Gametable Tests and Multiplay Scheduling

...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?