{"id":5368,"date":"2017-09-06T17:57:51","date_gmt":"2017-09-07T00:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=5368"},"modified":"2017-09-28T19:29:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T02:29:54","slug":"toee-the-village-of-hommlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/5368","title":{"rendered":"ToEE: The Village of Hommlet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My last session was spent mostly futzing around in Hommlet, looking for side-quests. I found quite a few, even including a couple of combat-oriented ones. A woodcutter wants me to drive giant spiders out of a grove of deku trees<span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_5368_1('footnote_plugin_reference_5368_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_5368_1('footnote_plugin_reference_5368_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_5368_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_5368_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\"><strong>[28 Sep]<\/strong>Correction: dek<em>lo<\/em>, not dek<em>u<\/em>. The Zelda connection is broken.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_5368_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_5368_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script>, which I thought were more of a <em>Zelda<\/em> thing than a <em>D&amp;D<\/em> thing. That was fairly simple, but there&#8217;s an armorer who wants me to prove my worth by bringing him the head of a giant. I&#8217;ve actually found a giant &#8212; specifically, a hill giant, the least of the giant races &#8212; minding his own business off in the skeleton-haunted battlefield where the Circle of Eight defeated the Elemental Evils in their last go-round. It&#8217;s going to be a while before I pose a threat to him, though. These side-quests are not necessarily things you can do right away.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, that seems to apply to the non-combat quests as well. One person has a sick child that can only be cured with a Heal spell, which requires either an 11th level cleric or a fairly expensive magic item. Another wants to join the town guard, but they won&#8217;t let him, for no very good reason. I talk to the person in charge, using my highest-charisma character, but he simply refuses. What do I do about this? Look for another side quest, I suppose. The &#8220;talk to the guard boss&#8221; quest is still in the quest log, and will remain there until I chance on something capable of changing his mind.<\/p>\n<p>The law-and-order enthusiasts of Church of St. Cuthbert are in quite a lot of the quests, as either a consumer of goods or a source of drama. In the pagan setting of the World of Greyhawk, the Cuthbertites are an obvious stand-in for Christianity, a relatively new faith with an emphasis on proselytizing and conversion, and not everyone in Hommlet likes them, even if they did save the village from a demon some years ago. There&#8217;s been some suggestion that they&#8217;re more interested in collecting tithes and asserting their authority than in doing real good. They&#8217;re definitely guilty of the crime of being uncomfortably pushy. In a more morally-murky campaign setting, like Planescape or Shadowrun, this would be enough to flag them as potential enemies, but here? However imperfect their judgment as individuals, I know that their hearts are Lawful Good. Evil has its own temple. It&#8217;s nearby, but outside city limits.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogofholding.com\/?p=7182\">It&#8217;s been observed that the implied world-view D&amp;D isn&#8217;t particularly medieval, and owes at least as much to the tropes of the Western as it does to fantasy literature.<\/a> Hommlet definitely fits this thesis: it&#8217;s your basic frontier town, a minimal self-sufficient community where everyone has a job directly involved in keeping the town running, except for some suspicious outsiders down at the saloon. Perhaps this is why I&#8217;m so instinctively distrustful of self-proclaimed authorities like the Church of St. Cuthbert. They violate the ethos of rugged individualism.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_5368_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_5368_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_5368_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_5368_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_5368_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_5368_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_5368_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\"><strong>[28 Sep]<\/strong>Correction: dek<em>lo<\/em>, not dek<em>u<\/em>. The Zelda connection is broken.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_5368_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_5368_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_5368_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_5368_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_5368_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_5368_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_5368_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_5368_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_5368_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_5368_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_5368_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_5368_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_5368_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_5368_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My last session was spent mostly futzing around in Hommlet, looking for side-quests. I found quite a few, even including a couple of combat-oriented ones. A woodcutter wants me to drive giant spiders out of a grove of deku trees1[28 Sep]Correction: deklo, not deku. The Zelda connection is broken., which I thought were more of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[590,589],"class_list":["post-5368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dungeons-dragons","tag-temple-of-elemental-evil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5368"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5386,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5368\/revisions\/5386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}