In space, only Cthulhu can hear you scream

Greg and I ran a short Rayguns! session last night, partially to test out a couple of ideas, partially just for the fun or it, but mostly because I wanted to spring this Aliens themed idea at him. The Rayguns! rules seemed to work fine: turn activation and combat worked as designed, generating plenty of opportunities for the models to do interesting things, generating turnovers quick enough to keep the action rolling, and showing that flow between Rating and Combat points that makes the system flexible. We did finalise a couple of point regarding leaping, so we did some work while we played.

So, a ship in deep space finds itself in trouble. In the passenger section the main bulkheads lock and contact is lost with the crew. The passengers decide to arm themselves from the storage lockers…

And discover that a Xenomorph is running loose int he corridors, appearing from the roofs to surprise, slaughter and then disappear again, carrying the body.

First to experience the terror, the Mysterious Emissary did not have time to demonstrate what his secret power/knowledge was. He was left behind, isolated, and ‘something big’ dropped from the ceiling. He screamed and then was gone.

Not having any Alien models in 28mm I substituted Great Cthulhu. I don’t know what effect it had on Greg, but it scarred the willies out of me.

Next to go was the Trainee Mystic (suck that, Anakin Skywalker – the future of the galaxy is safe from Darth Vader now).

Alert to what was happening, the two Battle Monks set up a perimeter without he two civilians and then attempted to assemble the battle droids. This took a long time, and once assembled turned out to be clunky things that could not keep up with the running and screaming and never once warmed up their lasers.

However, while in the assembly room, the mother alien had a go at the Lead Battle monk. Bad move, as his lightsaber made short work of the monster. But by this time two daughters had spawned, and a lively fight occurred in the corridors. Both the Battle Monk and the civilian went down, but not until they had carved up several daughters.

Alarms started ringing and a countdown began to ship self destruct. At every alien turnover we rolled for a fifty/fifty reduction of six timers. When all counters were gone, we reasoned, the ship went boom. With three to spare, the surviving Monk and civilian crowded into the escape pod, leaving the droids to lumber after squawking, ‘Master, master…’

Was there an alien/cthulhu in the escape pod? Probably, but by that stage we were talking about other things.

So a good and simple game. Not too heavy…

Battle Monk (*2)  6/4 (10), Agile, Seasoned, Inspiring, Multiple attacks. Energised sword +3

Trainee Mystic 3/2 (5), Agile, Energised sword +3. Stun pistol +1

Mysterious Emissary 3/3 (6), Expert, Camouflage suit (did him no good), Needler +1

Battle droid (*2) 2/2 (4), Laser rifle +3

Civilians (*2), 3/2 (5).

*********

Mother Alien 5/5 (10), Multiple attacks, Terrifying, (stealth – special)

Alien spawn (*5) 4/4 (8), Multiple attacks, Terrifying, (stealth – special)

Behaviour rules for the aliens: 1) attack the most isolated human, 2) Reproduce (by taking Stunned or Out of Action bodies away), 3) get out of line of sight.

Rules for alien movement and combat: 1) Spend 1 Opportunity to appear anywhere on board, 2) Spend 1 Opportunity to disappear, but can only do so when out of line of sight, 3) When a foe is defeated, and out of line of sight of any other foe, can disappear, taking body for parasitic reproduction, 4) Newly spawned creatures are subject to all the preceding rules.

Anubis Studios – Alive?!

A Yahoo group has been set up to talk about the games that will be coming out of Anubis Studios. This will give the players and testers the chance to voice their concerns in a single forum and get corrections and additions address.

Great days.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/anubis_studios/

Flaming Plasma – scenario generation questions

Flaming Plasma is the name of the rules set I am building to enable me to play skirmish games in my Ornithopter setting. It is based on Song of Blades and Heroes, and has inspiration from several older rules sets. Importantly, I hope for it to be generic enough to be thrown into the ring with the plethora of other generic sets. Oh… the dream.

Anyway, I consider my greatest contribution to the world of rules to be in the tools for designing sessions – mini-campaigns. The format for Flashing Steel seems sound: asking Where, What, Why and Who questions and then fleshing out the details. The trick is to remain generic but still give sufficient flavour. Science fiction is just fantasy, of course, and  whatever you say can only eliminate some possibilities, and alienate some readers who saw it differently.

I read a set of rules once that claimed to be generic, allowing you to play with whatever miniatures you had. It then went on to describe the politics and economics of a notional world of the author’s construction. He described the factions and force construction principles. In short, he enabled you to play not anything that you had models for, but anything that HE had models for.

So this is what must be avoided. The goal is to be specific enough for the players to design their forces and decorate the table from the random items, but to be generic enough so that they do not have to share the same art sensibilities as the author.

StarBlazer Adventures may come to the rescue again, as it has already when I was attempting to overcome the problem of shooting at armoured vehicles. There are some great random tables in there. And these are the basic design principles I had in mind: http://shichitenhakki.wordpress.com/rpgs-using-mythic/ornithopter/ Is this too restrictive already? The stuff about no aliens? Should that be relaxed? Probably, or at least the language needs to be modified so the existance of creatures that are not-like-man is definitely possible.

On the workbench -good progress for Queen’s Birthday

Long ago – twenty years or more – I decided that I wanted to skirmish war-game because the entry was so much easier. You only need up to a dozen figures and you were playing, rather than paint a dozen and realise that you are only a tenth, if that, of the way through one side. But there was no usable set of skirmish rules as far as I was concerned. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have talked up the Song of Blades and Heroes engine from Ganesha games.

So now I can churn out a couple of complete ‘armies’ a weekend, and cover a much broader range of historical, fantasy and science fiction settings.

Take for example these beautiful Brigade Games swashbucklers, just perfect for the heroes of my 30YW/ECW games using Flashing Blades.

Or these modern Bundeswehr from Eureka Miniatures, painted in a generalised camouflage pattern and useful for my science fiction games. The rules for these, Flaming Plasma, are approaching a good play-test state.

So all is well. I see that Eureka have some modern French Foreign Legion that have not even made it on to the website yet. Man, am I salivating for them… FAMAS armed troops? You bet. Just the ticket for science fiction Colonial militia. I can’t wait.

But now: Mega Miniatures villagers. A topic that is a little dry, but one that is essential for Renaissance skirmishing. After all, someone has to be tending the pigs that the ‘heroes’ come to scrap over.

The slow process of changing religion

Played a SWCMG with second son last night. The difference was that this time I persuaded him to use the turn sequencing mechanism from Song of Blades and Heroes. No more ‘two of yours move, then two of mine, then your next two move’, and so on. We used the one to three d6 roll, making everyone Q4 for simplicity. Everything else was vanilla d20 SWCMG, though I had to interpret a few of the Specials – but having done that already it was no drama.

Within a couple of turns he declared it a much better system. Now he had control of what troops to move and when, flavoured with the thrill of the irregular turnover. Enough luck to thrill the gambler, enough control to satisfy the player.

He still thrashed me, little swine. But at least I felt as if I was playing a game, rather than watching a game that could play itself.

He is still addicted to Hit Points; no matter how much it can make no sense that a character can be shot in the chest over and over again and it have only an incremental deletive effect, I expect I’ll be stuck with d20. But still, slowly but surely I will erode the system and replace the pieces with Songs until it becomes a playable tactical game.

The disappointment that is AT-43

I am sure I was not the only person to have been excited by Rackham’s release of a range of pre-painted 28mm science fiction figures. Personally I have nothing against GW (WH40k) – their figures are impressive, their range extensive – but the gothic art style is just too juvenile for my tastes. Similarly, while I paint a lot of figures, the easy-in of pre-painted allowed me the option of playing faster while painting other topics at the same time.

AT-43′s Therians work nicely for a Terminator setting. The UNA and Red Blok work well for any Colonial style setting. The UNA Tac armour is the first set of powered-armour I have seen modelled that reflects a more ‘realistic’ approach. The Red Blok Kolossus are the first miniatures that handle a VOTOMs tyle one-man tank idea with any finesse.

The rules were nothing to write home about: just more of the same. But I have never been constrained by a published set of rules.

The problem with the range is the slack way it seems to be have been handled by the parent company. I do not pretend to understand their business constraints – I am sure that there are some very good reasons for the way things have been handled. Perhaps the cost-effectiveness of pre-painted has been too great a burden. All I do know, however, is that the local shop in Melbourne refuses to carry the product for some unknown reason. I know that the Medusa (one of the coolest models I’ve seen) and quite a number of others no longer appear on the Rackham site. And I know that there is piss-all in the way of support material on the web. There are a couple of fan sites, but even they are straining to find anything to say. The AT-43 wiki is a disgrace – and what does that say? It says that there is no groundswell of support of people making things up and ‘living’ in this fantasy world.

And I think that’s a damn shame. Because I like the figures, and I could like the setting if there was anything available that suggested it was a living, growing, setting. But there is not. For all intents and purposes the line appears dead. Perhaps the French have it better and it is alive and well there. I envy them.

My personal goal now is to buy up the figures before they are gone: an event I anticipate may not be so far in the future.

Stargate 1900 game session

On Friday 25 March Greg and I managed to play test the StarGate 1900 campaign system. The rules used were Flying Lead by Ganesha Games.

To recap, the basic idea is a set of three short connected skirmish games. Together, it makes a campaign narrative, played in a single night, with one side carrying forward their losses. The setting is the science fantasy world that I have called StarGate 1900: a world occurring around the inter war period and incorporating the ideas of Pulp, Flash Gordon adventure and the StarGate instantaneous travel device.

In these games, Greg had a French SG team, arriving on an alien world. The mission profiles looked like this, based on the randomisation table I put up in a previous post.

Mission profile: A. Game 1 – arrive via Stargate. Game 2 – travel through hostile territory. Game 3 – arrive at destination.

Stats: Legionnaire SG team. Leader (x1) Q3. C3. SMG. Fearless, Hero, Leader. Trooper (x4) Q3. C3. SMG, Fearless, Hero. Medic (x1) Q3. C3. Pistol, Fearless, Hero, Professional Medic.

Game 1.

• Start at the stargate.
• Opposition 1: Passive civilians (farmers)
• Opposition 2: Civil authorities (police)
• Action: Meet. An agent from Earth has been previously inserted into the community. They now have information about a place far inland that must be investigated. The SG team must get to the agent so that he can pass on the information. For this scenario Greg had another figure which is placed in one of the buildings – I did not know which building he was in.
• Dominant terrain feature: Rugged.

The ground was cut up by numerous ridges. The whole thing put me in the mind of a desolate farming community. The cactus came naturally. In the central plaza there was a guardhouse where the cops were playing card. Peasants were spread about in twos.

Greg boldly stepped out of the StarGate and promptly put a withering fire into a couple of farmers, driving them to cover. He then took cover for himself and put two men on overwatch against the police station.

Two policemen burst out of the building to investigate the noise. The guarding SG Legionnaires killed one outright and grievously wounded the second. Learning from this, two other cops exited the from the back door in an attempt to circle behind the invaders, while the last two kept Greg’s cop-killers pinned with accurate but ineffective pistol fire from the windows.

Meanwhile, the rest of the SG team had moved to the target house and had contacted the agent.

With his objective achieved, Greg pulled back his team, and so the first game wrapped up, a clear win for the invaders. Total playing time: one hour, which is not bad for a set of rules we were only partially familiar with.

Stats: Cops (x4) – Q4. C2. Pistol, Green, Handcuffs. Farmers (x12) – Q5. C1. Green, Reluctant.

Game 2.

• Travel through alien territory (board edge to board edge to win)
• Opposition 1: Automated fences.
• Opposition 2: Big game hunters (word has got around that there are alien marauders and some alien hunters have intercepted Greg’s teams’ path and hope to bag one or two).
• Action: Investigate, see below
• Dominant terrain feature: Transport terminus. We decided that this was a centre of civilisation, with roads and cars and buildings. The target was a building which we declared was a telephone exchange. The team had to come past this place on their way to the main mission site to record the machinery used, probably by making a number of silver-amalgum photographic plates. To do this, a single team member must make entrance to the building and while unmolested by locals score 3 successes.

Almost instantly, the SG Legionnaires were driven into cover by the accurate fire of concealed machine guns on the roofs. In a state of almost constant shakenness, they inched their way along the building sides.

They were ripe for destruction. However, much to my growing frustration, the big game hunters strolled forward, never really coming within cooee of the invaders. They turned out to be big talkers, wanting the kudos of having faced the aliens, without having to suffer the danger. Only one came to grips with the enemy as the Legionnaire exited the target building after having successfully photographed the telephone exchange. But it came to nothing; the Legionnaire sprayed lead in reply, and my brave hunter fell back shaken.

Greg’s team ran off the board, and the second game fell to him too. Technically, the campaign was won, but we played the third game to round off the mission.

Stats: Auto defence towers (x4) Q4. C2. LMG C+3, Auto fire, Stable. Big Game Hunters (x6) Q4. C2. Large pistol, Semi-auto rifle, Scope, Climber, Crack shot, Danger sense, Stealth, Jungl craft.

Game 3.

• Arrive at destination and complete mission
• Opposition 1: Military
• Opposition 2: Aggressive civilians
• Action: Infiltrate
• Dominant terrain feature: Crash site. So, know we knew what the team was doing. Somewhere inland there was a crash site of advanced technology. It was under guard and the SG team had to get into the compound and examine the machinery.

This time Greg split his force, sending one team wide around a hill and the other straight forward. Since I had a military force this time I placed my Sergeant and a trooper on a hill in prone position. The others I dispersed and had them in cover. The militia were behind barricades.

The flanking SG group cut right through my militia and made their way to the crashed vehicles where they tinkered unmolested as the militia turned out to be easily shaken. However, in the centre the aimed shots from my military professionals killed the SG Legionnaire commander, no less, and a trooper.

Dragging their wounded, the remaining Legionnaires exited the board.

Stats: Sergeant - Q3. C2. Carbine, Leader. Corporal – Q3. C2. SMG, 1IC. Trooper – Q4. C2. Rifle. Militia – Q4, C2. Assault rifle.

Conclusion: the campaign was clearly won by Greg, effectively scoring three out of three. From a story viewpoint, it all worked perfectly. The conclusions were logical. The Frenchmen were too good for the locals. Game-wise, the rules worked extremely well. Neither Greg nor I had any complaints about the mechanisms. Our only points for future reference was the importance of statting the forces correctly – until the final game the defenders had little chance against the attackers – and that there are still several rules in the book that we need to become more familiar with.

Overall, the system, both game rules and campaign, worked well. A successful night of gaming, with lots of wine consumed as well.

StarGate 1900 – a miniatures wargame campaign system

Overview

StarGate 1900 is the general term for a slice of science fantasy broadly occurring between the turn of the 20^th century and the start of the Second World War. The technological sensibilities and military fashion is predominantly in the inter-war ‘pulp’ period.

To simplify travel between strange alien places, the notion of the StarGate is included, more or less exactly as it was depicted in the movie – though it has been exploited when found rather than languishing for decades. In addition, the space travel described in the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers settings are also included (just because I love those spitzen-sparken rockets).

Specifically, StarGate 1900 plays on several themes, and while it currently has a science-fantasy backdrop, it pulls any and all of the following flavours:

• Gangsters and G-Men encounters
• Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers adventures (Rockets & Rayguns)
• Gentlemen space explorer adventures (Brass & Bakelite)
• “Back of Beyond” adventures
• Russian Revolution and Spanish Civil War adventures
• Tactical WWI scenarios
• Gunboat diplomacy colonial adventures
• “Call of Cthulhu” supernatural horror encounters
• Nazi weird science expeditions
• “Indiana Jones” adventures
• Anything that could appear in “StarGate” translated into this time period (with the great powers of Earth active in these explorations)
• And finally, preferably combinations of the above.

A StarGate 1900 wargame campaign is composed of three connected tabletop game sessions, expanded by role-playing sessions where necessary. A StarGate is generally present on the table in the beginning or end games, making it an origin or a destination. Sometimes there may be the gate in both end games to depict an ingress, penetration and egress mission.

Scale and Mechanics

Skirmish to squad scale encounters (8 to 15 figures per side) using 28mm (1:56, S Gauge) figures.

The primary rules set for the games is Flying Lead, by Ganesha Games, supplemented by Mutants and Death Ray Guns. To assist with out-of-game role-playing decisions, and to help develop scenarios, and – where needed – to expand on the unexpected within a game, the Mythic GameMaster Emulator by Word Mill Publishing.

A three game campaign is always fought on one side by a team of StarGate Explorers. These are professionals in the mould of the SG1 team, but displaced to the appropriate time period. They may even be alien explorers. Typically there will be around 6 figures in an Explorer team as they are trained professionals.

Opposing them are a variety of creatures and circumstances that are determined randomly. Depending on what type of alien citizen they are their numbers will range from 5, for alien-hunter Special Agents, to 15 for more for passive civilians.

Using the Flying lead points system, both sides should be around 600 points.

Another type of opponent is hostile terrain, and this is treated like a complex trap puzzle for the player controlling them.

Designing a campaign

1. Decide on the basic mission profile. These come in three basic flavours:

a)      Game 1: Enter via StarGate. Game 2: Travel while maintaining force. Game 3: Reach objective in alien territory and do mischief.

b)      Game 1: Start in alien territory and do mischief. Game 2: Travel while maintaining force. Game 3: Successfully evacuate via StarGate.

c)      Game 1: Enter via StarGate. Game 2: Do mischief at objective. Game 3: Successfully evacuate via StarGate.

2. Player 1 selects and equip an Explorer team. This team has to persist through the three campaign games. Their losses are carried forward.

3. Player 2 now takes one game at a time find the Primary opponents by rolling on the Opposition table. These are the main forces that the second side has at their disposal. Then find the Secondary opponents by rolling on the table. These are other forces that the second side can manipulate.

Note that Primary and Secondary opponents can be different for the three games. Only the Explorers need to have and maintain consistency between games.

Now that Player 2 knows the forces available he can design his ‘army’.

Use these tools to design the forces.

4. Taking one game at a time find Player 1’s main objective by rolling on the Action table.

5. For each game find the dominant terrain feature by rolling on the table.

6. Finally, using the Action and Dominant Terrain findings, think up a credible, reasonable, difficult but achievable objective for the Explorers. If you are having difficulty with this, use the Mythic Random Events table to come up with some seed words.

Victory conditions

As a campaign system, overall victory is given to the player who won two or more out of the three connected games.

For each game, use the victory points system described in Flying Lead. Award an additional 20 points to the Explorers if they achieved the objectives of the game, or 20 points to the ‘locals’ if they prevented this.

In addition, since we are basically talking about a bunch of aliens chrashing in and shooting up the locals, capturing explorers is a valid goal for the locals (eewwww… alien disections). Therefore, for every Explorer left on the field at the end of each game (dead or wounded), the local side gets 5 points. Not leaving your dead and wounded is a good thing to do for many reasons, not the least of which is that it prevents the creepy natives from carving up your former friends. So for every corpse or wounded character carried or assisted off the field, the Explorers are awarded 2 points.