Another Bug Hunt...

16 November 2006-

It's back to GURPS:Fantasy after a long stint playing other games and other genres, and Craig is taking a turn running the adventure. Our party had been taking it easy in a local city when our wizard (Kevin) was summoned to the Mages' Guild to be assigned an important-sounding mission: another wizard in the guild was in trouble, and a rescue was needed.

It seems that a nearby island, inhabited by huge bugs (ick!) and a small village full of colonists/victims, had become a research station for one of the local mages who specialized in entomology. It further developed that this mage had a communications device with which to remotely contact the Guild on the mainland, and he had just called in to report that the wards which normally keep the creepy-crawlies at bay had failed, and that the village was being over-run with giant spiders (double-ick!). Naturally, Kevin accepted the challenge, and our party was ferried across to the island forthwith to investigate and deal with the problem.

When we arrived, the docks were deserted, but we found a native ranger-type on his way back to the village after an extended hunt, so he showed us the way to the village. Sure enough, the whole village was covered in a giant spider-silk canopy, right out of Tarantula. We approached, and ascertained that there are still people in at least some of the buildings, but several giant spiders came down to challenge us. We left it there for this week, but it's sure to get hairy next time. What we wouldn't give for some flame-throwers and a platoon of Colonial Marines! Somebody wake up Hicks!

MacGyver in an X-Wing

26 October 2006 --

Oh, this one was a treat.

The Imperial shuttle contained a provincial governor or some such VIP, and had been grounded by damage from hostile fire (fire from whom, we still don't know). We were worried that we were going to have to re-convince the lizardfolk not to believe the pretty lies spun by the Empire upon first contact -- but the Stormtroopers simplified the issue nicely when they vaporized the lizardfolk who were graciously approaching the ship. Hello, my new scaly allies.

So we began hatching ideas of how to incapacitate the ship and maybe even capture the governor alive. We came up with maybe four workable plans, and since a) they weren't mutually exclusive, and b) we had no shortage of willing helpers, we put them all into play at once.

Picture this. The ship is being pelted by catapulted rocks. Then it sinks into the hole opened beneath it by lizardfolk sappers. Then -- I love this one -- four large dinosaurs crash into the square, attracted by the griff-blood that we had lobbed onto the ship's hull. And finally, next to the ship, from inside an artifact where we had hidden it, a thermal detonator detonates, um, thermally.

Oh, and then hundreds of lizardfolk infantry rush the ship too.

Naturally, as soon as we had accepted the governor's surrender, our own reinforcements showed up. I guess some narrative conventions can't be avoided.

But really -- did you see the part about the dinosaurs?