& more trickeries

Aery Vantage
Casting Time 1 minute
Duration 1 minute/level
Caster must close eyes and stand still for duration of spell or it is broken. Caster's vision is centered at a point up to 100'/level directly above his position. The view can rotate in all directions, and be repositioned on the vertical axis at will.

Feral Spell
Casting Time 10 seconds
Range 10'/level
Duration 1 minute/level
Target domesticated animal must save or revert to a wild or non-domesticated state. The animal's rider or handler may make this saving roll if present and of higher level. Some particularly well-trained animals may gain a bonus to the saving roll. The animal returns to its normal condition when the spell ends. This spell has no effect on creatures of greater than animal intelligence.

Ferrous Charm
Casting Time 1 minute
Duration 10 minutes/level
Cast on an iron object, the object then protects the holder/wielder/wearer, granting a +1 to saving throws/3 levels of caster.

Namelessness
Casting Time 10 seconds
Range 10'
Duration 10 minutes/level
Target saves or cannot remember own name. Nothing else about target's memory is altered.

Riddle
Casting Time 30 seconds
Duration Varies
With this spell, the caster presents a riddle to 1 target/3 levels within hearing range. The caster must use a language the targets understand – but the spell has the peculiar quality of transmitting the voice through ambient noise of volumes that would normally impair the communication. Targets are allowed a saving roll. Those that fail suffer a -1 to all rolls for a number of rounds equal to their intelligence score divided by 2.

Symbol/Ward of Passivity
Casting Time S: 1 hr/lvl, W: 1 min/lvl
AOE S: 30'R/level, W: 10'R/level
Duration S: Permanent, W: 1 hour/level
All who enter the AOE (except caster) must save or suffer a reduction of 1 on to hit rolls, damage and armor class while in AOE.

Symbol/Ward of Weaponlessness
Casting Time S: 1 hr/lvl, W: 1 min/lvl
AOE S: 30'R/level, W: 10'R/level
Duration S: Permanent, W: 1 hour/level
Any who enter the AOE must save vs spells or immediately sheathe, sling, or stow any weapons in hand. All within area of effect must save vs spells to draw a weapon. These effects do not apply to the caster of the Symbol or Ward

Magic Items

Crown of Glass: +20% to all reaction rolls. All henchmen and important retainers within 100' at +2 to hit and morale. It is made of glass and fits narrow heads best.

Potion of Birdsong: imbiber may perfectly sing like any variety of bird known to them, and can communicate in a pan-avian language.

In Praise of Rolemaster

I'd already moved on to Rolemaster by the time AD&D 2nd edition came out, early converted by MERP – converted through sheer force of will really, my friend Ernie foisted it upon me, and we both being thorough Tolkien geeks...it was important to us. But I had read Arms Law, Spell Law, Character Law during their early printings (plastic bags, no glossy covers). I can't say that I could grok the system as a whole until very much later, not until MERP made me do it. It was not presented as a system at first, more as sub-systems (big ones) to tack on to your AD&D game. Very big ones – replacements really. I cannot help but think that Fenlon & Co. were designing a full system from the get-go.

Rolemaster is the only game that I know of that started off complex and has throughout the course of it's recent lifetime (through various iterations) sought to reduce its complexity to a more manageable level. It is to the point that the differences in organization do not form a pair of worse-organized to better-organized - they're both just as fiddly, just differently so...

1. The Resistance Roll Table – a matrix, comparing level of attack to level of resister. 1st level resistance provided 50% chance against 1st level attack. Smoothed out over 20 levels. This could be the only table ever used in a game – this table really is a very even-handed 'core mechanic'. Nothing unknown beforehand, mathematically – essentially the same concept as the magic resistance some creatures in AD&D had.

2. The division of character classes into three categories: Non Spell-User, Semi Spell-User and Pure Spell-User. This is not specifically accurate – there was a fourth category initially - the Hybrid Spell-User. This was essentially the same thing as a Pure Spell-User, the difference having to do with the categories of magic in the game. What I have retained from this, reinforced by my early playing of Tunnels and Trolls, was the division of character classes into no-magic, some-magic, all-magic.

3. Illusions. There was no disbelief a la AD&D. The caster of illusions manipulated the elements (even if that element were only 'light') and created effects that were real physical effects. Disbelieving illusions had always been a pet peeve of mine about AD&D. Broke the wall, as it were.

4. The Mentalism Companion is one of my favorite RPG books. It has some kinda bleh parts, (it's got 158 pages...) - but it has some very organized thoughts on some more outre fantasy role-playing accoutrements: time travel, 'the philosophies of illusion', natural languages, divination (of past, present, and future, each with their own treatment – jeez!), astrology, tarot, dreams...

Games I can't run? Rolemaster. As a referee, I, if not the players too, shied away from combat! It was too much to bear. In the end, character creation in Rolemaster is as far as I can go. It's kinda like Traveller that way – where character creation is itself a rewarding pastime. I even got to the point that I had 3 players create their characters in Rolemaster, and then I took their character sheets and converted them to my home-brew T&T for play! Gug!

Anyway, I'm sure I'll return to this later, one of those things. And it's given me an idea for a series of adventurous posts – Games I Can't Run!

Antimagics & other trickeries

Ethereal Room
Casting Time 1 second
Duration 1 hour/level
Transports caster to an extra-dimensional space. Caster may touch others to bring 1 target/3 levels – magic resistant targets may resist. Every hour that the Ethereal Room is occupied by a sentient being, there is a 1% chance that an Ethereal encounter will occur. The spell leaves a magical anchor point where the spell was cast, and this point is where the caster will be returned at the end of the spell. Casting an Ethereal Room spell while in an Ethereal Room serves to add an hour to its duration. Note that duration applies to the amount of time the Ethereal Room can be inhabited – the room itself is persistent and unique to each caster. The room is a cube, 10' a side/caster level. The caster (and any other targets of caster's choosing) may leave the room before the duration expires.

Hidden Mind
Casting Time 1 minute
Duration 1 hour/level
Caster does not register as sentient, intelligent, conscious, or possessing an identity for purposes of senses and detections that discriminate such points of perception. Empathy, ESP, and mind-affecting spells/abilities cannot target the caster of Hidden Mind.

Hindrance, Countercast, Foilspell
Casting Time 1 second
Range 20' + 10'/level
Duration 1 round/3 levels
Target saves or is at -1 to hit & damage, armor class is worsened one step, and attempts to cast spells fail.

Pact
Casting Time 1 minute
Duration 1 week/level
This spell targets at least two individuals – the caster may include an additional target for each level above the second. The caster need not necessarily be one of the targets. Unwilling targets may save to not be bound by the pact. It enforces an agreement between the targets. Either party that breaks the terms of the agreement suffers a negative modifier all rolls made for a full month after the pact is broken. This modifier is -1/3 levels the caster has attained.

Suppress Magic
Casting Time 1 minute
Range 10'/level
Duration 1 min/level
Target spell or magical effect must resist or be suppressed and inactive for duration of this spell. Resistance is based on caster level and the target's level. The spell has a 50% base chance of success, modified by +5% per level if the caster's level is higher than the target's, and -5% per level if the opposite is true.

Symbol/Ward of Exclusion (Minor)
Casting Time S: 1 hr/lvl, W: 1 min/lvl
AOE S: 30'R/level, W: 10'R/level
Duration S: Permanent, W: 1 hour/level
All magic items brought into AOE by anyone other than caster must resist or have their powers suppressed while in the AOE. All spells cast by anyone other than the caster of the Symbol or Ward (in AOE) must save vs. spells or the spell fails and is wasted.

Reading vs Writing

DAMMIT! READING WINS AGAIN!

Zulgyan of the boards started up his blog and it is as much a doozy as pretty much everything
else he presents to us! Avail yourselves - prepare for heavy reading - a trip back to the recent
past and his considered views (and many worthy others!). I have nothing but admiration for this fellow!

Goodbye Word of Thool

You will be missed. I don't know what else to say.

Blogs vs Boards

Boards win again!

I've had consistent internet for 6 months now, after about as many years without. The RPG blogs caught me quick and really blew my mind - looks like I got connected at a good time. But there was a lot going on in the years that I was not on the net (consult prior post for some examples).

Before the blogs, there were the boards. My journey has been backwards - stumbling into ODDD, K&K, Trollbridge, Doomsday, Alternate History, etc after finding out about them through the blogosphere.

I've never been much for monologue. The boards are dialog. Blogs are good, but really - the exchange, the community - the boards are where it's at for conversation.

Fight On! #5 & my AD&D alignment spread

Skimming through Fight On activated my somewhat dormant AD&D-cortex (hindbrain? ganglia?) - totally tangential - but I figured out the percentage breakdown of alignments in my AD&D universe.

So anyway! Had a chance to look through Fight On #5 - not yet to read the adventures in-depth, but man it looks good. Standout to me so far has been an article called "Dungeon Motivations" (by Paul Vermeren, with acknowledged shout-outs). The title suggests perhaps some musing on the ever-rich question WHY DO DUNGEONS EXIST?

No no. Better. 100 answers to the ever-droll question WHY IS MY CHARACTER GOING INTO A DUNGEON ANYWAY? Having been flustered by this question before (is this not something that the player should have already come to terms with?) I think the table is Totally Brilliant! answers provided by d100...some shining examples include:
20 Was double-dog dared to enter the dungeon
and the old double whammy of:
69 Seeks to disprove the existence of the Hollow Earth.
70 Feels a need to do what everyone else is doing.
Though there are plenty more 'conventional' results...and some pretty far out ones also...

And I can't possibly reproduce any of the effects of the Table of Fables (by an author called Age of Fables) - they are too good to extract and view in isolation. I'm a table fan, admittedly. This one is wonderful for generating strange magical effects (I'm a strange-magical-effects fan too.)

Seven Kings Mountains by Judd Karlman (methinks this is his site)is a pretty amazing setting, Dwarf-centric! Yargh! A discreet area with history, and the prime artefact of history - war! It looks like a great place to start an adventure and could open up in a million directions for longer campaigns.

David Bowman's Delver's Delve column shows several different methods toward giving beginning characters a 'fighting chance' - several different ways to 'cheat death' in the interest of keeping a game going without fudging harsh rolls or coddling fiat. I've used some of these techniques before, passed on some before, but just plain never thought of many of them, and it is really interesting to see all of them examined side-by-side.

There's a lot more. The reactions above were induced by about a grand total of 9 or 10 pages - less than 1/8th of the issue. I'll probably post more reaction later - the whole thing is pretty
awesome!

Superjail

Holy shit

T&T Solo Combat Matrix

The matrices in Tunnels and Trolls solo modules served many different uses. Common were Spell Matrices, cross-indexing your paragraph number with the spell you wished to use would yield a result. The matrices were used to add some variability to an otherwise rigidly serial format. And in the case of magic, writing down explicit choices to use specific spells seemed a signal that their use was crucial to proceed (or a temptation to doom oneself!)

As the 'golden age' of Tunnels and Trolls solo module publishing matured, the matrices were applied to more aspects of game play. I've been thinking a lot about solo module writing in general and I'm starting to mess around with more matrices.

One way that solo-module play suffers as compared to GM-player(s) sessions is that the negotiation of Saving Roll levels (for anything, but specifically here) for combat tricks/actions/maneuvers is impossible. So I was thinking about a matrix of combat manoeuvres, yielding a Saving Roll level and stat, to allow for more combat flexibility. It's not the kind of thing that is necessary, but it can lead to breaking a stalemate, creating an opportunity for escape, bypassing armor, etc...

Following is a table giving a rough idea, where the columns are 3 creatures (instead of the paragraph in which that creature is to be found...)

Move	Skeleton	Wolf	Rock Troll	Effect
Desperate Stab(DX)	bad	ok	bad	Roll 1/2 damage and apply it, bypassing armor.
Stunning Bash(ST)	good	bad	ok	(good party!)
Trip(DX)	ok	bad	bad	Flee or foe at 1/2 CBT next round
Disarm(DX)	ok	no	ok	??
Riposte(ST)	ok	no	ok	Deal damage to foe equal to its CBT
Feint(DX)	ok	no	ok	Foe at 1/2 CBT next round
Fighting Retreat(IQ)	ok	bad	ok	??
Flee! Flee!(??speed??)	ok	bad	ok	??

Early hashed implementation.
good = level 1 SR
ok = level 2 SR
bad = level 4 SR
no = SR cannot be made.
something I'll be working on some more - along with trying to get my head wrapped around the process of writing solo module in the first place...ugh

FLGS: The Griffon Bookstore (1)

A while back I tracked down and contacted the propriators of the book and game store that really molded my gaming (and reading) future and asked a few questions, which they were kind enough to answer. The Griffon has been the 'go-to' place for gaming in South Bend Indiana for more than 30 years now and I cannot help but wish that it was not 7-8 hours away from me now (oh, to browse the used-book shelves...)
It's taken me too long to get this posted, and I plan to do some follow up questions too. Thank you Ken and Sarah for taking the time to respond, and thank you also for all the years of providing a welcoming environment!

When did you open The Griffon?
1976

Why did you? It's obvious that the early seventies saw a sort of phenomenal growth of the gaming-market - but it seems the case that small business book stores/game stores are often opened more out of the proprietor(s) interest in the subject itself than making money off it.

Sarah and I were both teachers and the job market at that time especially for Russian language was very soft so we saved up for two years by working various minimum wage jobs to open the Griffon. Yes, we wanted to carry items that we were familiar with and that included both books and games although we thought then that the games would play the minor role.

Was it more 'game-oriented' at the start? I have only vague memories of the original location. Was there as much of a selection of books at the first location? Did either of you run RPGs there? I remember (again vaguely) a pretty large area dedicated to gaming tables there. Mostly miniatures?

For the first 5 years books dominated both sales and square footage of space by a 80 to 20 margin. By the time we were in our 10th year the balance was 50/50 and after 20 years the pendulum had swung to 75% games and 25% books mostly due to the appearance of the book superstores such as Crown, Borders and Barnes & Noble. Today, even though we devote 40% of our square footage to books, it still only accounts for about 15% of our yearly sales. We stay with that mix however because it provides the academic atmosphere we prefer in a gaming store rather than the comic book look.

Ken, I remember interrupting a pretty involved strategy/wargame you were involved with on the second floor of the Colfax store. What kinds of rules have you played, or if that is too inclusive, perhaps a better question would be - what rules do you prefer to play under?

The game you are referring to was Empires in Arms, produced by Avalon Hill. Now out of print. We play more games that involve less setup time and can be finished in one evening of play. Usually no more than 5 hours. That eliminates quite a few of the longer game systems. We particularly enjoy being able to play three 90-minute games in one setting rather than one long game.

What years did you put on conventions? I seem to remember two of them. What are the event count/attendance figures? - if that information is handy (or a ballpark...)

We ran Griffcon for 5 years and the attendance by the end was 300 people over a two day period. We also helped stage the Michiana Valley Wargamers conventions at IUSB for 4 years and the attendance there was about 200 for a two-day convention. We stopped running them because of the constraints due to increased rental prices, fewer people willing to run games, and little profit for a lot of work.

Character's Ultimate Fate (when player stops showing up. 2d4. Stat modifiers applied to player's next character if they return.))
2	Wanders into the hills one summer afternoon. Eaten by a giant spider. -1 IQ.
3	Finds a cursed ring of invisibility and winks out of existence when it is put on. -1 LK.
4-6	Retires and fades into obscurity.
7	Converts to a religion and is exalted on comfortable passing. +1 LK.
8	Becomes Lord of the Spider Hills. +1 CH (son/daughter of said lord...)

Star Trek

to boldly rant where no ranter has ranted before...
I'll not spoil a thing.
You know how some movies grow on you over time?
I believe this one will shrink on me over time.
Kirk, out.

N

J.R.R Tolkien         Everything (up to publication of Silmarillion)
Edgar Rice Burroughs  John Carter of Mars, Tarzan
Robert E. Howard      Conan
Fritz Leiber          Fafred and Grey Mouser
Fred Saberhagen       Empire of the East, The Books of Swords

Harvard Lampoon       Bored of the Rings
Douglas Adams         Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
Various               Thieves' World
Michael Moorcock      Elric Saga, Chronicles of Corum
H.P. Lovecraft        Everything

George R. R. Martin   Song of Ice and Fire series
Jack Vance            Lyonesse Trilogy
Gene Wolf             Book of the New Sun, The Knight
Brian Aldiss          Halyconia Trilogy

I read The Lord of the Rings over and over and over again when I was a kid. I'd estimate that there's easily 6 cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover-to-cover reads before I was 15. Then there were the times I felt like re-reading Moria, Bombadil, Helm's Deep, Fangorn, etc etc etc.
Saberhagen's Empire of the East (collected trilogy of novels) and then his Books of Swords (even the early Lost Swords) - which I read just after finishing the first Shanarra trilogy, thank ye gads! - really blew my mind. I was able to decouple from an absolutely Tolkien-centric universe.
Enter the Multiverse! The Crawling Chaos! Etc. Then I really stopped reading fantasy for a long time. All of the books mentioned had a bearing on my game-play - though many histories, philosophies, and other non-fictions (Machiavelli, Loren Eisley, John McPhee) here go unmentioned. And a boatload of sci-fi and other fictions (Murakami, Borges, Margaret Atwood, Stanislaw Lem, Phillip K. Dick, Bester, Bear, Benford, Brin, Brunner, Niven & Pournelle, etc etc etc)

I don't remember who tipped me off to Game of Thrones, but I do remember that it was late summer of 2003. It was the first thing that I'd read in years that really just made me want to play RPGs.
Other readings had inspired some writing, brain-storming development sessions, but as I continued that series, I just kept getting more and more steam up to play a damn game. So I went to the FLGS (Collectables, Etc.) and played some 3rd. Didn't 'do it' for me, but whatever.

Since then, Aldiss and Gene Wolf and Mr. Vance have each had a huge impact.

Micro-Fanzines?

This exhortation after a 1/2 month of no-blog...nevertheless - Knockspell is accepting articles for upcoming issue. This issue is without theme, and the magazine itself will accept submissions for any and or all of the OOP's and their attendant clones, now freed from their nutrient bath vats.
This is the relevant thread at the ODDBOARD.
I think that it's safe to assume that most of we who read these RPG blogs enjoy DM/GM/Referee -ing, and so probably have some corner of the game that we have and/or do love obsessively and craft wonderous subsystems, lists, tables, lyrical elucidations, etc - or have designed some interesting set pieces, spells, items, traps, monsters, etc, or suites of these in dungeon levels, sub-levels, upper workses...

How many POD fanzine style things are going right now?
Fight On!
Knockspell
Green Devil Face (someday I'll write a trap worth a delver's weight...)
(is Wilderlands of High Fantasy doing a subscription service?)

Here's my 2 ideas for fanzines
Towns, Villages, Cities - like the Catalyst Citybook Series. I like my settlements, but in general, I like other people's more often. Large settlements especially - I've NEVER invented one - just cribbed things from EVERY fantasy town/city I've encountered.

FRICKIN' TABLES!!!! Like the Ready Ref Sheets - all kinds of tables - all kinds of dice - matrixes! All kinds of subjects - maybe grouped in categories of purpose - or just one category: FRICKIN' TABLES!!!! Or maybe 3 subjects per issue...I dunno...I'd get it.

And I'm still waiting for the Earthwide Sandbox Adventure Megazine (ESAM - a world with no oceans...better draw a big lake every once in a while...)

If I could grok working with PDFs and such...ugh...

perusing GenCon list

(warning: gratuitous and arbitrary use of exclamation points!)
Not a single game of Rolemaster!
A couple Swords & Wizardry!
One Tunnels & Trolls!
Several Traveller and AD&D!
Nice to see Toon!
What the F is True Dungeon?(!)
Diplomacy!

I really just want to know how much space is given over to pick-up games and such!

whatevs

Tunnels and Trolls play-by-post is going pretty well. It's been going for about 2 weeks now. Some players bounce in and out, some are daily, some are 2-3 times daily - there's a total of 8 that have made characters, and all but one have participated to some degree. I'm glad to run a game again. It's been too long since I've run anything except what came to be one-offs, auto-aborts,
etc. I feel like I could do this for the rest of my life. I don't mean that in a dramatic sense - I mean it in the sense of 'as long as there's an internet and players' (both of which factors will certainly outlast me). I've tried to open it up as a sandbox and keep accepting players, but the idea was put forward to run an immediate adventure so that we could get out feet wet, get used to PBP. They're proving an inventive lot, really entertaining.

Warhammer FRP continues, in which I play a Dwarf named Yrkoll. The name: its all about the Yrk to me - I don't know why I've always been fascinated with that glob of letters. Yrkoon? That's the only citation I can think of (and only thought of it after I named the charater Yrkoon, and then remembered where it came from...early-senior-moment. One of those naming things...we're in the middle of out first combat, and I think I had a bursh with death in the form of an arrow graze, knocking my leather cap off...

The apothecary at Vedron's is starting an OD&D on rpol that I've joined, and I'm thinking about jumping into something really heavy over at AlternateHistory.

I'm trying to help the Swords & Wizardry project by categorizing creatures for the Monster Compendium encounter tables. It is exactly the kind of RPG-as-OCD task I love love love
and I think that S&W and OSRIC are both really relevant projects. It took some lurk time at the boards before I began to realize that I could help these worthwhile projects - to realize how easy it was even just to offer help.

Starting now to plan for GenCon. Never been. Kinda scared. But, I think it's time. I went to small local conventions in the Northern Indiana area when I was young. But the biggie? I generally avoid crowds as much as I can - and I'm pretty good at it. But there's just too much going on, and over the last few years I've really become very comfortable with how important gaming (and non-mindless escapism in general) is to me. Always has been. Gaming was a huge determinant in my life-of-the-mind (Barton Fink anyone? hoot hoot!).

I started an email interview with the owners of the Griffon Bookstore in South Bend Indiana. This is the FLGS I grew up with. Grew up in is more accurate. The owners (Ken and Sarah) have taught Russian for many years, and provided the only real outlet in town for minatures, a variety of RPGS, board and wargames for more than 30 years now. Unfortunately, I have totally let myself get wrapped up in other things (mostly the games listed above...) and haven't finished it up yet. Dammit! Gotta do that soon...

EDIT: and now helping the computer-translator English of Epées & Sorcellerie become human-reader English. This game is really cool!

Internet vs Books

7 years ago I made a New Year's Resolution (with capital letters) that I actually fulfilled! Read. Constantly. That was it. No real aspirations towards massive life overhauls or anything so dramatic - self-improvement? Bah. I'll go browse Barnes & Noble if I need some of that...

I've always read anyway, but it really did become something that I was dedicated to. Stopped watching TV. Rarely watched movies. Free time was generally spent somewhere in the middle of a sci-fi novel, histories, "literature" (you know, fancy writing about made-up stuff), sometimes game-books.

Now there's the Internet.
My resolve has crumbled. I've got 6 books started (6!), and I can't finish any of them - haven't been able to finish an actual book without a great deal of effort over the last few months (i.e.
since I got on the Internet last November)

So I do end up reading all the time now, PDFs, blogs, forums, articles, etc - it is amazing how
much information is available (I'm sure I'm the first to have noticed that...) Anyway - it looks like the Internet has won this particular face-off.

Is this natural? How long does this dubious honeymoon last? I miss my long attention span! If I could keep it in mind long enough to search, maybe I could remember where I left it...
pg 62 Forever Peace - Joe Haldeman?
pg 84 The Dwarf - Par Lagerkvist? (a nasty little book about a nasty little guy...)
lost in between two articles in a John McPhee collection?
some random amalgamation of texts in noisms' Borges Library?

...there's no telling. Maybe I should do a Google search for my lost attention span...

At some point, I'm going to read a damn book again (waiting on a friend who's getting the last book of Lyonesse soon...). Leiber is one author I'd like to revisit - My guess is that I was too young to catch as much as is probably there (I was a 10 year-old reading things I could find out of Appendix N...and LotR OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN!). Moorcock stands up on re-reading (though Elric pales _heh heh_ against his weird-pulp and Dancers series...

I shouldn't complain - the net is pretty astounding - and the sense of community is singular and something I have found myself really valuing more than I would have anticipated. But these days all I can bring myself to buy are reference materials (good reference books are such amazing things...) - and there are still so many books I really really do want to read...

anyway. enough rant.

EDIT: While I was writing this the Web blowed up with the WotC PDF news.
Whadda Maroon! This post has nothing to do with those pdfs

Play Reports vs Calindrical Events

I know play-reports are hit-or-miss - so bear with me.

Had a pick up game last night, a couple of friends came over unannounced kinda late-ish. Pulled out OGRE and my homemade hex-map (400x400, full color, cool cities and roads, wow!) that went with the scenario for the evening...
Empire Invades Fracticious World!
Player A (Imperial-Alexander):50 pts infantry, 3 Mark V Ogres
Player B (Supermen-Sun Tzu):30 pts infantry, 30 pts armor, 4 sabotages*
Player C (Techlords-Clausewitz):30 pts infantry, 50 pts armor, 1 Mark III Ogre
* sabotage means a 3:1 attack on any target

Despite the Techlord's scheme of an all howitzer buy and the skillful use of the Superman sabotages, the Imperials rolled over them. This meant that the world was under Imperial control.

So...We rolled up Traveller characters and ran them through their service careers(no scouts, one marine, one merchant). They got so old, we decided they had kids, so we rolled up the kids too. We mustered them out young and rolled on a table of worlds to determine where in the universe they mustered out (convienently together and coincidental)

1. Thool
2. Earf
3. Leng (named after the huge plateau in it's ecliptic 'northern' hemisphere)
4. Trantor

Now - before I move on to the roll on this table, we realized that having two generations 'modelled' we could flesh out the 'future history' of this homeworld. So I too rolled up a character (first gene-mush product of the two PCs...gross!) and then we decided to calve off doubles. With a cursory reconfiguration, and a brief pause to autofab, we let them loose in a safe sandbox program which we checked periodically...we were here to GAME not simulate...but old habits being what they are...

Anyway - back to what gaming is REALLY all about...the roll on the table came up 3 - Leng. Awesome! Marines vs Cthuloids! Break out CoC, the Night Gaunts tickle!tickle!tickle! and the scions of the Empire find themselves before the Masked Priest...

They waste him with their needle guns!

(At this point, not only was the sun rising, but our pseudo-selves had generated 34,000 generations on the homeworld! It had become a pastoral world of centaurs! Huh!)

Nevertheless, the Crawling Chaos responded - changed a subtle energy-state of the phlogiston, rendering jump drives inert - the shock wave emanating from Leng 'moving' so much faster than light that none had a moment to prepare (indeed! our sub-selves crashed! We spent the next few hours examining the error logs and dump. In their game they'd destoyed the universe several times and recreated it without our having noticed - gotten bored, retired to castles & keeps and spent most of their time trying to build the perfect 10' pole. Looks like they were really on to something when the Eldritch foulness took them...)

Yep. Just another pick-up game.

(tomorrow's game loop: ...Gamma World->Quirks->4e->Napoleonics->Aftermath->Gamma World...

link

This is a pretty funny (and brief) write-up about reacting to earth-collisions.
(has a cool map too!)
(from link in blogroll)