40K Thursday

Haven't posted much about 40K so I figured I would show my progress on the Eldar army so far this year. There's everything that's painted or started so far.

So there's 3 squads of Dire Avengers on the left - bases and fine-tuning of each squad is in progress. Next to them are the Fire Dragons and their favorite ride the Falcon grav tank.

The meat of the army: three squads of Wraithguard, a Wraithlord, a Spirit Seer, and a (primed) Wraithknight. That's my wraith host, the big thing I started last Chrtistmas break and the only two pieces left to finish are the Spiritseer (no problem) and the Wraithknight (well ...) so I'm hoping I can wrap them up by this Christmas break. The finished Scorpion squad is right there in the middle and a finished Ranger squad is on the right. The one painted Farseer has been my HQ in every battle so far this year and is often joined by the unpainted Farseer in there as well.

At the back are the work-in-progress guns and gunners of the Vaul's Wrath support battery. I'm debating whether to go ahead and finish them or to focus on the seer and the 'knight. There also an older metal Wraithlord (needs flock and a second gun) and some metal Wraithguard (just need flock) too. I wasn't going to use metal WG in this army but I keep coming across them already painted and sometimes it's a good deal so I may end up with a second Wraith Host down the road with minimal effort. Do I need one? No. It seems fitting for an Iyanden army though, and one day we might do another stupidly large game where I could use both at the same time.


Other elements: You can see the Swooping Hawks in baggies off to the right. I have two Wave Serpents primed but nothing more. I have three squads of Dark Reapers waiting on the shelf. That's really it. Most of the army will walk into battle but I'd like to get a 3rd serpent and use them for the Dire Avengers as their standard transports. The Scorpions usually start the game scouted or infiltrated up on the field. One squad of Wraithguard is often beamed into battle via webway portal with a Dark Eldar Archon. An Archon + warrior squad + raider is a small price to pay to be able to drop a squad of D-Weapons anywhere on the field with perfect precision. Beyond that one dirty trick it's a surprisingly mobile force as everything has Battle Focus so can shoot and move.


So far I am happy with it - it's formidable but not over the top like an all-scatbike army.  I'm hoping we can get in some more games soon, then I'll do an end of the year update with hopefully everything finished.

Week Off

I have a week off but it's consumed with other things than posting. Lots of catching up around the house etc. I did manage to get some painting time in and I am also prepping for the Big Game on Friday.

Tonight is Apprentice Twilight's birthday dinner, tomorrow is turkey and football with family, then Friday is time with friends who are like family - it's a good week. I hope it's a good week for anyone who's reading this too.

Crisis With Too Many Settings

I'm having a bit of a crisis now with the Big Friday Game. I had an adventure in mind which a) I love b ) feel is appropriately epic for a special get-together and c) has a lot of ties to the Freedom City setting. All set, right?

Well I was - then I started looking through my campaign binders. I have one for Freedom City (M&M 2E). I have one for Atomic City (M&M 3E), Then I have the Emerald City book (also 3E). I have a lot of good stuff sketched out. Almost all for 3E.

I want to run the big adventure, but it's written for 2E. I have a big bunch of stuff for 2E, much of it tied to Freedom City. I don't really want to convert it all. But I really like 3E. I don't want to move it to Emerald City either.

I also really like my home-grown setting. I could use it instead but I don't want to tie it to the Freedom-verse.  I want it to be completely free. It will have a fair number of Champions nods, and maybe some M&M bits too, but I don't want it to be one more city in the Freedom City setting.

If I am looking at this as a kickoff for a new campaign, and I want that campaign to be in my own city, do I want to weigh it down with 2E? If I don't want it tied to Freedom City it's probably better to not even run this adventure and use one of my own ideas instead.

So yes I'm spinning through this little dilemma right now.

If I run this with FC now it's not really a "kickoff" and it doesn't really help me run AC later. If I run FC as the ongoing campaign, I'm limiting my chances of running AC in the near future. If I run it in 2E it's less work (no translation) and it's easier for new players coming over from Pathfinder to get. I just like 3E better for a lot of things.

Of course Freedom City 3rd Edition is in the works. I expect we will see it in the next few months but that doesn't help me run a week from now. If I'm going to run it in the future as a say once a month open-table type game then a well-known setting would make it easier for players to connect their characters to the setting. But a setting of my own design would be easier for me to run.

In a week I will have it figured out and ready to go. This is typical for me early-stage campaign overthinking while climbing up the "how do I want to do this" hill. Once I get over the top it will come together easily. I just have to get to that point.

Ultimate Game: Follow Up

So in my Ultimate Game post I think I left out one big thing:

Why haven't you run it?

 For me, well, it's a combination of a few things:

• Players: I want at least 4 regular committed players to make it worth doing. 
• Opportunity: I have commitments to run other campaigns that we started quite a while back. In general those come first. That also means my players are committed too. 
• Timing: I don't want to run it once and then have to wait for months to play a second session. I've run a lot of my superhero stuff that way over the last few years and I hesitate to call it a real campaign. It's more of a series of one-shot runs some of which feature some of the same characters. 

So I've done it to myself with a set of minimum standards: I need a good mix of players, time to do it right, and the opportunity to run for a while. 

I may finally have the chance to get something going. The day after Thanksgiving we are having a game day and the plan is to take most of the day and play through a Mutants and Masterminds adventure. There are very few published adventures for superhero games that I like pretty much as-written and I am finally going to have a chance to run this one. It's a new mix of players too featuring one of my regulars, a couple of the apprentices, and a couple of new people to our group. I'm looking forward to finally running 

If it works, we could do a follow-up in December during the holiday break. After that one of my goals for next year is to carve out some time, maybe a set weekend, to run a supers game regularly and whoever can make it can play. After our Pathfinder ups and downs this year I'm a little tired of seeing a campaign bounce all over due to multiple schedule issues. This adventure will be one of the big events to bond some of these guys as a team and should be something we can reference years from now - perhaps even a "founding moment". After a series of previews and Issue Zeros I'm aiming to make this a regular monthly title - finally!

Regardless, it's going to be a lot of fun. Pressure? What pressure?

Meme-tastic Monday

Today's Theme: Westworld! If you're not watching it you should be!

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Didn;t think anyone could hold up against Brynner but I'm liking him more and more as the show goes on

My Ultimate Game

Barking Alien posed a good one this month: What is your ultimate game?

I'll answer that, and then I'll expand upon it a bit: how does that drive your other games? The one's you're running now that are not your ultimate?

First though, time for some self-examination:

Genre/Setting
"The universe is your playground" - Supers!

Approach
I outline the setting, I sketch out some factions and villains, the players make their characters and we see where things go. No metaplots. No adventure paths (as an entire campaign anyway). I would figure out certain events that would be happening in each "season" and the players could react (or not) to those in any way they choose.

*Open Table* would be the holiest of grails here. . Supers is the easiest genre to justify characters dropping in and out from session to session. Maybe I run the first and the second Saturdays each month and whoever can make it makes it.

Pace
We might only meet once a month, but I'd like to get through more than one or two combat encounters in that session. More comic book "let's go!" and less planning and optimization ahead of time.


Players/PC
I'd like to have multiple groups running separately in the same setting. Some players might overlap, no problem. Might be an East Coast team, might be a West Coast team, might be in the same city, might be a space team for special occasions too. I'd let the players drive this after a while. Over time I'd like to see the players make multiple characters for different parts of the campaign. I'd like them to design some of the villains too.

System
I agree with BA here - in many ways this is the least important element. I have a multitude of systems and editions of those systems for running supers and I could have a good time with most of them. M&M, Champions, ICONS, Marvel, DC - all of them are worthy.

Now for my contribution: How does thinking of this as my "ultimate" impact my other games?

• Potential Games: Well, I like Rifts. It covers a lot of the same ground as far as freedom while having a more specific flavor. A Savage Worlds Rifts campaign where the rules add to the fun instead of blocking it is very attractive. 
• Actual Games: I like a lot of the "weirder" Pathfinder games. Wrath of the Righteous is PF dialed up to 11 via Mythic Power. It throws balance out the window pretty quickly and the latter half is looking more like a cosmic superhero campaign than a traditional D&D game. Our most-likely second choice after this is Iron Gods where lasers and robots and wrecked spaceships are all part of the package. 
• Other games: For western games I like Deadlands - because there's super tech and supernatural abilities. For Space Opera I like Star Wars - freedom and force powers. For post-apocalyptic I like Gamma World and Rifts - more powers there too. 

As far as "have I run this" - no. I've brushed up against it in some ways but I've never had the full package I discussed above. Have I run my best game already? I doubt it. I like to think I get better over time at this. New games, the occasional new player, a new tool - all of these things help adjust attitudes and approaches to even old games. Knowing what's important and what is not improves with experience. Knowing a particular group tends to improve over time. Hopefully those best games are still ahead!

Un-Horror Games (A Late Halloween Post)

I've never been big on horror RPGs. I don't hate them - I just don't get them. I've read plenty of Lovecraft, like horror movies and shows in general, but they just don't translate to the tabletop for me. Some illustration:

•  I've never seen people jump in fright at a table the way they do in a scary movie. I think this is where "An RPG is not a book or a movie" kicks in really hard for me. I think part of the impact of a horror book or a movie is the lack of control - "please don't open that door" - and yet control is one of the signature features of an RPG. It's what makes them different than a book or a movie. Characters in more traditional media routinely make bad decisions and "go into the creepy barn" when an RPG character might run away, round up some help, or go oil up the chainsaw before entering. It's a completely different situation.

• Most roleplaying games focus on some level of heroic play. You're a bigger than life character fighting the good fight against bad things. Modern D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars, most Savage Worlds campaigns, the various superhero games - all of these tend in that direction. You don't run from evil - you run towards it! Maybe it's because you're a hero, maybe it's because they have the gold and the XP but that's a strong assumption within the game. Horror is usually assuming the opposite - there are things you should run away from and in many cases you cannot defeat at all. At best you can temporarily contain them, and that's fairly unsatisfying to a lot of heroic style players. I'll include myself in that bunch.

• The best I've been able to do and experience is a sense of impending doom. A game like the Warhammer RPG includes situations where the PC's know they have to face a foe they likely cannot defeat but have to do it anyway to save someone or cause some temporary difficulty to the foe. This is different from "fear". It's more of a doomed hero vibe than a horror vibe. I think a fair amount of Call of Cthulu adventures end up falling into this category as well. 

I'm not saying there aren't some people out there who can run it - the right GM, the right system, and the right players might do everything I cannot. I've never seen it in person but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just never worked that way for me, either as a player or as a GM. My attempts at horror games look more like "Ash vs. Evil Dead" than "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and honestly I am fine with that. My players have a good time, I have a good time, everybody wins on some level. 

Yes, in Season 2 The Delta gets possessed! The horror!

I've said it before but the only thing I've seen legitimately scare players in tabletop gaming is level-drains and instant-death poison/traps/magic in old school D&D. Sure, it's random and unfair and terribly inconsiderate of your character's perceived place in the narrative, but isn't that what horror is about? The unexpected? The permanent loss? That's a canvas I can work with, but most players nowadays are not interested in those kinds of mechanics. I suspect that just reinforces my feelings about horror games stated above. It still makes for a nice change of pace every once in a while.

Meme-tastic Monday

I generally keep politics off of the blog but tomorrow is election day in the U.S. This is as close as I'm going to get to the whole thing here.

Halloween Memes

Meme-tatstic Monday