44: Needlessly Horrific Box, Efficient War Crimes, and Soaps

D&Daniel:  D&Daniel here. It’s been a difficult week for me. Tabletop Tim reported me to the police for beef smuggling. I didn’t even know that was a crime. Please, patrons, Hewig, Carlo, A Socialist Hobgoblin. Help. I don’t even know how this all started. I don’t even know what I did. Anyone, please, help me. Enjoy the show

(music)

Pencil: Hello, and welcome to The Probably Bad Podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad. I don’t know why I’m talking in this news presenter voice, but I’m Mod Pencil

Paper: I’m Paper, and I am not a news presenter. Today’s probably bad RPG idea is…

(dice rolling)

Paper: “Your PC’s enchanted sword has been disenchanted. It used to believe in your heroic mission, but now it’s not sure, and would like some time alone before it slays any more goblins”

Pencil: This is the reason why all items should be intelligent. You are a hero, you’ve got a sword, you’ve got a shield, you’ve got a suit of armour, you’ve got persuade all of them to go along with your quest or they’ll just refuse to stab people

Paper: I do feel like this is a problem with sentient weapons that isn’t often explored, that’s just what if they have a different agenda to you?

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: They can’t do anything about it, because they’re also inanimate, but they’re sentient, and they have complaints

Pencil: Yeah. I don’t know if sentient weapons can…they can refuse to use their magical powers, at least, so you’re just swinging a normal sword

Paper: Almost a form of passive resistance, like “you can swing me, but I’m not gonna help”

Pencil: Yeah. I also feel it should be enchanted so it can grow arms

Paper: Why?

Pencil: Then it can punch you, or scuttle away on its arms. This is my new

Paper: Is it all sentient items or just if they become so against what you’re doing they grow limbs?

Pencil: All sentient items. This is my sword, the sword of arms. Instead of stabbing people

Paper: Eeey

Pencil: it’s just got 15 arms and they punch you. I didn’t realise the pun, but thank you

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: This is my sentient magical weapon, Greg, I’m grabbing him by the legs and swinging him at people, but he’s a wizard

Paper: I mean, I have been in a D&D session where someone picked up one quickling and threw them at another quickling

Pencil: I think enchanted swords needs rights. Sentient magical items are really weird as a concept, when you think about it

Paper: Yeah, the fact that they are inanimate, their life must be pain

Pencil: Yeah. You’re a cup, and that’s your life. You’re a cup in a dungeon

Paper: My question is, what if all magic items are sentient, and we just don’t know because most of them can’t speak

Pencil: That is a…that would be interesting. You cast detect thoughts, and just as a joke you cast it on your potion, and it starts screaming at you not to drink it

Paper: Except that one potion that’s weirdly into it

Pencil: Yeah, all potions are sentient, but luckily all potions are massively into it. They’re all incredibly down to be drunk

Paper: I think this might be the one case where we can accurately say “is this vore?”

Pencil: Enchantment of drink me daddy

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: But yes. So

Paper: Actually, that is a thing. At the start, we assumed that the enchanted sword in question can speak, but what if it can’t? Yeah. It’s just there like “you know what? Maybe I’m not going to glow in the presence of goblins. Maybe I want them to get you”

Pencil: Ok, so you’re an adventurer. You’ve got a magic sword, and only this magic sword can defeat the big bad, but also it’s incredibly passive aggressive and can’t communicate, so you have to figure out what it wants based on when it does and doesn’t use its powers, and use that to keep it happy so you can kill the big bad

Paper: I love it, it’s like Blue’s Clues. The sword gives you clues by pointing at things, or glowing, or deciding when to work and not work

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: And then you have to put the clues together and figure out what it wants

Pencil: You have a suit of armour and it can only communicate by charades, but obviously it can’t move by itself, so you have to go into the suit of armour and move around randomly, and when it does and doesn’t stop you moving will put you in the charades positions it’s trying to get across

Paper: I like this, this feels like a motion detecting game

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: You get in the right position and the armour just glows for a second like “yeah, you got it!”

Pencil: This is my magical suit of armour, it has motion controls. I guess suits of armour do all have motion controls, technically speaking

Paper: All clothing has motion control

Pencil: I would make random things sentient if I was making magical items

Paper: Well yeah, but you are a chaos goblin

Pencil: That is true. I think there should just be a single sentient hat

Paper: Just somewhere in the world

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Does it have any other abilities or

Pencil: No

Paper: It’s just aware of what’s happening to it at all times

Pencil: Yeah. It’s just constantly screaming on the inside

Paper: Do sentient magical items feel pain?

Pencil: I mean, I would assume so. You can damage them

Paper: Once that sentient hat becomes damaged, does it feel that?

Pencil: I would assume so

Paper: Does it feel itself being repaired? Being sewn?

Pencil: I feel like yeah, it must do. This is our Hat of Eternal Agony

Paper: I wonder if you can dip a damaged sentient magical item in a healing potion to fix it, ‘cause where do you draw the line between a person and an object? Is a sentient object a person?

Pencil: I mean, I feel it’s a person. What if the healing potion is sentient, and then it’s just continually healing itself

Paper: I think what you’ve invented there is the worst possible way to create infinite healing potions

Pencil: So all you have to do is keep stabbing the healing potion, and then when it heals itself it will produce more healing potion

Paper: I was just thinking, you know, you drink some of it and then it fills back up, but I’m intrigued by the concept of stabbing a liquid

Pencil: You just stab it. Yeah, ok. So you have an infinite healing potion, it’s always there. Admittedly it is constantly screaming in pain begging for death, but once you get past that, it is an infinite healing potion

Paper: Well that’s why you put it in your bag of holding. It’s sentient, but it doesn’t need to breath, so you put it in there, you can’t hear it screaming

Pencil: The bag of holding is also sentient. I don’t like how many things can be sentient in D&D

Paper: I mean theoretically…according to the Dungeon Masters Guide you can theoretically make anything sentient, is the problem

Pencil: Yeah. You have no idea whether or not the chair you’re sitting on is able to form hatred of you. You’re just sitting there going about your life, and you have no idea that your glasses hate you as a human being

Paper: Pretty sure mine does, it’s the only explanation for how much they try and fall off my face

Pencil: I’m sorry that you and your glasses are not friends. It’s like the mimic thing

Paper: Mmm

Pencil: Of, you know, everything you own could be a mimic, and everything you own could be a sentient life-form. Anyone you know could be mind-controlled. People don’t consider how terrifying the D&D world is

Paper: Here’s a question. If you kill a mimic

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Does it…’cause I don’t have the Monster Manual to hand, if you kill a mimic does it become, does it go back to some base shape, or does it just become a dead object?

Pencil: I think…app…I believe canonically it goes back to a combination of its base shape and the thing it last turned into, so a pile of spongy wood

Paper: So do you think, if you killed a chest mimic, you could then turn that body into a functional chest?

Pencil: I think so. You just, yeah, you kill a chest mimic, you put…yeah, you kill a chest mimic, you take the body, you taxidermy the body, now you’ve got a chest. Then you enchant it be magical, and then you enchant it to be sentient. Now you’ve got a needlessly horrific box

Paper: Ok, but turning dead mimics into sentient magic items makes so much sense I might have to make it canon in my setting

Pencil: Yeah. And all sentient magic items are just haunted by mimic ghosts

Paper: A mimic ghost’s actually kind of terrifying, ‘cause I have to assume it’d retain some level of shapeshifting ability

Pencil: Yeah what it is

Paper: So it could turn into other ghosts

Pencil: That or you go to sit down on a chair, you fall right through it because it’s intangible, and then it eats you

Paper: I see nothing wrong with this

Pencil: Yeah, all magic items come from the same (inaudible), so there’s just one giant mimic, and then you cut bits of it off, and then you make those into magic items

Paper: Sidequest idea: your party has to go and kill a mimic in order to create this legendary sentient sword

Pencil: Hmm. I feel like you cut out a few steps here, and just ask the mimic to be a sword

Paper: No, because a mimic of a sword is just a meaty sword that can chomp

Pencil: And then you enchant the mimic

Paper: This is inserting the mimic’s soul into a magical sword, to make it a super magic sentient sword

Pencil: That is true, but also, can you enchant a mimic that’s turned into a sword? And then you have a vorpal mimic

Paper: I feel like as a player I would definitely want to be able to do that, as a DM I would absolutely not want my players to do that

Pencil: Plus three mimic, it’s just three better than any other mimic

Paper: Three units

Pencil: Yeah, it’s three mimic goods

Paper: Three mimic goods

Pencil: Ooh, you could cast dancing mimic, and then you just have a little mimic doing a boogie

Paper: That’s my favourite minor illusion

Pencil: Dancing mimic is a 9th level spell

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: I feel like before we go through every single enchantment in the book and how they would work on a mimic. Ghost touch mimic

Paper: If you want us to do that, then message us, and we will make it an episode

Pencil: New bonus episode: we enchant mimics. Mimics: Will It Blend

Paper: (laughs) Will it enchant

Pencil: We cast the dancing enchantment on different magical creatures. Presumably cast it on a construct, ‘cause that’s just an item

Paper: See we’ve gone full circle now, back to “is a sentient item a person”?

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Can you be an object and a person? They’re discreet categories of things magic will affect

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: But there’s nothing saying that you can’t be both. Is a construct both?

Pencil: I think yeah. I mean a sentient construct is presumably a person with a soul and all that

Paper: But also, is a person an object? We’re just meat with a ghost in it

Pencil: That is true. I like the way that canonically they’re created by basically you take a spirit from the elemental planes, and then you basically lobotomise it, and then you stick it in the body, in the statue you made, and the reason they can get so aggressive is they remember that they’re trapped in a stone body and go on a rampage

Paper: Understandable

Pencil: It’s one of those things where it’s like “ok, that’s also quite horrific”, along with the fact that there are sentient magical items. Yeah. The D&D world is surprisingly horrifying, everything’s either a mimic or internally screaming, especially me

Paper: But yeah, if three people message or email us saying “do ‘Will It Enchant’”, we will do that as an episode

Pencil: Doppelgangers too. Everything in the D&D-verse is horrifying

Paper: At least we can definitively say doppelgangers are people

Pencil: Doppelgangers are people

Paper: Not objects

Pencil: You cannot

Paper: Apart from to the extent that all people are objects

Pencil: You cannot create a dancing doppelganger

Paper: I feel like you probably can, as an illusion

Pencil: Doppelgangers famously cannot and will not dance. If you suspect someone you know has been replaced by a doppelganger, ask them to do the macarena. If they say no, they are a doppelganger, and you are legally allowed to hit them with a frying pan

Paper: So what you’re saying is, it’s very lucky that I bullied Nick into learning the macarena before our wedding, otherwise they might have been a doppelganger

Pencil: Yeah. Yeah, this is how you can detect all shapeshifters

Paper: Sorry for calling you out like that, Nick. Anyway, questions

Pencil: No shapeshifter can do the macarena. Be sure to check with everyone you know that they can do the macarena

(music)

Paper: We have questions! Cobalts-various-posts wants to know “how many Geneva convention articles can you violate with a single spell cast?” Let’s find out!

Pencil: So, we do have the Geneva convention up, ‘cause we are planning this

Paper: Yeah. So, the main thing I notice reading through the Geneva convention articles is most of them are about who you can and can’t hit

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: So I feel like you can violate a surprising number just by targeting four or five individuals

Pencil: Yeah, just cast fireball in a hospital

Paper: Well the people you can’t hit, it’s non-combatants, kids, medical workers, people who are surrendering, prisoners of war. So if you have something that will hit five targets, which, there’s definitely spells that can do that, then you can violate five articles of the Geneva convention at once, with one spell

Pencil: So I feel, actually, that we’re possibly taking this too literally, and the single use of a spell that can violate the most Geneva conventions is suggestion, cast on a king, “commit as many war crimes as possible

Paper: You’re a genius

Pencil: I have just

Paper: At that point, is it you who is violating the Geneva convention?

Pencil: Ok. Possession, or magic jar, on a king, and then commit as many war crimes as possible

Paper: That one works. I like that. Could you also just use prestidigitation to just put red crosses on every medical thing that you find?

Pencil: I like the idea of breaking the Geneva convention but in incredibly petty ways. What I think I would do, I would cast higher level summon monster, and summon a balor, and then get it to put red crosses on everything that isn’t official Red Cross stuff. It’s chaotic evil, it’ll be down for it

Paper: I feel like violating that specific Geneva convention article, which I think it Protocol 3? Yeah/ Violating Protocol 3 of the Geneva convention is possibly the most chaotic evil thing

Pencil: Hmm

Paper: Because it’s the epitome of pointless evil

Pencil: It’s also illegal to fake surrender, so you can violate the Geneva convention by accidentally fireballing yourself in the face, and then, when people come over to help you, fireballing them

Paper: See, the problem is you’ve used the word “accidentally” there

Pencil: Mm

Paper: And there are crimes that you can do accidentally, but I don’t think that this would be one

Pencil: That is a fair point

Paper: What you do, is you cast charm person on your enemy, and if you succeed you deck ‘em. That’s false surrender

Pencil: Yes, I know how to do it. So it’s illegal, no it’s not, yes it is, it’s illegal to attack someone who is injured and sick, so what you do it you accidentally cast fireball on yourself, and then when the enemies come over and start stabbing you you have successfully committed, or at least allowed, a violation of the Geneva convention

Paper: See, I still don’t think if something’s an accident it can count as false surrender

Pencil: Oh no, it’s not false surrender, it’s attacking someone who is injured and sick

Paper: Ah, ok

Pencil: Specifically you. It’s in the same way you can

Paper: This is the same logic as “Joan of Arc was a war criminal because she brought herself, a civilian, into combat”

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: ‘Cause by that logic everyone that signs up for the army is a war criminal

Pencil: The same way you can very easily get involved in a mugging just by walking down a dark alleyway and loudly counting your money. But, yeah, I feel like if we…I still think possessing a king is the best way to commit war crimes. There’s something that you’re welcome to take out of context

Paper: You didn’t say it was a morally good way to do it, you just said it was efficient

Pencil: Yeah, it seems like a lot of the Geneva convention is mostly who you can and can’t commit war on, rather than what things you do in war

Paper: Well yeah, like I said, it’s who you can hit

Pencil: Any spell can violate the Geneva convention if you believe in yourself

Paper: Any spell can violate the Geneva convention if you use it on a child

Pencil: Yeah. It was nice having listeners

Paper: (laughs) Again, can, not may, it’s an important distinction

Pencil: I distinctly remember not being cancelled on twitter, it was great

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: But anyway, yes. Probably bad RPG idea: cast fireball on a five-year-old. Right

(music)

Pencil: Our next question is anonymous. “How would you gradually change a D&D campaign until the players suddenly realise they’ve been playing a soap”

Paper: I feel like with most players you’ve already got an advantage here, because they all have tragic backstories

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Much like soap characters

Pencil: Yeah, I think what you need to do…ok, so you have them go “ok, this is going to be quite a character-heavy campaign, could you come up with some backstories and NPCs I can work in” “ok, sure”. And then you keep working those NPCs in, but in the most ludicrous ways possible, so it’s like “ah, I lost my wife, and I’m trying to find her, I lost contact with her after some tragedy and I’m trying to find her” and it’s like “you find her again” and they’re like “woo” but it’s like “you find her again, and this time she’s actually your mother” and then “oh no, you find her again, but she’s actually three kobolds in a trenchcoat”

Paper: Shopkeeper that you mentioned in passing in your backstory is actually your long-lost twin brother with amnesia

Pencil: Yeah, make every single NPC somehow related to the PCs. The big bad is actually your grandma. She just wants to tell you how much you’ve grown

Paper: If a character dies, bring them back as an evil NPC who faked their death so they could go and do evil

Pencil: Every child ages 1 year per session

Paper: How is that a soap?

Pencil: It’s a soap opera thing. Because babies grow up very fast and soaps have…because of the way soaps do time versus the way actual babies do time. Actual babies do time. It’s a common thing for children to age weirdly quickly, ‘cause they’re being swapped out for new actors

Paper: I did not know that, but also I have watched approximately one episode of a soap

Pencil: I used to watch Eastenders. There is my tragic backstory

Paper: I’ve heard a lot of episodes of The Archers, ‘cause my parents listened to it when I was a kid, but you don’t have to swap actors out as much for radio

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Because you don’t see them. You just have stock baby noises for as long as you need there to be a baby

Pencil: Yeah, soaps have a lot of swapping out actors, so I guess just replace one of your players with a different player and refuse to acknowledge that they’re a different person

Paper: Including addressing them by the old player’s name

Pencil: Yeah like “hi, it’s Tim”, and then some completely different person walks in. See if you can convince your player base they’re going mad, as people tend to do when they watch a lot of soap

Paper: How is it we keep coming back to gaslighting people

Pencil: That’s soap operas, baby

Paper: For the ultimate soap opera though, you would need to separately gaslight the characters

Pencil: No, I think the best way to represent a soap opera is, it’s a normal D&D campaign, and then, middle of second session, you reveal to one of the players that you’ve always been in love with them, one of the players that you’re their secret brother, one of the players that you’re their long-lost child, and one of the players that you were the one that destroyed their house that one time

Paper: And if you are dating one of your players, that can’t be the one that you confess your love to

Pencil: Yes, that’s the one that you confess to being their long-lost sibling

Paper: Oh, the worst one

Pencil: Yeah. This will get a very soap-opera vibe to your campaign very quickly. Yeah, I guess, actually, the best one to do is, at the end of the second session, each other player independently and privately confess that you’ve always been in love with them for years

Paper: Also tell them that they can’t tell the others, ‘cause you’re not ready

Pencil: Yes

Paper: Just see what happens

Pencil: Yeah, you’ll get something very soap opera-y. When I die, I want to send a text to literally every single person on my contact list telling them that I’ve always been in love with them, just to make the funeral as awkward as possible

Paper: My contacts list definitely includes a plumber that we see once a year

Pencil: Mine includes my landlord

Paper: GP. I think my not last landlord but the one before, ‘cause I keep forgetting to delete. That would be interesting

Pencil: So, yeah, I think the best way to gradually change your D&D campaign until your players suddenly realise they’re playing a soap isn’t to do a soap in the setting in game, but to slowly make your D&D group more like a soap opera. If one of your players has a twin, find that twin and bribe them to be evil

Paper: What if, in my case, two of the players are twins?

Pencil: Separately bribe each of them to be evil, but tell them that the other one is being the good twin

Paper: That could work

Pencil: Yeah. I think what I’ve devised here is a great strategy to destroy all your relationships and no longer have friends

Paper: I mean, that’s what a lot of probably bad RPG ideas ultimately are

Pencil: At which point you’ll be spending a lot less money on D&D supplements

Paper: I don’t think you understand how this hobby works

Pencil: Alternately, you have three game groups, and you try to get it into “oh no, the GM’s been cheating on us with a different game group”. Insist that you’re D&D game group monogamous

Paper: Tell all your game groups that they’re your favourite

Pencil: Yes

Paper: Especially if they share players

Pencil: Yeah, take every player aside and go “just so you know, you’re my favourite player, I’m only continuing this campaign for you.” See how it goes

Paper: I love that, ‘cause you’d get such different reactions from different players. There’d be some that “oh no don’t keep going just because of me” and then others that are just like “yeah”

Pencil: I am the core of all campaigns I’m in

Paper: Coincidentally, they’ve been told that by their other GM earlier in the week

Pencil: Who you’ve been colluding with

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: Take every GM in your city, and you all work together, and it will hopefully end with everyone's players fistfighting in a McDonalds car park

Paper: It’s perfect

Pencil: As I said, I can see no way this can go wrong

Paper: So thank you for listening. Specifically you, you’re our favourite listener. Don’t tell the others

Pencil: We’re only continuing this podcast because of you

Paper: If you want to message us, you can do so on tumblr at probablybadrgideas, twitter at badprobably, or in this thing called e-mail

Pencil: It’s very new

Paper: At probablybadpodcast @ gmail.com. If you want to support us, get access to things like bonus episodes, one-shots, and short RPGs that Pencil and our producer/editor Nick make, you can go to patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas

Both: and remember to have a probably bad day