Summer Gaming Plans, Ver. 1.0

   We all know how 'buggy' a version 1.0 can be, right? So don't hold me too strictly to these plans. But in a few weeks I will go on summer vacation, and have significantly more time for gaming as a result. The thought occurred to me that some sort of plan might help with gaming productivity in my slow time. Thus, the following:

• Send 20 Kroot to painting service for Venusian Parrotmen.
• Send the boys' frogs to painting service.
• Obtain and paint about 15 Victoria Miniatures "Ood-like" figures.
• Paint eight 25 pdrs plus crew and staff for FOW.
• Paint an Indian mortar platoon for FOW.
• Obtain and paint more Cygnar figures ( a unit of trenchers and at least 2 warjacks).
• Finish painting Dragonfly Lancers.
• Finish painting 10 Empress Miniatures British.
• Obtain and paint replacement VSF British from Victoria Miniatures.
• Finish 5 German VSF figures.
• Obtain 10 more Prussian infantry. Paint all 20.
• Paint 10 more Aetherbattalion figures.
• Complete Volume 3, Issue 1 of The Aethergraph.
• Play some Star Frontiers RPG with the boys.
• Attend Historicon.
• Obtain a lot of terrain for 15mm desert and city.
• Obtain a lot of terrain for 25mm desert, jungle and city.

Ummmm... I think that's probably it. Look for updates, though. This is only v. 1.0, after all...

Using Technology in Roleplaying Games - Help?

   I had an idea a year or so back. For it to make sense, I guess you need to know that I have a good sized (32") flatscreen on the wall of my game room. It is usually hooked up to my sons' video game consoles, but does have an input that I could drive from a computer.

  Anyway, the idea struck me when we played a couple of games of Star Frontiers. Good OSR Sci-Fi stuff there. I want to use my mini laptop and the big screen to put up video transmissions. For example, when the characters get a call on their vidphone, explaining a potential job, or when the enemy starship captain sends a threat to "lower your shields and prepare to be boarded, or be destroyed!" 

   I just imagine this as a really cool use of technology to make for a memorable gaming experience. Problem is, how do I make the videos look good? Does anyone know of a cheap utility that could help me make good backgrounds, animate aliens, that sort of thing? I mean, a Sathar is a big worm. I can act, but that's a bit beyond me. By the way, I hear its voice as a mechanical translator with a heavy German accent.

Yazirian Conversion Possiblity?

From Mega Miniatures: Vermillionz

Some greenstuff wings and maybe you are in business... Supposedly closer to 15mm in height, which is fine for Yazirians. Several poses available as well.

Dralasite Sighted!

http://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder#detail/50129

Except for the neck mouth and the size... looks like a Dralasite to me. Need to be buying one of these...

April Wrapup from the Painting Table

A few shots of the work completed this month...

25mm Masked Minion (1 of 10) [Parroom]

25mm Half-Jacks (9 of the 10) [Privateer]

Masked Minion Gun Crew (1 out of 4)

[Parroom Station]

6mm (1/285) Trucks [GHQ Modern Microarmor]

25mm Masked Minion Officer (needs base work)

I got a good bit of work done this month. I was kind of surprised, considering how many other projects I worked on and how crazy work was. But, to be honest, I am pretty happy. I was disappointed in finishing the Minions because I have lost the wheel for my smoke launcher! I need to order a replacement or find the silly blasted thing... guess which one is more likely to happen?

One other mini-related disappointment is the Star Frontiers Player Character box set I bought from eBay. Still sealed from 1983. Lead rot, big time:

25mm Vrusk, lower body [TSR, 1983]

Intrepid Heroes, Mission 1

Intrepid Heroes is the name of the freelance troubleshooter trading house that my sons created when they started playing Star Frontiers with me a few weeks ago. I've already mentioned the first adventures of Bahud and Yan here in other posts. I thought you might want an update on the IH team.

First, we have added another player: Kellie, my wife's assistant. She's never really played a pen-and-paper RPG before, so we're teaching her how it goes. She got intrigued on Saturday when we had a garage sale here at the house and she brought a lot of stuff over to sell (she and her husband Chris don't have much of a "garage sale" neighborhood). Sitting about waiting for customers, the boys and I got into talking about playing some more. Kellie demanded we help her create a character. After the garage sale (not very successful, sadly), we went up to the game room and started playing!

Intrepid Heroes has hired a few new faces: Chooba, a Dralasite; Gar Pok, a Gorlian; and a female Vrusk whose name is utterly unpronounceable. The Dralasite and the Gorlian are Military PSA, the Vrusk a Biosocial PSA with Psycho-social skill (hypnotism!).

IH was hired out by Pan Galactic Corp to make a delivery run to a rather remote village called R'Haldran , some four or five days' travel by hover transport from Port Loren, the capital and starport on Gran Quivera, the primary planet of the Prenglar System. In exchange, each employee (of four) is to receive a payment of Cr500. Naturally, it isn't as easy as all that. So far, the four being IH team (Chooba stayed behind in Port Loren to mind the shop) has come across:

• A small town obviously raided by some kind of bandits, with all adults killed and at least one child taken, and a series of burned out farmsteads.
• Communications are out. The team's short range stuff works, and reception from satellites is still good, but there are no operating uplinks for long range comm transmissions.
• One farmstead (where they stayed the night) was similarly raided. Two dead human adults, two missing Human children, one dead male Vrusk in the farmyard.
• A mysterious glijet operating without running lights.
• A roadblock, manned by a single sentry who shoots first and didn't bother with questions. He was captured by a sweet tangler gun shot from the Vrusk, then interrogated after an attempt at hypnotism failed, but before Bahud got mad at him and burned a hole in his head with a laser rifle. Bahud needs to watch that temper!

That is the point at which we had to stop. The team has figured out that someone is kidnapping children, but have no idea why. The empty town kind of creeped them out, too. Which is great because it was totally what I wanted to happen.

What further adventures await the Intrepid Heroes? Tune in again next time...

Terror on Torrent

We finished up our Star Frontiers scenario / mini adventure last night.

When last we saw our Intrepid Heroes, Bahud, the Human Military Specialist, had just tossed his fragmentation grenade at the 10m long dinosaur that attacked him. Meanwhile, Yanshack'A of Zigara, a yazirian Technician known to his friends as Yan, was taking careful aim with his grenade rifle on the second dinosaur of the predatory pair...

And missing. Fast moving dinosaurs and no skill with a weapon means that happens a lot. The dinosaurs skid around in a sharp u-turn, then charge back at the hapless pair of (apparently) soon-to-be fast food containers. The pair of adventurers decide discretion is the better part of valor, and that one live dinosaur delivered was worth more than a trip through a Ripclaw's digestive tract. Again, fickle Fate saves our heroes, as they win the initiative and sprint for the safety of their nearby Explorer [1].

Safely behind the armored doors of their vehicle, Yan tries to sedate the creatures outside by dropping pairs of doze grenades out the (barely opened) window. Dane's lucky rolling streak continues, and he manages to put one of the Ripclaws down after it failed its STAmina check. He'll be sleeping for about five minutes (53 turns). One down, one to go.

As the second Ripclaw futilely claws and bites at the solid rubber tires and unyielding durasteel armor of the Explorer, Bahud passes his two doze grenades to Yan, hoping to repeat the performance and reap a bigger reward. Unfortunately, Yan's luck runs out, and Dane rolls a 99 - critical fumble! The doze grenades go off inside the cabin! As the Explorer's cabin fills with gas, Bahud and Yan pass out when they both fail their STA checks. When they awaken, both of the Ripclaws are gone. Running low on filters for their CO2 masks, the pair decide to return to the shuttle and leave Torrent behind.

On arrival a few days later at the Port Loren WarTech Industrial Complex, Bahud and Yan receive their walking papers. The Vrusk executive who hired them has mysteriously disappeared, and the project he headed up has been canceled. The new VP of the Prenglar office honors the original contract, and even offers to pay in kind at a 20% discount rather than in cash.

Newly unemployed (again), Yan and Bahud decide that maybe working directly for the big conglomerates is not as great a job as it seemed before. They decide to start their own business as freelance investigators and troubleshooters. The name of their company is (what else?): The Boys.

And that was pretty much where we ended the evening. We did a little bookkeeping (updating equipment lists, assigning and spending experience points, that sort of thing) and then called it a night. After they went to bed, I got to work on a handout for the next adventure - a classified ad sheet with all sorts of interesting leads and info on it. When it's done, I'll attach it here as a PDF (if I can figure out how to do that!).

[1] Explorers are large off road RVs, amphibious, and sometimes armed. This one is not armed, but is armored, and has a large cage (currently occupied by a sleeping and restrained dinosaur) in the back in place of the usual crew cabin.

On the Frontier...

The Boys (Greyson and Dane, my sons) and I played our first little bit of Star Frontiers last night. I think everyone had a blast, and we ended on a cliff hanger - more on that in a bit.

We started slow, creating characters using the Basic Rules, with one change - we did each attribute seperately instead of in pairs. Dane (11) chose a Yazirian Technologist named (I hope I get this right!) Yanshack'A of the Zingara. His friends call him Yan. He's strong and bright and fast, but gets winded very easily (STA 25!). Greyson (14) plays a Human Military Specialist named Bahud. He's tiny, but mighty. Using the optional rules we found in Issue 4 of Star Frontiersman, we generated a height of 1.5 meters and a weight of only 40 kg. Considering this child is actually 185 cm tall (6'1" for us 'Mericans), I find it funny. Bahud also has a Strength Attribute of 70 - well above average. One tough little person!

Anyway, we played through the first scenario in the Basic Rules, where you are working for Pan Galactic Corp to discover the security breach. Of course, it's an inside job. The boys managed to take down two of the spies (a Vrusk and a Dralasite) with doze grenades and captured a third (the Human) who was running off with a stolen data crystal. A quick call to Star Law resulted in the Yazirian's apprehension at the starport of Port Loren.

Later that evening, the Boys accepted a permanent position as agents of WarTech, Inc., a major weapons manufacturer in the Frontier. Their first assignment was to infiltrate the planet Torrent (as described in Issue 8) and capture specimens for the Biotech Warfare division. Specifically, they want dinosaurs!

After successfully landing their shuttle on the planet, the Boys disembarked in their modified Explorer. It took a few days, but they decided that they were never going to catch anything running around in this loud vehicle (the animals kept running away). So, they got out and set up camp. Waiting a few hours, a small herd of giant herbivores came through nearby, followed by a lone predator. One (lucky!) shot with the gas grenade rifle later, and the ten meter long carnosaur was down and sleeping. Bahud tried to determine the gender of the dinosaur, but he just couldn't get the biosensor to give him that much. He was able to get a species: Torrentus leapyclawclaw, common name the Ripclaw. Bahud restrained the sleeping beast with webbing straps while Yan brought the explorer close and they winched the heavy beast into the cage in back.

After a brief rest, the Boys went hunting, looking for signs of Ripclaws in the area. They found sign, alright - followed by a swift, running attack by a pair of angry, hungry carnosaurs! The carnosaurs flashed past, clawing and biting as they ran (nipping Bahud), then turning to make another pass. As they turned, Bahud pitched his frag grenade at them, only to fumble with it and drop it just outside the blast radius. Yan took aim with his grenade rifle... and we ran out of time.

Tune in later this week for more exciting tales. I promise you, my sons are not going to let me rest until they get these dinos!

Fresh outta 1980 what?

Look at what I found. My original Star Frontiers books. And the maps. No box or counters, but then I can always print the counters off from Star Frontiersman.

Who says compulsively holding onto a game for almost thirty years isn't a good idea? I think the boys and I are gonna be playing this weekend! Oh yeah!