The Mundane Challenge

[Berder]

Concept: win without using anything that reeks of magic!

Rules:
Must start as human
Acceptable backgrounds: fighter, gladiator, monk, hunter, assassin.
May not memorize any spells
May not worship any god
May not use any potions, scrolls, magical staves, jewelry, or evocables. Polearms OK. Sack of spiders - maybe OK.
May not use any artifacts
May not use any weapon or armor that has an enchantment or brand on it.
* It's OK to momentarily equip an unidentified item that you didn't know has an enchantment on it, as long as you immediately drop it and don't use it for anything.
* This prohibits negative enchantments and special enchantments like "boots of running" or "plate mail of fire resistance."
* Venom branded weapons count as magical since the venom flows along the blade by itself when you wield it
No cursed items. If you equip a cursed item you fail the challenge because it's magic and there's no way to remove it. So it's best not to touch anything that's glowing.
No dragon armors
No troll leather armor
No magically branded ammo (silver, steel, and poisoned ammo are ok; flame, frost, returning, penetration, dispersal are not)
No eating purple chunks
* Getting mutated by monsters is unavoidable, but you must not do it on purpose
* If you do get mutated, you may not evoke any abilities you might have gained. For instance, no breathing flames, no evoking blink.
* Deliberately stepping in mutagenic fog for the purpose of getting mutated is also prohibited. This is about intent so you must judge for yourself.
Forbidden skills: all magic skills, invocations, evocations
No deliberately stepping on magical traps (includes teleport traps)
* Exception in zot5 if both lungs are blocked by magical traps. In that case you may step on them.

[duvessa]

troll leather armour OP

[Berder]

troll leather armour OP

TLA prohibited as well, thanks for mentioning it.

[KoboldLord]

So, I don't get to use any items that do anything interesting, or indeed absolutely anything at all except walk around and attack with a weapon?

This challenge sounds like it would be even less fun than playing a felid.

[Arrhythmia]

I like how you forbid "mirrors" and not "phantom mirrors", like I'm about to stumble into a kobold dressing room and need to quit the challenge right there.

[Brannock]

So nets and blowguns are the order of the day.

[Berder]

You would have to become a true expert at judging what fights you can and cannot handle, because you have no crutches to rely on (no buffs or blinks/tele). Correct positioning would be far more important.

[tasonir]

I like the overall concept, but I think it's a little bit too restrictive. For example, + enchantment on armor could easily just mean "this is a better built suit of armor than the average plate mail". Here's a subset of the above restrictions which is a little more generous to the player:

  Code:

Must start as human
Acceptable backgrounds: fighter, gladiator, monk, hunter, assassin.
May not memorize any spells
May not worship any god
May not use any potions, scrolls, or evokable items.  You may use remove curse if necessary.  It is up to the player to identify remove curse 'ethically' and not benefit from reading unknown scrolls.
No magically branded ammo (silver, steel, and poisoned ammo are ok; flame, frost, returning, penetration, dispersal are not)
No eating purple chunks
* Getting mutated by monsters is unavoidable, but you must not do it on purpose
* If you do get mutated, you may not evoke any abilities you might have gained. For instance, no breathing flames, no evoking blink.
* Deliberately stepping in mutagenic fog for the purpose of getting mutated is also prohibited. This is about intent so you must judge for yourself.
Forbidden skills: all magic skills, invocations, evocations
No deliberately stepping on magical traps (includes teleport traps)
* Exception in zot5 if both lungs are blocked by magical traps. In that case you may step on them.

Basically you're still allowed to use brands, artifacts, and jewellry. And discovering a cursed item doesn't automatically invalidate your run. I'd say it's still pretty restrictive, although obviously gentler than the original. I like dragon armors <.<

I also replaced "lamps, phials, fans, stones of tremors, mirrors, or decks" with "evokable items" which includes rods and wands. In the original, disc of storms are allowed? Sacs of spiders?

[duvessa]

I also replaced "lamps, phials, fans, stones of tremors, mirrors, or decks" with "evokable items" which includes rods and wands. In the original, disc of storms are allowed? Sacs of spiders?

polearms UP

[Berder]

I also replaced "lamps, phials, fans, stones of tremors, mirrors, or decks" with "evokable items" which includes rods and wands. In the original, disc of storms are allowed? Sacs of spiders?

Oh, I missed disc of storms.

Is sack of spiders actually magical? Or is it just a regular sack of spiders, such as homeowners keep to deal with burglars? It might be permissible. In the most hardcore interpretation it would also be banned.

[comebackshane]

Does it count if I hit A and it says "you are rather mundane"?

[Berder]

I like the overall concept, but I think it's a little bit too restrictive. For example, + enchantment on armor could easily just mean "this is a better built suit of armor than the average plate mail".

I think the problem is that + enchantment is obtained by reading scrolls of enchant armour, an obviously magical act.

[comebackshane]

I like the overall concept, but I think it's a little bit too restrictive. For example, + enchantment on armor could easily just mean "this is a better built suit of armor than the average plate mail".

I think the problem is that + enchantment is obtained by reading scrolls of enchant armour, an obviously magical act.

Fine dwarven craftsmanship!

[Sprucery]

a regular sack of spiders, such as homeowners keep to deal with burglars?

Really?

[Berder]

a regular sack of spiders, such as homeowners keep to deal with burglars?

Really?

Contact your local spiderarms association

[1010011010]

a regular sack of spiders, such as homeowners keep to deal with burglars?

Really?

It's like you've never seen home alone.

[Sprucery]

It's like you've never seen home alone.

Hey, I went to see Home Alone when it came out in 1990!

[johlstei]

Keeping your home safe by releasing poisonous spiders at intruders may be tactically sound but it certainly isn't strategically sound.

[xentronium]

Some of those spiders are pretty damn big.

[dynast]

Sounds more viable than playing a tengu.

[XuaXua]

[xentronium]

(Toilet spiders)

That is terrifying.

[tasonir]

Don't knock it until you've tried it. For example, see this success story:

[Arrhythmia]

Don't knock it until you've tried it. For example, see this success story:

If that spider wrapped the cockroaches up then yeah it actually totally ate them.

[Greyr]

i think the newer spiderman movies are better

[Arrhythmia]

i think the newer spiderman movies are better

actually, all super hero movies are shitty, and i cannot wait until we, as a culture, stop fucking making them


e: i'm actually upset that i can set my watch by being dragged by my good for nothing friends to the latest marvel shitshow for two agonizing hours every four fucking months

e2: i'm a bit cranky today

[n1000]

i think the newer spiderman movies are better

actually, all super hero movies are shitty, and i cannot wait until we, as a culture, stop fucking making them


e: i'm actually upset that i can set my watch by being dragged by my good for nothing friends to the latest marvel shitshow for two agonizing hours every four fucking months

e2: i'm a bit cranky today

This may sound harsh but you don't understand movies or culture. "Super heroes" have been one of the most popular subjects in art since art was a thing (i.e., since humans) and the most expensive, cutting-edge special effects have always been at the forefront of art production. It is only in the late 20th and 21st centuries that we have had the economic organization to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these effects, but stage machinery which allowed characters to fly was critical to productions of the most popular superhero plays of the 5th century BC.

Our culture will not stop making or enjoying them until the movie is entirely superseded as an art form--which probably wont happen but that's another topic. If you want to avoid agony during the Marvel movies which you for some reason allow your friends to force you to see, and cannot find the depiction of heroism or superhuman powers compelling, which is shitty, then you should attempt to appreciate the technical triumph of modern special effects. This way, though you will be appreciating the movies on a lower, mechanical, level, you'll at least not be bored.

Being bored or annoyed by "decadent" contemporary art has been the purview of the most irrelevant and quickly obsoleted media critics for thousands of years.

[tasonir]

One of the reasons I'm not fond of super hero movies is that they tend to rely on massively upping the stakes in order to get you interested in the story. The hero must do X in order to save the world. I don't know about you, but I'm not often doing much to save the world, except for when I recycle, and I don't think I could make a compelling movie out of my recycling habits. This is used in place of more complex, compelling character development, realistic everyday struggles that we might be facing in our own lives, etc.

Picking out super hero movies for it is a bit selective though - it is most commonly seen in video games. There are very few video games that don't involve some sort of exaggerated hero saving the planet, which is part of why I like crawl so much. It's instead about one roughly-humanoid creature's lust for shiny jewelry and rocks, and deconstructs the notion that the hero is interested in saving anything. Theft, murder, betrayal are all held up to be ideals rather than flaws, and this subverts the very notion that heroics are something that we should strive for or emulate. If there's one moral in crawl, it's that being stronger and smarter than other people is useful in that it allows you to kill and steal more effectively than your rivals. Might not only makes right, it is the only right in crawl's philosophy.

[Arrhythmia]

This may sound harsh but you don't understand movies or culture. "Super heroes" have been one of the most popular subjects in art since art was a thing (i.e., since humans) and the most expensive, cutting-edge special effects have always been at the forefront of art production. It is only in the late 20th and 21st centuries that we have had the economic organization to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these effects, but stage machinery which allowed characters to fly was critical to productions of the most popular superhero plays of the 5th century BC.

Our culture will not stop making or enjoying them until the movie is entirely superseded as an art form--which probably wont happen but that's another topic. If you want to avoid agony during the Marvel movies which you for some reason allow your friends to force you to see, and cannot find the depiction of heroism or superhuman powers compelling, which is shitty, then you should attempt to appreciate the technical triumph of modern special effects. This way, though you will be appreciating the movies on a lower, mechanical, level, you'll at least not be bored.

Being bored or annoyed by "decadent" contemporary art has been the purview of the most irrelevant and quickly obsoleted media critics for thousands of years.

Let me delimit my position so you understand it better:

I really fucking hate the movies that Marvel Studios has been putting out in the last decade. This isn't to say I do not enjoy movies about super heroes or movies about comic book super heroes or etc. etc.. I hate, in no particular order, The Avengers, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. I do not think this is a failing of movies, or culture, or anything like that as a whole, but a failure of these particular, exceedingly shitty movies.

e: I'm really not sure why you brought up special effects or the "decadence of contemporary art" since neither of those were part of my original point, and still aren't, but oh well.

[twelwe]

This may sound harsh but you don't understand movies or culture. "Super heroes" have been one of the most popular subjects in art since art was a thing (i.e., since humans) and the most expensive, cutting-edge special effects have always been at the forefront of art production. It is only in the late 20th and 21st centuries that we have had the economic organization to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on these effects, but stage machinery which allowed characters to fly was critical to productions of the most popular superhero plays of the 5th century BC.

Our culture will not stop making or enjoying them until the movie is entirely superseded as an art form--which probably wont happen but that's another topic. If you want to avoid agony during the Marvel movies which you for some reason allow your friends to force you to see, and cannot find the depiction of heroism or superhuman powers compelling, which is shitty, then you should attempt to appreciate the technical triumph of modern special effects. This way, though you will be appreciating the movies on a lower, mechanical, level, you'll at least not be bored.

Being bored or annoyed by "decadent" contemporary art has been the purview of the most irrelevant and quickly obsoleted media critics for thousands of years.

as a normal person human, superheroes trigger me into feelings of mundaneness. and i used to lvoe superhero movies alot. people change.

also when you say our culture who do you mean by ``our`` ??

[n1000]

This isn't to say I do not enjoy movies about super heroes or movies about comic book super heroes or etc. etc..

Oh my bad. See, when you said

all super hero movies are shitty

I thought you meant...uh...well precisely what you said. Sorry man.

[Arrhythmia]

This isn't to say I do not enjoy movies about super heroes or movies about comic book super heroes or etc. etc..

Oh my bad. See, when you said

all super hero movies are shitty

I thought you meant...uh...well precisely what you said. Sorry man.

Well, I was pretty cranky when I wrote that.

[Greyr]

Guys

lol

e:(i was drunk when i posted that first thing... totally forgot i was even a part of this thread)

[n1000]

[marvel reference]

That's my secret, Captain: I'm always cranky.

[/marvel reference]