Another reason I don’t go back into Star Wars Legion?
Required play area is 6 feet x 3 feet. I don’t have that kind of room anymore, as an apartment dweller.
Author Archives: Chris
Star Wars
… Nothing but Star Wars, Give me those Star Wars, Dont let them end. Oh Star Wars, If they should bar wars, Please let these Star Wars Stay.
I gotta say, I am a sucker for most Star Wars tabletop games.
I got into X-Wing, Armada and Imperial Assault, al of which have been discontinued.
And now I hear that Star Wars Shatterpoint is the next in line to go that way.
To be fair, I did like the look of the Shatterpoint miniatures more than Star Wars Legion, and I believe I only bought a couple of expansions (Clone Wars Era) before shelving that game in storage.
For Legion, on the other hand, I bought more than a few extra squad boxes for both the Rebellion and the Empire. And then the main game went into storage, while the miniatures found their way to my apartment.
I have a couple of miniature agnostic games that allow me to use them, A Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes Edition and Five Parsecs from Home.
It does make me wonder if I should get a new Starter Set for Legion, since it appears that they pivoted toward Shatterpoint for a while and left Legion to flounder and then shifting back to Legion, but looking at the contents of the Rebellion Starter Set, I have pretty much all the miniatures it includes except for the Wookiees.
Now if they came out with a Scum and Villainy Starter set…
31 Days of RPG Characters
I went and did the 31 Days of RPG Characters challenge and posted the results on Facebook.
The question now is, what do I do with them?
And what about the other systems where I *didn’t* create characters, there were so many?
Hopefully I’ll find time to revisit a few of these characters over time.
For now I just want to get something to the table for a session or two, RPG, wargame, skirmish, or sports.
This challenge took me away from that, though I did have fun doing it.
Let’s see what pulls at me the most over the next few days.
Don’t touch that dial!
Play
If there’s one thing I’ve picked up from watching more Solo RPG videos, especially from The Grouch Couch, it’s that I should be playing more, not trying to write a novel.
There should be more dice rolling and less treating the play session as a creative writing exercise.
And that goes for any other tabletop games I’m trying to play, like Five Leagues and Five Parsecs.
I’ve found myself lost in simple things like trying to hard to come up with background details for a character I may or may not ever play, or trying to come up with names for regions/cities for my Five Leagues map.
And that’s probably one of the things that subconsciously prevents me from delving more into any of the Solo RPGs that i’ve already set up, all three of them.
I have one campaign underway (Star Trek Adventures/Captain’s Log), and two ready to start (Dragonbane, D&D 5E) but now I believe that the issue I was having was trying to describe events THAT HAVE NOT HAPPENED YET.
You can’t write a good story without an outline, so how can I describe how my adventure is going without playing out the situation?
For Star Trek: Excalibur, we’re about to continue our mission of exploration.
Irony: the last bit of storytelling for Star Trek: Excalibur was *totally* a creative writing exercise, no dice were rolled, just trying to advance the plot.
For Dragonbane, my character is about to delve into the unknown catacombs.
For D&D, my two-man party is about to enter the forest in search of a lost scouting party from a local town.
Other games will have some sort of after action report as they are played.
Don’t touch that dial!
Star Trek: Excalibur, S01E03
Ship’s Log, August 3rd, 2154.
The Excalibur has returned us back to our original position prior to our little trip through the spatial rift. We have resumed course to explore the unknown space before us, and have run smack dab into an Andorian patrol.
The Andorians have not acknowledged our hails and appear to have their weapons trained on the Excalibur.
Commander Saguisag orders the hull polarized and to continue hailing the Andorians.
“Charge cannons?”
“No, let’s keep a defensive posture for now.”
The gambit worked, the Andorians do not fire on the Excalibur. The Andorian ships power down their weapons.
“We’re being hailed by the lead ship.”
“On screen.”
A male Andorian appears.
“I am Captain Shabaav of the Andorian Empire.”
“Commander Saguisag, Starfleet. What’s your business here, Captain?”
The Andorian captain furrows his brow.
“You should have received a transmission from your superiors, Commander.”
At that very moment, the communications officer reports a message from Earth, recalling Lt. Commander Riordan back to Earth while the Andorians transfer a member of their race to join the Excalibur crew as an observer and first officer. This crew change is meant to strengthen relations between Earth and the Andorian Empire.
The message is checked and double checked for authenticity, while the Columbia NX-02 arrives to bring Riordan back to Earth.
As Riordan was a popular shipmate aboard Excalibur, some of the crew are not happy with him leaving, nor the idea of an Andorian taking his place.
A goodbye party/welcome ceremony is held aboard Columbia, where Excalibur‘s new XO, Threvak, is introduced. He seems less aggressive than the typical Andorians we’ve encountered in Star Trek.
The Andorian and Earth ship crews say their goodbyes, the Andorians go back to their patrol route, Columbia heads back to Earth, and Excalibur continues on her mission of exploration.
“Ready to resume our mission?”
Looking around the bridge, Commander Saguisag gets nods from his crew.
“Let’s Go!”
And the ship goes into warp.
[end credits]
—
Far too long between these sessions, and this wasn’t even a proper session, just an exercise inmoving the plot along.
I wanted to go back to having an Andorian aboard that I had originally rolled up for this crew, oh so many months ago.
I hoping to find the time to expand this campaign, either through actual play or through just simple writing, even if it looks like an outline more than an actual story.
And yes, “Let’s Go!” is Commander Saguisag’s “Engage!” or “Hit it!” or “I would like the ship to go. Now.”
Beginnings Revisited
Star Trek Adventures has a new sourcebook, The 23rd Century Campaign Guide, and per usual, they included a new career path option:
NOW I can recreate my original FASA Trek trader captain, Mackenzie Decker, if I so choose.
I’m actually thinking of having Decker as an NPC, and maybe pull a nuBSG and do a gender swap on Mackenzie Decker?
I’ve met this cosplayer, Abby Darkstar, and her partner, Keith Zen, both are really nice people.
Anyways.
Decisions, decisions.
Miniatures for War Stories
Observations
A couple of decades ago I dived back into Warhammer 40K, choosing to go that route because I still had some old armies from the 80s and saying that I felt better playing in a sci-fi world instead of the real world when it came to table top wargaming.
I tried to get into Flames of War, a 15mm World War II miniatures game, but that never got past the painting stage.
Eventually I grew tired of Games Workshop’s business model of new rules every 2-3 years with enough changes that you had to pick up some new toys to replace the now invalid ones. So I sold off almost my entire GW Warhammer 40K collection, saving a few units for possible Kill Team play.
And now even Kill Team has lost my interest, with Blood Bowl very close to the same level of general disinterest.
Some months back I decided to pick up one of the new starter sets for Bolt Action, a 28mm scale World War II game. For some reason the idea of US soldiers fighting Nazis appealed to me in a big way.
I put together the 2 dozen miniatures and painted them up, but of course my sense of… duty? (Patriotism? Attraction to the Pacific Theater?) led me to picking up a set of both Imperial Japanese and US Marines for Bolt Action. And they sat around untouched for about 3 months.
Two weeks ago I felt a surge of interest in World War II again, so I opened up the Marines and began assembling them. At the same time I caught a few videos on how to play Bolt Action, along with videos on it’s sister game, Blood Red Skies, which is a World War II air combat game.
Once again I picked up starter set, based on the Battle of Midway, so it contained a squadron of Japanese A6M Zeros, along with a squadron of my beloved F4F Wildcat, the first plane model I ever built, when I was maybe 10.
These games from Warlord are very easy to pick up, with fantastic miniatures to build and paint. So I’ve been jumping between assembling 28mm soldiers and painting 1:200 scale fighter planes.
And this past weekend I finally set up and played 4 of the scenarios in the Bolt Action Starter Set. The Americans won the first and fourth scenarios, the Germans won the second and third.
My interest in this game has increased so much that I’m planning to start a British Army, which would technically be my largest compared to the smaller US, German, and Japanese forces that I’ve already collected.
Soon the Germans will be dealing with the British Airborne and the SAS.
I know, it’s kind of shocking that I didn’t start with SAS in the first place, but they weren’t in the starter set.
And I suppose I can send in a small British commando force to steal some valuable intel from the Japanese?
I’ll have to look that last one up.
Oh, and I also picked up 3 additional squadrons for Blood Red Skies, Messerschmitt BF109Es, Supermarine Spitfire MkIIs, and F4U Corsairs, along with an Ace set for Pappy Boyington. Battle of Britain and Black Sheep Squadron on deck for tabletop play.
Stand By!
Single Player Mode
Star Trek: ODT
About 4+ years ago I had an idea for a Star Trek RPG campaign with an espionage twist.
With STA Captain’s Log I think I can run this one as a solo campaign, which a few changes.
It’s still called Outpost Delta Tioga, in reference to my old house located in San Francisco.
It’s still based out of Science Station D-5 on the Romulan Border.
It’s still an unofficial Starfleet listening post, officially listed as a science station.
Originally I was going to run this during the Lower Decks-era With the California-class U.S.S. Colma. I may switch to late the TOS-era with a modified Archer-class scout ship, since I already created a Captain’s Log crew for a ‘spy themed’ campaign.
AND a 3D printed ship as well.
We’ll see if I can flesh this one out a bit more over time.
Don’t touch that dial!