Author Archives: Chris

Saturday Morning Musings

Posted on by

I was browsing YouTube and came across videos about Bolt Action v3, a World War II tabletop miniatures wargame, which I’ve seen before, and went into a deep dive on how to play, what you need, and what’s in the starter box.

I eventually found myself searching for the starter set, along with US Marines and Imperial Japanese Army  sets, since my interest lies more in the Pacific than the European front.

As I was searching for those, other products appeared, specifically Firelock Games’ Blood & Plunder.

Which made me stop looking for Bolt Action stuff, since I still hadn’t finished building/painting my various factions for that game.

I then remembered that if I really need to scratch that World War II itch, I do have Firelock Games’ War Stories, which is a WWII RPG, and the Pacific expansion that I pledged on Kickstarter will be coming out at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, I may create a small squad/warband based in post D-Day France, or use the pregenerated characters and try playing solo at some point soon.

I’ll probably spend some time with Blood & Plunder as well, as they’re starting their ‘Summer of Plunder 2025’ event this weekend.

Don’t touch that dial!

Catching Up

Posted on by

Ha.  Never will.

—

Basically I come up with great ideas but fail to execute.  Just ask my gaming group(s) who are still waiting on me to start up a D&D campaign here or a sci-fi campaign there, or all of the various unplayed/unread RPG systems or solo boardgames that are sitting around in various boxes and shelves.

And don’t even mention the multitude of sports game projects/replays that I’ve had lined up for the last decade or so.

But I digress.

—

My latest idea was for the War Stories RPG from Firelock games.  It’s based on post-D-Day World War II, European Theatre, and I was thinking about playing a soldier from the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the Japanese-American army unit based in Europe.  Through research I found that they mostly operated on the Italian/French border, so perhaps one soldier got separated from the main unit and ended up in the small group that I was planning to create.

I went back and forth with this idea, because the main archetypes for the game primarily come from British, US or Canadian nationalities but using the lifepath method for character creation has ‘Commonwealth (Anzac, African, Indian, etc)’ as an option, so maybe my Japanese-American could start from there.

I thought about how this character would interact with the rest of the squad, and whether his race would be an issue (of course it would) or would I just ignore that aspect, which wouldn’t feel right either.  Or I can create a small group all from the 442nd but once again I would end up addressing/not addressing their place in the game, and finally realized that I would just be doing it as a gimmick or novelty and it would take away too much from just playing the game.

In the end I’ve decided to shelve this concept and move on to trying to figure out how to play yet another soccer game that I haven’t tried to play yet.

Too Many Shinies

Posted on by

I’m an idiot.

But a lot of you already knew that.

The latest proof:

I ordered and received the X-Men Expansion book for the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game a few months ago, but like most expansions I’ve gotten lately, I may have taken a quick look at it, barely skimming it.

And it wasn’t until today that it dawned on me to look up Alpha Flight,

Lo and behold, the team that went after Wolverine in X-Men #120 is in there (along with Puck but no Marrina), along with full stats.

UNCANNY X-MEN (1963) #121 page by Chris Claremont and John Byrne

Talisman and Nemesis are also listed in the character section, alongside The Master of the World.

I just find it odd that Marrina is mentioned in the description of the various teams in AF’s history, but no character/stat sheet in this book.

At some point I’ll need to retrieve those Alpha Flight miniatures that I 3D printed that are currently in storage.

Don’t touch that dial!

Revision to the Revised Revision

Posted on by

So I fire up an episode of Enterprise, and was immediately reminded that yes, Phlox is another alien aboard the ship, so I reinstated Botta, the Denobulan Engineer.

I thought about restoring the Andorian XO, but that still didn’t make sense to me, though it could have played into where we are in the current adventure, as the Andorian fleet is hailing the Excalibur.

Nah, too tropey for what came to mind for that possible interaction.  Maybe a tweak on that in a later installment.

Don’t touch that dial!

Revised Revision

Posted on by

As I was reviewing the bridge crew of the Excalibur, I realized that I may have made a mistake by including non-humans, specifically an Andorian first officer and Aenar security chief.  So I swapped out all the non-humans.

Again, I may not be as well versed in Enterprise lore, so maybe there eventually are non-humans (besides Vulcans) serving aboard Earth ships by this time (2154).

I also figured that a majority of the crew should be from Earth or Luna, and not colony worlds.

Stay tuned!

Wait a minute….

Posted on by

I’m thinking too big.

I’m thinking that Solo RPGs should be this big grand adventure similar to what happens when a group gets together.

It shouldn’t be that at all.

It *can* be, but I may have to work my way up to that.

I have ideas all the time of what should happen next, but I don’t have to set up the whole game on my tabletop in order to run with it.

It’s about the journey and what happens next, no matter how big or small or whether or not dice are rolled.

It’s story telling.  I’m trying to tell a story.  And I should not let the tools hamper me, they should help or enhance the experience.

—

So, as I had noted back in November, the Excalibur had run into an Andorian blockade, with hails being ignored and weapons being trained on the ship.

Commander Saguisag orders the shields raised 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.

“We’re being hailed by the lead ship.”

“On screen.”

—

See?  Was that so hard?  I can do this, I just need to adapt my playstyle to something simpler.

DON’T TOUCH THAT MF DIAL!

Meanwhile, in the Solo RPG world…

Posted on by

I’ve decided to put Star Trek: Excalibur on hiatus, for the simple reason that I’m not as well versed as I think I need to be in Enterprise-era lore to create a compelling story that I’d be interested in playing.

Instead, I’ll take a look at the other ship/captain combos that I’ve made and see if any of those pique my interest.

Don’t touch that dial!

Upcoming and Incoming

Posted on by

I seriously think I have too many options for gaming, resulting in executive indecision.

I’m reading up on that and may ask my doctor about it during my next annual visit.

In the meantime, I hope to finally get around to playing something more consistently in the next few weeks.

I’ve neglected all of the solo RPGs as I’ve been hopping around reading up different systems, when I should just focus on continuing the adventures of the Excalibur.

– – –

Meanwhile, I’ve been preparing for a couple of games that should be arriving in the next month or so, both from Firelock Games.

Oak and Iron is a tabletop naval game in the age of sail.  They have a second edition coming out soon, so I decided to pick this one up since I finally watched Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.  Ships are in 1:600 scale, and I found a few on MyMiniFactory that I’d like to have included in my games, including the HMS Surprise from the aforementioned M&C movie, and the USS Enterprise , from the late 18th century.

The core set comes with 6 smaller ships, but I did pick up a couple of expansions which contain much larger ships, including 1st/2nd/3rd rate Ships of the Line.

There was a Kickstarter for this last summer, which I backed.

This is basically a smaller scale skirmish version of Blood and Plunder from Firelock, based in the Jamaican city of Port Royal after the earthquake in 1692.

The miniature count for squads average about 6 models, and while I already have models for English, Spanish, Native Americans, and pirates, the core set contains15 models that will represent the French, and I included an add-on of the new Native American set with multi-pose plastic models that I will build as a Maroon (escaped African slaves) faction.

– – –

And of course, I have my sports games to play, but that’s another story.

Stand by!