Saturday, February 3, 2018

Eye of the Beholder II: Poorly Coordinated

The bad guy makes threats.
           
Things are starting to get much more difficult in the temple of Darkmoon.

When I last wrote, I had just achieved the "mark of Darkmoon," which would allow me access to a previously-inaccessible area of the temple's second level. The magic mouth let us pass with no problem. There was some kind of glass shield blocking passage on the other side. I just swung away at it with my weapons, and it shattered.
            
Every bit of vandalism advances our cause.
        
The corridors led to a stairway, which led upward to a very small level with no enemies and not much treasure. It was oddly purposeless. I was worried I had missed something but I tested every wall--even those that shouldn't hold secret doors--and only found one. It led to a teleporter, which led to a small area with a couple of treasures and another teleporter back to the main area. Ultimately shrugging, I continued upward.

The next level started with a curious puzzle involving two busts of the same elf stationed in alcoves. San-Raal reported that the statues were "sources of powerful magic," and a nearby plaque said, "disperse the magic," so I tried casting "Dispel Magic" on them. It worked; casting it on each bust opened a secret wall.  
         
Ours is not to reason why.
        
In a room nearby, I found the old elf from whose visage the busts had been carved. What he said didn't really make a lot of sense. He had come to the area to study the magic of the bulettes--more on them in a second. Apparently, there was some rumor that the creatures released magic when they died. He goes on:
       
I constructed this dais to siphon the magic and store it as a reservoir. To my horror, the dais not only collected the magic but the creatures' intelligence as well. It binds my body here, feeding off of my magic powers. It wracks my mind and body with unbearable pain. It laughs at my pleas to release me or let me die. If you would allow me to physically touch you, I could release the inherent magic from my body and my body and spirit would finally be free of this magical snare.
            
Ah, the old "I'm trapped by a curse and need to physically touch you to free myself" ruse. You must think we were born yesterday, you old perv.
       
None of this makes any sense, but whatever. I let him touch Gaston and he died and Gaston got a bunch of experience and rose a level. I do like that Eye of the Beholder II offers so many of these special encounters, but they could have tried harder to make them coherent.

It wasn't long before I encountered one of the bulettes, also known as "landsharks." I read up on them in the first issue of Dragon magazine, where they first appeared, and it doesn't sound to me like they're particularly intelligent or release magic when they die. (I did learn that the name is pronounced "boo-lay." Well la-di-dah.) What they do is pound you for an incredible amount of damage. Two bites can kill one of my lead characters. "Hold Monster," damage spells, and dodging worked reasonably well when the geography cooperated. It often didn't, and they occasioned a lot of reloading.
            
These guys are hard.
         
The second monster introduced on the level was the lesser basilisk, which is theoretically capable of petrifying characters. I say "theoretically" because I couldn't even make them do it. Either I have good saving throws or they were just getting the worst rolls. Either way, I think Bugsy got petrified once, when we entered a room literally full of them. Otherwise, the creatures died from regular attacks about as easily as the dire wolves at the beginning of the game. It's good that they weren't too hard because they respawned like crazy.
             
I couldn't make these guys turn me to stone.
            
This level way overdid it with the navigation puzzles. There was an area of multiple teleporters that I had to carefully map. There were areas of "moving pits" where I had to time my travel down a corridor to avoid falling in. There was one fun puzzle with two rows of pressure plates in front of a moving piece of wall. Every time I stepped on a plate, the wall moved closer to my side of the room. Since it only had three squares to move within, stepping on two consecutive plates brought it right in front of me and prevented passing. (I'm aware that I'm not describing this well; if someone can do a better job in the comments, please give it a shot.) To pass, I had to throw an object to a pressure plate on the other side of the room, "faking" the wall and darting past it before it returned to my side.
         
By far, the worst area of this level was in the northwest, where there was a series of about 10 pressure plates in various corridors and an equal number of vents bellowing fireballs in various directions when you stepped on the plates. I had to carefully map which plates triggered which fireballs in which directions, then find ways to dart around the area, avoiding fireballs, and finding pockets of safety, all of this involving the kind of manual speed and coordination that I'm not good at. Complicating things was the presence of at least half a dozen bulettes, who wandered the area and often triggered the plates themselves. I must have spent two hours and a dozen reloads in this area alone, but it produced some clearly-necessary keys. 

Note all of the annotations on the western side as I tried to figure out how to get safely through the area.
         
I determined two things during the experience. First, "Wall of Force" stops fireballs and is thus a godsend in the right location. Unfortunately, I can only memorize one of them. Second, if you kill enemies by using the traps against them, you still get the experience. This came in particularly handy on the next level.
    
The party prepares to experience another death-by-fireball trap.
       
This area opened the way into the toughest challenge of the game so far. I encountered a magic mouth that challenged me to enter a teleporter after dropping my spellbooks and holy symbols in an alcove--I could cast no spells on the other side. ("Your spellcasters would make this battle a lopsided affair.") After saving and casting all the buffing spells I could think of, I dropped my items and entered. I found myself in a small area with three bulettes with no room to maneuver, but after a couple of reloads, I was able to kill them with a combination of melee attacks and a Wand of Lightning.
      
Fighting with no spells was lopsided the other way!
         
Nothing special happened after I returned, and the mouth acted as if I hadn't accepted the challenge. I started to move on, but then I realized that I had forgotten to drop my paladin's holy symbol in the pile. When I did that and entered the teleporter, I got taken to a new area. This one also started with a bunch of bulettes. They did a rough job on us. Shortly afterwards, we ran into a wall that we had to smash open. The kicker is that the wall did 8 points of damage to every party member every time we hit it, and we had to hit it 6 times. (Range weapons and spell scrolls didn't help.) This posed a problem, since Shorn and San-Raal don't have 48 hit points total and my other characters had been damaged by the bulettes. I had to reload from outside the area, enter again, and make sure that my party took virtually no damage from the bulette fight, then rely on potions and scrolls to heal everyone enough to pass through the wall.

The area culminated in a battle against some kind of fat abomination with wings, curly horns, and an elephant's trunk. It doesn't appear in the game manual. The next level was full of them. He started down a long corridor, so he wasn't hard to beat with my Wands of Lightning and Fireball and various ranged weapons. Beyond him was an "Eye of Talon" that I needed to open the way to the next level.
            
Anyone know what this is called?
       
I should mention here that both this level and the next were full of small areas interconnected by up- and down staircases, pits, and teleporters. Mapping them all was a bit of a nightmare, and I gave up on trying to keep track of what "level" I was on at a given time. This setting really needs some kind of "Locate" spell that will give X, Y, and Z coordinates to facilitate proper mapping.

Next level was full of these lumbering elephant monsters, which pack a punch but aren't as hard as bulettes. When they're close, they make a loud rhythmic thumping that's suitably intimidating. Midway through the level, I found a corridor with a pressure plate that launched two fireballs every time I stepped on it. A little alcove allowed me to dart to safety. There were at least 15 of the monsters in rooms at the other end of the hallway, so I spent a long time leading them back to the hallway and killing them with the trap.
           
Letting a fireball trap weaken the elephant-goat-bat-bear thing.
         
The level had a lot more of the "moving pit" traps, including two 3 x 4 rooms full of them, and it only took me a couple of experiences falling to the previous level before I started just saving and reloading if I fell. Again, challenges of manual dexterity aren't my strong suit, and I fell a lot. It seems a little unfair that my characters can all have dexterity of 18, but their success depends on me--perhaps another way that AD&D rules don't really fit this engine well.
           
Thread your way through this! (It's a little sped up.)
          
The hardest puzzle on the level was at least an intellectual one. It involved an area with four pressure plates, two teleporters, and six more pressure plates behind glass shields. I soon determined that various combinations of the original four pressure plates "configured" the destinations of the teleporters. There were pits in front of the teleporters preventing me from walking into them, but I could throw objects into them, and they would appear behind the glass walls on one of the six pressure plates there. The goal was to get an object on every one of the six plates. Through trial and error, albeit quite long, I figured it out, which opened the way forward and also allowed me to enter the previously-glassed-off areas and collect my stuff.

Towards the end of the level, there was a humorous moment when "Khelben" appeared in a vision. He told me that Dran Draggore was planning on unleashing some horrific magic against us, but we could prevent it by taking a magic amulet, letting Draggore's minions kill us so that Draggore would believe us to be dead, and then letting the amulet resurrect us. It was a nice try on ol' Dran's part, but even if I had believed the story for a second, the fact that the amulet was cursed kind of gave him away.
       
Sure, sounds legit.
        
We killed the minions as normal. The vision re-appeared, with "Khelben's" face dissolving to reveal Draggore. He ranted and threatened us and disappeared. On we went to the next level.

One thing that's starting to annoy me is the number of places where you have to take unavoidable damage. It started with the "light pads" an earlier level and continued with a "glyph" on the floor here, and a few places where I don't think there was any way to avoid a fireball. Also, that part where I had to just stand there and take the damage from hitting the door. Maybe there was a way around some of these, but I don't think so. I feel like there should always be a way for a clever or agile player to avoid damage.
         
The party takes damage from an unavoidable glyph on the floor.
         
This session was good for levels. Bugsy went to Level 10 as a thief, Marina went to Level 11 as a mage, Gaston increased to Level 9 as both a ranger and cleric, and San-Raal went to Level 10 as a mage. I didn't get any new spell levels, though.

On equipment, I have a lot more keys than makes sense, but perhaps there are redundancies on the tougher levels. No weapon upgrades, but we just found some kind of wand or mace called "Starfire" that casts some kind of "mystic defense" spell. Also, rather ominously, we keep finding polished shields that resolve to "Medusa shield" when "Improved Identify" is cast on them. I swear I've found about six of them so far. I guess the game is giving a fair chance to all six of the characters, but not all six of them are capable of carrying shields. Medusas, incidentally, are also not in the manual.
       
The game is starting to over-do it on these shields.
     
Checking on monsters, I still have mind flayers, salamanders, hell hounds, frost giants, and aerial servants left to experience. That would suggest three more levels, but since this session showed that the game is capable of introducing monsters not in the manual, I have no idea how many levels there really are. I'm still enjoying it, but not all of the time, and I wouldn't mind if it wrapped up before the 40-hour mark.

Time so far: 34 hours

*****

Those of you who said that Heroes of the Lance was not an RPG are correct. I knew you were correct before I started playing, but I thought it was important to document it as a D&D game, since D&D is responsible for so much we experience in the RPG world. After an hour with the game, I no longer think so.

103 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    3. As a lifelong American, I have never heard roo-lay. Roo-let or rool-et.

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    6. In our gaming group, we've had countless arguments about how to pronounce "bulette." I have never heard Roulette or any other -ette word pronounced roo-lay (also an American). I think the only confusion is the documentation, which I just ignore because it's clearly wrong.

      What I want to know is how to pronounce "orgeat."

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    8. Which Americans are you speaking listening to Charles? I've always heard the -ette pronounced as -et with hard consonants. I've had a fair amount of exposure to french speaking people having lived on the US/Quebec border 'till I was 18.
      Whatever, I'll pronounce the word as 'bullet' until I die.

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    9. Yeah, if you've heard Americans pronouncing "roulette" as "roo-lay" they were almost certainly talking shit, like when someone calls the big box store Target "tar-jay"

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    11. Well I'm a Canadian and I have heard many people say Roo-lay though I have heard some say roo-Lett too, though I still thought it was boo-Lett but I can see boo-lay

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    13. As in the thread below, apparently there is actual evidence that the creator pronounced it that way to "make fun of the French." That still doesn't change the fact that Americans by and large do not pronounce "ette" as "ay."

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    15. Obviously, someone must be tipping vending machines on themselves, or we wouldn't get warnings like this:

      http://www.flickriver.com/photos/lwr/2568925544/

      That doesn't mean that any of us have ever met or directly heard of someone who has died in a vending machine accident, or that it's a regular part of anyone's life.

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    16. Or--to make my point clearer--that such accidents are regular enough to assign to a particular culture or demographic.

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    17. All this time we've been pronouncing Smurfette incorrectly.
      It should be Smurfay.

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    19. I will give Charles this—in Amercian English the word ‘Valet’ tends to be pronounced to rhyme with ‘Ballet’. Which is odd, because everyone else says ‘val-et’.

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    20. ...everyone but the French, who pronounce it "val-ay." American English for some reason favored the French pronunciation over the English one, as we did with "chalet," "cabriolet," "bouquet," and "ballet." Odd, I guess, but nothing blatantly wrong or mock-worthy.

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    21. There may be some people somewhere in the states who say "roo-lay", but it is EXTREMELY rare and by no means the norm. I mean, you found ONE video. As a linguist that should tell you something.

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    22. ya'll need to chill out. Go smoke a cigar-ay.

      -Chris

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    23. "everyone but the French, who pronounce it "val-ay" - well, technically, the French don't have a "y" on the end of any of these words, that's a purely "anglicized French" thing.

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    24. If we want to be precise, the end of Valet, Ballet, Chalet, Cabaret and so on is phonetically É›. Which wikipedia says in English is the sound the "e" makes in "bed" or "bet".

      I guess Val-eh (as in eh, or meh) would not be a bad approximation.

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    25. I don't know why people would say "Russian roulay", but there are plenty of -ette words that Americans pronounce "-et" -- kitchenette, omelette, baguette, Smurfette, etc. I have certainly never heard someone say they wanted an "omelay" or a "baguay".

      I have always pronounced "bulette" like it was a tiny bullet, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

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    26. This thread is bullshay.

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    27. .... deliberately pronouncing other languages words incorrectly is one of those reasons that it is really easy for people from other counties to think all Americans are uneducated yokles, you realize. Or really jingoistic, possibly both.

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    28. The video linked below says the plastic figurine was called a "bullet", accent on the first syllable, which Tim Kask redubbed as boo-LAY as a joke. So I see no reason to assume the -ette spelling came first -- the orthography could well be a second joke layered on top of the pronunciation, not vice versa.

      I was sorry to see Charles Häberl's thoughtful and nuanced posts get deleted, but I understand why he did it. Has he been back since?

      I've never known anyone who got killed by a vending machine, but I've known loads of people -- all of them young men or boys, speaking of "demographics" -- who did stupid stuff to try to get free food/drinks from one, or got physical with a machine that took their money and didn't give them anything.

      Per Canageek's post, I'd note that the English have a long tradition of Anglicizing words beyond all reason, e.g. Lord Byron and his epic satire "Don JOO-in".

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    29. PK Thunder: That is possible, but calling it a bullet doesn't seem to make a lot of sense?

      I mean, the first written account clearly says "The Bulette (pronounced boo-lay)" (Dragon Magazine #1, pg 19. My Dad got the PDF compendium in the brief period it was available and gave it to me when I moved out).

      Checked with Mara (She is a linguist). -ette is an ending in English, as a diminutive. (ie Kitchenette). So that term is in English.

      On the other hand, she also pronounces foyer with an R, and niche and quiche like lich or switch.

      ....I know some French Canadians we could ask ;)

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    30. (Then she pointed out I was also wrong: I was getting my French endings mixed up: -et is silent, -ette is pronounced. Checked a list of French loanwords ending in -ette and right, this is dumb: fléchette is pronounced /fle.ʃɛt/ (ie with a final t), as is roulette.

      Dammit Tim Kask, now I look like an idiot.

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    31. I have no idea why you felt it necessary to resurrect this inane thread, but I will say that "Charles Häberl's thoughtful and nuanced posts" started by making fun of "Americans" for mispronouncing "roulette" "rou-lay." This irked me because a) it's not like millions of uneducated morons in the U.S. one day decided "I guess I'll deliberately mangle this French loanword." Language gets adopted, twisted, transformed, etc., all the time, and it's not particularly risible or contempt-worthy when it happens, at least not on a national scale; b) he only had that one example; and c) the number of "Americans" who actually pronounce "roulette" "rou-lay" is so small that you have to really search to find them.

      Unfortunately, no, he never commented again. He had been a commenter since 2014, so I'm sorry to lose him. But acting condescending to an entire nationality, particularly without any real evidence, is always a risk, and it wasn't worth taking over such a dumb issue.

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    32. @Canageek: Hey, you got me re: why the figurine was called a "bullet" (as in the projectile), but that's what Kask says. My guess is that he did a "tar-ZHAY" style deliberate mispronunciation of what he assumed was B-U-L-L-E-T, and then gilded the lily/doubled down by respelling it in a goofy way.

      @Addict: Without CH's posts at hand it's difficult to say, but I remember nothing I took as offensive or condescending in any significant degree (I'm American, though oddly enough I too am posting from abroad right now). As I recall, his main point was simply to say this particular phenomenon (overcorrection of "-ette" to the ay/é/et sound) exists -- which is typical of a linguist, a community that ultimately decided as a whole to be descriptive, not prescriptive, about language: in that world, if something happens twice, it's a thing.

      And -- by the way -- it is a thing, and does exist. One example:

      https://www.discogs.com/The-Bizarros-Lady-Doubonette/release/1550388

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2wLFaA56Iw

      I also remember reading your post that "Americans by and large do not pronounce "ette" as "ay"" at the time, and feeling irritated by what seemed to me an unfair misrepresentation of his argument on your part (I'm quite sure CH never claimed they did).

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    33. I looked it up in e-mail.

      Charles's original comment: "'Bulette' is only pronounced 'boo-lay' in the same place where 'roulette' is pronounced 'roo-lay' --- in American English, near as I can tell." Later he repeated this statement, adding "where such hypercorrections are not uncommon."

      I stand slightly corrected in that "making fun of" was more a matter of my interpretation than the original text.

      As for your video, I'll simply repeat what I said above: "Obviously, someone must be tipping vending machines on themselves, or we wouldn't get warnings like [the one I linked]. That doesn't mean that any of us have ever met or directly heard of someone who has died in a vending machine accident, or that it's a regular part of anyone's life . . . Or--to make my point clearer--that such accidents are regular enough to assign to a particular culture or demographic."

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    34. Let me be more emphatic than that: "nothing I took as offensive or condescending in any significant degree" is probably the correct interpretation. I was offended for no reason and needlessly argumentative in my response. It's still a stupid thread, but I contributed to its stupidity.

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    35. Hey, a sincere thank-you for that second post. It's the kind of gracious response that mends a lot of fences, and is much appreciated.

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  2. "I did learn that the name is pronounced 'boo-lay.' Well la-di-dah."

    Haha, I had exactly the same reaction when I learned this.

    I don't know what those demon creatures are. I suspect they are an EotB II special.

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    1. The demons are supposed to be greater yugoloth guardians.

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    2. Makes sense but they sure mucked up the face.

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    3. I think these guardian yugoloths are a product of combining art from different books. The look most of us are familiar with is this: http://www.lomion.de/cmm/img/yugoguar.gif which is a greater guardian.

      However, in another book they look like this: https://farm7.static.flickr.com/6221/6243008078_fa1a13647c_b.jpg which might just be a weird look or it could be a least or lesser guardian .

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    4. Good find! It appears that we have a lesser yugoloth guardian's head on a greater yugoloth guardian's body.

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  3. The pronunciation was meant as a way to mock French, because Americans have a weird dislike for them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPepszyjh3g

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    1. American dislike for the French is mostly a fly-over thing. Making fun of French is more common unfortunately.

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    2. That seems needlessly accusatory of the original authors. I think it more likely that it was a simple mistake.

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    3. Addict, I encourage you to watch the video linked above, it's only 3mins long. Tim Kask (Bulette creator) explicitly says the pronunciation was a way to make fun of French.

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    4. Ah, my apologies. I figured the video was about how Americans like to make fun of the French.

      It doesn't really make sense. Deliberately mis-pronouncing a syllable in the way that the French WOULDN'T pronounce it is hardly making fun of them. It just makes you look like a moron.

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    5. I think we have forgotten about FRENCH dislike for Americans. Perhaps Americans are only returning the favor. French anti-Americanism has a long history and has didn't start yesterday. DeGaulle's postwar foreign policy was bascially, "find out what side of the argument the Americans are on and get on the other side."

      "The French couldn't hate us any more unless we helped 'em out in another war."

      -- Will Rogers, 1932

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    6. Actually, DeGaulle wanted to form an independent foreign policy, not an anti-US one. Unfortunately, many Americans are unable to see the difference. Culturally there is some resentment and dislike of the US for sure. (I spend a lot of time in France.)

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    7. Maybe they hate being reminded of the help we gave them in both world wars? It's not like they helped us win our Independence or anything, even if they planned to invade right after the British left.

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    8. I have to say that as a French person, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading these comments. It's pretty close to watching a train wreck and we all know how we love our train wrecks...

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    9. I don't know why everyone is so eager to make an international incident over some dork's decision to mis-pronounce a fictional word back in 1976. It's just a dumb pronunciation. It's not a sign of rampant mispronunciations in American English, nor a deliberate insult to the French, nor a justified backlash against French bigotry towards Americans. Why does no one want to talk about the goofy elf sub-plot instead?

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    10. Maybe because we don’t understand that subplot enough to make fun of it?

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    11. The goofy elf subplot sounds like somebody made it before they knew what a Bulette was. It actually sounds like the kind of stuff I would make up when I was little, they were dumb but evil so enough of their minds would take me over, but why touching you realized it I got no clue. And the releasing magic when they die could be possible for a magical beast I guess but it's meantioned nowhere I can find.

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    12. I'm going to defend the sub-plot by suggesting it was meant for mind-flayers, but they didn't have mind-flayers on that floor... maybe they won't show up in the game at all?

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    13. Heh interestingly from 2nd Edition MM 1989 "Some also claim that the soil through which a bulette has passed becomes imbued with magical, rock-dissolving properties". More likely the elf just tried something stupid and wound up doing something entirely different. I mean think about it. Its a throne designed to trap magic from a dying creature...he's lucky thats ALL that happened.

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    14. Btw "bulette" is a also a german word used for meatballs. I really imagined a different look in my mind before I saw the screenshot ;)

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  4. The starfire sceptre, I would like to know if anybody figured whether the mystic protection is working and how, and in particular whether vg bssref bzr cebgrpgvba / vzzhavgl ntnvafg gur zvaq synlref nggnpxf, or not.

    Thanks!

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    1. I don't want to give too much away (I still have all 3 EoB games and their clue books, which detail pretty much everything in the games) but I *think* the Starfire Sceptre gives a solid green or dashed yellow/green border around a character portrait when it's used on them (doesn't do the whole party at once but can do characters one by one).

      I know what it's used for and I think I remember a part later (or earlier before you get the sceptre?) in the game where an NPC explains it (or it's a note written on parchment or similar).

      I'm not sure whether it's effective in all situations though, I was always a bit unsure about that.

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    2. Thank you Matthew, I remembered now it was used later, when I checked the recount of the final part of the game.

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  5. The ElepantGoatBears are called Yugoloth.

    If I recall correctly they also give 5000 Exp points when killed.

    There's a room where you can spawn a few of them at a time with a flip of a lever. That is if one were so inclined as too grind a level for your party laments.

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    1. Well, 2 or 3 but I was young...

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    2. EOB2 only specifies them as Yugoloths but I think they're supposed to be specifically the Yugoloth Guardian, an image of which appears at the link below (which also summarises its 2nd Edition stats). It doesn't have the tentacle-nose in this picture but otherwise seems to fit the bill, and Guardians are supposed to come in a wide variety of appearances anyway.

      The "Guardian" variant would also explain what an otherwise quite rare extraplanar monster is doing in the temple...

      http://www.lomion.de/cmm/yugoguar.php

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    3. To add to the name diversity, the official clue book calls these things Greater Guardian Daemons.

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    4. Huh. That's actually a bit odd. Like I mentioned in another thread, yugoloths were called daemons in first edition, so the guardian yugoloth was called a guardian daemon in its first appearance in the first-edition Fiend Folio, but they were renamed to yugoloths in second edition. Given that EOB2 was written during the second-edition era, one would think it would use the second-edition name for the monster. Oh well.

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    5. Ah, OK, never mind. It turns out that in their first 2E appearance in the Monstrous Compendium Volume Two they were still called guardian daemons... they weren't renamed to yugoloths till the Monstrous Manual, which was published two years after EOB2. (It's the MC2 that shows the guardian daemon with an elephant trunk, too.) So, yeah, never mind; it makes perfect sense that the clue book would call them daemons instead of yugoloths; the name change came a little later than I thought.

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    6. (For what it's worth, other daemons were renamed to yugoloths earlier, in the Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix... but the guardian daemon/yugoloth didn't appear there. Besides, that came out the same year as EOB2 (albeit much earlier in the year), so the game was surely well along by the time it came out... and even if the makers of EOB2 had been aware of it, the guardian daemon was such an odd fit among daemons that it wouldn't necessarily be obvious it would also be classified as a yugoloth.)

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    7. http://www.mojobob.com/roleplay/monstrousmanual/y/yugoguar.html

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  6. The elephant-goat-bat-bears look a lot like the Shingouz, an alien race from "Valerian & Laureline", a French series of science-fiction graphic novels.

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  7. Thought they were nalfeshnee, and how I even remember that name I have no idea.

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    1. The nalfeshnee are an entirely different monster. Nalfeshnees were a kind of demon (chaotic evil); yugoloths are neutral evil. As others have said, the elephant trunk doesn't quite match the guardian yugoloth picture, but guardian yugoloths were kind of obscure anyway and never got much attention in the books. I'm pretty sure it's the only type of yugoloth from first and second edition that never made it into third edition, except for a really obscure type called a "gacholoth" that only appeared in one Dungeon Magazine adventure.

      Incidentally, in first edition the yugoloths were called "daemons". In second edition, bowing to objections from religious groups, TSR renamed demons to "tanar'ri", devils to "baatezu", and daemons to "yugoloths". In third edition, Wizards of the Coast restored demons and devils to their former names (while retaining the words "tanar'ri" and "baatezu" to refer to specific categories of demons and devils), but the yugoloths stayed yugoloths... which was understandable, since it was never clear how "daemon" was supposed to be pronounced to differentiate it from "demon"; the two words were way too similar...

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    2. Whoops... should have checked my facts before posting; I got a couple of things wrong. First of all, the gacholoth didn't only appear in a single Dragon Magazine adventure; I forgot that it also appeared in the Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Four. Second, the guardian yugoloth isn't the only yugoloth from first- and second-edition not to appear in third edition; I forgot about the baernoloth, from the Planescape Planes of Conflict Monstrous Supplement. Though I think the guardian yugoloth is still the only yugoloth/daemon from first edition not to make it into third... oh well.

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    3. In the guardian's first first appearance in Fiend Folio (as guardian daemon) it says that it can many forms, and cites similarity to a type IV demon (nalfeshnee) as an example, so there is an exception, though the accompanying art kinda looks like Tyranthraxus https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/6/61/Guardian_daemon.jpg

      The Planescape accessory Faces of Evil: The Fiends would later state that guardians were not true yugoloths, but rather yugoloth creations sent to answer the spells of mortals.

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  8. That no magic fight can be cheated a bit by leaving the spell menu open before dropping the character's book or symbol. That allows you to go in and still use one person's spells. It doesn't really make it THAT much easier since it's still 3 bulettes in a cramped area.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Is the villain's name Dram or Dran? The screenshot says Dran.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Does it really make that much difference?

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    2. Frankly my dear, I don't give a Dran.

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    3. The Dran of evil doth all the noble substance of a doubt.

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    4. It means more than you could ever imagine.

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    5. Definitely makes a difference whether's it's Dran or Dram. (It should be Dran.) Revisit this after you've finished the game.

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    6. Hm... why would it make a difference? Is it an anagram? Dran Draggore anagrams to... "Gerard Dragon". Or... "Dragon Grader". Or... "Dragon Regard". Or... he's a dragon, isn't he?

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    7. Congrats Jalen, you're smarter than Khelben (who could not figure this one out...)

      Delete
  10. "and I wouldn't mind if it wrapped up before the 40-hour mark"

    I'd say that you have completed around 2/3 of the game

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    Replies
    1. Nah, there's less than that left. I think the game will wrap up just exactly when Chet wants it to.

      Delete
  11. The green shield can be bashed only by crystal hammer, other weapons should not have any effect.
    Also, some surprises ahead!

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  12. Maybe bring the shields along anyway.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately, my playing was a bit ahead of my blogging. I had to go back and search for a couple.

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  13. For what it's worth, if you played an hour of Heroes of the Lance, you're probably around half way through. I remember being annoyed at how short it was when I beat it.

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  14. Fun fact: The bulette was one of three monsters from the first-edition Monster Manual to be based on a cheap plastic toy. (The other two are the owlbear and the rust monster.)

    Yes, seriously.

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    1. Another fun fact: You can find a rust monster in an S2E5 of Futurama (Imgur Link).

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    2. And of course a beholder appeared in another episode later that season, bringing us back full circle to the game that the post is about. ;)

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  15. IIRC the green shield barrier can only be broken by the green crystal hammer. It can actually be a nasty puzzle (speaking from experience) if your imported party sticks to the more powerful weapons from EOB1.

    Regarding the old elf, I think whoever touches him earns exactly the amount of experience to advance in level -- so it's better to choose the right character, or a spellcaster for an extra spell level.

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    Replies
    1. Inappropriate touching gives traumatic experience...

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    2. I guess I was lucky. I had the hammer and was using it as the off-hand weapon for my fighter. I didn't even realize until later that it was that specific weapon that broke the barrier.

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  16. All your criticisms are valid. This is one of the most action-like RPGs of its kind, and I understand how the final drags a lot. I remember playing this game during a long time (I usually take games in very slow doses, to the point that I leave them for weeks and usually I cannot remember what I had to do) so I didn't get tired of the obvious repetition of killing/resting.

    As for the mapping, I never map, and it is not because I am some kind of macho gamer. Really, I always thought this game was fairly easy to orient yourself in it, even with the teleporters and the spinners. At least we can agree on the sound design being fantastic, can we?

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  17. "I thought it was important to document it as a D&D game (...) After an hour with the game, I no longer think so."

    Well, this is disappointing.

    You could at least give us a small post documenting your no doubt delightful experience with this masterpiece of gaming art.

    Please!

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    Replies
    1. Is there a tip jar? I would tip for this.

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    2. There's no tip jar. In the past Chet has indicated the only 'monetisation' he's ever really considered is writing a book.

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