• Registered: 2013-10-14
  • Posts: 6

Topic: Of Insect Gods and Monoliths: Or "My Players' Schadenfreude"

Schaudenfreude - N. , Defined as the "pleasure derived from the misfortune of others."

Setting:  An Alternative Earth set in the late 1500s - early 1600s.  Mid-level magic, existence of demi-humans in incredibly small pockets 

The Group:  Veteran Roleplayers with a Cynical Tragdegicomic bent in love with LotFP because well "The Outcomes are Fun."

The Setup:  "Better Than Any Man" Scenario  (Spoilers Following)







Specifically - Almost TPK due to Encounter with the Insect God.

The Twist - Using an unreliable magical item, The Returner's Lament (teleports you to a place you've been before).    A few members of the party escape the Wrath of the Insect God....and land outside the vale of the Monolith (an adventure they had run through before and successfully completed).

5 minutes of real time discussion about how the team might "recover" from the Better Than Any Man debacle occur while players start pulling out their alt. character sheets until the surviving wizard the group decides:

"You know what?   When you can Beat Them?...... BURN THEIR HOUSE DOWN."

1.) He proceeds back toward the Monolith and knocks on the door, having his previous fellow adventurer open it.

(I subsequently decide to turn the psychonauts on).

2.) He then proceeds to use another chain of the Returner's Lament to teleport back into the Halls of the Insect God.

3.)  As the Divine Insectoid Eminence and its warriors take notice, said character literally flips the Insect God the bird.

Famous Last Words -  "Well, this is going to be an interesting experiment.   Hey your Insect Holiness..  you know what's weirder than an Insect or a Human?????"

He then Guzzles down Van Winkle's Repose (a Sleep Potion).

Session ends.

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The player has explicitly told me that "I don't mind losing the character, I mean, let's face it - this is as sane as the ending of the movie Vanishing Point.   But, there's a part of me that is wondering about something.    We're playing in a world of Weird Fantasy, where our expectations give way to the odd or the macabre.

Usually. our characters are on the receiving end of it - which is a ton of fun.    But i'm wondering, can we also serve as Vectors for the Weird?    Can our characters become the means to astonish instead of being astonished?"


I'm rather sympathetic to his viewpoint, but i'm not quite sure how to handle this.   

On the one hand you have a Divine Entity.   On the Other, you have the mysterious Power of the Monolith.

And I have a whole group of players, just giddy with what the possible outcomes might be.    (I kinda get the sense they are hoping for something akin to Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla).


An thoughts on the matter my fellow Referees?  Any ideas?   




Incidentally - the "BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN" Philosophy does not stop with this move.  The surviving and new members of the group used the 2nd to the last piece of the Returner's Lament to return to a Cold Mountain in Germany - a place they have been before - a place where Plant sings a Lullaby to a whole City of Undead....

Quotation from Player:  "I wonder if Gustavus Adolphus would be prepared for this one..."

  • Registered: 2013-08-03
  • Posts: 6

Re: Of Insect Gods and Monoliths: Or "My Players' Schadenfreude"

The ghostly giant insects protecting the Insect God are immune to physical damage, which is the mode of attack employed by the bodies possessed by the tiny colonists from the Monolith. While the Insect God isn't immune to physical damage, the thousands of ghosts will most likely grapple and subdue the most powerful warrior, in this case the possessed person, and begin their transformation into an insectoid being.

So, the character will be free to go, but will wake up with a weird sword with him and will eventually transform into an insectoid being (and all the murder everyone fun stuff from the Monolith being active as well). That is unless you rule that disease/magic immunity from the body snatchers prevents this effect. Personally, I'd say in this instance the God wins over the body colonists, in a sense both sides would get what they want. The colonists keep the body and all the previous effects from the Monolith and the body snatchers stay effective, but the character will eventually transform into an insectoid being as the God wills it to.

It opens up a ton of interesting possibilities, especially because the character will wake up in the silent cave of the God and be free to go, and they will not know why (maybe they'll assume that the plan worked and they won?). There's just that one weird sword there, and the character won't know what's been done to them in their sleep. Cue surprise when the character's body slowly starts changing...

  • From: Sudbury, Ontario, Canada
  • Registered: 2011-08-09
  • Posts: 79

Re: Of Insect Gods and Monoliths: Or "My Players' Schadenfreude"

The Guardian attached to the Monolith would likely make short work of the insect god and its protectors but how those realities interact is up to you.

I think the player was short sighted. He should have commanded the monolith to expel all the passengers capable of interacting with the ghosts and the insect god. There are many strange creatures riding around in the Monolith, some of them might be quite deadly to an insect ghost.

He could always visit another reality to gather reinforcements. The Monolith will take you to any existence and time.

The Monolith is a terrible weapon and the craziest magical artifact Raggi has come up with so far.

  • Registered: 2013-10-14
  • Posts: 6

Re: Of Insect Gods and Monoliths: Or "My Players' Schadenfreude"

So, the character will be free to go, but will wake up with a weird sword with him and will eventually transform into an insectoid being (and all the murder everyone fun stuff from the Monolith being active as well).

All very good points, and this is something I initially thought of, except for the fact that it has already happened.

Remember when I said that the current party reached near-TPK?   3 got away via the Lament, leaving 5 and a bunch of hirelings to their fate.  Amongst the 5 were the fighters of the group.   Guess who got the excrutiatingly detailed description of an Insectoid transformation?

The other complication is that Baldwin the Black, the mage that my player sacrificed, can in fact rip at the undead.   Its the result of a curse/Monkey's Paw wish from a very Solomon Kane-esque inspired encounter within the Black Forest of Germany.   Its also been a kind of thorn in the player's side because I've used the whole "OMG!  The Satanic sorceror's hands are those of a skeleton" as the jumpstart for many a "Slay the Witches!" encounters.


The Guardian attached to the Monolith would likely make short work of the insect god and its protectors but how those realities interact is up to you.

That's kind of the unique possibility and the problem at this point David. 

I'm not sure how anything from the Monolith would interact with the more traditional (although disturbing) elements of a fantasy game.     


I'm left pondering the hilarious possibility that the Insect God would be staring at our psychonaut infested PC or even eventually the Monolith itself (remember the other PCs stayed behind) and going "WTF is that?!  "

Admittedly, a large chunk of this Weirdness was never meant to Criss-Cross with each other - Raggi usually generates these things as independent challenges/Anti-Monty Haul mechanics.

Works great when you have players who are generating characters with a focus on the traditional gaming objectives (Get Magic Item, Earn More Treasure, Get More Levels, Comb Dungeon from Top to Bottom in Search of Loot).   

Mine aren't (well maybe 1 or 2).     They are much more into the experiences produced from all these encounters.   

IE: Let's play around with the Telescope in the Stargazer's Lab, even though its probably going to cause us horrible doom.  (it Did.)   

So "hitting the accelerator" on the Weirdness is part of the fun for them.  Especially if they have a hand in it.  (Hence the very real possibility of having the Undead Legions of Du'vanku from Death From Doom waking up and splurging forward into the Night...right into the arms of Gustavus Adolphus' army....or the Insect Gods.....which ever comes first).

But yeah.. if anyone has any ideas to keep things fresh/interesting for the folks - keep on shouting - i'm listening.

  • JimLotFP
  • Lord of All Fevers and Plagues
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  • From: Helsinki, Finland
  • Registered: 2009-10-07
  • Posts: 613

Re: Of Insect Gods and Monoliths: Or "My Players' Schadenfreude"

Edogawa Rampo wrote:

Admittedly, a large chunk of this Weirdness was never meant to Criss-Cross with each other

Actually, the adventures are all intended to be inserted into campaigns. The fact that I don't know what happens before adventurers pop into one of my adventures means that I don't always have to worry about self-contained "fairness." For example, the psychonauts from Monolith could be removed by one of Joop van Ooms' plays, so that nobody has to stay in the Monolith to stop it. Alternatively, there are a lot of oddly worded teleporter/dimensional transport powers and devices out there in RPGland where strict reading may allow escape from inside a closed Monolith.

Seeing all these different things collide in ways I never could have thought of is part of the fun in putting all this insanity out there to begin with. smile

(For example, my group has a golden monkey's paw toad thing which grants wishes... but also screws them at the same time. That could probably work in the Monolith. If they dare. big_smile)

JimLotFP's Website

  • Registered: 2013-10-14
  • Posts: 6

Re: Of Insect Gods and Monoliths: Or "My Players' Schadenfreude"

JimLotFP wrote:

Seeing all these different things collide in ways I never could have thought of is part of the fun in putting all this insanity out there to begin with. smile

(For example, my group has a golden monkey's paw toad thing which grants wishes... but also screws them at the same time. That could probably work in the Monolith. If they dare. big_smile)

Thanks for the input Jim!

Nice to see that these things are being used in the way they were ought to be!

Speaking of which - i decided to split the difference as a solution.


Baldwin the Black woke up just as his bloody jaws were tearing into the carpace of the screaming Insect God.    In the 24 hrs that he had blacked out, millions of insect spirits, from the prehistoric to the present, died a second death in defense of their God.    I intimated that in destroying the "paragon master templates" of a variety of insect species, he may have in fact narrowed the course of insect evolution for centuries to come.

Then he got chomped on by an Insect spirit soldier.   

I figured all objectives were met with this solution.   Players get their crowning moment of awesomeness, Insect God survives as a threat  a bit weakened, and the Otherworldiness/Alien nature of the Monolith is preserved.....a mystery even to the Gods...or at least the dumb ones.  (and it was already established that it wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed - remember the mistake it made with the giant!)

Will see what next week brings!