40K Friday Returns!

Yes I'm trying to drive some 40K action again here at home. I want to plant the seed before summer vacation hits for the Apprentices and they get wrapped up in everything else. With the "year long campaign" sitting idle since February my grand plans are in tatters but there is still hope. Playing 40K seems to drive interest in painting 40K so I'm hoping some regular games will spur that a little bit. Also, Apprentice Blaster will be on a different schedule with us this summer, a more evenly-spaced schedule, which should give us time to get in more games, whether it's 40K or anything else. The current state of 40K on our home planet:

Apprentice Red has Orks and Necrons

• His Orks are about 90% built and about 50% painted so he's not in bad shape. He was running mostly footsloggers but I gave him some custom battlewagons (that I replaced with some even more custom battlewagons) and with those and his trukks now he could run Mechanized Death if he wanted too. His main support choices are deff koptas and kannons with a new batch of lootas built now as well. What he really needs now are more boyz, plus we have plans to make some custom meganobz and some more of my scratchbuilt killa kans to really build out his options. 
• His Necrons are still developing. he has plenty of warriors, all painted, plus one of the newer HQ's plus some destroyers (painted) and a monolith (painted) and he picked up a ghost ark back at Christmas but has not finished it yet. Oh and wraiths. He has 3, built but not painted, and I already hate them. Definitely the most annoying unit in his army. Ghost arks seem to be pretty popular right now so he could use more of them and some of the other vehicles, but those are the priciest things to add so it will take some time.

Apprentice Blaster has Space Wolves and Eldar

• His Space Wolves are pretty solid. His core is Grey Hunters(footsloggers) and a big mob of Blood Claws that ride to battle in a Land Raider Crusader led by a Wolf Priest and it's a pretty strong force when it hits. He also has the obligatory long fangs, who usually park next to a Razorback (painted) with long range guns for extra shooting power. He also has two dreads that sometime make an appearance (painted) and one predator that shows up sometimes too. He has added another predator and a vindicator but they are not even built yet,. He has recently added some bikes (painted) too. He has a pretty solid standard tactic worked out where the Fangs+RB park at the back, the Hunters + Dreads (if any) + Termies (if any) footslog forward, and the LR full of Blood Claws and the bikes and the Thunderwolves (if any) surge flat-out towards the other side. I've only seen it fail when I hit them with the Deathwing army and I'm not sure I could pull it off again with his added forces. His biggest need is to finish painting his marines.
• The Eldar are still pretty new to him and he's only played them once in a small battle. He has the basics: Avatar, Farseer, Dire Avengers, Guardians, some jet bikes, Harlequins, a Wraithlord, a full complement of Dark Reapers, and just added a pair of Falcons and a Wave Serpent. So what was a footdar force just got fairly mobile. I've been hearing bad thins about Eldar vehicles with 6th edition, but with a new codex on the way later this year I suspect that will all get resolved. Most of it is built, but not much of it is painted so he has his brushwork cut out for him.

Apprentice Who has played a few times but does not have his own army yet. He did participate in a figure painting contest up at the FLGS and did pretty well for never having done it before so it may be time to get him started. He has shown a strong interest in the Chaos armies, but I'm still a little reluctant to set him up with those as it's tough to explain to grandma what he means when he says he likes "Chaos Demons" and he is not shy about telling anyone and everyone all about his latest obsession.  About the only army we do not have represented in the house is Tyranids, so I'm considering a push towards those since he likes big monsters. I have a pretty nice Dark Angel force with a lot of bikes but he just does not seem interested in space marines - unless they're Chaos marines, which brings the thing full circle. More to come on this. 

As for me? I have too many damn armies even after shedding a whole bunch to get the boys set up - but they are mostly painted!

• Howling Griffons - Drop Pod army - the oldest, veterans of 1st-5th edition battles, not yet tried in 6th
• Crimson Fists - Mechanized army - started in 3rd edition, still adding on here and there. I started thes guys originally because the quartered paint scheme of the griffs was a pain to paint and I wanted to get them done faster. 15 years later I'm still adding to it.
• Imperial Fists - Deatwing all-temrinator army - acquired last year already painted, thank god. It was a nice big army but I've still felt the need to add some pieces to it.
• Dark Angel Ravenwing army - so did I decide to paint them all yellow to match up with the Fists I got? NO! Because the guys in the new starter box have a bunch of feathers and wings and robes all over them and wouldn't look right as Fists - so that meant yet another marine army!  I justified it by making it almost all bikers of some kind. Only used in small battles so far but they will see more action later this year.

Now nobody really needs 4 marine armies. It is a product of how things have evolved over the last 20+ years and not a conscious plan, but still - it's overkill. If I had planned it from the start I would have picked an easy paint scheme and just added to the original force over the years. Lesson for the future, kids!

Besides marines I also own:

• Chaos Marines! Because I can! I had one back in 2nd & 3rd, traded most of it to bump up my Ork force, and the survivors of that purge kept whispering to me ... then they went and put Chaos in the starter set for 6th edition ... what the heck was I supposed to do? Clearly it was time to build another marine army! This one is the current obsession and while I don't have a set theme yet I am actively working on turning my collection of parts into a useable coherent force. 
• Chaos Demons - because I had them for fantasy and we never play fantasy anymore - so they started getting rebased in 5th and will be on the table fighting this summer in 6th! It's pretty evenly spread amongst all 4 chaos powers so I don't have a theme here either.
• Eldar! Actually I gave most of my Eldar to Blaster to start his army, but I kept a few of my oldest units in their weird paint scheme. It's a small force but I could run them if the mood struck. That's actually the second time I've downsized my Eldar. I am not actively adding to these guys right now, just keeping them around. That new codex might inspire me to finish painting some of the units so we will see. 
• Imperial Guard - had an army started years ago, traded it for Orks, then a friend found a bunch of stuff at a garage sale and look - I have a mostly-painted guard army again! I keep an eye out for add-ons for this one but I really haven't played them much. I need to work on organizing the infantry better and getting in some playing time. 
• Orks Orks Orks! I didn't really care for Orks back in the RT days, but then we started playing them in Epic and they were a blast so I started picking them up in the 40K 2nd Edition days and they've done nothing but grow ever since. I gave Red a selection of stuff to build his force up but I still have a lot of greenskins. They're mostly Goffs with a side order of Evil Sunz. I can run them as footsloggers, mechanized, whatever. I am still painting what I have and still add stuff to them at times. Lots of opportunities for "going different" with these guys, and I do.

At some point I will probably do a post on each of these with points and pictures and notes and plans for the future but for now there's the overview. My goal is to get the boys painting again as part of their summer off-time, scheduling some games, and maybe inviting some friends over to play too.

Overreaction Wednesday

For the latest in the Next Design Wars, I think these two articles pretty much sum it up:


Against the Nostalgia Fetish in Fantasy Roleplaying


1,000-Word Rebuttal: Against the Fetish of Progressive Design


The funny thing is that when I saw the titles of each I expected to feel more aligned with the second article. After reading them I was much more sympathetic with the first. I'm not sure what that says about me or how I feel about these games we play, but it's an interesting feeling. 

I do tend to consider myself more old-school than new-school, but I have seen exactly what the first  article describes: lots of the comments on Next have been pushing for changes based on how D&D used to do it. Using that as one consideration is fine IMO but it shouldn't be the only consideration, and I'm not sure it needs to be the primary consideration. Anyway, the primary focus of the article was specifically D&D Next.

In contrast the second article seems to be about old school gaming and nostalgia in general, which is really not anything that was addressed in the first, so it's not much of a rebuttal, specifically, to that first article. I completely agree that "newer" doesn't automatically mean "better" and that people should play what they want.

My personal take on Next is this: They don't need to republish Prior Edition X or some combination of Prior Editions X-Y-Z. They're already selling those again, in PDF form and in reprinted hard copy form. A new edition needs to have some "new" in it or there's no point to it. So show us something interesting. 

To WOTC, specifically: This is your job! You're supposed to be the trained professionals, the experts, with more resources than anyone else making RPG's. I've been hearing for years about how much better something is when "professional game designers" handle it as opposed to part-timers and hobbyists - mostly by people who happen to be or aspire to be - professional game designers! So show us how this is supposed to be done! Don't farm it out to the internet and then tell us "well this is what people want". I don't need a designer for that! That's acting as a project manager, not designing a game! No one has asked for a return to the completely closed "Hey ya'll here it is" approach leading up to 4th Edition but I suspect there's something between it and the "warring internet tribes" approach we're seeing now.

I'm less convinced now that crowd-sourcing was a good idea at the early stage in which it entered this project, because the game mechanics have gone all over the place since it started.  Having a solid base and the letting the crowd refine it, an "Open Beta" approach, still has value I think. This one feels like it started with no real set design and that everything was on the table. The lack of direction and consistency makes me wonder if we have a game of game design musical chairs going on now and whatever mechanics we have when it's time to publish are what we will be playing as part of D&D 5. I hope I'm wrong.

Neverwinter!

I allowed myself to get sucked in to the new Neverwinter game over the weekend. Since it pretty much filled our RPG time - Apprentices Who and Blaster joined me -I thought I would discuss it a little bit. The high points:

• It's free to play, full access to current classes and races except for Drow - they're tied up in some kind of early spending deal right now but are supposed to free up 60 days from launch. If that's a big deal for you, now you know.
• It has a good tutorial, running through the basics of characters and controls without being ridiculously tedious, repetitive, or boring. Everyone ends the tutorial at 4th, the games goes to 60th right now.
• It looks very pretty. I thought it looked more like LOTRO than some of the more cartoony fantasy games out there. The lighting is nicely done
• It's based on 4E D&D but in practice it works more like an MMO than any particular tabletop edition of D&D, including 4th

The setting is the ruined city of Neverwinter (Forgotten Realms), pretty much right out of the 4th edition D&D Neverwinter sourcebook. Having read the book I don't think there's any mechanical advantage but it is cool to recognize the names of characters and factions and locations and have an idea of what/who/where they are. If you liked that book you will probably be more inclined to like the game.
.
The character options are somewhat limited right now in that there are only 5 classes and there doesn't seem to be a ton of variety within a single class. So once I've created and played my Great Weapon Fighter I'm probably not going to create another one anytime soon, but I will probably create a Wizard.

They did have some problems over the weekend with some auction house exploit and rolled things back a little bit. I lost a few levels. It's annoying but it is a very new game and I would expect a few bumps - I'm not paying anything for it so I can't complain a much.

I'd say if you're at all interested in D&D themed videogames it's worth a look - it's free and you can play 24/7 so the flexibility is certainly there. If you dislike online games I don't think there's anything here that's going to change your mind about them.

Motivational Monday

Super Saturday: The Iron Man Movies

Since 3 has been out for a few weeks I thought I would go ahead and indulge myself with a  recounting of why I love these movies so much. You really need to see all 3 before reading this as I'm not going spoiler free here.I will issue a "Shameless Gushing Alert" though. You have been warned.

There are 3 comic book boxes in my house:

• One is a grab-bag of stuff I've had forever, mostly Marvel, from Secret Wars to some Spider-Man to a bunch of X-Men I was sent by mistake in an Ebay deal. I have them mostly because I've had them.
• One is a bunch of Avengers, including a nearly complete run of West Coast Avengers, which I really liked for a while, and its successor, Force Works
• The most-packed is a box of Iron Man, from around issue 100 up to a little over 300, almost complete, and also a nearly full run of War Machine's first solo series.

Iron Man was my favorite from about the time I discovered him (in the single digits) onward. I liked plenty of other super hero types but he was a lesser-known guy (snobbery at an early age? most kids knew who he was, even if the grown-ups did not) that I thought was really cool.

So I heard they were doing a movie and I cringed - they'll change up something or the special effects will suck or the acting will be terrible. Remember, Superman and Batman had movies before I was born and were on TV all the time, cartoon and live action. Spiderman and Hulk and even Captain America were on TV too, again with cartoons and even some live action (70's live action - it wasn't great but it was there). Iron Man couldn't even get on Saturday morning when I was a kid. Now they're going to make a movie of him? I was afraid that besides being bad it would turn the character into a joke for the next 20 years.

Boy was I wrong.

I will say when I learned Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Tony Stark I thought he was an excellent choice within about 30 seconds of hearing it. So, why is the first movie so awesome?

• They get the origin story right. Eve the update from 'Nam to Afghanistan is perfect
• The villain is right out of IM200, one of the signature moments in the 80's Iron Man books, and they didn't screw him up

• The supporting characters are right out of the comics as well, and handled just perfectly
• They got the suit right. This is a huge deal.
• They got the right actor for the main part. Christopher Reeve fit like this. Hugh Jackman was basically an unknown before Wolverine, befitting the mysterious past of the character and slipped right into it. Downey was all too well known, mostly for being a brilliant failure on some level, and this carried into the part perfectly. It seems like this would be the #1 concern but it isn't always - remember the first time you heard about who was going to be Batman in that big new movie? Michael Keaton? I think there's still a faint question mark hovering over my head from that. They got it right this time.
• Little nods to the fans count for something too: Ten Rings, "Next Time", etc.
• Changing things up at the end with "I am Iron Man" - now you've managed to show respect for the original material AND open things up completely for the future. The closest thing I can think of to how this was handled was the Trek reboot of 2009 and I liked that too.

Iron Man 2 - some people don't like it. I like it just fine. Why?

• We open with natural consequences of the unmasking at the end of the first movie with Congressional hearings and a Russian named Vanko building a rival technology.
• Lots of nods to history - Vanko (the original Crimson Dynamo), Rhodes finally getting into the action, Justin Hammer showing up - lots of that kind of thing.
• They worked in Iron Man's Briefcase AND the Silver and Red armor in one scene! It's so far beyond my expectations at that point that right there in the theater I was ready to anoint it greatest super-movie ever!
• Nods to the camera: "I'm here, deal with it" for the recast Rhodey's first scene.
• Black Widow shows up, much like she did in the comics: pretty face first, action heroine later.
• Finally, that big finale with IM and WM back to back - when the masks clang shut the second peak of the film hits for me - it looks like a comic book cover, then it looks like a two-page spread as they take down a horde of robots together. Yeah!

No, not that one!

No, not that one either!

Yeah, that one!

Iron Man 3 - the Big Finish

• We open with consequences again - this time from that other movie, and more personal than public at first
• Usually introducing a kid into a movie series is a terrible ting - see that last Zorro sequel for all the franchise-wrecking evidence you should need - but it worked in this one. And it was temporary.
• Not a huge fan of the overheated armor-ripping badguys but it worked OK for the story and it is a comic-book movie.
• Thought the house-wrecking scene was really well done, better than I expected from all of those trailers.

Sniff .. it brings a tear to my eye! Why can't all comic book movies be like this?

• The Mandarin thing ... yeah I was pretty shocked as I thought the whole terrorist angle was going to be epic and very modern. Guess not in some ways, a little too "modern" in others, but I appreciate the ability to be shocked by a movie - it doesn't happen much anymore. So I'll call it a draw.
• Tony Stark investigates a mystery and solves it! How very much like the comic character, especially the early years of the comic books! There's more detective work here than in some of the recent Batman movies!

• Our nod to history here is to Iron Man #300 where Ultimo resurfaces and Tony gets his crew together - Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, everybody - and has them suit up to fight it. So in the movie it's just the suits (well, Pepper does get to use one) but the visuals are the same. That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident.
• It ends as appropriately as any superhero movie I've ever seen, especially for a trilogy. It finishes the story and as a side effect pretty much brings the movie character up to date with the comic character in most ways.

Iron Patriot - Beta version

So yes, I liked them. The feeling that somebody gets it and then does it right is a good one to have, and it's all over these movies. The combination of actors, characters, stories, villains, effects, and a general paying of attention to the source material puts them at the pinnacle of the comic book movie pile for me. The Avengers is just the cherry on top. It might not go on forever but it's incredibly good right now.

Overreaction Friday: Pre-Order Your Special Kickstarter Stretch Goal Preview Now!

Wow, seems like at least half of the blogs I visit semi-regularly are selling something directly, or via DriveThru RPG, or are pushing a Kickstarter of some kind. Sheesh. I'm all for people putting out good material but there are a lot of products being thrown out lately.

Selling stuff directly: I'm still amazed at what people will pay for a tweaked version of old D&D rules. Is it nostalgia? You could buy several decent copies of the original D&D books for what people are paying - sometimes for the price of the PDF option! Adventures I get, but core rules ... I don't know. This mostly seems to be an OSR thing but in the early days of that it was a big deal to put "your" version out there on the web for free. Now it seems to be some kind of deluxe printed box set thing. I suppose if there's enough demand for it, why not, but it seems like a reach to me.

DriveThru RPG: PDF's are everywhere and lord know I've bought plenty of them, but some of them are a little weak. I see people selling single character writeups for $1, mainly for superhero games. Do those sell? I mean, would you spend a dollar for a single character that you could make yourself in maybe 10 minutes? Especially characters for games like ICONS - the only thing I can't instantly do myself is the art, and it's not terribly difficult to find character/superhero art online, from Google to Heromachine. Again, adventures for existing games, rules for completely new games, I get all that, but a lot of the lower end stuff just baffles me.

Kickstarter: Well that got pretty popular in the last two to three years and now it's tricky to keep up with everything  that's going on. "Back this, back that" - there's something new dern near every day. Now I like KS - I like the approach, I like the concept, I like that it lets some things get created that might not otherwise. Some are great, some fail utterly. I've backed a few and I've been pretty happy with those. Others have at least been entertaining to observe. The only thing that is starting to bug me is the regular cross-promotion of another KS project in an update for another! What's supposed to be an update for KS X ends up shilling for someone else's KS Y! Not a huge thing, and I get the whole cross-promotion thing, but c'mon. Between the blogs, the company pages, and the forum and email signatures it seems inescapable.

 Not everyone is a fan

General Observation 1: A lot of the material found online used to be stuff from someone's campaign. A lot of what is coming out now seems to be written specifically for sale. There's so much material coming out that I wonder how much of it is actually playtested before it is published? Of those I wonder how many are tried by at least two different groups, with at least one of those GM's being someone besides the author? To me that seems like the minimum for actual "testing" but I doubt everyone feels the same way. As far as just writing something up and throwing it out there - why should I pay for that? Anyone with a computer can do it and ideas are cheap - polish, especially in the case of an adventure - is something worth paying for.

General Observation 2: Once someone tries to monetize this hobby, there seems to be a shockingly high number of family and personal emergencies that occur. Or maybe they happen all the time and we don't hear about them until they have a kickstarter or a preorder to fulfill. Is it the Curse of the Kickstarter?

This came up in a search for Kickstarter, so I thought I would add it to the page

So, to the point:

• I won't be selling anything on the blog. The day job covers the income needs, and trying to sell hobby stuff turns the hobby into another job, for me anyway. With the aforementioned day job, and the family stuff taking up time, I'd rather spend my free time doing  stuff and playing games than doing more work. Plus it would turn "doing kid stuff" from a friendly Facebook update into an excuse as to why Chapter XX isn't completed yet. That doesn't sound like fun at all. Anything I put together and decide to share will be here and it will be free, simple, and completely unprofessional. I don't have a burning desire to be a gaming professional so that's what you will get.

• I won't be putting any PDF's up on DTRPG either. I've put PDF's of a few things up here, linked to Dropbox, and that's about the extent of it. I know there are free PDFs on there, but if I'm not planning on selling anything then it seems like a waste of time to set all that up.

• I'm not running any Kickstarters either. Really! I may be the last person who isn't, but it's true!

• I don't work for a game company, in any capacity.

• I won't be putting ads into the blog either. I don't like them, and if I did that to my own site then I couldn't complain about them on other sites with a clear conscience. So no ads here.

Now now it's not that bad. Yet.

Corner Cases: I actually backed off some from talking about Kickstarters on here because they're all over everything else. The most I will do is occasionally mention one that is directly tied in to a game I play AND is something I think is cool. D&D, LL, M&M, ICONS, Marvel - the usual suspects. Rest assured I have no involvement in them other than as a player of the game in question. Same with other new stuff - part 2 of Stonehell is coming some day, Emerald City for M&M is coming some day ... I'll be watching for both of those. I may review something that came from a kickstarter, but I'm not going to get into what I'm backing or what I am not at any given time- I don't think it matters that much.

What I Do ... Do: I've become a big believer in Actual Play: Theory is cheap and there's plenty of it already online. Interesting characters come from actual play. Interesting plots come from actual play. Interesting settings come from actual play. Interesting adventures come from actual play. That's the kind of thing I want to see, so that's what I will post here: From those April characters to the Random Female Bystander Generator to my one short adventure to the Extremely Expert DM Advice, it all comes from actually playing and running games. It's mainly for myself as a record of what I've been doing at any given time, but if it turns out to be useful to someone else then that's even better.

This came up in the same search - I didn't realize they had Kickstarters for bikinis, but they do. End on a high note, right?

Modern Marvels - Session 2 "Into the Savage Land"

We open with a Transition Scene: Knowing they were dealing with a magical artifact the team contacted the only expert they knew - Dr. Stephen Strange. He traced the location of the item to Antarctica but could not pinpoint it. He offered to teleport the heroes but admitted he was not sure he could return them given the fuzziness of the signal. He gave them a card - "Nick Fury - Director of SHIELD" - and suggested that they contact this person and explain the situation. He would be interested in the situation and it was likely he could provide transport.

I decided Strange was at least sort-of-known as an expert on the occult to local NYC heroes, even the new ones.

Meeting with Mr. Fury the next morning he had already talked to Strange and agreed that the threat should be pursued. He shares that he has a file on all three of them and is willing to "deputize" them and provide them with transport to the Antarctic. 

Castle bows out at this point - he has a war to wage here, not at the other end of the world.

Apprentice Who decided that he wanted to take a different hero for this mission

Iron Man says he has to check in with his employer first and heads out. 

Apprentice Red had to go to work earlier so he was not available

Fury announces he's bringing in another "resource" to help out as he doesn't want Panther going alone and can;t spare any of his normal agents. He introduces T'Challa to Peter Rasputin, code name "Colossus". They jump into a (Flying Car? Does SHIELD still use those? Momentary confusion, ended up giving them something like a quinjet. I figure it's an earlier version that Stark has developed and the more advanced one will eventually end up used by the Avengers.) SHIELD jet and head south - waaay south!

Apprentice Who decided he wanted to try out Colossus instead of Punisher so now we have an interesting situation where Colossus has ties to Nick Fury and SHIELD - do the other X-Men fit into this too or is it just Peter? What about Professor X? Is SHIELD behind the X-Men somehow? We will have to explore this some more down the road a bit.

The estimated location of the Serpent Crown has been loaded into the S-Jet's Nav system so navigation is not an issue. Panther makes an easy Vehicles check against the Doom Pool. 

Unexpectedly, in the middle of the icy wasteland the whiteness gives way to a verdant green valley! This is where the Crown is located! Is it responsible for this tremendous climate change?

Attempting to get the lay of the land they spot 3 areas of interest: a mountain with a skull carved into it, something that looks like some kind of ice fortress, and something that looks like a modern-ish installation. The jet is acting up so they decide to land an equal distance from all three structures to minimize travel time. The VTOL system engages and they land in a clearing, in the jungle ... in the middle of what should be Antarctica.

Scene Distinctions now in effect: "Dense Jungle" and "Dangerous Flora and Fauna"

Feeling that the jungle is at least something like familiar territory, however unexpected, Black Panther debarks the jet and climbs a tree to take a look around. Colossus loiters near the jet and is suddenly jumped by 3 velociraptors! Shifting to metal form the "Russian Farmboy" uproots a nearby tree and tree-slaps all 3 of them into next week! Panther looks down in amazement - he didn't even have time to jump out of the tree.

This was creative action and an awesome roll by Who backed up by some pretty vivid descriptions of what he was doing and a nice justification of how  "Russian Farmboy" applies to fighting dinosaurs in Antarctic jungles. The answer is that he pulled up a lot of trees working on the farm and used to swing them around like baseball bats for fun - sounds good to me!

Fortunately for Panther's ego, 3 more raptors emerge from the jungle, this time circling and approaching more warily "Surrounding" the metal man. (Imposing the "Surrounded" condition on Colossus) Panther leaps out of the trees, sinking his daggers into one of the beasts - he's never fought dinosaurs so he's not taking any chances.

Line of the night, Apprentice Blaster:"... that's a d6 Weapon for my daggers because I'm going to stab him, then a d8 for Enhanced Strength, because, uh, I'm going to stab him really hard ..."

The remaining 2 dinos attack Colossus whose steely skin resists their tearing teeth.

Apprentice Who learns the awesomeness of the "Invulnerable" SFX: Spend a Plot Point to ignore physical stress or trauma unless caused by electromagnetic effects" - yeah. The dinos don't have a chance after that. The kid gets pretty giddy because he has about 5 Plot Points when he discovers that.

Colossus finally gets to go and sensing his chance he leaps into the air, snatches a Pterodactyl, lands back on the ground, and proceeds to beat a raptor senseless with it.

He wants to use the "Dangerous Flora and Fauna scene distinction to do this - WTF? I made a face, and then it was pointed out to me that he's playing a metal man fighting dinosaurs in a jungle in the middle of antarctica. I decided to allow it Heck, that one is right out of the basic book and dangerous doesn't have to mean only to the player characters..

Black Panther goes next and throws a dagger "really hard" and takes down the remaining raptor.

T'Challa is pretty vicious in melee

Raptors handled, the heroes turn to discover the face of a huge T-Rex peering at them from behind some trees - then it emerges from those tress and steps on their jet!

"Threat to Wakanda!"

'Denied! - with the jet destroyed he's stuck here just like you so Wakanda is safe!"

Colossus is kicked like a football into the jungle when the beast charges. Panther runs up the dino's back and looks for a good place to execute his tried and true anti-dinosaur strategy. Then with a roar of full-throttle boot jets, Iron Man flies in!

Apprentice Red is home now and jumps right in!

The Unibeam charges up and unloads - doing absolutely nothing! Those Rexes are deceptively quick! 

A ferocious furball of snapping jaws of giant teeth, punching metal fists, stabbing daggers, and more metal punches end with a T-Rex on the ground and 3 slightly battered heroes still standing  The Doom Pool ends at 2d6 and a d10. In the distance, three interesting structures beckon ...

Notes: Progress continues and this one went much smoother. The basics are down. I added the scene distinctions this time and they actually saw use! I am using elements of both the RPG.net campaign I mentioned in Session 1 and the material in the basic rulebook that is Act 2 of Breakout - if you have it you might as well use it!

Blaster got in a bit of a rut with Panther's dagger attacks and I pointed out he might as well play Wolverine, but he did handle the plane stuff and did some scouting around as well.

Plot Points flowed freely - Apprentice Who rolled three "1's" at one point - and the Doom Pool was rising. Who sat on his quite a bit to keep his new favorite ability going. Red and Blaster got pretty comfortable with theirs, spending them on stunts and adding in extra total dice too.

I really like the concept of "Scene Distinctions" as a way to include the setting and the scenery in the game mechanically. I think any location deserves at least one and they will be a part of my notes from now on.

I'm still figuring out Complications. I went with "Surrounded" as the three dinos closed in but as soon as Panther dropped one the question came up: Is he still surrounded with only two? I said he was but then once we're down to one it doesn't really make sense anymore. There's a fairly subtle note there that I think a complication really has to apply only to the target, without requiring anything further of the inflicting party, or it can fall apart in the next round. Typically I think the target should have to use some kind of effect to offset or counter the Complication but against weaker foes it may just be easier and quicker to wipe them out in spite of the complication, rather than wasting a round to undo it. I need more practice here.

I also need more practice sing Hordes (like the raptors) and Large Threats (like the T-Rex) as I thought it was all clear then once the game started I got a little fuzzy on how it all worked. I'm sure we will see more of each type. 

Finally, we all  still keep forgetting to use an opponent's condition against them. Hopefully we will get past this eventually.

The best part - we kept laughing all through the game as it was a blast. Something about the Marvel thing combined with the mechanics of the game leads to a very different atmosphere when we're playing this one, even over ICONS and it's fairly relaxed structure. I think it's that Marvel is something we all are familiar with to some degree and so we all "get it" when someone makes a reference or does something interesting with a "known" character. I can't really pin it down just yet but it's just a lot of fun.

Next up: Exploring the Savage Lands! What could they possibly find down there?

The Random Nearby Vehicle Generator

How relevant is this? Looks like they've been throwing cars since the beginning!

Along a similar line of thinking as last week's Random Female Bystander Generator I give you another occasionally useful gap-filler: The Random Nearby Vehicle Generator! Sure, it's not quite as much fun as hitting on helpless NPC's but it can add a little color to your fight the next time the brick wants to throw a car at someone. Dress up those otherwise dull descriptions of everyone's favorite improvised weapon with the tables below:

What is the closest vehicle to the character?
1 Compact Car (Civic, Corolla, Focus, Beetle, 1-Series, Soul)
2 Average Car (Accord, Camry, Taurus, Malibu, Mustang, 3-Series, )
3 Large Car (Town Car, Crown Victoria, S-Class)
4 Minivan/Small SUV (Caravan, Odyssey, Escape, Liberty, RAV4, X3)
5 Pickup/Large SUV (F-150, Silverado, Explorer, Tahoe, G-Wagen, Hummer)
6 Special

This should cover most of the vehicles on the road with #6 allowing for the unusual stuff. When interacting with vehicles in an RPG one important consideration is weight: Compacts weight from a little less than a ton to about a ton and a half, Average runs about a ton and a half to two tons, Large runs two tons plus, Minivans and small SUV's run about one and a half to two and a half, Pickups run about two and a half to four, while Hummers are three tons plus. So yes, sometimes strength matters a great deal, at least for non-bricks. 

There's no tank on the table. Those aren't really a random kind of thing in most cities.

Special Vehicle Table
1 Motorcycle
2 Classic Car/Exotic Car ('57 Chevy, '65 Mustang, Ferarri 455, Lamborghini Diablo)
3 Limousene
4 Bus (City/School/Tour/Greyhound)
5 Cement Tuck/Garbage Truck/Dump Truck/Fire Truck
6 18-Wheeler (Box Trailer, Flatbed Trailer, Tanker Trailer)

This set of options should pretty much cover everything else. Motorcycles are typically less than half a ton, Limos are generally two tons plus, a bus weighs 10-20 tons, a cement truck weighs 10-35 tons, the traditional garbage truck weighs 20-30 tons,  dump trucks are 10-40 tons, fire trucks are 15-30, the cab of an 18-wheeler weighs 10-15 tons and can haul up to 40 tons.

Lift with the legs!

What color is it? (2d6)
2 Primered/so dirty you can’t tell
3 Gold
4 Green
5 Red
6 Black
7 White
8 Silver
9 Blue
10 Yellow
11 Orange
12 Unusual Paint Job

Unusual Paint Jobs
1-2 Metallic (roll again for color)
3 Stripes! - roll again for colors
4 Logo or ad-wrap - pick a local company or organization
5-6 Multicolored - roll again twice

Should cover it, edit to taste. Based on some of the more recent reports as to the most popular colors of new cars.

Lift with the ... yeah

Distinctive Feature
1 Smoking, probably sounds bad too
2 Thumping Stereo
3 Custom Wheels
4 Dark Tinted Windows
5 Lowered or Lifted
6 Custom Exhaust - kinda loud

Use as necessary to embellish. You might not find a thumping stereo on a cement truck, but then again you might.

Looks like we're going to need to use Extra Effort

Condition
1 Pristine - looks brand new
2-4 Looks pretty good
5 Battered, beaten, used hard
6 Rustbucket

It may not happen a lot but your players will remember for a long time the day they ran into a rustbucket Ferrari.

Call it half of normal vehicle weight

Think of this as an opportunity to throw a little bystander roleplaying into a combat encounter because every one of them has a driver somewhere. Maybe the exotic car driver is an associate of the millionaire secret ID of one of the players. Maybe the hapless dependent NPC of a character just happens to be sitting there in their car. Maybe the female cement truck driver starts arguing with the brick about just what he is up to. Maybe the worried classic car driver asks one of the PC's to move his baby to safety. Is the bus full of senior citizens on a tour or are they really Viper agents in disguise waiting to unload a full broadside on the unsuspecting heroes - those "hunteds" or enemy complications can be a real pain sometimes.

Motivational Monday

... well, MAD scientists anyway.

Super Saturdays: Comic Book Stuff for May

I've been reading a lot of older stuff via the magic of the iPad.

In March I went back and read the entire Civil War event.

In April I went back and read Planet Hulk. I skipped it when it was new, but I really liked it after reading the whole thing. Watched the animated version with the Apprentices too. It's alright but it leaves out a lot.

For May I decided that I needed to work in some DC so I started back with Crisis on Infinite Earths, Death of Superman, then Reign of the Supermen. I'm working on Knightfall and Zero Hour.

What other, newer, DC stuff are the high points of say the last 20 years? Down the road I want to read some longer runs of individual books but there are a lot of the "Event" type things I missed and I want to fill in the gaps. Any suggestions?