QTR 29 - comments and reviews

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Item 50: Welcome to Whitestone...

What is Whitestone? Didn't get the reference.
Thanks for the review and commentary! ^_^ I am especially fond of 1, 31, 51, 70 and 75.

It's a place in the setting of Legend of Vox Machina. The party arrives in Whitestone to fight some very evil people, and discover they were expected.
The rulers have strung up a group of people from the city's Sun Tree - by the neck. Each victim had been dressed up to resemble the adventurers, two of whom are gnomes.
The littlest bodies, made up to resemble them, were human children...

[IanFordam]

Gundarak: Land of Oppression and Whim

I always appreciate under-developed domains receiving attention, particularly when they incorporate nods to what has been done previously. In this article, I enjoyed the inclusion of Ardonk Szerieza and Randall du Pree (now with a revised background and more appropriate alignment than given in his canon appearance).

However, the reworked NPCs do not overshadow the new ones. "The Famed and the Infamous" presents a good spread of people in power (the beys, the priests, and the heads of various factions) and people without that level of influence. The adventure hooks are an excellent touch.

[IanFordam]

Excepts from 'The Register of Monsters'

Among these high-level descriptions of monsters with an eldritch horror feel, the creature that stood out to me most strongly was The Heron Ghost. The illustration certainly helped catch my attention. That is a most impressive maul.

[Baron Von Stanton]

Larva

The heart of this story is uncovering the mystery behind "Luke" and his curse. (At least it feels to me like a curse.)

Luke's condition is very much a curse, given as how his immortality comes with the price of having to turn into a train-sized Hercules beetle who has to "download" himself into another body in order to resume his human disguise. Luke's cryptic fable to Wexler explains how he acquired it.

Oh, and why Old Lady Terwilliger insists on employing him, and (most crucially) why Luke is such a deft hand with a Bananas Foster. Unsurprisingly, the explanation will have to wait for the conclusion, and so a more complete review will too.

Let's just say that "Luke"'s people skills are better than his managers and coworkers give him credit for.

[Baron Von Stanton]

Excepts from 'The Register of Monsters'

Among these high-level descriptions of monsters with an eldritch horror feel, the creature that stood out to me most strongly was The Heron Ghost. The illustration certainly helped catch my attention. That is a most impressive maul.

I started sketching the Heron Ghost with the description of these bird-ghost monsters from a supplement for Exalted. When I was drawing her maul, a friend of mine suggested it be a placoderm fish's head.

[Mistmaster]

Marcus Khan, is this a Talespin reference, Mephisto?

[Jack the Reaper]

Marcus Khan, is this a Talespin reference, Mephisto?

Marcus Khan is actually a character of mine from QtR 25, and yes, he's a homage for Talespin's Shere Khan. Glad you noticed, and glad to see him adopted by other players!

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Marcus Khan, is this a Talespin reference, Mephisto?

I had no idea!
Talespin is something that was unfamiliar to me as a name, though I had seen the series many times three decades ago, I had never seen Shere Khan (from the Disney Jungle Book movie) in the series just Baloo and King Louie. I took the Khan surname as a Hindi or Asian inspired name such as Genghis Khan, the Khan meaning Emperor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khagan

Marcus Khan is actually a character of mine from QtR 25, and yes, he's a homage for Talespin's Shere Khan. Glad you noticed, and glad to see him adopted by other players!

I was searching for rakshasa characters to associate with the magical item and discovered your tycoon that seemed perfect as he is a collector of oddities and items, hope I did not overstep too much with the phylactery angle

[Jack the Reaper]

I was searching for rakshasa characters to associate with the magical item and discovered your tycoon that seemed perfect as he is a collector of oddities and items, hope I did not overstep too much with the phylactery angle

Sure, no problem, he and the other characters there were written as seeds to be expanded at will, and this is an interesting interpretation of him

[DustBunny]

100 Road encounters
And now for some comedic colour commentary:

You missed the obvious one...
47. Do the party run away, count to three, or start shouting 'Ni' at it?

Of course there could be other options in the same vein...
47A: You see a grail like beacon in a tower in the distance. If the party follows it they encounter a castle with some rather ...frisky... young ladies inside. A most perilous situation.

[IanFordam]

The Many Ravenlofts

My players and I are still having fun with the traditional Ravenloft set-up, so I'm unlikely to use any of these alternate takes on the setting. However, I do want to call out my appreciation for both the Amber reference and the phrase "went Wanda Maximoff".

[Jack the Reaper]

The Many Ravenlofts

My players and I are still having fun with the traditional Ravenloft set-up, so I'm unlikely to use any of these alternate takes on the setting. However, I do want to call out my appreciation for both the Amber reference and the phrase "went Wanda Maximoff".

Appreciation accepted I'm not a big Amber fan actually, but I like the basic concept, even if its execution could be done better IMO.

[IanFordam]

Markovia, Land of Healing and Harming

The fusion of Jhurgen Vastich and Akanga is interesting and appropriate. If you're going to discard canon, then this is exactly the sort of cool thing you can do.

Dolly Bellwether is my favorite of the new NPCs. She just fits.

Given the premise of the domain rewrite ("healing and harming"), the inclusion of Dr. Dominiani is thematically appropriate.

I would have enjoyed seeing more description of the relationships among the various members of the Markov family. Why have so many Markovs if they aren't going to fight in interesting ways at the family reunion?

In my experience, it can be a challenge to prevent players from recognizing a darklord too early. Especially given the expansion of the Markov family in this article, removing Frantisek from the family tree (at least in name) is an excellent approach.

Also, as I said in response to the Gundarak article, I appreciate the inclusion of adventure hooks for each of the NPCs.

[IanFordam]

The Many Ravenlofts

My players and I are still having fun with the traditional Ravenloft set-up, so I'm unlikely to use any of these alternate takes on the setting. However, I do want to call out my appreciation for both the Amber reference and the phrase "went Wanda Maximoff".

Appreciation accepted I'm not a big Amber fan actually, but I like the basic concept, even if its execution could be done better IMO.

I will admit that I struggled a bit the last time that I reread the series. Even so, I remain in awe of the brilliance of some of Zelazny's ideas.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

The Many Ravenlofts

My players and I are still having fun with the traditional Ravenloft set-up, so I'm unlikely to use any of these alternate takes on the setting. However, I do want to call out my appreciation for both the Amber reference and the phrase "went Wanda Maximoff".

Appreciation accepted I'm not a big Amber fan actually, but I like the basic concept, even if its execution could be done better IMO.

I will admit that I struggled a bit the last time that I reread the series. Even so, I remain in awe of the brilliance of some of Zelazny's ideas.

I adore the Amber series, as well as Mr. Zelazny's other books - in so far as I've read them.
The concept of Shadow in its infinite variety, moving between Order on the side of Amber and Chaos on the side of the Courts, allows you to create a multiverse and use the many worlds-theory in one go. One brilliant version of Shadow I read about combined some of my all-time favourite fantasy- and game-worlds.
There's room for the Great Wheel, the Great Tree, and Ravenloft in there - in all their possible variations. ^_^
The Amber Diceless TTRPG may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think it could be used as a mechanism to explain travel between the various worlds and their variations. Think of it as temporarily ascending to your 'higher self' and travelling into a new dimension, 'translating' your being to adapt to local reality. You could go from a D&D game, step into the Amber reality, then move on to a 7th Sea realm, or a Fighting Fantasy world.
Endless variations of fun! (To me, anyway.)