Party Time - The Bloody Nipple Saga

Managing game time versus play time is a constant struggle any GM has to deal with. You know the game's in trouble when the GM perpetuates it.

Finally, we learn the names of the players - Chris (who plays Conan), and new-comer Michael (who will be playing Subotai). The lady pictured was the witch from the previous chapter, who, in the film, is an odd shape-changing witch.

For those not familiar with "treasure type," it involves assigning one or more treasure categories to a monster, which requires a bunch of corresponding look-up tables to cross-reference. Creatures like kobolds had close to garbage as their treasure, while dragons had every high-price treasure type. Animals like dogs would (should?) have no treasure.

Halflings were a non-copyrighted way to integrate Tolkein's Hobbits into D&D. They may be a good choice for a thief, but I have yet to meet someone who likes to play both elves and halflings. Yeah, it's a weak joke. The original script was worse.

I actually ran a campaign once with very little in the way of magic or monsters, based on Fred Saberhagen's Sword series (take warning if you read that Wikipedia article on the series - it's filled with spoilers you don't find out until the end of the last book). Needless to say, the campaign was fairly boring until the players started finding the "rare" magic items.

I opted for a different color to Subotai's speech. I think it makes the text easier to read, and is almost a necessity when I look at some of the future scripts I have written.

Transcript:

Scene: Michael (Subotai) and Chris (Conan) are talking with the DM

DM:Good to have you join in, Michael.

Subotai:Chris told me about this, and I thought it would be fun to start playing again.

DM:I didn't think you'd be interested. What kind of character are you wanting to play?

Subotai:An elven thief.

Conan:Thief! Awesome! I wanna steal stuff, too!

DM:Hm. I'll need a bit of a re-write. And, Michael, there's only humans in this campaign.

Subotai:No elves? What kind of fantasy campaign are you running here? Do you even have wizards?

DM:{images of the witch} There was supposed to be one.

Subotai:What have you done so far?

DM:We have just started getting into the world setting...

Conan:I was a gladiator-slave, killed a bunch of goons, and I just killed some dogs to get a fantasy sword.

Subotai:You've done nothing but murder, and you've only got a sword to show for it? Just what have you planned for up to now?

DM:Hey!

Subotai:Also, I don't think dogs were that treasure type.

DM:Now that's going too far. I think I'm going to allow halflings.