Loot from St. Vinnie's

I picked up a couple of cheap Mary Stewart books from the second-hand store, as well as some old Dark Horse Conans for a buck each. The comics are ok but they really make me appreciate my Savage Sword compilation even more.

I’d made a quick stop there on a hunch I’d find something Doug Easterly had posted about over at his blog: a Magic Eightball, from which I could harvest the twenty sided “die” inside with various fortunes on its faces. My wife was along and skeptical, but I never lost faith that they’d have one. They did, for another buck.

My idiot mistake was not thinking that I could simply huck it at the concrete in my driveway to extricate the thing. Oh no. The mistake was not first putting it into a plastic bag before doing so. Because you see, on the second attempt it did indeed dislodge the transparent plastic lens, allowing the die to exit. It also let loose the watery, blue-dyed oil which (though some got on my shoes) mostly ended up all over the carport and my wife’s car. Fortunately it wasn’t permanent, although I had bank robber hands for the rest of the day.

Here’s a picture of the little bastard:I think I got the cheap, later version.

Rubbing alcohol cleaned it up pretty well - I’ll repaint it to make the text easier to read. I plan on it using it when a superstitious porter occasionally takes out his “sticks of telling” to see what they say.

"Hey, There's Something Different About These Orcs..." (d20)

d20 Table of Odd Orcs

1. Obviously blind (but pretending not to be).
2. Speak with a Scottish accent.
3. Drink tea. Use silverware.
4. Totally high on dungeon fungus.
5. Moss suckers - afraid of water.
6. Stay well away from anyone with a ten foot pole.
7. Wearing dapper hats.
8. Knife cult: Only use knives as weapons. Tolerate those who carry knives. Admire those with fancy or magical knives. Scorn those who don’t like knives or use weapons other than knives. Knives. Knives. Knives! They really like knives.
9. Wearing expensive, fashionable dresses.
10. Vegan, dirt-worshipping pacifists.
11. Coin eating Xorn worshippers.
12. All carry copies of a little red book entitled “Underground Equality” written in gnomish.
13. Tracheotomies apparently the latest fad in orken body art.
14. Sing taunts in a dramatic opera-like fashion when attacking (a la Ring of the Nibulung)
15. Best looking orcs you’ve ever seen. Still ugly though - just sayin’! Smell nice too.
16. Zebra striped. Highly contagious.
17. "You guys play boneball?" Totally obsessed with some strange sport.
18. STONE DEAF FROM WATERFALL IN NEARBY ROOM
19. Mumblers.
20. All have the same tattoo of a hot elf chick.

Rolling more than once is encouraged.

The Riddle of the Three Runes

A subject that comes up irregularly at the weekly magic users’ tea party in Domme is the Riddle of the Three Runes. Whoever originally devised the runes is lost to antiquity, but for several years now the social gatherings at the home of Geronymous have been plagued by this curse. In essence, three plain looking runes, when simply placed next to one another in a certain order, arouse in all magic users who behold them (or hear them pronounced) a nearly irresistible need to argue for the lesser or greater importance of one of the symbols and how it relates to their shared occupation. Like a bad case of dungeon funk, the riddle seems to never quite go away, and rears its ugly head most often when a gathering’s banter has begun to wane or become an awkward silence. Once the subject’s been broached, the effect dominates the rest of the social and continues preventing any kind of productive communication between affected magic users for several (d6) days.

The true nature of these runes are known to only a few (those who have made their saving throw at -8). Of course, this cannot be communicated to anyone else (not even to those who have also successfully made their saving throw). What seems a riddle is really a curse: whether read or heard, the effect is also viral, and if one has become infected, he becomes a carrier. From then on, whenever two or more magic users are gathered, there is a 2% cumulative chance per person that the Riddle of the Three Runes will be mentioned yet again.

Sadly, even those who successfully make their saving throw against it are only immune for about a year.

A Zoo is a Dungeon Too

I was considering Zoopocalypse again the other night, and then started thinking about a zoo’s similarity to our games’ dungeon - its winding paths that lead to exhibits is rather like a dungeon's tunnels, leading to larger chambers and creatures perhaps never seen before… The fun of discovering something new in a zoo visit is something like what we create with dungeon crawls, enhanced with an element of supposed danger.

So I went looking for some zoo maps online and ended up getting totally carried away, downloading one after another to look at more closely for inspiration in creating my own maps later. Some inspire with their art and design; perspective, cut-away views, and colors being used to provide ease of navigation and more information. Others I could even see GIMP’ing, replacing the animal descriptions and icons with monsters, and turning the whole thing into a dungeon.

I went through just about every major zoo’s website in the U.S. and Canada I could easily find, downloaded their maps, and merged them into one gigantic PDF. I put in some interesting aquarium maps that I found along the way too, but I had to leave a lot out due to poor resolution. You can download it on Scribd if interested.

Post-Punk Musical Intermission. "We just do our stuff."

My next DM-beer-conversion music. If you enjoyed that and haven't yet seen the videos below, high hilarity coming your way...

The Cook: A Gonzo Class by John Anon

A couple summers back I purchased a large D&D collection I’d found via Craigslist. I spent a few hundred bucks on it but it turned out to be quite a score - probably the best items were the Tradervale, and a Tegel Manor. Some of the collection I sold on eBay and elsewhere to recover the initial cost.

The previous owner had also included many of his own campaign materials and though I quickly looked through them, they weren't that interesting to me at the time. So they went into a corner of my office where they've been gathering dust. Last week I took them out again, and found a copy of The Living Greyhawk Journal with a very nice pull out map of the city of Greyhawk.

Then, between some character sheets, I found a stapled version of a class he’d typed up and entitled “The Cook”, complete with level progression, weapon and armor restrictions, and a host of magic spells he refers to as “recipes”. There’s reference to mana on the bottom of the first page which I don’t fully grok - is this a class for GURPS? I’ve never played it - the only game I’ve played with mana is Galloway’s HLFW.

It’s pretty silly stuff - check out that spell list! I’d credit him here but no longer remember his full name (it was John something - a veterinarian who lived on the Oregon coast). So for your edification and amusement, I present John Anon’s “The Cook Class”...
The Cook Class

Last Minute Gift Idea...

Or they're ornaments... (see last post). Just scale them up. Punch a hole through opposite sides on the "top", run a wire through, and there you have it. Here's mine:

Um, we actually don't have a tree this year. This Mother-in-Law's Tongue plant will have to do. :^P

Download Yer Dice (d10's)

I'd give you all real dice if I could, but these are the best I can manage. Click the thumbnail above to download. Open in GIMP or Photoshop and personalize beforehand if you like (there's another version here with circles around the numbers for better readability)... Construction instructions:

• Print on index card or heavy weight paper. Do not scale/make sure scaling is at 100%.
Dexterity checks:
• Cut out with scissors and/or razor.
• Lightly score with razor on lines and where black flaps attach to die faces. Gently fold your new cut out model along these scored lines.
• Glue larger black folds on either half first. Place small amount of glue on smaller black flaps. Take a deep breath and close the two halves of the die together, making sure the small flaps are tucked in and are each touching an adjacent edge. Hold for several seconds (exhale). Blow on completed die for a half minute to make sure it'll hold. Voila!

I used the plasma effect in GIMP and they came out looking like this:
Rather festive I thought. But how would they hold up to those Gamescience dice to the left of 'em? In my quick, non-scientific 100 roll test, the variance was 26 again - same as the last time with my slightly larger prototype (Chessex was 24 and GS was 22). It was kind of fun to test with some eggnog and bourbon on the side. Happy Holidays everyone! Party on.

Updated 12-25-10: I put a bunch of colored examples up here.

Do-It-Yourself D10

Our video chat game was canceled tonight due to a player’s hard drive failure, so I had some time to goof around and made another paper die. I’d been thinking about how to make a d10 - definitely harder than my previous paper d8. I decided to make it a little larger than normal for ease of cutting and folding. It had to have 5 tabs to hold it together decently (the d8 only took 3) and I think the extra weight of these might have reduced its accuracy. It still did pretty well on a quick comparison test of 100 rolls:
Incidentally, greetings visitors from Metafilter, I see there was some interest in a picture I linked to quite a while back of a Gelatinous Cube. You might keep an eye on this seller on eBay if you’re interested in one or two of your own - cheap too. A big thanks to Bliss Infinite for pointing them out, I picked up a couple before they sold out and they’re killer (pic below).

Best troll I've seen in a while...

Do-It-Yourself Polyhedral Dice

I remember awhile back reading how Christian was having a tough time getting gaming materials to prison inmates. The subject of dice replacements came up. Someone suggested chits, which I remember actually using long ago, digging them out of Dixie cups with those terrible jokes on the side. Before we could afford D&D, my cousin and I made up our own clone (or as best as kids could) using the six sided dice from a boardgame.

Tonight, I wondered whether it would be possible to make polyhedral dice from paper. If so, it seems like it would be a neat thing to include with a game - a page you could rip out or photocopy and use to make your own cut-out polyhedral dice. Lost that d8? Download it. Or customize your dice and email them to a friend. Sure, if you have a computer you could just use a dice rolling program. Where's the fun in that though? No players with bated breath waiting for the outcome... Paper dice might not be ideal, but they still might have a place in the universe. But would they even roll? I looked on the web to see if any freaks out there might have already tried to find out. Shockingly, I didn’t find anything.

I did find an interesting page on a Australian university server though, where Paul Bourke posted some images of polyhedra for model creation. So having a touch of the flu with nothing better to do, I decided to see what was possible. I grabbed the octahedron and resized it to be close to the size of my d8 by Gamescience. I added some small flaps to the model for gluing the folds together on the inside (rather than using tape, to minimize imbalancing the construction and reducing random results) and printed this out on an index card (of course). Here’s a picture of my paper d8 alongside the Gamescience one. The three black rectangles on the 2 and 3 faces are the same size as the flaps in the same location but glued on the inside - I made them black so I could easily see which sides of the die would be the most weighted. It was only necessary for three flaps to keep the whole thing together.


Ah! But would it roll? Surprisingly, it more or less did, albeit without the characteristic and satisfying clattering sound of your typical high-impact plastic dice. But how random would its results be, given the custom cuts and folds, and the additional weight of the interior flaps holding it together?

I rolled it a hundred times (I told you, I had nothing else to do tonight) and recorded the results. I was very satisfied with them. Then I decided to roll my Gamescience d8 a hundred times as well, for purposes of comparison. The results are below:

(Click to stop squinting)

As you can see, based on this short experiment, my DIY d8 is superior to the mass produced Gamescience d8. I assure you that I used the same technique in rolling the dice with both dice and with each roll: cupping two hands together, shaking for several seconds, then sort of flip tossing/rolling with one hand.

Now before you all clamor and begin asking when you can order my hand made paper dice, I’ll need to run a few more experiments. There is no question that my die’s longevity will be much shorter than a high-impact plastic die. But isn’t it better to have confidence in your dice’s ability to give you a random result than to let your laziness (or miserliness!) get in the way of your game? I mean, how many of you have actually tested your dice, hmm? Know for sure that your players aren’t getting killed through no fault of their own, or of you, their DM? Fortunately, Christmas is coming up.

DIY Gelatinous Cube: The Quick and The Dirty

I read Michael Curtis' post on his homemade Gelatinous Cube miniature and was inspired to give it a go. For some reason I always think of gelatinous cubes as translucent green even though I know they're described as "nearly transparent" - a google image search shows I'm not alone. I really don't understand it. Part of their appeal is the fact that PCs might walk straight into them. Still, maybe translucent green wouldn't show up with infravision or as much under torch light. Maybe the green version is a peculiar local variety in my game. Whatever.

The Quick: My first thought was: why make a mini? I can just take a plastic dice container, remove the bottom, turn it upside down, and voila! This has the added advantage of allowing you to put it over the top of your players' minis. If you like a green version, get out a green marker and use it to color the plastic container. If you don't want to permanently color it you can cut and fold some green acetate to the right size and put it in the container, taping or gluing it there if you like. I cut two sheets to try this since I couldn't be bothered to measure where to make folds.

Looks a little more like a gelatinous parallelepiped than a cube though. Not very gelatinous either.

Therefore, The Dirty: I really like some of the epoxy-resin mold produced versions of the Gel Cubes I've seen on the web. But there's something about being able to take another mini and put it inside the dang thing whenever you like that appeals to me. Plus, some of that stuff looked pretty toxic at the art store. So I decided to construct my own cube. First I got a length of balsa wood, about 3/16"x3/16" by 2'. I cut this up into appropriately sized pieces (I was going for a 2" cube) and glued them together in a such way that there would be some reinforcement.
Then I cut some green acetate into 5 squares slightly smaller than 2"x2" each and glued these to 5 sides of my cube. These gave it a little more strength. Too late, I realized that I should have painted the balsa before gluing it together as its pale color would be easily seen through the acetate once I was finished. Ah well, I painted it after the fact as best I could.

Next, I took some paper clay (since it air dries) and molded this around all the edges, leaving aside the open bottom face of the cube.


Then I painted it. The whole thing came out way more green than I'd wanted. Still, I've grown attached to the little monster... Here's our hero, before and after being swallowed by the creature.

Fun with Mushrooms

I was delighted to discover the king trumpet mushrooms my wife had bought for use on Thanksgiving, and immediately pulled them out of the fridge and went looking for miniatures to pose with them. I soaked some paper towels and put them around the bases of the mushrooms to get them to stand up straight so I could take a decent picture.One quick and dirty GIMP job later, I've a fairly decent image to complement a future game location's description. It could use some work here and there but it's a start. :P

Candy

A number of years ago, Chef Tirel employed an enterprising halfling as live monster bait. Named Tim, this halfling would accompany adventurers that Tirel had hired to retrieve fresh meat for his own employer, the infamous monster eating Claude de Sarlat. Tim was desperate for high paid work, being in debt to some of Sneedsworth’s men in the Dordogne. Long story short, on one expedition the little halfling had his legs torn completely off by an ogre. Through the intervention of a cleric, Tim miraculously survived but would never walk again.

Nowadays, Tim can be found in the bastide of Domme, frequenting pubs where he performs his version of a stand up comedy act. Reciting bad limericks, re-telling stories of his brief stint as monster bait, and accompanying a little guitar, he’s now known as Tiny Tim. He’s become quite the local celebrity. Halflings are extremely rare in the region, and those that do pass through are continually subjected to local inside humor which takes the form of loud exclamations like “It’s a miracle! The little guy’s got his legs back!” Consequently, Tim isn’t hard to find and is often sought out for whatever information or advice he can offer to visiting greenhorn dungeoneers.

Tirel, for his part, was honorable enough to pay off Tim’s debt. Without his skilled little halfling though, Tirel was forced to devise other ways to occasionally draw monsters out of their hiding places. Towards this end, he came up with a number of recipes rumored to have ghastly ingredients that work far better than simple horsemeat or chickens. He’s even begun to determine which work better than others based on which monster one wishes to catch. Occasionally he’ll offer to sell his monster bait (which he confectionately refers to as his “bonbons”) to traveling adventurers in the course of offering them a reward for any monster flesh they can acquire for him.

His usual bait comes in the form of head-sized chunks of rotten spiced meats of indeterminable origin, stitched together and which Tirel and his assistants jokingly refer to as “Paydays”… Another kind they refer to as “corn” - palm-sized, it’s typically put down every ten feet or so to lead a creature to a predetermined ambush site.

Tirel sells his monster bait for up to 100gp depending on the quantity desired and the monster it will attract. Unless extreme precautions are taken the stench of it will cause townsfolk to shun the carrier, refusing service of any kind. It will double the frequency of wandering monster rolls and at least triple the likelihood of the desired creature making an appearance if in the area.

Flavor Enhancing Fairies

Claude de Sarlat is almost universally reviled by the inhabitants of the Dordogne, as is his practice of eating monsters, but no one can deny the culinary expertise of his head chef Tirel. In fact, it was Tirel who first pioneered and perfected the incredibly delicious and now very popular practice of cooking with fairy flakes.

Popkin fairies, at one time common throughout the Dordogne Valley, were discovered by Tirel to have exceptional flavor enhancing qualities when properly prepared. To those who have tasted the dried and shaved remains of these creatures, it’s hardly necessary to convey the extraordinary effect that they have on the palate. Describing the savory essence that popkins add to nearly any recipe is a task best left by this author to the many bards who have seen fit to take it up in poem and song. Suffice to say that once experienced, one will never be able to leave the valley without a strong sense of recurring nostalgia or outright craving for just one more exquisite taste of the little buggers.

Of course the controversy surrounding their use in cooking is well known. In the Dordogne valley itself, such moralizing and hand-wringing is scoffed at and ridiculed, but further away (and particularly amongst the elves), consumption or possession of fairy flakes is viewed with disgust and usually results in the shunning of the individuals involved. Complicating the situation is the fact that some area residents now keep orcs as slaves for use in tracking popkin fairies. The orkish ability to sniff out the presence of popkins is uncanny and has led to the popkins’ increasing rarity and sky rocketing price.

The Great Druid of Marquessac has decreed that anyone determined to be hunting popkin fairies in his gardens will be publicly hanged. Even with this decree, popkin poachers and other ne’er-do-wells have been seen in ever increasing numbers in the central Dordogne. Some say that should the popkin ever disappear entirely, the Druid would wreak vengeance upon the inhabitants of the valley without mercy. In the town of Sarlat, a syndicate known as the Committee for Popkin Preservation (or CPP) was formed with the aim of protecting the popkin, but through infiltration by outside interests and due to infighting, it’s been ineffective and become somewhat of a laughingstock.

Disturbing rumors have begun to circulate that “dead zones” where magic functions oddly or not at all have been detected. These zones are said to correspond to areas where the popkin have been completely wiped out, but where they were known to previously congregate in large numbers. Many claim these rumors are purely the propaganda of the CPP. In any event, the future of the popkin looks grim if history is any guide - one need only recall the sad decline of the hoar fox.

Tumbling Dice

I'm sorry, but I've been wanting to do this for years.

Helios Creed - Alien Landscape

Endless Caption # 4: Light on Quests Mountain

Number four in a series of posts where you the reader choose your own caption for the included picture...
Today's scan dedicated to Margot Kidder and Brian De Palma

Endless Caption #3: Robbers and Robots

Number three in a series of posts where you the reader choose your own caption for the included picture...

Smegging Minis

My latest acquisition was purchased in the hope that it would finally satiate my Red Dwarf obsession, but it seems to have had the opposite effect... I'm consoled by the fact that my rank has gone up considerably in the process: If my wife had any doubts about whether she was married to someone in the elite Nerd Corps, they went out the window as I walked into the room merrily whistling the theme music to the show while “flying” Starbug 1.

Knowing there might be a few fellow members of the corps out there who would appreciate this achievement, I thought I’d share here and post a couple of pictures.

Update: X-Plorers stats for the beast:

Ship Class 3.1 Frigate (Jupiter Class)
Crew: 4-175 (can transport an additional 1000 for extended periods)
Hull Points: 500
Number of Weapons: 4
Weapon Damage: 1d6+2
AC: 11 (or 10 if mining vessel)
NPC Skill: 15/13/11+
XP Value: 500
Cost: 1000m CR
Special: Equipped with 4 Class 2 (Scout) Vessels