Tag Archives: Tabletop

Play

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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!

Beginnings Revisited

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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?

File:Big Wow 2013 - Indiana Jones (8845876192).jpg

I’ve met this cosplayer, Abby Darkstar, and her partner, Keith Zen, both are really nice people.

Anyways.

Decisions, decisions.

Observations

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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!

Combat in Dragonbane

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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!

Prelude: The Duck Knight of the Misty Vale

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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!

Space Cowboys

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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 Story So Far – D&D

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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!