New Purchases

More new purchases, courtesy of eBay.

I've long been wanting to get a look at the Avalon Hill old chestnut Outdoor Survival, pretty much since it was suggested as a resource in the last few pages of Wilderness Adventures, the third booklet that came in the box that held the original version of Dungeons and Dragons. Gary Gygax suggested using the Outdoor Survival map board as a campaign map for D&D, retasking the various features on the board as castles, baronies etc.

When the chance came to buy the game I jumped at it, and scored a copy that by the looks of it had never been played. I, of course, plan to ruin the collectibility of the thing by punching the counters from the sheet and actually playing the game. It looks to be an odd beast, where the players are actually playing however many simultaneous games but not actually doing much in the way of co-operating. The conceit is that players are lost in the Great American Outdoors and must survive and navigate their way to safety. To simulate being lost in confusing territory while at the same time having a bird's eye view of the whole terrain, the players do not have complete freedom of movement, but must move in straight lines largely in accordance with instructions randomly determined according to how dilapidated the player characters are. If a counter crosses a trail, the player may decide to follow it instead of beating through the bush, but that's about all the discretionary movement one is allowed if my cursory reading of the rules is right.

The different counters show the same characters in steadily decreasing state of health, from striding along confidently to staggering and even crawling desperately. It is all very amusing, in a life-or-death way.

The game came with an actual wilderness survival booklet too, the game having aspirations to be a teaching tool as well as a good way to kill a couple of hours on a rainy day.

Looks like fun.

Own Goal

I recently picked up used copies of Panzerblitz and Panzer Leader, two games from Avalon Hill's golden age of bookcase games, which I somehow managed not to buy despite promising every time I saw them that I would.

For those not in the know, these games "simulate" armoured conflicts in WWII, Panzerblitz between Germany and Soviet Russia and Panzer Leader between the German and Allied armies post D-Day. In their time there were expansions available (if you could find them) that could shift either game into new theaters of war. They remain quite popular with enthusiasts to this day, even though neither game has been available outside of a collector's market since the late 80s.

Picturing battles to come with opponents I am determined to scare up, I decided to pen my own version of The Panzerlied - the German song of the tankmen as heard in the movie The Battle of the Bulge. Since I don't speak German, and the point was to needle my putative opponent (assuming I get to play Germany) the lyrics were of necessity in English and inflammatory in nature.

If we see an enemy tank we shoot it to bits!
If we see an enemy truck we shoot it to bits!
And if we see a tank hunter we shoot and shoot until it's blown to bits!
If we see an enemy jeep we shoot it to bits!

The enemy hides in camouflage which we shoot to bits!
The enemy hides in houses which we then shoot to bits!
The enemy hides in trenches which we squish and then we shoot them to bits!
The enemy hides in bunkers which we shoot to bits!

The enemy arrives in landing craft which we shoot to bits!
The enemy arrives in gliders which we then shoot to bits!
The enemy arrives at airfields which we overrun and then we shoot to bits!
The enemy arrives in halftracks which we shoot to bits!

Only thing is, since writing it I can't stop it running round and round in my head. It seems I have written an earworm.

So that worked.

Savage Worlds Kickstarter And More

And speaking of Savage Worlds, a new version is being kickstarted.

Funded in 3 minutes. Oversubscription to this level should speak volumes about the quality of the product line to date. I believe Savage Worlds is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys poking one in the eye, and I recommend it to anyone not moving quickly enough to get out of the way. It is simple to riun, easy to teach and fun to play.This is the most entertaining explanation of how it works that I've come across to date.

You can use it to build your own RPG games or you can bolt it onto any of the many available pre-written settings: Deadlands Reloaded, Space 1889:Red Sands, 50 Fathoms, Slipstream, Flash Gordon, Rifts, Necropolis, Realms of Cthulhu, Sundered Skies, Lankhmar, Rippers, Gaslight, High Space, Kerberos Club, Weird War, Mars, High Space and more. Call it a sort of math-light GURPS in concept.

Two self-contained games don't even require a separate purchase of the basic rule books: Solomon Kane and Pirates.

I can personally recommend Pirates and 50 Fathoms to would-be Jack Sparrows , Flash Gordon and Slipstream to 30s SF serial buffs, Rippers, Realms of Cthulhu and Gaslight to the Steampunk and Horror fan bases, Space 1889 to anyone who loved the 60s movies based on Jules Verne and H.G. Wells stories, and Deadlands Reloaded to everyone - even those with no interest in the wild west, as I found it to be exciting and enjoyable after over a decade of avoiding it. Of the stand-alone games, Solomon Kane is a personal favorite.

Coming soon will be a new mashup Fantasy/SF/Horror setting called "Crystal Hearts", set in the world of this webcomic about an RPG campaign, kickstarting in mid-November.

Figure Flats For Wargaming and RPGs

Like every gamer I like having metal or plastic miniatures on the table when doing grid-based combat¹, but am increasing less enthused when it comes to the job of basing them³, prepping them⁴ and painting them, as this takes time I'd rather use to be playing.

So I've fallen back on an old idea, made new again first by Stephen Jackson (or GURPS fame) and later by several others, of cardboard representations of the figures mounted in some sort of base.

The disadvantages boil down to "not a three dimensional figure" and "can easily blow over if clods abound". The advantages are that the artwork is often superb and large collections can be transported with a fraction of the time and trouble three-d minis cause.

Steve Jackson's Cardboard Heroes were assembled as "tents", so the figures resembled upside-down letter Vs with a base that could be stuck to a coin for heft.

Pathfinder sells collections of high quality thick card "Figure Flats" to match their printed products⁵ that are sort of like cardboard tombstones in shape. They are designed to slip into a grooved set of jaws of the special bases they sell. These bases are not cheap either, because they are quite complex mouldings made, unless I miss my guess, by injection moulding. Dies represent a hefty investment - they have to be fabricated using machine tools, which is why small companies don't do plastic injection very often.

Precis Intermedia make a series of figures that can be assembled as triangular prisms, flats and counters, and also sell a rather nice base to take the flats. These are the bases I prefer to use as they are much less expensive than the Pathfinder ones and actually grip the thinner card likely to be used to make them. Precis Intremedia actually sell PDFs of these figures for download and print-at-home..

Pinnacle Entertainment Group, the company that puts out my favorite RPG system Savage Worlds also make a range of settings for the basic system, most of which (but not all) also have an available line of figure flats for purchase. These are intended to be assembled as triangular prisms and so have three faces, one of which is a black silhouette and the other two a full-color depiction of whatever it is.

I have extensive collections of both Pinnacle's and Precis Intermedia's product lines, but I prefer the figures to be presented as simple two-sided flats, with a rear and front depiction. I also prefer the figures to be slightly larger than either company chooses to make them so that the detail prints properly on inexpensive home printers that cannot get anywhere near the resolution of a professional printing press. So, to get a usable figure collection I have to do a bit of work.

Job one is to import a page of figures into a program like Photoshop or GIMP so they can be re-engineered. The Pinnacle figures are usually presented in a tight matrix that makes good use of the card available but is not suitable for flats to be mounted in a clip-base. I pick out the figure I want, and carefully extract two of the three panels from the original (one side image and the rear silhouette).

Using the rulers and guides in the graphics program I carefully scale the image appropriately. With Necessary Evil, for example, the PC Villains were scaled to be larger than the NPC aliens, which in turn were scaled up slightly so they would print cleanly. For Deadlands I made the figures, which started life at about 1.25 inches tall (including whitespace) 1.5 inches tall. I then carefully added a half-inch tab to the bottom of the character. This is what got printed, on high quality matte paper.

The printed figure art was then stuck to card using rubber cement. This is a decent bond for the duration of the preparation, but won't last long in play as the glue gradually loses its grip.

The figure was then carefully cut out using a sharp Xacto knife, the fold line scored and the figure folded and glued into a flat. It was now a two-sided cardboard affair of decent thickness⁶ with a tab. This I wrapped with heavy duty clear Scotch brand wrapping tape. I started about halfway down the tab on the rear side of the flat, wrapping the tape over the back of the figure, across the top, back down the front and cutting enough to fold over the bottom and cover the initial start point of the tape. The sides of the tape wre then trimmed flush with the sides of the flat.

The wrapping was done for several reasons, starting with the fact that rubber cement does not form a durable bond with the card. Wrapping over the top and bottom not only made sure the paper would not come away from the card backing, it formed a durable point at which the base attached - slipping the figure into the base posed no threat that the paper would be torn away from the card by the jaws of the base itself.

The glossy tape also made the card figure durable vs greasy dimwit player fingers, and gave me a nice erasable surface on which to write with wet- or dry-erase pens to indicate special status or wounds or whatever.

So not quick as far as preparation goes, but oodles quicker than painting.

1. In which the RPG sort of strays into board game territory in the name of clarity and fun. Some hate it and prefer Theater of the Mind², but I see useful applications of both techniques↑
2. In which all combat scenarios are enacted in the players' heads and no miniatures a re needed. All RPG combat was like this at first↑
3. i.e. gluing them to a base and then dressing the base to look nice↑
4. An endless process of removing the casting lines and flash, changing out patrs for others in order to make the figure unique, bending or cutting/regluing to change the pose etc↑
5. Bestiaries and Adventure Modules↑
6. Because two layers of card, yes?↑

New Purchases

I just successfully bid on three Avalon Hill boxed wargames from the golden age of games, when people weren't afraid of rulebooks.

The first was an almost complete "Tactics II", arguably the game that jump-started the market for Avalon Hill wargames. I've wanted to try this for years and a copy was available for the Buy it Now price of 20 bux plus postage, so around 35 bux in total. Not bad for a game missing a couple of counters¹.

The second and third came as a single deal in one auction. "Panzer Blitz" and "Panzer Leader" were games I remember seeing and scheduling for my shelves but money wasn't endless and I had other games that were fun and ... well, the time when these were available new passed when Avalon Hill collapsed and became a boutique name for Wizards of the Coast.

These days it is almost impossible to find people in the same locale as me who are willing to invest the time and effort in playing simulation games like these. The games are designed to recreate the actual physics of driving tanks and shooting at things. Things are intuitive once you get the designer's basic take on what is important, and certain standards were used in just about all wargame-type games so picking up a new one wasn't a steep learning curve usually and things were designed to work the way you expected them to.

The rules are also written in what is called the "Case System" which groups rules in increasing amounts of specialty. You look up whatever you want to do in general terms, then the special conditions that apply as and when you need them. It is a sort of hyperlinking. The key concept is that the players are never expected to be "off book" while playing, so the rules ware exhaustive and easy to navigate. ².

I was feeling nostalgic and decided to chance the condition and component count³ but these seemed in good condition.

I expected to get sniped to be honest and placed my bid in such a way to foil the manual snipers, but there's nothing you can do against software designed to up the bids incrementally before a human can type a counter offer. But after a brief flurry of activity by one inexperienced bidder and a halfhearted bid by someone not really interested I took the prize for around 50 bux. Twenty five dollars per game, not bad.

So I'm looking forward to receiving these blasts from the past⁴. Even now I am picturing the Panzer games in the window of Dungeons and Starships on Summer Row, my not-so local friendly game store of choice in 1981.

Now if only I can find an opponent ...

1. Which can be replaced easily enough by printing replacements from counter sheet images on the web↑
2. Contrast this to game rulebooks today which typically adhere to the RPG standard where it is assumed that the players will figure a way of winging it when (not if) things get confusing or they hit something not covered. The result is often a disorganized mess. Fantasy Flight Games, I am looking at you↑
3. the options for both these games were not great and nobody was doing a component count on the various offerings↑
4. The ancient past in the case of Tactics II, which dates from 1958 I think.↑

Intro To Savage Worlds

I came across this excellent primer on the Savage Worlds RPG game engine and think everyone will find it entertaining and informative.

And you can join a game running in the Crystal Heart setting. Well, you can watch the others play.

After reading, bet you wish the writers played your favorite system.

Space 1889:Red Sands Session 1, And Deadlands:Reloaded.

So on Sunday I finally convened the delayed start of Space 1889:Red Sands.

I am glad to report The Curse is alive and well. This game has collapsed twice due to players having conflicting schedules that eventually killed it. These people assure me that the problem isn't my GM style (my first suspicion), just events.

This day there were supposed to be two players, Matt and Chris, but at the last minute Chris had to beg off as he had contracted a bad cold.

Rather than not play - I had had a rotten month and badly needed the break from suckage - I decided to play with only one player and a GM, padding the numbers out with an army column of 25 troopers, a sergeant and an officer. Matt would be a civilian being escorted through the Libyan desert by the army.

Savage Worlds lends itself very well to this sort of kludge because it splits characters into two types:

• Wild Cards like the players and "boss" baddies who have a number of wounds they can suffer before being taken out (the consequences of that can vary according to the setting), several "bennies" that can be spent to re-roll failed trait checks or "soak" wounds (shrugging off attacks cinematically) and access to certain edges (feats/advantages) restricted to Wild Cards, and

• Extras who are downed by a single wound. Think of the enemy soldiers in a Rambo movie or bandits in a western - extras are characters for players to shoot if opposing or to give support if allied. Extras can be made very quickly. In fact, I used templates from the back of the Space 1889:Red Sands setting book.

 The number of allied NPCs meant I could terrify Matt with a huge number of attacking Bedouins as he raced for Fort Oublié.

I gave him a good run for his money and threw in a Lame GM Bone (LGMB) so that he survived with some soldiers to enter the fort and suffered attacks by what waited within.

And he had a ball. I had a ball. Things can only get better when Chris joins next session.

The preparation involved reading the scenario and setting rules to re-familiarize myself with them, and turning text-block clues into first person diary entries for touchy-feely clues a-la Call of Cthulhu.

I think this time we might get all the way through. I might even finish the Globe of Mars I was working on when the last game collapsed in a puff of weddings and postings abroad.

That was in the afternoon. In the evening I stepped into my friend Craig's game slot and ran Deadlands:Reloaded, the Weird West setting for Savage Worlds. I ran Deadlands a few years ago and had a great time doing so, using a module called Coffin Rock. When it was over I calculated we got 18 3 1/2 to 4 hour sessions from that module, and I could have run another 9 without breaking a sweat. Coffin Rock is just about the best value for RPG dollars I've ever bought.

This evening I ran "Shootout at the Circle R Corral", an inexpensive pdf I bought from the Drivethru RPG website. We got about halfway through before we had to beak for the evening. During that time much Mad Science was deployed on both sides of the GM screen (actually, the screen was off to one side because I prefer to run "in the round" with open die-rolls. The screen is just an aide-memoir for the various once-in-a-blue-moon rules I normally can remember but have trouble with after running D20 most of the time). Mine was largely ineffective, theirs was devastating, blowing my mighty steam wagon to shrapnel with one shot and taking down my clockwork mech with riflefire. The mech proved delightfully incapable of directing gattling gun fire onto any of the many targets and eventually blew up due to over-the-top damage the likes of which have not been seen since Kirk activated the self destruct on the NCC-1701A while Klingons were rifling it.

It was all great fun and we shall be meeting again in two weeks to do some more.

UPDATE: Future posts concerning the Space 1889:Red Sands campaign will be posted in a purpose-built blog rather than here.

End Of An Era

So last week I sat with the two people who showed up to the (delayed) Delta Green session and we decided that the game wasn't doing it for anyone any more.

It was agreed that if we had more interested people it would still be a going concern, but with only two players the pacing was not as good as it might be, and the mix of player styles wasn't working with our established milieu. We had enjoyed it more when there was a crowd, with all the churning of ideas that brought.

And so, I reluctantly put the campaign to bed, with the players stipulating that if interest should pick up I should run it again, which was kind of them but we are done.

It had a very long run, more than eight years of (mostly) monthly play. I didn't count the sessions but I would be surprised if we hadn't convened the game more than 90 times.

This game brought me into contact with some of the best RP gamers with whom I have ever had the pleasure of playing. Their buy-in and keen participation drove me to the limits of my creativity when trying to devise suitably convoluted plots, schemes and double-crosses. It has been the most enjoyable of all the games I have run.

So I should thank those who made it so much fun, starting with the seven people who sat in the very first scenario, at a small convention called RetCon. I don't know all their names, so they'll all stay anonymous. I learned a lot from devising and running that one session.

Mark, Jay, Melanie, Kevin, Mike, Justin, Chris, Dan, John, Matt, Stephen, Daniel, thank you all.

I shall remember forever Kevin's radio kluge that saved the day, Melanie's cunning "Almanick deception ploy", Justin's tiny hand and later inadvertent bloody sacrifice, Jay's leadership and knowledge (along with his gobsmacked reaction when he found out about Melanie's perfidy and his loud refutation of personal cultism while his character stood naked in a field chanting a spell with a bunch of other naked , blood-soaked "non-cultists"), Mike's re-entry to the game after a short spell away, Chris's telephone pole climbing stunt and his mix tapes, Dan's close encounters with mythos stuff that somehow didn't kill him or drive him insane, Matt for his gleeful playing of insane characters ("The Frogs! Aargh!"), Stephen for his attempt to psychoanalyze someone going mad in a submarine via radio and his love of ridiculously large caliber guns, John for destroying the known universe for no good reason, and Daniel for his powers of deduction and the spaceship incident.

Thanks to all those who participated in single games whose names are too numerous to mention, too.

I hope everyone had fun. I know I did.

We took a vote and decided to switch to a monthly game of Space 1889:Red Sands, which can be played with fewer players owing to the ease of use of NPC "extras" in the Savage Worlds system.