“Giant spiders! Giant spiders! AAAGH! THEY’RE EATING MY FACE! I’ve only got 2 HP left! Help!”

Although they’re an important part of this nutritious dungeon crawl, this isn’t strictly an RPG-related Giant Spider article, but more inspirational for RPGs, for GMs, as a real-world example of the closest we have to the fantasy RPG/Gygaxian/D&D-esque Giant Spider. They’re not quite as large as those from David Arquette’s vehicle, Eight Legged Freaks, but for people with an aversion (or worse) to them, I think they’re plenty close – speaking from experience.  I’d like to add, however, that I find the tiny ones perhaps more unsettling, in that they are insidious and could be anywhere, LOTS of them could be anywhere – I’m likely going to be able to see something the size of a basketball coming at me and beat it with a tire iron – it doesn’t work like that when you awake to find your hair is suddenly infested with little crawly demons.  Just saying.

I freak out around spiders, but they’re fascinating. I’m not sure what I’d think about dog-sized or truly monstrous spiders, I would hope they would be like white men and unable to jump and not be significantly venomous. I would put Camel Spiders on here, but anybody familiar with them knows they aren’t actually spiders.

Pictures and Articles on Real “Giant Spiders”
http://www.squidoo.com/world-biggest-spider
http://www.giantspiders.com/
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/biggest/spider.html

Videos of Giant Spiders
CAUTION: Goliath eating a white mouse, somewhat graphic.
http://www.break.com/usercontent/2008/4/World-s-Largest-Spider-eating-dinner-484491.html

Less graphic, National Geographic take on Goliath.
http://www.extremescience.com/BiggestSpider.htm

Spider “Web”
And for those that want to control a virtual spider, there is:
http://www.onemotion.com/flash/spider/

Time to Change the Spider’s Batteries
For more hands-on control, remote control Goliath! (video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny-AKUIQr9c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhCIJQz0zvU

Another Creepy Thing
And just because it is awesome, a remote control snake in a pool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOSK4lVRTFw&feature=related

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This entry was posted by J P on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 at 3:30 pm and is filed under General RPG. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.