Volume 1 Issue 17 – Giants

By 10 commentsPodcast, Show Notes, Volume 1

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Show notes:

A sad farewell to Frank Frazetta and John Eric Holmes, two legendary men who passed away recently.

New authors at RFIpodcast.com, including Matt Ide, Todd Huges, and PC Buzz, please stop by and leave a comment for them.

Sage Advice – listeners comment on lycanthropy, treasure, and alignment

Poll of the week – what kind of player are you?

Table Manners – Alcohol in (and at) the game

Creature Feature Theater – They might be GIANTS (yes, they are giants)

Dragon’s Hoard – The Amulet of the Planes

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10 comments on “Volume 1 Issue 17 – Giants”

  1. DM Paragon

    Hey guys.

    Thought I would comment on your “drinking” segment:

    First: Drinking, in a fashion where “becoming drunk” is an issue I reserve for role play alone. If they are in a town in lay-over and just stopped into the tavern just to have a drink and chat with a locals, then it is mostly just hand-waved. However…

    Second: My players like to role play, and a lot of that happens in a tavern, while drinking. For example, just last week, there was an NPC dwarf who was eyeballing a PC while both were drinking. The PC took this as a challenge, and a “cross the room” silent drinking contest ensued. Handling it for me is fairly simple.

    Base: poison save (alcohol is a type of poison)
    Modifiers: given by race and class in the PHB/DMG. Multi-class rules apply to saves as usual.
    Further modifiers: If the party assists the drinking (cheering him on, etc.) then the PC or NPC gets a +1 moral bonus to the poison save per cheerleader to a max of +3

    First hour: The PC and NPC has had 1d4 drinks (PC determines type. This is primarily for pricing and has no effect on the game). Save vs. poison after the first hour.
    From there: Each drink once finished requires another save vs. poison. Each failure is marked (note taken). here are the save results for both players and NPCs.

    failed save 1: -1 CHR (fine, CHA),
    failed save 2: as above and -1 Dex
    failed save 3: as above and -1 Wis
    failed save 4: as above and -1 Int
    failed save 5: as above and forced alcoholic slumber (I avoid the word sleep, for the elves..lol) for 1d6 hours

    In not forced into alcoholic slumber: return 1 point of ability per hour (in order they were removed). If forced into alcoholic slumber, they must finish slumber before before I start returning ability points. Also, forced slumber time only works as 1/2 for “rest” to simulate hang over. thus, if the d6 forced slumber results in a 6, then he is slumbering for 6 hours, only 3 of those hours count as “rest”.

    What I like about this system is that how well a character seriously drinks is already created during character creation and through leveling as normal. I need no other saves, charts or rules to make it work. I only added the “bonus to moral” as my own way to give the other players something to do in the role play of it all. I feel the saves are important, because as we all know, drinking all night when you have something to do the next day ALWAYS affects the next days work, and I am a firm believer that most everything the PCs do should have outcomes, both good and bad. In this case, the PC out drank the dwarf! He earned admiration from the dwarf, who is the armor merchant in town, and this, gained a 10% reduction in armor prices in that town, and I can use the dwarf as a character hook for a future adventure!

    Thanks!
    DM Paragon
    “Jesus Saves (and takes half damage)”

  3. DM Bill

    Awww!!….no mention of my half-ogre article…but you remembered giants -sniff -sniff….boo hooo hoo šŸ™ …….lol

    Good episode btw…liked the little blooper thing at the end…

  4. Christopher Letzelter

    Hey, listened with interest to the “Giants” segment and would like to update you on uses of giants in modules other than the “G” Series. In WG4, “The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun,” a Mountain Giant named Groorg plays a very significant role-the primary antagonist. I don’t want to give any more away, in case players might view this comment, but I wanted to let you know that at least one additional Gygax module prominently features a giant.
    HIll Giants and Ettins are scattered in the Temple of Elemental Evil, but only as heavy artillery and not central plot figures.
    I agree with DM Bill – I liked the blooper at the end, too. Any way to figure out what plane DM Jayson got transported to? (It was DM Jayson, right?)

    Cheers,

    NPC Braaaayydon the Mule

  5. Death Metal Nightmare

    i dont even think it was in this issue (yeah, it was last issue) but i really enjoyed the review of the Gygax module! love all the issues as usual. always helps spark the imagination with ideas on both sides of the game (DM/PC).

  6. Greywolf

    Which issue of Dragon had the index that you guys oohed and aahed over? I obtained the 5 CD Dragon set of 250 issues and wanted to look up the Dragon with the great index.

  7. DM Jayson

    I keep a dog-eared copy of #112 on my desk (and a nice clean one in my cabinet in case it ever wears out).

  8. Greywolf

    Thanks, I just printed out my Ultimate Article Index from the Dragon CD set!

    I have listened to all of the podcasts. Keep up the good work. Off my head, I especially enjoy the sections from the Dragon’s Hoard, the reviews of modules (great background music), and Creature Feature among others.

    Would you consider a regular section? You could call it Stayin’ Alive. It could be a discussion of various strategies against monsters or for overcoming traps or beating riddles. Certainly, the well-known or standard methods could be mentioned: silver weapons for lycanthropes, fire for trolls, etc. But most interesting would be creative methods that you or your players have used to overcome difficult situations. Some great plans succeeded and led to glory and fun. Some ‘great’ plans failed and led to character deaths and also fun. This is where the imagination really gets going and makes for some excitement!

  9. Brother Oscar

    Hey, Guys! Love the show and catch it when I can. Tonight I was playing catch-up, listening to the episode on giants while painting fire giant miniatures. Mine are coal black with red hair, thank you very much, not made out of flames. šŸ™‚

    Keep those dice and those issues rolling!

  10. LC Peter

    I like to let the players decide how many drinks they want. You can get drunk in a few minutes if you are doing shots or similar. I would then decide their level of drunkenness by their race, con, size. (Although Gnomes can drink anyone under the table despite their size.) Additionally if a player says they drink until tipsy, drunk, under the table etc. then they can judge that themselves.
    I often drink at games (usually scotch) unless I have to drive.

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