"Do Your Giant Spiders Or Bugs CLIMB Walls In Your Games?" Topic

(For Fantasy, SF, VSF, Horror, Pulp)

Or do they pretty much stay down on the ground when they move and/or fight?

And if they do climb, how do you replicate than on your terrain? Do you create little "hand holds" for them to stick on? So you use pins, sticking out from the underside of the bug/spider?

Or do you just use your imagination?

Dan
PS. I don't know where this real spider is from, but it must be pretty strong to take a mouse up a wall like that:

I discussed the idea with my gaming buddies. I thought about using neodymium magnets inside my cardboard castle walls, and towers, but I never pursued it. The visual was fun to picture in the mind, though… Would require I put metal bases beneath my toy spiders, so a lot of work, for a very temporary visual effect. I skip any type of temporary visual effect which lasts only a moment -- not worth the effort, in my mind. Cheers!

[EDIT: I just thought of using Blue Tac, the poster sticking material… That could work rather well. Hmmm… Now I'm thinking how I can put together another 2e BattleSystem game featuring Giant Spiders attacking a fort, or city wall. Just did that type of scenario, with Giant Spiders, a few BS games back. Thinking… Thinking…]

Heck, mine can climb on the ceiling.

A spider pig can do whatever a spider pig does…

Spider pig had a little help though. :)

Dan

Oh, my bugs climb walls. Unfortunately, the troops find out the hard way!

Stryderg

How do you represent that movement on your terrain?

Dan
PS. By the way, that spider with the mouse is in Australia. I guess they don't need mousetraps down under:
YouTube link

I have them climb walls. Sort of lean them up against the wall as a representation they are on it.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

link

If I did have spiders of any size in my games … they'd be terminated with extreme prejudice !

Brilliant idea from CC

This is the video tutorial that made me wonder about why bugs in games are pretty much still confined to moving and attacking on the ground, instead of taking advantage of their most important attributes:

YouTube link

Dan

I don't usually have to represent it, it's just a reduction of their horizontal distance. The terrain usually isn't so tall that the bugs would take two turns to get to the crunchy bits.

+1 Stryderg

For my kaiju games (with really big spiders and mantises of course), I do it like the flying monsters and put a block underneath them. I have clear plastic boxes in various sizes from the arts and crafts store.

Or sometimes just put a die beside them to show how many inches up the wall they've gone.

But only needed when climbing skyscrapers, they can make it to the top of most buildings in a single move.

Bugs in The Hive and the Flame often climb vertical surfaces! They have proven quite annoying doing this on more than one occasion

I never let them do it. It just tears up the walls. With real insects and spiders, there are little micro-tears from their sticky feet, but giant monster bugs leave giant rips in surfaces.

It's worse than letting the dogs on the furniture.

Giant bugs subject to Earth's gravity require too much handwaving for me, anyway. Large animals on land need a circulatory system to get blood out to their extremities.

Could it be that, somewhere in the galaxy, insectoids have evolved with vertebrate-style circulatory systems, allowing them to develop large bodies, and, more important, large brains? or could it be that normal insectoid stock was, in ancient times, genetically engineered to get those results?

Starship Troopers players say yes, to one or both questions, as can Traveller players, who have a powerful ancient race of genetic engineers in the main canon of the universe.

So, mount up, spider cavalry! An infestation of giant termites threatens the very foundations of Fort Apache!

If you are using plastic bugs, it's not too hard.

It's kinda fun messing with people when you stick a model to the side of a building.

We use poster putty a lot to get models to stay put on some of my terrain as-is, but most metal models are a bit too heavy to stick their base to an MDF wall with poster putty. A big RE magnet, however…

@CC, that's an Australian Huntsman spider. Relatively harmless to humans. I think that one actually ended up in an animal shelter, where it was promptly put to work (since no-one was willing to adopt it, the staff did)!

Lion

Lol. Well, if my wife wasn't so afraid of creepy crawlies, I would look for a legal way to adopt it myself! :)

Dan

I like rules that let climbers move on vertical terrain. But, like flying, it poses some issues on the tabletop. Generally, I prefer based figures for gaming purposes. As pointed out, an unbased relatively light crawler could be leaned. For the metal models, though, this is less viable. Since most rules do not allow overlapping bases, using dice or similar layering of cardboard chits, poker chips, wooden hobby cubes, etc. would be a good way to represent vertical progress with relative stability. Uneven surfaces and overhang get much trickier, but this is true of all models.

Hmm. Maybe there's something in this video that could be applied to the climbing bugs, etc.:

YouTube link

Dan

Guys

Check out this new beauty, posted by a TMPer here:

TMP link

Dan

And if the bugs are social ones like ants, then good luck.

Dan
PS. There is no "I" in "ants":

Dan, you are cracking me up. Those videos are amazing.

Alternative Armies is selling a range of giant spiders compatible with the 15 and 28mm scales.

Main page

link

Amicalement
Armand