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.

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!

I can see Russia from my house!

I was watching the Saturday night live Thursday special thing, and Alaska came up. Of course it did. Which reminded me of the boxed set of Twilight 2000 I picked up at a flea market five or six years ago. Contained within were the original rules, a few issues of Challenger, some modules, vehicle guides for Soviets and NATO, and a copy of the Indianapolis Star from November 8, 1987. This is why.

A map of the "Arctic Chessboard". Does it get cooler than hovercraft, frost bite, and killing Russians to keep America safe?

WOLVERINES!

There are few things as manly and dorky at the same time as playing Twilight 2000. Most RPG's, yeah, girls can get into them. Not Twilight, a gun-porn game of shooting and stabbing and looting.

Not the ones with Monster Mash on them...

I've found a new reason to love Halloween time. Cheap spooky instrumental soundtracks. I think most DM's have bought CDs for the express purpose of using them as background music. The earliest ones I remember trying to hunt down were the Conan and Excalibur soundtracks. Around Halloween, every supermarket, costume shop and drug store has a small stack of creepy party music. Usually for dirt cheap. The ones I have found the most use for is the Midnight Syndicate ones. I looked at their site, they even specifically made a CD of D&D soundtrack music. Can't wait to try out the one I just snagged for 2$. Vampyre, Symphonies from the Crypt. Makes me want to run Ravenloft or something like that.

Let's Get Silly!

Toon. Good times. I've only had a chance to run it on one night, and damn it was a lot of fun. Adventures are classified as quick flicks, short subjects and feature films. A quick flick is supposed to last about 15 minutes per player, a short subject about 20, feature film around 30. Characters don't die, they fall down. They then have to sit out the game for 3 minutes. This timed set-up makes for some fast furious fun. I wonder if this is one of those rules that pop up that few people actually use? I consider it one of the best features of the game. That, and the gajillion random tables.

With this timed scenario idea, you can cram like 2 to 4 crazy little scenarios into one gaming session, with like 1 to 3 scheduled breaks. I really can't see playing this as a campaign, even though they suggest it. Themed cartoon series, the examples are a knock off of ghost busters, a space opera, and spies. Great game to use as an introduction to our crazy little hobby I think.

The secrets of the spirit world unveiled for the first time!

This supplement came out when AD&D was seriously winding down. White Wolf was kicking their ass without a doubt. It introduced the spirit world, and three classes that gained their power from it. Saying three new classes was a little misleading, it was more like one new class, three kits.

The new classes were a little like priests, but when they chose spells for their spell slots, it was permanent. If they wanted to switch out a spell it would offend their patron spirit. Most of the spells dealt exclusively with spirits. One gave the shaman the ability to bind spirits into fetishes.

Pretty pointless supplement. In the DM only section, it is revealed that the spirit world doesn't exist. It's all in the heads of the shaman. Stupid. Integrating this into a running campaign would assuredly end it. Starting a new campaign based on this would turn into one guy is the hero, everyone else follows him around as he reads omens and barters with ancestors.

More Parlainth

Last post really felt incomplete, so I'm gonna revisit the boxed set. Still strong smell in it, I'm hoping the more I open it, the better it will smell. The smell I would prefer is rotting paper, like the funk given off by the 1st ed. AD&D books. Maybe even the sweet ink smell that books with lots of color illustrations seem to emanate.

The box contains two punch out card sheets of monsters and magic items detailed in the enclosed campaign book. Awesome idea, I'm glad Paizo is running with this now. The one pictured on the left is the Butterspider Box. It's a beat up rusty tin box with a lump of lard in the shape of a wolfspider inside of it. When you touch the spider, you heal, and it melts. This is one of my favorite magic items ever. That is some flavor right there (lard flavor at least). Makes a healing potion look lazy and weak. The illustration doesn't make the box look all beat up. It makes it look like a eldrich rune encrusted obvious artifact. The real shape of it makes it look like some sort of random flea market junk. Something a compulsive hoarder would store with all of their mason jars and christmas cards.

The Forgotten City

About seven or eight years ago, I stumbled onto this boxed set at a flea market. For a short span of time, maybe about a summer, I found a big stack of loot there. The blue cover Holmes D&D, Twilight 2000 boxed set, a D&D calendar from like 1981, a couple of issues of dragon from the early eighties, and this boxed set. The stall selling it had like ten copies of it. Awesome.

I ran Earthdawn, maybe four to six times. Didn't get a chance to use anything from this set. I'm pretty sure I found it near the end of my interest in said campaign. It is a pretty sweet box of goodies though. Nice almost sandbox style setting. Rough maps, all sorts of adventure seeds. I really should have read through it again if I was going to blog about it I guess. Huh. Inside of it I have typed notes of all the Earthdawn adventures I ran in the mini campaign. Also in there is the stale smell of smoke. I used to be a smoker, quit about a year ago, so now when ever I open a book or boxed set that I haven't touched in a while, I get a whiff of old smoke. It's kind of gross.

What Gaming Hath Shown

So, before, there was the post about what our gaming influences are. Made me think of the other route, what gaming has done to my influences. Or, what I discovered through being a gamer.

1. THE Authors. Lovecraft, Leiber, Moorcock. All of which I discovered through a lucky find at a salvation army. The Deities and Demigods that contained all of these. I ended up selling it at the first gen con I went to, meh.

2. Cyberpunk. I might have discovered it later on, when love of film would have shown to me that Blade Runner kicks all kindsa ass. For me though, it was Shadowrun. Orcs with guns and cybernetics happened to be the gateway drug for me.

3. Music. Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, X, Robert Johnson. For as reviled as White Wolf is, at least it had awesome suggested listening lists.

4. John Woo. The Hong Kong stuff at least. Hong Kong Action Theater had a super awesome suggested viewing list, which I only scraped the surface of. The Gun Fu stuff really sated me I think. So fricken awesome.

5. Samurai. I really only watched Kurosawa and read Book of the Five Rings so I could run a kick ass game of Legend of the Five Rings. Never did, though.

6. Anime. I'm sure I would have eventually seen Akira, MD geist, Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D. Heavy Gear just gave me the kick in the ass to get around to it. Starting with Patlabor.

Splatta!

The sunday D&D game I'm playing in just descended into a gore fest. Now if boobies are inappropriate in gaming, gore is totally kosher. How can you have a game that 75% of the time involves people chopping away at each other with swords and not have a little viscerata? The grinding and chopping was all happening to townsfolk, so it was especially brutal. Gore is blunted in gaming, and wisely so, because if your axe can lop off slabs of ogre flesh, it stands to reason that his cleaver will do the same to you. No player wants to get maimed in every fight.

Gurps goblins used nasty injuries, but in that game, your characters are virtually unkillable. The injuries would just make your phobic sickly alchoholic goblin more miserable. Seems with healing spells, chopping the hell out of players would be ok. The cure light would just stick that flapping chunk of flesh back on you.

Ye Ole Teat Bar

I'm playing in a new game on sunday nights, good times. Still trying to get a handle on the personality of my Mwambi (African) tribesman magic user, Witch Man. Just talking in third person all the time doesn't seem like a deep enough characterization, but meh, I'll get the hang of it eventually.

During the scenario, it became obvious to me that in fantasy towns and fairs there is an abundance of sex workers. Brothels, dancing girls, street walkers, saucy barmaids, willing succubus's, all kinds of naughty girls. In addition to this, I just saw the south park episode Major Boobage. Ahh, one of the hidden ingredients to perfect fantasy. Puerile adolescent nudity and violence. Korgoth of Barbaria, Heavy Metal, Frazetta, Nekkid titty demons in the monster manual, all these reflect this naughty piece of the fantasy puzzle.

Try running naughty things in your game though. It's pervy as hell. For the most part, players are going to be guys. As much as they like boobies and sex scenes, they don't really want their buddies to think them up for them and then tell them about it around a table. I guess it is sexist as well, to plaster manuals and scenarios in boobirific art. Still, I'm thinking the best fantasy has awesome boobage and mysterious super science.

5 Influences! Yay memes!

1. Piers Anthony
As much as I wanted to read real fantasy fiction as a lad, the local library left much to be desired. Of your fantasy mainstays, seems like they never had more than one or two of any given series, and never the first episode. Except for the Xanth books. Think this is where I decided a little bit of silly anachronism is ok in fantasy.

2. Elfquest
When Marvel comics reprinted this under the epic imprint, in color no less, I was lucky enough to stumble onto the first issue. I was just strolling through the local drug store, when BAM! I espied a first issue of a new series. I spouted "Wow! This looks just like dungeons and dragons!" From there on I was hooked. Took periodic three mile walks to the local comic store to try and snag the current issue. If I missed an issue, hunted for it in the back issue bins of whatever comic store we might visit on family vacations. I'm still missing one issue, which I have sort of avoided finding. I like having that quest unfinished.

3. Krull
My brother had the board game, which came with little resin figures of The Prince, and The Beast. They found their way into the first couple of sessions I ran, along with whatever half painted mini's of my bro's I could scrounge up.

4. Zork
Not the computer game, we were too poor for that. Nope, the What-do-I-do-now books. Good stuff, picked them up at school book fairs, when I could beg the change for them. Still have a copy of #4 Conquest at Quendor. Bivotaur and Juranda have to face down a riddle talking cat head on the end of a tentacle. The demon Jeearr!


5. Dr. Frankenstein's Haunted Castle
Awesome attraction at Indiana beach. Just really think a good dungeon should kinda be like a haunted house ride. Like the intro to the DnD cartoon. Rat tails tickling at your feet, drop away balconies, false doors, all kindsa tricksy fun.

Free Game Day!

So, free game day, pretty ossim eh? All kinds of free starter rules, think the one I like the best is the Harnmaster Field of Daisies. Never really paid much attention to Harn, but looking through this, I'm thinking I should have. Half realistic middle ages, half typical fantasy, nice middle ground between the ole D&D and Pendragon. The scenario itself seems like it would be great fun, with a sort of made by Europeans feel, like the old Warhammer fantasy adventures. One of the character stats I've never seen in any other system, is for how pleasant one's voice sounds. That just might be the key to easy role playing (for npc's at least) that I have been searching for!

Field of Daisies also has a new fun toy in it for me, a extensive map key. I really feel like map making in RPG's fell by the wayside. Probably in the early nineties, when on one side, you had TSR trying to convince you to make 3d maps (Castles and Catacombs guide) and on the other, White Wolf telling you that maps are for railroading suckers. This map key has usable symbols for ceiling height, whether or not a door has a bar, what type of ceiling, how to mark changes in elevation and floor height easily, all sorts of goodies.

The castles and crusades quick start has character creation in it. Neato! Reminds me of the Holmes blue book Dnd, without monster and magic item listings. Traveller 0, full set of rules, plus character creation as well. This really impresses me. I thought demo and quick start rules were made of about 5 pre-generated characters, a rough run down of the rules, and a short scenario. Quite a few of these little booklets are just rules, no characters or scenario. One of them is just setting information (the goodman games one I think). Would be nice to have the time to sit down and blast through one or two of these eventually. Heh, seems like the backlog of gaming is just piling up.

Do I wanna play some Mutant Future? Hmmmm...

So this here is Jedediah "Smell Good" Xerox, orneriest mutie to prowl the wastes. He's got a firm sense of what's right and wrong, and since most folks are wrong, it gives him a reason to bury an axe in your face. His mutation takes the form of fragrant flowers sprouting every where hair should. These daisies put out a hypnotizing aroma, which has saved his irradiated rump once or twice. He's stubborn, so don't try any funny mind tricks on him. Jeb ain't afraid of a scuffle, because he can't feel pain, gotta look at the hole in his hide to know he's been hurt. So get some other reckless types together, and he'll go sifting through some ruins in no time!

I'm thinking lawful is like the chaotic of the apocalypse. The status quo seems to be survival of the fittest, kill or be kill. Someone who wants to instill law or order would be the aberrant weirdo in that situation. Without any static society to base his lawfulness on, it would be just do as I say, because I am right!