Camouflage Schemes

I have been thinking about the camo schemes for some of the ex-Imperial Guardsmen in my Inquisitorial retinues (and probably in odd bits of guard gear for others too).  So I painted up a few sample squares as a test.

About life size on my monitor

As it happens, I have somewhat color deficient vision, so some of these look like muddled messes to me (which of course they may very well be).  For example, my wife likes #4, but it only has about 2.5 colors for me, rather than the 4 that are actually present.  Since these patterns are going to be about 1/4 this size, it may make sense to select ones that are more defined.

What do you think?  Do you have a preference?

Laughing Ferret - Give away

Laughing Ferret, of Laughing Ferret Lab, is having a 200,000th hit give-away.  Merely commenting on the blog gives you an entry, and plugging the contest gives you another.  There are some very nice prizes, including a sprue of Mordor orcs, dice, and some old codexs [codices?].

200k hits is pretty great, and the blog is interesting, even if you do not play Bloodbowl...  I seem to recall first reading the blog a while back with an article about Lord of the Ring dwarf ranger conversions, and started following there after.

Player HUD

A heads up display (HUD) is a transparent or projected screen of information for a fighter plane, so that a pilot does not have to take their eyes off what they are doing to get vital information. 

Telecanter, who appears to have a bag of 1001 ideas, had the idea of creating one for D&D play, so that what a player is holding and what role they have in combat is clear both to the DM, and probably just as important, to other players at the table.  While this may seem unnecessary to veteran players, for new or more casual players, this sort of thing is pretty useful.  Many times, a character sheet seems to get in the way of role play, as players are looking down at their sheet, and away from each other and the DM.

Telecanter's Version

In the comments to Telecanter's post, I mentioned that I have used name tents to encourage players to call each other by character name [and help me remember!], and yellow sticky notes to show who had light sources, and wondered if it would be possible to combine those ideas with the player HUD. 

Then we had a baby arrive, and I did not have the time to develop the idea further until now.


Click it to get very large

So here is my "improved" Player HUD, with attached mini character sheet.  The idea is that during the game, this is all you need to look at, although for higher level play with more spells/abilities/powers, it would start to be too limiting.

Facing the DM and other players we have right hand/left hand, combat role, player character name, and a light indicator.  Facing the player, we have an injury track, the reduced character sheet, and a d30 reminder.  I also have a "ready equipment" list and a spells list.   This should be everything that a player needs to get going during an encounter.  To make it a "tent" it folds on the dotted line, and then again in between the name/Role line, and the damage track/reduced character sheet line.

The Injury track is supposed to be a way to show other players how your character is doing with a sort of slider, just like in real life you can see if your buddy is bleeding or injured with a glance. You might use something like these Post-it flags, or just a paperclip. 

Obviously your 1hp magic user is not going to be able to use the injury tracking the same way that a fighter might.

Thoughts?  Would this help in your games?

Irony, MT - Part 2

One of the most important parts of a RPG game (for me anyway) is the map, so when I was putting together a set of western RPG materials for my wife's birthday [see previous post here], I knew that I wanted to make a map to go with it.

Since I had decide to use the Montana Territory for various reasons, I spent some time looking at Google maps, trying to find a town that was in mixed terrain, and was not too changed from its late 1800's plan.  The idea was to then look for a period map of the town, and use that, or a modification there of.  After some work, I finally found the prototype for my town of Irony: Bannack, MT.

Bannack, named for the local Bannock Native Americans, was a gold rush town that boomed quickly, then nearly disappeared before guttering out into the ghost town that it is today. I found a tourist map of the place, which had the look I liked, and drew a simplified version of it in Google Draw.  The pictures are either period pictures of buildings in town, or modern ones of the remaining buildings in the ghost town.

Click to enbiggen

After I drew the map with Google Draw, I then used MS publisher to put together this version, add in the photos, and the border.  I then printed it, and yellowed the paper with coffee and some dirt, folded it about 1000 times and there you have it.  I rather like it.

X Wing Miniatures - MicroMachines

Like many, I have a fair few MicroMachines, and wondered if I could apply them to the X-Wing Miniatures game (needing then just bases and some paint work).  I pulled out some that seemed like they would be in a useful scale, measured them, and here are the results:

MicroMachines Millenium Falcon: 5.1cm so ~1/681 scale
MicroMachines X Wing 4.6cm ~1/271
MicroMachines Y Wing 5.5cm ~1/290
MicroMachines TIE/In 3.3cm ~1/290
MicroMachines Lady Luck 6cm ~1/833
MicroMachines Skipray Blast Boat 4.7cm ~1/530

The larger Millenium Falcon is a gyroscopic toy from Burger King or similar, and comes in at 9.8cm and therefore ~1/354 scale.

All "real world" lengths taken from Wookieepedia.

As X Wing miniatures has a stated scale of 1/270, it seems that, as expected, the X-Wing, Y-Wing, and TIE/In would be good matches, and the others would not work. Which is a particular pity for the Lady Luck since it is so unique, and I am pretty sure I have a second of those toy Millenium Falcons kicking around...