Comic for Monday 01/11 (Early HighRes)
Sometimes no matter how clearly you attempt to breadcrumb your players towards a plot...
Comments (9)
Wait, where did the whole grammar thread go?! 😳 OK, anyway... No, meanings of words, and verbs in particular, mostly don't have any bearing on the kinds of patterns they are used in. There is no logical reason why we say: • "wait FOR sb", and not "wait sb" or "wait AT sb"; • "make sb do sth", not "make ON sb doing sth"; • "look AT sth", but "see sth", etc. All of these things have just formed historically. The case with "curse" is very much akin to that. This verb just doesn't take a direct object that describes the means of the curse (the "pall” in your story). Only the target. INDIRECT objects? Sure! "Helga cursed the knight WITH LYCANTHROPY." That was the only issue I raised. And all the off-the-cuff examples you provided supported this very idea. Of course, you can use whatever form you desire. I just thought that maybe reading something fantasy-themed in the previous weeks prompted you to use this rather unusual pattern. Nothing too demanding. I get that you're a busy person. 🙂
Either I think too quickly for my players to pull these shenanigans, or they don't generally try. Besides, a good GM can still breadcrumb the actual campaign with these little tangents, effectively keeping the game on the rails. Either that, or see the campaign through despite the tangents. Remember, folks, the only reason you think you're the hero is because it's YOUR story.
I don't know if you've seen the NPC d&d videos, but a hilarious way that their DM put them back on track when they were getting...well standard playery I guess, was just silently dropped a huuuuuuge dragon right in the middle of the group and their like ooohhhj my god sorry we'll behave XD
Would have just tied the two together, their search would have led them to the dopplers, who were in league with the Necrobaker"
Or even better. The dark elves were feeding a demon on the despair of finding stale pastries all in a plot ti slowly demoralize the kingdom while also strengthening their forces.
Earthdawn Adventures have "Troubleshootings" at the end of every chapter since 25+ years. I always only had to read the introduction and could go to the end to read that bit... Every RPG Group is the same =)
Also, Panel 1, "did DID"
Lol. My group totally did that to the DM once... He was trying to set the scene of the time of year (late autumn) and so the water in the rivers were lower. One of our group pounced on it "But WHY, what nefarious evil is stopping up the flow of water?!?!?" Three days of adventuring, and the DM had to invent a whole dungeon on the fly.
My team accidentally nat-20 one-shot the penultimate big-bad 2 words into his monologue laying out the plot. The DM was somewhat less than pleased.