Black House in D20
I have been reading "Black House" by Stephen King and Peter Straub. Well, listening to it on tape while driving. I recently finished chapter 19. Beezer and the Thunder Five against the hell hound.

With all of the RPG development and writing I have been doing, I guess it was inevitable. With the voice of the narrator going through each action of each member of the motorcycle game in sequence, I couldn't help myself. I immediately realized that he could have been going (almost) round-by-round combat in a D&D game. Well, a D20 modern game. It was step by step... you could almost hear the "players" of the five bikers rolling their will saves (only Sonny made his save... it sounded like Mouse and Kaiser Bill totally failed, and Doc and Beezer were only partially affected).

I figure the bikers probably hit the hellhound with at least 2 shots from a .357 and another from ... I can't remember now... the .38? So that's 3 hits for 2d6 damage each... or about 21 points of damage on the average. The average hellhound in D20 has 22 hit points of damage, so I can see why it ran off. Of course, this was no simple D20 Hell Hound, so it was probably a bit beefier with a very nasty disease / madness combo area affect attack (I don't know for sure, since I'm not done with the book). So it probably took over half damage before it fled. And maybe had damage resistance...

Woah. What am I saying?

It's funny that I haven't thought about a book in game terms since I was a kid. But I couldn't help but wonder if Peter Straub (or Stephen King) had been playing a little bit of D&D or something when they wrote that scene. It just fit too perfectly. Or at least, in my warped brain it did. Should I sign up for therapy or something, or has anything like this happened to you?

Oh, and incidentally, I really like the book so far...

Labels: Geek Life, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:22 AM (Permalink)