From: Rannou@info.polymtl.ca (Patrick Rannou)
Subject: Re: Kobolds (Re: Intelligent opponents)
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 13:05:01 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.175809.22985@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes:

   Lines: 273

   In article <RANNOU.92Oct8230236@watson.info.polymtl.ca> Rannou@info.polymtl.ca (Patrick Rannou) writes:
   >In article <1992Oct7.203655.29858@pbhyc.PacBell.COM> djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes) writes:


   complexity and interest).  I've played an lawful-good orc paladin.

   If there's a theme to what follows, it is this:

	   Each GM should run their world according to their own personal
	   vision.  That is what I do in Arthur; that is what has been
	   done in any world I've enjoyed for more than two sessions.

Agreed.



   >You say there were only Kobolds. Putting GS isn't what I call "not putting
   >bigger and better monster". GS is DEADLY.

   Deadly, yes.  A monster, no, at least not as I understand the term.  It's more
   in the line of a trap or a poison.  You have to step in it (or have it thrown at
   you) for it to do anything.

Well, I view it as a monster,... but that's a matter of taste. It's in the
moster's manual after all... ;-) And seriously, the GS must be able to mve,
otherwise it couyld never "fall down on unweary adventurers", no?

(well, even that can be taken care of by saying it moves so slowly you'd
have to watch it for days to see it move).


   >Also, you assume a LAWFUL society, with leaders ranging in the 12+
   >intelligence, or more. 

   Is there any law that says kobolds can't be smart?  Not as far as I'm concerned.

Agreed. Individuals kobolds can be smart. As a race, tough, I'd expect the
"typical" kobold to be not too smart.

   >Kobolds, like orcs, have this tendency to fight
   >among themselves and be chaotic. 

   Genetics =/= destiny, at least as far as I'm concerned.  A race that fought
   among itself that much wouldn't survive; its death-rate would exceed its birth-
   rate by some phenomenal amount.

Huh? With the high birthrate they have, it's very hard to wipe them out.
It's like the wars on insects. And genetics *DO* make destiny. Hormones are
genetically controlled, and hormones can do such wondrous things to a
pwersonnality. 

Again, on the individual level I believe a LG orc can exist, it's a
certainty. But as a race, don't expect me to believe you can get a kobold
lair full of intelligent lawful (whatever) kobolds. Well, you *CAN* do them
that way, but then you aren't really talking about kobolds, so the point is
moot. It's like my friend who talked to me about a dwarf race he created
with spellcasting powers. I said to him "that isn't dwarves, their whole
mindset has to change". He just wouldn't accept that he created another"
monster", that looks like a dwarf, say it's a dwarf, but isn't like a
dwarf-the-real-down-to-earth-standard-type-of-dwarf.

I'm not saying that your kobold tribe shouldn't make a good game. Heck, if
we were to limit ourselves to the "standard" monsters, we'd chunk a great
deal of possibilities for our games. But I just won't accept your kobolds
as "standard run of the mills kobolds". You have the right to think so,
tough, and please do not mistake discussion for "I'm trying to force the
holy truth unto you".


   >ALSO, it took all their wisdom (which is very low) 

   This must be some silly AD&D thing.  I've got no prejudices against smart,
   wise, or whatever, kobolds.

Me neither. My PCs encountered a 7th level kobold fighter once. Deadly
serious, he was. Not strong, but quite agile. To meet one such character is
something. To meet a whole race of unusuals is another. To meet that whole
race of unusuals and make it look as if they were "standard type" isn't the
only thing I don't accept. Maybe you think I'm hard headed. But that's how
I think anyway. And I believe genetics greatly affect a race's temperament,
up to a point.

Like, in human societies you'd expect more people to be chaotic neutral
than laweful evil, right? Well, in orcish society I'd expect lawful good
orcs to be a lot more rarer than in a human society. Say, a 400 orcs tribe
got 4 LG in them. Wow, big effect they'll have on the whole. Maybe yes,
more probable not much. 

And remember culture. Culture affects all individuals, up to a point, and
various and subtle ways. Your LG orc may still feel like those PCs
adventurers need to be slayed. The PCs won't make a difference between the
good orc and the devil orc.

"The only good orc is a dead orc". (killing excuse #1 after an orcfight).
;-)


   >to finally agree to join
   >up with orcs and others against the Evil Lord, and i seriously doubt it's a
   >kobold who came up with the idea. 

   Actually, it was.  They were the ones with the highest mortality rates in the
   Evil Lord's petty little wars and they were just bloody sick and tired of it.

OK. But they've got the highest natality rate too, I presume (esp.
considering that even if they don't get killed they don't live very long
anyway). You can have two kobold tribes fighting each other as often as you
want and they'll never wipe each other out because  wshen they fight they
break the fight as soon as they are too damaged (the other side is in the
same shape). OK, so maybe one tribe can eliminate another, but then it gets
bigger (very high natality rate), finally splits into several smaller
tribes and the whole shebang starts again.

If you find me a kobold tribe that lives peacefully  with it's neighbors,
well that makes for very interesting -and special- kobolds indeed! NOT what
I'd call your "run-of-the-mill" kobolds.

   >They did it because they had no choice,
   >as a last ditch attempt to prevent their doom. I doubt their alliance
   >lasted for long after they defeated the evil Lord... think about it..

   Alliance?  Oh, you mean the SGCLF.  It didn't, not after the *final* defeat
   of Shot-Nicor (see below).  There was no longer a need for it.  The various 
   armies went their own ways.

   >"What, do you take me for a koboldish stupid? I know the evil lord has a
   >BIG treasure, and you won't bar our way!"

   Shot-Nicor, as it happened, was the sort of petulant bastard who insists on 
   taking it with him.  Upon dying, he became a rather nasty lich and tried to 
   reassert his control over the small giant-class types, who had a much tougher
   fight defeating him dead than they had alive when he wasn't really expecting
   it.  The lich form was equally petulant and, finding ultimate defeat inevitable,
   final-struck all his magic, including himself, creating a wasteland called the
   Frozen Chao that, as far as I've plotted Arthur's history (some 26,500 years
   after the events being described here -- which, btw, was always in pre-history
   as far as PCs were concerned), remains deadly and nearly impassible.

Oh. Interesting background there.

   Regarding your scenario of the SGCLF degenerating into internecine warfare
   -- well, all I can say is it didn't happen that way.  Genetics ain't destiny,
   and kobolds don't got to be dumb.

I agree about the first part, but if the kobolds aren't the ones that are
supposed to be the dumb ones, then who? I mean, even the dragonlance novels
depict most "mercenary" draconians as brutish ans stupid. Hey, human
mercenary must be a lot like that too... ;-)

   >That's the very NATURE of a CHAOTIC EVIL civilisation, espoecially when
   >it's people aren't very bright or wise, and especially if they don't like
   >each other to start with. It's the law of greed and "might makes right",
   >even tough they united themselves for just that right reason!

   As I intimated above, I simply don't believe this.  There is no such thing as
   a "chaotic evil" civilization in this sense; there could not be, because it
   would destroy itself in less than no time.

Unless they reproduce quite fast. Like kobolds do.

   Any race capable of forming tribes
   and armies is capable of cooperation.

Sure. But I'd thing that this copperation is more of the "to increase my
chances of survival and personnal confort" kind than the real "let's all be
nice to each other" kind.

And I feel kobolds should have a tendency to be cowards. AGAIN, this is
only a racial generalisation, not a "every individual is like that" thing.
Genetics isn't an INDIVIDUAL's destiny, but it CAN be a race's destiny,
because group destiny is the result of both individual actions/feats and
group tendencies. Unless driven by a single (or afew) individuals, a group
is often predictable. Then, genetics is really the race's destiny.

Like they say that the dwarves's lust for gold will be the end of them all.
A racial destiny, surely NOT necesseraly the destiny of any particular
dwarf.

   >AND I'M SURE that after 10K years, kobolds hace absolutely NO memory of
   >that war. Think about it: illeteracy = nearly exactly 100% (kobolds having
   >a written language? Don't make me laugh... 

   Okay, don't laugh.  Literacy among kobolds in Arthur is fairly low -- <5% --
   but not unknown. 

* 5% ? * That's fairly HIGH. In the medieval ages, humans got about that %
of litteracy -or far worse-!

 But they have an oral tradition, of the same sort that
   preserved the ILIAD, the ODYSSEY, and much of the Old Testament before it was
   written down.  There's a great deal of loss, a great deal of exaggeration; it's
   a myth to them, but it's there.

OK. Oral tradition is fairly strong amidst less "civilised" cultures.

   But why should they even *need* to remember the war?  All that matters is that
   they have a home, they want to live there and mind their own business, and these
   stupid adventurers keep coming in trying to wipe them out.  It's just plain
   racism, that's all, and they're not putting up with it.  The party of PCs wasn't
   the first party of adventurers to enter that cave, and undoubtedly wasn't the 
   last.

Agreed. But putting GS in the hands of kobolds is a lot like saying:

"Here, I've got a module where the local 0-level thugs are played
intelligently and will completely scrap those munchkins your party has"

and it turns out a bunch of those thugs got "poison, save or die" on them
daggers. Like putting nytroglycerine in a baby's hand. Not that it's not
possible, only very unusual.

   >It's also not a
   >"civilisation" (if we can afford to call it like that) that writes it's
   >history through songs... they song a little, but horribly false. And they
   >know it.

   Again:  *SAYS* *WHO*?  You're welcome to interpret kobolds however you like.

OK, I was wrong on that one. It really is a personnal interpretation. By
"songs" I meant oral tradition anyway, like you said. And kobolds singing
beautifully? Come on...

   Please don't tell me how kobolds in my world should behave.

Well, you can always hit 'n' if you don't like discussions on viewpoints.
If you take every comment that disagree with you as an attack on you, I'd
say it's mild case of paranoia. Don't worry, everybody suffer from it every
once in a while.

   >If nothing (or no big serious menace which comes over and over) has
   >attacked the tribe in the last century 

   And who, pray tell, ever said nothing ever attacks them?

Well, I tend to make generalisations a lot... ;-(

   >this may account for some of the groudwork, 

   Nonsense; the fact that they *have* been attacked is precisely *why* they
   have laid such elaborate defense plans.

OK.

   >Of course, maybe you still managed to have some fun. 

   Why how generous of you, to admit that something other than your fascist
   vision of how D&D *MUST* be played might possibly be some fun.

Why, how nice of you. I don't have the right to give OPINIONS. AS I said,
don't take every differing viewpoint as an attack on your integrity.

   >Specific kobolds would then be
   >assigned to the task of holding the bucket in case of emergency, 

   ...and are.  You've made a false assumption.

Right, right... rest of rambling deleted... ;-)



Anyway, like you said, "those stupid players needed to be taught a lesson,
and they asked for it!".


Ciao.

"Me, paranoid? NEVER! I-am-not-PA-RA-NO-ID! OK?"

--
/---------------------------\
| Patrick "Paradak" Rannou. |
| Rannou@info.polymtl.ca    |
\---------------------------/

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