All's Quiet

Not a whole lot happening over here, hobby-wise. Well, wargaming hobby-wise. 

I *did* play Grimdark Future Firefight yesterday against another human. It was the first game I've played in awhile.

He messaged me on Thursday or Friday on Discord, we hashed out schedules and locations and all that, and then Sunday we got together at a local-ish (30-40 minute drive for me) store. The rules have moved up a version since I last played, but nothing too dramatic has changed in Firefight.

We played two games. 

The first featured his old school Iron Hands Space Marines vs my old school Plague Marines. I took quite a beating. The only consistently good showing was the figure with the plasma rifle. Although, on the last turn, I managed to take out one of his Space Marines in a melee counter-attack with the figure with the Plague knife. It didn't change anything but it felt cinematic.

All of the dice I rolled in that game were retired for the the next one! 

For our second game, he took his Iron Hands again, but switched out some rifles for a Terminator. I benched my Plague Marines for my Battle Sisters. I had 7 models to his 5 but mine were fragile in comparison, especially the two Sisters Repentia. 

Luck was on my side this game - I took out the Terminator with a combination of a Battle Sister with  Storm Rifle and my Cannoness with her Power Sword.  Then I dropped his RPG after a brief exchange of fire with a Sister with a Bolt rifle. On turn 4, I dropped his leader. In the end, I held 2 of the 3 objectives free and clear, and was contesting the 3rd. 

I didn't take any pictures, but it was a lot of fun and hopefully we'll meet up again soon. 

Of course, now it's got me thinking again about how to get at least one of my forces to 2000 points for the full-size game. 

This is the team I fielded yesterday. Pummeled badly, but I still love them.

 

I almost forgot that I ran a session or two of our family and friends RPG campaign since I last updated - I forget when exactly - and we have a session later this month. 

The party has turned to murder-hobo-ing. They are actively avoiding an RP opportunity I set up in the dungeon proper and seem to be speed-running the dungeon. I need to poll them to find out why. I'm happy to terminate the adventure at any point, if they aren't enjoying it. The characters themselves aren't obligated to go straight through, they could go back to town or even to another adventure.

 

My sister and I worked on clearing my parents house out last week to get it ready for sale. This sign hung in the basement bar of their first house. I remember it from my very early childhood. It now hangs on my wall to welcome and set the mood for my RPG players.

 

Most of my free time, I've been spending on music.

I picked up a Behringer Edge (percussion synth) a few months ago and then an Arutria Drum Brute Impact (analog drum machine) about month later. I have been having a blast attempting to make various forms of electronic music as a result - mostly industrial, ambient/drone techno, and power noise. I pretty much do that every day and just get lost in the beats.

It's nice to do something musically where I have no particular purpose except to have fun. 

In fact, I can lose hours to it. It's almost a dangerous as doom scrolling Instagram, except I'm actually creating instead of mindlessly consuming.

That's in addition to practicing trumpet every day (I took up the trumpet on September 6, 2024 and I've practiced every day since). When I started playing it was just for giggles, to return to my first instrument and maybe someday play in a community band. But then I fell in love with it way harder than I expected and suddenly I had musical dreams again - like I did when I was 14 and took up guitar. We're at the point now that when people ask how it's going, I tell them that when I grow up I want to be in a professional jazz band (I do. And by grow up, I mean in about 10 years). And maybe a touring ska, soul, or rocksteady band.

And finally, icing on the cake, a band I was in that hasn't played together in 16 years is reuniting for a November show and I've got to re-learn songs I have long since forgotten. It's punk rock, not prog rock, so it's not difficult, but I just need to sit down and do it to the point I can play them in my sleep again. And remember which song is which just by seeing the name on the set list (never my strong suit - I've many times, in many bands, leaned over and asked a bandmate to quickly sing how the song starts!)

Me and the boys. 2008? 2009?

April Recap

Not much to share pictures of this month.

I briefly picked up a paint brush and applied the base uniform color for eight WWII French. I could have sworn I had primed nine, but it seems he's AWOL.

That was the extent of my painting.

I did order ten used(and painted) old GW metal Black Orks. I can't wait until they get here - they'll go against my lizards, when I make time to game that is.

Gaming-wise, I didn't get a game in until this most recent Monday night when my Sisters of Battle and Tyranids met in a first pass at Space Weirdos in a small 75-point game.

At that level, that's just three Sisters and five Nids - a tiny number of figures, but well suited for a small space gamer.

I played without the command points or the optional rules, just to get a feel for the basics. One game is not enough to go by, but I enjoyed it far more than Grimdark Future: Firefight for a similarly sized game. I found the rules easy to pick up and I appreciate that they have a solo supplement included with the rules (though I haven't tested). It's dice-based, which is not my favorite, as I prefer cards, but it uses more than just the d6, so I actually enjoyed rolling. 

RPG dice need more love!

Oh and I took no pictures.

That said, this evening (Wednesday), I setup a similar set table but played with One Hour Skirmish Wargames. I don't know why I bother to play anything else honestly. Such a great game. Immersive. Cinematic. Strong narrative. Etc.

I need to buy more decks of cards though - I keep losing one or two cards from each deck. Maybe the missing French infantryman took them.

Oh and no pictures again - trying to get even further away from photographing games and just enjoying the playing.

Most of my gaming efforts in April were focused on prepping for an Episodic Old School D&D campaign  - we meet this weekend for our character creation session. 

I'll be running Basic Fantasy RPG (BFRPG) which is essentially a retro-clone of one of my favorite iterations of D&D (and the first one I played lo those many years ago), Moldvay\Cook Basic\Expert Dungeons & Dragons. Character creation should take at most 10-15 minutes for B/X but everyone will be creating three PCs (given the lethality of old school games). 

Not only that but BFRPG implements a 1e-style separate race and class system and they have a plethora of community tested and approved additional races and classes beyond the four core classes (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-User, Thief) and four core races (human, halfling, elf, dwarf). So, selection will probably take quite a while as most of our group won't read anything until we're at the table.

If you're unsure of what I mean by an episodic campaign, think A-team or Law & Order as examples. Basically, they will have adventures with no overarching plots tying them together, other than player character emergent plots. There isn't even a necessarily consistent world (how many times does the same actor appear on Law & Order as different people on different episodes?).

Adventurers, however, are not police nor are they a team of commandos who were imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit. Especially at 1st level, they aren't even top of the list when someone is in trouble. So, rather than waiting for adventures to come to them, I want them to find them, yet not a sandbox and not a hex crawl, because those are a hard sell for at least one of my players. 

To that end, and mostly because I love making maps, I created a map of sorts (there's no scale, it's not even relative distances, so is it really a map?) with some initial adventures indicated on it. My intent is that it provides them agency in what adventures they go on. 

It's not really for navigation within the game world, but for navigation within the list of curated adventures from my library that I could run for them in the first two gaming sessions we have scheduled - it's more of a graphical database interface perhaps?

Week Off Recap

I was off this past week from my day job and as a result, I was able to squeeze in some gaming related activity. 

Most of the gaming was centered around a mega-dungeon campaign I've been running for my son, off and on, since July of 2023. His party is on their way to the regional capital to deliver a letter they discovered that hints of an invasion and at his request, he wants to see the villages and towns along the way.

As I had never intended for him to leave the tiny area I had mapped out around the dungeon originally, some time was spent generating a map (I make it sound tedious but it was fun - I used an old copy of Hexographer), identifying the villages and their names (most of them are based on towns from the Let's Game It Out YouTube channel that we used to watch religiously, but the capital is Capital City per The Simpsons), and then importantly what published modules, adventures, encounters, etc. I would put in or near each stop along the route.

His first side-quest was fighting a devil his party had accidentally freed when they were but level 3 or less (they are now level 6-7 - which might sound like a lot of gain for old school play, but we have had a *lot* of sessions, since it's just him and me it's easy to get the whole group together!). He appreciated the call back - and in the very brief fight where he sent the devil back to Hell, he learned that Geryon (arch-devil) is concerned about his party rising in power. It came out in role-play and was completely unscripted, but he's super excited about it, so now I have that thread/threat I can work in now and again.

As a point of interest, I used ChatGPT to generate a 5-room "dungeon" (really wilderness encounter areas) featuring said devil, set in a swamp. With a little tweaking it ended up being a great little 2+ hour session with a satisfying story arc and interesting puzzles. I'll probably do this for some other small area encounters along the route.

The party is currently in the Tower of the Stargazer (James Raggi's module for Lamentations of the Flame Princess). He will be there a bit - although he's already found and gotten the big treasure I think (the module is not written for characters of 6th level or higher, so he had some advantages and got a boon when he passed what would be a difficult saving throw for a 1st level character, which he cashed in for the key to the puzzle protecting the treasure - I'm OK with this. At his characters' levels, the treasure amounts to a pittance towards the XP for the next level - and he still hast to get it back to the village for it to count as XP anyway and it's more than they can carry). 

He's on summer break, so we'll play on weeknights as well as weekends until school starts again.

My big miniatures accomplishment was finishing the last three Novokh Dynasty Necrons. 

The gang's all here.

This puts me at twenty-five Warhammer 40K miniatures painted this year - not earth shattering, but on pace to get everything painted before the end of the year. Up next, when I get to it, I'll probably start assembling the first Tyranids. I think they are pretty great, so I'm looking forward to it, even though I have like 23 to paint or some ridiculous number.

I got in a second game of Fire Team - Necrons lost again, and in a big way. I definitely made some tactical errors when I was controlling them. I made some notes to apply next time.

The same can be said for my Nurgle Rotters who had their second game ever, and lost, in Blitz Bowl - this time against the Reichland Reavers (humans). They are just so slow. I think I need to goal tend with most of the team, most of the time.

Other than D&D, I'm not sure when I'll get to work on anything else gaming related - I'm putting together a bunch of YouTube content for guitar (song walk throughs for Sisters of Mercy, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and similar, as well as general guitar content, etc) and I 'll need time to shoot and edit it in between day job, D&D, Lone Warrior stuff, and teaching! (Overextended? Me?)

More games!

This weekend featured quite a lot of gaming again, but almost entirely D&D, so there are no pictures.

For your viewing pleasure, here are photos for one of last weekend's many games:

How it started ...

How it was going ...

How it ended.

I thought the greater firepower for the Russians would offset the numerical disadvantage. 

I was wrong.

Rules used were G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.

This was the last game for the Cossacks. They are heading to Canada. The Imperial Russians are heading to a new home near me.

 ***

The D&D campaign we started on our vacation, continues. Although school started back up on the 1st, it's barely put a dent in our gaming.

Indeed, I haven't played this much D&D since I was a kid.

My son asks to play almost every day - so much so, that we've churned through almost everything I prepped in advance. And, having little to no time between sessions, I had to call last night's session short.I felt like the quality of my DMing was dropping rapidly. 

I've been using a couple of sample dungeons (Holmes and the one in the Swords & Wizardry quick start, both of which I've run many times before), and some of the many freely available one-page dungeons for this megadungeon - reskinned to connect them thematically. However, we have gone past what I reskinned, and I was having to do that on the fly.  While I can improvise easily with an unkeyed map, I can't help but feel compelled to refer to the key when one exists. That led to disjointed play with me flipping back and forth between pages.

I'll spend some time tonight finding or creating some unkeyed maps, make a quick list of what occupies the level and generate contents on the fly so we can play unhindered again. I don't need detailed descriptions of room contents to run a game, I just need to know in advance the relationships between the entities on that level and their relationships with entities on other levels.

I'm a big fan of dungeon economies (which gives PC's an access point to gold without having to fight, if they can find a way to become a part of it) and preparing relationships between factions that the party can get involved with. The latter produces emergent story, and that's my preference - rather than a particular plot (the only hook for this campaign is the PCs are seeking fame and fortune), I like the players to decide what matters to them, and for the game world to react to their actions.

We are using the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert rules (I was in 6th grade when I got them. He's in 7th now.), supplemented with some OSR-created products, including the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion and some new classes.

So far, it's working like a charm.

 **** 

We played Blitz Bowl together this weekend and he had a great time. That he trounced me by 11 points might have something to do with it. I'm not bitter - he made a great use of one of the bonus play cards to score the winning touchdown - but I demand a rematch! 

It also made me want to get paints for the Nurgle team but there's a bunch of stuff in the paint queue currently.

In related news, my son has expressed interest in possibly playing 40K (he's met some kids at school who play). My wallet weeped a little, but I do like a lot of the figures.

We primed some of fantasy figures from my Pile of Plastic this weekend and one of his sci-fi looking "army men" and we'll do some painting sessions, so he can find out if it's something he likes enough that he'd want to paint up an entire force (Kill Team only requires 10 figures per side, so that sounds like the best entry point to me).

His birthday is coming soon, and I would be happy to buy him a 40K starter set(he likes the set with 5 marines and a bunch of Tyranids), or a box of figures and paints, if that's what he wants.

All Units Return to Base

Friday was my birthday. I am 51. Not sure how that happened.

Peppermint Update: He came home from the hospital on my birthday, which was the best gift I could get. There's no cure, but at least he's home and comfortable and we can take care of him ourselves.

We went for a walk to the nearest convenient store (a bi-weekly tradition) and I treated myself to a Monster energy (Orange Dreamsicle flavor is amazing!). I may or may not have had three more over the weekend *cough cough*

I had thought that afterwards I might strong-arm my son into playing Wings of Glory with me, as we recently had a great time with the basic rules, but alas, his friends were all online playing Roblox together and I didn't have the heart to keep him from that.

Instead, I sat with Peppermint and re-watched several episodes of HBO's The Pacific.

Fired up, I spent time Saturday rebasing my Pacific Theater collection. 

The result is that I can field a company plus per Crossfire organization tables for both the Japanese and the USMC in 1942. 

Cutting the little b********** free from their individual bases was far more trying than I expected. Fortunately, I only stabbed myself once. Unfortunately, it was right in the tip of my fretting hand index finger, which means playing guitar will be unpleasant for a bit.

The Americans

The Japanese. Each platoon gets a knee mortar. And a badly painted flag.

I toyed with using 1.5" squares and three figures per base, but went with 2-figure1.25" squares (the standard size from the rulebook) because I can field more units this way.

Of course, based as they are, I can use them Hammer of Democracy, too.

I have Britton Publishers Rising Sun: Operation Watchtower for Guadalcanal scenarios and Rising Sun: Operation Galvanic for Tarawa. It's been awhile since I read either, but if I recall, most of the scenarios are infantry only, with off-table artillery, which suits my forces. I suspect that as written they are better suited to Hammer of Democracy, as Crossfire requires substantial terrain laid out with great care to prevent table length line of sight and fire lanes.

Sunday,  which, by my reckoning, was still part of my birthday, I ran the third session of our Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign.

The party made it to the town, spent some time talking to the townsfolk (where we discovered I can do just two accents: Southern and the other Southern) and went on a shopping spree, before eventually making their way to the hideout of some ruffians who have been shaking down the businesses in town. 

They quickly found themselves toe-to-toe with a Nothic (a creature none of us had never heard of before - and they still haven't, I just showed them the picture, not the name) but came out victorious. This was followed by rolling over some skellies in a crypt. We were all shocked to find out that in 5e clerics don't get to turn undead at 1st level! I guess that makes up for them being able to cast spells at 1st.

To my delight, the players have rediscovered the ancient joy of mapping the dungeon as you go.  It's not really accounted for in-play like it is in B/X, at least not in the starter set, so it's not an in-game document they can lose in a fire or flood. 

Not that I'd do that to them. I swear.

Bridge to Nowhere and Some D&D

As I mentioned in the comments on my previous post, I was planning to tackle the Airfix bridge over the weekend. Lo and behold, I did!

EDIT: The bridge was primed with black gesso. It was then damp/dry brushed with Ceramcoat Hippo Grey. That was followed with some Ceramcoat Raw Sienna. Then a light coat of Ceramcoat Bridgeport Grey. After that, a very light drybrush of Americana Light Buttermilk which I thought would finish it off. Unfortunately, that made it too contrast-y. So I  then hit it again with a very light dry brush of the Raw Sienna to tone down the Buttermilk.

In person, it has more of a buff/sandy tint to it. Regardless, it's a dramatic improvement over the bare plastic.

The figures are Toy Soldiers of San Diego, painted some years ago.

Speaking of painting, there are four lizard archers underway, although when I'll get a chance to finish them is anyone's guess.

Gaming-wise, I have a scenario idea for testing out the vehicle rules for Hammer of Democracy, but it may not get on the table until next week.It will absolutely use the newly painted bridge!

**** Warning: Role-Playing Gaming Talk Ahead ****

This last Sunday was our second session of 5e D&D.

I'm running friends and family through the starter set (the older one, with the Lost Mine of Phandelver) as we are all new to playing 5e (I played in Adventure League years ago, which I did not enjoy). Once we're done with this campaign, I'll step aside and someone else will run a campaign. That means I'll get to be a player character for the first time in a long time!

Without giving too much of the story away, but for those familiar with Lost Mine of Phandelver, they rescued Sildar (the human warrior captured by goblins). However, they didn't put forth any further effort against the goblins or their bugbear leader, so the threat remains. They are, though, interested in finding the goblin chief's location.

Sildar, who tried to persuade them to eliminate the immediate goblin menace, only acquiesced because he was in no shape or position to argue with them. 

Complicating everything, at the previous session the player characters captured a goblin with the intent of reforming him from his evil ways. He led them to the local goblin lair - although i was cautious not to have him give them much if any information about the lair layout - but certainly his presence will pose a problem for them when they get to town. When warned that society may not accept their gobbo friend, the PCs decided their first purchase in town will be a hat, and maybe a fake mustache, for him. 

He's already become a bit of comic relief (I do my best Dobby the House Elf impression while playing him ) so of course, I'll let them find a suitable fez or fedora for him. 

We play again on Sunday.

The last campaign I ran with a group of people met bi-weekly. It's been ages since I had a weekly role-playing group. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever did.

The Black Gem

For the past two weeks, I've been head down scrambling to put together some kind of game for our family's annual Fall Festival. Last year, I ran a brick/Lego-based zombie scenario, which was a huge hit. The only specific request for this year's game was some kind of visual element (helps keep my son involved).

I had an itch to run some b/x (Moldvay Basic/Expert) Dungeons & Dragons again and decided to combine that with bricks.

After far too much time spent pouring over one-shot modules, I decided that The Black Gem  from Catthulhu over on DriveThruRPG had the makings of something fun. However, as written, it would not work for my players, so I reorganized it into a 5-Room dungeon format (I highly recommend subscribing at RoleplayingTips for the free guide). 

Spoilers ahead! If you are a player in a campaign and your DM plans to run this, STOP NOW!

*****

The party arrives in the area of the Crying Angel fountain.

While the PCs explore and investigate, some zombies and skeletons arrive.

Drawn by the smell of apples, the party finds themselves in the Spider's Grove. (This is something I added as a connecting point between the major encounters)

Ambushed by ghouls!

A tough fight but the party prevailed! The pumpkin headed figure resulted from that cleric trying to throw a pumpkin at the ghouls and rolling a 1.

The party happens upon two zombie grave robbers. They make quick work of them.

The final boss - the eerie glow of the black gem.

The Danse Macabre!

We had to turn the lights on so we could actually play.

Overhead shot of the battle field.

The thief fired an arrow at a skeleon, missed and the gem was alerted to the party's presence. It sent forth its guardian!

Ed the Head cast invisibility on itself, and rolled past the raging melee in front of the mausoleum. There it found the black gem. Which it debated eating or knocking off the pedestal. Given Ed's lack of a stomach, knocking it off was decided upon.

With the gem destroyed, the undead dropped in their places. The party was victorious.

I set up a map similar to a node-based wargames map based on the "rooms" and added some events to occur in between the main story nodes.

Here is my map for reference:

Grey boxes are from the module, blue circles are things i added. Solid lines are actual paths in the cemetery, whereas dotted lines are "overland" amongst tombstones and copses and take 2 -3 turns to traverse.

I purposely created multiple paths through the adventure - I don't like to rail-road my players and I've seen too many 5-Room dungeons setup or run just that way, with the rooms in order. The progression across the map, left to right, is basically the 5-Room structure, but they don't have to follow that.

In the event, my players went from the In Media Res start, to the Fountain, to the Spider Grove, to the Grave Diggers, to the Ghouls, to the Danse Macabre, skipping everything else.

To give players something to hook their directional choices on, I added simple sounds (or scents in one case), will-o-wisp "torches" were from a Halloween random encounter list i found on DriveThru, and the "gate signs" are part of the adventure as written. This made for quite lively discussion each time a decision was needed and that was the entire point, to allow the players to role-play and to feel their choices mattered.

I was pretty much able to run the whole game looking just at this. Including the time it took for players to decide on a minifigure and choice of armor, it took about 3 hours start to finish.

Cliche as it is, fun was had by all. It's hard not to have fun with Legos/bricks.

One player, a role-playing veteran, commented that he was impressed my ability to consistently run successful one-shots. Unfortunately, that's kind of where my ability ends! I find campaigns with through-lines difficult to run - perhaps because I cut my teeth in episodic module play? I don't know but thankfully our family gatherings are perfect opportunities to run one-shots.