Tentacle Monster Lair: August 2007

Thanks Uncle Skaffen !

Look what Uncle Skaff got me for my birthday. What a legend.

In other news, my 13 year old got good reports at parent-teacher interviews, is going to start getting pocket money and is saving up for a set of cheating dice, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 20 siders, with the high number a 2nd time instead of a "1". That's right, no 1s. Roll initiative, 20! roll to,,, 20! Um, damage 10! 10! 20! Whoah.

Update

The lizard swcoped out a treasure chest, disarmed a poison needle trap and made off with some rune-covered magic studded leather armor and a similarly runed magic sword.

Meanwhile the Echidna looked down the pit, spotted really big spider webs, and scratched his head, announcing that giant spiders were most probably going to come out if anyone messed with the pit.

While on the other side of the room, the torch bearer mouse held the torch up high, peering down a flight of stairs and yelling "Look!" to the rest of the party. So they had a look, and a heavily armoured hobgoblin looked back, drawing his longbow. Muttering something at the stupid mouse about the element of surprise, the party charged, driving the mouse before them in a tsunami of Hack.

The hobgoblin copped it in the shoulder from the Lizard, ducked the Echidna's flail by a hair's breadth and reached for a healing potion on his belt, just as the Cockatoo finally forced himself out of the narrow stairwell with an audible POP and split the hobbo in twain. Tally XP, dorks.

Skaffen's 6 year old nephew pnws linerider

Real 3D display prototype is here

Japs developed real, floating 3D hologram
YOUTUBE

It's still early days, apparently it crackles like 20 bug zappers going at once while it blasts air molecules into bursts of light.

But that's not the point - I am starting an AVALON 3D wishlist and encourage stupid and unfeasible contributions.

- I want 3d holoterrain to float on the table, animate when you open doors, reveal secret doors and have traps go off, spikes come out of the walls etc
- Floating status info around our miniatures (I still want to use real minis for the PCs initially) like in Warcraft - buff stats, taking damage, spell effects and all that.
- Holo monsters
- Animations to play over our PC minis during combat - weapons swinging, spells launching like exocet missiles, you get the idea. Played x3 scale, to really bring it home what's happening. So the sword swings up over the character, arrows and crossbow bolts are huge and travel at mid pace so you can see where they go, and please, squirts of blood, and some critical hit animations which pay homage to Mortal Kombat fatalities.
- The all I'll need is a $100 surround sound speaker set to hook up to the lappy, to complement to $33 million 3D projector, and we are good to go. Cool bananas.

Looks like D&D 4th edition is about to launch

Which means, I'm hoping, a crash on 3E prices across the interdork. Sweet.
I love buying books I don't need. Let alone one's I'll actually use.

"Dad, can we play Avalon?"
"I'm cooking tea."
"Tea. Boring. I don't want food. I want to kill monsters and take their stuff."

Brace yourselves...

...because I went stupid nutty on ebay and bought 4 books chockaplop with Demons for Avalon.

DENIZENS OF OG
DENIZENS OF DIANNOR
DENIZENS OF VECHERON
DENIZENS OF VEREKNA

The bad news is, I am going to need a shipping crate full of sculpey to make these dudes, PLUS this guy stung me pretty hard on postage. Ouch.

The good news is, I spent so much, these bad boys ARE coming on line in the campaign no matter what, and Avalon now needs no cap on character power! Those kids can kit up with everything in the manual and vorpal toothbrushes and +5 undies on top, I will have enough bad guys to still make it fun. And funny, look at some of those guys. Whoah.

"An 8 armed frog with tentacles coming out of its face waddles towards you, speaking backwards. It draws a circle on the floor with a piece of chalk held in its foot and summons 3 satanic kreepy crawly pool cleaning machines made out of cheese. Roll initiative."

"I smash him with my spiked balls and then kick him."

The lizard had a listen at a door and could hear someone mumbling/chanting in the next room - a hobgoblin wizard alerted by the goblin massacre, frantically prepping spells to face the invaders. So the party huddled, and the Echidna sepped up to the plate.

"I smash the door off its hinges with my spikey ball."

The wizard was inside, behind a metal curtain.

"I tear down the curtain and throw it on the Wizard."

So he negotiated the tables in the Wizards lab, tore down the curtain and dropped it over the Wizard, who sprayed a wierd rainbow of colours at the Echidna and the Lizard, who was coming in behind him (looking a bit to me like he was actually taking cover behind the Echidna to me.) They both made their saves, the Wizard lunched his initiative roll (which kind of fits because he was trapped under a metal curtain) and the Echidna smashed him into a paste with a crit. Killed in 2 rounds.

It was a good session, especially with the little guy making a lot of calls on what he wants to do. He shot at a shrieker mushroom with his crossbow, missing but setting the mushroom alarm off in a piercing whistling shriek. The 13yo said "I told you to leave it alone" and the little guy started crying. I gave him a cuddle, explained what would have happened anyway if he had left it alone, which involved the lizard sneaking past it, making successful move quietly rolls, and the shrieker taking a deep breath and screaming its guts out anyway, and he cheered up and got back to lootin', shootin' and bootin'. Oh yeah, and he kicked the wizard after he dropped it, and was satisfied when it crumbled and wafted away as a green whisp of smoke. Which he insisted was its ghost.

They are finally starting to get some loot, and there is a fair bit of magical swag for a 1st lvl dungeon, but that's cool. If it keeps them going, fine. It's not like I'm going to run out of monsters.