I love getting mail

My son rang me at work yesterday to get the OK to open this package.



You can imagine my glee at the dungeon maps printed on the backing card behind the minis. The Bookmarks of Doom are cool too.

The owlbear is going to make the cockatoo, and the kobold is the lizard Rogue.
I have my work cut out for me with the conversions. I know what to do with the cocky and have bits coming off ebay, but the Lizard I have to green stuff some webbed dreadlocks (he's a frill necked lizard.) Also his main sword, which will be on his back, is a serrated blade in a scabbard covered in webs - it was made by ettercaps (humanoid spider/men.) So I can use a WH40k serrated knife blade, sticking partly unsheathed from a scabbard, but I think ill have to make the webs on the scabbard with greenstuff too.

Monkeypoox do you know of any spider webbed scabbard? Will work that fine be hard in green stuff?



My 6 year old claimed the poster for his room (his brother didnt want it.) I just thought we'd get the minis, the other stuff they threw in is cool. We studied the module covers together, he likes "the squishy guy" and agreed the lava men are cool. Booyah. Now we just have to wait for the 12 Dungeon Crawl Classic modules I have coming by slow mail from ebay. Avalon in full effect yo.



Click on the images to blow them (right) up.
I'm thinking about cutting the minis off those bases to put them on Dungeon Stone bases (from Back to BaseIX). The Cocky would be on a double-sized base (4 squares.) A lot of work but would look rad.

Please excuse the interruption

Stomps tales of adventure are stirring epics, they are beginning to awaken something deep inside of me that desires a triumphant return to Australia accompanied by the smashing down of fist-fulls of D6s in rage.

In the meantime however, I am curious, how did you people manage not to tell me about this:

Skate.

Fuck.

Twilight, on the forest path

Several hours later the party have nearly reached the village.

The Cockatoo is dragging the wagon, the Echidna is pushing it and the injured Bunnies and the Hamster are inside the wagon. The rest are hanging around behind.

A crazy goblin runs out of the forest towards them, holding a spear and shaking a fist blazing with magical fire, screaming "I'll turn you into ash, my pretties!". From his side a huge wolf with burning red eyes leaps into battle, chasing the prettily-feathered Lyre bird (deciding for some obscure reason that the runty little chicken-boy might make good eating. Go figure.)

The Rogue Lizard artfully leaps onto the wagon and dives into melee with the Goblin, who promptly slaps him right in the neck with the magic fire and nearly drops him in one fell blow (crit.) The Goblin's burning hand goes out in a whisp of magic steam, the magic fire expended, much to the relief of the Rogue's now befouled underwear.

The Rogue responded with a multi-mixer vegomatic blur of artfully-coreographed double-sword attacks, missing spectacularly round-after-round, every, single, time, and getting himself stabbed hard in the guts with the goblin's spear. (Once again, the Rogue was within a minor wound of buying the farm. And we're running 1st level PCs with +20hp kickers. Whoah.)

The Cockatoo waddles over to help the Lizard Rogue, and joins in the comedy of errors by missing repeatedly.

Meanwhile Fancypant Ladysleeves the transvestite Sorcerer evades the wolf's jaws with a hop, skip and a prance, and summons a Dire Spider in a flash of eldritch power. The Spider, venom dripping from its viscous fangs, climbs up out of the ground, and is promptly eaten by the wolf as an entre. The Echidna winds up with his heavy flail and beats 7 shades of shit out of the wolf, who rolls over and farts in defeat.

The Goblin fumbles in his attempt to skewer the Rogue, and for the first time we roll d1000 on the Hackmaster fumble chart 8KK. The kids had their fingers crossed but the Goblin's belt broke, dropping his pants.

The Lizard begs for help but the Echidna wont budge, looking on, pouting. (The little guy running the Echidna had just rolled dice into the miniatures, got in trouble with his brother, and stormed off to his room yelling "I miss my turn!" The older boy wanted us to run the Echidna as an NPC to save his Lizard, but I said no dice. The Echidna is just as grumpy as his real-life Player.)

The Lyre Bird casts a Daze cantrip on the Goblin, and the Cockatoo finally connects with a crit, doing enough damage to kill the goblin outright, and 5 of his family members too, had they been standing close enough. He's dumb, and ugly, but when he does eventually connect it's pretty cool.

And on to the village . . .

Game On, Moles

Both kids are home from school with colds, and the wife's at work, So we got our game on in Avalon.

(Dork note/Spoiler alert: Heavily Hacked version of DnD Module "Scourge of the Howling Horde" used as basis for this Adventure. If you've stubled across this blog by some cruel twist of fate, and intend to play that Adventure, turn away now - although I thinks it's safe to say that in Avalon, most things are Hacked beyond easy recognition.

The little guy was jealous when I cracked out my Hackmaster Deluxe GMs screen, and said "I want one!" 20 minutes later we heard someone open the flyscreen door, and we discovered a parcel - ,Hacklopedia Vol6, and The Hackmaster Player's Mat, which I'd won on ebay and had thought were heading for Skaffen's work address in the UK. So we cracked out the Player's Mat, which he promptly claimed as his own, and we transformed it into combat mode - crenellated castle complete with doors to roll your dice through into the middle of the table. We secured the castle walls with sticky-backed velcro tabs and the little guy was geared up and ready to HACK. That parcel arriving today, at that moment, has to be chalked up as one of the raddest coincidences in recent history.

(Skaffen I got it mixed up. Hacklopedia vol1, and 2 Hackmaster Modules "Smackdown the Slavers" and "Annihilate The Giants" will be waiting for you at the Post Office. Read the Hacklopedia for a laugh, it's Vol1 of an 8 volume Monster Encyclopedia set, but dont open the modules - they are 2 large chunks of the Hackampaign I am preparing for when you're in town to play.)



The party regrouped at the "Whacked Mole" Icecreamery and Milkshake establishment, with rooms to let for adventurers upstairs, and the Echidna exchanged the Grumpy Mole's flying hammer with his friendly Mole buddy for a glass vial of healing potion, with eye dropper, and the pet wrestling crab he has been wanting so badly.

The crab promptly started carrying gold coins from their treasure sack, across the table and dropping them into the side of the magic horn (with coin slot) which the scored from the Grump. The coins promptly disappear inside. 4 gems are sunk into the horn around the coin slot, a successful spot check revealed one gem had started to glow faintly as coins went in. The Echidna test-sounded the horn, and a cat-sized mudman climbed out of an NPC's milkshake and trudged across the table, standing to salute the Echidna, ready for orders. The NPC put his now strangely muddy milkshake to one side, and the mudman dissolved into a puddle after one round. The crab looked dejected later when the party spent all their gold on equipment. All he wants to do is feed coins into the horn.



The party set out on foot for a nearby village, to see a Turtle there who can make an antidote potion to cure the cursed Owl wizard who is still laid up in magic hospital.

They come across goblins who have ambushed a wagon, and ambush them in turn, rescuing also a would-be-rescuer Large Enraged Flightless Cockatoo Barbarian swinging a 2 handed greataxe (8ball's character, run as an NPC,) besieged by goblins, who serves this encounter as a huge feathered HP sink, soaking up 17 points of damage from the goblins while the party flank them from behind and hack away.

Skaffen's character, also run NPC style by my 13 year old, is Laurie "Sissy" Aquasleeves, a Pretentious Lyre Bird Sorcerer, who acts smart but only knows spells from hanging around the Magic Hospital imitating wizards. Sissy flounces around on the periphery of battle, flapping his sleeves like Stevie Nicks and consistently missing the goblins with throwing darts. What a poofter.

The Cockatoo, screetching like the 7' enraged imbecile that he is, rarely hits (for some bizarre reason) but when he does he pops goblins like they're water ballons. The party prevails, they heal the Cockatoo who dubs them brothers in battle, even Sissy, and joins the party "Until Death!!" The Echidna loots a goblin's shield, and a Hamster merchant peeps out of the wagon, thanks them, talks them into dragging the wagon to the village (the giant wagon snails ran away) and offers them 100gp each . . . . . . . worth of credit at his store. Game on, moles.



Today was also the debut of the home made dice tower, which works a beaut. No more fractured eye sockets for the rest of us when the little guy throws for initiative.