Random Stuff

I haven't been doing much gaming lately, but I have a couple updates.

LARP

My recent attention has been on LARP.

Last weekend we ran what we call a "lore battle." Lore battles add to the ongoing lore of our fictional setting.

Here I am as a manticore.

Full write-up on my Annals of Elzwehn blog.

Rockets

As I mentioned in my predictions for 2023, I'm working on a boxed set for sci-fi gaming. I realized that I need some spaceships so I made some.

I had them out for a quick trial battle. It did not go well for Blue.

Rebel Rebel

THE ADVENTURES OF ROTH AND GRZ

Roth Tian and Grzlu (Grz for short) seem like typical traders / drifters that thrive on the fringe. But secretly, they are agents of the Galactic Federation.

The Mission

They receive a communique from Ursa Bassett, their contact from the Federation. She has a new job for them.

Rebellion is brewing on the pro-Federation planet of Ralea 5. Federation intelligence believes that its enemy, the Imperium, is backing the rebellion.

The Federation has identified the location of the rebel stronghold. They obviously cannot attack it directly without risk of escalation. They don't want to inform the local authorities because they believe the rebels have a mole in the government. The rebels would find out in time to escape.

Instead, the Federation has decided to send some operatives to sneak into the stronghold and eliminate the rebel leader, Marius Waylon. Actually, those operatives are Roth and Grz.

The Approach

At the capital of Ralea 5, Roth and Grz acquire a speeder. Then they whisk off across the arid landscape toward the rebel stronghold.

A few miles from the site, they hide their speeder and proceed on foot.

Suddenly, there is a tremor and a giant scorpion erupts from the sands!

Like my MicroQuest rules, I have a travel phase where the heroes can face random encounters. They rolled a monster so I decided to use a scorpion.

Grz uses his psychic powers to instill fear into the creature. It hesitates. Roth begins shooting at it, which enrages the scorpion. It charges. Our heroes dodge its claws, then they begin blasting away. The creature falls dead.

Confrontation

However, the noise attracts attention. Three rebel soldiers investigate. 

Roth (blue) and Grz (red) try to sneak past the rebels, but they are spotted!

I didn't bother with figures and used meeples instead. I intend to replace the meeples with counters.

Again, Grz uses his psychic power to panic one of the soldiers, who runs away. Roth fires, wounding another, who also runs. The last soldier remains adamant, however, and fire back. His shots miss. Then our heroes blast him.

The Caves

Our heroes find the entrance to the rebel stronghold in a series of caves.

They try to sneak in. Four rebels, alerted by the shots from outside, are on guard.

Two advance, firing at our heroes.

I'm using the cork hills to represent walls.

Roth and Grz fire back. Roth shoots one down. Two others charge. Grz wounds one and Roth blasts another. The last one panics and runs.

Silencing Marius

Our heroes advance deeper into the caves. They come to a room with two figures behind a desk.

The hill is now a desk.

"An Imperial!" Roth exclaims.

The Imperial agent leaps over the desk. Wielding a laser sword, the agent strikes and wounds Roth.

Roth shoots, hitting the agent smack in the chest. The agent grunts, but continues to attack.

Meanwhile, the other figure behind the desk shoots at Grz. He ducks, then shoots into Roth's melee. Fortunately, he is very accurate, and his blast takes down the agent.

Our heroes begin trading shots with the remaining figure. They can see that it is Marius Waylon, leader of the rebellion. Determined to take him down, they charge the desk, coming at their enemy from both directions. They catch him in a crossfire and shoot him down.

 Escape

Our heroes manage to find their way out of the caves and back to their speeder.

As they race back to the capital, a pair of beat-up, old speeders start to chase them.

For this portion of the adventure, I repurposed some rules for space skirmishes I created several years ago. I combined them with my dogfighting rules to create quick-play chase rules.

"Rebels?" asks Roth.

Grz takes a closer look. "Probably not," he concludes. "Looks like bandits."

Roth revs his engines and tries to outrun them. Unfortunately, they are faster than they look. One catches up. The occupants of the two vehicles exchange shots. Roth hits the driver. The bandit speeder wipes out.

The other catches up. More shots. Our heroes' engine begins to smoke.

"We're hit!" exclaims Roth.

"So are they!" replies Grz.

Apparently, the bandit is damaged more severely. Our heroes pull away and escape!

Conclusion

They meet with Ursa, who is pleased with their success. She rewards them, and tells them to stay tuned for their next mission!

HISTORICAL NOTE: Today marks the 10th anniversary of this blog. I'm surprised I managed to keep it going for so long!

The Adventures of Roth and Grz

I'm starting a new series of sci-fi adventures with new characters.

Inspirations

I previously mentioned that I was intrigued by the new version of Five Parsecs from Home.

I have the first edition so I pulled that out and perused it. I also discovered that I have Starport Scum by the same author. Both games seem to cover the same ground. I did a little research a found a post where the author explains that SS "is much more RPG oriented." Therefore, I focused my efforts on SS.

My Rules

Instead of using SS, however, I plan to use my own rules. Specifically, I am revising my MicroQuest fantasy adventure rules to create dungeon crawls IN SPACE! Nevertheless, I plan to crib some of the tables from SS.

Character Creation

I used the SS rules to create a 4-character party. I ended up with 2 aces and 2 goons. The aces are a security guard and an alien. I also use SS to generate backgrounds.

My sci-fi rules have different classes, however. Based on various inspirations, they feature these classes:

• Soldiers
• Spacers (e.g. pilots)
• Scientists
• Psychics

I decided that the security guard would be a soldier and the alien would be a psychic. I decided to drop the goons and go with a 2-character party. If I need reinforcements, I'll add some temporary goons.

I found some name generators online to come up with their names.

The Characters

Here is the end result. My characters are:

• Roth Tian - a human soldier
• Grzlu - an alien psychic

Both start as level 1 characters.

According to their background, they both fought for a cause. I assume that they were freedom fighters against a tyrannical government. Afterwards, Roth founded his own company while Grzlu advanced in reputation with the new government.

However, they became embroiled in a scandal, and were caught committing fraud.

I want my heroes to be heroes. so I decided they would be government agents. In their story, the Galactic Federation gave them a second chance. In lieu of a prison sentence, Roth and Grzlu are now secret agents, fighting against the evil Imperium that threatens the Federation.

The Story Begins

I used the jobs tables from SS to generate a mission. Stay tuned for their first mission!

Fuzz in SPACE!

A couple of days ago I found myself locked in the den.

The reason? I was keeping our new cat company. Meet Fuzzelle.

Her name began as a shortening of Fuzzy Tail, which we called her when she was a stray that came to our door. We then fancied up the spelling a bit.

We were feeding her for about 2 months. Then she mysteriously disappeared. Last Wednesday she suddenly reappeared on our doorstep, with a nasty abscess. We took her to the vet, then decided to take her in.

Anyway, while locked away, I played a few sci-fi games. These are all one-offs.

Space Dogfights

I started with a quick dogfight using my scratch built rockets. I did not have any damage markers, so Meeples stood in.

I randomly determined a limit to the number of turns. Blue had damaged the two red rockets, but they got revenge in the last turn.

This time, blue escorts a "bomber." Red manages to damage one escort and shoot down the bomber.

Skirmish

On to a planet-side skirmish.

Three brightly colored space rangers take on 5 bad guys.

Our heroes take out 2 bad guys, but they lose one of their own.

Red moves into the woods, but a bad guy charges and cuts him down.

Blue manages to wound 2 of the bad guys before he beats a hasty retreat.

Defeat for the space rangers. 😢

What's in Store for 2023?

Where do I think my gaming is going in the new year? Let's look into the crystal ball and find out.

• Counters - By year-end I'll probably go all-in on counters. I occasionally think about reverting back to 2mm, but then the thought of painting puts me off.

• The Purge - Whether I stick with counters or switch to 2mm, I'm going to have superfluous 3mm and 10mm figures lying around. While I did not purge last year, the odds are greater of it happening this year.

• Finalize Rules -  I've written the core for a bunch of rules sets, but they are all incomplete. I'd like to finish them. Here is what I have in the pipeline:

• MicroBattle - large-scale battles with small armies in the eras of massed units. Each unit represents approximately a division-sized force. Armies usually run 4 to 6 units.
• MicroQuest - fantasy RPG-style skirmishes. The player runs 2 to 4 heroes vs. several enemies.
• MicroSkies - fast play dogfights with 2 to 3 heroes vs. a similar number of enemies.

• The Sci Fi Boxed Set - inspired by Five Parsecs from Home, I've begun work on a boxed set for sci fi adventures. I plan for this to be my first project for 2023. The boxed set will have some battle boards, ship and character counters, terrain, and other accoutrements for gaming. So expect some sci fi adventures in the new year.