Kristin got to deal with my pedantry last night while watching a season three episode of CSI that featured a shot of a SPL meter and then had a faulty line of dialog referring to db SPL as well.

Kristin got to deal with my pedantry last night while watching a season three episode of CSI that featured a shot of a SPL meter and then had a faulty line of dialog referring to db SPL as well.

Heh. Which episode was that?

Season 3 .... whathisname's kidnapping?

He paused the DVD and ranted. You know exactly the face he made. It was pretty funny.

I can't remember the name, but it's the very beginning on Season 3, the one with the guys drag racing cars. In one scene Willows whips out an SPL meter on a guy that has a car stereo and it's measuring at 131 dB SPL about 20 feet from the car...a jet engine is about 130 dB, so yeah, at 20 feet, not so much. Then she says a jackhammer is 50 dB quieter than that, um, again, no, jackhammers are much louder than 80 dB. The decibel scale is logarithmic kids.

Links?

I'll see if R can come up with some links. He mentioned that the monster art was getting positive comments in some of the gaming threads he follows. I believe one was for a Pete painting (the grick? some worm thing with four tentacle things around its mouth thing), because the creature had volume and weight and looked real.

Incidentally, he was flipping thru the MM when I mentioned Pete had art in it, and said "Did he do the Gibbering Orb? Looks like his work." How he remembers that from our Magic cards I don't know.

The minion thing is a part of several systems...sometimes they're called MOOCs. I call them popcorn monsters. Savage Worlds (shameless pimpage continues - at $10 give it a try) has them and they work really well in our campaign. When I GM I like using them also.

Nothing sucks like having to stat out heaps of monsters in 3.5.

Yeah, I though it might be that one. Been a while since I've seen it.

Also, ancient Roman d20 for sale (only $18,000!) [link]

Nothing sucks like having to stat out heaps of monsters in 3.5

By Tiamat's five unholy sphincters YES.

Even using pre-statted monsters out of published materials doesn't really help a whole lot if you don't know the stat blocks for the creatures inside and out. And learning the stat blocks doesn't all that much less time than statting them up in the first place, especially at mid-levels and beyond, when specific powers, abilities, spells and magic items become ever more important.

I kept trying to use the DMgenie and WotC's computerized tool, but every program got the rules wrong somehow. Still, I thought it was faster to just do that and then scan the results for errors.

(Or make it up on the fly)