), or you can use a crowbar (but don't let people see you OR hear you), or you can use explosives/breaching charges/etc. So there is a push and pull between stealth and strength.
I have to this day never actually played a Hitman game, but I have heard a lot of good things about the series (especially the newer games) giving you lots of opportunities to pick your preferred method of assassination, as well as letting you be fairly creative if you choose to be.
The balance they have struck with the series in this current iteration is so good and thought out that the 3rd one is the entire post leather fetish nun era wrapped together in one package.
Fact is, not letting you swap out different chacters is okay because even though 47 is a featureless smooth rock, he is a rock sat in the middle of a zen garden of sand, syringes, piano wire, sniper rifles, detonators, and .45 caliber handguns.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
I feel like a simple enough way to get out of that is "No, it has to be plugged in and also the item you are turning into a waffle has to fit within the iron part of the waffle iron and it has to close, the way a waffle iron normally does"
At most you might be able to waffle a doorknob but then the door is still there.
I feel like a simple enough way to get out of that is "No, it has to be plugged in and also the item you are turning into a waffle has to fit within the iron part of the waffle iron and it has to close, the way a waffle iron normally does"
At most you might be able to waffle a doorknob but then the door is still there.
I have a feeling the first time was, "Ok technically no but that's really clever and I want to reward that." The 50th time was, "For fuck sake stop trivializing my dungeons you bastards!"
That's also basically how the fireball+barbarian universal lock pick was invented, just much less clever.
I like to think I would have the wisdom to ask the players what they wanted/found rewarding as a gaming experience: coming up with varied solutions to challenges, or having invented (or in this case, acquired) a one-size-fits-all Win button. And then honestly assessing for myself whether it was satisfying to me to provide them with that desired experience.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
+3
ArmsForPeace84Your Partner In FreedomRegistered Userregular
Hitman has doors that you can open with a key, or a lockpick if you have one (but don't let people see you), or you can use a crowbar (but don't let people see you OR hear you), or you can use explosives/breaching charges/etc. So there is a push and pull between stealth and strength.
I have to this day never actually played a Hitman game, but I have heard a lot of good things about the series (especially the newer games) giving you lots of opportunities to pick your preferred method of assassination, as well as letting you be fairly creative if you choose to be.
The balance they have struck with the series in this current iteration is so good and thought out that the 3rd one is the entire post leather fetish nun era wrapped together in one package.
Fact is, not letting you swap out different chacters is okay because even though 47 is a featureless smooth rock, he is a rock sat in the middle of a zen garden of sand, syringes, piano wire, sniper rifles, detonators, and .45 caliber handguns.
Also, at least one of the older titles from before the reboot remains worth checking out. Hitman: Blood Money was the high water mark for that cycle. Refining the gameplay and adding a coat of polish, while the story goes places.
Hitman: Go also rates a playthrough, for anyone not averse to puzzle games. It is, of course, highly abstracted. And in keeping with its genre, has a very specific solution to each puzzle, in contrast with the freedom of the series that inspires it. The aesthetics are those of a tabletop game, like Davey could be playing it with his Jack Flack action figure at the start of Cloak & Dagger. With a certain charm to the settings, evoked with the barest minimum of set decoration.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
That sounds less like "stopping you from solving problems" and more like the GM trying really hard to not let you softlock yourselves, honestly.
As a GM, "Well, congratulations. You broke the statue that was going to give you enough hints to be able to continue *and* the magical potions you needed to cross the path forward. Now you get to sit there and wait while I try to think of how to salvage this adventure because you basically just caved in your path forward" is the mother of all failure states.
Like, in most situations, "breaking the puzzle" does not actually get you much, it just prevents you from learning whatever the puzzle was going to tell you!
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
My first thought was “put the waffle iron on the ground, upside down, campaign over”
I don’t think that would have really passed muster with any dms I had though. The rule was basically that everything had a certain power level and charge, even if not mentioned in the rulebook, and extreme uses would cause the item to fail.
So unless the waffle iron was some artifact level item personally crafted by Vecna or something, after a couple of uses opening doors it would just burn out.
Or if someone got the idea to use it on a sleeping dragon guarding treasure it would be “the waffle iron turns a 18 inch circle of the dragon’s scales and flesh into waffle, which immediately gets blown out as it was in the path of a major artery. The waffle iron has used all its charge and needs to be recharged over 8 hours of rest time. The dragon has taken 25 points of damage and a bleed effect of 5hp per round is applied. Also the dragon is now awake, pissed off, and aware of your presence, roll for initiative.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
That sounds less like "stopping you from solving problems" and more like the GM trying really hard to not let you softlock yourselves, honestly.
As a GM, "Well, congratulations. You broke the statue that was going to give you enough hints to be able to continue *and* the magical potions you needed to cross the path forward. Now you get to sit there and wait while I try to think of how to salvage this adventure because you basically just caved in your path forward" is the mother of all failure states.
Like, in most situations, "breaking the puzzle" does not actually get you much, it just prevents you from learning whatever the puzzle was going to tell you!
That sounds like a “Rocks fall and everyone dies” situation.
Oops the magical statue was bonded to the soul of a long dead level 20 fighter/mage whose duty was to kill hostile looters while guiding those who approach the tomb for a noble purpose. Roll for initiative. Oh you guys are level 4 and it killed you all easily? You’re all dead. Everyone reroll a standard level 4 party. You hear rumors in a tavern of a band of idiots who fucked with the guardian of ithil zahn. On investigating their mysterious disappearance you find a collection of mangled corpses in front of a statue with bubbling liquids. Most of the valuable items have been looted, but you find a small satchel containing (keys and necessary quest items the party has collected up to this point).
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
My first thought was “put the waffle iron on the ground, upside down, campaign over”
I don’t think that would have really passed muster with any dms I had though. The rule was basically that everything had a certain power level and charge, even if not mentioned in the rulebook, and extreme uses would cause the item to fail.
So unless the waffle iron was some artifact level item personally crafted by Vecna or something, after a couple of uses opening doors it would just burn out.
Or if someone got the idea to use it on a sleeping dragon guarding treasure it would be “the waffle iron turns a 18 inch circle of the dragon’s scales and flesh into waffle, which immediately gets blown out as it was in the path of a major artery. The waffle iron has used all its charge and needs to be recharged over 8 hours of rest time. The dragon has taken 25 points of damage and a bleed effect of 5hp per round is applied. Also the dragon is now awake, pissed off, and aware of your presence, roll for initiative.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
My first thought was “put the waffle iron on the ground, upside down, campaign over”
I don’t think that would have really passed muster with any dms I had though. The rule was basically that everything had a certain power level and charge, even if not mentioned in the rulebook, and extreme uses would cause the item to fail.
So unless the waffle iron was some artifact level item personally crafted by Vecna or something, after a couple of uses opening doors it would just burn out.
Or if someone got the idea to use it on a sleeping dragon guarding treasure it would be “the waffle iron turns a 18 inch circle of the dragon’s scales and flesh into waffle, which immediately gets blown out as it was in the path of a major artery. The waffle iron has used all its charge and needs to be recharged over 8 hours of rest time. The dragon has taken 25 points of damage and a bleed effect of 5hp per round is applied. Also the dragon is now awake, pissed off, and aware of your presence, roll for initiative.
Zork: Grand Inquisitor has a part where you're playing a rock eating monster and get confronted with a Myst-style chessboard puzzle. The correct solution is smash it into pieces and take the item it was protecting.
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
My first thought was “put the waffle iron on the ground, upside down, campaign over”
I don’t think that would have really passed muster with any dms I had though. The rule was basically that everything had a certain power level and charge, even if not mentioned in the rulebook, and extreme uses would cause the item to fail.
So unless the waffle iron was some artifact level item personally crafted by Vecna or something, after a couple of uses opening doors it would just burn out.
Or if someone got the idea to use it on a sleeping dragon guarding treasure it would be “the waffle iron turns a 18 inch circle of the dragon’s scales and flesh into waffle, which immediately gets blown out as it was in the path of a major artery. The waffle iron has used all its charge and needs to be recharged over 8 hours of rest time. The dragon has taken 25 points of damage and a bleed effect of 5hp per round is applied. Also the dragon is now awake, pissed off, and aware of your presence, roll for initiative.
My favorite dirty DM trick was an elaborately decorated but apparently mundane longsword set into an altar with a shaft of magical starlight illuminating it surrounded by the remains of a century of battles, many of the bodies frozen clutching at the blade or the frame holding it. It had an enchantment that could not be identified (some ridiculous difficulty check that basically required gimping a build to get to) and was worth something crazy like 135,000 gold. Just having it attracted negative attention, it scared shopkeepers and anyone learned in magic was truly terrified of it once they knew how we found it (because nobody could identify what was obviously a terrible curse).
We lugged that sword around for months and one of us specialized a build just in lore to identify it. We mostly forgot about it but the DM one night said, "(bard) catches a glimpse of the elaborate sword's hilt and he thinks he recognizes something he missed in the mithril inlays," to let us know we could possibly pass the check. Still took some trying (and an extra clue the DM threw up us in the form of a book with the same symbols - he had a house rule that you could only retry a failed lore check if you increased the skill or gained some new information).
The enchantment? Once per long rest the bearer of the sword could look under objects and find a single coin made of tin and bearing the stamp "SAMPLE NOT FOR TRADE."
The sword was set up like something truly fantastic or truly terrible. We were prevented from getting rid of it but it was also made dangerous to keep. It had a power we couldn't figure out and would never find by experimentation which set off alarm bells with every NPC we met.
TL;DR this thing was SO OBVIOUSLY plot critical that even I wouldn't cast fireball on it and I don't heed friendly fire.
We derailed an entire campaign for multiple sessions to unlock the secrets of this super important plot critical sword only to learn it was the most worthless item ever conceived of, a -1 sword which randomly gave us coins we couldn't use.
Posts
So far it asks things of me that I don't know what they are, and thus my Qi is under constant assault.
Statements from cultivator dating sims
Reminds me of Dark Souls 2 where you have to kill 4 of the most powerful beings in existence because you can't jump over a broken pillar.
Thank you!
Steam: Feriluce
Battle.net: Feriluce#1995
Also you're wearing a thousand pound suit of Iron Man armor and have a gun that fires low yield nuclear bombs.
Doors in Fallout have some incredible engineering behind them.
Thanks, I was just thinking about how there haven't really been any gunpoint-likes since Ronin
Thanks to @Karoz for Scott Pilgrim VS The World, and to @Siege for Planet Crafter!
Twitch | Blizzard: Ianator#1479 | 3DS: Ianator - 1779 2336 5317 | FFXIV: Iana Ateliere (NA Sarg)
Backlog Challenge List
The solution to this is FALCON PAAAWNCH
I want to make a classic Resident Evil style game where you're trapped in a giant mansion or whatever and the first time you come across one of the "This door has a lock with a symbol of an elephant on it, you need the elephant key" puzzles the character's thought response is basically "Well I have a shotgun".
The ways I have been thinking about to justify the blow out the lock/find the key being an actual decision instead of just blowing out the lock (or even kicking the door in should your character be of sufficient beef) is that the noise might attract monsters (or set off some sort of alarm that would massively attract them until the player found a way to turn it off), or that alternately if you break a lock instead of opening it with a key than monsters that spawn later in the original room you left that would normally not be able to travel through that door would now be free to do so, causing you to have more areas in the environment where you could encounter them.
Alternately the game is set in a lab or a police station or [some other environment] that might have the majority of its locked doors be secured, and you would be required to find the correct keys/keycards/whatever to access those, but you can choose to blast or kick in the lock on the occasional office/supply closet/break room door to give the player some moments of catharsis in between all of the key hunting.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
I have to this day never actually played a Hitman game, but I have heard a lot of good things about the series (especially the newer games) giving you lots of opportunities to pick your preferred method of assassination, as well as letting you be fairly creative if you choose to be.
EVERYBODY WANTS TO SIT IN THE BIG CHAIR, MEG!
The balance they have struck with the series in this current iteration is so good and thought out that the 3rd one is the entire post leather fetish nun era wrapped together in one package.
Fact is, not letting you swap out different chacters is okay because even though 47 is a featureless smooth rock, he is a rock sat in the middle of a zen garden of sand, syringes, piano wire, sniper rifles, detonators, and .45 caliber handguns.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
This is why my old DM had to make every puzzle fireproof and magically invulnerable because "throw a fireball at it" and "throw a barbarian at it" will solve way too many problems otherwise.
"You approach a large open room. In the center is a table with twelve goblets filled with bubbling liquids of different colors. An enchanted statue comes to life and begins to -"
"I attack the statue."
"I cast fireball on the table."
"GUYS COME ON I WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS!"
My old DM once had us raid a Final-Fantasy-7-esque lab which was researching unnatural power and harnessing it in breakfast-related appliances. My character made off with a magical waffle iron which turned anything placed upon it into delicious waffles. The first hint that the rest of the campaign might not progress as planned came when I asked if the device could be held against the wall to create a "waffle door."
No room could hold us.
Please tell me that at some point you Midas'd yourself into a waffle
I slept on that.
Someone tell me the Ryan North video game I have been sleeping on
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
At most you might be able to waffle a doorknob but then the door is still there.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
You have to aim for the lock, so below the handle.
It's probably the biggest tech that is not casually known.
Sliding doors don't have this weakness.
I have a feeling the first time was, "Ok technically no but that's really clever and I want to reward that." The 50th time was, "For fuck sake stop trivializing my dungeons you bastards!"
That's also basically how the fireball+barbarian universal lock pick was invented, just much less clever.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Also, at least one of the older titles from before the reboot remains worth checking out. Hitman: Blood Money was the high water mark for that cycle. Refining the gameplay and adding a coat of polish, while the story goes places.
Hitman: Go also rates a playthrough, for anyone not averse to puzzle games. It is, of course, highly abstracted. And in keeping with its genre, has a very specific solution to each puzzle, in contrast with the freedom of the series that inspires it. The aesthetics are those of a tabletop game, like Davey could be playing it with his Jack Flack action figure at the start of Cloak & Dagger. With a certain charm to the settings, evoked with the barest minimum of set decoration.
That sounds less like "stopping you from solving problems" and more like the GM trying really hard to not let you softlock yourselves, honestly.
As a GM, "Well, congratulations. You broke the statue that was going to give you enough hints to be able to continue *and* the magical potions you needed to cross the path forward. Now you get to sit there and wait while I try to think of how to salvage this adventure because you basically just caved in your path forward" is the mother of all failure states.
Like, in most situations, "breaking the puzzle" does not actually get you much, it just prevents you from learning whatever the puzzle was going to tell you!
My first thought was “put the waffle iron on the ground, upside down, campaign over”
I don’t think that would have really passed muster with any dms I had though. The rule was basically that everything had a certain power level and charge, even if not mentioned in the rulebook, and extreme uses would cause the item to fail.
So unless the waffle iron was some artifact level item personally crafted by Vecna or something, after a couple of uses opening doors it would just burn out.
Or if someone got the idea to use it on a sleeping dragon guarding treasure it would be “the waffle iron turns a 18 inch circle of the dragon’s scales and flesh into waffle, which immediately gets blown out as it was in the path of a major artery. The waffle iron has used all its charge and needs to be recharged over 8 hours of rest time. The dragon has taken 25 points of damage and a bleed effect of 5hp per round is applied. Also the dragon is now awake, pissed off, and aware of your presence, roll for initiative.
That sounds like a “Rocks fall and everyone dies” situation.
Oops the magical statue was bonded to the soul of a long dead level 20 fighter/mage whose duty was to kill hostile looters while guiding those who approach the tomb for a noble purpose. Roll for initiative. Oh you guys are level 4 and it killed you all easily? You’re all dead. Everyone reroll a standard level 4 party. You hear rumors in a tavern of a band of idiots who fucked with the guardian of ithil zahn. On investigating their mysterious disappearance you find a collection of mangled corpses in front of a statue with bubbling liquids. Most of the valuable items have been looted, but you find a small satchel containing (keys and necessary quest items the party has collected up to this point).
Steam | XBL
May I present to you
The Head of Vecna
https://www.rpglibrary.org/articles/storytelling/headofvecna.php
This why folks cant be trusted with magic.
*a lifted 1998 dodge ram flies through the air surrounded by rednecks on broomsticks*
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
I want to thank you for absolutely making my morning with this.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Right up there with the Dread Gazebo.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
We lugged that sword around for months and one of us specialized a build just in lore to identify it. We mostly forgot about it but the DM one night said, "(bard) catches a glimpse of the elaborate sword's hilt and he thinks he recognizes something he missed in the mithril inlays," to let us know we could possibly pass the check. Still took some trying (and an extra clue the DM threw up us in the form of a book with the same symbols - he had a house rule that you could only retry a failed lore check if you increased the skill or gained some new information).
The enchantment? Once per long rest the bearer of the sword could look under objects and find a single coin made of tin and bearing the stamp "SAMPLE NOT FOR TRADE."
And as mentioned above we 100% deserved this.
There be shenanigans going on in chat.
Thanks @Shade for The Chant and @Jazz for Cyberpunk: The Pornier Version.
The sword was set up like something truly fantastic or truly terrible. We were prevented from getting rid of it but it was also made dangerous to keep. It had a power we couldn't figure out and would never find by experimentation which set off alarm bells with every NPC we met.
TL;DR this thing was SO OBVIOUSLY plot critical that even I wouldn't cast fireball on it and I don't heed friendly fire.
We derailed an entire campaign for multiple sessions to unlock the secrets of this super important plot critical sword only to learn it was the most worthless item ever conceived of, a -1 sword which randomly gave us coins we couldn't use.