I'm in the Poconos for the holiday weekend. We missed the fireworks in one town last night and the event closer to home got postponed to tomorrow night due to the weather.
It all go me thinking - do you allow mundane fireworks in your campaigns? I'm not necessarily referring to gunpowder and the the baggage that entails, but alchemical fireworks that go boom, make sparks, bright colors and the like.
Not powerful enough to blow open a stuck door or a lock, but maybe enough to startle or entertain.
I haven't done so, but I'm thinking about it as well as how far my players might push the envelope ;)
So, do you or don't you?
Picturing Solo History
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There are many gamers who will tell you that it was *Vampire the Masquerade*
that got them into roleplaying. That was in the 1990s. There are many
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1 hour ago
Come to the game tonight, there are fireworks afterwards. You can watch them from the parking lot of the Cinemark.
ReplyDeleteMaybe when Gandalf comes to town, otherwise no, it is beyond the ken of mortal man.
ReplyDeleteI have a pretty gunpowder rich game - petards, grenados and even shaped door charges are available in the 50GP to 500GP range (500 GP for a WI/WWII stick or pineapple grenade, but you gotta know a guy as well). On problem is the sulfur has to be imported from hell.
ReplyDeleteThat said pyrotechnics in the form of signal rockets are available pretty cheap, terrible weapons, but they come with fuse, lots of it. No one ever buys them though.
I played a traveling entertainer character with a custom wagon that turned into a stage. He spent about half of his treasure income on pyrotechnics (sparklers, smoke bombs, fireworks, etc).
ReplyDeleteThe only time it really mattered in game is when he drove his wagon off a cliff ... BOOM!
In my own game, the dwarves know the secrets of gunpowder. They are not included to wasting it on frivolous things like entertainment.
No, probably not. It intrudes on the province of the magic-user too much for my tastes.
ReplyDeleteIf I ever did allow them, they would be expensive, magic-user only items.
Not as a generally available item, but if the players wanted to make some, they (eventually) could. Or they might run across a wealthy eccentric who has some. But they'd be a unique kind of item, not feasible for mass production what with the availability of magic and all.
ReplyDeleteI want to start up a The Fantasy Trip campaign with its archaic gunpowder weapons. The limiting factor in this is that saltpeter (potassium nitrate) comes from dragons. Dragon shit to be exact. I think that makes a really nice limitation.
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