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.