Random Links for 10/4/2024

It's Friday, time for stuff that doesn't warrant a whole post.

- Next game is 10/20. Ugh. We're monthly. I'll have to see if there is a way to play more often.

- Sorting through my comic collection, I realized I like sci fi/supers crossovers a lot - lots of Dreadstar, Silver Surfer, Guardians of the Galaxy, some later Thor when he's dealing with the Sentinels, etc. in my collection. Well, that and liking certain writers a lot (Starlin and Hama especially).

- Also sorting through it, I'm reminded how much I think the FASERIP system of Marvel Super Heroes did an excellent job of representing four color superheroes. We never got a campaign going because Joe M. would only play Silver Surfer and Jack, Jason, Fred, Rob, and everyone else wouldn't play anyone except Wolverine. Well, maybe Jack would have settled for Spider-Man, but that's about it. Hard for young me to come up with a game to challenge a superteam of Silver Surfer and Wolverine and Spider-Man. Too bad chargen was garbage.

- I've been re-reading some GURPS rules and noted a few I think my players largely honor in the breach - like the penalties to HT rolls to avoid knockout* - and ones I ignore without intending to, like the delayed effects of poisons on SM-positive targets. I have an idea for the latter I kind of like, though, that will see a post next week.



* Which I think I originated in my article for GURPS 3e in Pyramid called ". . . And Stay Down!"

Return of my long-lost Car Wars countermix

Literally decades ago - probably almost 30 years ago now - I introduced a few of my gamers to Car Wars, Deluxe Edition. We played a game. Afterward, I left my whole countermix out on a table on top of the folded-up board from the Dungeon boardgame in the basement. Sometime later - the next day, maybe? - I went down to sort out my counters instead of having them all in one big pile.

They were gone. Nowhere to be found. I searched high and low, and found the Dungeon board on the table, but no counters. All gone.

I searched for quite a while, but assumed they'd been accidentally thrown out during some other cleanup in the basement.

So I literally replaced my entire collection to get a countermix. I found a Car Wars lot on Noble Knight and bought it. Deluxe Car Wars, Dueltrack, etc. I replaced a few map-and-counter supplements, too.

Flash forward to yesterday. I was cleaning out my comics collection, and one by one pulling bags from the comic long boxes and seeing what collection was in each. In one bag, along with a mix of comics, was a weird lumpy mass at the bottom of the oversized bag.

In it was my old countermix.

How it got there, I have no idea. Did someone in my family pour it into the bag and I didn't notice as I put comics in it?

We had cats. Was it possible one sat on the board, dumped the contents into the comics box and therefore the open bag? I used to keep my bagged comics right near my gaming table.

Did I put them away in that bag and complete forgot about it right away?

I have no idea.

But now, decades after my last game of DCW, I have two full countermixes. It's definitely my old countermix - I'd glued wrecks to the back of their unwrecked cars, colored a few favorite black and white counters with colored pencils, and otherwise customized things. And here it is.

Weird.

My replacement mix, sorted, and my old, unsorted mix:

Er, anyone for DCW-era Car Wars?

TWW: Persian Gulf update

I've played a few more turns of Frank Chadwick's Third World War series game, Persian Gulf.

It's been a hot mess.

At the moment, we're just starting Pact First Impulse for War Turn 4.*

- the conflict went nuclear as fast as possible. On the end of War Turn 1. It narrowly avoided going from level 1 to level 2 last turn. All of this benefits the Pact, since Soviet forces get 2:1 on artillery/short range tactical nukes.

- the Pact luck on airpower kept up for 2 more weeks (turns). The RDF B-52 wing was out with maintenance issues for 2 weeks. They shot down the precious A-10s and turned about the AV-8Bs once as well. Severely weather kept the Western Asian theatre out of threat from NATO airpower.

- The Syrians got massacred. Their entire expeditionary force was wiped out after a severe brusing with the Iraqis. They tried to limp home but the Turks crushed them.

- The US 24th ID (real world - become the 4th ID) and a tank bridge and a few assorted units rushed a Soviet force and mauled them badly . . . but when the conflict went nuclear, they suffered from the exchanges. The 4th ID and attacked armored brigade barely escaped destruction, and were mauled badly enough to need to flee to the coast and to get evacuated to Saudi Arabia (well, Bahrain anyway) for reconstituion. In game terms, they have proficiency 7 and took 6 disruptions each. Ouch.

- The Soviet's first wave of reinforcements arrived while the Turks were finishing off the Syrians. Looking at the board, I chose a different approach. In the past, I'd used them to backstop my Iran positions and try to finish off American units. This time, Turkey seemed vulnerable. So I had them rush Turkey . . . and it worked. They smoked most of the defenses and are now debauching into northern Iraq.

- The US had to back off, the Jordanians are surrounded in Iran in Kurdistan, the Kurds have been mauled, the Turks are mauled, and there is little left of the rebel centrist Iranian army.

- But then, the worm turned a bit. A Soviet gambit to finish off the 24th ID cost them a Motor-Rifle Division (in NATO parlance, a mechanized division) . . . in fact thei best one (it was 9-9-6, when front line units in Germany are 10-9-6 and most on the flanks are 7-7-5). And then weather cleared over Western Asia, the B-52s were back in action . . . and turn 4 began.

- The US was able to, finally, use the B-52s for deep strike missions, and went after logistical depots. The B-52s inflicted 46 brigades worth of unsupplied markers in one massive strike. The Soviets had 43 brigades in theatre. So suddenly, the Pact units whooping it up and chasing the mauled RDF to the coast are unsupplied. There aren't remotely enough units to deprive to change this much (using emergency supply redirection to keep the key units in supply), but we'll see. If the US can keep this up, it might change the war. If not, this is a brief respite before the Soviets finish off the rebel units in Iran and crush most if not all of Iraq. We'll see.



* Turns are interesting. Once you do some preliminaries, you get Pact First Impulse, a second phase for Pact units not in a ZOC, then a NATO Reserve Impulse for units not in a ZOC, then a Pact Second Impulse and second phase, then two NATO phases. It's all based on doctrinal assumptions about how both sides make war. Potentially, a Pact unit can move 4x and recover damage 2x; a NATO unit 3x and 3x. Usually it's less thanks to ZOCs (zones of control) and movement.

Early Champions Bundle

There is an early - 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition - Champions Bundle over on Bundle of Holding.

I'm considering getting this. The regular, not expanded version.

I own almost all of the Champions books in the original mix - maybe all of them, I'm not certain about one enemies book. I don't own the screen. All of them are paper, not PDF. I own almost all of the adventures - I'm only missing Stronghold, that I know of.

I didn't get the play very much Champions back in the day . . . but getting the 1st edition boxed set was extremely formative in my gaming experience. I just loved making up super heroes and super villians, and plotting a potential game. I just couldn't get people on board . . . they either wanted to play Marvel or DC superheroes, but not both, and usually not their own made up ones. Plus I'm not as good at plot and story and character as I am at mechanics and open settings and game balance, so I don't think I'd be a great GM. But I loved the system and deeply enjoyed making up NPCs. I liked the adventures, and read them several times. So this is very much in my nostalgia wheelhouse. The question is, do I need them on PDF?

Did anyone GURPSify Hammer's Slammers?

The other day, I was searching the library catalog for Gene Wolfe books. One thing that popped up was a Hammer's Slammers compilation, to which he wrote an intro. I grabbed it, both to read the intro and to read any Slammer's stories I'd missed. There were a couple, surprisingly, and a novel that I missed as well. Lucky for me I didn't miss Rolling Hot, which is just excellent.

That got me thinking, did anyone ever think out what Powerguns would be like in GURPS? They're ammo fed, not battery, but they're energy weapons. No recoil, fire in straight lines, and otherwise act like energy weapons. They tear people up rather than torch them . . . so, lasers? Blasters? Plasma weaponry? I'm fuzzy on what they should be in GURPS terms.

There is a Hammer's Slammers RPG using Traveller, though, on DriveThruRPG. I didn't notice it until now, though.

I'm certainly not going to run a campaign with a Dutch mercenary tank unit using powerguns, but if someone has noodled around on the details of how they'd do the equipment in GURPS I'd like to see a link to it!

Fire in the Lake - 8-turn Tutorial

I just finished the scripted portion of the Fire in the Lake tutorial.
Sorry some of the pictures are a bit unclear, I'm still getting used to the lightning in my new gaming spot.

Here is a brief look at important points to understand the game.

- There are four sides. The NVA, the VC, ARVN, and the US. Each has their own victory conditions.

- The victory conditions of your "ally" doesn't match yours. They have partial overlap - both the US and ARVN benefit from pacified, controlled provinces. The VC and NVA both benefit from occupying territory and controlling it. But they also diverge. You can't have a joint victory. And sometimes your actions to help yourself can push your ally toward victory before you.

- Most of your actions come with a cost - resources (the US and ARVN spend from the same pool, the VC and NVA have seperate pools), reduced support (VC taxes drop support but raise resources, say, while US airstrikes remove enemy units and indirectly improve control but breed hostility from the population), or opportunity. Some actions require you to expose "underground" guerilla units to accomplish them, which open you up to destruction, but staying hidden eliminates your ability to take some actions.

- Often what you do to improve your position undermines your ally - the NVA can convert VC to NVA, the US can force ARVN to spend resources and take actions, and so on.

- There is very little randomness to actions. You roll for effects sometimes, but the core effect generally just works.

- The game is card driven, and acting costs you the chance to something the next turn, often a chance at a good card. You can see the next card coming and try to plan accordingly. Basically only two factions get to act or pass on a given turn. Going makes you ineligible the next turn, unless there is a coup.

- There are a series of Coup cards, which force victory checks and reset the game's rhythm.

In country:

I'm still in Saigon. So are 1 US base, 2 US troops, 2 ARVN troops, and 3 ARVN Police. The area is under COIN (counter-insurgency) control, with passive support from the population of 6. You can see VC and NVA (blue and red, respectively) out provinces.

I Corps becomes a battleground. The NVA infiltrated in 6 units of guerillas. Airstrikes and reinforcements would reduce this down. The province is under NVA control because they outnumber everyone else there - including the VC, importantly.

You can see Hue, the cirle overlapping the province. It's full of US troops, ARVN, ARVN police, and one VC unit that just caused a terror event.

I'm still having trouble recognizing the place names . . . that'll come. Hue, Saigon, Laos . . . those are easy. But Quang Nam vs Quang Ti vs. Quang Duc . . . tougher. I have to search the map until I find them.

Here are a couple of cards - the left is the current, and the VC would use it to terrorize Hue. The right is the next card. At the top is the order of selection, telling you which of the eligible factions goes in what order that turn.

Overall impression?

I like the game. There are a lot of rules, but few come into play any given turn. Turns aren't the slog they'd appear - you are limited in what you can do, and you don't act every turn. You need to plan ahead but you don't get too much of a glimpse at what's coming. I had fun during the tutorial and I'm curious how I'll do playing a faction "against" non-player factions run according to a flow chart. For now, I'll play a short game or two playing all sides just to get familiar with what I'm doing before I try to play a single faction to win.

Random Thoughts & Links for 5/26/2023

Random stuff for a Friday.

- I'm going to be randomly crushingly busy for a month or so. I should keep up a reasonable posting frequency, but I may miss a day here or there with no warning. Aside from this warning.

- Zenopus Archives has an excellent look at Russ Nicholson's artwork.

- Grognardia talks Space: 1889. I love this setting, and I'd happily run a game in it.

I had a lot of Space:1889 minis, actually, but I think I sold off those boxed sets when I realized I'd probably never get to play a game with them.

- Spelljammer happened after I stopped playing AD&D, but I'll admit it is an interesting idea. Here is a look at the tactical considerations that the setting brings up.

- I backed Doug's Kickstarter.


I went print and PDF, even though I really only need PDF. I like to browse magic items and monsters in print even if I don't need to do so.

- Still playing Planescape: Tormemt (Enhanced Edition). Still fun. Still evil. I'm choosing most of the wreck the world options when given them, but basically I just get evil by asking to get paid to do things and talking about chaos. I get the talking thing - it's Planescape, and belief shapes reality - but being mercenary and greedy doesn't seem that evil. At least there is no squick factor here!

- Dreams in the Lichhouse is posting again. His Black City campaign was awesome, so let's see how his Greyhawk game goes.

Star Schlock Sale

I like the concept and minis for this game. I don't forsee getting to play it, but I do like it.

And Star Schlock is having a sale.

"Get 15% off your purchase through Dec 31st by entering promo code HOLIDAY22 during checkout."

Also, free shipping on some orders.

Enjoy!

"Red" Grant in 007

I just watched "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love," the first two Bond movies. I never saw Dr. No beginning to end before; I'd seen From Russia With Love more times than I could easily count.

With that in mind, here is a screenshot of the stats of Robert Shaw's character from From Russia With Love from the James Bond 007 game from Victory Games - Donovan "Red" Grant.

I doubt I could ever run this game well, but man, I wish I could . . . and I'd love to play it run by a GM that really understood the genre well.

I'd post Jaws, but I don't own either movie he's in . . . suffice it to say, he violates several rules on his own.

GURPS Traveller for 4th edition?

I know this exists somewhere, but I can't seem to find it . . . did someone do a conversion document for GURPS Taveller 3rd edition to 4th edition? Unofficial or official?

Fire in the Lake . . . still waiting

I amused myself earlier this year by hoping I'd have Fire in the Lake during August, when I'd have a bit of time to sit and play it.

So far, that is not the case.

It's still At the Printer, with 931 orders. It has to go to charging, and then shipping. So it's another step away at least.

Boo.

I still want it, very much, but it's getting less likely I'll get it when I have free time to really dig into it.

Traveller Book - arrived!

There was a major sewer issue in Stericksburg, today, which precluded me from getting more than a few free minutes today. That said, my copy of The Traveller Book showed up:

Shiny and new!

The printing is very well done, from what I can see. Margins aren't too tight to the binding - which renders books functionally unreadable for me as I'm too frustrated to keep reading. The type is clear, the pictures aren't too fuzzy or black (although they seem a bit darker than I've seen in Starter Traveller.) I was surprised to see red as well as black and white. I've added this to my "to read" list, right near the top. I'm excited to see how Traveller was in one book I felt even back in the day I should have picked up.

Silly Star Wars crossover thought

I work in a place that has TVs running in the background all day. Mostly I ignore them, except to look up at hockey highlights, market news, and Bassmasters on Saturday morning. But on 5/4, they play some station that shows Star Wars all day.

It brought me back a little to playing Star Wars with my cousin as a GM.

It also occasioned the thought that a good Jester Gate location for Felltower would be a pistine forest full of litle hairy cannibal ninjas so badass they're shocked and saddened when they suffer a single casualty wiping out an entire army. Like Horde Pygmies, but way more lethal. They'd have the Bulletproof Nudity trait, too, obviously, n the form of Bulletproof Cuteness.

I'm not saying I'd do it, but I would do it. What kind of treasure to appropriate to hand out to the few, haggard survivors would be a good question. Uhm, getting to visit some friendly ghosts? That would fit the best.

Big Ogre Battlemats pre-order

In case I got this email but you did not:



I'm good on battlefields for my Ogres, but if you need a 3' x 3' battlemat, you're in luck!

Ogre (the video game) on sale 60% off - worth it?

Steam has a sale on the Ogre video game by SJG/Autarch.

It's 60% off, so $9.99 instead of the usual $24.99 (and the usual $12.49 when it is on sale.)

Ogre on Steam

Any opinions on it? Worth it for single player? Many of the reviews I've read highlight the AI as especially bad. If you've got experience to support that or to the contrary, I'd like to know. I would like to be able to play Ogre on my PC, but if it is going to be a case of whupping a dumb AI over and over . . . I'll pass.

Friday Random Links 10/15/2021

Random links for Friday.

- Everything my players ever told me about playing Dark Sun made it sound extremely overpowered, a bit of a mish-mash (dystopian post-apocalypse, but with all of the usual D&D stuff there so you could run an elf cleric). But I'd accept random crud like that in a video game.

Reading this is making me interested in playing it if and when it goes on deep discount on GOG.

I'd never play it tabletop but as a video game? Sure, why not. I wouldn't want to run a game for ST 24 half-giant fighter/psionicist/druids but I'll play one on my screen.

- Speaking of Boot Hill, here is a Boot Hill character generator complete with combat resolution system!

Boot Hill Character Generator 1st edition

I don't recognize the guns . . . I'll have to see what edition I actually own. Probably a later one.

- LJN AD&D Action Figures

I had some of them, including Melf before he became Peralay, probably because "Melf" is not a great name for an Elf. Any more than Worf is for a Dwarf or Morc is for an Orc, Mindy's alien friend notwithstanding. I know Melf was an actual character name in Gary Gygax's AD&D game. Still not a great name.

Catching up on T2K game summaries

I didn't have a lot of time to do gaming stuff today, so I spent it re-reading Dungeon Fantasy (REDACTED) - oh, sorry, my players need to not have a clue here.

I also spent it reading these sessions summaries . . . somehow I'd missed the T2K sessions over on Kaliszweb for a few months. It is only a handful of sessions but I really enjoy them.

Winter Quarters: Captain Bart Moss, the Fire Knights’ New CO

Winter Quarters: Pine Barrens Exercise

Winter Quarters: Attack of the Duster

Winter Quarters: Convoy Return

Some notes:

- the lack of Maks is just weird. Understandable, and all of that, but weird.

- sometimes switching game systems isn't worth the reward of the switch. And sometimes it radically changes the results.

- I need to go back to the beginning and read the others . . . I kinda picked the game up partway through. I mean, in theory, I'm already all ready for game Sunday, so I can just read unrelated stuff, right?

I doubt I'll ever get to play but I do really love reading about T2K.

NATO - the slippery slope to game replacement begins

Ah, dammit. Now I'm reading this. Next I'll be sorting my countermix . . . and if too many are missing, I might need to replace the set. I hope that doesn't happen with 2nd Fleet, that's way too expensive to replace!

Early highlight? Where the TWW series had strategic nuclear exchange as a potential aspect of the game . . . NATO is a bit harsh:

"Immediately upon declaring Tactical Nuclear Warfare, the declaring player rolls the die. On a die roll of 1, 2, or 3, the game ends instantly and the declaring player loses decisively; [. . . ]"

So sure, take a 50/50 shot of just losing outright, but if you do, you get all sorts of "benefits." Loss of some reinforcements, loss of many movement modes, loss of air power . . . but you do gain very destructive nuclear strikes that you can use against the enemy's nuclear attack points and units. I've played with these rules, and they're brutal. It can be interesting but it changes the game. Much like in TWW, once you start to use nukes, the game revolves around deploying your nukes. It's no longer about anything else. It's still fun but it's a different thing entirely.

And, hey, 50% of the time you've lost. Time to play Greg Costikiyan's "Nuclear Winter."

Games I Want: New version of NATO

I can't justify buying this at all:



But I really liked the original game. One of my big regrets is not taking care of that set, and losing enough counters to make it impossible to put back together and play. I can't spend a bunch of $$$ on a game so I can play it one last time, when I don't even have the time and space to set up the ones I do have to play - such as Third World War, War to the Death, and Panzer Blitz.

The new version seems interesting - two different NATO setups (1983, and 1988), changed units and such based on more available information, and a modern set of game rules.

Tempting.

If I could fine the space and time to play, I'd get a used copy of the old game, and play that - it's cheap enough, and it's fun enough, if you have space to set it up to play. It's a pretty brutal game. Airpower is abstracted into strike points, which degrade as the turns go on - air power is use it or lose it, as the game assumes you're using it maximally and suffering damage as you do. Units grind out of existance pretty quickly. And unlike in, say, TWW, US units aren't so tough that it's foolhardy to directly attack them with Soviet units.

The game had a really nice feel to it. Three scenarios - strategic surprise (the Soviets attack from a cold, unmobilized start), tactical surprise (the Soviets attack from a partially mobilized start), and extended buildup (the Soviets attack from a fully mobilized start.) In the first, NATO is caught flat-footed. In the second, NATO sees it coming but isn't fully ready to fight when the Soviets jump off into the offensive. In the last, both sides see it coming and are as ready as they're going to get.

My experience was that the odds of the Soviets winning were in that order, too - you'd get torn to shreds in the first scenario, but NATO just wasn't in position to stop you. In the second, it was more of a tossup - the Soviets had more going but NATO reinforcements came in fast and quick. The third I never won as the Soviets. It was too much of a meatgrinder even with all of those troops.

When I first played the game I didn't like it as much as TWW. The more I played it, though, the more I really enjoyed the challenge of the different scenarios and the very different gameplay. You didn't set up for attacks like in TWW, and airpower was much more useful to the Soviets. Smaller NATO units were in real trouble. But Soviet units would disappear in a blur of poor CRT results if you weren't careful. Overall, it was a game I liked a lot.

Hmm . . . maybe $20 and hoping for a place to set it up in the future isn't a bad idea, eh?

How do I justify my pre-order of Fire in the Lake? Hey, leave me alone, I can't be fully consistent.

Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter

I saw this, thanks to checking in on the SJG Kickstarter:


Now, I have a copy of Call of Cthulhu. Not the boxed set, but rather the 4th edition softcover. That's enough for me - it's a good edition with a lot of extras. If I needed more stuff on my shelves to sit unused, I'd go for the boxed modules. They're a joy to read even I won't ever get to run them.

If you're not as lucky as I, you might be needing a good, physical copy of one of the best games ever designed. The prices for the kickstarter aren't that bad, either. This might be a good chance. I didn't want anyone who reads this blog to miss it and only find out later, like I have with so many things.