RPGs, Wargames, and Everything In-Between
If there’s one thing I’ve learned while getting ready to play the solo campaign in Dragonbane it’s that combat is fast and deadly.
I just had Splats run another encounter with a pair of orcs, and I learned how to ‘push a roll’ in order to avoid him getting killed by one orc who was armed with a spear.
He eventually managed to kill the two orcs, with 4 of his 15 hit points left.
MEDIC!
Splats Gleamhelm stood before the gaping mouth of the cave
The cave where the troll had been spotted the previous night by the anxious onlookers who now stood a good distance behind him.
Go on then, Splats, he thought to himself, what’s the worst that could happen, besides getting killed by a troll?
Upon entering the cave, Splats found it unusually well lit, for a cave that is. He didn’t need to light a torch or an oil lamp, it was lit as well as the morning was, just outside.
“Boo,” said a voice ahead of him. It was the troll.
Wasting no time, Splats took a defensive position as the troll strode toward him and proceeded to bite the young Mallard-kin.
“Ack!” Splats exclaimed excitedly, then realized that his armor had taken the brunt of the bite. The troll then gurgled and spit up a tooth and some foul liquid that barely missed Splats, but did piss him off a bit.
Splats then took a couple of swings with his broadsword at the monster, connecting both times and visibly causing the creature some harm.
Another couple of sword strikes by Splats, and the monster spit up again, this time the stench of the troll vomit causing Splats to waver a bit. The troll picked up Splats and hurled him across the cave, his armor once again saving him from serious harm.
Now Splat was really mad. He picked himself up from the ground where he landed, charged the visibly weakened creature while yelling a battle cry, swung for a killing blow…
… and missed, his sword clattering to the floor between himself and his opponent.
Shit, good thing no one saw that, he thought to himself.
Before he could pick up the sword, the monster clawed at him, troll nails scraping against his armor, which protected him once more.
Splats recovered his sword, slashed at the creature once, then twice, and the troll finally fell.
Breathing heavily, Splats proceeded to check the troll for any treasure that it had, but found nothing but a rusty nail, which did actually poke and hurt him and later required a tetanus shot from the local healer.
***
And thus begins the epic tale with the Dragonbane RPG system.
Don’t touch that dial!
One reason I’m excited about this Space: 1999 RPG is that it’s produced by Modiphius Entertainment, the same company who produces the Star Trek Adventures RPG.
And they both use the 2D20 game engine.
Which means I’m gonna try to run both solo, with a Star Trek: Excalibur adventure as a pilot for whatever I end up doing for Space: 1999.
I also found a channel on YouTube of opening titles for RPGs, and they made one specifically for the Space: 1999 game.
Don’t touch that dial!
Friday night I came across an RPG website, selling mainstream and independent role playing games.
I found one called Orbital Blues, a space western that I remember from Kickstarter that for some reason I didn’t pledge back in the day.
I discovered that a solo play system was added so I took the plunge and ordered the game, which included digital copies in addition to the physical books.
I skimmed though about 50 pages and found it a pretty straight forward game system, one that could be used in a Firefly or Cowboy Bebop like setting.
Which is when I remembered that I already had a Cowboy Bebop Role Playing Game, which I did get from Kickstarter, delivered about a month before I moved from the house to the apartment.
I rummaged through some of the storage tubs that I had brought from the house last year, and found the main book and other accessories (dice, GM screen, woolong poker chips).
After flipping though the Cowboy Bebop book, I reckon I can eventually play/not play (heh) both, along side every other system that I have sitting around here, awaiting my attention.
Had I not stored it away and out of sight, I probably would have had another solo campaign all set to not play.
To be fair, I’m sure I still have the Serenity Role Playing Game somewhere in my offsite storage.
The first character that I created in the old FASA Star Trek RPG was Mackenzie Decker, son of Matt Decker, brother of Will Decker. He was ex-Starfleet, resigning his commission after the disappearance of Will Decker after the V’Ger incident. He became an independent freighter captain, and was known by his leather jacket and whip, looking much like Jake Cutter from Tales of the Gold Monkey but without the hat, and Indiana Jones without the fedora.
In the new Star Trek Adventures Exploration Guide, there are two new character creation options, Outpost Scientist (ex: David Marcus) and…
Independent Archaeologist (ex: Vash)
I’m not sure I’ll recreate Mac Decker as this new character option, or just make a new Indy-type character. One of the example Values listed is ‘These artifacts belong in a museum!’ and one of the new Talents listed is ‘Make Your Own Luck’.
Don’t touch that dial!
I decided to think of a quick prompt to kick off my solo Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
The Adventures of Roy Kent (fighter) and Raised by Minotaurs (barbarian)
As with all great adventures, this one starts in a tavern.
The Grumpy Tortoise
Roy and Rai (he hates that name, BTW) are having a meal.
Yeah, that’s all I got.
Don’t touch that dial!
Bolt Action: so I did end up getting the starter set and a couple of other army boxes:
The main US Army list book has an entry for Philippine Scouts, so guess what I found and ordered online?
—
Meanwhile, I got a notification that a Kickstarter reward was shipping, and this one is something I’ve been looking forward to for a while.
Back in the glory days of FASA Corporation, there was the Renegade Legion series of games, which I never got into because I was already into their Battletech series, and we were still doing RPGs more than tabletop wargaming.
Flashforward to around 2020 or so, when FASA Games (a new company working with the original FASA Corporation) came out with a new iteration of FASA Corp’s Interceptor game, which didn’t catch my eye until a few years later when they had a Kickstarter for their Aetherstream: Leviathan game.
Both Interceptor and Leviathan can find their roots in the old Renegade Legion universe, but this new incarnation of FASA Games doesn’t appear to have full rights to that world, so these are under a sub brand called Aetherstream, which appears to be a continuation/offshoot of the original Renegade Legion source material.
Older fans of these games appeared to dislike the fact that it’s not in the same universe as before, but since I never got into it back then, this new version appears to be fine with me.
So next week I should be getting both the Interceptor core set and the Leviathan Academy starter set. The Kickstarter itself was for the launch of Leviathan into FASA Games product line, but I decided to finally pick up Interceptor as well, as an add on.
The main difference between the two games (both then and now) is that Interceptor is about fighter combat while Leviathan is about capital ship combat.
So of course I dragged out some other space games to fiddle with and play until the Aetherstream stuff comes in.
Stand 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!
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.
