This deal concerns a rather unusual situation. It’s not that it’s particularly hard, in itself, but that there just isn’t an easy way to explain how the hero got in this situation. Anyway, rather than trying to reverse engineer the problem, just figure out how to deal with it.
Our hero stands on a bridge running North to South across a flooded ravine running East to West. To the North, travel is prevented by The Black Knight. Armed and ready, he stands sworn to his standard ‘None Shall Pass.’
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To the South stands The Bunny. Both are to be considered an ‘edged’ threat. North’s reach is longer than most, but South is just Death on Roller Skates once he gets going.
To the East, a Bridge Troll waits in waist-deep water for either the Hero or tasty parts thereof to fall or be thrown over the side.
To the West, a strange shadowy figure lurks just out of clear view in the water.
The solution to this contact depends on the level and attitude of the Hero.
If it were Lancelot, for example, he’d just charge in the direction of the first threat noted and hack it into tasty meat snacks for the local vermin. Let’s examine this tactic for a moment. North is sworn against passage, not against anything else. So if L attacks South, North will not attack from the rear. South is sworn to nothing, but tends to leave people alone unless attacked. So, again, if L attacks North, South will not attack from the rear. East cannot reach anything on the bridge, and West may or may not be able to. But as long as it merely lurks, if our hero has the skill level to defeat one or the other opponent on the bridge, he can gain freedom through that defeat.
The trouble with that plan is that North remains largely undefeated except by King Arthur who weilded the mystical sword Excalibur, and South can handle himself against any known number of explosive- deprived knights.
Less swaggering heroes might conclude that any polar-oriented attack path is doomed to a painful, painful failure. A veteran player would probably have a decent chance against East, though. A few missile weapons to soften him up, something shiny to distract him (like Gold Coins or a Fireblast spell), then a short melee and escape up the Ravine. North and South are almost certain to leave the hero alone during this effort, the only question is the lurking shadow to the West.
If the hero has a veteran player, that shadow should worry him…a lot. There’s no telling what it is, how it will react, or what sort of threat it might be at your back. To the good, it’s not attacking the troll, to the bad it might be because some sort of restraint prevents it from reaching where East is standing, but it would have no problem reaching the spot where someone fighting East would stand…
And if the Game Master is a veteran GM, it should scare the player silly. Whatever the worst thing you can imagine being West might be, rest assured that once you’ve committed yourself to doing anything, it’ll be far, far worse. If you jump in to face it, it’ll turn out to be the Thing from the Dark Deeps, the mere thought of which makes Cthulu sleep with a night light. If you shoot it, it’ll turn out to be the mermaid princess that was going to rescue you except for the fact that you put a crossbow bolt through her gills. Cast ‘Lower Water’ to get a look at it, and the exposure to air will release the pent-up energy of a thousand fireballs. Raise Water and the fresh-water Kraken will finally have the room it needs to float above the paralyzing weeds keeping it from plucking you off the bridge as an appetizer before eating East, North and South. Freeze the water to capture it, and the trapped demon will finally be able to get a good enough grasp on the walls of its watery prison to escape and, of course, eat your face.
Of course, if you’re playing a Munchkin character, you cast a 1000-die fireball somewhere beyond your opponent to the South. If Bunny survives the explosion, he’s blasted to the North (you duck) and ends up fighting North in a Battle Royale to end all BR’s. The shock of the explosion gives the Bunny a slight disadvantage at the beginning, which North will exploit for all it’s worth. You open a Neverending White-water Rapids bottle aimed at East and flush the dang thing to the next time zone where it’s eaten by the flying piranha you specially bred and added to the waters in the NEWWR bottle. As the creator of the FP’s, you claim the experience points for the troll they ate, and any other person, animal or watercraft they come across in the area you just unleashed them into. Then you rush North, where North and South have, at the very least, knocked each other down to a few hit points. Slitting their weakened throats, you claim full EXP for the both of them. Then you don gloves-of-, girdle-of-, bracers-of-, retainer-of- and mithril-toed boots-of-Storm-Giant-Strength and leap into the water to the West, wrestling whatever it was to death. (If told it’s a mermaid princess, you ask if her being royalty increases her EXP value.)
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