Stores

Store pages for the Cyberpunk RPG.

Equipment

Cyberpunk RPG equipment pages.

Bestiarum Vocabulum 2

The Carrion Crawler

Oh, yes. The dreaded carrion crawler.  According to my memory of the white second edition monster manual, it looks like a cross between a fat white cephalopod and a cutworm.  They're about 6 foot long and can run down most adventurers. They can climb up walls and ceilings. A nest of these is as deadly as a pack of ghouls.  I love using them for those total party kills.  First they paralyze you with their wiggly tentacle mouths, then they move in for the slow eat.  Super terrible.  And they're must tougher than you'd think.

It's a pretty good monster.

Apparently it was introduced way back in the 1975 Greyhawk D&D.   The only more dickish move would be to give them a 1-2 punch of Rust Monsters, then come in with some CCs.   There's no glory in killing these things.  Only danger.

Bestiarum Vocabulum 1

Today's lesson will be the Daemonette. Apparently, Daemonettes appear as both beautiful and repulsive to those who look upon them. Their bewitching opal eyes and enchanting aura veil their androgynous features and grotesque claws, revealing an alluring appearance the beholder will always consider the epitome of beauty.

Yeah, because nothing says "beautiful, bewitching, and alluring" like crab claws. I can't remember the rules for 40K, but I think their big crab claws can punch through the sides of tanks, and snip well armoured men in half. Their other claim to fame is that because they're so "alluring", they cause their opponents to hesitate, because obviouly they're just so interesting that you momentarily stop defending yourself to mumble "What in the blazes is that sexy thing?" That leaves them with an opening to eviscerate your sorry butt.

In Dark Heresy our group inadvertently summoned one*, and had to dispatch her quickly, while fighting in an small underground bunker/map room. They kept referring to it as a Kitchen-ette, while they shot it a few times with hellpistols and .44 magnum revolvers. No big deal. In game terms, their "alluring" trick causes you to pass a willpower check each turn, or spend half of that turn gawking. Oh, you need a full round to do an action? Reloading? Invocation? That's too bad. One surefire way to defend against this is to be a Techpriest with the Chem-Geld trait. Apparently in the year 40K, there is only war. And terrible choices. *They didn't actually summon one. Only heritics do that.

ScanCon 2012!

Scanpocalypse Now!

Once again, buds from 'round the world (including Australia) came to Madison, WI to engage in epic gaming for four days straight.  There was board gaming, wargaming, video gaming, rpgs, tron disc-throwing, delicious food-eating and possibly some spontaneous firebreathing.  What follows are some pictures that were captured of the mercurial event.

Swordquest!

When I was a wee tot I spent many an hour playing games like Combat and ET on the old Atari 2600.  One game that I incessently played but had me completely baffled as to what it was about was Swordquest (Earthworld).  I played it over and over just because the cartridge cover art was so awesome, hoping that my eight year old brain would figure out what the heck I'm supposed to do in that crazy game.  I didn't have the original box or instruction manual, because I think we got the game from some neighbor kid who my brother traded it for Haunted House (which is fine, because Haunted House seriously sucked).  

Swordquest's gameplay was pretty much incomprehensible, where you'd run around and drop crossbows in rooms for no reason, and suddenly you'd have to frogger-style your way up the screen on pink boats.  It made no sense, until now.  Below is a video explaining what the whole SwordQuest epic was about, and now 25 years later I finally understand why that game would spit numbers and hypnotic patterns at me for seemingly no reason. 

Its a true legend and incredible story for video game history.  Behold, the true purpose of... SWORDQUEST!

Thorgrim Steinhammer

In the ancient times there was a warrior dwarf that has such cussitude and awesomeness that he achieved Sainthood. Cory could likely tell you what he did, but he probably crushed goblin kingdoms and smashed giant's knees. (You always gotta go for the knees)

At any rate, there are a few small wooden totems out there that grant a small portion of the Steinhammer fighting spirit to it's carrier.

It's a 5 inch statue carved in the likeness of ole Steinhammer, holding his trusty hammer, of course. Cory described it to me years ago, when we played 3rd edition D&D on FantasyGrounds/Scype. It was a magic item that Cory invented (just for me, I think), which could only be activated by sharing a beer with the statue. You'd have to get two beers, of the best quality you could find, and drink one, and hold one up to the statue's mouth, which he would drink. In the next battle you fought, you would be granted Bull Strength, just like the spell. I think it was +1D4 Strength or something.

I think my Dwarven Character would carry around many extra waterskins full of beer, just in case. Every time we stopped and the other characters cleaned their weapons or tended to their wounds, for my Dwarf, it would be beer time.

It was one of the more memorable and fun magic items I've had during my time gaming. It wasn't even that powerful of an item, but that isn't really what gaming is about, is it. Whenever we'd go to a bar, and get beers, I would get the best one because I was worried that Steinhammer might not work if the beer sucked. Cory never even said anything about that, but I figured that's how it worked.

So this year for Christmas, Cullen gave me my own Thorgrim Steinhammer beer tap handle for my homebrew. He made this bad boy by hand, and put a threaded tap handle mount in the bottom.

It's about 5.8 times better than I imagined it would be. He's wearing scalemail, has a 70's mustache like my old football coach, and his short handled, Dwarven hammer looks heavier than a dumpster full of concrete.

Check out the pipes on this mamma-jamma. Two tickets to the gun show.


And here's one next to my minion for scale.