Bugs, Mr. Rico! Zillions of them!

I've finally gotten back to my bug project. I've been working on a hive society of insects that I have named Haidomyrmodes Formigathus after a species of prehistoric ants. I call them Formiga for short. They will dig their own hive or, on occasion, invade a dungeon or labyrinth and expand it for their own use.

The warriors and workers will scour the countryside to find food for the colony and they are not the least bit picky as to what they will take back to the colony. In the warmer climates where they are usually found colonies compete with each other and this serves as a control to overpopulation. Unfortunately the Formiga will swarm from time to time and occasionally have moved into more temperate areas inhabited by humanoid races. When that happens the local ruler is wise to gather a strong force and eradicate the invading insects before they become entrenched.

I'm not going to post stats and other information about them yet because I want to play test them against parties of adventurers first, but here is a little:

• Drones serve the queen and larvae exclusively.
• Workers do the heavy lifting, digging, and building.
• Padrones are the boss bugs. They control the workers and warriors.
• Punchers are big (2-hex) warriors with a large horn as a weapon.
• Spinners will try to paralyze their prey and wrap them in silk.
• Stingers are the flyers and they inject poison.
• Queens are the largest (4-hex). She lay eggs and eats, but she can be dangerous.

Keeping Track of Everything

I guess everyone that is into role playing games does it. I take copious notes on what is happening in every game session... where we are, who we see, how much I spend, what is in my pack. The list of information grows and grows. A lot of it is just bookkeeping, but some of it is random bits of information that our game master drops.

They seem unrelated, but in the days after our weekly get togethers I try to see if there is a developing pattern. Where do we most often encounter goblins, or orcs? Are there gargoyles, as reported, in the petrified forest? How many dragons are in the western mountains, and how big are they? Are there any other gates other than the two we know of? How can an ogre who never seems to leave his castle have so much influence over the entire island?

We have a great GM in my opinion. He lets us make our plans and then gets us to do what he had planned in the first place. That was obvious the other night. We've been picking at our spider problem (See my earlier post.) like one who presses around a really nasty pimple that you just don't want to pop yet. We were ready to travel away from that problem to explore other territory when our GM, I'll call him Joe, rolled for a random encounter. I don't know if he honestly rolled for a wandering knight or not, but that's what we got. Not just any knight either, but a hedge knight with an entourage of men-at-arms who was seeking glory by killing our giant spiders.

All well and good, but we started talking to him about being nice to our friend Ralph, the somewhat dim, but useful ogre. The knight's eyes gleam as he contemplates fighting him before dealing with the spiders. We like Ralph and don't want to see him hurt needlessly, so we turn around and return to the town, warn the ogre to lay low, and plot how we will use the knight to achieve our purpose in the battle of the spiders in the orchard.

At the end of the session we had vanquished a major monster, the magical Spider Queen, and her minions. There was no apparent monetary reward, but we have the gratitude of the town and the friendship of the new lord of the manor. We'll have to wait until next week to see what Joe decides that we want to do.

The Spider Queen

This is a synopsis of one of the story lines of our intrepid band of adventurers in the Fantasy Trip. Originally five adventurers were thrown together in a small town on the Isle of Bridonia. They included a female rogue, a fighter, a wizard, a dwarf warrior, and a halfling merchant, healer, and mechanician. Over time the dwarf was killed, eaten by giant frogs, and the wizard became a hermit because he blamed himself. The party got a new wizard and has been roaming the countryside looking for adventure and fortune.

The town of East Riding's main export was apple cider made from the apples in the orchard behind the manor house of the local lord. It was a thriving community until the orchard became overrun with spiders of all sizes, ranging from small up to the size of a large pig. The orchard had become a dark, foreboding place that none would enter.

A brave, and often foolish, party of adventurers had been asked to help to clear the orchard of these nuisances. They discovered quickly that there was more than it seemed in the woods. They had used their wizard's bear illusion to hunt a large spider and it was quickly disbelieved by some intelligence in the darkness. They retreated and moved on. They had other quests before them.

The adventurers returned to the town again in a fortnight. They had not forgotten their promise. This time they entered the orchard with an ogre they had befriended. In the darkness of the grove they faced many large spiders and one ogre-sized spider. They fought mightily and took many wounds from the dark creatures of evil. Together with their ogre they defeated the giant spider in a battle where their friend was gravely injured. The fight was not over. A voice in the darkness taunted them and promised to defeat them with more of her minions. The adventurers gathered their wounded and departed to fight another day.

Another couple of weeks pass. The party of adventurers were preparing to return to the orchard one more time. Although their friend, the ogre, was not fully healed, they helped him obtain armor to use in the coming fight. They prepared themselves with molotails, torches, and poison for the spiders. A traveling knight appears in the town and announces that he plans to clear the orchard. The adventurers convince him to work together in the enterprise. He will enter from the east while they start fires on the west side of the orchard to drive the spiders towards him.

As the fight begins, they hear screams from the direction of the knight and his party as they engage the spiders. The adventurers advance deeper into the wood and discover the lair of a great giant spider queen and her remaining minions. She is in the middle of her huge web and directs her other spiders to attack. Fire is a good weapon. The wizard in the party uses illusionary fire to burn one spider. The halfling throws a molotail at the queen. It misses, but she leaves her burning web to advance. The rogue archer has been knocked down by a blast of dark force cast by the queen. The fighter is down, covered in spider bites from a swarm of small spiders. The lord of the town is also engaged with the persistent small arachnids.

Finally in a last ditch effort, the halfling throws another molotail and hits the queen. That is just enough to distract her as the archer readies an arrow dipped in poison. The halfling is in the way, but the archer shoots. The arrow flies past the halfling's ear and pierces the giant spider's abdomen, injecting her full of poison. She lets loose and horrible scream and vanishes in a dark cloud of smoke. Her remaining minions vanish as well. Within seconds there is no evidence of the spiders at all in the orchard.

The lord calls on the townsfolk to help as they fight to put out the fires they started. About half of the orchard is damaged by the flames before it is put out. The knight survives although the rest of his party died in the battle. There are still questions to be answered. Why did the spider queen invade the orchard? What did she have to do with the deaths of the two previous lords? For now the town is at peace and celebrating their victory.

Coffee and Keyboards

Yeah, they don’t mix well. I probably won’t be posting much until I take my computer to the shop. I can’t even login because I can’t type all the letters of my password.

2/24/19 UPDATE: I'm up and running again. Well, sort of. I took my laptop to the shop and they examined it. Their recommendation was to give it a couple of weeks to dry out completely and get a cheap keyboard and mouse to use until it heals itself. 

So here I am using said cheap keyboard and hoping that I don't need plan B which is a large $$$ outlay for new components.

Making Progress

My colony of bugs is coming along. They are basically giant ants, but not as large as the ones in the movie THEM. I don't anticipate them being hard to fight individually, but bugs are a challenge when in large numbers.

A colony will contain a queen with her eggs, and drones to serve her and the growing larvae. Then there are the more mundane workers who build, clean, and move stuff around, including the food harvested from above. There are padrones that control the workers and the warriors as they go out from the colony to hunt and collect food. Of course there are flying bugs too which I envision as scouts to locate food in the area of the colony.

I'm working to design counters to use in play testing the bugs against completing colonies and adventurers that may cross their path. Fun times.

Poodles! God, Why Did It Have To Be Poodles?

This has absolutely nothing to do with our fantasy roleplaying (yet), but I like it.

More About Bugs

I did a little research into Hymenopterans the other day. They were originally part of the Chitin I game which was designed by Howard Thompson and edited by Steve Jackson in 1977.

My guess is (and anyone from SJG can correct me if I am wrong) the bugs were included as part of the monster list for In The Labyrinth in 1980 when it was owned by Metagaming, but Steve wisely removed them from the legacy edition since they were based on material he did not own. Again this is my assumption.

I like the bugs, but they are no longer canon to TFT. Like I said before I really like the concept of an insect hive culture as a monster challenge for roleplaying adventures. Instead of dealing with one or two large monsters the PCs must face a horde of little critters that are single-mindedly seeking food and protecting their queen. So I am creating my own hive society of bugs and although you still will find workers and warriors, I'm designing them a bit differently. More to come...

This & That

I've been absent for a few days. There is a 'bug' going around that has nasty effects on the gastrointestinal tract. My granddaughter brought it home from school. Since we babysit her and her brother my wife and I got it too, as well as our son and his girlfriend. Luckily it only last 24-48 hours.

I took a look at my activity on Kickstarter. I got started with it when Steve Jackson announced The Fantasy Trip - Old School Roleplaying! last July. Since then I have backed the TFT Adventures, the Pocket Box Games of the Eighties and Hexagram #1. All of them are through either Steve Jackson Games or Warehouse 23. I'm backing one other project. Phillip Reed who is CEO of SJG decided to create his own fanzine which is called Delayed Blast Gamemaster #1. It is a 48-page (it started with 24) saddle-stitched zine loaded with ideas for use with most fantasy RPGs.

So I am hip deep into Kickstarter projects and please don't tell my wife how much I have spent or will spend over the next seven months. I hope I can resist participating in anymore projects, especially since I am forced to wait, and wait after I spend my money. The good news though is my huge 'I Want It All' box of The Fantasy Trip Legacy Edition should arrive in about six or seven weeks.

Speaking of bugs, Mr. Tollenkar on the MeWe group: Melee, Wizard, and The Fantasy Trip posted a page of Hymenopteran counters he had acquired. These bugs were included in the list of monsters in the original (©1980) version of In The Labyrinth, but were dropped from the new Legacy edition (©2018). I like the concept of creatures with a hive mentality and the sole purpose in life to find food and increase the strength of the hive. So I am starting work on an adventure in which a party of intrepid explorers will have to enter a hive to do... what? Find a long, lost treasure, destroy the hive for the benefit of the community, save a damsel in distress? I don't know yet. I'm working on that.

The Misunderstood Ogre

No, this has nothing to do with Shrek. Our party met an ogre several sessions ago in our game. His name is Ralph and he told us he was a bridge troll. He was kind of sad and funny. His bridge was a panel of boards nailed together laying in the middle of the road. Rather than pay his toll we could have just gone around him when he wasn't looking.

His toll was a pig. The first time we met him we didn't have one, but by a strange coincidence we had the bodies of three bandits salted down in barrels (long story). We offered him long-pork instead and went our merry way. It became a regular thing for us to buy a pig to give to Ralph as we went back and forth along this road.

Recently we decided to help the nearby town rid its apple orchard of the giant spiders who were preventing the locals from harvesting their crop which they use to make a potent cider that is their main export. As it turns out Ralph has a taste for cider.

We tell our new friend our plan. He tells us how he really isn't a troll, but an ogre, but his dream has always been to become a bridge troll with a real bridge. "Why aren't you living under the nearby stone bridge," we ask? He tells us he is just starting in the toll bridge business and didn't think he was ready for a real bridge yet. We promise Ralph a supply of cider from the townspeople and see if we can help him move to the stone bridge if he will help us with the spiders. Ralph agrees.

Our party consists of a fighter, a rogue with bow, a halfling throwing daggers, our elf mage, and Ralph carrying a two-handed club. We enter the orchard and engage three large spiders, one giant spider, and their leader who remains hidden in the darkness of the trees.

Ralph fights the giant spider, but he is outmatched. He keeps swinging his huge club and missing. The spiders engage us in hand-to-hand combat. We manage to kill them, and then pile on the giant spider and kill him. Ralph falls unconscious in the battle, but a healing potion and a bit of healing brings him around and we exit before the spiders regroup.

We don't have the cider to pay him yet, but we help our wounded friend move in under the stone bridge. Ralph could use more healing and we feel obligated to help, otherwise it's going to take a long time for him to get back to full strength. For now we'll get him some fat pigs.

Just A Quick Note

We had our weekly Monday night game session. It ran a little later than usual. We managed to complete the wizard's tower adventure and free the wizard who had been locked in battle with a demon for the past 300 years, give or take a decade.

For once Krupke did not come close to dying even though he got into a fight with several large (hog sized) spiders. The other PCs faired well with the exception of our rogue who got beaned with a large rock.
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In other news, the backer kit survey for the Steve Jackson Games The Fantasy Trip Adventures opened today and I confirmed my add-ons and paid my money.

I'm also backing the Hexagram #1, an Old-School RPG Zine for The Fantasy Trip. If you are interested there is about a week left to pledge your support. If you are interested in the TFT Adventures you can still get it as an add-on to this one.

I am very please to see how much material is coming out or in the planning stages for TFT. There are at least 4 more adventures scheduled for this year and there are other things that Steve is hinting at.