Poke-a-Monster
You guys ever play DragonStrike? It was Hero Quest’s less famous little brother, and these days it’s probably most famous for the VHS tape that came in the box. (Seriously, you should watch this ridiculousness. It still cracks my shit up.) Like it says in my bio, this was the game that got me into the hobby in the first place. I still remember badgering my poor beleaguered mom into playing the part of the Dragon Master (DM), and even more clearly I remember getting my butt kicked by the game.
I lost my copy of DragonStrike somewhere in the depths of time…probably when we moved to North Carolina in the summer between 3rd and 4th grade. I’ve always pined for a replacement, and last X-mas Laurel actually tracked one down. I tore into the paper, beheld the glorious box art, and felt an extremely nerdy nostalgia-tear forming in my eye. There were the boards! The character cards! The fondly remembered plastic minis! We set up, sat down, and I got ready to get my butt kicked. After a quick refresher of the rules (huh…turns out there was a “talk to the monster” option in there. Weird.) it was off to the castle.
First round of the first encounter. There’s a drawbridge with a gargoyle standing guard.
“Hi!” says the thief player. “Would you mind letting us past?”
“Sure,” says the gargoyle, who promptly wings away.
Meanwhile I’m sitting there with my warrior (wait a minute…Malibu!?) with my mouth agape. Did that just happen? Laurel reads the DM instructions aloud and assures me that yeah, that’s exactly what happens. Too bad 3rd grader Colin never figured that out. It would have made my mom a much less conceited DM.
We plowed through the rest of the adventure with nary a problem, and even managed to beat up on the “very difficult” scenario in the next round. I’m sure that my current gaming group has better tactics than my long-ago little kid pals, but I honestly think that whole “try talking to the monster” trick was the real key to our success.
How about the rest of you guys? When did you learn that there are solutions to gaming conflicts beyond “kick down the door and stab the monster?” Share your cleverest tactics in the comments!
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Well… I suppose you could call me and our party’s Brawler Dragon Diplomats, because we had to talk down a particularily angry brine dragon, possibly on the verge of attacking, and initiating combat with our poor lv4 party… In the middle of it’s underground, water filled lair.
I had to choose what I had to say wisely, because I started off this conversation rolling a nat 1 on my diplomacy, making said dragon a tad aggressive towards me. Fortunately, the rest of the rolls were in my favor.
There was another case in which we tried talking a band of (hob)goblin thieves into submission… However, our Brawler’s threat of “You better back down or we’ll have to whomp you” was taken the wrong way… I’ll have to say, that was quite a fight that followed…
In the end, a couple of our party members opted to heal one of the still living goblins to have a bit of a chat, in which we learned of the prejudice and discrimination the unfortunate band went through, being branded as thieves, despite trying to live a normal life before resorting to banditry…
After sharing a few words of encouragement that not everyone out there is hateful and cruel, we sent the goblin off with our best wishes in mind, and a modest sum of gold, in hopes that they will live a better life.
I do hope that goblin comes back to return our generosity in some way…
I’ve always liked the idea of neutral dragons. If it’s a blue dragon the party probably just goes into dragon slayer mode. A silver dragon and you automatically assume you’ve stumbled upon a new ally and/or quest giver. But a brine dragon? Suddenly you’ve got options, and you know you’re going to have to play the encounter by ear.
In a chat based 3.5 D&D game, I made a bard. There was a lot of thought that went into my barding, like the Bluff check accompanying a Silent Image as I yelled Wall of Stone! and got a cover bonus from it.
One day, the group I was with was squabbling, so I took a little detour from the main folks in private messages with the DM. My bard sleuthed around a bit and found a back way into a mountain peak that the group was trying to scale. This back way went straight to a white dragon’s hoard room…with the dragon on top of it. My bard went ahead and did the adventurer thing by trying to swipe some of it, and got caught by the quick-to-wake beast.
About to die, my frantic bard said “WAIT! Isn’t it boring, alone here by yourself? And look, entertainment has shown up right on your doorstep!” and took out his grandpappy’s fiddle. Amused, the dragon allowed me to play as long as I could stand the cold. I played, and danced, and tried to grab the treasure again and bolt for the exit. I got caught again.
I was allowed to keep my life, as the fiddling was quite good, but the fiddle now belonged to the dragon and I was unceremoniously deposited in a snow bank outside. The rest of the group never got past arguing at the front door, and the DM thanked me later for having provided some actual fun in the scene when he was beginning to despair about the whole ordeal. Had to replace the instrument, but I got myself a new bard story, so overall, a win.
Now see, I’m of the mind that there are two types of talking in RPGs. There’s “too much talking,” which involves dudes arguing about strategy for 45 minutes, and then there’s “shenanigans.” You brought shenanigans to the table, which is much more fun than squabbling about a locked door. GJ.
Well after having had many troubles with dwarves in the past when me and my D&D group encountered another group of dwarves in a room (we actually didn’t just kick the door down for once) we decided “lets get tactical.”
The paln started with the monk and gnome rogue tunneled up and ovwr the room, stealthy like, and opened a small hole to drop a thunder stone into it.
This is when the gnome Rogue droped in, critical roled and cleaved a dwarf in two from head to toe with his battle axe (yes our rouge used a battle axe) and leaped back up into the tunnel unseen.
When all the dwarves came too they realized one of them was dead, at which point pur barbarian kicked the door in and my necromancer sent his body guard (a skeleton dressed as the grim reaper usong a scythe) and 3 zombies run into the room followed by the barbarian howling in rage.
By the end of it all the dwarves were dead, dying, or gone insane thinkjng the grim reaper was out to get them as the dm called it a night, took a deep breath and screamed “THE DWARVES WERE THE PLOT!”
“Ooh! How many XP do we get for killing the plot?”
Friends of mine, when just starting a campaign in RQ, (so no levels, but low skills) were waylaid by a small goblin, who tried to rob them. As it was on its own, that did not work out, but my friends decided to spare it, and gave it some pointers on how to do proper robbery, with ambushes, and more than one person. So several months later, they were ambushed by this rather large goblin army. Turns out, the little guy listened, and upped his game. And as the party taught him what to do, they were left unharmed. However, the goblin was complaining that now every one was afraid of him and his army, so the robberies were few and far between, and no fun anymore, and the goblins were still shunned, but for different reasons. So the party told him about kingdoms, and having your own land, and being the boss there. Which led to the party, months later again, coming across this goblin kingdom, which more or less sprung up within a few months. So they asked for an audience with the king, which indeed turned out to be that lonely goblin. By now that goblin was happy enough with his lot, and gave the party the right to cross his land any time they wished, without having to pay tolls, and free board and lodging whenever they would be near.
I feel like you’ve got the outline of a children’s picture book there. I suggest you hire an artist and get on a best seller’s list ASAP.
I played DragonStrike! But it was the VGA version, rather than the VHS version:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonStrike_%28video_game%29
Well then. I’ll be hunting for an emulator this afternoon.
I was part of a group that was taking on the Temple of Elemental Evil. I had a Thief that I happened to roll the (almost unobtainable) Psionic Ability in 1st Ed AD&D. I randomly rolled the domination ability. I thought, “Cool, this could be useful.”
We met a shopkeeper (10th Lvl CE Thief), he was supposed to be a main plot driver all through the scenario. My 1st lvl Thief dominated him. (That ability is so Overpowered in First Edition. And the description was vague, so we misinterpreted.) We proceeded to completely dismantle the cabal before we went into the dungeon at all. DM did not like that party very much! We all had the upper level magic items before we really started the adventure. And every item was helpfully explained by my slave. ToEE is not supposed to be a WALKOVER!
He made us roll new characters after that one!
Lol. “No. You’re going to go through the adventure again. And this time you will struggle and die like proper adventurers!”
would love to do it again. But sadly, my adventuring group has retired and moved on to other pursuits. trying to get a new one together now.
Nearbygamers.com worked well for me. Good luck hunting down your next band of merry murderhobos.
Is… Is that Hovan Du?
It is not:
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Girallon
I suspect there might be some conceptual poaching at work though.
Not D&D, but in my youth I enjoyed a computer game called “Hero’s Quest” (name later changed to “Quest for Glory”. In the game, there was a critter hiding under a rock, and we needed some of that critter’s fur for a quest. My friend and I had tried all kinds of things to get at that critter – shooting it from a distance with fireballs, prying the rock up with our sword, hiding and waiting for it to come out on its own.
Then, along comes my little brother. “Why don’t you just ask it to come out?” Pff, yeah, right, it’s just a furball monsteer. But fine. “Talk to the critter.” we type.
Sure enough, the thing tosses the rock aside, perches on the edge of its hole and engages us with an extremely verbose introduction, followed by a jolly conversation in which it is happy to lend us some of its hair. Quest complete!
An important lesson!
I’d be curious to know what the creature was though.