Pathfinder

There is a movement afoot to collect some like minded friends of mine to play some sort of D&D-ish game online using Roll20.  After some back and forth, we may have settled on Pathfinder as our rules of choice, despite it being a new rule set to all of us!  Glad I am not the DM for this one.

Poking around online, there are some great tools for Pathfinder, which is useful because all the feats and preferred classes and whatnot get pretty complicated for someone like me.  Also, being based on the OGL/SRD material, the Pathfinder rules are available online, which gives you most of what you need to get going [although obviously without all the cool art and flavor text in the real $32 book].

So at some point in the near future, I may be playing a belligerent Elf Oathsworn Paladin... more to follow if it comes to pass.

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...

Irony, MT - Part 1

For my wife's birthday this year, I somehow hit upon the idea of giving her a set of miniatures and rules for western role play. 

Rules were easy, as I went for a hard copy of Go Fer Yer Gun, printed by Lulu. I also managed to get a PDF or the rule book when it was a free item from Drive through Games. This system is based on D&D, and should be pretty easy to pick up.

For miniatures, I went with Foundry figures, sculpted by Copplestone (OW9/2, OW11/8, and DA1/6). At $15 a pack, the Foundry figures were a pretty good deal, although the flat rate shipping was a little harsh, particularly considering that it took longer than expected for them to get to me.  I was pleased with the sculpts, but there were more mold lines that I was expecting, some of which were too difficult to remove.  I also painted a random Artisan figure, which had character, but was less technically accomplished than the Copplestones (particularly in the hands).

I painted the figures predominantly at work during my lunch hour, and had pretty good success with that.  My office gets fairly good light, so it is not too bad for painting. I did run into some technical issues, mostly having to do with the Citadel screw top paints having dried up.  My flesh wash was a solid mass, and the propellant from my DullCote had long since vanished, necessitating a trip to the hobby store to procure more.  I experimented with some new techniques whilst painting these up, including using a sponge for some of the weathering on the clothes, painting reflections on a bottle, and I used the Perry Miniatures article on Painting Dark African Skin by Steven May to inform my painting of this first fellow.

For basing, I tried out grass tufts for the first time, and was somewhat pleased with them.  It seems like the particular set of tufts I had were more irregular than clumped, but I think that the overall effect is good (and quick, which its own sort of good).

Enough words, here are the first four of the miniatures (out of 13)

  Clearly I need to work on photography, since they are much better "in the hand" than they are showing here.  Limited in this case by taking pictures at night with a cellphone.  More to come, including a map of Irony City, Montana Territory.

X-Wing Miniatures

This weekend we celebrated my birthday, and my lovely sister and her family gave me the X-wing Miniatures starter from Fantasy Flight Games.  This apparently wildly popular game uses 1/270 scale fighters, secret orders, and a whole host of chits, cards, and cardboard templates for movement to enact Star Wars fighter duels and skirmishes. [rulebook may be read here]

Picture from Wired Magazine

The basic box comes with three fighters, the various chits/cards/cardboard to get you started, and then you need to buy booster boxes that have additional fighters and cards.  Cards are used to have "upgrades" like famous pilots, torpedoes, extra shields and so on. Currently, you can get most of the fighters from the movies and a few bigger things like shuttles, Slave One, and the Millennium Falcon.

There is quite a lot of online interest in this game, and people have created Deathstar tiles, squadron builders, star field mats, plastic rulers, and much more to add on to this game, even rules for corvettes and similar sized ships. [the out-of-print Electronic Rebel Blockade Runner Ship can be had for $30 on eBay and is a pretty good size, even if not quite scale]

LucasArts long ago pre-programed me to be excited by this game, as I put in hundreds of hours playing X-wing, Tie Fighter, and X-wing vs Tie Fighter when I was younger.  As for actually playing the game, my son squealed "Tie Fighters!" when he saw the box, so apparently he is into it... but he is too small to play it yet.  So actual play may have to wait until I can muster up some friends for a couple of duels.

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisition

By now most of you have probably read the rumor that Games Workshop is going to have an Inquisitor game for its now obligatory "Fall Mystery Box", instead of the long expected four team BloodBowl box.  If you have not, here is the rumor:

TastyTaste says:
Inquisition is designed for 2-4 players and each side will use custom cards and dice. Army sizes consist of about 5-10 models per side. A whole new set of models drawn from Blanche artwork will accompany. The game should be flexible as you can make and design your own Inquisitorial retinue. As for rules complexity that is anyone's guess, but the general marketing goal for Inquisition is a gateway game into the greater Warhammer 40k universe.
Beyond that GW, seems to be taking cues from Kickstarter projects like Sedition Wars and home-brewed rules like Inq28 for Inquisitor. This also might not end up as a limited edition run, but that all depends on sales, and if any support is continued will be done through digital expansions and updates.
As it is that is all I have for now, but if my sources hold true expect more information as it comes!

There are some supporting murmurs, TastyTaste is semi-reputable as a rumor monger, and of course some of the Ammobunker crew have been playing Inq28 and similar games with Blanche for a while now, and Blanchistu has featured pretty much only custom war bands... so it could be true.

I was thinking about how this game might work last night when I was supposed to be sleeping, and came up with the following wish list/guess:

£60/$100 box with ~30 figures.  Something like 4 Inquisitors, 8 retinue figures, 8 cultists, 8 guards, one main bad guy, two objective pieces.  Inquisitors would be multi-part pushfit, and one would be in power armor, one female. Retinue figures would be archetypes like The Penitent, The Arbiter, the Veteran, the Interrogator, the Daemon, the Fanatic, the Sage, the Mystic, The Harlequin, etc.  Cultists would be similar to those in the 6th edition box, but with lasguns, and with more bionics, and would have one special weapon, and one leader. Guards would be something more generic, but otherwise like the cultists, maybe with cyberhounds.  Most of the non-inquisitors would be monopose  two part pushfit, except the main bad guy, and if there is one, some sort of hulking beast.

Another sprue of terrain, which is sort of down-hive versions of the cities of death stuff, made similar to the buildings that came with the LotR boxes, i.e. thin walled, but detailed on both sides. Expect mostly ruined corners, like most terrain for 40k.

Game play as basic Necromunda/Mordheim, but with all character stats on large cards.  Stats as per current Warhammer 40k, but with movement and willpower.  Wargear and one shot weapons on wargear cards that attach to the character cards [grenades, refractor fields, Emperor's tears, etc.]. More cards for terrain effects/defenses, psyker powers, wound effects. Dice in the usual amount, and jam dice for multi-shot guns (Someone at GW clearly loves second edition lately).  Inquisitor/Retinue experience is limited to some sort of skill upgrade cards [inquisitors pick, and retinue gets them randomly].

To allow for 2-4 players, rules allow for the cultists/guards to be controlled by either a player as a side, or like sea monsters in Dreadfleet (controlled by alternating players)

Two books in the box, one of rules, one of missions and character backgrounds.  Blanche art throughout, but box cover is painted by someone else.

Features in one issue of White Dwarf, mentioned in a second.  If they ever do expansions, it would be a sprue of  one Inquisitor with two new retinue figures, and accompanying cards.

Yeah... I would buy that, and I suspect a lot of you would too.

INQ28 -WIP

My wife and the newborn were away this weekend visiting relatives, so after a couple long days wrangling a three year old, I managed to get in some hobby time, and stuck together some bitz.

Primarily I was able to get this armsman with voidarmor assembled.  He is made from a Valkyrie door gunner body, bike scout shotgun arm, chimera head, three separate bitz for his right arm, chaos warrior boarding axe, and some tanks and bitz on the back that can not be seen in this picture. The chest armor and neck ring was made from a bit of plastic tubing that I got at the hobby store.  He still needs some detailing and putty work to fill gaps, and add some strapping.  You might be able to make out in this reduced picture that I tried the micro beads as rivets technique, which I still need to practice with.

Also visible in various stages of completion: (from left to right) a death cultist with a venom hand, the xenophile, Death Watch marine, pilot, sage, headless inquisitor, and the torso for a female interrogator.

Annoyingly my super glue turned to super goo over the weekend, possibly due to a faulty lid design letting in air (or failure to reseal properly!), which slowed things down a bit. I also finished my secret painting project, which I will reveal in good time.