Thursday, June 16, 2011

Dungeonspiration: Ants

[Carefully I crept onto the New Post section of Blogger without scanning through the Blogroll.  My willpower is unexpectedly strong today. :) ]


I've got these beach beach recliners with pillows built into the head area.  The pillow can be flipped up, revealing a padded hole for your face.  I assume this is to so you don't have to char the side of your head if you fall asleep while tanning.

I didn't have much to do this afternoon, having declared a moratorium on reading blogs.  Its' a strange feeling.  I've been reading blogs almost every day for half a year now.  The Boy was uninterested in discussing the new idea for a Risus game, so I went outside to get some sun.  The Baby Momma nabbed me and slathered me with a experimental concoction to reduce sunburn.  We have bottles and bottles of sunblock, but apparently all of it gives you cancer now - thus the mix of grape-seed oil, baby butt cream, shea butter and aloe that I suddenly found myself wearing.

Lying on the recliner belly first, I stuck my head in the hole.  I noticed immediately that the backyard needed a good mowing.  The second thing I noticed was all the friggin ants.

We used to have a problem with fire ants in North Texas.  The sunabitches could swarm a dog or deer and take them down.  Their bites burnt like hell.  They were an invasive species that pushed out the original big red ants and big black ants that we had when I was a kid.  But another invasive group of ants came in and has driven the fire ants to who knows where.  These dudes are little and black and they don't sting like the fire ants.  Well, they sting, but it doesn't hurt near as bad.

So I'm chilling, watching these little black warriors like a god suspended in the heavens.  They like to go up one side of a blade of grass, hang out on the tippy top long enough to stroke their little antennae, and then down they go via the other side of the grass.  Over and over, from one blade to the next.  I guess they are patrolling their territory.  Occasionally they'll stumble upon another bug - a little spider, a beetle, or a ladybug, and run it off.  I know the ants follow scent trails and communicate to each other a lot by scent.  Watching then got me to thinking.

What if there were a good reason that dungeons were inhabited by monsters.  Perhaps there was a colony-based burrowing creature that took to dungeons because they liked not having to dig so much.  Maybe there were ant-like - but maybe not.  They were underground dwellers, so had no sight.  They didn't have very good hearing either - except for a sense to detect vibrations.  Their main sense was smell, and the entire colony communicated through scents - quite like ants.

So, a party of adventurers goes to loot the tomb of Rootin-Tootin-Ho-Tep and finds it infested with the critters.  The critters have evolved over the eons - or perhaps have been magically enhanced, to have very separate castes.  Some are warriors, others scouts - but some have drifted very far in physical form and act as doors - only opening with the right scent combination.  Others could have evolved into traps - slashing blade traps, crushing traps, pit traps, poky dart traps - all with a basic intelligence behind them.

Perhaps the goal of the adventurers isn't to loot a tomb - but to raid the critters colony and steal something.  Perhaps raw goods that the things collect - or something they produce - like royal jelly or some sort of secreted gem or the very collectable eyes of the queen herself.

You could have an entire world over-run by the critters - and the adventurers are the some of the last survivors of a post-insect-apocolypse.

Well, anyway, my mind can go crazy thinking about such things.  Go sit down in your back yard - or a park somewhere - and stare at some bugs for a while.  I bet they'll inspire you.

[Just a reminder - I'm not reading blogs for a bit - including my own.  If you reply to this post, I'll eventually read it and respond - but not just yet.  Feel free to talk amongst yourselves until then. ;)]

- Ark

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Happy Trees

Apparently I have been reading too many blog posts and comments lately, because I am finding myself angry at odd times of the day for absolutely no good reason. So I declare a BOB ROSS BRAND HAPPY TREE MORATORIUM on reading any blogs. I'm not sure when it will end, but at least until July.

I'll still write a few posts, if I have a brain-gasm, (and the Dungeonspiration series,) but that is about it.  Forgive me if I don't even look at the replies for a while. 

HAPPY LITTLE TREES TO YOU ALL! :)

- Ark

PS - If you need to get in touch, you can figure out how, I'm sure.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Monday, June 13, 2011

Dead Simple Lock & Trap Mini-game Report

Back in April I posted rules for a Dead Simple Lock & Trap Mini-game.  This was created with help from - oh - just about everybody in the community.  I must say, it's working great.  The Boy is loving it.  Whenever there is a lock or trap, I start shuffling the deck of cards and he runs around the table and stands next to me, making his guesses and wanting to see the cards first hand as I reveal them.

The other players seem to enjoy watching - but I was surprised that one player reported using the mini-game in the rpgs he runs as well.  He said he used it for Pathfinder and it was a hit.  But even more surprising, he started using it in his Shadowrun flavored Savage Worlds games as well, to handle cyber-intrusion.  Seems like it works good for any time you need to create a little more tension than just a flat die-roll, but not take too long.

One little problem I have is that the Boy tends to do a bit better than he should statistically.  Whether he is psychic or not is up in the air, but I'd say that the chance that he is reading his old man's unconscious cues is much more likely. :)

I'm impressed how fun the simple little thing is.  Go ahead - give it a whirl.  It won't bite. 

Much.

- Ark

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Ode to a Tachikoma

Brave blue spider
Innocent as a child
Watching the sun glow through its fingers
Death bringer
Life saver
Downloading enlightenment
Artificial
Yet possessing what so many strive for:

Salvation


- Ark

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Pecan Summer

My grandparents lived in Burkett, Texas - a stone's throw away from Cross Plains - the town where Robert E. Howard spent most of his life.  I spent many summers there, tromping through the surrounding wilderness.  Howard lived in Burkett when he was 11, and probably tromped through the same places.  Sometimes when I am relating that to others, I tell people that I grew up playing in Conan's back yard.

The rather lengthy poem below takes place when I was 11, the same age that Howard was when he lived there decades before.  This was mere weeks before I was to return home to Houston and discovered Dungeons and Dragons, and about a year before Conan the Barbarian was to grace the silver screen and provide my introduction to the man who's footsteps I had unknowingly followed.


Pecan Summer

The smell of dusty curtains slowly gives way to bacon
As wisps of back seats and long roads recede into dream land.
The morning is covered in gauze, with no impetus to remove it,
Aside from the growing glow through flowerdy yellow curtains.

A good stretch and grunt and smile are followed by a poke;
A rude reminder of the feathers in the pillow.
Bare feet against bare floorboards to the kitchen,
Where pops and splatters mingle with morning plans.

We dip heavy biscuits into the golden centers of eggs,
Sopping up the gooey goodness and finishing the whites
Using silverware stamped with eagles perched on bent crosses;
The old man's final stab at a long dead evil.

Armored against chiggers with jeans, tube socks, and tennis shoes,
We head out past the pecan trees with hammocks strung between,
And down the white gravel lane with the caw-honking sounds;
Peacocks and peafowls at the Peaflower Ranch & Tax Write-off.

The gravel crunches loudly beneath our feet as we march.
The spaces between houses widening as it gets hotter.
To the left we see the silvery glint of corrugated tin;
The old cotton gin still stands, but is filled with gourds now.

The sides of the road burst into color with an odd mixture;
Deep purple bonnets and the red and yellow stain of paintbrushes,
Which descend on either side as the road lifts upward
To an ancient silver and rust colored truss bridge.

The crunching abates as we walk on its paved surface,
Only one car width wide, but a faded black dashed line down the middle.
Trees crowd in amongst the trusses and create a green canopy,
While the gurgling sounds tell us of the unseen creek below.

We stick our heads out beyond the metal girders and look down
At the pebbles underneath the crystal clear water.
The dangerous move from girder to rebar to branches, then dirt
Would frighten mothers, but is far more fun than the safer path.

The journey upstream is filled with woods and pastures
And the occasional cluster of cow patties by the creek,
Then the land rises as white hills made out of chert push up,
Exposing veins of flint that make us dream of old Indians.

The air gets hotter and hotter until the vibration
Seems to match the buzz saw of the cicadas' wings and both
Sound and heat seem to penetrate into bone
And leave me with the lifelong feeling of the perfect Texas afternoon.

The creek widens and slows abruptly into a swimming hole,
With desiccated gar fish hanging from fishing line
Tied to tree limbs all around the lake, in a vain attempt
By the locals to eradicate the antediluvian creature.

In the middle of the water floats the huge trunk of a tree,
Its branches bare and stunted, but still reaching skyward.
We shuck off clothes and dash into the deep water,
Headed towards the mysterious platform of untold fun.

We grab branches, trying to pull ourselves up on the tree,
Only to be met with a swarm of countless giant red ants,
That emerge from the tree and coat it in a seething layer of
Desperation and anger, hell bent on finding dry land.

Still more hordes of bright red ants spew out as we paddle away,
Hundreds and thousands of the insects launching themselves
Into the water, creating rafts with their bodies for their
Compatriots, a nightmare version of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

With more fun to be had, we stay away from floating islands of death
And swim and splash to our hearts content, then dry out in the
Texas sun, shake our clothes out for rattlers and cotton mouths,
Then make the long trek back to what some would call civilization.

Downstream is easier, but longer, as we linger to take in
As much fun as we can, and the dog skeleton we find helps.
Crickets take over from the cicadas as the sun creeps down
Beckoning new life that sleeps during the day, out into the cool air.

We pull ourselves up on the bridge while slapping mosquitoes,
But endure the bites a bit longer as the forest comes alive
With the green glowing streaks and blinks of fireflies,
Creating patterns that stay etched in our minds for a lifetime.

- Ark