Ah! Now I understand. Okay, given the explanatory text, I thought it was about the movie. The other strip explicitly referenced the gming angle.
I have certainly had players point out stuff I'd forgotten. Perhaps the most embarrassing example was when mnemex pointed out some abilities of an NPC that I'd toned dwon over the years, genuinely forgetting how stupidly I'd stuck on abilities.
For some reason, I'd decided that the sidhe were sorta-kinda like the unicorns in Piers Anthony's Double Exposure books, which meant that they had to have two extra shapes. Exactly why I came to this conclusion escapes me now. So, one of them, Gary Luther, could turn into an owl. That wasn't so bad, and I think, though I'm not sure, that this was before the astonishing glut of stories with boys turning into owls.
But, for some reason, I decided that he should have a more powerful shape, like, say, a hippogriff. Looking back, I just shake my head and say, "What the heck was I thinking?" I managed to forget the hippogriff bit completely, but mnemex didn't, and he assures me that Gary actually used the hippogriff form onscreen in one long ago episode. My brain sort of guesses where and when that was, but cannot bring itself to examine this too closely.
Whether or not it can be retconned away, he can't do it now. I can justify this by lots of handwaving about how the magical field of the Earth was rearranged at the end of the first Cthulhupunk game, and Gary also got bathed in serpentscience magical rays that took away his Lovecraftian outer god genetic heritage, something one could have a field day analyzing in terms of what this implies about the game world.
Less gross, but equally problematic, I gave him the ability to play magical music and do stuff like put people to sleep. This was a problem because Gary became an ally of the PCs, and, with this power, was a) too danged useful and b) capable of stealing the PCs' thunder, which should be a no-no. mnemex worked the magical music into the write up of the Regina story, but in a good way, implying that Gary's music made travel faster. You know, the musical rule: It takes only as long as the song to get to where you're going.
I think we eventually decided that he traded or sold or gave his magical musical talent away. Sidhe can do that. I don't know if we ever decided who got it. He might have sold it to one of his teachers, although he didn't quite sell all of his talent, explaining why he could use it to be cosmetically helpful in the Regina story, but not actually effective on a large enough scale to make Regina's abilities redundant.
I can probably come up with other examples, but that one is one of the most egregious.
There was also a running joke about how all of us, players and gm alike, forgot about all the NPCs who had attacked the PCs in various locations, usually hotels. The standard procedure at that point was to overpower the NPCs, tie them up and gag them, and then stick them in the closet.
And, when I played in crash_mccormick's D&D 3.5 game, like Varsuvius from Order of the Stick, my PC tended to forget he had a raven familiar.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-10-09 03:09 pm (UTC)I have certainly had players point out stuff I'd forgotten. Perhaps the most embarrassing example was when
For some reason, I'd decided that the sidhe were sorta-kinda like the unicorns in Piers Anthony's Double Exposure books, which meant that they had to have two extra shapes. Exactly why I came to this conclusion escapes me now. So, one of them, Gary Luther, could turn into an owl. That wasn't so bad, and I think, though I'm not sure, that this was before the astonishing glut of stories with boys turning into owls.
But, for some reason, I decided that he should have a more powerful shape, like, say, a hippogriff. Looking back, I just shake my head and say, "What the heck was I thinking?" I managed to forget the hippogriff bit completely, but
Whether or not it can be retconned away, he can't do it now. I can justify this by lots of handwaving about how the magical field of the Earth was rearranged at the end of the first Cthulhupunk game, and Gary also got bathed in serpentscience magical rays that took away his Lovecraftian outer god genetic heritage, something one could have a field day analyzing in terms of what this implies about the game world.
Less gross, but equally problematic, I gave him the ability to play magical music and do stuff like put people to sleep. This was a problem because Gary became an ally of the PCs, and, with this power, was a) too danged useful and b) capable of stealing the PCs' thunder, which should be a no-no. mnemex worked the magical music into the write up of the Regina story, but in a good way, implying that Gary's music made travel faster. You know, the musical rule: It takes only as long as the song to get to where you're going.
I think we eventually decided that he traded or sold or gave his magical musical talent away. Sidhe can do that. I don't know if we ever decided who got it. He might have sold it to one of his teachers, although he didn't quite sell all of his talent, explaining why he could use it to be cosmetically helpful in the Regina story, but not actually effective on a large enough scale to make Regina's abilities redundant.
I can probably come up with other examples, but that one is one of the most egregious.
There was also a running joke about how all of us, players and gm alike, forgot about all the NPCs who had attacked the PCs in various locations, usually hotels. The standard procedure at that point was to overpower the NPCs, tie them up and gag them, and then stick them in the closet.
And, when I played in