Gloomhaven
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Second game, my character trapped in the basement until Glenn arrived in a magic elevator
Victory!
Solo
Except for a couple of days with friends every month, I am a solitaire gamer.
Or solo gamer.
I miss the days when my friends and I would play games almost every weekend, mostly role-playing games like Star Trek or Top Secret. Nowadays we do RPGs once a month.
Because of this we’re limited to sticking with a given game world or system for a few months, like D&D or Hyperlanes or some superhero-based system. Meanwhile, other systems stay on the shelves, collecting dust.
Imagine my surprise when I went to drivethruRPG.com and discovered this:
The Cepheus Engine is another name for the classic Traveller RPG system, and this product allows one to play without a referee/game master in any of the existing versions of Traveller.
Like the one that I have at home from Mongoose Publishing.
At 150+ pages, this looks to be a good way for me to play Traveller… Solo.
We’ll see.
*dust off Traveller core rule book*
Games Day 04.14.2018
Three games played:
Gloomhaven, a dungeon crawl co-op game. This is the 4th time we’ve attempted the first scenario, and this time we succeeded!
Han Solo Card Game, an adaptation of the in-universe game Sabacc; it even comes with a pair of dice similar to the ones hanging in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon
Dice Throne, which came down to the Paladin (Glenn) vs. the Barbarian (Dave). The Pyromancer (Nelson) and Moon Elf (me) were both knocked out of the game earlier.
Mighty Protectors a.k.a. V&V 3.0
Today our gaming group tried the Mighty Protectors Super-Hero Role-Playing Game.
We created characters (all except me) and ran through a combat session.
Four of the players chose to make random roles for everything, while one had a concept already in mind. We ended up with an interesting group of heroes, all with different power sets, with only a couple of overlapping powers.
The five heroes attacked each other individually, with varying levels of success, mostly due to an occasional bad die roll.
A car was tossed around by a pair of Magneto-type characters, while another pair of heroes squared off, alternately punching and shooting each other with a devitalization (power draining) ray.
All-in-all, I think we’ve found our super hero RPG, choosing this one over Mutants and Masterminds, which all of us had trouble understanding.
Even when we were stumped with a combat situation, we were able to work our way to a solution that made sense.
I look forward to running a full adventure for this, even without playing a character, though I did create a couple on my own.
And they’ll have a butler NPC named Alvis (Jarfred sounded dumb) to attend to their needs. I just have to figure out how/where to introduce him.
I Don’t Want To Grow Up…
What can I say about Toys R Us closing that hasn’t already been said?
Like many folks, it’s a place where I grew up.
It’s the place where I grew up.
The Colma location was where my parents took us for birthday and Christmas gifts, and the occasional time for doing a good thing.
It’s where my friends and I would stop on road trips, in our 20s and 30s, and for me, through my 50s.
It’s where I think we got our first home computer, the ViC-20.
The big Space: 1999 Eagle One Transport, a Christmas gift.
Micronauts.
Most of the Star Wars toys that I ever owned, including the Millennium Falcon that my parents bought for me after telling me they would if I cleaned the house, which I did from top to bottom, to their shock, er, surprise that same day when they got home from work.
Great Mazinga, a birthday purchase after my godmother gave me money in my birthday card. I saw a $20 bill held by a paper clip attached to the card, and when I handed the clipped money to the cashier, she handed a second $20 bill back to me, along with the rest of my change. Talk about surprised, that was more money than I ever had, prior to getting and saving allowance from my parents.
The first Jeff Gordon die cast car that I owned, still sitting in my workstation at the office.
Midnight release of toys for the Star Wars prequels, I think I went to all three of those. They had them for the last three recent Star Wars films.
G.i. Joes and other action figures, from Megos to Marvel Legends.
Fisher-Price Little People.
Plastic model kits.
Estes Rockets, which my Dad was reluctant to let me get into, until he saw a launch at Candlestick Park when my brother was learning how to drive and park. Dad took me to Toys R Us to pick up the Estes Rockets X-15 starter kit, later that day.
I’m not 100% sure it’s where I got the Six Million Dollar Man, or the first Battlestar Galactica toys, or even various early Star Trek toys.
I do recall getting the 12″ Indiana Jones figure there in 1981, but never seeing the original 3.75″ Indy figures.
And the last thing I got from Toys R Us?
The Infinity Gauntlet.
With time I could go on and on about other items acquired from TRU over the years, but I won’t.
I’ll just say that I’ll be sad when the stores close. But the memories will stay with me.
I’m a Toys R Us kid. And I always will be.
HVD 2018
PORGS ARE AWESOME
It was great. And even better when you see it with friends and family.
Rankings:
- A New Hope
- Rogue One
- The Empire Strikes Back
- The Last Jedi
- The Force Awakens
- Return of the Jedi
- Revenge of the Sith
- The Phantom Menace
- Attack of the Clones
I thought Rogue One was a better film. Maybe that will change after I see The Last Jedi again.
Lunch
Today a bunch of us trekked up Larkin Street and had lunch at Little Henry’s.
The last time I ate at a Little Henry’s was probably 30-odd years ago, at the one on Balboa St. This one near work looked more or less the same as the one I’d been to many years ago.
The menu looked about the same, and this time I decided to have breakfast instead of lunch or dinner.
Steak and Eggs. Medium and over hard.
It was about as tasty as any other time that I’ve had that meal, though the portion (i.e. the steak) seemed a bit small.
Others had onion soup, a pasta dish, a meatball sandwich, and a Joe’s Special.
All-in-all, it was satisfying and a bit nostalgic.
Glenn and Dave contemplate our next move, once Nelson added terrain pieces to the map
Our intrepid crew. My character is the little bitty grey koala bear
Empty Diet Pepsi bottle doubling as the main power core in engineering