From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Kobolds (Re: Intelligent opponents)
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:58:09 GMT

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:

. . . but first a few points of gaming philosophy.

I don't interpret "chaotic evil" the way Mr Rannou does.  His presumption -- and
it's valid in AD&D as written -- is that genetics==destiny; if you're born to a 
"chaotic evil" race you are doomed (in the sense of "fated") to behave in a 
certain way.

I don't buy that.  What Mr Rannou describes as a "chaotic evil civilization"
simply could not exist, for reasons I'll go into below; but, more to the point,
I don't believe in "chaotic evil" races, any more than I belive in "lawful good"
races.  Any _hnau_ (a word borrowed from C.S. Lewis and meaning "incarnate
sentient"), at least in a world I run, has free-will and the ability to choose
good or evil, law or chaos, life or death (a third alignment axis I've added for
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.

My complaint with Mr Rannou is that he seems to feel it's his job to dictate to
me what the *true* nature of (in this case) kobolds is, should be, and must be.

This is tremendous piffle, and probably does not deserve a detailed response
such as I have given in what follows; but I think there's a lesson in this -- 
something about game logic and the integrity of a world -- and I'm going ahead
and posting this.



On to Mr Rannou's comments. . .


>I love it... still, if there was over 50 kobolds, you should have gave the
>players a chance to hear them. 

I did.  I've added a characteristic called "Awareness," and secretly rolled
an awareness roll for the highest-aware member of the party; he failed to
notice anything, so I presumed that there was nothing any less-aware member
would detect.


>I think the chapter on surprise has a thing like that... 

An entire chapter on surprise?  My.  AD&D really is different, isn't it?
(I should explain that what I run is a version of the original, three-pamphlet
D&D, with significant house rules:  enough so that I wound up having to write
a whole pamphlet of my own, as if it were a separate rule system; but it's 
still D&D at the heart of it.)

>	   "Some kobolds at the well look up at 
>	   you, apparently startled.  One has a
		^^^^^^^^^^
>	   bucket in his hand."
>	   "I charge."
>	   "He empties the bucket in your 
>	   direction.  It's full of green slime."
>	   <roll>
>	   "You're covered in the stuff."
>
>Like, DUH, this kobold holds this bucket all day, knowing that should he
>ever trip with that thing in his hands, he's going to buy the farm real
>fast. 

Nonsense.  40-odd kobolds had escaped alive from the ambush room to spread the
alarm.  Actually, it had been spread a good deal earlier; that's why the 50 of
'em were ready and silent.  The place was honeycombed with secret passages that
the kobolds used to watch and spy.  Remember, they've had 10K years to make this
place safe.

So he *KNEW* they were coming, drew a bucket of goop from the well, and waited.


>...if he is truly surprised, as in "Ahh, adventurers,
>what i'm gonna do?!" then either he was very poorly guarding his post (or
>if he held the bucket in hand, making his round), or he wasn't garding the
>place and had nothing to do with GS.

None of the above.  As I said, he knew they were coming.  The well was designed
to look like a *well*; the party thought they were coming in on a bunch of
dumb kobolds peacefully going about their business and charged.  They deserved 
to get slimed just for attacking a dumb kobold peacefully going about his 
business, imio; but, more to the point, the kobold was intentionally *looking* 
like he was just a dumb kobold peacefully going about his business.  It was a
deliberate, nasty trap.  

Read the Subject: line again; the subject is *INTELLIGENT* opponents.  Your
entire point seems to be that kobolds aren't intelligent.  Again and again and
again:  says who?


>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.


>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.


>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.


>Also, I doubt any kobold would notice that
>wood isn't affected by green slime. 

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


>Also, kobolds aren'r very loyals. 

Genetics. . .


>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.


>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.


>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.

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.


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


>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.  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.

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.


>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.

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


>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?

>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.


>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.


>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.


>Of course, at least one will fumble (it's not a normal weapon, and they
>couldn't afford to "practice" throwing it, could they? 

No, but they can practice throwing other slimy muck (for example, mud of
an appropriate viscosity) from buckets.


>Range should be very near also: say 1/2" | 1" | 3/2". Try throwing
>something far from a bucket. 3/2" is 15 feet, and nowe think about how much
>a kobold is smaller than a human.

Can't you even read?  I said the stupid bugger of a fighter was *charging*
the "sword-fodder" kobold.  He asked for it.  The kobold tossed the stuff
from maybe six feet.


>BIG rooms shouldn't be kobold make neither. 

Normally, no.  And that's what the adventurers would presume also. . .  These
were smart kobolds, remember. . .


>Anyway, a last thing about the GS: even though it is written MV 0, it CAN
>and DO move. Else, how could it climb up a ceiling? 

Spores settle on a moist spot of cave ceiling and grow there, devouring e.g.
lichens and fungi which naturally grow on cave ceilings/walls.


		Until the philosophy that holds one race superior and another 
								inferior
		Is finally and permanently discretited and abandoned
		Everywhere is war
			-- Haile Selassie via Bob Marley

		FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY
			-- Sinnead O'Connor

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.