Friday Grab Bag

Yesterday, after viewing some images over on Little Wars Revisited, I was inspired to throw some 54s on the table (as is right and proper). 

Elements of an Allied Venusian Expeditionary Force patrol are in retreat from the lizard folk. The AVEF units plan to consolidate their position on the hill beyond the river. (One Hour Wargames Scenario 20)

Crossing the river.

Rifle and bow exchange fire.

The AVEF about to be overrun.

I played this scenario with One Page Rules Age of Fantasy : Regiments, but instead, treating each element as a unit of 10 figures (and tracking with d10s). Rolling 10d6 for an attack was more fun than I anticipated. But I'm not sure the special abilities/troop differences that AoF brings to the table were any better than when I play using One Hour Wargames (Ancients+Dark Ages for the lizards, Rifle & Sabre for the FFL/Highlanders, with  my fantasy rules for heroes, casters, and beasts bolted on), just different.

Speaking of OPR...

Last year, on his birthday, my son received the Space Marines paint set (6 paints, and 3 Infernus). The intent of the kit is to paint them as Ultramarines. Unlike the regular box of Space Marines, the starter kit comes with the Ultramarine and Unit symbols molded into the pauldrons so they seem pretty much destined for that chapter.

My son had assembled and primed one, but lost interest quickly thereafter.

With his permission, I asked if I could paint it up as a Blood Raven (his preferred chapter) - if I could manage to scrape the Ultramarine symbol off the figure. Thumbs up received, a fresh #11 blade was applied and, while I feared the plastic was too thick to remove easily, off it came easy peasy. 

So, he'll now have three Blood Raven Infernus (he may assemble and paint the other two himself - seeing that it could be done seems to have changed his attitude towards the figures)

"Now it's time to get funky"

"To the right now,"

"to the left ...Take it back now ya'll"

Speaking of my son, ever since I introduced him to the Ken & Robin Talk About Stuff podcast, he has wanted to try The Fall of Delta Green. However, as it's set in the 60s, I felt like it wasn't a good fit even if I made it kid friendly, since he didn't know anything about the 60s (which reminds me of one of my favorite exchanges on the Gumball cartoon. Someone says a decade like "the 60s" and Darwin asks "You mean the future?" "No, the 1960s", "There was a 19?").

He was maybe 8 or 9 at the time.

This past year, in 7th grade social studies, they covered the Vietnam War (in a superficial way, but none the less), but he is more than informed about it after watching numerous history videos on YouTube and discussing the war with me. In fact, in our Family & Friends gaming group, he probably knows more than most of the adults about it (I'll pat myself on the back for that).

He also gets a big kick out of the Fortunate Son/Huey gunship meme.

With my only interest in 5e D&D being to participate as a player, I have had nothing to bring to the group during breaks in our current Ravenloft-based campaign to give the other GM a chance to play. I don't want to run more D&D (b/x of course), as I have the campaign with my son - we did try to bring in the Friends & Family group into that, but since we play so often, it's almost impossible for them to have any sense of the various threads that have emerged.

So, all this is to say, I decided it is time:

It's a hefty tome. For me at least.

I've long since given up reading large rule books (I have the 5e Player's Handbook, but I have only read maybe 20 or so pages that I needed to create the two characters I've run -a gnome monk and a human thief) but I'll make an exception here as much of it is background and GM advice (horror seems to require a modicum of seriousness, which I tend to lack, so this may or may not work!) and intriguing.

The Fall of Delta Green uses the Gumshoe system, which is new to me, and to the entire group. 

That adds some additional lifting for me. 

As I will be running one-shots or maybe an episodic campaign for the group, a group that won't invest in player books to learn a system, I'll have to teach it. At it's base it's not difficult, it's when all the little extras creep in that I can easily lose my footing. I'm considering some of the various Cthulhu Dark variants (Cthulhu Deep Green seems a likely candidate) as they are rules-light and easy to teach. 

We'll see though.

I have a lot of experience playing RPGs solo - using a variety of methods including Mythic: Game Master Emulator, so I will go through the character generation process a few times, and run some sample mini adventures for myself to get a grasp of the mechanics to see if they are as involved as they seemed on my first pass.