Shifting gears

I find role playing games skirting farther and farther from my interests. They have been surpassed almost totally by Wargames! Yaaay wargames!

It started sometime in November I think. I found out a group of guys were playing Warhammer 40K at the local gaming store on Sundays. This was the day I normally ran my Pathfinder campaign. Problem with the Pathfinder campaign, of the six or seven players I had recruited, I could reliably count on only two or three showing up. So it kind of petered out for me.

On to Warhammer 40K, says I. The attendance over there is just as spotty, but really, I only need one other player to show up. The game type alternates between normal with about two players per side, Apocalypse with about three players per side, and monthly tournaments. My original army was Eldar, but damn near half of the guys who show up play them. This convinced me I needed to look into another army, so I'm currently building up a Dark Eldar army.

I'm really the only player who shows up who has a fully painted army. They all have a few figs painted, and some have much better paint jobs than any of mine. But all of mine are painted, so I win, nyah.

Last weekend, I went to Winter War in Champaign again. Only played in one event, Blind Sniper. Lasted two rounds, me and another guy shot each other, while a lucky bystander looked on. Bought a copy of Malifaux, Hostile Aircraft (WWI biplane combat wargame), and Elfquest Rpg.

Fulci made a barbarian movie

I vaguely remember seeing this at a video store, way back when I was a wee lad. The kind of video store that had a box on the shelf, with little aluminum tags dangling beneath for VHS and Beta. Loads of movies had fantastic covers like this, only to give none of what was promised in the art.

Not so with this one. This really has a lady with a metal face, dressed only in snakes and a loincloth. There is a metal plated demon, and the barbarian protagonist fights with bone nunchucks.

I'd be lying if I said it was a good movie. It's totally not, or you would have seen it. It does have plenty of awesome things about it. Dog men tear a quarter a naked girl, then drag her head back to their master. Old men get their brains bashed in. The hero has a bow that shoots lasers. The villainess cooks an underling on a hot stone. Bog mummies, spiderweb shrouded stone men, Dog men, devils, bats, cavemen, and a golem demon.

It's got a misty dreamlike quality that I liked, but could see would be annoying for some. Sort of like Excalibur, or dream sequences.

No deaths to speak of

Tonight the Pathfinder session ran roughly five hours. Which was good, it never dragged or became boring. The party had a couple of near death experiences. I really didn't want to fudge the rolls or "let" them live, but really, a chance encounter with 3 trolls would have ended them. They met the green buggers in a field, based on movement alone, the trolls would have overtaken them. Even if they had split up, they were a party of three. All three would have been digested and pooped out.

First session.. a success kinda?

Played the first session of my new pathfinder campaign. I told the players, make what ever alignment you want, do what ever you want, this is a sandbox. Mmmhmm, the session ended with two of the characters knifing the lawful evil priest of Azmodeus in a healing pool he had just desecrated. So that's why letting players have evil alignments is frowned upon. Huh, now I know.

So first session, 1 kill, but totally not my fault. Also, they enslaved a kobold, then got it killed. Anymore first level is all about enslaving at least one humanoid, then putting it in the line of fire.

Gonna run some damn Pathfinder

Been a while since I blogged, since I haven't been doing much gaming. The only gaming I've been doing has been Warhammer 40k, and tons of World of Warcraft. For 40k, my girlfriend built me a huge gaming table in the garage. So now I can play on a battlefield that is the correct dimensions of 6' by 4'. Haven't had a chance to play any traditional pen and paper rpgs though. Pretty weak showing, time to start playing the D and the D again. Or Pathfinder, which is the crazy stepchild of Ye old D&D.

So today I'm going to start the first installment of the Kingmaker adventure path. Sandbox in all it's glory, good times. It has a couple of homages or inside jokes to classic DnD. The most noteworthy to me is an encounter with a crazy hermit who lives in a hollow tree with his pet puma he calls "Cat". Mmmhmm, ripped straight out of Keep on the Borderlands.

I have 3 "tenative" players so far, need to expand that to about 4 or 5 I'm thinking. I like the format of the sandbox campaign. Weekly attendance isn't as important as it would be in a character story driven railroad campaign.

40K Failure!

Here is an image of what was left of the Biel-Tan host. The couple of guys in white uniforms in the upper left? Only Eldar left alive, everything else on the table was green and had huge tusks. Spectacular loss! 2 Wraithlords, an Avatar, a troupe of harlequins, 10 rangers, and 10 dire avengers got Waaghd to death. My kills consisted of a bunch of grots, a squadron of 4 deff kopters, and like 2 boyz mobz. Need to put more speed in my army against these damn greenskins!

First 40k smackdown!

So it's not my first smack down, but the first one with Lori, with my terrain. Oh yeah, and her first go at 40k. Here is the set-up. Observe the choke point right there in the middle...









Here is Loris Orkie hoard, ready to Waaaaggh all over my Eldar. Scary!












Here be my Eldar, trying to hide out, and stay in a position to shoot shoot shoot as long as possible...











Right off the bat, had a sweet plan involving shooting goblins, and then charging war-trakks. Not a very awesome plan, these chunky ass jalopies are covered in armor. The thick kind that my weak little space elves can't poke through :(











Here is what's left of the goblins I shot to shit though. Pretty awesome! After the Trakks I assaulted kind of just ignored me, I sent my Dire Avengers over here to stab them in they face holes.











This is the kind of mess that started to occur after midnight. Hordes of hardened greenies dog-piling my Avatar. Boooo!











So tomorrow, when I wake up, this is the cluster fuck of a fight I have to finish. Might be easier by the light of day. Really don't understand why I didn't apply the Risk "don't play after the sun goes down" rule of thumb.

Eldar terrain

I've been trying to build a set of Eldar specific terrain. Stuff that will give me a tactical advantage, like forests and sniper towers. Here are some pics of them, with my Avatar and a couple of Wraithlords standing by them. The other one is a fungi forest, originally built for Gorkamorka.

Necromunda

Just like Gorkamorka, all of my Necromunda terrain has disappeared over the years. This is a big problem, because in order to play Necromunda, you NEED multilayer industrial terrain. Therefore, I will now scratch build replacements out of foam core and junk bits. Here is the beginings of the first building.

Current gaming

It's been a loooong time since my last post. This is because life has become too chaotic to regularly schedule Dnd time. So now I've been focusing on all things relating to Warhammer 40K. I've been buying up and painting butt-loads of Eldar. The way I've been regulating my purchases has been to completely paint a purchase before going out and buying more. It's worked like a charm, I have like 2000 points completely painted.

Another thing I've been doing is making and painting terrain. It started with me needing an Ork fort for Gorkamorka. The original box came with one, but over the last fifteen years, that flimsy piece of cardboard has long since been thrown away. So here are some pics of the one I built.

New Adventure Path

The gaming group is starting on Rise of the Runelords today. Finally, yay! We've been trying to play this for about a year or two. Two many chaotic life events got in the way. I'm playing a paladin.

Can't remember anyone ever playing a paladin in a game I ran. People just don't really like playing a guy who can't torture or maim for information. I think it will be an interesting experience. Force me to role play. At least enough to convince the rest of the party to hold back on the usual dungeoneering atrocities.

I think my initiative is low enough that when fights go down, it won't be me who throws the first blow. Think this will help with some moral dilemmas. Also, the ability to detect evil will help me wade through ethical conundrums.

Can't wait to shove my Great sword down a goblins throat. That is totally acceptable good guy behavior.

TPK!

So last night our whole party died. A couple of sessions ago, our rogue got bitten by a Vargouille. My cleric wasn't high enough level to cure disease her, so we had to go deeper into the dungeon with out rest to find the Mcguffin to cure her. The Kobold King and his chainsaw wielding guard laid us low. Oh well, that's an acceptable risk when playing. Now I get to make a new character, Huzzah!

Sunday!

It seems like Sundays as gaming days are ramping up again as fall looms near. Tonight is Jum-jums game. Yay! Changing all of our 3.5 characters over to pathfinder. Now my evil gnomish cleric can generate a flipping death field! I took a feat so that the party won't get melted by it, but everything else that isn't undead? I'm like the arc of the flippen covenant.

Dungeoneering movies

Just finished watching Raw Meat (Death Line in the UK). I've been hearing about this movie for years from both my parents. See, when we start talking about obscure and bizarre movies, this one always comes up. They saw it on one of their earliest dates, and couldn't remember the title. All they could remember is that it involved cannibals in the sewers, and that all they could say was "Maah dee daaaah"

So I found it, through a guy I work with who is also all about obscure music and movies. It's all that's good about seventies horror, and British to boot. Kinda like the Abominable Dr. Phibes.

So back to dungeoneering, the whole movie is centered around these cannibals. Subway workers who were trapped in the 1890's and have been living off of each other and anyone they can get their hands on. So they have a sweet dungeon complex. Sweet in the "reasonable ecology of a dungeon" sort of way.

They've got living areas (well, a cot, a booze still, and lamps), a tomb (full of loot covered dead cannibals), a "pantry", a means of exit/entry, a reason for being down there, and a ton of rats.

Mainly, the dungeoneering aspect is best represented by the imagery, and reactions of the police when they get down there. Just to see how normals might react to a critter lair. Cuz these flesh eating limeys weren't too far removed from orcs, morlocks, or measels.

Do not play after dinner!

Finally got to play Talisman last night! This is a game I have been wanting to play for as long as I could remember. During the peak of my game buying days, this bad boy was out of print. By the time it had came back into print, my interest had waned considerably. Lucky for me, Jum bought a copy.

We all knew this game would take a long time to play. Hours and hours, by all accounts. When dealing with a game like that, you need to start it in the afternoon, make a day of it. Not gonna happen. Nobody wants to sit down to play a game before seven o' clock. That's just the way things go.

So after dinner, and with beers, we tried to blast through this one. Of course everyone was going to get too tired to finish. It was loads of fun though, and I keep obsessing about playing it again. Even though we didn't finish, we at least learned how to play, and got a handle on what it would take to win.

I read that they are going to start releasing expansions for it, like Talisman Dungeon. The only expansion I want to play is Timescape. That's the one least likely to get released. Guess I'm never going to get to play as a Chainsaw Warrior or Astropath.

Labyrinths and Lizards!

Jum and I drove out to Champaign to play in Labyrinth Lord at the Armored Gopher. Been wanting to do that for a while, the two and a half hour drive was a bit of a deterrent. We both played in J. Rients Big Stupid Dungeon Party at Winter War in 08, and had been itching to do some more of his brand of dungeon crawling. We both made up characters before hand, but ditched them to see what we could roll up on the fly.

Jum rolled up a fighter, with a scottish name. Seamus I think? I made a dwarf with 6 strength, Fonkin Wurp. With a six strength, I figured my role would be to shoot a crossbow and set off traps. We each got a random bit of useful gear. I got leather armor +1, Jum got a net. The net never got used, surprisingly. My fifty feet of rope got used tons though. Another party member swung me by it as a weapon, and a pair of kobolds we captured ended up being tied to each end.

I think four other players showed up besides me and Jum, to make a beefy six man party. Spent the night attacking shit, making jokes, and getting loot. That is gaming right there. I've decided I really couldn't give a hoot about "Roleplaying" unless it's funny. Crunchy tactical combat systems are a bore as well. If I wanted to play hero clicks while occasionally using funny voices, that's what I would do.

Might take Thursday off next time to make it out there, hopefully hit second level before we get a TPK. Which I am looking forward to. Lets you know the stakes are high when everyone dies!

Football for dorks

Played a game of Blood bowl tonight. It's been years since I've even thought about playing. In the mid nineties, a buddy of mine convinced me to buy a team. We were going to play at a league up at Excalibur in Merrilliville. That never panned out, just ended up buying a skaven team and playing a few games with him against his undead team.

Blood bowl was also another reason to make an excursion up to Friends Hobby back in the day. Even now, when I play any older game, it becomes a reason to make a trip up there. This is a hobby shop run by pack rats. I mean that in the nicest way, because they still have EVERYTHING. Silent death minis, Al-Quadim boxed sets, Avalon hill wargames, man, it's mind boggling.

Anyway, we went up there in about 1994, he got the hardback blood bowl companion, I bought a couple blisters of star players. I like how they used to package them, in a blister labeled star players. You got a random assortment, so if you were playing skaven, too bad, you got one mutant, frankenstein, and a dark elf. I believe we used some sort of variant from there to play dungeonbowl? It's been a long time, memory is foggy on that.

About the Blood bowl tonight. It was Orks vs. Orks, and I got mah Teef kicked in. My guys spent the whole game flat on their backs. It was fun regardless. All kindsa chances for fumbling and game changing events. Feels good to foul a player when they are down, step on their squishy parts when the ref isn't looking.

Palladium, now with less Rifts!

One of my FLGS, Critical Effect, has specialized in gaming. No comics, few collectible toys, just gaming gaming gaming. It has a back room, and two wargaming tables with a respectable amount of awesome looking terrain. They seem to have something going on every night, and last night, it was Palladium fantasy.

Played Palladium fantasy once before, ran by Jum Jum. Figured if I was going to go play, he was the one I would get to tag along. Didn't get around to making a character before hand, so just whipped up one right there at the store. Preist of Light! Yay goodie two shoes!

The pre-existing party was made up of a troll, and elf, and a "human". Mmmhmm, changeling. Does every PalFan party have one? Jum rolled up a Long bowman, so we joined this party as the most vanilla human duo ever. Had to hunt down an alchemist, led to some mishaps with teleportation circles and monster infested sewers. Good times. At one point the "human" decided to sneak into the palace and impersonate the king while the rest of us tried to find the alchemist.

Think my opinions on player death have shifted GREATLY in the past few years. I like it, and I like it alot. Not in the gm vs. player punishment sort of way, but a way to affirm reality. Impersonating a bar keep? No biggie. The king? Your dead. He is the king after all. The style of the game seemed to be more of a free form by the seat of your pants thing. Death occurs less frequently in that sort, just by the fluidity of outcomes and events. I guess death would be a gm induced punishment in free form style.

Journeys in the dark

Last weekend, finally got a chance to play Descent. I've been wanting to play this game for ages. Every time it gets brought up, we opt to just play dungeon, or do a cheap D&D dungeon romp instead. The rules were intimidating. Pretty weak excuse for not playing something you want to play for the past four years or so.

It's like a roided up version of Heroquest. Tons of plastic monsters and cardboard doors. In many ways, it is superior. One of which is the variety of characters you can be. The rules suggest randomly picking them, and that's what we did. I got a battle specialized minotaur, Jum got a magic/archery/battle mix female tiefling looking thing. With a tail. We stomped ass all over the dungeon. It took about three hours to play, but most of that time I think was just learning how to do everything. I want to play again. Right now!

Whaaa?

Over at Paizo, they are selling the original Hook Horror toy. Hell yeah! I need to get me onna these!