Game Question - turned to stone

[dadlamassu]

Grandad (me) and te boys have been play testing our rules for Jason and the Argonauts.  In one game the boys had to visit Medusa's Sacred Grove.  In it were "statues" victims of her stare.  Aiden age 8 decided that he needed more weapons and a shield and said he was taking them from the statues.

With the logic of a small boy his argument was that Medusa's stare affected the men because they were alive.  Their clothes, swords, shields, armour, helmets, coin pouches etc were not alive and so were not affected.  So the fingers could be broken off and the weapons or whatever taken.

How do you think I should have played it?  How have you played it?

And would the stare affect an Amazon?

Interesting.

[swiftnick]

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. As a compromise you could have said that the victims dropped their weapons when turned to stone.

[Cubs]

Well, for the sake of fun, and letting a small boy enjoy the game instead of sticking rigidly to rules, yeah let him be rewarded for some good lateral thinking.

For an ordinary game I would have ruled that the majority of people's kit would turn to stone with them (in the style of such magicky statues everywhere) but there might be a small chance of picking up the odd bit of dropped stuff here and there where someone has lost it prior to their petrification.

[Plynkes]

Sounds like you've bred yourself a junior barrack-room lawyer there. I'd watch that one. 

I would reward his initiative rather than cut down his hopes and risk souring him on gaming. But to teach him that you don't always get everything you want I would make a bit of gameplay out of it, and have him roll dice to see if he has found anything useful. If he fails it is too old to be of any use, having rotted, tarnished, rusted or whatever, or it is too deeply embedded in the stone, or has turned to stone itself.

Thus you yourself will not have dashed his hopes nor caved into him, it will be the dice's fault, and will have added another little bit of fun to the game.

[dadlamassu]

We watched "Clash of the Titans" (the Harryhausen one) and the answer was there - some statues were completely petrified but the "fresh" ones had the cloyhing etc untouched.  So I'm thinking of:

If the victim is petrified in this game the weapons etc can be recovered but a die roll is needed to remove it from a petrified hand.  1,2 stuck, 3,4 try again next go, 5,6 removed at end of turn.

Those petrified in the past have their accoutrements gradually turned to stone so again a de roll 1,2 petrified, 3,4 part pertified so usable as a club, 5,6 usable but needs to be freed from the petrified hand.  1-3 petrifed. 4-5 usable as club, 6 recoverable as above.

The film

[FierceKitty]

All those ancient Greek statues - weapons and garments are always stone too.

[dadlamassu]

All those ancient Greek statues - weapons and garments are always stone too.

Of course, those turned to stone by Medusa have had a couple of thousand years for all accoutrements to turn to stone, so our rules must be correct!