Seeing as years ago Grognardia was my inspiration to do some rpg blogging, it makes sense that I can still get inspired by posts there to make my own posts on related subjects. But in this case James' post about spiders reminded me of a game related spider thing that happened earlier this year. Early in the campaign the characters were travelling through hobbit lands, and killed a wayward giant spider on a rainy night while taking shelter in an old cottage. The local governess was pleased, and let them stay at her estate in cozy, round halfling guest cottages.
The dead giant spider was placed by and Ettercap, who called upon all spiders large and small in the local area to descend on the domiciles and attack the party. The characters awoke in the dark covered in small spiders, and ran outside to face a half dozen of the giant variety. It was a nasty fight, but the PC's prevailed.
Later after the game, the players had logged out and I was cleaning things up. That's when I notices something odd. A spider on the 50 inch TV screen I use for running the session. A small spider, about the size of "O" on your keyboard, was just running around.
I like spiders, and heard long ago it was bad luck to kill one. So I tried to knock it into a glass but nothing happened. It was immune to my touch. A ghost spider? OK, this may sound silly, but for a few seconds I thought (being new to Roll20) that the program could mess with you with animations depending on what you did in the game. Maybe just based on the word "spider" in text somewhere in token notes. But good sense prevailed, and I realized quick that a little spidey had gotten inside the screen. Wow. This had never happened to me before.
Odd, right? I mean, I'm running a spider based session and I spider invades my game map. Anyway, here is cell phone video I captured it with.
You'll notice the fellow runs through a door into the domicile, past a couple of swarms of spiders, then out a small round window. Clever little guy.
It may or may not be bad luck to kill a spider, but there's generally no reason to do so anyway. The common varieties are pretty beneficial for humans as they eat tremendous numbers of small insects as well as each other, which keeps their own numbers down so they don't exceed their food sources. About the only time you're likely to see them in any numbers is right after a brood hatches out when the teeny tiny ones are running around carving out territory. About the worst most spiders will do is force you to clean up the odd cobweb and the best hunter species don't even spin them.
ReplyDeleteWell, as I said I kind of like them and try not to kill them generally. But I’ve smashed my far share of black widows and anything that looks like it could be a brown recluse.
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