RL Smurfs

Discussing all things Ravenloft
Post Reply
User avatar
tec-goblin
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 397
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2003 5:22 am
Location: Paris, France
Contact:

RL Smurfs

Post by tec-goblin »

Well, I posted a long post about my campaign experiences regarding a Ravenloft domain of smurfs in the Big Brother thread... (second page). Is there anyone interested in me describing it for QtR?
Should I worry if many of us are indeed interested?

Any ideas are welcome!!
BEAUTIFUL IS!
CHAOS
too DIM MJLTIVERSE
IS TO NOTICE
MOST THE OF.
User avatar
Le Noir Faineant
Rafe, Agent of the Fraternity
Rafe, Agent of the Fraternity
Posts: 4522
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:25 pm
Location: The Wind Isles

Post by Le Noir Faineant »

:Strahd: I already gave my vote.
Desdichado wrote:
tec-goblin wrote:
Desdichado wrote:
You don't have a campaign log at hand, do you...?

And BTW: Please submit that concept to QtR! That's an absolute masterpiece of DM imagination! :D
Well, regarding the log, I think I remember it quite clearly - it is unforgettable! It was after my PCs killed Volumvax, the hand of Shar... And the players got names... Arkanis became "Arkanoukos", something like "Arkanie" in greek...
Regarding QtR... I don't know... is there anyone around wanting to see this. I mean, really? Wouldn't we have some... copyright problems with smurfs? :)
Yes to your first question. :mrgreen:
...And yes to your second. :cry: Although I tend to think that noone would give a damn... :wink: Just go on with this, tec-goblinoukos. :lol: :gabrielle:
Yours,

Desdichadoukos

Image
User avatar
ScS of the Fraternity
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 2409
Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2003 10:46 pm
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by ScS of the Fraternity »

I think you could easily do something with the smurfs.

The mad alchemist Gargamort lives out in the solitude of the Yarginwald forest. Decades before he tried to become a dictator by scaring the locals with some petty tricks but he was revealed as a fraud and was forced to flee to woods, with only his pet cat Azazil, for company.
Driven mad by lonlieness, he devised a means of creating living people. Rather than make real people, Gargamort wanted to make a race that he could bully - so that he could get the fear and worship he felt he deserved. Despite his petty talent, his desire was great enough to spawn a race of tiny green people. These creatures would be called simacurs - aka smurs.

These little people put up with the petty demands of their creator, for a time. A few attempted to assasinate their giant oppressor, though they were foiled by the peternatually intelligent cat Azazil.
Eventually the first Smur ever created, known to the others as the Father, rallied the smurs together, set fire to Gargamort's hovel and led a mass exodus into the woods.
Now the Smurs live in the shaddy forest. They have harnessed and even corrupted the magics of nature to create illusions and enchantments. Now they use their power to trick niave travelers so that they may steal their goods, and even eat their bodies. In face, the Smurs perfer to make their homes inside of the skulls of their victims, using their bones as cobblestones, and their teeth as currency. The Yarginwald is now a dark and shadowy place, where few animals live, and only the most desperate go.

Gargamort, for his part, escaped the blaze and rebuilt his home. He hunts for the Smurs, so that he might extract his terrible revenge. The attempts by the smurs to assassinate him always fail, since the cat Azazil always foils them. Still, Gargamort is too much a fool to do more than harrass the smurs. For now, the Yurginwald remains a battleground, waiting for some niave adventurers to tip the balance in one side's favour.
Evil Reigns!!!!
Jennifer
Arch-villain
Arch-villain
Posts: 170
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:47 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Post by Jennifer »

Hi all,
I find all of this rather disturbing. I used to watch the smurfs when I was little and gargamel always frightened me. ( i was very small) I don't think I can handle a ravenloft version of the smurfs. Espescially if they are cast in such an evil way, living in the skulls of victims.

jennifer
User avatar
JinnTolser
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 523
Joined: Wed Dec 03, 2003 10:43 am
Location: Franklin Park, IL

Post by JinnTolser »

Definitely a darker take on it than I was expecting, but I think that helps sell it. If the Smurs were innocent little guys, I think it wouldn't work nearly as well. Nice touch with the skull-houses (and teeth money). :twisted:
User avatar
Le Noir Faineant
Rafe, Agent of the Fraternity
Rafe, Agent of the Fraternity
Posts: 4522
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:25 pm
Location: The Wind Isles

Post by Le Noir Faineant »

:shock:

ScS, this is... as Mistress Jennifer of the Shining Smile correctly said, absolutely insane and disturbing. I fear the day you will *mistify* the Gummi Bears...

Congratulations! :twisted:
Jennifer
Arch-villain
Arch-villain
Posts: 170
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:47 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Post by Jennifer »

Hi all,
Hmm, I don't think a ravenloft version of the gummibears would work as well. I never really took to the series and it definitely did not have the enduring quality of the smurfs.

Suddenly I am thinking of all the other childhood series I watched a very long time ago. And a horrible thought creeps up on me. My Little Pony. (I am a girl, I was crazy about ponies with pink tail). I can see it now, some strange world where young pre adolescent girls are lured by promises of pink and yellow horses to play all day among the flowers and then at night the horses all turn into girleating monsters. The next day they can never remember where the girls went and try to lure new ones.

I will never take to smurfs with teethmoney by the way. Perhaps it would be better to leave things as they were, with Gargamel as the evil wizard and the smurfs as a sort of fey like creatures. There seem to be only males anyway, which is in keeping with the fey I thought. The smurfin (what is the girl smurf called in english?) might be some sort of construct, for the ahem needs of the all male population. ( this getting a lot more disturbing and adult then I thought)

The woman smurf might even be planted by gargamel the snare the more dangerousmale smurfs into some trap. Perhaps some sort of strange disease.

Mistress Jennifer of the Shining Smile
User avatar
Reginald de Curry
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 454
Joined: Tue Dec 02, 2003 1:12 pm
Location: The Ruins of Cahokia, USA

Post by Reginald de Curry »

If you really want to mess with someone's head, create a campaign based on Rainbow Bright. Do it right, and you could cause several suicides.

Er, character suicides, not player. Hopefully.

Of course, if you do it really well....
Pinky! Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I think so, Brain, but didn't we give up ritual murder for Lent?
Fresh Ground Tuesday
Conspirator
Conspirator
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 1:06 pm
Location: St. Petersburg Florida
Contact:

Post by Fresh Ground Tuesday »

Jennifer wrote: Suddenly I am thinking of all the other childhood series I watched a very long time ago. And a horrible thought creeps up on me. My Little Pony. (I am a girl, I was crazy about ponies with pink tail). I can see it now, some strange world where young pre adolescent girls are lured by promises of pink and yellow horses to play all day among the flowers and then at night the horses all turn into girleating monsters. The next day they can never remember where the girls went and try to lure new ones.

Mistress Jennifer of the Shining Smile
My Little Pony used to terrify me as a child. One of my earliest memories is being around 4 years old and having to leave the movie theater when my mom took me to see the full length film. For some reason the ponies would fill me with blind terror and I would start screaming.

The Care Bears had a similar effect, as did almost every Disney cartoon.

I was a very strange and troubled young boy.
User avatar
Le Noir Faineant
Rafe, Agent of the Fraternity
Rafe, Agent of the Fraternity
Posts: 4522
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 12:25 pm
Location: The Wind Isles

Post by Le Noir Faineant »

Jennifer wrote:Hi all,
Hmm, I don't think a ravenloft version of the gummibears would work as well. I never really took to the series and it definitely did not have the enduring quality of the smurfs.
The problem with Gummibears would be that there is already a dark realm in it, so *poluting* it, would be considerably more difficult than with smurfs, where everyone is happy in the end...

The same thing with My Little Pony, btw. They already had a very very monstrous villain. (I was five years old. EVERYTHING seemed monstrous to me.)

Back to topic: Why not make Mother Nature the darklord, or Father Time? - Gargamel seems a bit too weak for that, although the idea of his endless quest is really like done for RL...
User avatar
Bloody Morgan
Arch-villain
Arch-villain
Posts: 185
Joined: Sun Apr 17, 2005 10:36 am
Location: The Sea of Sorrows

Post by Bloody Morgan »

Jennifer wrote:Suddenly I am thinking of all the other childhood series I watched a very long time ago. And a horrible thought creeps up on me. My Little Pony. (I am a girl, I was crazy about ponies with pink tail). I can see it now, some strange world where young pre adolescent girls are lured by promises of pink and yellow horses to play all day among the flowers and then at night the horses all turn into girleating monsters. The next day they can never remember where the girls went and try to lure new ones.
I can see this, or some variation on this, working quite nicely in Nova Vassa. I doesn't even just have to be girls; a predatory, horse-resembling fey from the Shadow Rift could play hell with anyone who tries to make their living from the plains.
Jennifer wrote:I will never take to smurfs with teethmoney by the way. Perhaps it would be better to leave things as they were, with Gargamel as the evil wizard and the smurfs as a sort of fey like creatures. There seem to be only males anyway, which is in keeping with the fey I thought. The smurfin (what is the girl smurf called in english?) might be some sort of construct, for the ahem needs of the all male population. ( this getting a lot more disturbing and adult then I thought)

The woman smurf might even be planted by gargamel the snare the more dangerousmale smurfs into some trap. Perhaps some sort of strange disease.
Smurfette. And in the cartoon, that was her purpose, to be a lure created by Gargamel to destroy the Smurfs. But Papa Smurf redeemed her, and she joined them. This is all explained in Donnie Darko :)

While I would put Smurs down as fey in a sans-Gargamort setting, assuming he created them from scratch, they work as miniscule dire constructs. Which also explains why they are all male. If only Gargamort knows how to create more of them, then that adds another vendetta, as they try to learn how they can save their doomed race. Kind of like Draconians in the original Dragonlance.

I really like this idea btw. I see it mostly fitting in Tepest, but it could be adapted to anywhere, really.

Bloody Morgan
User avatar
Scipion_Emilien
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Jun 23, 2005 6:54 pm

Post by Scipion_Emilien »

Personnally i found the original smurf history to be really fitting in RL without so much modification.

The fact that Gargamel had wish and try to sacrifice sentient being to create an endless stream of gold had doomed him into his own domain.

Now he is doom to failed each time he want to get his revenge on the smurf or get his gold. I would also see gargamel dreaming each night of the recipe to transform smurf into gold, the DP wanting to be sure he never forget it.

As for the smurf themselves, i prefer they remain as good-hearted and innocent as they are, this simply accentuate the failure of gargamel in losing a the end of this little gnome instead at the hands of little bastard.

Perhaps to add a little ravenloftesque style, make the forest a more dangerous place that even the smurf would fear. Perhaps the forest would be haunt by some old-forgotten monster to a degree or another. This could also explain why only gargamel and his cat Azrael are aware of the existence of the smurfs. (At the exception of others having read gargamel grimoire of course) Perhaps add constant mist and an old forgotten graveyard around gargamel estate to make it more frightening.

And to enter the players into the story, nothing better than a curse item, perhaps one in link with gargamel curse that would help him get more smurfs to get gold.

As for the smurfette, it could be an interesting dread possibilitie if gargamel had found a mean to get a new hold on his lost creation (perhaps something he found about the creation process) to kill all those smurf and at last get his money...
Jennifer
Arch-villain
Arch-villain
Posts: 170
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:47 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Post by Jennifer »

Hi all,
My Little Pony used to terrify me as a child. One of my earliest memories is being around 4 years old and having to leave the movie theater when my mom took me to see the full length film. For some reason the ponies would fill me with blind terror and I would start screaming.

The Care Bears had a similar effect, as did almost every Disney cartoon.


The same thing with My Little Pony, btw. They already had a very very monstrous villain. (I was five years old. EVERYTHING seemed monstrous to me.)
my goodness, I seem to have unleashed quite some repressed memories here.
Smurfette. And in the cartoon, that was her purpose, to be a lure created by Gargamel to destroy the Smurfs. But Papa Smurf redeemed her, and she joined them. This is all explained in Donnie Darko
I always wondered a bit about smurfette. so the only woman in the childrens cartoon was evil to her very core until she was redeemed by father smurf. that's a nice message for all you kiddies out there.
Personnally i found the original smurf history to be really fitting in RL without so much modification.
what was the original smurf history? I never thought there would be such a thing, I thought it were all a sort of stand alone episodes, only connected by the recurring characters.

I agree with scipion emilien, the smurfs should remain innocent creatures striving for goodness, or at least harmlesness, while they are hounded by the looming figure of gargamel.
The world could be made more dangerous by the presence of another being. Perhaps the mother earth or father time as desidichado mentioned. Mother earth would definitely become a warped figure if the forest of the smurfs was transported to the world of ravenloft.
perhaps the perverted mother earth goads gargamel in trying just one more scheme to destroy the smurfs.

I never really thought about it but those childrensseries were all rather horrible. really rather fitting for a ravenloft session. gargamel would be even scarier if the player characters shrunk to the size of the smurfs when they enter the smurfworld.
Last edited by Jennifer on Fri Aug 05, 2005 12:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jennifer of the Shining Smile
mcy

Post by mcy »

Jennifer wrote:I will never take to smurfs with teethmoney by the way. Perhaps it would be better to leave things as they were, with Gargamel as the evil wizard and the smurfs as a sort of fey like creatures.
Then where is the irony? Nothing is like sharp teeth in a cute smile..
Jennifer wrote:There seem to be only males anyway, which is in keeping with the fey I thought. The smurfin (what is the girl smurf called in english?) might be some sort of construct, for the ahem needs of the all male population. ( this getting a lot more disturbing and adult then I thought)
That's smurfette; and she is, according to the actual Smurfs storyline, indeed a construct created by Gargamel, sent as a spy into the smurf community, as noted above. Moreover, the smurfs (follow the link if you would you like to know more) do not actually have genders; and reproduce by crane. As such they do not have such "ahem" 'needs' as implied. Of course this need not hold for smurs.

Yes. I am a huge fan. Still. :|
Jennifer wrote:The woman smurf might even be planted by gargamel the snare the more dangerousmale smurfs into some trap. Perhaps some sort of strange disease.
As scary as they may be in real life, I think STDs would lose their impact in a game.. :P
ScS of the Fraternity wrote:I think you could easily do something with the smurfs.

The mad alchemist Gargamort lives out in the solitude of the Yarginwald forest. Decades before he tried to become a dictator by scaring the locals with some petty tricks but he was revealed as a fraud and was forced to flee to woods, with only his pet cat Azazil, for company.
Driven mad by lonlieness, he devised a means of creating living people. Rather than make real people, Gargamort wanted to make a race that he could bully - so that he could get the fear and worship he felt he deserved. Despite his petty talent, his desire was great enough to spawn a race of tiny green people. These creatures would be called simacurs - aka smurs.

These little people put up with the petty demands of their creator, for a time. A few attempted to assasinate their giant oppressor, though they were foiled by the peternatually intelligent cat Azazil.
Eventually the first Smur ever created, known to the others as the Father, rallied the smurs together, set fire to Gargamort's hovel and led a mass exodus into the woods.
Now the Smurs live in the shaddy forest. They have harnessed and even corrupted the magics of nature to create illusions and enchantments. Now they use their power to trick niave travelers so that they may steal their goods, and even eat their bodies. In face, the Smurs perfer to make their homes inside of the skulls of their victims, using their bones as cobblestones, and their teeth as currency. The Yarginwald is now a dark and shadowy place, where few animals live, and only the most desperate go.

Gargamort, for his part, escaped the blaze and rebuilt his home. He hunts for the Smurs, so that he might extract his terrible revenge. The attempts by the smurs to assassinate him always fail, since the cat Azazil always foils them. Still, Gargamort is too much a fool to do more than harrass the smurs. For now, the Yurginwald remains a battleground, waiting for some niave adventurers to tip the balance in one side's favour.
Impressive.
Yet this can be used only when you want tongue-in-cheek humor in your games. I assure you there is no gaming group that would keep up a serious facade in such a situation. This may well spoil your Ravenloft mood (just thinking about Brainy Smur -a wizard of course- saying "One day I will replace Papa, and then you all will learn to obey me! I will have my revenge!" under his breath after he has been trashed by Hefty is funny enough, I cannot imagine what may happen when a group starts to crack jokes on the issue).
I think the original smurfs can fit Ravenloft setting as good as the Cathedral of Most Noble Order of the Sacred Heart would fit into Il Aluk (before or after requiem). All smurfs are practically innocents and paragons. This would bring more than humor to the campaign (and I mean this in the worst way possible).

p.s. I -despite you can never be sure of the exact propotions- decided that smurf height is above 20cm. As such, a human skull would make a crampy home.
Perhaps they have some way to inflate the skulls, as they do those mushroom homes of theirs.. :)
User avatar
tec-goblin
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 397
Joined: Wed Dec 24, 2003 5:22 am
Location: Paris, France
Contact:

Post by tec-goblin »

Well, I think that any reference to Smurfs in a game table will lead to un-Ravenloftish humour anyway. So I have accepted it and think that I should not reduce their silliness and cuteness.

But I would fill it with small dirty secrets. Making them more "human" and more "realistic", but keeping the outwards appearence of silliness and cuteness. For example, Papa Smurf always is calm and leads the way, but if the adventurers (having turned to smurfs themselves) question his leading he will be VERY VERY upset (THIS IS UNBELIABLE! IT'S UNSMURFISH!) and would even try to use alchemic concotions to make them more "cooperating".
Smart Smurf (however he is called) would be a would-be-dictator. The forest would be dangerous to non-smurfs (for smurfs all dangerous plants will hide and everything would seem happy and colourful).

Of course all smurfs except 2 are male (after all, in all countries where the genre shows in translation, they are male). And they have male needs. Edited by the Moderators

Ok, let's assume I write it for QtR (full of adventure hooks based on your ideas in this thread). I still have one question: d20 or d20 modern? The first is the obvious choice, the second works GREAT for smurfs (I mean, it's evident who will be strong hero, who would be a charismatic one and who's a smart hero. It works great).

Of course, I have planned rules for smurf race, smurf characters, Gargamel's curses etc :)
BEAUTIFUL IS!
CHAOS
too DIM MJLTIVERSE
IS TO NOTICE
MOST THE OF.
Post Reply