Saturday 31 December 2011

Fun For All The Family... With Tables!

Demon-slaying is a fun and profitable pass-time that everyone can enjoy. But demons aren't your everyday monster; they shouldn't just fall over and expire when you slay them. So, when you land that killing blow, rattle your d20 and...

What Happens When A Demon Dies?
d20Result
1The killing wound bursts into flame which spreads rapidly through the demon's body, incinerating it from the inside out and leaving nothing but greasy ashes and thick, stinking smoke.
2The demon collapses into a pile of squirming, slimy worms, which rapidly disperse, leaving behind a foetid slime-patch where the demon fell.
3The demon deflates as thousands of small black beetles pour from the killing wound and scurry away.
4The demon petrifies instantly into solid granite. A weapon that inflicted the killing blow is momentarily trapped; make an easy STR save to free it (the attempt takes one attack).
5The demon petrifies instantly into very soft, friable stone that will crumble to the touch.
6The demon instantly freezes solid, falls over and shatters into a million shards. A weapon that inflicted the killing blow is momentarily trapped; make an easy STR save to keep hold of it as the slain demon falls.
7The demon transforms into a cloud of tiny, vicious birds that immediately turn on each other, pecking and slashing until the flock disperses in 1-3 rounds.
8The demon swells up like a bullfrog, tearing open from the point of the killing wound and spilling its bones and entrails out across the surrounding area. Anyone within 20' must make a CON save to avoid throwing up in their mouth.
9The demon disappears with a blinding flash and a deafening crack, leaving behind nothing but a small cloud of stinking smoke. Save or be dazzled and deafened for 1d3-1 rounds.
10The demon implodes, its hide crushing its bones and entrails, until all that is left is a small, leathery, wrinkled ball (about 6" in diameter) smelling strongly of putrescence.
11The demon explodes, showering everything within 20' in stinking mince.
12Translucent, ethereal tentacles spring up from the ground and drag the demon down to the abyss, leaving nothing behind but a shadow that slowly dissipates.
13The demon collapses into a pile of worn terracotta blocks, a couple of inches on a side. If someone wanted to take the time and effort, and had access to mortar and brickworking skills, they could be reassembled into a brick statue of the demon.
14Thick, stinking, tarry ooze gushes from all of the corpse's orifices. It sticks like treacle (and tastes absolutely disgusting).
15The demon and everything within 20' is covered with (harmless) electrical arcs for 1-3 rounds, after which it disappears with a flash and a smell of ozone.
16The demon disappears, leaving behind only an irridescent green pearl about half an inch in diameter. It is subtly unpleasant to look upon or to touch, and leaves a viewer with the distinct impression that it's watching them.
17The demon putresces and mummifies incredibly rapidly, as if a hundred years of decomposition takes place in a moment, and then falls to the floor, shattering into scraps of hide, bone and dust.
18The demon's skin sloughs off, then its muscles and entrails fall away, leaving its skeleton standing in the posture it was in at the point of death. If touched, the bones will collapse into dust.
19The demon, and everything around, it appears to suddenly stretch out to a hundred times its length and then snap back like a rubber band, disappearing with a noise like a bag of custard hitting the footpath, having been dropped from the top of a high tower. Make a WIS save or be severely disoriented for 1d3 rounds.
20The demon is petrified into a statue of sand; a wind arises and blows it back to the Abyss in 1d3 rounds. Make a DEX save to close your eyes or be temporarily blinded by wind-blown demon-grit.

Friday 30 December 2011

Android Ahoy!

I recently got a B&N Nook Color from a friend, which has been rooted and turned into an Android tablet. I'm pretty happy with it so far, and I've just loaded it up with a bunch of gaming PDFs.

I'm using RepliGo for PDF reading at the moment, and it works pretty well and reliably, but it does have one major fault (for my purposes), which is that it will only keep one file open at a time. I believe that something called GoodReader for iOS uses a tabbed interface to switch between open files, but I haven't been able to find anything comparable for Android. Does anybody out there know of such a thing?

Being unable to switch easily and seamlessly between files makes tablet-based reference reading much, much less useful or easy than it should be. I really hope they'll be addressing this soon.

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Sweeeeeeeeeet!

Xmas goodies for FREE! Go here, where you can find your way to this spectacularly well produced hundred-and-a-bit pages of adventures, locations, tables and what-not, all produced from the fecund brain-meats of people just like you and me and offered up FREE (did I mention that it's free?) to people just like you and me.

I'm impressed. Also grateful. Thanks, people-less-lazy-than-me! Thanks a bunch!

Saturday 24 December 2011

Tombworld


I originally saw this this illustration by Les Edwards in Omni magazine (I think), and then again in a collection of illustration that I bought in about '83 (I think).

I found it immensely evocative then, and still do. It would make an excellent setting for a megadungeon-based campaign.