#tournament module

[oldschoolfrp]

Eveyd, a 315 year-old half-elf druid, blocks your path. (Keith Parkinson cover for AD&D adventure To Find a King by Bob Blake, including four first round tournament adventures run at Gen Con XVI, TSR, 1985)

"Two centuries ago, the last king of the celtic kingdom of Pelham was deposed in favor of a High Council. Now, however, things are going badly, and a restless populace longs for the days of the ancient kingship. The High Council is floundering -- and the political situation is turning ugly." This teaser text from the back cover has an unusual use of lower case "celtic" as a thematic description of one realm in a fantasy world without Celts.

[canadianlucifer]

part of me hopes taki wins the twink tournament bc it'd be so funny but part of me also hopes he loses bc then he'd have lost every tournament he's been in and that'd also be very funny.

either way, it's gonna be great.

[kaito-module-of-the-day]

would you ever consider doing another tournament?? the project diva one was really fun!!! (｡˃ ᵕ ˂ ) its ok if not, just wondering :0

Hmm...I agree that the Project DIVA tournament was a blast! However I'm not sure what else I would hold a tournament for.

If you guys want another tournament and have any suggestions for the topic, feel free to let me know.

[theenpcbracket]

So is this for OCs only, or is this also for that minor NPC in a published adventure who broke WAY past their original design for your group?

Great question! I think that if you feel they’ve become unique enough from the originally published template, go for it! I’d just ask that you be sure to mention the original module somewhere and how they’ve changed so that I can make sure credit goes to the appropriate places.

[mod-a-day]

Daniel Grandpre (Basehead) of Straylight Productions "unreal add-on (enigma)" Unreal Tournament (1999) Epic MegaGames

[prokopetz]

Hey why DO all those old tabletop RPGS and adventure games have such weird obtuse "act in this one scene or softlock forever" moments? Like, these weren't designed like arcade games that munch quarters... Why was this sort of thing so commonplace?

(With reference to this post here.)

Funnily enough, for tabletop RPGs there's actually a good answer.

If you're familiar with the popular history of tabletop roleplaying games, you've probably heard the idea that they developed out of fantasy wargaming. That's not actually terribly accurate; tabletop RPGs and fantasy wargames are more like two parallel branches that split off from the recreating-historical-battles kind of wargaming at about the same time, and for the first couple of decades there wasn't a bright line drawn between them like there is today. Many are genuinely hard to classify by contemporary standards – there are a lot of early fantasy wargames that look more like modern tabletop RPGs, and vice versa.

One of the consequences of that lack of sharp distinctions between tabletop RPGs and fantasy wargames is that early tabletop RPGs were often played in a sort of "competitive co-op" format at wargaming tournaments. Multiple groups would run their parties through the same adventure in parallel, and be ranked on their performance; sometimes this would involve scoring points for completing specific objectives, or speedrunning the adventure and aiming for the fastest time, but the most popular tournament format was the survival module: adventures which were deliberately designed to be unreasonably difficult, with whichever group's last surviving character's corpse hit the ground furthest from the dungeon entrance being judged the winner.

The upshot of that popularity is that many published adventures early on – and certainly the greater part of the more infamous ones! – were originally written as survival modules, created to be run competitively at a particular tournament, and later repackaged and sold as commercial products. Of course, practically none of them actually explained that; like nearly all tabletop RPG material of their day, they were written under the assumption that all tabletop roleplayers had come up through organised play at university gaming clubs, and thus already had all the context I've just outlined. This ended up causing no end of confusion when the hobby's mainstream visibility exploded in the early 1980s, and suddenly there were folks who'd picked up the rulebooks at their local bookstores trying to teach themselves how to play from first principles with no prior contact with gaming club culture.

As for why adventure games were also like that... well, this is going to sound bizarre by contemporary standards, and I don't blame you if you don't believe me, but once upon a time, point-and-click adventure games were considered the gold standard for Serious Gaming. Unforgiving routing, bizarre moon-logic puzzles, and a bewildering variety of unique ways to get yourself killed off were held up as the mark of the serious gamer in much the same way that janky soulslike combat systems are today, and a large chunk of the genre was made to cater to that ethos. Gamer culture is a hell of a drug!

(If you're about to ask the obvious follow-up question, "what changed?", the point-and-click adventure game's fall from grace and subsequent dismissal as casual fluff tracks more or less directly with a large demographic shift in the late 1990s that saw the genre's player base skewing predominantly female – and, well, you can probably connect the dots from there.)

[vintagerpg]

This is I11: Needle (1987), a reworked tournament module by Frank Mentzer. It features pregenerated characters named the Ghost, Blaze, Finder, Blondy, Slim and Smiley. There is at least one stealth Star Wars quote. The players need to go into a jungle to get a weird obelisk, haul the thing back, then explore the moon the obelisk teleports them too. The first part is a pretty typical hex crawl, albeit punctuated with puzzles and high strangeness. The third part is a dungeon crawl. The dungeon crawl sure is odd (it ends with a confrontation with “Tiamat” and no, I am not going to explain that further) but it is the middle part that I think is the most interesting.

The middle part is the hauling of the obelisk back to the king who wanted it found (its not an obelisk, its actually a gigantic piece of tech). This is sort of a nightmare logistical puzzle, involving lots of NPCs sailing to the obelisk, taking it down, packing it up and hauling it back. Things need to be built. Like roads. And a raft (the thing is hollow and will float). That means lumber. Which means upsetting the natives, who are bullywugs and grippli, locked in rivalry with each other. The whole thing plays out across two months of daily events, which feels like a novel sort of slog. I’d definitely enjoy playing this — there are all sorts of opportunities for things to just go entirely off the rails.

Clyde Caldwell cover art. I don’t love it, but I honestly think that is because it was recycled for the 2E Rogues Gallery, a book I loathe. The interiors are by Doug Chaffee, who I don’t know. They feel like run of the mill late-‘80s D&D illustrations.

[teambyler]

Stranger Things 5 speculation based on the episode titles and what we know from D&D

Vanishing of Holly Wheeler?

I already shared that I think Episode 2 is Holly Wheeler: "IF this information is accurate, I'm guessing the missing Wheeler is Holly. They have a new actress to play her. I think they're returning to s1 themes and the horror of a child being in danger is one thing they might get back to. The 1st episode would give them time to make her a character we care about. (And probably stabilize the situation at the end of s4.) It would also consume the entire Wheeler family into getting Holly back. Karen will be beside herself. Nancy will be tough and take charge. Will will have to unearth his memories of the Upside Down, and possibly use his connection, to help MIKE and NANCY get back their little sister. One possible road to BYLER is Will having to reexperience his trauma and possibly sacrifice himself to help his best friend."

Camazotz

I see a LOT of interest in episode 6 title "Escape from Camazotz"... I think for ANY speculation we HAVE to go to where our D&D nerds would go, which is the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks in the 80s. Camazotz was published in Deities & Demigods for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1980). It is the "bat god," so we're probably going to see it tied to the demobats.

We learn from Deities & Demigods that the Aztec and Mayan gods have "inscrutable motives"... which is ON BRAND for the Cthulhu inspirations of Stranger Things. These gods come from a "parallel universe." Clerics "are the elite of the populace," and are able to cast "commune or gate spells" to connect the planes together. ("Will the Wise" has been the cleric of the party... perhaps he is a cleric?)

Also, these gods "unusual nature makes it impossible for them to travel on any planes but the ones that they have worshipers on." Maybe Vecna needed to have a host on the "Right Side Up", to take form here, which is very consistent with the s2 and s3 plotlines.

The clerics perform human sacrifices... maybe another theme in s5??

But perhaps JUST as important, the adventure D&D module Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan (1980) involved an ancient temple dedicated to Camazotz. Odds are that our heroes will be trying to escape from a "temple" within the Upside Down. According to the Wikipedia article about this adventure, it is "full of tricks and traps".

As a "tournament module," meaning for competition purposes, and it was EXPECTED that heroes died in it because it was so deadly. The goal "is to get out of the ruins before time runs out." The lower levels (where the heroes begin) have a poisonous gas that slowly kill them. Also it is very unstable, spells will cause a collapse. If El were caught in it, it might be dangerous to use her powers.

This adventure debuted the gibbering mouther, a very distinct D&D monster that is VERY reminiscent of the s3 Flayer and would be VERY on-theme for Stranger Things:

The Sorcerer

Also, Episode 5 is titled "The Sorcerer." Sorcerer was not a class yet in D&D in the late 1980s. (The idea that Sorcerers have innate arcane power versus Wizards who study magic, was not invented yet until 2000.) Sorcerer was one of the many titles that Magic Users had (next to Wizard). Sorcerers had less power than Wizards. They were 9th level, while Wizards were 11th level:

It is already established that El is "the Wizard." Maybe there's another person with powers in season 5 which are less developed? If so, the most logical choice would be Will. It's confirmed that this season will focus on him. Although he's a "cleric" in their D&D game, maaaaybe he finds out he has new abilities. There was a reason Vecna didn't kill in season 1, and who has had "truesight" since.

That's what I can find for now! There's a lot of interesting traps and puzzles, with illustrations, from the adventure. But it's hard to predict what else (if anything) they might borrow from it! The aspect of escaping, and the poison gas and the timer, are probably what we can most rely on!

P.S. I mainly blog about Byler, but I thought my D&D knowledge would be useful for this one. If interested, follow and read my blog! I have so much to say!

[astralisbelle]

Dead Man's Hand 5 - Shiny On The Outside

Dead Man's Hand Masterlist tags: tags: engineer!reader, gambler!reader, loose canon timeline, eventual smut, fluff, action, casino aesthetics, touch starved reader, touch starved din, reader and din get on each other’s nerves, also they’re idiots, defrosting ice king din, cinderella vibes, everybody loves grogu

chapter summary: She sees Canto Bight for the first time. The Mandalorian gives her some advice.

She had an image of Canto Bight in her head, but she could hardly recall what it was when they finally touch down.

For someone who grew up on a planet famed for its deserts and harsh life, her eyes went big when she saw the beach and a wide expanse of ocean. Situated on its shore is the sprawl of tall buildings, lights peppering the strip. When she steps out, the air is clean and pleasant, unlike the dry, stifling air of Tatooine. The many layers of the city stack upon each other, people walking on each level and a few even leaning over the balconies to watch others below.

The Mandalorian has Grogu in his pram, following him as he strides across the landing pad. He is about to leave it entirely when he notices that the girl is lagging behind, her head craned up as she spins, taking in each and every sight. “Keep up or get lost,” he warns.

“Oh.” She snaps out of the daydream, catching up to him. “Sorry.”

She is surprised at how clean everything is, even the droids. The people they pass have nary a speck of dirt on their faces or clothes. Their jewelry twinkles against the strip lights and women wear paint on their faces that accentuate their features. Suddenly, she becomes very aware of her state, of her filth. Holding onto her arm, she follows close behind the Mandalorian, hoping to go unnoticed.

They march up flights of stairs, take half a dozen of elevators, all to reach the tallest, widest building on the strip. Before they can cross the threshold, a guard at the entrance holds up his hand, standing in front of the Mandalorian. “Hold. Do you have a reservation?”

“I just did a job for Dastiv Res. Tell him I’m here to enter the tournament.” The guard eyes him up and down before noticing the mechanic standing behind him.

“And this?”

“My stand-in.”

“Hmph.” The guard stands aside, clearly keeping some snob comments to himself. “I’ll let him know you’re on your way.”

“Good. C’mon.”

She hugs her biceps as she follows him into the main floor of the casino. A barrage of noises and lights bombard her all at once, making her wince. Slot machines churn out credits, play obnoxious noises, and click with each reel. People huddle around tables with cards and dice, sometimes erupting into joyous laughter or others with indignation. Waitresses in tight, revealing dresses pass by with drinks on their trays, offering refreshments to patrons.

“My stars…” she breaths out. “It’s so… so…” It robs her of words.

The Mandalorian lags, placing his hand on her upper back and ushering her along. He leans in, modulated voice whispering something to her. “It might look pretty and shiny on the outside, but it’s no better than any other gambling den in Tatooine.” He leads her towards the back where the elevators are. “Don’t let the splendor distract you.” He pulls away, pressing a button on the elevator and letting his hand drop to his side. At that, she breaths out slowly, nodding in acknowledgment.

The three of them enter the elevator where an attendant awaits. “Dastiv Res,” says the Mandalorian.

“Of course. He is expecting you.” He punches in the code and away the elevator goes. It is made of glass, allowing one to look down and see each floor it passes.

Guards at the top most floor open the double doors to the lavish office of the casino and hotel owner, so named Dastiv Res. Most old men on Tatooine were withered, their age pulling deep wrinkles on their face with bears masking their chins, but Dastiv is clean-shaved, his hair slicked-back, wearing clothes that shimmer against the office’s lights. “Mando!” he greets, hands extended. “So good to see you back. I hear you’re entering the tournament?”

“No. I’m sponsoring this one.” He steps aside, showing Dastiv the girl.

Dastiv’s smile nearly fades. “This one?”

“This was the bonus you gave me.” He tosses a fat sack of credits onto the desk, making a heavy sound. “You said it covers the cost, right?”

“...Right.” He smiles. “What is your name?” She tells him, albeit while stuttering. “Charmed. Entering the tournament nets you a suite right here in the hotel. The tournament begins in a few days.”

“Understood.” He does an about-face, ready to leave with his companions.

“One second, Mando. Before she gets to the table, just make sure she’s washed, clipped, and groomed! Hahaha!”

Her face reddens at the humiliation. Normally, she would have bitten right back, but things are different here on Canto Bight. She is different.

As Dastiv cackles, Din doesn’t think twice. He makes a long stride towards him and yanks his collar, pulling him forward. The guards immediately turn their blasters towards Din and Dastiv pales. Din grits his teeth, his animosity dripping in his words. “Don’t ever talk to her like that again.”

She holds her breath, eyes darting back and forth between the blaster barrels and the Mandalorian.

Dastiv flashes a nervous smile. “Of course.” He clears his throat. “So sorry.”

The Mandalorian lets him go, letting him fall back in his chair as he swings on his heel. “C’mon,” he says to her and Grogu.

She follows him out of the office, her heart racing from the confrontation. Glancing back and watching the doors slide shut, she follows him back into the elevator. That was… kind of cool, actually. And noble. “Y-You didn’t have to do that. You almost got shot.”

“Hmph.” He doubts it.

She twiddles her thumbs. “...Thank you, though. Since you did anyway.”

His voice sounds gentler. “Don’t mention it.”

[little-cat-showdown]

Welcome to the Little Cat Showdown!!!

This is a tournament to determine the best Little Cat out there!!! This is for all members of the Felidae family except for Felis catus and the Panthera genus. The bracket is based on the Wikipedia page for Felidae. This is a single-elimination 33 team bracket, and to make the numbers easiest all three lynx species will go against each other in the first round. All polls will be tagged with #little cat showdown poll. Polls will last one week and the first round begins today, May 4. The cats were seeded based on how popular I personally think they are, and how long I've known they exist.

The mascot of the tournament is my beautiful tiger boy Lunar Apples Module (Luna for short). He has never seen any of them in his life but you can clearly tell he's related to them by the way he majestically hunts crickets in the summertime (he is an indoor cat who goes on walks on a leash and I don't think he's ever even killed a cricket. he doesn't know what to do when he catches a cricket. he just gets confused. I love him so much)

Here is the bracket!!

[ID: a 33-team bracket with the following matchups:

Round one:

Cheetah vs European Wildcat

African Golden Cat vs Marbled Cat

Palls Cat vs Leopard Cat

Flat Headed Cat vs Ocelot

Bobcat vs Black-footed Cat

Andean Mountain Cat vs Jagarundi

Sunda Clouded Leopard vs Oncilla

Eurasian Lynx vs Canada Lynx vs Iberian Lynx

Sand Cat vs Chinese Mountain Cat

Kodkod vs Bay Cat

Serval vs Pampas Cat

Jungle Cat vs Fishing Cat

Cougar vs Rusty-Spotted Cat

Margay vs Caracal

Asian Golden Cat vs Geoffoy's Cat

African Wildcat vs Clouded Leopard

Round two:

European Wildcat vs Marbled Cat

Pallas Cat vs Ocelot

Black-footed Cat vs Andean Mountain Cat

Sunda Clouded Leopard vs Eurasian Lynx

Sand Cat vs Kodkod

Serval vs Fishing Cat

Rusty-spotted cat vs Margay

Geoffoy's Cat vs Clouded Leopard

Round Three:

European Wildcat vs Pallas Cat

Black-footed Cat vs Eurasian Lynx

Sand Cat vs Serval

Margay vs Clouded Leopard

Round 4:

Pallas Cat vs Eurasian Lynx

Sand Cat vs Margay

Final Round:

Pallas Cat vs Margay

Third Place Round:

Eurasian Lynx vs Sand Cat

end ID]

[armoredisopod]

Arknights CN 4th Anniversary PVs

New Operators

Melanite, 5* Heavyshooter Sniper

Please check the status of your weapons again to avoid any mishaps on the battlefield.

Silence the Paradigmatic, 6* Welfare Abjurer Supporter

We should explore the meaning of combat, not just let it happen.

Ho'olheyak, 6* Core Caster

Doctor, are you really going to waste your time alone with me, preaching about Rhodes Island's rules and regulations?

Muelsyse, 6* Limited Tactician Vanguard

Rhine Lab, Director of the Ecology Department, Muelsyse, but i don't think there should be such a formal greeting between us, Doctor.

Friston-3, 1* Protector Defender

Greetings, my name is Friston. And yes, "Friston", not "Friston-3".

Operator Skins Update

Total of 9 new skins, 6 new additions for the Bloodline of Combat brand and 3 new additions for the Ambiance Synesthesia brand

Bloodline of Combat

Orchid's Twines of Time - Free Login Event skin

Ebenholz's Eine Variation

Specter the Unchained's Born As One - L2D Skin

Ch'en the Holungday's Ten Thousand Mountains - L2D skin

Kal'tsit's Remnant - L2D + Special Voicelines skin

Justice Knight's Tournament Fantasy Retrofit Kit - Event Reward skin

Ambiance Synesthesia

Irene's Voyage of Feathers

Lumen's Golden Dream

Roberta's Granter of Colors

Announced skin reruns

W, Rosmontis, Nearl the Radiant Knight's Epoque skins

Mountain, Eunectes, Ayerscarpe and Flint's Bloodline of Combat skins

Series I & II Ambiance Synesthesia skins

~74 skins as part of 4th Anniversary Celebration edition of Rhodes Fashion Review

Operator Modules Update

Melanite and Ho'olheyak being part of branches with modules immediately gets their modules

ARC-Y module base effect increases Melanite's ATK to 105% and allows her to ignore Physical dodge when attacking enemies directly ahead

CCR-X module base effect allows Ho'olheyak to ignore 10 RES

Hexer Supporter and Flinger Sniper branches gets 1 module type each

W and Kal'tsit gets their second modules

ART-Y module base effect allows W to ignore 100 DEF

PHY-Y module base effect increases Kal'tsit's healing effectiveness by 15% when healing units on melee tiles

Events and Stories

Lonetrail, a Rhine Lab side story event

Misc Stuff

CN regional dialect voices for Lee, Aak, Waai Fu and Hung (though for some reason the PV claims there are 11 new additions)

Suzuran, Ayerscarpe, Click and Friston-3 added to recruitment

2 new main menu screen backgrounds, Laterano and Rhine Lab

Livestream Stuff

Showcased Muelsyse being a 6* Tactician Vanguard utilizing a special reinforcement unit that you can deploy on melee and ranged tiles, her reinforcement also comes with a unique skill that lets you deploy any operator on it to clone (most of) the op's base stats and applies unique properties depending on whether the operator copied was melee or ranged, her 2nd and 3rd skills play into this and have different skill effects depending on what mode the reinforcement is in

Showcased Ho'olheyak being a 6* Core Caster that reduces the weight of enemies in her range and utilizes Levitate, her 2nd skill is a rapid-fire arts burst with a chance to Levitate enemies and her 3rd skill makes her attack by sending tornadoes down her attack range and Levitating the first enemy it hits + dealing massive arts damage

Showcased Silence the Paradigmatic being a 6* Abjurer Supporter that gives a Sanctuary effect without any HP prerequisite and the effect becomes stronger the lower the ally's HP is + has a talent that automatically heals allies below a certain HP threshold, her 2nd skill allows use of a drone that can give a stronger Sanctuary effect and her 3rd skill allows the first ally that takes lethal damage in her range during skill duration to survive and their HP will not go below 1 for several seconds

Showcased the event mechanic, adjustable artificial gravity that can affect enemy movement speed and ally operators ASPD depending on the direction it's set to and gravity-affected spheres that can block enemy pathing and ram into enemies, the spheres can be pushed by operators dealing enough hits to it or by operators applying Push to it

Showcased the new gamemode Pinch-Out, Experimental Operation

A different take on the difficulty-select challenge gamemode, you can choose contracts of varying difficulty that are placed on a branching path with rewards scattered throughout the paths, certain rewards are only unlocked by clearing all connected contracts or paths required

After completing a run you can start the next run from certain "checkpoint" nodes instead of starting over from the original starting point

The gamemode has daily maps and missions for rewards

Laterano lore video narrated in Latin, showing the history of Laterano's founding and racial conflict, which then cuts to a room filled with unknown technology, a teaser for the next Laterano event

An introductory video for potential surveyors of the Infy Icefields, the video advises people to go through Sami due to ongoing Ursus-Columbia disputes then elaborates on Sami's geography, culture and society. A teaser for IS4: Expeditioner's Jöklumarkar

Showcased a few of IS4's new content

Temperature which presumably replaces IS3's light levels mechanic

Collectable rune tablets that can be combined to gain buffs and special effects, for example the ability to change nodes ahead of you

Ability to scout upcoming nodes with a special device to peek at the contents, the device can break which will prevent you from seeing what the upcoming nodes are at all

Interference in the form of elements and weather that can disrupt your exploration

Teased the next summer event to be located in Siesta after the events of Heart of Surging Flame, with a title "Wanderland"

Showed teasers for more episodes of the Ceobe mini-series in progress and LDA anime

Showed a teaser for a new comic series centered around Angelina and her travels across Terra

Arknights anime adaptation 2nd season: Perish in Frost teaser

Talked about the Terra settings/world building art book and the Arknights Vol. 2 art book, which comes with an exclusive Planter skin for 3* Lava

Showed art for an Arknights tabletop game, planned to release Late 2023

Showed teasers for collabs with ANTA Sneaker and China Aerospace Science

Announced that Rhodes Kitchen Tidbits and Rhine Lab - Records of Originium will get physical book forms

Ended off the livestream with an animation starring the Rhine Lab cast, from the founding of the company to Saria and Kirsten's parting

Destiny 2 collab teaser, said to be a story collection event and will have collab exclusive skins

[oldschoolfrp]

The Halls of Fortune await adventurers (Roy “Lucky” Lopez cover for Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer 84, December 1988, featuring Jim Kirtley’s AD&D tournament module from GAMEX 1985)

[dndhistory]

8. Gary Gygax, Tracy Lesh and Alan Lucien - Tomb of Horrors (1975)

One of the earliest documented adventure modules for D&D and an all time classic that would go through iterations throughout the whole history of D&D up until fifth edition, where it was republished in the anthology Tales from the Yawning Portal in 2017, Tomb of Horrors was originally a tournament adventure.

This was a popular way of playing D&D at the start, get a group of people together at a big convention, sit them down and give them a couple of hours to try to finish a dungeon. In this case they were pretty much guaranteed to die before reaching the end. In fact the dungeon is so merciless that players can pretty much die at any turn and in any room. And when I say die, I don't mean "go unconscious", I mean be disintegrated into powder for some silly reason that they could never have predicted.

Early adventures are extremely merciless, these are meant for pre-made characters which are completely disposable, there is no sense of a long, emotionally involving and plotty campaign, this is just an "avoid dying horribly" game. I am sure it is fun, and it would work particularly well in a fast paced convention setting, with teams following teams and learning from the previous team's mistakes. Is it fun to play at home? I don't know, bet 15 players together and try it, I guess... this has been republished by Wizards as a part of their Art & Arcana box in 2018, and it's worth it even if just for the cool, edgy teenager illustrations, so you can still find it. Let me know how it went! 

[aresmarked]

[Content ID: a screenshot from Arknights of part of Saria's module story. The entire story follows.]

'Saria stared at the old gloves before her.

They had originally been locked away in a closet in the Director of Defense's office, Rhine Lab HQ. Her departure had been too rushed to take nearly any personal items. And they should have cleaned out her office long ago. So why save these? Why send them to Rhodes Island? And why now?

A few days ago, at the intervention of the Maylander Foundation, construction ceased on dozens of unlawful experiment sites. Certain people had bribed officials in the municipal planning department to circumvent the necessary auditing procedures, and used fabricated plans to deceive the ethics review committee. Business as usual. Saria had spent months on the move to find evidence of their illegal dealings—fortunately she'd gotten ahold of Anthony Simon, along with his sources. Ultimately, over half of the test sites shut down had belonged [to] Rhine Lab. Maybe that was why these boxing gloves turned up now. A warning, or even a reminder.

They were hardly the first boxing gloves she'd ever owned. Those would be the ones her father gave her, clearly unfit for a child, which always chafed her skin to the point of bleeding. But she persisted and did as her father told her, pounding her weakness into a sandbag, along with all her *impractical* emotions, punch by punch. Others had minds filled with openings, so one moment of complete disarray was all she needed to shatter their defensive line in a single punch. Saria was never as enamoured with fighting as so many other boxers were: for her the skill was simply a means to survive until now.

Unconsciously, her fingers read the ridged words along the back of the gloves. 'Trimounts Institute of Technology'—she'd once taken part in an intercollegiate tournament with these. She spent many a late night in the boxing club back then, always with a plus-one tagging along. That certain someone wasn't a fan of the sport, nor was she interested in the tournament, but hung around simply because 'varying your environment prevents your mind from getting stuck in certain lines of thought.' She wasn't joking: not much later she proposed the concept of a hand-mounted exoskeletal operating system, based on observation of Saria's own movements. That system was still in use to this day, in the office of Rhine Lab's Control.

Though they hadn't seen use in so many years, the gloves looked as snug as ever. Saria very nearly put her hands in them, but a slight ache from beneath her shoulder blades held her back—apparently a call to adjust the dosage of her painkillers. The mercenaries outnumbered her in her last investigation, after all: a whole platoon against one.

It meant she was gradually getting close to the truth.

A few minutes later, Saria let go of the gloves, stowing them in the lowest drawer of her temporary desk, and once again picked up Ifrit's latest physical report.

[theenpcbracket]

This may have been asked before but I can't find it; Can we submit 'canon' npcs from the actual books that we have taken into our settings and made our own? Or do they have to be entirely original? Thanks!

It's an important question! I think that what you're asking was answered here, but I'll clarify a bit from it just to confirm that it's what you're looking for. If you feel that the NPC has transformed well beyond their original design, go for it! What I'd ask is that you be sure to specify and highlight the parts of their original design you've changed and built beyond so that it's clear how they've become your NPC specifically (as opposed to the experiences of others who may have played the same module). I'd also ask that you be sure to include the information about the original source/creator so that I can be sure to credit everyone properly.

Please let me know if you need more information or clarification! Definitely an important question, so thank you for asking!

[mod-a-day]

Esdemo1 of MindForge Interactive "$ $ BANK DAD $ $" Stupid Tournament (2006)