Feel the power of my huge-ass dice! They are so big, I could take out car windshields if I decided to chunk these off of an overpass. The creator was saying that they had imperfections - but frankly - my eyes don't focus to the level where said imperfections might be. They look great!
That right there - where the #5 is - is where the frikkin space medusa is waiting for the party. Shhhh - don't tell them though. Let it be a surprise.
- Ark
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Monday, December 12, 2011
Naked Ponies!
Okay, not naked, but here is the original My Little Portal Ponies image without all that text. I figure that other people can probably make it funnier than me. Feel free to make word balloons, insert bad jokes, and spread bronie RPG love world-wide on your blogs and other places. Penicillin optional. Link-backs welcome.
- Ark
- Ark
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| Clicking makes it bigger. |
Sunday, December 11, 2011
My Little Pellatarrum
A few weeks ago, I made a smart-ass comment to Erin Palette, that went something like this. "For my next trick, I will draw the My Little Pony invasion of Pellatarrum." Pellatarrum being, of course, her crazy-ass fantasy setting, and My Little Pony being - well, if you don't know - stop reading. This isn't for you.
I had no idea how hard drawing fan art is. Well, I could have spit out pony stick figures, but no - if I was actually going to act on my half-baked remark, I should do it right. Trying it really makes you respect professional cartoon artists. The forms are so simplistic - but have to be so perfect - otherwise they don't look right. There is something very zen about the art form. Yes, and this is complete drawn from scratch - no tracing - and done in SHARPIE on paper, then sucked into Photoshop for a dye-job.
The Boy was horrified and refused to look at what I was drawing while I hummed the My Little Pony theme song. Okay, that was just a side benefit for my inner sadist.
Below is the MLP Invasion of Pellatarrum. I do not give this to the OSR, like previous art. I give it to Bronies worldwide. Post it wherever. Not that I own anything about it. Hasbro owns it all. Just like D&D. You know the drill.
So anyway, enjoy!
- Ark
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| Click Rainbow Dash to embiggen. |
Friday, December 9, 2011
Ellen-14
Ellen-14 is a non-player character in our Stars Without Number campaign. The picture doesn't do her justice - but it is similar enough to her appearance to get the point across.
The lady is ten feet high, twenty feet wide, and thirty feet long. She is somewhat rock shaped, and her tough skin is a gray and black color - the kind you find on certain bloated ticks found in the foothills of Arkansas. She has a human head emerging from the gray skin a bit over five feet up from the floor, and underneath it hang two human arms. Having no feet, she moves around like a horta.
Ellen-14 is a human-alien hybrid. Actually, Ellen-14 isn't just one entity - the name is a signifier for an entire brood of approximately 100 individuals - the 14th generation since initial hybridization. All of the individual Ellen-14s are pretty much the same, and they keep in contact with one another to avoid drifting apart mentally.
The aliens who designed Ellen-14 (and the many other hybrid variants,) are known as the Metha. The Metha look pretty much like Ellen-14, but without the human head and the human arms. They have been sentient for half a million years, and have spent most of that time doing bioengineering work - redesigning themselves - and their biosphere - countless times. Currently, their bodies house 15 to17 brains - some genetic copies of other alien species that they met in the past.
The Metha fit into the Stars Without Number alien classification of 'Other' - alien beings that are too different from human beings to communicate with or understand. After a series of brutal wars after first contact, the Metha created the human-metha hybrids as an attempt to understand humanity and communicate with them. The Metha are completely oblivious to the fact that the mere sight of Ellen-14 and her various sisters and brother causes most humans to run in abject fear.
Ellen-14 does, however, bridge the gap between humans and methans. She has 18 brains inside of her - one of them human, and they all chat with one other through bizarre chemical interactions, radio waves, and pulsing light. She is well aware of how she looks, as well. "Oh my," she will often say, "You think I look hideous. I do. I cannot argue. But I couldn't find a thing to wear today that didn't make me look bloated!"
Ellen-14 is also a smart-ass.
The player characters have - strangely - taken a shine to Ellen-14 and her brood sisters. I'm not sure why. She is their 'Mr. Johnson," in Shadow-run speak. They are still very nervous about the pure methans, though. It might have something to do with the aliens engaging in thermonuclear war as a sport. But who knows.
- Ark
The lady is ten feet high, twenty feet wide, and thirty feet long. She is somewhat rock shaped, and her tough skin is a gray and black color - the kind you find on certain bloated ticks found in the foothills of Arkansas. She has a human head emerging from the gray skin a bit over five feet up from the floor, and underneath it hang two human arms. Having no feet, she moves around like a horta.
Ellen-14 is a human-alien hybrid. Actually, Ellen-14 isn't just one entity - the name is a signifier for an entire brood of approximately 100 individuals - the 14th generation since initial hybridization. All of the individual Ellen-14s are pretty much the same, and they keep in contact with one another to avoid drifting apart mentally.
The aliens who designed Ellen-14 (and the many other hybrid variants,) are known as the Metha. The Metha look pretty much like Ellen-14, but without the human head and the human arms. They have been sentient for half a million years, and have spent most of that time doing bioengineering work - redesigning themselves - and their biosphere - countless times. Currently, their bodies house 15 to17 brains - some genetic copies of other alien species that they met in the past.
The Metha fit into the Stars Without Number alien classification of 'Other' - alien beings that are too different from human beings to communicate with or understand. After a series of brutal wars after first contact, the Metha created the human-metha hybrids as an attempt to understand humanity and communicate with them. The Metha are completely oblivious to the fact that the mere sight of Ellen-14 and her various sisters and brother causes most humans to run in abject fear.
Ellen-14 does, however, bridge the gap between humans and methans. She has 18 brains inside of her - one of them human, and they all chat with one other through bizarre chemical interactions, radio waves, and pulsing light. She is well aware of how she looks, as well. "Oh my," she will often say, "You think I look hideous. I do. I cannot argue. But I couldn't find a thing to wear today that didn't make me look bloated!"
Ellen-14 is also a smart-ass.
The player characters have - strangely - taken a shine to Ellen-14 and her brood sisters. I'm not sure why. She is their 'Mr. Johnson," in Shadow-run speak. They are still very nervous about the pure methans, though. It might have something to do with the aliens engaging in thermonuclear war as a sport. But who knows.
- Ark
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Dungeonspiration: Epic Death
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| - Sergeant Loronzo by The Boy - |
When I was but a wee role player, I really didn't like the whole character death thing. It was something to be seriously avoided - going so far as to sit behind a DM screen and never risk a PC by never having one.
But when you come down to it, some of the most memorable moments in role playing are the deaths. Case in point - The Boy. While initially horrified by the concept, he is getting quite good at them.
In my Stars Without Number campaign, the characters were contracted by some shady underworld types to shut down a casino. Not forever, mind you - just for a bit. Actually, the party never asked - or even seemed to wonder - as to WHY someone would shut down a casino for a bit. It just enough that they got to cause some chaos - and get paid for it.
The session turned out to be one of those long-ass planning ones. You know those types. The players get so interested in the planning aspect that it seems like they never get to the execution. But several hours later, they had their plan and went ahead.
The plan was to blow up an intra-building sewer main in the casino's hotel and have millions of gallons of raw sewage flood the casino proper. Actually, the plan was not a bad one at all. The big problem was that the party's hacker was AWOL (an actual date with his girlfriend!) and so they had to hire a retainer.
The hacker henchman screwed the pooch on his computer and security rolls. Badly. Worse than bad. The hacker was particularly nice about the whole thing, calling the party up and letting them know he had miserably failed and had not only NOT prevented the security systems from detecting their activities, but had actually helped the casino security zero in on their nefarious activities.
Ron and Crazy-ass Tim were in the getaway car. The second they heard the alarm go off, they were out of there. Completely. Utterly. Gone. Not even a post card.
The Boy, playing Sergeant Loronzo, and Kaye (yeah - the guy who plays Torvalds in the 2e game) were on the third floor, attaching explosives to the sewer pipes when the first security guard arrived, gun in hand.
Sergeant Loronzo picked up a huge plumber's wrench, swung it the guy, and grabbed his Order of the d30 Brand d30, choosing to use it at that moment. The massive wrench did so much damage it cut the guard in half, showering everything in the room with blood. They finished setting the charges and high-tailed it out of the plumbing room, racing to get to their long-gone getaway car.
They ran down the hotel hallway to the elevators, but they were too late. Three security guards stepped out of the elevator firing. Kaye was hit and died like a punk at zero hit points even. Sergeant Loronzo wasn't having any of that, so he pulled out his stash of Lazarus Patches. The patches help dead character's come back to life. Well, very recently dead characters. And it takes a medic to really apply them well. Sergeant Loronzo was not a medic.
But damned if he didn't try. He slapped patch after patch onto his dead buddy, trying to shock him back into life, all the while dodging a hail of bullets. The other players began a count down to when the timer would kick off the sewage explosives. Eventually Sergeant Loronzo ran out of patches and the guards - none too happy with all the missing going on - ran up and began to pummel him.
Sergeant Loronzo ran out of patches. He was very upset that his buddy has died for good. He mowed down the security guards and proceeded to leave - but more security guards were coming out of the elevators.
The count down to sewage explosion was getting woefully close - like about one round. Then the boy had an idea. He busted down the door of a hotel room, dove onto the bed, snatched a pillow, shot the glass out of the window with his laser, and leapt out of the building.
The explosives detonated.
Sergeant Loronzo had some hope that the pillow would soften the impact into the ground, but when the true gravity of the situation hit him, The Boy turned, fired his bright blue laser pistol in the air, yelled 'Sayonara,' and made his peace with the universe.
We all thought it was a very epic death - a very inspiring end - and one which should be remembered in the annals of RPGdom forever.
So if you know your character is going to die - think for a second. What can you do to make the Valkyries sing loudly of that death in their meady halls until Ragnarok comes? Do something cool - and inspiring. The skalds will appreciate it.
- Ark
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Vayniris Anthology Project Deadline Approaching
No, I haven't forgotten or totally flaked out. The Vayniris Anthology project is still going strong - I just haven't mentioned it in a while since it's a project in flight.
We are coming to a close on our submission deadline. The deadline is set for December 31st, 2011. That's in three weeks.
If you have an idea you are keen on and just can't pull it together by the deadline, shoot me a message and we can mind meld about it. A cut-off point during the holidays was probably a risky idea anyway. :)
- Ark
We are coming to a close on our submission deadline. The deadline is set for December 31st, 2011. That's in three weeks.
If you have an idea you are keen on and just can't pull it together by the deadline, shoot me a message and we can mind meld about it. A cut-off point during the holidays was probably a risky idea anyway. :)
- Ark
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Torvalds vs. the Honey Badger
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| It's thrall good. |
This is the 2e game being run by Crazy-Ass Tim, in which I am playing the sexy elf ranger lady Chartreuse. One of the party members is Torvalds - the most useless first level magic user in the history of all D&D ever. Yeah, I know - a boastful boast - but it's true - and even more so as the session unfolded.
So Torvalds rides an ox. Everywhere. Even places where oxen do not fit. But traipsing through the woods following zombies was a bit much for the ox this time around. Torvalds blew his animal handling roll - and the ox bucked him off and bolted.
The zombies were headed to destroy our town. Torvalds was about to lead us on a wild-ox chase of ridiculous proportions in the opposite direction. The ox had Torvalds' spell book - the only thing that makes him even vaguely useful.
So I shot the fucking ox.
Regretfully, the arrow didn't kill the ox. But as Torvalds became enraged about what I had done, Merwyn's character chased after the ox and hacked it to death.
That's when Torvalds attacked Mervyn's character.
As the two first level characters began to tussle, my character Chartreuse got sick of the whole thing, turned around, and raced after the zombie horde to rescue her village.
Meanwhile, Torvalds actually killed Merwyn's character - dead. Surprising, yeah. The Boy thought that such a murder was horrendous and attacked Torvalds, smashing him down below zero hit point. The Boy has a conscious, though, and only did subdual damage. He then left Torvalds face down on the forest floor and raced after me.
I was busy tackling zombies and slapping them awake. The Boy didn't think to tell me that one party member was dead and another was face down unconscious in a zombie infested forest. But the horrifying screams alerted me that something was wrong.
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| Torvalds' recess playmate. |
So we ran back to where Torvalds was and tried to fight off the honey badger. The honey badger was, of course, tough. It ripped off another one of Torvalds' legs. We continued to attack, and finally took honey badger down. But even in death, honey badger didn't give a shit and ripped off Torvalds' left arm.
We applied tourniquets, and did massive amounts of cauterization with torches, and brought Torvalds back from the brink. It really only worked because Crazy-ass Tim is a mean bastard of a DM. But we had rescued our useless magic-user. Yay!
Meanwhile, our entire village was slaughtered and burned to the ground. So, I'm thinking that Torvalds deserves his fate. Regretfully, he is even more useless than before. But Kaye continues to play him without a hitch - reveling in his one armed, no leggedness - and declaring himself the Sorcerer Supreme.
The Boy has taken to calling Torvalds the Burrito Supreme.
- Ark
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