A Hat Trick of Mysteries

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This Sunday I’m thankful for mysteries. Three in particular.

The first mystery I’m currently interested in is a technical one. I’ve used a reMarkable tablet for years and never had a problem. I love it. Recently my marker has started writing when it is still about a quarter inch from the surface of the tablet. It’s very strange. Neither component has been dropped or banged about.

I have access to another tablet and marker just like mine. I was able to confirm that it isn’t the tablet itself, which is a relief. It’s the marker that is acting up. At least if I have to replace it, it’s the less expensive part of the pair.

The problem is intermittent too, so I’m still able to get work done; and reMarkable is being very helpful with technical support. I hope to soon have an answer and solution. But for now, it is a mystery.

The second mystery is a playable one.

I just discovered this on The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society website. Eternity at Sea is a 1920s Call of Cthulhu adventure that comes in a box full of physical — and audio! — props. It is set in and around Astoria, Oregon. You know, the adventure land of The Goonies! I haven’t played this yet, but I am very intrigued. So, in a sense, this one is in fact two mysteries.

And the third mystery I’m caught up in is trying to find out who made these Crabman figs:

They are straight out of the 1st edition Fiend Folio, pages 20 and 21. They’re perfect actually.

I’m hoping this thread on Lead Adventure Forum can lead me to their lair. So far though, we’re really more filling in who didn’t sculpt or cast them. Ah well. That’s helpful too I guess, in narrowing down the field.

So there you are. This trio of mysteries for which I am thankful is keeping my mind abuzz with what-nows and if-thens.

More Ideas for Mutants and Death Ray Guns

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In light of someone I was speaking with recently having started a campaign of Mutants and Death Ray Guns, I thought I’d post a half-dozen additional tables for generating and advancing models in your warband.

ALTERNATE SKILLS TABLE : This pulls together all the skills listed throughout Project Simian Ultra X.

EXPANDED ARMOUR TABLE : This gathers in one place all the game’s various armours, and some skills.

ROBOT FEATURES TABLE : An expanded list for more varied generation and advancement.

EXPANDED GRENADES TABLE : This collects all grenades from the books.

EXPANDED MENTAL MUTATIONS TABLE : Includes those listed across all the books.

EXPANDED PHOBIA TABLE : Elaborates on the Fears and Phobias possible.

Any time you have to determine a Skill in the game, roll 2d6 plus a check die to determine which table to reference, the one in the rulebook or this one; odd-even, high-low, heck, you could even flip a coin for heads-tails.

I created these years ago and have been using them ever since but just now realized I never posted them.

And in looking them over, I notice I never did get around to polishing and posting my Expanded Physical Mutations Table either. Hm, I’ll have to give that some thought.

 

Cyberpunk Mothership

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For Sunday, 26 July, I’m thankful for Mothership.

I’ve been reading Mothership’s Player’s Survival Guide — getting ready to run it this fall — and I was struck by how perfectly it captures its subject. I was also reminded of another game that did the same thing for its genre when it came out in 1988, Cyberpunk.

Both of these games come in a black box. Both are stripped down to their core functions. And both accomplish their mission admirably. But it’s really their aesthetics that hit me the most. Their hard lean into black and white presentation, tight page count and hyperfocus on the necessary are remarkable.

And because Mothership is setting-agnostic, you could very easily map it onto 2013’s Near Orbit and 2020’s Deep Space to establish your campaign background.

Seriously, do yourself a favour and flip through those two books. The art and sensibilities are straight-up Mothership. And they’ll give you plenty of corporations, governments and organizations more than willing to send your crews to their doom.

You could also use Cyberpunk as a bolt-on sub-system for interacting with — and dealing with — digital horrors and terrors in the web.

Finally, I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another of my favourite games that would add an excellent third layer to a Cyberpunk/Mothership campaign, High Colonies.

Man, 1988 was a banger year.

Title Cards

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For Sunday, 19 July, I’m thankful for title cards.

Hear me out.

Recently I was reminiscing about one of my favourite bad horror movies, Night of the Lepus:

And it clicked that that movie’s title card reminded me of something. So I looked through my screen saver images (I know), and found it:

That’s a pretty amazing similarity of font and layout, from 1972 to 1978.

Night on Freak Mountain is one of my all-time favourite Saturday Night Live sketches. I’ve never really gotten over John Belushi as Windowpane Watson.

And I just found this image of the castle in Freak Mountain’s background:

That’s Frank Zappa’s car down there on the left.

Over the years I’ve managed to collect 18 of these Horrorclix Demon Bunny figs:

And a buddy recently told me about this guy:

So, naturally …

We’ve got a weary traveler, we’ve got a castle or village full of weirdos and we’ve got a warren of giant killer rabbits on the rampage. This thing writes itself! I’ll have to give some thought as to whether it will be better fought as a Dragon Rampant battle or played as a skirmish using one of the handful of medieval fantasy rule sets I’ve got.

Either way, it’ll end up looking something like this:

The Ray Bradbury Theater

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For Sunday, 2 August, I’m thankful for The Ray Bradbury Theater.

About a year and a half ago I ordered a dvd set from somebody and they sent me this instead. I hadn’t watched it when it was coming out in the late-’80s and early-’90s. I checked the price of this item on the website to make sure neither of us was losing out; it was the same cost as the thing I had ordered, so I decided to keep it.

I’ve finally been watching them. I’m into the second disc now. It’s fun to settle into that time period of TV and take in all the streets and cars and houses. It’s a cool blast from the past that way. And each disc has a caveat at the beginning telling you the graininess and possible sound issues are because of the digital transfer from old media. The roughness really just adds to the experience.

The first dozen or so episodes have been a mix of strange, eerie and unsettling. The quality of the stories is consistently good so far and the productions are what you’d expect for a show of its kind with what looks like a pretty modest budget. That said, some of them have been international co-productions with New Zealand or France, set in Britain, Ireland or Paris, so they don’t seem to have been too strapped for cash.

One annoying thing about the set is that the episodes are not on the six discs in original airdate order. I wouldn’t have noticed except the openings of each episode, season to season, are different. After experiencing three or four different openings in as many episodes, I had to check the wiki linked above to find out what was going on. As the show is an anthology series, like Amazing Stories, Twilight Zone, and Tales From the Crypt — with each episode being entirely stand-alone — it’s not a problem continuity-wise; it’s just a minor bother.

I haven’t seen Messrs. Saxon or Shatner yet. Still a ways to go.

All in all, I recommend you check this show out.

 

Xenos Rampant: Last Stand

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For Sunday, 9 August, I’m thankful for Xenos Rampant, Scenario Lima: Last Stand.

When I was 13 I drove down to Origins Game Fair in San Mateo, California with a group of guys from Trumpeter. At the Con I played in a colonial game of Brits versus Zulus. I can’t remember which side I played on and I can’t remember who won. What does stick in my mind was it was the first game I’d ever experienced where as Zulu impis were eliminated by British gunfire, the models were simply rotated to the rear ranks of the buffalo and introduced as newly arrived follow-on units continuing to press the advance. It’s a concept that has stuck in my mind ever since. Over the years I’ve learned that it’s a thing used in many games involving hordes of warriors of all kinds.

Fast forward to a couple months ago. While reading through the scenarios toward the back of the Xenos Rampant rulebook I came across Scenario Lima: Last Stand. I was ecstatic! I determined to host a game of it at the club.

One problem. I don’t have hordes of anything. My collection is very much three or four of these guys and five or six of those guys. The only two or three dozens I have of anybody all have pumpkins for heads.

But wait! Luckily a buddy of mine has a veritable horde of 40K Space Orks. And he agreed to play the attackers.

That left me to set the table and muster the defenders.

I’m quite happy with how the battlespace turned out.

The same friend had — several months prior — given me one of this tower and two of this gate. When I realized they can be connected not just in-line but also on the square, my mind boggled. I spent the next few months tracking down five more pieces, and voila:

I was referee. On a 6’x6′ table instead of the recommended 4’x4′, and with a position just under 24″ square instead of the suggested 18″, I set the game at 30 points for each Detachment, increased from 24. So, slightly bigger by all metrics. I trusted those things would balance out.

For the defenders, I tapped Recovery Force Romeo:

I assigned them some Atts & Dets in the form of Tiny and the Gorillinators:

Tiny is a Fighting Vehicle Walker and you can just make out the Gorillinators in the deep background over the tower left-of-centre.

Another club member played the Gorillas.

For the Space Ork Waaagh!!, my friend — bless his heart — brought six units of basic Berserk Infantry (I don’t know how that could’ve been more perfect), one oldest of school Ork tin can Dreadnought as a Fighting Vehicle and an Elite Infantry unit of Storm Boyz (with Flying, natch):

Those Storm Boyz are outstanding, and rained murder!

For the game I stated that all four of the position’s gates were broken, with one door wide open and the other fully closed. That gave the Orks — along with the shattered corners — eight openings to exploit. The gates did end up being useful to the Greenskins, but also chokepoints, so in the end they balanced out.

I also ruled that the four shattered corners could be scaled to reach the ramparts, using cracks in concrete as handholds and exposed rebar as footholds. That had the same result as the broken gates.

I was relieved the gates and corners ended up allowing more things to happen in the game — a lot of shooting was fired back and forth through the doorways and breaches — and didn’t end up being a big advantage or disadvantage for either side. A gamble that paid off.

It was a close run thing that came down to a victory for the Gorillas of Force Romeo as time ran out at the ninth turn. If the game had lasted even one more turn it could have ended with an Ork win.

Aliens: Dead Orbit

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For Sunday, 12 July, I’m thankful for the four-issue comic Aliens: Dead Orbit.

This is a second entry in what looks like it’s going to be an ongoing series about comics I’ve been sitting on unread for nine years. I have to give some thought as to what the heck happened in 2017 and ’18 that caused me to stop reading comics, even after I’d collected complete runs. For now it’s a mystery.

But I digress.

Aliens: Dead Orbit is a short comic arc set on a space station in position above a gas giant. It’s a fun dual narrative. One thread is about what’s happening to the protagonist now, the other is an ongoing flashback sequence telling us how our man came to be in the situation he’s currently in.

I don’t know much about James Stokoe, but I do remember that the reason I collected this book is because of the art in issue number 1. And it doesn’t let up. The art is outstanding throughout. The style reminds me of one of my all-time favourite Heavy Metal stories, Pepe Moreno’s Bunker 6A. And it’s really impressive that Stokoe wrote, drew, coloured and lettered the whole work himself.

Another great thing about the story is it’s solidly in the camp of Smoking in Space. I wish the streaming channels had a filter (heh) for that genre. But again, I digress.

You can still find copies of both the single issues and the soft and hard cover collections on Abebooks and eBay. But try to find it locally if you can. Check out your favourite comic shops and used book stores first.

Immortal Brush!

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For Sunday, 23 August, I’m thankful for Strategies Games & Hobbies‘ Immortal Brush painting contest.

This November will be the 20th Annual competition!

A few years ago, for a few years, I was honoured to be asked to judge the event, along with two local well-knowns. It’s a fun day with some really good paint jobs across all kinds of genres.

If you’re in the Vancouver metro area, do yourself a favour and check it out. Hell, enter a contender; you could win!

 

Goose! Geese! Gooses!

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This Sunday I’m thankful for the Grumman Goose.

I was recently in north Vancouver Island and was lucky enough to get these two photos of a Goose docking in a harbor:

I sent these pics to a friend and he said it looks like i was hired to do surveillance at the docks. Ha! Now there’s a scenario for any flavour of Pulp!

It turns out it’s not just Jake Cutter …

… and Archer …

… that fly these beautiful birds.

Wilderness Seaplanes, out of Port Hardy, operates two of them.

As evidenced by Maps.

Hm, it kind of does look like I’m spying on them.

One of their Gooses was flying around near me at one point but I couldn’t get a photo of it in the air as I was driving.

A few years ago when I was first delving into Pulp gaming I was sorely tempted to order one of these babies off eBay. I might yet.

It’s good to see they’re still available.

Hitlarious!

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For Sunday, 5 July, I’m thankful for World War Two sitcoms.

I think Hogan’s Heroes, ‘Allo ‘Allo and Dad’s Army would make a great campaign. Something along the lines of the Allies need to get a scientist or engineer, or somebody’s girlfriend, out of Germany and who better to get the job done than our casts of fearless spies, saboteurs, resistance fighters and home guard?

It could be played in one evening, as short as three individual scenes. Or it could be run as a mini-campaign of three three-act episodes:

  1. Germany; then
  2. France; and finally
  3. England.

The timing of the games — given the timelines of the three shows — would probably be best suited to around Christmas 1943. And that could lend an additional holiday flavour to the scenarios!

For Hogan’s Heroes, Stoessi’s Heroes make Colonel Hogan, Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz.

For ‘Allo ‘Allo, Artizan Designs make good versions of René and Yvette.

And Warlord Games do Dad’s Army right proper.

Curiously nobody seems to make the rest of the casts of Hogan’s Heroes or ‘Allo ‘Allo. There are numerous companies though, that make WWII figs of all kinds, combatants and civilians. So I don’t think it would take much searching to find suitable analogues.

For rules you might try 02 Hundred Hours or 7TV. My caveat is that I’ve not played the former (though I know a few people who have and really like it), and I haven’t played the latter in its current edition.

I hope somebody takes this idea and runs with it. I’d love to hear how it turns out.