# I ripped it off, but we had fun anyway...



## STARP_President (Sep 10, 2004)

OK. I admit fully I ripped this concept off, but I thought it would be a really cool hook for an adventure.

In my campaign, the PCs are the crew of a ship which roams around a giant archipelago looking for trouble. They find it every session, funnily enough. In this particular session, they were invited to an elven party, which I saw as basically a college fraternity mixer. and had a good time. That was until morning. All the while, they were wondering about this famous elf bard who was in town. He gave a magnificent performance, signed a view autographs without enthusiasm, and vanished. 

You see, a century ago, this bard had made a deal with a pit fiend that he would recieve the greatest voice in the world (or that part of it, anyway), and following that, the debt would be collected and the demon would take his voice away forever. The time was now up, and the bard made one final performance before meeting his creditor.

But the bard wasn't ready to give up his voice. He pleaded and begged the pit fiend not to take his voice. I figure Baatezu are not without a twisted sense of humour and so the pit fiend agreed. Instead of taking the bard's voice, he took everyone elses.

Consequence: when the PCs woke up, neither they or anyone else was able to speak. I told them as much using pieces of card I held up. They got on fine by writing stuff down (although one PC is an illiterate barbarian!) but I wouldn't let them speak in character or communicate in-game by speech. They did find ways around it, including mime. I mimed too - in the interests of solidarity I spoke as little as possible. The silence rule didn't apply during combat though - they were allowed to tell me their actions because otherwise it would have been almost impossible to manage. They were fighting devils, incidentally, brought in by the pit fiend to 'play'.

In the end they found the bard, got the truth out of him (he could still speak) and smashed the jars containing all their voices , then the pit fiend returned and took the bard's voice away. The bard then jumped into a lava pit and was incinerated, preferring to die than live in silence.

Geeks and nerds (and let's face it, that's all of us) will know I stole the 'no talking' idea from the Buffy episode 'Hush', although I did change the details about how it happened.

I just thought I should tell that story. It was a pretty cool night. And one player got bonus XP because he didn't say a word until I told him he could. Not even in combat. Pure class.


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## Nifft (Sep 10, 2004)

Eh, and Buffy ripped off _the Little Mermaid_, which ripped off the earlier, better _Little Mermaid_, which is so old that it'd probably stolen fire from the gods at one point.

It's a great concept, great execution, and sounds like something I could rip off too. 

Thanks! -- N


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