Friday, April 1, 2011

Kort, the World's Weakest Kobold

Ah, Kort, my old friend... it has been several years since Kort's first appearance, cowering bravely in the ruined kitchen that the other members of his gens had told him to clean up and use to get dinner ready...

This was first edition AD&D and Kort had a hit point, a cleaver, and a grubby chef's hat.

Kort was also the only monster that the party talked to in that entire game.

He was, quite simply, described as "too pathetic to kill".

And he was. Weak, feeble, kind of stupid, barely any common sense... Kort was the only character in that game who was guaranteed to kill himself in one hit (which gave rise to a description of Synnibarr as "The game where everyone is Kort", years later).

The weird thing is, he was really fun to play.

He sniveled, he closed his eyes and waved his cleaver at the PCs in a desperate attempt to defend his "turf", and then the PCs were nice to him and gave him a measure of respect.

Kort now owns and operates a grand restaurant in the kingdom's capital city.

I once thought about re-making Kort in Third Edition D&D, but realised that he would be far more powerful than he should be and abandoned the idea.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is an interesting thing about talking to monsters. For some reason in my last session I had them do nothing but talk to all the monsters in the dungeon (well, there was one fight, but the players soon realized that they could not question dead orcs). It was a success, in a way. it just kept them from killing all the other monsters in the place because all of a sudden these might be cruel and annoying characters instead of xp in packaging. On the other hand I might say that it was a failure for the same reason.

Lucas Kain said...

We miss you, Kort! :(

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