Tropers / Captainmarkle

Hello. My name here is "captainmarkle", although I hate that name and usually use different ones on other platforms. I am a troper from England (he/him) I spend too much time watching most things related to Outside Xbox. I also love the works of Terry Pratchett. Sometimes I watch Soviet Womble.

Launched the following pages:

• Rooster Teeth awesome page.
• TF Armada Character Sheet
• CaptainSparklez
• The Funny page for SeaNanners
• Area 11's Funny page
• Area 11's Heartwarming Page
• The Escape Artist plus subpages
• The character sheet for LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
  • And the same for LEGO Batman
• The pages for Strippin and Turpster (this was before Turps was expelled for sexual harassment)
• The page for Daithi De Nogla
• The page for Jayuzumi
• The YMMV page for Murder!
• Page for ''Falskaar, plus YMMV page.
• The character page for The Oxventure

Launched/helped to launch the following tropes:

• Animal Espionage (took over, launched and indexed)
• Bleak Border Base (added multiple examples, launched after the draft stayed unedited for two years, and indexed)
• Mook Depletion (took over)
• Mouthing the Profanity (took over, launched and indexed)
• The Vietnam Vet (provided numerous examples, launched and indexed; credit should also go to Walter Smith and ayjazz)

This is a series of tropes for the mod Wyrmstooth, which is another mod I hope to make a page for.

Wyrmstooth Main Page

"The East Empire Company commissions the Dragonborn to slay a dragon that is interrupting trade routes throughout Skyrim. But is the dragon stirring up trouble with a particular reason and is there something more sinister behind it?"

—Official mod description on the mod's Nexus page

Wyrmstooth is a popular mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It is set on the island of the same name, not far from the coast of Tamriel. It adds roughly twenty to thirty hours of gameplay, a totally new region, unique puzzles, new items, a series of new spells and shouts, a large and fully-voiced main cast plus several new dungeons and a new soundtrack suited to the area.

The quest begins for characters at level 10 and above after they have been summoned by the Greybeards in the main quest line. Theodyn Bienne, an Imperial courier, will track down the Dragonborn starting from the Bannered Mare in Whiterun and will deliver them a very important message. The task seems quite simple for the Dragonborn: slay a dragon that's stirring up trouble with shipping in the area.

But things don't go that easily...

The mod has been generally well-received. It is available on Nexus, as well as the Steam workshop.

This mod contains examples of:

• Action Survivor: Ja'Shavi-Dar, a Khajiit salesman that somehow survives the attack on the settlement despite not being remotely combat-trained.
• Army Of The Dead: Vulthurkrah's plan is to raise one of these, so as to weaken Tamriel enough for dragons to take over again.
• Badass Bookworm: Alberthor is a seemingly simple mage, but he proves quite versatile with his spells, and uses his mind-control spell to possess a Falmer warrior and help you clear a dungeon.
• Batman Gambit: Vulthurkrah's plan. By evading the mercenaries and Dragonborn after disrupting supply lines, the East Empire Company are sufficiently frustrated that they decide to send in the Imperial Legion. He's counting on this, however, since his plan is to massacre them with the reanimated bodies of dead adventurers and then raise their corpses to be his army of the undead. While the forces of Tamriel weary themselves trying to take down this sudden new threat, the dragons then swoop in and take over once more.
• Big Bad: Vulthurkrah, the dragon that the East Empire Company have been trying to hunt down.
• Big Bad Wannabe: The Thalmor send a team of agents to the island, but when Alberthor sends the Dragonborn to hunt them down it becomes clear that their plan has gone horribly wrong.
• Boss Rush: During the main quest, you and the mercenaries get attacked by no less than three dragons, each attacking not long after the other. To compensate, they aren't that strong.
• Continuity Nod: The Civil War questline is given a nod by Hulgar, who notes that he isn't terribly interested in Skyrim's affairs.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: So as to prevent the quest from being finished in five seconds, Vulthurkrah is immune to damage in his first few appearances and also cannot be affected by "Dragonrend".
• Disproportionate Retribution: Shargam threatens to kill the Dragonborn for asking them questions.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Averted with Lurius and some of the Mining Settlement's citizens, who will praise you for saving them.
• Dude, Where's My Reward?: After the main quest is finished, the mercenaries hired to help you have individual quests you can complete... but they only reward 200 gold each. Most of them are at least grateful.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While Vulthurkrah's the Big Bad of the quest, a secondary quest has you recover the bones of a Dragon Priest, Vulom, who unsurprisingly turns on you and then plans to take over the island by using you as a thrall. He has the skill to back it up, too, but isn't tied in with the main quest.
• Hates Small Talk: Shargam, who threatens to kill you for talking to him.
• Honest Corporate Executive: Lurius Liore is a decent person and a high-ranking member of the East Empire Company.
• Knight in Sour Armour: Most of the mercenaries as well as Theodyn Bienne, who are committed to stopping the dragon but are incredibly dour.
• Loan Shark: Shargam's personal quest has you kill a Nord named Ulfgar, simply because he didn't pay up.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: If not for Vulthurkrah's disrupting the East Empire Company's supply lines, it's unlikely that his plan to reanimate legions of undead would have been discovered until it was too late. Then again, this was part of his plan.
• Necromancer: Vulthurkrah is capable of raising many zombies at once, and reckons himself capable of raising an entire legion.
• Non-Action Guy: Lurius Liore is more of a planner and businessman than a combatant, and so he tends to get out of the way in a fight.
• Noodle Incident: Elmera did something to get thrown out the College of Whispers, but what precisely happened is not specified.
• Obviously Evil: It should be fairly evident that the being asking the Dragonborn to reassemble their body is not someone trustworthy.
• Only Sane Man: Of the four mercenaries hired by the East Empire Company, Athir appears to be the only one not dealing with some serious issues. Compared to Daenlit (who clearly is suffering from some sort of PTSD due to her fight against the Thalmor), Shargam (an unrepentant Blood Knight with a serious Hair-Trigger Temper) and Elmera (who is a Cloud Cuckoolander), he's level-headed and clearly focused on what is happening.
• Retired Badass: Should you purchase Fort Valus off Lurius, your steward mentions that she used to be in the Legion, which helped her fight off twenty bandits by herself. She's a little angry that she has to do most of the hard work while the Dragonborn travels across the island.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Daenlit's past fight against the Thalmor has left her with some sort of PTSD and made her deeply cynical.
• Squishy Wizard: Very much averted by Vulom, who not only hits like a ton of bricks but can take as much damage as he deals out.
• Take Over the World:
  • This is the plan of Vulthurkrah, after the Zombie Apocalypse weakens Tamriel.
  • Downplayed with Vulom, who mentions taking over Wyrmstooth but does not mention the rest of Tamriel.
• Token Evil Teammate: While most of the mercenary band are simply mercenaries, most of them can be considered good or "neutral" at worst. However, Shargam, the token Orc, is an unrepentant Blood Knight that constantly threatens to kill you if you annoy him. Should you take his personal quest, he has you off a random Nord named Ulfgar in Markarth simply because he owed Shagram money.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Unsurprisingly, Vulom elects to kill the player after they have done as asked.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Vulom elects to kill the player when they have done as asked.
• Zombie Apocalypse: It turns out that Vulthurkrah is planning to unleash one of these upon Tamriel, by luring the Imperial Legion out, massacring them with the bodies of many undead adventurers and then setting the zombies loose on the world. The effort of dealing with one of these is meant to buy the dragons time to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to the world of Mer and Man.

Wyrmstooth YMMV

• Anti-Climax Boss: The final fight against Vulthurkrah is considered a little underwhelming. While he's hardly easy to beat, he's essentially just a named dragon.
• Game-Breaker: After defeating Vulom, you gain a staff that allows you to summon him as a shade. Summoning him alone can kill most difficult enemies, both from the vanilla game and other mods, in mere seconds.
• That One Sidequest: "Wrap Me Up", in which Alberthor asks the player to gather eight wisp wrappings. Not particularly hard, but it takes time, in no small part due to no Wisp Mothers spawning on the island.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The final boss fight against Vulthurkrah doesn't use the plot point of him resurrecting the undead, even with the few corpses in the mining settlement.

The following are tropes related to the "Shoggy the Seldom Dog" stories, for which I hope to launch a page sometime.

Shoggy Main Page

"I’d like to share the story of one of my favorite NPCs: a party pet called Shoggy the Seldom Dog. A friendly dog that randomly polymorphed every few hours."

—Opening line of the post that started it all

The "Shoggy the Seldom Dog" saga is a collection of stories from the same Dungeons & Dragons campaign, run by the same Game Master who would later run The All Guardsman Party. The most famous story, as the title would imply, is that of the party pet named Shoggy, a shapeshifting dog, though other stories like "Tommy the Bard" and "Shane the Sly" also exist from the same continuity.

Tropes applying to the campaign:

• Arch-Enemy: Shane the Shy becomes this to the party, to the point they dedicate a sizeable amount of time into hunting him down. Then when that fails, they make serious preparation.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: This hit Tommy the Bard in multiple ways when his player asked the DM to tone down Tommy's skills when they were deemed to be too powerful for the campaign. As OP put it, this was like asking a Jackass Genie to word your wish for you, allowing them to screw you over hard:
  • Many of the traits meant to make Tommy so awesome were kept, but received a Nerf that gave them, for example, 50% chances to backfire; OP notes that the revised rules weren't that harsh, but that Tommy's player was too reckless and new to make them pay as they were now worded.
  • One of the traits Tommy wanted was to be more recognisable based off his past exploits and description of his alleara. While the DM had to tone down many of the more zany, overpowered traits (in ways that came to bite Tommy in the arse), this one didn't change, if only because Tommy's player hadn't realised how badly he could be screwed over.
• Big Bad: Though multiple threats are described, including a Red Dragon planning to invade a kingdom with an army, the ultimate, most personal threat ends up being Shane the Shy, a "Get Back Here!" Boss who was The Man Behind the Man to multiple plots and disasters. Once the party kills him and wipes out his list of associates, they note the world becomes a slightly better place.
• Canine Companion: Shoggy, the Team Pet... although he didn't stay that way for too long.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: It was extremely rare for Shoggy to actually fight, even when in a form that would have made him borderline unstoppable, so the only occasions he did (aside from thinking Treants were moving sticks when he was enormous) were when some Too Dumb to Live enemies cornered him and he happened to be considerably stronger than they were.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • The eponymous Team Pet would very rarely fight anything, but any time he did, woe betide his enemies.
  • Tommy the Bard, who was a spectacular tool and a tad reckless, but also a surprisingly deadly force.
• Difficult, but Awesome: OP notes Tommy's unique traits were this post-Nerf and that they'd probably have worked well in a more experienced player's hands, or a conservative play-style. Unfortunately, Tommy was neither conservative nor experienced.
• Dumbass No More: Zigzagged Trope in the case of "Tommy the Bard"; the character remained an insufferable tool until his death by multiple poisoned arrows, but his player developed into a good role-player with smart use of tactics and the DM was genuinely proud of him for this.
• For the Evulz: The party, upon capturing Shane, interrogates him for information and a reason why he's causing so much chaos, thinking it might be a geas from an evil deity... Nope. He just woke up one day and decided it'd be fun to sow chaos by luring monsters in, starting civil wars or backing any warlord wannabe that might get somewhere.
• Gender Bender: Shoggy was a male dog by default, but on at least one occasion morphed into a female elf.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Shane, AKA "Shane the Sly Shy", who never once fought for himself but always seems to have multiple escape routes planned and used before the party can get close. It takes them months to track him down and put him down for good. Once the game was finally over, they discovered the GM had invested in nothing but skills for helping him run away, levelling him up as the player characters did.
• Groin Attack:
  • Tommy the Bard on at least one occasion fell crotch-first onto a chamberpot as the result of a Critical Failure roll.
  • The result of a Chaotic Neutral warlock attempting to have sex with Shoggy when Shoggy transformed into a female elf, only for Shoggy to emergency-transform into a porcupine.
• Hypocrite: One of the players who joined but didn't stay - referred to as "that guy" - used a Chaotic Neutral warlock character, which promptly attempted to have sex with Shoggy when he transformed into a female elf. When the Kobold cleric healed said Warlock from the ensuing Groin Attack and gave a lecture on morality, "that guy" called the entire party "dog-fucking faggots" [sic] and stormed off in real-life... completely oblivious to the fact that his character literally attempted to bed a (transformed and unwilling) dog. Lampshaded in the thread where the story was being told, where OP even admits he has no idea what "that guy" was talking about.
• Killer Game Master: OP notes that the DM, while being firm but fair on many matters, ended up killing quite a few of the party off; anyone familiar with The All Guardsmen Party will recognise this. With that said, he was seemingly fond of Shoggy and gave him some degree of Plot Armour.
• Morality Pet: The group had people of varying alignments, but almost all of them treated Shoggy as this, which meant the pet-sitter search was long and arduous. Even the GM, who was noted for high-mortality games, gave Shoggy some degree of Plot Armour (though he advised the party this was limited) and refused to incorporate any mechanics that would make him, for instance, transform into a fish in the desert.
• Papa Wolf: The party bard, Tommy, ends up bedding two women one evening and then trying to de-escalate an angry mob the very next morning. Thanks to Tommy's special rules, he is identified as having bedded Jenny, to which he retorts "it was Jenny and Samantha". It just so happens that the guard captain is present and that the two women happened to be his niece and daughter... this twist of fate, combined with a failed diplomacy role which had the town believe he actually practiced bestiality, and the bard was very lucky to escape with his life.
• Pet the Dog: Shoggy was the main source of this trope in the campaign. Even the Stupid Evil thief and Killer Game Master were quite fond of him.
• Properly Paranoid: Shane the Shy, eventual Big Bad for the game, has no shortage of magical items and escape passages he's willing to deploy, which saves his life on many occasions.
• Reality Ensues:
  • As it turns out, being recognisable based on your past exploits is a seriously bad survival trait when adventuring, as Tommy the Bard discovers fatally.
  • Shoggy's escapades start as amusing, but the party eventually have to get him a permanent and experienced pet-sitter because as funny as it is, he risks killing them all. Finding said pet-sitter also takes quite a while, as not many people are prepared for, or willing to deal with, a polymorphing pet; at least one group of druids view him as an abomination and recommend euthanising him.
  • Nobody entirely believes the party that Shane is responsible for so much evil, so they take a reputation hit. On a positive note, things do at least start to improve in the world after his death.
• Stupid Evil: The party thief who joined up at one point is noted by OP as being stupid (and unwilling to learn from his mistakes) to mind blowing degrees, notably pissing off his fellow thieves by serving as The Stool Pigeon, while also conning the clergy and trying to swindle anyone he comes across. He was also notably lax on camp security, which almost resulted in him being kidnapped and brainwashed by some scions. Ultimately, he plans a theft on the wizards college which backfires and forces him into early retirement; none of the party desperately miss him, except for Shoggy.
• Taught by Experience: The various escapades Shoggy gets up to cause the party to adapt their plans accordingly, though even as they do there tends to be something else they weren't prepared for:
  • Misunderstanding how his transformations work (they think he always turns back into a dog after transforming once) means he causes a riot when he turns from a goat into a troll. Result: the party agrees that he needs to remain hidden in towns or villages from that point on, leading to...
  • The party later hires a warehouse that Shoggy can be hidden in. They unfortunately don't account for his barking when bored and alone, which is fine for a dog but attracts more attention if it's a magical creature like a basilisk. A bunch of hippie style rangers and druids break in to free him and things go From Bad to Worse from there. Result: Shoggy is agreed not to come into towns unless absolutely necessary, and will stay with anyone camping outside the town who is Persona Non Grata to the location.

CM writeup drafts

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