A proper fantasy campaign setting has room for a fair number of random critters to appear and disappear like monsters of the week. If your world can't handle that, it's likely better suited to writing single-author literature than tabletop gaming.
Tell me about it. My world is mostly high fantasy, to the point where you can have basically any high tech device, but powered by magic and special effects.
Glitter, sparkles and rainbows are side effects of many spells in my setting.
Also, you can introduce darn near anything, even incorporeals. The only catch is that you can't have ghosts. No departed souls or anything like that. Plenty of room though, for banshees, phantoms, spectral horrors, poultrigeists, and, heaven forbid, demons. Gods help you if you encounter demons. For starters, they're cestial level enemies, so a pit fiend would be the weakest thing you would deal with.
A taste: Raxon places a black candle with a red flame behind him. He rolls up his sleeves and draws a knife. "Through my blood, I call to thee. With my shadow, I protect thee. With this pact of blood and darkness, come forth and do my bidding, for I have candy!" He cuts his wrist, and holds it out so the blood pools in the shadow. Something claws its way out of the blood, and wraps itself in his shadow. Raxon gives it marzipan and gummi bears as payment to seal the pact. The creature is indistinct. You can't get a good look at it because all you see is a pale shadow, a translucent silhouette of an inhuman creature. Not evil, just scary.
I call it a bloodshade. Boom. New creature added. Many many fun things you can create and add. Anyone else have fun new monsters to add?
Oh I know! Then again, in my setting, celestial means run for your life. Dire just means it's bigger and meaner than the usual. Dire rats that weigh 50-100 lbs are common. They're starting enemies.
We once had a campaign where we were taking a depressed dude from one town to the next. However, when we got to the town, it turned out that it was an alternate present, caused by the depressed guy having never existed. We managed to return to the proper present, only to discover the entire thing had been because a Bhaalspawn cast Wish when the guy wished his existence gone, but the Goddess, Frigg, managed to halt the spell in mid-cast. We ended up fighting a Bhaalspawn in the end and stopping the Wish from coming true.
I once run adventure in 7th sea in which players had to retrieve research notes of their late scholar friend from hands of Inquisitor. It seemed like a simple recovering, cloak and dagger mission. But as they were crossing the bridge to the city in which the Inquisitor was currently residing, unknown to them destiny witch was burned at the stake and cursed whole town to relive this time from her death to setting of the sun for the whole eternity. But players were exactly on border of the city and were affected but remembered every iteration. At first they didn't know anything was happening up until at 7pm they were transported back to noon and on the bridge. They quickly found out that they had to find and punish person who sold out witch to inquisotor. But they soon found out too that:
1. Each iteration shifts them a little closer to the city and ends hour earlier. They have 7 iterations till they will be traped forever.
2. Each time they are transported back they are healed but since they remember everythin they don't get any sleep and get tired. After 3rd iteration they were 25 hours awake, and after 5th they slowly loose the grip on reality.
3. At the very end, just before final iteration one of players died. They were relived that she was still with them at the bridge. But she lost her memories of the loop and they have one iteration with 7 hours, tired as hell with their best swordsman confused and considering if the rest of the team have gone insane.
One of my best runs, I dare to say.
Feel free to steal it. I have some notes but they are in polish so not much use to you. If you want more details feel free to mail me: mad.bronies@gmail.com
I always wondered if the candy company that makes Skittles ("Taste the Rainbow!") advertised on The Hub, either before or after dash's line: "Yeah, rainbows aren't known for their flavor." Heh.
Yeah, registered, but wasn't logged in for the comment. tried to edit, it made me log in, then said I couldn't edit the comment because it wasn't mine.....
Out of the Mane 6, definitely Twilight. I have many questions about how Equestria works, particularly regarding magic.
If everypony's fair game, though, probably Celestia - I'd prefer to speak to Luna, but Celestia has more experience teaching, and I'd want to make the most of my one interview. I imagine Celestia would know pretty much everything that Twilight could tell me, as well as fill in more of the kingdom's history.
Well. not necessarily a plot that was more involved, rather a plot that suddenly took a turn for the worst 9and that's putting it nicely)
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
Well. not necessarily a plot that was more involved, rather a plot that suddenly took a turn for the worst 9and that's putting it nicely)
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
Well. not necessarily a plot that was more involved, rather a plot that suddenly took a turn for the worst 9and that's putting it nicely)
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
Well. not necessarily a plot that was more involved, rather a plot that suddenly took a turn for the worst 9and that's putting it nicely)
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
We then were set four stage four; Prison riot. Our rogue gets the ball rolling, and prisoners and guards are at eachother, as the rest of our party (save me) arrived at the scene. One of the guards is wielding a crossbow, and some poor sap was in melee range as he rolled a nat 20, prisoner's head exploding. Second turn comes around, yet another nat 20, pins another guard to the wall. At this point, we joke that the crossbow is an artifact, when he rolls yet another nat, the bolt wiping out a group of prisoners. our DM decided that one more nat would have made this level 2 fighter into a greater diety; A fourth nat came up. So our rogue watches as this shadowy orb starts to envelope the guard (We did coin flips and rolls to determine that this was a lawful evil guard), this blacj sphere spewing tendrils and converting everyoner in the prison into followers; Long story short, We witnessed the birth of a shadow god, Freeport is no longer free, and we completely and unintentionally made a mess of the in-game world.
I feel I should mentiomn that despite the ever-growing sphere, me and the druid decided to YOLO it and attempt to recover the aurorum, which we did. Sadly, our bard was taken, but it has been assured that he will be able to return, just... changed... And I apologize for my pre-account multi-post...
We were tasked to escort an old woman as a sidequest. Mid way we were assaulted by brigands. Brigands turned out to be Orcus cultists (it's always Orcus, isn't it?) wanting to sacrifice the old woman, who turned out to be an ex cleric of avandra who had slain the cultist's last leader. We managed to defeat the cultists, but in the wake of his death, the raider leader left behind a clue as to where their base was (some keep somewhere generic) but also their goal, which was to collect divine power by capturing and sacrificing clerics and paladins and empowering Orcus enough for him to be more powerful than all of the gods. We ransacked the keep, but the damage was done. Orcus was free and had ungodly powers. Sending all but one of our members into death saves in just one turn, Avandra (our patron) appeared in our moment of despair and brought us to safety, only to be struck down by Orcus and sent into near death. With her dying throes, she invested the remaining shards of power into all of us, essentially making us all demigods. We then embarked on a journey to muster the rest of gods to combat Orcus. Orcus, however, had his own problems as other demon lords demanded power, culminating in a god-demon alliance against Orcus, who had absorbed almost half of the god pantheon as well as a large portion of his own demon followers. Bearing arms with a demon team controlled by the DM, we personally fought Orcus to a standstill until the gods and demons sacrificed all of their power to banish Orcus into the mortal form of a child. We were given the chance to reform the mindwiped demon/child. We crushed his skull and fed the remains to the demons. Then on, we became the realm's gods as we had each taken in the essence of a god as well as the shards of avandra. I became the second Raven Queen.
I remember the ill-fated Star Trek game I was in became a clusterfaq of "involvement"...
We were a rag-tag crew of a transport ship that ships/smuggles stuff for money. First, we had space mercs attacking us to get back our Orion who was an escaped slave from a wealthy owner. Then the mysterious "Section 38" of the Federation was after our logistics officer because apparently he was sold to a client for his organs and there were no refunds. Turns out Section 38 was being paid off by a wealthy Ferengi company for the stuff we were transporting, which we thought was just computer tech, but it was illegal computer tech and the organs were just a lucky bonus. But then a Terminator from the future set up the Ferengi so he can use the illegal tech to create a neutron bomb to kill all life in several star systems.
At this point we lost track of the part of the plot that involved our helmsman and our doctor, so we pretty much gave up.
One time we went to kill an evil necromancer... It turned out that the necromancer was just using his undead minions to keep away people as he held the tarrasque at bay.
I love tricking my players with that kind of thing. I rarely use it though because 96% of the time they will kill the lesser evil before thinking about the fact it was holding back a greater evil.
And I am also reminded of a similar thing my players did by forgetting why they were attacking a wizard's tower.
In a previous game, they had found a pile of gold that was bewitched to look like fake chocolate coins. So they went looking for a wizard to take off the illusion. They heard about a wizard that some village was afraid of. They raided his lair, finally got to the top of the tower...and killed the wizard.
We met a little elf girl while resting in a small town. The druid was instantly distrustful of her, but the rest of the party had no in character reason to worry about her. Even in OOC, the druid wouldn't explain why he didn't trust her. That night ogres attacked, killed most of the village and injured the little girl. 2 sessions later, we've killed the ogre chief and found his journal where he write about his inside informant in the village. The ogre's attacked because the informant met us and one of the party showed open hostility. If the druid had just smiled at the little girl, she wouldn't have told the ogres to attack.
Dinner time? I cook! Man, I would cook for you guys! I even got bhut jolokia flakes as a Christmas gift. I'd make you some good chili! Cheeseburger nachos, pizza peppers, fishballs, fried mushrooms, stir fry...
Yeah, I would take real good care of my guinea pigs.
You scoop the gills out of some nice big shiitake mushrooms, and stir fry the gills with meat and veggies. When it's done, turn the shiitake caps over and use the raw caps as small bowls for the stir fry.
I once had the party hired to investigate strange noises in a graveyard.
It turned out to be that an adventuring party had been doing the "Scooby Doo" bit to make sure no civilians got involved while a dungeon was being cleared out.
"I bring to you a tale of intrigue, murder, and magic.
Once upon a time, there was a magical kingdom. In this magical kingdom, there were great beasts made of iron and glass. They roared with rage and fury at their servitude to old masters. The masters had subdued the beasts. They had carved out their insides so they could use them as beasts of burden. They drilled holes in the beasts' necks and put rods in them, so they might control their movements. They put spurs on them, to make them run faster. The masters used harsh chemicals to paint the beasts as their whims dictated. It pleased the masters to put harnesses on the beasts' hearts, to weaken them and slow them down. Sometimes, they would stop the mighty heart when they had no need of the beast's service, and would revive the beast when they did need it.
"One day, something terrible happened. A beast resisted the command of its master. It would not slow down. It would not turn as it was commanded. The master was helpless as the beast ran right off a cliff. Master and beast alike perished.
"That's when they were called. The guard investigated And found that the harness on the beast's heart had been sabotaged. The rod in its neck cut. Another master had done this. But how-
"Raxon, if you don't shut up, I'm going to put you back in the box! Look, the brake ties and tie rods were cut. Stop monologuing and help!"
"AND THE MASTER WAS MAN!"
"That's it!'" *thunk*
"Wow, he's finally quiet. But was the bat really necessary?"
I figured it out at "harsh chemicals to paint the beasts as their whims dictated." Still didn't guess that he'd be interrupted, much less successfully clobbered!
I can see this "ghost" being one of two things: either the Ursa Minor (huge and semi-transparent) or the Windigoes (semi-transparent and defeated by none other than Twilight, Applejack, & Fluttershy - or, at any rate, their historical counterparts).
Well, most of the plots were complicated by the players (such as the time my OOC paranoia and my IC bestial instincts and paranoia caused us to waste three wishes on clearing a dungeon that turned out to be three Wishes, or the time everyone [including myself in-character, but not OOC] trusted the rogue to carry all of our bulky items because he had a Bag of Holding), but there was really only one situation that was much more complicated than it looked:
It was a Pathfinder side session (appropriately for this story arc). I was an Alchemist (day job) Rogue/Bard (class), and my partner was a Kender. She eventually borrowed something from an ongoing chemical experiment without asking, which resulted in some sort of grey, clay-like substance that didn't dry out. The way I remember it: OOC, I recognized the detailed descriptions as C4. In-character, it took about three months and the DM just /giving/ me an extra Sparks scroll on the condition that I used it to test the material to realize that the seemingly inert material I'd been testing with magical fire, chemicals, and kinetic force was reactive to tamed lightning. In-character, about half of our stuff was inside the blast radius. Had it not just been a side campaign with one-shot characters, the next session would have likely included a shopping spree and a trip to every rich vacationer's house in the country. All this from a game that was supposed to be about killing Kobolds, giving me a feel for Bardic magic, and giving the other player a non-canon chance to play a Kender.
Thinking back, I probably shouldn't have tried to use it as chewing chicle before testing how it reacted to saliva.
Glitter, sparkles and rainbows are side effects of many spells in my setting.
Also, you can introduce darn near anything, even incorporeals. The only catch is that you can't have ghosts. No departed souls or anything like that. Plenty of room though, for banshees, phantoms, spectral horrors, poultrigeists, and, heaven forbid, demons. Gods help you if you encounter demons. For starters, they're cestial level enemies, so a pit fiend would be the weakest thing you would deal with.
A taste: Raxon places a black candle with a red flame behind him. He rolls up his sleeves and draws a knife. "Through my blood, I call to thee. With my shadow, I protect thee. With this pact of blood and darkness, come forth and do my bidding, for I have candy!" He cuts his wrist, and holds it out so the blood pools in the shadow. Something claws its way out of the blood, and wraps itself in his shadow. Raxon gives it marzipan and gummi bears as payment to seal the pact. The creature is indistinct. You can't get a good look at it because all you see is a pale shadow, a translucent silhouette of an inhuman creature. Not evil, just scary.
I call it a bloodshade. Boom. New creature added. Many many fun things you can create and add. Anyone else have fun new monsters to add?
For instance a Dire-Celestial-Triceratops.
1. Each iteration shifts them a little closer to the city and ends hour earlier. They have 7 iterations till they will be traped forever.
2. Each time they are transported back they are healed but since they remember everythin they don't get any sleep and get tired. After 3rd iteration they were 25 hours awake, and after 5th they slowly loose the grip on reality.
3. At the very end, just before final iteration one of players died. They were relived that she was still with them at the bridge. But she lost her memories of the loop and they have one iteration with 7 hours, tired as hell with their best swordsman confused and considering if the rest of the team have gone insane.
One of my best runs, I dare to say.
If you could interview any pony, who would you do, and what would it be about?
Me: Twilight, and the Elements of Harmony
If everypony's fair game, though, probably Celestia - I'd prefer to speak to Luna, but Celestia has more experience teaching, and I'd want to make the most of my one interview. I imagine Celestia would know pretty much everything that Twilight could tell me, as well as fill in more of the kingdom's history.
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
I play a 3.5 campaign on Roll20, our party consists of me, the Changeling Chaos Mage (homebrew class) A human druid, a kitsune rogue, a draconian bard, and as of last week, a human fighter. We have spent most of the campaign doing tasks for this well dressed gentleman, who we stumbled upon after prctically destroying his castle that he had full of bandits, as we had now essentially became his errand runners. He had three tasks for us, the first to destroy a certain book(which my fire-loving mage was on top of, and we were now tasked with retreiving a bar of aurorum from the city prison.s confiscation room. We spend several days planning out this operation, me of course looking to join a cult of Erythnul (and succeeding), finding a guard, interrogating him, and pouring an acid flask down his throat after convincing him it was all a dream. Fast forward three hours and we are in phase 3 of Operation Nightwing (this was the name of the whole plan that my character came up with) The rogue and I stage assault on a city guard (me having taken the form of the guard we interrogated, and who
s fingers i cut off to get into afore-mentioned cult)and getting to the prison.
We were a rag-tag crew of a transport ship that ships/smuggles stuff for money. First, we had space mercs attacking us to get back our Orion who was an escaped slave from a wealthy owner. Then the mysterious "Section 38" of the Federation was after our logistics officer because apparently he was sold to a client for his organs and there were no refunds. Turns out Section 38 was being paid off by a wealthy Ferengi company for the stuff we were transporting, which we thought was just computer tech, but it was illegal computer tech and the organs were just a lucky bonus. But then a Terminator from the future set up the Ferengi so he can use the illegal tech to create a neutron bomb to kill all life in several star systems.
At this point we lost track of the part of the plot that involved our helmsman and our doctor, so we pretty much gave up.
Sorry, had to do that.
Confused, look at title.
In a previous game, they had found a pile of gold that was bewitched to look like fake chocolate coins. So they went looking for a wizard to take off the illusion. They heard about a wizard that some village was afraid of. They raided his lair, finally got to the top of the tower...and killed the wizard.
I don't know why I expected anything else.
My only question is how long it'll be before it comes to a grinding halt.
Yeah, I would take real good care of my guinea pigs.
I mean friends.
You scoop the gills out of some nice big shiitake mushrooms, and stir fry the gills with meat and veggies. When it's done, turn the shiitake caps over and use the raw caps as small bowls for the stir fry.
It turned out to be that an adventuring party had been doing the "Scooby Doo" bit to make sure no civilians got involved while a dungeon was being cleared out.
Once upon a time, there was a magical kingdom. In this magical kingdom, there were great beasts made of iron and glass. They roared with rage and fury at their servitude to old masters. The masters had subdued the beasts. They had carved out their insides so they could use them as beasts of burden. They drilled holes in the beasts' necks and put rods in them, so they might control their movements. They put spurs on them, to make them run faster. The masters used harsh chemicals to paint the beasts as their whims dictated. It pleased the masters to put harnesses on the beasts' hearts, to weaken them and slow them down. Sometimes, they would stop the mighty heart when they had no need of the beast's service, and would revive the beast when they did need it.
"One day, something terrible happened. A beast resisted the command of its master. It would not slow down. It would not turn as it was commanded. The master was helpless as the beast ran right off a cliff. Master and beast alike perished.
"That's when they were called. The guard investigated And found that the harness on the beast's heart had been sabotaged. The rod in its neck cut. Another master had done this. But how-
"Raxon, if you don't shut up, I'm going to put you back in the box! Look, the brake ties and tie rods were cut. Stop monologuing and help!"
"AND THE MASTER WAS MAN!"
"That's it!'" *thunk*
"Wow, he's finally quiet. But was the bat really necessary?"
"Yes. Yes it was."
"I just set out to deliver a package."
Yes, Fluttershy. Yes, she can:
http://capnpea.tumblr.com/post/31102838876/scootaloos-rainy-day-fullview
It was a Pathfinder side session (appropriately for this story arc). I was an Alchemist (day job) Rogue/Bard (class), and my partner was a Kender. She eventually borrowed something from an ongoing chemical experiment without asking, which resulted in some sort of grey, clay-like substance that didn't dry out. The way I remember it: OOC, I recognized the detailed descriptions as C4. In-character, it took about three months and the DM just /giving/ me an extra Sparks scroll on the condition that I used it to test the material to realize that the seemingly inert material I'd been testing with magical fire, chemicals, and kinetic force was reactive to tamed lightning. In-character, about half of our stuff was inside the blast radius. Had it not just been a side campaign with one-shot characters, the next session would have likely included a shopping spree and a trip to every rich vacationer's house in the country. All this from a game that was supposed to be about killing Kobolds, giving me a feel for Bardic magic, and giving the other player a non-canon chance to play a Kender.
Thinking back, I probably shouldn't have tried to use it as chewing chicle before testing how it reacted to saliva.