March 8, 2012

Having Awesome Players is Awesome

Dave "the Knave " White set up our whole group with this awesome shirt last session (Dave has a thing for t-shirts: Too Many T-Shirts):
The "% Liar" bit is a double joke.  Here is the story, per Monte Cook:
The original D&D booklets had a typo. In the monster entries, instead of saying "%Lair" (for the percentage chance that the creature would be found in its lair), it said "%Liar." The Arduin books embraced that concept (I'm guessing without knowing it was a typo): In those books, that game stat reflected the percentage chance that, if you talked to it, the creature would lie -- apparently at any given time. It was a rule to handle the roleplaying of the creature. And along with the expected "%Liar: 45%," the Arduin books even had monster entries that said, "%Liar: too stupid." So the monster was too stupid to lie.

(Dragon columnist Ray Winninger has a hilarious story from back then. His group, who also believed that the stat determined how often a creature would lie, applied this rule to the elf henchman with the party. The PCs would ask the henchman if he had enough food, or whether he needed healing after the last battle, and the DM would roll to see if he told them the truth. You can just imagine the poor, starving, beat-up henchman, when asked if he needed any help, feeling this odd compunction to lie... shaking his head "no" with a look of profound regret and helplessness on his face.) 

(Source)


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