A few Monstrous Compendium thoughts

~ crossovercreativechaos

I love a bunch of the D&D commentary on this fic. Just saying. 🙂

And yes, the players are exploiting loopholes wherever they can possibly find them. Players tend to do that. To a certain extent, Beniryuu set it up so they would do exactly that – because remember, adventurers are relatively few and far between in Eberron. Right now he has several thousand highly motivated people trying to break the system any way they can get away with, and you can bet one interested red dragon is taking notes.

But even a red dragon with INT 24 can’t watch everything at once. Which is the only reason our players stand any chance whatsoever.

I have to admit, one of the reasons this fic stalled for a while was that I was having trouble figuring out how our players would manage to use that slim chance. I had part of the solution, but not how to get it implemented in Aincrad-reality.

I think I finally have an answer to that, and Yui is the key.

That, and… well, Beniryuu is a bit too focused on what he’s making people to remember what they were before he ever started.

Currently the Kabaneri fluff is still going, and if I turn loose of that it might stall. So… I’m going to take notes for this idea in MCO. So I have them later. 🙂

22 thoughts on “A few Monstrous Compendium thoughts”

  1. Sounds fuuu~uun.

    Also good to know that the DnD commentary is mostly appreciated.
    I know you’re specifically writing Eberron mildly AU. Further, translating tabletop to fiction is always a pain. But a part of me is always analyzing your pieces from a ‘This is what it’s like in Canon. Here it’s different. How much of that is intentionally different for the AU, how much is Beniryuu changing language for his own goals, and how much of that is different for writing-a-story-not-a-game’ point of view.
    So the babble is partially reflex, partially thinking out loud, and it’s good to know that it’s not… causing more trouble than it’s worth.

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    2. Oh, I don’t know… my group is widely separated, geographically speaking.

      We play via google docs, putting our character actions in the document (each player has a different text color, DM has black) and keeping player convo, meta game commentary and dice rolls in the chat sidebar.

      It works out quite well, for play, and means that we don’t have to keep notes about what happened previously, because it’s all written down. At this point, we probably have six or seven novels-worth of first draft.

      It’s almost a pity none of us are writers.

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  2. >That, and… well, Beniryuu is a bit too focused on what he’s making people to remember what they were before he ever started.>

    Congrats you overgrown lizard. During your fool-proof unstoppable plan, you neglected to remember that you locked up thousands of would-be Macgyvers not in a tool-shed (that would have been bad enough) but in a full stocked and powered military armaments manufacturing facility.

    You only have yourself to blame for what will happen (to you). Stheno will be wanting popcorn and Vincent will be very Very smug.

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  3. So..Exalted ahoy? Exalted is a role-playing tabletop game where TTGL would be considered a tame kiddie show.Use a mountain as 🏈; Five Leagues and counting.Punch cancer out of you. Only problem: Curse of bad guys made it so despotism is a minor sideeffect.

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    1. …probably not standard Solars. Dragon-blooded, maybe (O Irony, how she laughs…). With Sidereals for added wacky. This is starting to look like a 100-star kind of plan.

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      1. Whoops, forgot to explain before I hit post. Dragon-blooded are elemental specialists who explicitly do better at teamwork than anyone else in the game. Sidereals are schemers and spies who literally fade out of people’s memories if they stay away long enough (e.g., a few days or so).

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    2. …in retrospect if there were an Exalted Aincrad, I think all factions would have their hands somewhat tied. Except the Sidereals, because no doubt they are probably helping weave this nightmare. (Tolerable odds this is a Saturn plot.)

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      1. I dunno, while it’s not like Solars *can’t* do subtle, I feel like the default is brick-meets-glass levels of sneak. Because a) why bother, I can punch mountains in two, and b) why bother, I light up like a neon sign whenever I do anything. It’s not a powerset that lends itself to stealth, or at least not the “do do doo, nothing to see here” kind instead of the “humming the mission impossible theme” kind.

        That might be my play group being themselves, though.

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      2. So far my playing group has slept with several minor gods, remembered misc. nonsense about first age lunars, killed a dragon-mom and found out a blacksmith knocked up an immaculate monk. So far sneaking isn’t the thing, but being social monsters definitely is….

        (They also made friends with a dragon-bear, a black jaguar, and decided to raise a clutch of river dragons…. That, and stole a message meant for a Sidereal of Journeys. Because why not screw up heaven’s plans while we’re at it.)

        I wonder if an Aincrad could perhaps be a Fae machine… I must reference my books and see if I can make it happen…

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  4. Not to mention that the standard FUBAR plan can be measured by the number of Sidereals in it One taking part in a plan means it will go perfecty, 10 and a county is buying the farm. The last 100 Sid plan ended up killing 99.99% of Creation.*Sarcastic Understatement* That was a bad plan.*/Sarcastic Understatement*

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    1. Yes, that was kind of the point of my “hundred-star plan” comment. And I thought zero was “no more likely to fail than usual” but one Sid was “(worried voice) that’s fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.”

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  5. there is a fanfic of SAO and EXALTED crossover. where the yplayers, playing as Dragonblooded, get transported to the real creation… it is on hiatus for over a year and didnt go far, though…

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  6. One place where players could easily get away with abusing loopholes is if they used some unusual tactic/spell to recreate some common place effects. For example, fire resistance: a dragon might see someone take less damage from fire, and assume it is a standard fire resist spell, but might be something else that was originally not planned as such. And several feats/skills are easier to use, if you can hack a spell, it might be far easier to create a cold ball from a fireball in game than in Eberron.

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      1. Thanks. One more thing to consider: the unwritten rules, what everyone on Eberron knows, but unless it is coded into the system, the players might not know about. And since it is not hard-coded, might be possible…

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