40K Friday - Death Guard

I've been slowly acquiring needed pieces and putting parts together for my chaos marine army. I know CSM's are not highly regarded right now in the competitive 40K scene but I don't do this for tournaments. I had a 40K Chaos army back in 2nd edition (back when Abaddon was a new mini) but I later traded it away for more Orks - because you always need more Orks! This was one of those things that taught me never to trade away painted figs because I will regret it later - because I did.

I actually started picking up pieces and units during 5th edition but I never put them together because I just wasn't feeling the inspiration I needed to get it started. I kept picking up things that looked interesting and waited for that light-bulb moment. Now my only fully built and painted Warhammer Fantasy army is a Chaos Warrior army that goes back to 3rd Edition, so I'm comfortable playing the badguys. That army does have a theme though and I wanted to have something like that to guide my assembly of the force as it helps me decide what makes sense to include and what does not rather than just grabbing everything and throwing together a scratch force every time I play.

Last year I finally felt like I had a concept:What if my army was a force trapped in the warp aboard a space hulk and whenever I used them in a fight it meant the hulk had emerged into space near a planet? The random nature of the warp and the screwy nature of time there meant I could justify all kinds of ridiculousness in terms of time and place. Say, a demon prince, a chaos sorcerer and a band of survivors stranded aboard a hulk. This would also influence what kinds of units would be included, as it seems unlikely that a massive tank force would be carried aboard a hulk, so this would mostly be an infantry and walker force and maybe ... bikes. At the time that seemed like an interesting mix of forces. Then the new codex came out and every CSM army seems to include bikes anyway so it's not quite as novel as it was.

This concept would also give me a reason to do some interesting bases. I've decided to do a metal decking/grid thing with them - once I have some finished samples I will share.I tend to do plain "turf" bases and once you start an army you're kind of chained to that particular approach. Any update of the basing requires you to go back and do all of the bases if you want to keep a unified look. I usually do want that as consistent basing is one of the things that brings an army together as a unified force -  visually speaking. A few years ago when I last expanded my fantasy chaos army I went with snow bases because I wanted something different and because they were supposed to be invaders from the north. Going back and updating the older parts of the army was easy because you just put snow on top of whatever is already there - just like reality! Metal deck grids are not something that's easily retrofit onto a painted mini but since it's a new army I don;t have to worry about that part. Since I am doing it myself I am not dependent on "custom base X" from a particular model company being available and that's something I don't want anyway as I tend to add to them and keep armies for the long haul.

So now I have a concept, I have a pile of mini's, I have an interesting base idea. What do I want them to be? The "stranded" concept screams Nurgle to me and explains why the force is reduced from whatever it used to be - they are the survivors of some horrible plague, the "chosen" of Nurgle. The only problem is that I am not all that thrilled with the standard color scheme for Nurgle of blah green + rust + the occasional pink intestine or yellow eyeball. It just isn't that visually appealing to me. There is hope though:

The pre-heresy Death guard legion uses a green on white scheme that looks pretty nice, and I don't have a set of white-armored marines. Even if I dirty them up they should still stand out. I really like the painting guide I found here - that's a good looking paint job, especially when the whole army is lined up.

Force-wise I see a Nurgle Chaos Lord in terminator armor, a Chaos Sorcerer on a bike, and a demon prince as my HQ's. The termie lord will lead a couple of units of Nurgle terminators, the psycher biker will lead a Nurgle-marked bike squad, For Troops there will be a couple of units of plague marines and regular CSM's and possibly some cultists just because I have them. For heavy support I'm building a unit of Havocs for now, and I have a pair of helbrutes for any leftover Elite slots. In the near future I'd like to add a heldrake but I don't have one yet.

Not everything will be in every force but the basic strategy is hold some objectives with the troops while the bikes and termies (and heldrake) clear the enemy off of the others. Details will vary but that's the basic approach for now.

So far:

There's 1 CSM squad, 1 terminator squad, some bike parts, and an otyugh who will be a chaos spawn for this army. Yes, there are some normal marines mixed in there to represent the less-corrupted members of the force.

There's the rest of the terminator parts, six bikes & bikers and the sorcerer and his bike. We're just in the "primed white" stage but it's a start. The two six-man plague marine squads are already primed as is the demon prince so the core is pretty much handled. Now I need to get some actual color on them. The whole army is a mix of old-school metal chaos and some of the newer plastics. I think a decent paint job will unify them. My take is that this unit of Death Guard is still largely in their pre-heresy colors but is inevitably sliding toward that Nurgle guts-hangin-out look that most of the modern units have. Being in and out of the warp means that different units do it at a different rate - some of them are nearly pristine white and un-mutated while others look like normal plague marines. It should be fun and if I do it right it gives me a little variety in painting while keeping the army looking like it belongs together. More to come!

Happy Halloween

Wednesday night was busy getting some last minute things done for our usual holiday get-together and Thursday will be busy having the Halloween party - lots of Halloweening going on here. So I thought I would share some fun stuff:

Emerald City

So I saw this Monday night:

.. and I thought cool, it's finally on the way. I'll have to look at it and see how much and when.


Then on Tuesday I received this:

... and I was thinking this was a pre-order for the PDF- NOPE! It's the actual PDF! You can go to DTRPG and download it now!

As much as I like PDF's for some parts of RPG's I still forget sometimes how the timing works on these things now: If it's ready to print it's ready to sell as a PDF!

Now if this was another enemies type book I'd be fine picking up a PDF - I've come to realize that those benefit a lot from the electronic option as I can print out only the parts I need. Especially in a supers game I find I only need a couple of pages to run an entire evening. This is how I have been using the Threat Reports for M&M.

Short adventures are handy in PDF too - print the stat parts out, maybe the map pages, and run the rest from a laptop or tablet. The many adventures for ICONS have been nice using this kind of approach.

This, however, is not an enemies book. It's a setting - with a poster map and other goodies.I'd really rather have this one on paper to flip though, pass around the table, and otherwise handle. That's just my own preference.

It is more expensive (double the PDF, and that's not a cheap PDF either, but it is a lot of material) and it will take longer, but it's worth it to me.

Then of course there is the larger question of "how will I use it?" or "when will I run it?" and that's hard to say. I've gotten away from buying stuff I know I won't use but I am trying to pick up everything for M&M as it comes out because it all feeds into a mighty, mighty system for a superhero RPG. Even if I don't run it as-is, there's a chance parts might appear in my own setting.

I'm also toying with the idea of giving it to one of the Apprentices, unread, and telling them to get ready to run it. It's just a glimmer right now, but it's there.

Regardless of the eventual usage I'm happy to see it released and I will post more about it when I do actually do something with it.

Overreaction Tuesday

There have been a few developmentss since the last time I posted about Next:

From last week's Q&A:

 How would a 3.5 prestige class designed to be taken by a multiclass character, like mystic theurge, be modeled in D&D Next as a subclass?

While we can’t yet talk about which specific subclasses we’re going to end up with, we’re looking into “multiclass friendly” subclasses to help blend the spellcasting classes with those that are not spellcasting classes. This goes in both directions; while we might have a subclass for, say, the fighter that makes it easier for that class to multiclass with a spellcasting class, we’re also considering subclasses for spellcasting classes, like the druid or sorcerer, that make them friendlier for weapon use. For the classes that already mix weapon use and magic, like the bard, cleric, paladin, and ranger, we are less likely to look for subclasses for that purpose. For any concepts not quite rich enough to support an entire subclass, we’re also looking into feats as a potential way to deliver some class-blending aspects, much like what you would expect from the multiclass feats from 4th Edition, especially since the feat design we have right now packs a lot of punch into a single feat.


Wow, I thought multiclassing was settled pretty well in that last packet but now we're tweaking sub-classes for it and we might also use Feats for it? Options are great but this could turn into a mess really quickly if someone takes a few levels in two or three classes, takes a multi-classing feat or two, and then moves into a prestige class. It doesn't really matter until we get details but the 3E approach they've published gives a player two ways to mix in more flavor: per-level multiclassing and prestige classes. I think adding feats into the mix could be interesting but how does it improve the game or add options that those other two do not? I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

"Here's the windup..."

From the week before:

What is happening in the game world when a fighter deals damage on a missed attack?

Since Armor Class represents a combination of agility and the ability to absorb the impact of the weapon (for example, why a suit of plate, by default, has a higher AC than leather armor), we like to think of it as the fighter character striking the body of the target, and the armor (or hide) absorbing the brunt of the damage, but not all of it; the strike was so brutal and skillfully placed that it did more than anyone else could have done with the same attack. For anyone except a fighter with this very specific training, the armor/hide/scales would normally absorb the full impact of the strike, thus dealing no damage and being described as a miss.

If there were two early and consistent complaints about 4E they were 1) Fighter Daily Powers and 2) "Dissociated Mechanics" where it was hard to tie the game mechanics to a physical action as it happened. This question touches on elements of both and WOTC needs to tread carefully here to avoid the same kind of blowback as we saw with 4E. "Damage on a Miss" is an interesting mechanic and I think it has a place in a game where specific mechanics play a big part in defining a character. If they handle this right - and I like the answer above - then maybe we will see some similar things included for other classes and game abilities.

"ARGH!" (see below)

From the week before that:

Mike mentioned in Legends and & Lore that sorcerer and warlock were back to being full classes instead of mage subclasses; is this true for psions as well?

Right now, psionics are not a priority for our design. Because we have many different ways we could go with the design of psionics, we don't have anything further to announce about psionics at this point.

That's very polite. I'm reading it as "Dear fans: please stop freaking out about trying to cram psionic powered characters into the wizard framework because they won;t be in the first set of books anyway." That's a smart play, even if they let that storm brew a little too long.

"DE-NIED!"

Finally, this came in my DDI monthly renewal notice email over the weekend:

Should you decide to renew your subscription, we wanted to make you aware of some upcoming changes to DDI.  As we look to the future launch of D&D Next, we are shifting our focus to the development and support of the new rules set, which will impact the Dungeons & Dragons Insider subscription service:

• DDI will remain available to those who still wish to access all the great 4th Edition Magazines and Tools as part of the DDI subscription.
• Starting in March of 2014, the DDI tool set (Character Builder, Adventure Tools and Compendium), will no longer be updated with new 4th Edition game content.
• Existing issues of Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine will continue to be offered for viewing.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the last issues of Dragon and Dungeon would be in December 2013. Maybe that changed or maybe the extra three months gives them time for any bug fixes or additional updates to wrap things up. At least they're getting the word out now - I appreciate that.

If you're wondering why I still pay for this it's simple: I'm still running it. If you're running a 4E campaign having the compendium at your fingertips - all of the items and abilities - is a nice thing. The monster tweaker is handy too. That said, If my campaign ended next week I'd drop the subscription at the next opportunity as that is it's only real value for me.

 I do wonder what they're going to do with the whole DDI concept for Next - that's some nice reliable income but so many other games (like Pathfinder) have similar (or better) tools available for free that I wonder if it's sustainable for another edition. My own guess would be "no" but I don't know that the corporate outlook will see it the same way. Maybe they will  take a note from MMO games right now and go with the pay-once model (buy the box ala Guild Wars 2) or free base game but pay for the expansions like some other games. I think it would be simpler to just make it free to begin with but like I said, most companies are going to want to monetize their digital content so I doubt that will happen. The presence or absence of an open license may play a role here too. There are some rumors going around that there will be but nothing really solid yet.

13th Age SRD

Well I'm not really doing anything with it right now but there is an open version of it out there.

Original (downloadable documents) version is here.

Nifty online hyperlinked version is here.

One of these days I'll probably take a serious run at a campaign with it but for now 4E, Pathfinder, and Next have filled in the fantasy RPG space at the table.

Motivational Monday

Preferred Tanker: Fire Tankers - BURN! Invulnerability was probably my second favorite. Draco was my main here but I played many, many tankers.

40K Fridays - Status Update

It's been really light around here when it comes to 40K specifically and miniatures in general. Weeknights are busy with homework, college research, homecoming stuff, Halloween prep, and all of the other routine things we all deal with. With the Pathfinder game kicking off I've been spending a lot of time catching up on 3 years of Pathfinder releases and that has squeezed my 40K reading/research time too. I have enough of a painting backlog that I decided to skip the second Reaper Bones kickstarter because even a year from now I expect to have unpainted armies - bleah.

So the Marine Codex is out - I haven't picked it up yet. It's probably going to happen this weekend and you can expect a report on it shortly after - maybe next Friday. Heck, it might even let me get the Crimson Fists on the table again.

Sisters of Battle are out as a digital-only codex now. I think it's cool that they are giving them some decent up-to-date rules support but they aren't getting new mini's and they aren't getting a print book - this is strictly a "maintenance release" to allow owners of existing armies to keep playing. It's not the best solution, but hey, it is better than they have handled this kind of thing in the past.

Finally these "codex supplements" (or the announcements/rumors of them at least) keep coming out faster than I can keep up with. Most of them are digital-only and at $39.99 for a digital "supplement" I am extremely reluctant to embrace this particular "future".  The print versions are $50 for 72 pages, and the special limited edition is a bargain at $100! Remember that this is on top of the $50 army codex that you need to use these specialized sub-armies. I'm sure they are aimed at the hardcore/long time player but man ... that's a lot of $$$ for rules and fluff to run one force. Love the concept, hate the pricing.

For the rest of this year we have the Tyranids, then next year we have Orks, Guard, and maybe Space Wolves early on - well we have 3 of those 4 armies in this house so that's positive movement for us.

More to come

Gaming Fiction Review - Gauntlgrym

I started this one, set it aside for a few months, then picked it up again last week and read it fairly quickly. As of this volume there are about 20 books in the Drizzt saga depending on how you want to count the "Sellswords" trilogy where he only appears in the first book. There are 3 more in this particular series with 1 more (as part of "The Sundering") on the way so we're up to about 25 or so altogether. If you want to throw the Cleric Quintet into that (some characters show up in the Drizzt books) then we're up to about 30 novels in "Bob Salvatore's travels around the Realms". In my opinion, they're pretty good, around the top of "gaming fiction" as a genre. No, your kids aren't likely to be studying them in English or a Literature class but there are good stories and interesting characters here.

With all of those Dark Elf & Friends books out you're likely already either on board with them or not and I doubt this book will change your mind. If you don't like any of the earlier ones, you probably won't like this one and I wouldn't recommend starting with it anyway. If you do you probably read it a couple of years ago and are wondering why someone is just now posting a review. I'd label myself a casual fan - I get the books but not the day - or even the year - they come out. So I'm reviewing them at a casual pace and as that casual fan.

As an overview, this book continues the story of Drizzt and company though his companions are finally being thinned out by the passage of time. To me this is one of the great potential themes that the author has resisted until now: when you have an effectively immortal character who has non-immortal friends, what happens when time passes? How does it impact the character, a heroic figure in the setting, as his friends and family die off? There are a lot of interesting elements that could be layered on top of the original misfit/wanderer/outsider looking in themes of the early books. In the previous book in the series, The Ghost King, we finally started exploring these ideas and in this book it becomes a major theme and that's is 100% a good thing.

I won't get into spoilers too much here in case someone has not read the book but here are 3 things that stood out to me:

• There is a lot of time passing quickly in this book. Decades pass between the beginning and the end and the timing of most of this story is just a few years before the 4E era of the Forgotten Realms. Timeline jumps are much easier when you're dealing with Elven and Dwarven lifespans.
• The expected threat-of-the-book (pictured on the cover up there) takes a somewhat unexpected turn and despite the author's continuing preference for unique, signature weapons for many of his characters (see Drizzt, Athrogate, Cadderly, Jarlaxle, Artemis, Pwent, and others for examples) he manages to not bring it down to a simple confrontation between Drizzt and the expected signature villain. I thought the whole story was well done and the climax of the story was especially well handled.
• There is a lot of dungeoneering in this book and it's a pleasant change from some of the cross-country stuff in earlier books. If you like dwarves they are a focus of this book, along with Thay and cultists of Asmodeus. The opposing forces in the book are an interesting and unusual mix of creatures too. The party Drizzt joins is an interesting mix as well and the pages fly by.

One thing I realized as I was wrapping up the read was that none of the main characters in this entire saga have children: Drizzt, Bruenor, Catti-Brie, Wulfgar, Regis, Jarlaxle, Artemis - none of them. In a lot of other settings and stories one way to handle the passage of time and mitigate the loss of favorite characters is to have their children grow to adulthood and begin having similar adventures. That's really not an option here. Why is that? I am not sure. Mr. Salvatore has children, so I know he's not against them in general. It's just odd that with all of the emphasis on home and family and friends and long term relationships that have their ups and downs that none of these characters appears to have produced offspring nor are they engaged in raising them beyond Bruenor's adopted humans in the first few books.I wonder if that will change down the road.

None of that changes the epic quality of the story - this is a tale that sets the stage for Neverwinter and the North in the 4E timeframe and it's a really good read, even moreso if you've read all of the others leading up to it.

Old School Champions Returns! - Adventurers Club #7

Not their strongest cover

We're back with AC #7 from the summer of 1986! Oddly enough #6 was winter of 1984 so there's a bit of a gap in there - even longer than the gap in my posts on these magazines! I let this go for a while because I hit a gap in my collection but I do like digging back into the older era of Champions. Besides, there have been some good comments in the past and there's not a ton of stuff online about them so let's fire them back up again.

Some RPG context for 1986: Champions is a big deal but Marvel Super Heroes came out in 1984 and DC Heroes came out in 1985 and are also big players. V&V is still seeing new adventures. TMNT and Heroes Unlimited are around and locally at least TMNT was briefly popular. In other games, AD&D is in the 1st edition but post-Unearthed Arcana phase, Runequest 3rd Edition is another big player, Traveller is still in its original edition, Twilight 2000 is still a newish thing. Mechwarrior, Traveller 2300, and Ghostbusters are all either out or coming out this same year.

Remember these? Whoa ... three ... pages of written material each month. That sounds like a tremendous beating to run if he ever had more than 3 players.
(Googled - nothing about it online that I can find)

Up Front: We get some discussion of the reasons behind the delays which is pretty frank: lack of funding and resources. Compare this with the obfuscation and carefully worded press releases we see so much of today even from smaller companies and it's pretty refreshing. This leads into the announcement of the partnership with Iron Crown, which means we're going to get content wasted on devoted to Middle Earth Role Playing as well. Oh boy.

Letters: One notable item we get some complaining about "lack of quality control" noting that there have been 3 revisions of the Champions book, 2 of Champions II, and that Champions III was full of typos and missing tables, all in a period of 3.5 years. Yes kids, this stuff went on well before the internet. In some ways it is better nowadays but I still see stuff like this even in modern products. I suspect the ease of electronic publishing is a double-edged sword. There's also a letter discussing heroes and killing citing Wolverine as one example with the response citing Captain America as a counter-example - again, it was going on before the Great Internet Debates.

Also notable: No trash-talking Foxbat letters this month. Perhaps we are now too big for those. There's a lot less silliness in general in this issue, from the ads to the articles to this. I kind of miss it.

That is an awesome back cover. I really like it.

The Meat:

• There's a nice article on Presence that uses Captain America as a pretty strong example and adds some new wrinkles for using PRE in positive ways. One example is to buff allies against an enemy's presence attack. It's good stuff.
• Errata for Lands of Mystery - I wonder if this is online anywhere? google - look, it's on Aaron Allston's page!
• A couple of WW2 Axis-themed villains for Champions, Packmaster and Aslan - more on them later
• Gadgets: The Phase Door for Champions and the Mercy Gun for Justice Inc.
• Mr. Allston has a really nice little article on making Justice Inc. adventures more cinematic
• There's an article for Danger International on acquiring equipment in the field. This seems to be the least-loved child of this era as even in the magazine there is limited support
• Grand Tactical Champions - this is a rules-tinkering article by George MacDonald that I don't recall seeing in later rules updates. It attempts to make it easier to run bigger scale combats by modifying the normal Hero system using everything from scale changes to grouping NPC's into combined units to simplifying the damage into more of a scale of damage steps that is a little like M&M's damage system!
• No reviews this issue!

Ah, old school maps

The big item this issue is "Raid on Blackgulch" - a Champions adventure by Andrew Robinson. Blackgulch is a chemical weapons testing and storage facility for the U.S. Army. The primary villain of the adventure, Phosgene, is a victim of an army weapons experiment. I think you can see where this is going. Aided by fellow villains Mercuria and Dr. Magnus (stats are provided for all three) he intends to steal the chemical weapons and use them against the army as his revenge. As noted in the adventure, this isn't a mystery to be solved. Instead "it's a chance for mayhem in an unpredictable environment."

This is a solid setup: there are hooks, background on the facility and program, maps of the facility, and a run-through of the villain's plan. The detailed map is keyed like a dungeon with notes on the purpose of each room, contents, stats for doors and walls, and any other defenses present.

Phosgene!

The distinguishing characteristic of this facility is the chemical contents of some of the rooms and labs. There is a simple random system for determining the type of chemical that is "discovered" - likely through weapons fire - and how strong it is, how it affects characters, and the likelihood and size of possible explosions and fires if these things are violently impacted. This also includes things like nerve agents, welding torches, and fire extinguishers. If you have a character with a vulnerability or susceptibility to chemicals they are going to hate you for running this. Heh. The approach is similar to the Food Fight introductory scenario for Shadowrun, only more dangerous.

"Well surely my cautious and well-prepared players will take every step not to accidentally release some nerve gas or set themselves on fire. What could possibly go wrong?" Well Phosgene has an interesting power:

Yep, if he takes any body from fire then he explodes for 20d6. Note the vulnerability right next to it too. Now it looks like it only happens once per day but that's a pretty severe explosion and in the wrong room calculating the secondary explosions that result from this could take a lot of time, to the point I think I'd just go with "the Brick gets to make a Con check everyone else is unconscious" approach and go from there.

Dr. Magnus is an armored magnetic controller, ensuring someone can throw some of those metal containers (or fire extinguishers) at your heroes - or fling your battlesuit guy into them.

Mercuria is a fairly tough energy projector (35 Con!) who also happens to have a 6d6 NND explosion - that should be fun in close quarters.

Anyway, there's the rundown for Issue 7!

Refit

It's been 4 years of the same basic look around here. Change is good so I'm playing around with the look and layout of the blog. Things may move around, some other parts could use a clean-up, and others may be improved. Stay tuned for "Better"!