From: “Jeremy Belton” gilok@mint.net
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: The REAL reason for the demon/devil name change
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 04:58:43 -0400
I posted this once before, but it was buried in a thread so some of you may not have read my wisdom.
This is the REAL dirt on the names. See, Demogorgon and some of the other demons got together one night and said, “You know what'd be a good prank to play on those stuffy devils who always get mad when we cheat a little at our bridge games? Lets get all those yokels in Sigil to call them something stupid.” And so, they sent Bob the Balor to sigil, cleverly disguised as a pit fiend, and before too long, everyone was spreading the word that devils were actually called Baatezu, which means, in the tongue of devils, “small, fuzzy, and pink.” Asmodeus got word of this, and poor sport that he is, said, “Oh yeah? Well two can play at this game.” And so Bubba the Pit Fiend got sent to Sigil announcing that the true name of the demons was Ta'nari, meaning “Those who molest gerbils” in the tongue of the Abyss. Demogorgon, getting pissed, yelled over the fence at Asmodeus, “Hey, dammit, that was going to far. And why did you start those idiots talking so stupid, anyway? All that “berk” stuff is just annoying.” Asmodeus replied, “Oh, bite me.” And thus, my friends, was the Blood War started.
Jeremy Belton
From: Steve Riese srr5x@node6.unix.Virginia.EDU
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 10:39:02 -0400
On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, [me] wrote:
Who was the wise guy who listed dolphins in the MM with an average INT of 19? Are they saying that the average dolphin is more intelligent than 9,999,999/10,000,000 humans (or whatever it is. I don't want to bother calculating the standard deviation)?
All real-world animals in the MM are given way too much intelligence. I'd say that all non-mammals, and most mammals, would have an INT of 1. I might give a 2 to dolphins and chimpanzees. In a human-based intelligence measurement, that's about as high as they'd get.
Good point. I agree. I mean, what PC with 19 INT would be stupid enough to end up in a can of tuna?
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 1999 09:46:45 -0400
From: [me]
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd
Subject: Re: Dolphins and whatnot
On 27 Aug 1999, Jason Etheridge wrote:
I'm willing to bet that a dolphin doesn't get caught in a net twice, even if the thing is transparent to sonar.
What are the chances that any given fish will get caught in a net twice? If one in a 10,000 dolphins gets caught in a net, that means there's a one in a hundred million chance that a particular dolphin will get caught twice.