SOD.151 – Volstagg on Vacation

Because even the gods need some time off, you know? And if you're a god from the frozen tundra, it only makes sense you'd take your vacation in the tropics.

Also, I like to think there are several small children cowering in terror just off-camera where Volstagg will land his belly buster.

SOD.150 – Volstagg

This is for yesterday, sorry for the miss. Apparently though I have Thor Cartoons on my mind.

RP: Before Reed decided to unlist his number

(From "Cracked Comics" number 3, 1940.)

Fogwood

When last we left our intrepid Lone Wolf, we were deciding whether or not to avoid a thicket of Sleeptooth. Continuing our unparalleled history of conflict avoidance, we chose to shy away from stabbity things and instead returned to the path. Thus:

Keeping a watchful eye on the sky above, you move quickly along the track. you recall that this route leads to Fogwood, a small cluster of huts that have been used by a family of charcoal burners for nearly fifty years. After twenty minutes you reach the edge of a clearing where the huts are grouped in a small circle. There is no sign of the usual mist of wood-smoke which gives Fogwood its apt name, and the huts are unusually quiet.

If we had the Kai Discipline of Tracking, we could turn to 134 and the untold glories that lie there. Sadly, we skipped Kai School that day to go picking daisies and thus do not have the ability to Track. Thus you "prepare your weapon and stealthily approach the huts", turning to 305.

Through the open doorway of the first hut, you can see the body of a charcoal burner lying face down on the rough stone floor. He has been murdered, stabbed in the back by a spear. All his furniture and belongings have been smashed and broken and not one piece remains intact.

This is the evil handiwork of Giaks without any doubt, for they delight in the destruction of all things. A quick check of the other huts reveals a similar story of murder and wreckage. In the last hut that you search, you discover a Giak Spear -- proof of your suspicions. You may keep this Weapon if you wish.

More determined than ever now to succeed in your mission, you continue along the track.

Turn to 105.

Wahoo, Spear! We have the Kai Discipline "Weaponskill: Spear" so we now get to add 2 to our Combat Skill when using this weapon. With our Mindblast, that gives a total of +4, for a final CS value of 23. Next time we ATTACK that bush!

In the distance, perched on the branch of an old oak tree is a jet black raven.

If you have the Kai Discipline of Animal Kinship (which we do!), you may call to this bird by turning to 298.

The head of the bird slowly turns and it curses you. An instant later, it flies off above the trees and has soon disappeared. Shocked by what you have heard you are now sure that the fledgling was a scout of the Darklords and is now probably on its way to inform them of your whereabouts.

[polldaddy poll="3272347"]

Decisions, decisions. On the one hand, if we take the forest track there might be more shrubbery, and even with our spear I don't know if we're up to that. On the other hand a Darklord literally flipped us the bird, and that just ain't right.

(All images and quoted text ©1984 by Joe Dever and Gary Chalk.)

RP: After a hard night of cross-dressing and burritos

(From "Cracked Comics" number 6, 1940.)

SOD.149

Went for a cartoony version.

RPG Corner: Blood Chess

I wanted to change things up a bit for this week's "RPG Corner", and share with you a fun little one-off adventure we ran for our Champions (4th Edition) campaign. It's a game I called "Blood Chess" and basically lays out the rules for making the PCs and their opponents into living chess pieces, not unlike the hologram battles in "Star Wars".

Continue reading

RP: Hank Pym, Viagra spokesman

Random cool photo

Can you believe this is an actual animal, right here in the real world!? It's called a fangtooth fish and it looks like it swam right out of a comic book or adventure movie. Too cool!

(Via Andrew Sullivan. A Fangtooth fish is displayed at the Natural History Museum's new exhibition 'The Deep', on May 26, 2010 in London, England. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.)

HM3: More armor tops

I've just posted eight new Tops-MaleFantasyArmor items to the HeroMachine 3 set:

I had planned to do more on these, but the file's already the fifth largest out of everything so far, behind only the BodyAlternate, Fonts, Companions, Auras, and Floors, and I am reluctant to balloon this thing up too much. I feel like the major sorts of armor are pretty well represented at this point -- lots of plate and leather, and a fair amount of "other", and while more is better, I think it's probably enough. I am bored with drawing them, frankly, and I haven't seen anything in the reference suggestions so far that screamed that it just HAD to go in.

So, barring anything huge you feel like is missing, I'm going to move on starting next week, once I'm all the way moved to Colorado. I'm open to suggestions as to what the next set ought to be. So far "rifles" has gotten a lot of push, so that's the leader at this point. If you would rather see something else first, by all means pipe up in the comments.

I haven't been pushing the items very hard for the last month or so, and I apologize for that. Once I'm settled in at the new place, I want to make item generation once again the top priority, and try for another massive, sustained push for a couple of months to really flesh things out.