Worlds funniest Merchants. - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Worlds funniest Merchants.

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
tsukasa_macleod
Mar 26, 2008 23:50:43 Realms of chaos, one of my DM's gave us perhaps the best merchant since Akbar. His name is Estevan, If you read my posts on worst cursed items, HE gave me Dandelo. Realms could probably explain him better, but here are some of the items he sold us.

"Soap": Turned out to be a rather potent wisdom poison.
"Black Lotus Extract": Unknown, but when asked for, large amounts of shoveling were heard as he gathered it
and of course, Dandelo: a -2 talking shortsword of extreme annoyance. Will not let me use other weapons, and follows me if I try to get rid of it
#2
sin_shai_nagai_jedi
Mar 27, 2008 0:05:28 Cobblepot of Cobblepot enchantings, he spoke and acted like the penguin from the batman animated TV show from the 90s, he was rather ill tempered and whenever he was upset his words just turned into "meh MEH MEH!"

also

"the poison merchant" a low level rogue decided to look for "the poison store" in a town once, and he found this paranoid little man, when asked about his goods, he'd freak out, yell out "Pocket sand! shiishii shaaa!" and throw sand in your face and then run away.

oh and

lance and vance two competeing weapons merchants in a city, they were always quick to stain the reputations of the other, and could be talked into a deal easly if told that the other was having a sale of some sort.
#3
Demetri_Knighthawk
Mar 27, 2008 14:14:55 "Lucky" Eddie Boneroller
My ranger/thief character I retired into a pawn shop merchant/adventuring guild house holder.

When I first rolled him up, we used a house rule back from 1st ed about thin, ave, heavy weights. Basicly at random height/weight, if you rolled % and got 02-10 you were under weight. if you rolled 90-99 you were over weight, 01&00 were double the roll. I rolled verry oddly and ended up with a 3' tall 300 lbs hobbit, he was a beachball, I played him up as a polinesian/sumoan hobbit with mauri tattoos and all.

I played with him for about 3-5 years, going from 3r/3t to 7r/8t before he had a bad chain of bad luck, in 1 week he was: Hospitalized for a broken leg in a wagon accident, while in hospital someone slipped poisons into his healing salves, sent him a yellow musk creeper as a get well boquet, attacked by a were-rat acting as hospital staff.

After that week he was taken to a high security room with wards and glyps all over for alarm and detection in case anyone teleported in or such. That is when the earth elemental opened up a 10X10 pit underneith the wood floor, Eddies own weight with the hospital bed broke through the floor into the pit, then through the pit into the city sewer system, then the earth elemental started to stomp on him.

After the hospital stay he decided to hang up his daggers, for now, and work with the local thives guild and rangers guild to train the next set of adventurers. He often acts as the 'starting point' for some of our games with eddie having a stack of jobs for the characters to do to get used to the city.

"Alright guys, we got firebeetles in a warehouse, dire rats in the sewers, and herb gathering outside the city walls. each of you picks a card, hears goes to firebettles, clubs hathers herbs, diamons goes in the sewers and spades gets lunch ready for the others when they get back" *Slaps a deck of cards on the table.*

The "best" part about eddies was watching the players as I describe a 300 lbs. hobbit walking around wearing only a sarong with all his flubber a-flapping.
#4
realms_of_chaos
Mar 27, 2008 21:40:29 Estevan is one of my proudest achievments.

He is the ultimate in opportunistic merchants, generally complementing characters on their worst ability score before searching for a (likely dubious) item.

What he has gotten away with:
When a character came over with vouchers for potions, he mistook the voucher for something else and walked out of the back room with a camel (which he was blackmailed into giving away).
During a seige on a town, Estevan insisted upon compensation for the weapons he'd hand out. When threatened with violence, he was quick to point out he's the only one who could make his goods even halfway safe.
After said siege, Estevan was given a box of daggers as part of his compensation (and Tsukasa slipped Dandello into the box to try to unload the cursed sword back onto him). Although Estevan realized the deception and took out the sword, when he walked back into the shop with the daggers, he was mumbling about melting them together to make short swords.

Yup, when a player runs into a shop and demands all of the soap that they have in stock, you know you've done something right.

P.S.: Remember, Tsukasa, the lucky charm that Rarg stole still hasn't activated yet.
:evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh
#5
Mad_Jack
Mar 28, 2008 1:37:58 Ali Al-Ras'gul's (a little rascal?) Bazaar of The Bizarre

A horrible, horrible caricature of every stereotypical fat, overly-friendly desert camel-trader from every movie and fantasy novel, transplanted into the city. He speaks with a cheesy Arabic accent, quotes random verses from made-up prophets, philosophers and holy books, and is cheerful and overbearing to the point of people wishing to beat him with ax handles. :D

Although he's an astute trader and a wily bargainer, he's also known for randomly giving away items to people who tell him a good story or joke, or sing/play a song he's never heard before. He alternates with machine-gun rapidity between abject depression and utter joy, buffoonery and philosophy, and his rapid-fire commentary on life only seems to stop when he's asleep, but his fast talk is merely a front to distract people from his skilled diplomacy, manipulation and information-gathering. He's a veritable force of chaos.
His desert-style tent is set up in the marketplace of whichever city the party is based from, with a big rug covered in several low wooden tables of goods in front off it, with Ali sitting crosslegged behind them. He's quick and spritely for such a large man, and always seems to have a different exotic-looking woman sharing his company each time the party comes to his shop. His tent is actually the nexus for several interdimensional spaces, although nobody but him is sure just how much space is in the various areas. He has contacts all over the planes, and may or may not be working towards some goal (beyond just his own entertainment).
He deals in everything from information to magical items, and is likely to be able to find anything that the party asks for, given enough time and incentive. The party *WILL*, however, end up paying for any goods or services that Ali provides, as he will constantly be after the players to do him "favors", which they will quickly discover they end up having no choice but to agree to.
Each trip to Ali's shop is an adventure in itself, as the gods only know what odd trinket or useful bit of information Ali will have at the moment.
#6
tsukasa_macleod
Mar 28, 2008 2:44:40
Estevan is one of my proudest achievments.

P.S.: Remember, Tsukasa, the lucky charm that Rarg stole still hasn't activated yet.
:evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh

Sh*t, I forgot about that! This cannot end well.
#7
Mad_Jack
Mar 28, 2008 2:51:41
Sh*t, I forgot about that! This cannot end well.

Any time your DM makes a point of mentioning some minor campaign-related factoid, it never ends well.
#8
mad_dice_rolla
Mar 28, 2008 10:34:14 This was during my first DM session ever. I was big on the roleplay at the time (only knew half the rules for combat) and I can do a lot of voices. When they went into the weaponsmith/armorsmith the first one that popped into my head was Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. He hit on the female characters and tried to sell them xena style outfits. he was funny as hell. I decided that they were part of a large merchant family and owned just about all the stores in town (hehe, less voices to put to npcs this way, muahaha) and it got to the point that the 2 girls we played with would go "NO! We dont NEED to go to the store today!" whenever it was brought up after a bit of adventuring. IT was cool though, because I had one killed by a local gang and the group was so distraught by this they went of and avenged him without ever asking for some sort of reward for it. =)
#9
green_yawgmoth
Mar 28, 2008 11:31:36
Any time your DM makes a point of mentioning some minor campaign-related factoid, it never ends well.

But always ends in a good story!
#10
Dark_Stryke
Mar 28, 2008 11:41:10 My weird merchant?

I had been DMing for a party for almost a year, and they were quite high level (about 16 or 17 at the time), but the campaign was moderately low magic because of a ruling wizards' cabal that kept particularly powerful items out of the streets (it was hard to find anything over 25000gp or so). Now, the party needed some powerful items, and I was always having to invent ways for them to get them. Finally, one of the Players asked me if I would let the party have a magic lamp. He explained his idea for a "shopkeep genie" who could sell the party things.

Since the cost of a magic lamp is pretty high, I figured it was fine for something like this to happen. Of course, then I started to really like the idea, and Raoul the Genie Merchant was born.

Raoul's lamps are scattered all throughout the planes, and when rubbed, the genie appears in a puff of smoke with a little storefront all set up in front of him. Behind him appears a doorway filled with swirling smoke and freakish lights. Raoul says that the doorway leads to "the stock room", but never allows anyone inside.

Raoul himself appears as a bone-skinny old man with a long black beard, a turban, a purple robe, a wide grin, a curly mustache that extends about a foot in either direction which he is constantly stroking, and sunglasses. he constantly hovers above his little stall, which is full of interesting items, including magic weapons, armor, and shields, pies, cutlery, guns, a hookah, a save point (!!!), small animals in cages (half price on familiars! One week only!), and other assorted oddities.

Raoul speaks with a thick accent. When he first appears, he cries "Welcome to Raoul's! Raoul have everyting!" However, if someone asks for an item that wouldn't normally be available in their world (such as the aforementioned guns or save point), he'll mumble something about the item being on hold. He does seem to have quite literally everything (or 'everyting') someone could possibly ask for, except exceedingly rare items like artifacts.

Raoul was a really fun NPC for me to run, even if he did run the dreaded "ye old magick shoppe". If I were to ever use him again, I wouldn't put him in anything other than a very high level campaign.
#11
jexil
Mar 28, 2008 15:07:18 The strangest and most interesting merchant I ever created was a gnome named Bingle who ran a toy shop. He was actually a major villain rather than someone whose role was to sell goods to the party. He was born of a desire on my part to create larger-than-life villains based on wacky themes, in the style of classic comic book bad guys.

Bingle had an assortment of magical weapons in the form of toys. These included:

1) Blocks that would explode when thrown, releasing energy depending on which colored side of the block landed face up (red=fire, blue=cold, black=negative energy, etc).

2) Stuffed bears that would transform into fiendish dire bears in the manner of a summon monster spell.

3) Marbles that would transform into mephits when shot.

4) Toy soldiers that were really warforged scouts dressed in silly soldier costumes and powered by wind-up keys stuck in their backs.

5) Jumping jacks that were sharpened to serve as caltrops.

6) Tops that would transform into air elementals in whirlwind form when spun.

7) A jack-in-the-box, from which an efreeti would spring.

8) Animated manikins of all sizes (really just standard animated objects from the MM).

Bingle was also a sorcerer who specialized in enchantment and transmutation spells. He especially loved baleful polymorph and hideous laughter.

He also had a half-orc servant named Jongo who dressed as a clown and was a trained acrobat. He used juggling pins that I treated as masterwork clubs which could be thrown with up to a range of 30'.

Bingle's racket was that he would anonymously blackmail wealthy parents, threatening the demise of their children if they didn't pay a hefty ransom. Parents who didn't pay inevitably found their children brutally slain despite all precautions to keep them safe. Finally the party was hired to solve the mystery, and after investigating they discovered that the children's own seemingly harmless toys were in fact being used to kill them. This led them to seek out Bingle, the only toy maker in town. When confronted, he unleashed one of his whirlwind tops on the party and beat a hasty retreat. Later the party tracked him down to his lair and fought their way through hordes of killer toys and Bingle's legion of goblin toy crafters (sort of twisted versions of Santa's little helpers), finally making their way to Bingle's little fun house for a big show down.

The players really seemed to enjoy this adventure despite (or perhaps because of) all the campy wackiness, so I'd have to call Bingle one of my better successes.

The best part is that the party was offered extra gold to capture Bingle alive so he could stand trial, which they did. What they don't know yet is that Bingle was part of a cabal of powerful and insane criminals, and his villainous compatriots are more than willing to free him from prison and help him get revenge........
#12
tsukasa_macleod
Mar 28, 2008 20:07:59
Any time your DM makes a point of mentioning some minor campaign-related factoid, it never ends well.

Yeah, but when Realms gets creative, it's even worse!
#13
mr_seth
Mar 28, 2008 20:08:43 My old DM, Neil McMaster, had the brilliant idea of having EVERY store in a city manned by identical dwarves. Dwarves that also sounded alike. And constantly tried to marry off their sister/cousin/daughter/whatever to members of our party. They were so... persistent... that we eventually caved.

My best? Bottis the Orange, a mad Jagermonster transmuter obsessed with creating new forms of life and then selling them off to local adventuring groups. A few lines from him... (accent transcribed for maximum impact)

Bottis: "So, hyu needs somet'ink for a guard dog?"
Adventurer: "Yeah."
B: "Naschty. Porrtable."
A: "Yep."
B: "Expendable."
A: "Ideally."
B: "I gots just th' ting!" *Reaches beneath the counter, pulls out a cage containing something like a steroid-ridden taco bell doggie.* "Th' dire chihuahua!"
A: "...not that expendable."
#14
tsukasa_macleod
Mar 29, 2008 3:16:46 Bottis talks a little like Estevan.
#15
mr_seth
Mar 29, 2008 13:06:04
Bottis talks a little like Estevan.

He's a Jagermonster... they all have that accent. They're from Phil Foglio's "Girl Genius" - http://www.girlgenius.com . Great "gaslamp fantasy" webcomic, used to be put out in dead tree format.
#16
Demetri_Knighthawk
Apr 25, 2008 17:34:38 Shashar the throat slitter (not as bad as he sounds)

An arabic assassin who managed to slay a sultan, the royal vizier put a curse on him as he tried to escape, the curse of te genie. It was explained to him that he could only buy off the curse when his treasure was greater than the sultans whole kingdom. So he was passed from one adventure group to another as a sort of portable merchant and bank. He could hold the adventurers treasure inside his lamps inner dimension to make the dragons horde much more managable. When adventurers dies (TPK, not just one player) all the parties posessions transfer to the genie to fill his store. This way when the next adventurer comes along they might find many skeletons and a starmetal lamp.

This makes it similar to a portable mage-mart with 1 important difference in the price. He always buys treasure from the players at 1/3 the book value rather than 1/2, and he always charges 150% sales price out of the book. He has a 90% chance to have any item in the books once, 80% to have two, 70% to have three of them, ect.

It was so funny once when the players were working up some deals "do you have and how much for a +2 flaming burst scimitar? Ouch that is a bit more expensive than I got right now. How about just a +1 scimitar? WHAT do you MEAN your all sould out?!?"

as a side note, he is based off of Zin Bu from jade empire. http://www.gamebanshee.com/jadeempire/followers/zinbu.php

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 tsukasa_macleod Mar 26, 2008 23:50:43	Realms of chaos, one of my DM's gave us perhaps the best merchant since Akbar. His name is Estevan, If you read my posts on worst cursed items, HE gave me Dandelo. Realms could probably explain him better, but here are some of the items he sold us. "Soap": Turned out to be a rather potent wisdom poison. "Black Lotus Extract": Unknown, but when asked for, large amounts of shoveling were heard as he gathered it and of course, Dandelo: a -2 talking shortsword of extreme annoyance. Will not let me use other weapons, and follows me if I try to get rid of it
#2 sin_shai_nagai_jedi Mar 27, 2008 0:05:28	Cobblepot of Cobblepot enchantings, he spoke and acted like the penguin from the batman animated TV show from the 90s, he was rather ill tempered and whenever he was upset his words just turned into "meh MEH MEH!" also "the poison merchant" a low level rogue decided to look for "the poison store" in a town once, and he found this paranoid little man, when asked about his goods, he'd freak out, yell out "Pocket sand! shiishii shaaa!" and throw sand in your face and then run away. oh and lance and vance two competeing weapons merchants in a city, they were always quick to stain the reputations of the other, and could be talked into a deal easly if told that the other was having a sale of some sort.
#3 Demetri_Knighthawk Mar 27, 2008 14:14:55	"Lucky" Eddie Boneroller My ranger/thief character I retired into a pawn shop merchant/adventuring guild house holder. When I first rolled him up, we used a house rule back from 1st ed about thin, ave, heavy weights. Basicly at random height/weight, if you rolled % and got 02-10 you were under weight. if you rolled 90-99 you were over weight, 01&00 were double the roll. I rolled verry oddly and ended up with a 3' tall 300 lbs hobbit, he was a beachball, I played him up as a polinesian/sumoan hobbit with mauri tattoos and all. I played with him for about 3-5 years, going from 3r/3t to 7r/8t before he had a bad chain of bad luck, in 1 week he was: Hospitalized for a broken leg in a wagon accident, while in hospital someone slipped poisons into his healing salves, sent him a yellow musk creeper as a get well boquet, attacked by a were-rat acting as hospital staff. After that week he was taken to a high security room with wards and glyps all over for alarm and detection in case anyone teleported in or such. That is when the earth elemental opened up a 10X10 pit underneith the wood floor, Eddies own weight with the hospital bed broke through the floor into the pit, then through the pit into the city sewer system, then the earth elemental started to stomp on him. After the hospital stay he decided to hang up his daggers, for now, and work with the local thives guild and rangers guild to train the next set of adventurers. He often acts as the 'starting point' for some of our games with eddie having a stack of jobs for the characters to do to get used to the city. "Alright guys, we got firebeetles in a warehouse, dire rats in the sewers, and herb gathering outside the city walls. each of you picks a card, hears goes to firebettles, clubs hathers herbs, diamons goes in the sewers and spades gets lunch ready for the others when they get back" Slaps a deck of cards on the table. The "best" part about eddies was watching the players as I describe a 300 lbs. hobbit walking around wearing only a sarong with all his flubber a-flapping.
#4 realms_of_chaos Mar 27, 2008 21:40:29	Estevan is one of my proudest achievments. He is the ultimate in opportunistic merchants, generally complementing characters on their worst ability score before searching for a (likely dubious) item. What he has gotten away with: When a character came over with vouchers for potions, he mistook the voucher for something else and walked out of the back room with a camel (which he was blackmailed into giving away). During a seige on a town, Estevan insisted upon compensation for the weapons he'd hand out. When threatened with violence, he was quick to point out he's the only one who could make his goods even halfway safe. After said siege, Estevan was given a box of daggers as part of his compensation (and Tsukasa slipped Dandello into the box to try to unload the cursed sword back onto him). Although Estevan realized the deception and took out the sword, when he walked back into the shop with the daggers, he was mumbling about melting them together to make short swords. Yup, when a player runs into a shop and demands all of the soap that they have in stock, you know you've done something right. P.S.: Remember, Tsukasa, the lucky charm that Rarg stole still hasn't activated yet. :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh
#5 Mad_Jack Mar 28, 2008 1:37:58	Ali Al-Ras'gul's (a little rascal?) Bazaar of The Bizarre A horrible, horrible caricature of every stereotypical fat, overly-friendly desert camel-trader from every movie and fantasy novel, transplanted into the city. He speaks with a cheesy Arabic accent, quotes random verses from made-up prophets, philosophers and holy books, and is cheerful and overbearing to the point of people wishing to beat him with ax handles. :D Although he's an astute trader and a wily bargainer, he's also known for randomly giving away items to people who tell him a good story or joke, or sing/play a song he's never heard before. He alternates with machine-gun rapidity between abject depression and utter joy, buffoonery and philosophy, and his rapid-fire commentary on life only seems to stop when he's asleep, but his fast talk is merely a front to distract people from his skilled diplomacy, manipulation and information-gathering. He's a veritable force of chaos. His desert-style tent is set up in the marketplace of whichever city the party is based from, with a big rug covered in several low wooden tables of goods in front off it, with Ali sitting crosslegged behind them. He's quick and spritely for such a large man, and always seems to have a different exotic-looking woman sharing his company each time the party comes to his shop. His tent is actually the nexus for several interdimensional spaces, although nobody but him is sure just how much space is in the various areas. He has contacts all over the planes, and may or may not be working towards some goal (beyond just his own entertainment). He deals in everything from information to magical items, and is likely to be able to find anything that the party asks for, given enough time and incentive. The party WILL, however, end up paying for any goods or services that Ali provides, as he will constantly be after the players to do him "favors", which they will quickly discover they end up having no choice but to agree to. Each trip to Ali's shop is an adventure in itself, as the gods only know what odd trinket or useful bit of information Ali will have at the moment.
#6 tsukasa_macleod Mar 28, 2008 2:44:40	Estevan is one of my proudest achievments. P.S.: Remember, Tsukasa, the lucky charm that Rarg stole still hasn't activated yet. :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh Sh*t, I forgot about that! This cannot end well.
#7 Mad_Jack Mar 28, 2008 2:51:41	Sh*t, I forgot about that! This cannot end well. Any time your DM makes a point of mentioning some minor campaign-related factoid, it never ends well.
#8 mad_dice_rolla Mar 28, 2008 10:34:14	This was during my first DM session ever. I was big on the roleplay at the time (only knew half the rules for combat) and I can do a lot of voices. When they went into the weaponsmith/armorsmith the first one that popped into my head was Eric Idle of Monty Python fame. He hit on the female characters and tried to sell them xena style outfits. he was funny as hell. I decided that they were part of a large merchant family and owned just about all the stores in town (hehe, less voices to put to npcs this way, muahaha) and it got to the point that the 2 girls we played with would go "NO! We dont NEED to go to the store today!" whenever it was brought up after a bit of adventuring. IT was cool though, because I had one killed by a local gang and the group was so distraught by this they went of and avenged him without ever asking for some sort of reward for it. =)
#9 green_yawgmoth Mar 28, 2008 11:31:36	Any time your DM makes a point of mentioning some minor campaign-related factoid, it never ends well. But always ends in a good story!
#10 Dark_Stryke Mar 28, 2008 11:41:10	My weird merchant? I had been DMing for a party for almost a year, and they were quite high level (about 16 or 17 at the time), but the campaign was moderately low magic because of a ruling wizards' cabal that kept particularly powerful items out of the streets (it was hard to find anything over 25000gp or so). Now, the party needed some powerful items, and I was always having to invent ways for them to get them. Finally, one of the Players asked me if I would let the party have a magic lamp. He explained his idea for a "shopkeep genie" who could sell the party things. Since the cost of a magic lamp is pretty high, I figured it was fine for something like this to happen. Of course, then I started to really like the idea, and Raoul the Genie Merchant was born. Raoul's lamps are scattered all throughout the planes, and when rubbed, the genie appears in a puff of smoke with a little storefront all set up in front of him. Behind him appears a doorway filled with swirling smoke and freakish lights. Raoul says that the doorway leads to "the stock room", but never allows anyone inside. Raoul himself appears as a bone-skinny old man with a long black beard, a turban, a purple robe, a wide grin, a curly mustache that extends about a foot in either direction which he is constantly stroking, and sunglasses. he constantly hovers above his little stall, which is full of interesting items, including magic weapons, armor, and shields, pies, cutlery, guns, a hookah, a save point (!!!), small animals in cages (half price on familiars! One week only!), and other assorted oddities. Raoul speaks with a thick accent. When he first appears, he cries "Welcome to Raoul's! Raoul have everyting!" However, if someone asks for an item that wouldn't normally be available in their world (such as the aforementioned guns or save point), he'll mumble something about the item being on hold. He does seem to have quite literally everything (or 'everyting') someone could possibly ask for, except exceedingly rare items like artifacts. Raoul was a really fun NPC for me to run, even if he did run the dreaded "ye old magick shoppe". If I were to ever use him again, I wouldn't put him in anything other than a very high level campaign.
#11 jexil Mar 28, 2008 15:07:18	The strangest and most interesting merchant I ever created was a gnome named Bingle who ran a toy shop. He was actually a major villain rather than someone whose role was to sell goods to the party. He was born of a desire on my part to create larger-than-life villains based on wacky themes, in the style of classic comic book bad guys. Bingle had an assortment of magical weapons in the form of toys. These included: 1) Blocks that would explode when thrown, releasing energy depending on which colored side of the block landed face up (red=fire, blue=cold, black=negative energy, etc). 2) Stuffed bears that would transform into fiendish dire bears in the manner of a summon monster spell. 3) Marbles that would transform into mephits when shot. 4) Toy soldiers that were really warforged scouts dressed in silly soldier costumes and powered by wind-up keys stuck in their backs. 5) Jumping jacks that were sharpened to serve as caltrops. 6) Tops that would transform into air elementals in whirlwind form when spun. 7) A jack-in-the-box, from which an efreeti would spring. 8) Animated manikins of all sizes (really just standard animated objects from the MM). Bingle was also a sorcerer who specialized in enchantment and transmutation spells. He especially loved baleful polymorph and hideous laughter. He also had a half-orc servant named Jongo who dressed as a clown and was a trained acrobat. He used juggling pins that I treated as masterwork clubs which could be thrown with up to a range of 30'. Bingle's racket was that he would anonymously blackmail wealthy parents, threatening the demise of their children if they didn't pay a hefty ransom. Parents who didn't pay inevitably found their children brutally slain despite all precautions to keep them safe. Finally the party was hired to solve the mystery, and after investigating they discovered that the children's own seemingly harmless toys were in fact being used to kill them. This led them to seek out Bingle, the only toy maker in town. When confronted, he unleashed one of his whirlwind tops on the party and beat a hasty retreat. Later the party tracked him down to his lair and fought their way through hordes of killer toys and Bingle's legion of goblin toy crafters (sort of twisted versions of Santa's little helpers), finally making their way to Bingle's little fun house for a big show down. The players really seemed to enjoy this adventure despite (or perhaps because of) all the campy wackiness, so I'd have to call Bingle one of my better successes. The best part is that the party was offered extra gold to capture Bingle alive so he could stand trial, which they did. What they don't know yet is that Bingle was part of a cabal of powerful and insane criminals, and his villainous compatriots are more than willing to free him from prison and help him get revenge........
#12 tsukasa_macleod Mar 28, 2008 20:07:59	Any time your DM makes a point of mentioning some minor campaign-related factoid, it never ends well. Yeah, but when Realms gets creative, it's even worse!
#13 mr_seth Mar 28, 2008 20:08:43	My old DM, Neil McMaster, had the brilliant idea of having EVERY store in a city manned by identical dwarves. Dwarves that also sounded alike. And constantly tried to marry off their sister/cousin/daughter/whatever to members of our party. They were so... persistent... that we eventually caved. My best? Bottis the Orange, a mad Jagermonster transmuter obsessed with creating new forms of life and then selling them off to local adventuring groups. A few lines from him... (accent transcribed for maximum impact) Bottis: "So, hyu needs somet'ink for a guard dog?" Adventurer: "Yeah." B: "Naschty. Porrtable." A: "Yep." B: "Expendable." A: "Ideally." B: "I gots just th' ting!" Reaches beneath the counter, pulls out a cage containing something like a steroid-ridden taco bell doggie. "Th' dire chihuahua!" A: "...not that expendable."
#14 tsukasa_macleod Mar 29, 2008 3:16:46	Bottis talks a little like Estevan.
#15 mr_seth Mar 29, 2008 13:06:04	Bottis talks a little like Estevan. He's a Jagermonster... they all have that accent. They're from Phil Foglio's "Girl Genius" - http://www.girlgenius.com . Great "gaslamp fantasy" webcomic, used to be put out in dead tree format.
#16 Demetri_Knighthawk Apr 25, 2008 17:34:38	Shashar the throat slitter (not as bad as he sounds) An arabic assassin who managed to slay a sultan, the royal vizier put a curse on him as he tried to escape, the curse of te genie. It was explained to him that he could only buy off the curse when his treasure was greater than the sultans whole kingdom. So he was passed from one adventure group to another as a sort of portable merchant and bank. He could hold the adventurers treasure inside his lamps inner dimension to make the dragons horde much more managable. When adventurers dies (TPK, not just one player) all the parties posessions transfer to the genie to fill his store. This way when the next adventurer comes along they might find many skeletons and a starmetal lamp. This makes it similar to a portable mage-mart with 1 important difference in the price. He always buys treasure from the players at 1/3 the book value rather than 1/2, and he always charges 150% sales price out of the book. He has a 90% chance to have any item in the books once, 80% to have two, 70% to have three of them, ect. It was so funny once when the players were working up some deals "do you have and how much for a +2 flaming burst scimitar? Ouch that is a bit more expensive than I got right now. How about just a +1 scimitar? WHAT do you MEAN your all sould out?!?" as a side note, he is based off of Zin Bu from jade empire. http://www.gamebanshee.com/jadeempire/followers/zinbu.php