Gametable Tests and Multiplay Scheduling

a pile of licked clean bones.

White, off-white or yellow?

And you know how Corwin can get something like that? POST MOAR.

Okay, we're almost done with our first weekend of Miracle on 34th Street. Between work, performances, cleaning my costume garb for said performances and getting enough sleep for all of the above, it's really sucking a lot of time and energy out of me.

Remind me not to do anymore plays for the time being.

But the good news is that I got a new LG phone, and for $25 a month I get 300 minutes a month, unlimited texts and unlimited web access.

Could this phone possibly represent a new way for me to access Illusion Vale from work?

We shall see.

I'll fiddle with the phone tonight and see what shakes loose.

Success! This is me, typing from my new phone. WatchGuard is not invincible! Take that, Craig in the Network Department! HA! But this interface is strange and unwieldy and ungainly. The phone won't let me do line breaks or highlit text. I shall have to play with it some more and try to learn this interface. I greatly prefer the PC, but maybe this is better than nothing. More in the morning.

Gentlemen, behold!

It's been a while that I've been wanting to make Gametable underlays for specific spell effects. And, like the adage says, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So in light of current events (and by "current events" I mean "Keitha's current events"), here are two single steps:



Whatcha think?

These underlays will be particularly helpful with spells which have durations rather than instantaneous effects. As always, if the spell's area of effect touches or engulfs a pog's dead center, the creature or object represented by that pog is affected by the spell unless stated otherwise (ie. a stone golem would not be affected by a Warp Wood spell, no matter what).

I plan on creating more such underlays for more spells in the future, for all your spellcasters' needs (and your allies, and your enemies...). But man, that Circle of Death spell--with its 50' radius--is going to be a pain in the rump roast....

is that Entangle spell made from christmas wrapping paper of holly ad trees?

No, it's all Paint Shop Pro's Picture Tube with a Warp Brush, some Twirl distortion and some Ripple distortion. Unfortunately, the Picture Tube options include a set of grass blades, a set of green tree leaves, a set of autumn tree leaves, a set of leafy vines and four or five different friggin' sets of holly, along with a bunch of other Christmassy crap. So the guys at Jasc didn't really give me a whole lot of options for vegetation.

Bastards.

It all looks good to me as long as I am not caught in it. lol

Ooh! I just thought of a better way to make that Entangle spell underlay! To the Paint Shop!

...after I score some breakfast, that is.

There we go! I increased the width and height of the surrounding transparency by 64 pixels, so the Entangle spell will automatically center on a pog or the center of a grid square instead of an X-Y crossing on the grid. I also made it look less "whirlwind of phantasmal grass and holly berries" and more "bunch of vines and grass reaching out to grab people"...which is pretty much what the Entangle spell is all about.

(Spoilered to avoid minor page-stretching.)

Spoiler:

What do you think?

Yeah, that Entangle spell may be twice as big as that Web spell, and the two spells have pretty much the same effect on any creature ensnared by them, but the balancing factor is that the Web spell will work anywhere, while Entangle can only work wherever vegetation is present; you can lay down an Entangle in practically any forest, jungle, swamp or grassland, or maybe even in an oceanic kelp bed or one of those underground tunnels where you have tree roots hanging and protruding from the earth all over the place. But you can forget about casting Entangle in a desert, in an ice cavern, across a lava tube, inside a salt mine, on a cobblestone road or up on a rocky mountain in the dead of winter.

The Entangle spell can even ensnare plant creatures (such as treants, shriekers, violet fungi, assassin vines, phantom fungi, trees animated by a treant's Animate Trees power or a druid's Liveoak spell, and those homebrewed briarjacks that Karnoz and Keitha ran away from in Gametableland...), but the Entangle spell won't directly alter the plant creatures themselves. Just don't expect that huge, powerful treant to stay put for very long (unless you grabbed him with a bunch of other trees, perhaps).

(Possible alternate effects of Entangle depend on the type of vegetation present; ensnaring people with a dense copse of oak trees may give them a better chance of slipping free and escaping, but with the added threat of crushing damage if they fail to escape. Briars, thornbushes and poisonous plants come with their own threats, and snagging three guys in a dinghy with that oceanic kelp bed might even end up capsizing the boat--or pulling it under--and drowning the poor bastards....)

The other thing about Web is that the magic webbing is flammable. So a few guys with torches--or a lone sorcerer with a Burning Hands spell--can easily defeat a Web spell, but anyone caught in the web is going to burn right along with it. Some malicious spellcasters might even take advantage of that, snagging someone with a Web spell and then turning a flask of oil or Alchemist Fire into a medieval Molotov and throwing it at the webbed-up victim. Big ouchies invariably ensue.

Anyway, I'm still eating my salad and my fruit pie for breakfast, but I'll get back to the prologue posts now.

Also, new status pogs!

We all remember these old "Bound" status pogs, right?


Yeah, the idea behind the Bound pog was to represent a character or creature who has become completely unable to move, whether because of being bound from head to toe in chains or ropes or whatnot, being paralyzed (usually by Hold spells, certain poisons or the attacks of creatures such as ghouls and carrion crawlers), failing a grapple, falling victim to spells such as Bigby's Grasping Hand, getting caught in a net, suffering Mental Shock from a drastically failed Will save against Horror, and so on.

But there needs to be a differentiation between that and a character who cannot move from where he or she stands but is otherwise able to act, whether freely or with restriction or penalty. The victims of those pesky Web and Entangle spells would qualify here; until they can free themselves from the spell, they're rooted to the spot, they suffer a -4 penalty to Dexterity (but aren't considered Flatfooted by being stuck in the spell's effect) and they suffer -2 to their Attack rolls from trying to stab or hack through all those web strands or grasping vines. Spellcasters also need to pass Concentration checks to cast any spell, lest the spell be bungled and lost. Immobilization can also be inflicted by certain traps, environments or other spells or spell combinations (such as that old, infamous spell trap where a wizard, a sorcerer or a druid casts Transmute Rock to Mud, waits for the victims to sink in up to their knees and then casts Transmute Mud to Rock).

And so, for a handy Immobilized status pog, I give you a little red-and-white bear trap.


I've also made a Slowed status pog. This is a good pog to represent the effects of a Slow spell, which reduces its subjects to half Speed, half jumping distances, halved numbers of attacks, partial actions and penalties to Armor Class, melee Attack rolls, melee damage and Reflex saves. Spellcasting is unaffected.

So have a little ball and chain, courtesy of the Slowed status pog!


There are some gray areas to work through, though; shallow water, deep mud, caltrops or spells such as Spike Growth can reduce ground speed but will neither immobilize people nor hinder any actions with their hands or other parts of their bodies. Which pog would we use to represent that? I may have to come up with another status pog for this.

Also, here's a good status pog for a change: the Hasted pog! This would be the result of spells such as Haste or Mass Haste as well as potions, supernatural abilities or various magic items which mimic those spells in effect, increasling the enchanted character's movement speed, attacks, actions, jumping distance and Armor Class.


More will come later. Back to reading and typing I go now.

So, Taljor! Pog time!

Pick a Keagon pog. Any one. Whichever one you like most in regards to zoom and point of focus.



Also, here's a Maya pog. Let me know if you think it needs any adjustments...zoom, contrast, brightness, brushed pupils, whatever you think would help represent Keagon's kitty best. I could even go so far as to twist her around with a Warp-Twirl brush, turn her teal with a Hue brush and add a Sunburst to her left eye, though I have no idea why you'd ever want to do something that radical with a black jaguar.



What do you think?

Very nice! I love the Jag. Nothing beats the fear of only seeing peering eyes from thick brush... if you get the chance to see them.

As for my own pog, talk about tough choices? I'd have to go with.... 2nd from the left.

Second from the left it is!

Also, I'm about to go rest my eyes and eat something for a bit. But in response to last night's events, I have done some more tinkering on The Bountiful Burrows of Braddenlock, and I've come up with these goodies to help spruce things up a bit:



Also, after lengthy deliberation, I've decided to change horses midstream and bank Experience Points earned through Gametable Nights sessions, and I've added lines in The Party to reflect this. The reason for this change is that the adventures covered in Gametable Nights take place at some point in the future, with the forum campaign-in-progress being the present...except that the "present" is actually the past, because the Chapter Zero chapters are prologues, and...

Yeah. That'll get confusing. In short, the banked experience is to be added at the end of the current chapter in the forum campaign. Chapter Zero comes to an end, and at some point between Chapter Zero and Chapter One, Karnoz and Keitha join forces to plunder the Bountiful Burrows of Braddenlock, and they come back with some more Experience and goodies in time for Chapter One to kick off. This makes better sense from a chronological perspective...fewer "time-travelling" Experience Points this way.

Of course, this "timestream" application of Gametable Experience still doesn't quite avert or resolve potential temporal paradoxes, like if Karnoz somehow dies during his Chapter Zero, or if Keitha doesn't quite pull through when the House of Ainsley falls at the end of her prologue (meaning that she would be some type of undead when she runs off to sack the Bountiful Burrows), et cetera.

But we'll cross that bridge when or if we come to it.

I'm also debating whether or not to add lines for goodies found or lost during Gametable Nights adventures, as these gains and losses can be banked until the end of the current in-forum chapter as well. I won't sweat the little things like arrow counts, but it could be important if Corwin delves into the Tinstone Warrens and finds a Decanter of Endless Water....

Okay, I'm off to go stretch my legs, eat stuff and handle a few chores. See you in a little while.

Oh! I almost forgot!


Okay, I'm going to bed so I can get up at a decent hour tonight. Be good!

...and then I woke up a couple of hours ago and realized, "Gack! It's been exactly one month since Taljor posted! I'd better get him done before I take off for work tonight."

And then there were gnomes.


...and the debate over whether D&D gnomes have pointed ears or round ears rages on. At least most people seem to agree that gnomes have bigger noses; that and and an extra foot or so in height serve to help the "longshanks" tell them from the halflings (even if people can't make up their minds about the ears and whether halfling ears are different; I'm in favor of "gnomes have pointy ears just like those equally magical elves do, and halflings have round ears just like their hobbit forerunners do" myself).

Also, if you ever get on Google and search for images of gnomes, remember to add "-garden" to the keywords. Otherwise, you'll get swamped with an ocean of David the Gnome and all the rest of the pointy-little-red-cap variety. Fair warning. (And yes, believe it or not, there is gnome porn on the internet...most of it on the Rule 34 website, of course. So be sure that Google's Safesearch is on if the kids are hanging around....)

And ha ha, someone on DA drew her own version of the playable D&D races! The comments tell me that I'm not the only one who wonders why she made the dwarf and the gnome just as tall as the human, but hey...it's a cute pic anyway.

Okay, back to the post I go! Cya.

Because I might actually need at least one of these in the near future, here are more pogs from the Wild Kingdom (with some graphic help courtesy of Magic: The Gathering):




And now, I'm off to bed so I can get up at a decent hour this evening. Toodles.

And because I care, here's what I've been working on for the past few hours:


Overlays for the notorious Lightning Bolt spell!

The Lightning Bolt spell underwent a serious metamorphosis between D&D/AD&D and D&D 3.0. Those of us who remember Ye Olde Days remember the Lightning Bolt spell with these traits and limitations:

1) The lightning bolt was always 5' wide and 60' long, no longer and no shorter. Any creature in the lightning bolt's area of effect got zapped.

2) It would bounce off of solid obstacles; even a typical wooden door could deflect a lightning bolt. And the laws of physics were usually applied regarding the angles of impact; a lightning bolt which struck a wall at a 45-degree angle would bounce off at a 45-degree angle. This allowed a clever wizard to set up "bank shots" with the Lightning Bolt spell and zap enemies around corners (though a Dungeon Master who's a stickler for details might demand that the mage have some means of sensing enemies' locations through walls before allowing the wizard to target them with a lightning bolt). It was also possible for one lightning bolt to strike the same target multiple times, depending on the surroundings and the lightning bolt's "ricochet" angles.

3) The Lightning Bolt spell knew no friends; anyone in its way got struck by it. Combined with #2, it was not unknown for careless wizards to zap themselves with their own lightning bolts, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes even getting killed by their own Lightning Bolt spells.

Yeah, it was a pretty deadly spell. You could easily take down a few ogres with one Lightning Bolt, but you'd better be paying attention to that big stone statue behind them....


The Lightning Bolt spell is still pretty dangerous these days, just in different ways:

1) The lightning bolt comes in one of two sizes: 5' wide and 100' long, or 10' wide and 50' long. The lightning bolt's length increases with the caster's spellcaster Level...+10' per Level for the "narrow" version, or +5' per Level for the "wide" version.

2) The lightning bolt doesn't bounce. The mage is in no danger of getting fried with his own spell. If the lightning bolt hits an obstacle sturdy enough to withstand the lightning strike, the lightning bolt will stop. However...

3) ...the lightning bolt can destroy obstacles quite handily. With the object Hardness and Hit Points rules, if the lightning bolt deals enough damage to destroy the obstacle, it will destroy it and travel through for the rest of the lightning bolt's length. Even the weakest lightning bolts can blast through a wooden door; the most powerful lightning bolts can shatter boulders, detonate oak trees, melt iron bars and reduce stone walls to rubble.

Sure, you can use a Lightning Bolt spell to blast open a rugged treasure chest, but you'll probably also melt, burn, evaporate or explode everything inside. Either use a Knock spell or let the party's Rogue handle it.

So here are the goodies, in both Narrow and Wide forms, and in lengths of 5', 10', 25' and 50'. I also added a set of 45-degree-angle Lightning Bolts, because Gametable still doesn't do 45-degree angles. It was the biggest pain in the pancreas getting the angle bolts to come out just right, but I finally did it. You're welcome.




Combine all these bits and pieces and you can come up with lightning bolts of varying lengths, angles and special effects. And since you guys don't have any Arcane spellcasters in the party (at least until Karnoz makes Assassin, and Assassins don't do Lightning Bolts, alas...), I'll just have to use a lich for the examples. Guess who gets to be his target dummies.




Narrow Lightning Bolt and Wide Lightning Bolt.
(Remember: if the lightning bolt touches the center of your pog or physical miniature, you're zapped. That wide bolt can zap three people marching abreast. Yeow.)




Wide Lightning Bolts, 45 degrees and 90 degrees.




Note the use of two Zaps and a Terminus. They're not necessary; they're just for show.

The rules don't say anything about partially blocked lightning bolts, so I would have to assume that whatever isn't blocked continues on its trajectory. In this example, Corwin and Sylvea are in the lightning bolt's area of effect, so the lightning bolt strikes both of them. But the lightning bolt's not powerful enough to breach the wall, so Karnoz--hunkering behind that wall--is safe. But the wall has taken significant damage, and a second lightning bolt could destroy it. Karnoz would be wise to find another place to hide.




With a little ingenuity, you can use the Lightning Bolt overlays to depict the Chain Lightning spell as well. I'd just use drawn lines for the Chain Lightning's secondary targets, though; given Gametable's angle and rotation limitations, there's no way you can rotate an overlay to hit absolutely anyone within 30 feet of the primary target. Just like the Queen going after the Knight on a chessboard, there are some places you just can't reach.


Okay, I need to get food now. Who's up for a Gametable Night tonight?

Well, poopsies. Dad's home from St. Louis a day early after a week or two of vacation, and now he wants to hang out with me tonight...eating dinner and so on. I was planning on hosting another Gametable Night tonight, too. We'll have to play it by ear and see if he lets me go early.

Also, look what I made! Snowy terrain stuff!



Basically, all I did was go through Gametable's Environment folder, open up everything besides the statue and the hole (since I use pogs for statues and a deep, dark hole looks like a deep, dark hole whether there's snow at the bottom or not) and add snow. It wasn't just brushing white all over everything, either; I had to keep in mind how snow looks, how it lies and how it behaves. Snow's not going to form a solid shell over an entire treetop, for example; there are some places where the branches are spaced well enough to let the snow fall through to the ground. And snow also bunches up on the crooks and low bends of a tree branch yet falls off the higher arching bends, so making some parts of the branches solid white while making other parts sparsely snowy or icy helped me give the branches a semblance of waviness or movement. Those snowcaps were fun, too; I started off with a very light blue-white for the snowcap's base, painted white on top of it for the snowcap's top (with the widths or absences of the blue-white "skirt" suggesting broad sloping edges, steep edges or recessive edges) and painted on "wrinkles" or furrows with a Darken brush and a Warp brush. I think they came out pretty well...not quite perfect, but I think it works. What do you guys think?