Okay: caveat. I've played Whitebox a few times, and never really 'got it'. Tavis sometimes gave out really awesome stuff, but I usually miss it due to my own infrequency and poor timing, or so I thought.
Last night, I watched in drooling amazement as we used Polymorph Other to make two party members into twin androsphinxes to combat another above, in elusive cloud cover. More than this, Tavis was allowing Chrystos to assassinate, render himself back invisible, go back into combat, etc. In fact, he's practically perpetually invisible. A God of Death (with no worshippers, because the PCs killed them all) asked a request of a PC (Ookla) to leave a magic item that the God didn't like (Ookla's magic sword) behind in exchange for the what the PC considered his core desire from the sword. But I still didn't get it until I came home and asked Tavis via email:
Question about polymorph other:
Why not recruit first level adventurers and polymorph them into sphinxes, fire giants, etc?
What is the mechanical difference between a lvl 3 fire giant and a lvl 3 fighting man polymorphed into a fire giant?
Can one be a medusa magic user?Thanks for addressing these power hungry questions. I am, as always, looking for exploits.
(Please note my mistake here: I forget to ask how different they are from a real fire giant. Fortunately, Tavis answers this for me.)
Tavis replies:
I think the reason you don't polymorph random first level guys is that you can't trust them not to use that power to turn on you - either because that was their plan already or as their mentality gets taken over by the polymorphed form. Individual PCs have special abilities, but the Gray Company as a whole has a remarkable ability to meet strangers and determine whether they are loyal allies or potentially treacherous others, and then understand one another's intentions and coordinate actions.
I am less concerned about exploits than about balance. Turning the new PCs into bad ass monsters is an elegant way to make them relevant even in a party with dudes who can cast polymorph. I killed Maldoor once with an enemy mage polymorphed into a purple worm, so this is an arms race I began.
My current ruling is that there is no mechanical difference between a full-time fire giant and a first level guy polymorphed to be one. This is partly because I want to give third level dudes a chance to not be reminded of their relative weakness vs. the rest of the party, and partly because saying form dictates all is a good way to avoid other problems like where you use polymorph other to turn a fire giant into a mosquito but then it still takes 70 points of damage to squash him.
I would say a medusa mage can cast spells but not a purple worm one, you need speech etc.
Tavis plays fair with all these considerations, he imagines where ideas could be more fun or less fun for you (though he did hint that if I played a medusa magic user, I might be 'stoning' PCs—this isn't really a big deterrent for me.) Chrystos often carouses for new crazy stuff that occurs to him, potions never designed before..
The Whitebox is where the DM is allowing the game to bloat however you want. Your reasoning and abilities and ambitions are the only limits. If you come into the game with gonzo ideas with just a lowercase 'g', that's what you get. But he won't refuse those capital 'G' requests as well, if the reasoning behind it is sound. This is unlike any D&D game in our canon, and almost like an indie RPG of Sorcerer in some regards. I wasn't missing loot (though I was), I was missing daring to dream what I really wanted by flipping through the monster manual as a kid: awesome monster PCs!!
I'm reminded of meeting my best friend for the first time, I was new to D&D, and I flipped through his character sheets from the D&D power games he played in, and he told me of a player who was the golden minotaur, his own character, Sauron (the eye of mordor kind, not the hypnotizing pterandon) was drawn like Venger from the D&D cartoon series (really well, I might add), he had written his own custom spell, Phaser Strike, a 9th level spell for downing starships, or perhaps as a means of making him a one-man turret on an existing space barge, I wasn't sure.
But by the time I joined, all the gamers who typically played this way left, along with their DMs. Power gaming wasn't dealt with kindly by the crop of DMs I played with, we were typically all snuffed out or left drooling by Cthulhoid horrors
The Whitebox PCs got a spaceship last night (I missed it, though). Amazing! I think I'm going to ask my friend to undust his old ideas and come on down (if the person count for the game is less than 10, I think.)