CF: RE: Locks & Mythology (was Re: World Maps)

[dragonm <dragonm@leech.org>]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Andrew Michael Noelle
To: crossfire@ifi.uio.no
Sent: 10/24/99 7:29 AM
Subject: CF: Locks & Mythology (was Re: World Maps)

> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 02:49:54 -0500
> From: Steven Lembark <lembark@wrkhors.com>

> > changing dungeons etc. But this can destroy a good quest. If you
can,
> > for instance, pick the lock of the door of the lighthouse in Navar,
> > you would miss nearly half of the smugglers quest (and all of the
> > story around it).
> 
> then don't design maps with pick-able locks in them.

I think a better solution would be to have three different types of
locked doors, the simple ones that can be opened with any key or
easily picked, the ones that require a specific key but can be picked
at various levels of difficulty, and quest doors that will not open
for anything other than their specific key.  This can be implemented
by using the door's "level" to determine how hard it is to pick, with
some arbitrarily high number reserved to mean absolutely no chance.

-----Begin Response-----
Hear hear!  There's ample precedent for this solution.  In fact, it dates
back to the penultimate fantasy author, Tolkein.  His dwarven door into the
Lonely Mountain was a "quest" door, that could be opened only under
exquisitely precise conditions.  I'm not proposing we take it /quite/ that
far; I'm just saying that the concept is already firmly established and
readily accepted.
----------

The same could apply to containers.  There aren't many examples of
this yet, but locked containers do work.  

[...]
> this version has the (mild) advantage of explaining where the
> rings of life, fire, ice, etc, come from.  also might be used
> for slight realignment of gods (e.g., allowing both ruggilli
> and devourers to hate gaea). 

I thought we were going to leave the Devourers as "Undead" and make a
new ice god.  I think we had just about everything except a name.  It
must be in the archives somewhere.  The Devourers aren't a "god" of
anything.  They're not really even a god.  According to the random
bits of mythology already in place, "the Devourers" is a collective
name for all the nameless spirits of darkness and death, so there is
no single entity called "Devourers."

Of course there's no rule that says this can't be changed, but it
would require hunting down all the current references to Devourers and
making sure they match the new mythology.  As has been mentioned here
numerous times, that's not a reason to scrap an idea that would be a
significant improvement, but I'm not sure making the Devourers a "god"
of ice fits that category.  Would your mythology still work if you
replaced "Devourers" with some name for the proposed elemental god of
ice?

-----Begin Response-----
I tend to agree that Devourers as Ice God doesn't fit very well.  Better to
come up with a name for the Ice God (and don't anybody suggest "Schlee..."),
and elevate one of the Devourers to supremacy over his fellows as the god of
evil.  The tale of that rise to power is probably a whole ballad of its own,
to be sung, or rather, bellowed, with an ogre voice in dark and noisesome
hole.

DM
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