A clear triumph for DM! The basket of kittens worked as advertised, and thus he’s successfully roped the party into accepting the Beginner’s side quest he wanted to send them on. Well worth the extra lengths he went to, and it even saved him some money: Playing on a party’s greed might often be the better approach, but it’s always the more expensive one. Playing on the attractiveness of kittens only costs you a couple of bottles of milk…and, later, repairs to your furniture, replacement of various breakable artifacts, tons of cat-food and…wait, perhaps this isn’t actually the cheaper approach, after all…
But, no matter the price, it succeeded. Sufficiently, at least…he might not have been able to convince Mopey, but she was the stretch goal to begin with. Convincing everyone else leaves her safely outvoted, if somewhat resentful. And the later isn’t really an uncommon state for her, so everything’s good. And the other team-members are working on that, anyway – they try to prolong and enhance the kitten effect my frequently mimicking the sad kittens in front of Mopey. Up to now it hasn’t worked, but give it some time.
Gregory helpfully summarizes the side quest: invade a castle and overthrow the local tyrant, so there will be much rejoicing. Since DM takes a realistic view of the party’s capabilities at this point, the castle in question is Takeshi’s Castle instead of Minas Morgul.
On a side-note, I couldn’t remember which design I had put on Mopey’s shield, but it probably actually wasn’t this one. I’ll correct that later.
More on Thurs…uh, Monday.
When I saw the different shield design I just assumed Nolan lost the original prop, panicked and ran out and grabbed the first shield-like object he could find. I assume the actors are paid by the hour (so Nolan can claim they’re part-time and avoid having to pay for any benefits).
XD That sounds pretty plausible…the question would only be why he didn’t grab one of George Geekish’s shields. After all, George always keeps shields, helmets and breastplates handy as safety equipment for stunts. For himself, of course – he doesn’t want to get a concussion from being hit by any of the flying chunks of stuntman.;P
George was going to charge Nolan $5 to borrow a shield on such short notice and Nolan really, really wanted a sandwich for lunch. So he opted for the 5-finger discount option.
XD Well, it’s Nolan’s own fault. If he wanted a sandwich, he should have had one written into the script. After all, that’s his normal way to dodge taxes on private purchases…