Talisman Game Board!

I sauntered across this little gem this weekend and was amazed. This guy made a totally sweet 3-D gameboard for Talisman! (You can watch it with the sound off, its just background Enya music).



You can tell its 2nd edition (the best one) and not 3rd edition (shortened, crappy one) because of the presence of all the center stuff: werewolf, pit fiends, the "dice with death." The 3rd edition one I have now just has you draw cards once you get into the plains of peril, which is totally lame. Fortunately my buddy SuperChad still has my old copy of 2nd edition Talisman. I'm going to get that back from him in a month or so and consider making my own unnecessarily huge gameboard for Talisman. How can I resist after watching that video?

I stopped painting minis and crafting terrain once I moved to Wisconsin, but that video made me desperately miss my pinning vice and foam cutter, even if I'm no longer marching Necrons across fields' of battle.

I keep thinking of other game boards one could build. Arkham Horror maybe, with little light-up 1920s street lights and such. Fireball Island is an obvious one, but that one would have to be functional for the little marbles to roll correctly. What are other games that would benefit from a huge, 3-D terrain board?

Star Wars: Battles of the Outer Rim

STAR WARS: BATTLES OF THE OUTER RIM

EPISODE I

SIEGE OF RYLOTH

It is a dark time for the Galactic Republic. Civil war rages as the newly-formed CONFEDERACY OF INDEPENDENT SYSTEMS declares independence and quickly absorbs a number of important and influential systems into its number. The Republic has responded to this threat by unleashing the GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, in what throughout the galaxy has come to be called THE CLONE WARS.

After a number of defeats on Duro, Commenor and Balmorra in the Core, the bulk of the Separatist forces have withdrawn to the Mid and Outer Rim territories, reinforcing their holdings and controlling access to the Corellian Trade Route hyperspace lanes. Emboldened by the Separatists’ seemingly hasty retreat from the Core worlds, SUPREME CHANCELLOR PALPATINE and the JEDI COUNCIL have deployed a significant force of clones and fleet elements to the Outer Rim to liberate the loyalist systems in the region and break the siege on the hyperspace lanes.

Above the tidally-locked planet Ryloth, a vast battle rages between the armies of the Republic and Separatist Forces. Enmeshed in this battle is the Venator-Class Star Destroyer JUSTICAR, recently sent to the Arkanis Sector from Coruscant to bring much-needed reinforcements to the Republic forces in the Outer Rim …

Two sessions in and the Force is strong!
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Fire up the hyperspace navicomputer and strap on your ridiculously elongated rebel helmet, its time for some Star Wars!

As most of you know, Star Wars is the greatest Space Opera of all time (definition of Space Opera notwithstanding). So my Tuesday night D&D group agreed to drop the Longswords and Magic Missiles and dive into some X-wings and Blaster Rifles after much prodding by me. We even got a sixth player to join us who altered his work schedule just to be able to shoot droids on Tuesday nights. Now that’s dedication to the Force. I downloaded a boatload of Star Wars sound effects I play during the game, and I’m always looking for more, because you just can’t have enough sounds of blaster bolts ricocheting off of lightsabers.

We’ve got a human scout pilot named ‘Rolan Antillies,’ of the upper New Corellia Antilles’es, who is a fairly crappy pilot who’s never actually successfully landed a starship/starfighter/landspeeder/speederbike, but he’s got a famous piloting name so he stays employed. There’s a Bothan scoundrel “technician” for the Grand Army who speaks binary and has an underground hacker following on the holonet that call him ‘The Warlock.’ The Jedi are represented by an acrobatic flippity-doo-dah Jedi named ‘Romulus’ who focuses on the force insomuch as it allows him to aggressively use his lightsaber on stuff; as well as his estranged twin Jedi brother ‘Remus’ who went the Force Wizard path, knocking dudes around with his mind-bullets. There’s also a half-baked jetpack-wearing Clone Sergeant/failed ARC trooper (bad early batch) named ‘A-144’ that was determined not suitable for ARC duty but too skilled (expensive) for genetic recycling, so was shoehorned into the regular Clone Army. Finally there’s the hulking Wookie ne’er-do-well named ‘Garrrgull’ who specializes in tearing the arms off of ‘bots and things.

The group consists of a bunch of semi-random Republic soldiers and contractors all thrown together in the Clone Wars after the Republic Star Destroyer they were traveling on gets hit by a couple Proton Torpedoes upon exiting hyperspace. They were all in the same Turbolift when this happened, and of course the primary power went out. Once they figured out how to get out of the Turbolift shaft the clone is contacted by ‘T-1138’, the clone commander for the ship, who lets him know that droids have breached deck D-327 (which our heroes happened to be on) and are heading for the shield generator in engineering! Early in this adventure they learned that while battle droids have terrible aim, blaster bolts really hurt when 20s are rolled by the DM. We had to break out the ‘Treat Injury’ rules pretty early in the session.

After their first harrowing battle, the PCs decided that rather than take the direct approach and get shot to pieces by battle droids, they’d go through the maintenance tunnels. During their crawl through the dark tunnels they rescued an R5 astromech droid that had become trapped in some live wiring. The Bothan nearly destroyed it trying to retrieve it, but the Corellian pilot – familiar with Republic droid tech – managed to pull off a motivator inversion and re-polarize its core matrix, all using a simple hydrospanner!* As such, the R5 astromech is surprisingly loyal to the failed pilot, and follows him everywhere beeping all the way.

After a few near-misses with avoiding those ubiquitous chasms found in all starships, a number of battles with squads of battle droids trying to destroy the shield generator, and seeing the death of a Jedi Knight at the hand of some Separatist melee-bots, the heroes witnessed a Sorolsuubian Techno-Union chief fly out of the hanger deck and into the sprawling space battle with a kidnapped Twilek ambassador in tow!

As they saw the Techno-Union Separatist leaving in his Sorolsuub Lamba-class assault shuttle, they quickly jumped into any ship they could find in hot pursuit. The pilot, humorously confident in his piloting skills, opted for one of the ARC-170 fighters taking the astromech and the force wizard along as a gunner. The rest of the crew jumped into the “Golden Mynock,” an ambassadorial YT-2400 star transport prototype. Both ships rocketed out of the docking bay in hot pursuit of the Separatist kidnapper.

The space battle was huge, and difficult to keep straight. For some reason I decided that I needed a full four Republic star destroyers, three Separatist Banking Frigates, and one Droid Controller Ship all on the map along with 23 droid tri-fighters, 16 vulture droid fighters, 11 Clone-piloted ARC-170s, 6 Jedi Starfighters, 12 space mines and 5 patches of ‘space debris’ randomly floating about the board while the chase occurred. Oh yeah, and 1/4th of the board was a gravity well due to the pull of the planet Ryloth. This was probably a little too much to keep track of for our first foray into the spaceship combat rules, but I follow the creed that if you think of some awesome thing for a game but don’t know if you can follow all the rules properly, then make rules up on the fly and still do the awesome thing.

The PCs had to do sensor sweeps to see the mines, which would move every round and disappear from the map. They also had to avoid engaging in dog fights with the droid ships as the Techno-Union kidnapper flew past them, and the droid ships would move based on a highly technical algorithm called “my 40k scatter die.” If the PCs got too close to an enemy capital ship I’d roll a chance based on the size of the ship that they get stopped by a tractor beam, but the capital ships were pretty busy defending themselves so the chance was very low.

I anticipated that the PCs would most likely try to cripple the ship they were chasing and catch up to it, using their magnetic clamps to board the ship, or they’d chase the ship into the planet’s gravity well and force it to land. Less likely, but still possible, was that the ship would make it to the Droid Control ship on the other side of the board and that the PCs would have to call in some Laat/i gunships filled with Clone Commandos to board the ship with them and take it down from inside. Instead, they decided to follow the Corellion Pilot’s lead and crash their ships into the docking bay at full speed on the same round that the Techno-Union ship landed to take advantage of the momentary opening in the capital ship’s shields, and busted up every ship in the hanger (including their own).

They crawled out of their ships and into a huge droid firefight and barely survived. A vulture droid ship crashed in behind them and began blowing the hell out of the upside-down ARC-170 the pilot was trapped in, but the Force Wizard made a heck-of-a-roll and Force Gripped it until the Lightsaber Jocky could cut it to shreds. The Wookie nearly died and almost everyone took at least a blaster bolt to the kidneys before the battle was over. You see, I had prepared an encounter in the hanger for the PCs and two groups of Clone Trooper Squads (from the Clone Wars book) just in case of the third possibility, and after a second of consideration I decided to use it as-is, minus a few battle droids that were in the path of the crashing ships. Hey, if you want to land aboard a Droid Control Ship you’re goona see a lot of droids, what can I do? To add insult to injury, the Techno-Union guy ran into the bowels of the ship with the Twilek Ambassador and got away...for now.

Once the hanger was secure and the Bothan slicer hacked into the computer they saw all droid squads in the area converging on their location, so the slicer locked a few doors, the clone and pilot set up a couple explosive traps, and they all went back to their favorite strategy – hide in the maintenance tunnels. Now I’ve got a group of hapless and very wounded Republic soldiers hiding in the astromech maintenance corridors trying to figure out how they are going to contact their buddy T-1138 and get some assistance. Do they try to get to the heavy-defended comm. station and radio for help? Should they go to the heavily-defended detention area where the Separatist bad guy is probably taking the Twilekkian Ambassador? Or should they head to the extremely heavily-defended core reactor and shut down the ship droid controller system?

I love Star Wars.

*Hydrospanner note from the Personal Log of Remus. Entry 03, 19 BBY

The Stars are Right!

Three planets were visible last night (New Years eve 2008) just at sunset, after the sun went down but before the stars came out. Venus was visible all night long and was super-duper bright, and I assume anyone who was out last night saw Venus just below the moon.

But Mercury and Jupiter were skulking around out there too, but were only visible around 5:30pm central time, to the southwest of Venus just above the horizon.

Now granted, the linear alignment may not have an R^2 of 1, but its pretty darn close. Its got at least a 0.985 if I've ever seen it.
I went inside worried that the end of all things had come, but then was relieved to see that Dick Clark was still alive and hosting his New Years Eve special, so things must be fine. This is just a general omen of otherworldly dread, not necessarily an immediate portend to unprecedented disaster.

I look forward to greeting the Great Old Ones when they arise from their subterranean crypts due to this celestial alignment. Wait, maybe they already have...

Happy New Year Everybody!

Ftaghn!

Happy Holidays!

Yes, we have done a woeful job of updating the blog as of late (Cory's last posts notwithstanding). Here is a pictoral essay of what has been going on.

The cactus that we got from Cory's grandma bloomed. The blossom started off as a large pod, opened up for a while, then closed and fell off. It was strange and beautiful. Interestingly, in WI in the winter, a cactus requires more water than you would think.



Cory and I made our first (and second) trips across Lake Wisconsin via the ferry. We didn't know what to do, but the GPS did.





Cory and I went to the RA reunion at UNI earlier this month. Guess who else was there?



We got complimentary passes to eat at the Redeker dining center (now called Piazza). Before we got there, I told Cory we should count all the pajama pants we see (mesh shorts and sweat pants count, too), but the first twelve people we saw were all wearing pajamas, mesh, or sweats, so we decided that we should count people wearing regular clothes, like jeans. But as soon as we got inside the dining center, we were so confused about how to actually get food, we forgot about the counting. After wandering around to all the different stations, where Cory took one of everything, we finally secured enough food to comprise the weirdest meal of all time (black bean burger + butterscotch yogurt + chinese stir fry + cotton candy ice cream).

The actual RA reunion was held in the new McCloud basketball arena, which is a much better building for basketball than the UNIDOME.



The reunion was held in the Alumni Association box behind the basket. Great seats.



Cory's been rollin' some 20-sided dice with his buddies.



We got a kickin' pre-lit Christmas tree.



And we also got over thirty inches of snow. I went to the nearby golf course today for a little cross country skiing. I didn't stay long because it started snowing again. As of the 11 inches of snow we got Thursday-Friday, we have more snow this year than we did last year at this time (remember over 100 inches of snow last year?). We are under a winter weather advisory for tonight with 4-6 more inches of snow. We fly out to visit Cory's parents on Monday, so hopefully the snow will be finished by then.



On that note, Merry Christmas to all and to all, a good night!

Ravenloft, Redux

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So avid readers will remember that I DM'd an online Ravenloft 3.5 ed game on Fantasy Grounds with some buddies of mine a while back. Specifically the "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" game, though we never got into the Castle itself. This was my fauilt, as I didn't have the patience anymore to convert maps and dialogue into type form anymore, and the Castle itself is such a huge project I just gave up. It didn't help that I had made an agreement with a guy on the FG forums that I would convert the realm and encounters around the Castle and village, etc. into FG format and he'd do the Castle itself, except after I sent him my stuff he never reciprocated. That was pretty much the end of it.

Anyway, avid readers will also remember that I have a new local 4e D&D group I have weekly games with (in-person!). Well, they just got transported into Ravenloft (Barovia, specifically) and fought their way into the center of a besieged town, which is under seige by '30 Days of Night'-style zomb-ires (I've altered the EtCR a lot for 4e). Anyway, one of the players plays a halfling ranger/rogue who's a living turret (*pew pew pew*), and he writes a bi-weekly journal of our games in-character. As his last game was their first foray into Ravenloft, I figured my old players and fellow Ravenloftians might appreciate reading it. I've also come up with a new Fear/Horror/Madness percentile-based system into our Ravenloft games that is very Call of Cthulhu-oriented. So far its worked out pretty good and the players seem to like it, so I may post the details of the system in another post.

Just for reference, the characters are Rong the Dragonborn Cleric of the Raven Queen, Arjan the Half-elf Paladin of the Raven Queen, Wil Blackburn the Human Man-at-Arms, Colibri the Tiefling Fire Mage, and KinKal the Halfling Ranger/Rogue.


Journal of KinKal Issue R1

There was a chill in the air as we got our bearings in this new place. It was dusk and a thick fog hung about the forest the bordered the road. The land we had left was snow-covered but here there was none.

We started off in the direction of the town – perhaps someone there could explain where we were. As we moved down the road the fog seemed to get even thicker and a misty rain began to fall. Though I believe the actual temperature was warmer than where we left, the wet air chilled me. And I had a feeling in my gut…something here was just not right.

We eventually reached a gate in the road flanked by two large statues whose heads had been removed. There was no wall beyond the gate or any other reason for it to be there. The thick forest was as it had been on either side of the road.

The gate creaked open – probably a bit of breeze…though it seemed pretty calm. It just seemed creepy but I wasn’t about to let a creaking gate scare me and strode forward. As the rest of the group followed through the gate slammed shut behind us. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and the feeling of dread increased – that was clearly not natural.

I shook off my doubts and we continued forward but there was still that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something wasn’t right.

We broke from the woods as the rain increased from heavy mist to a constant drizzle – not enough to soak you, but enough to be cold and annoying. A town lay in a low spot thick with the ever-present mist. However, we did not see any signs of life – no fires, no light, no smoke from chimneys. As we got closer we could see that the doors and windows of all of the buildings were boarded up.

The muddy road showed signs of recent foot travel from many sets of boots, and with the puddles on the ground and rainy weather they couldn’t have been very old. So someone had to be here, somewhere.

A noise up ahead grabbed our attention – there seemed to be an overturned cart of some sort with humanoid figures around it. It was hard to tell what exactly they were doing though the thick fog…but as we got closer it became clear – they were some sort of sick undead creatures feasting on dead humans!
I felt the bile rise in my throat; these were no simple mindless zombies but were instead actively feasting on the dead bodies! Our new addition – I had learned his name was Wil Blackburn – charged forward but the sickly creatures were faster than they appeared and after deftly dodging his blows started swarming around him.

As the paladin marched forward and launched into his attack, he was assaulted from the flank down another street. Fortunately he avoided the attack as the rune-covered creature caused the ground beneath him to open and attempt to swallow him.

The fast zombies gave out a high-pitched scream which was answered from distant rooftops. As we cut down the zombie hoard more of them poured in from the rooftops, surrounding Wil and Ahrjan, while the rune-covered enemy pressed forward. Wil managed to get tangled up with a zombie during an attack and dropped to the ground, managing to get a face full of muddy water which momentarily blinded him.

We were looking a bit pressed and I still felt the horror in my gut. Still I pressed forward a bit as the rune-covered evil sent a wave arcane fear over our front rank. Meanwhile Wil had gotten up and cleared his eyes, but in his drive to strike his foes got his flail tangled and tossed it across the road.

The cart we had seen was now an inferno as Colibri’s bursts had caught that as well as the enemies. I saw a cold determination rise in Rong as he stepped forward and called on the power of the Raven Queen. A shadowy burst of divine energy radiated out from him and several of the creatures screamed as they turned to dust! Ahrjan pressed forward but was trapped by the earth attack and could not reach the runed enemy.

My arrows finally started flying true and I felled a pair of the disgusting creatures that were coming over the rooftops. We had now turned the tide, but the leader was still standing. Rong stepped forward, again invoking his god, and smote the thing. There was a terrible scream as the runes glowed and the creature seemed to collapse in on itself.

Ahrjan yelled some nonsense about that being “his” enemy to defeat but most of us figured it was just more of his “life is pain” morose crap and just nodded until he stopped. Rong seemed a bit surprised at the reaction but little seems to shake the huge Dragonborn. But then again he could have had a look of complete fear for all I knew – his face never seems to change no matter what the situation.

All was quiet…for a moment. Then we heard the scream of another of these wild zombies. The fire – it was clearly visible from most of the town and we pressed on to get away from it before we had more visitors.

Clear of the fire we came upon an open crossroads. In the middle there was a man lying face down. We all suspected…well something. Colibri poked the body with some magical force to see if it would arise as a zombie but it was truly dead…for now. Still, I’d seen enough ambush situations to go marching into this. No, always change the rules when you suspect an ambush. So I quietly climbed to the roof of one of the buildings to our right. Moving stealthily I noted a figure on a roof opposite, seemingly watching the corpse. It was hard to see through the fog but it seemed to be crouched in a pose suggesting a zombie, not a human. I took careful aim and fired – the arrow neatly pierced the creature’s neck and it pitched forward onto the street with little more than a thump.

The group approached the man and he seemed to have some sort of amulet on him – an old symbol of a sun god of some sort. I stayed on the roof, watching for more enemies while the group searched the body. Suddenly they looked up at the building he appeared to be fleeing when he died. I could see in their eyes that something inside was not right. Colibri gave out some sort of scream and started looking around as if he were surrounded by enemies. Before we could act he had launched a spell at Ahrjan. A moment later the madness seemed to clear from his eyes and he looked confused. Ahrjan slapped Colibri to try to clear his senses but it was obvious he now knew he had been affected by some sort of delusion.

Meanwhile Rong and Wil had gone in and taken care of the floating apparition practically before I could get into the building.

We sat to rest a moment but heard the sound of combat farther along the street. It appeared we were not the only ones fighting zombies in this dread place! So off we raced toward the sound. I checked my supply of arrows on the way; a little more than a single quiver. Hopefully there was someone in this forsaken place that could make a straight shaft and put steel to its tip [after all, in 4e I can’t craft anything…].

We came upon what appeared to be the city center. There were barriers constructed across the roads entering the square but one was broken and zombies flooded through the breach. In the middle a single armored female struck down zombies with gusto, but was hard pressed and wounded.

The barriers were high – clearly made to slow the advance of the quick zombies. It took some of my teammates a bit of effort to clear the obstacle, but it hardly slowed me down. Two arrows took care of two zombies currently attacking the armored lady. She looked up a bit surprised at the sudden aid and I simply smiled; “Yes ma’am, the heroes have arrived.”

With our help the zombies were quickly dispatched – even those foul things that hurled globs of putrescence at us. Without hesitation the lady – who we later learned was Ashlan and a Paladin – started directing people to rebuild the barrier. But before we could get very far with that the ground shook with giant footfalls. I could help but wonder what this place was? Where had we ended up? Was this some sort of slow death set upon us by some evil god? Perhaps there was no end to the flow of living dead and it was simply an inevitability for us to join this army? The thought shook me – slaving was my most hated issue but eternal servitude with the torture of the cold pain of death lingering forever?

A barrier burst open, shaking me out of my thoughts. A zombie the size of a house stood in the newly made breach. I hesitated, wondering how something this foul could even exist. Well, that didn’t matter now, let them come and keep coming. I will fill them with arrows until I have no more, then I will cut them with my swords until I create a pile of bodies so high they can no longer reach me! And somewhere, somehow a bard will sing songs of the crazy Halfling that slew an army of zombies!

I let fly with arrows but the shaking of the ground threw off my aim. Wil strode bravely forward but the creature swung its massive hand at him. Though it struck Wil with the force of a battering ram its back swing had hit a building, knocking lose a tall tower. The tower collapsed on the giant zombie causing massive damage!

The group pressed hard, seeing even more, smaller zombies following the giant beast. Apparently the falling tower had done a lot of damage as the big zombie fell under our assault. Still I had a feeling – something was not right. And correct I was, as moments later the thing got back up! I launched arrows burring several deep it its rotting flesh. Rong, Arjan, Colibri, and Wil smashed, burned, and cut not only the giant zombie but all that followed and soon all of the dead had been returned to their rightful state.

Ashlan thanked us and introduced herself. She indicated that the attack seemed to be over for now and we should retire to the tavern to rest and recover.

Even in the warm tavern I could feel the chill inside me. This was not the normal chill of wet, cold weather but a chill that touched something deeper. Should I fall from this evil and rise as one of these foul creatures I truly hope that my companions will destroy me and ensure that I do not rise again. I most certainly will not hesitate to do the same to them.

Maybe this is some test from the Raven Queen for Rong and Ahrjan? Perhaps I was just unlucky enough to be caught up in the “test”? Whatever the case, perhaps I should at least learn a bit about this Queen and what it is I can do to keep her satisfied.