Das Schwarze Auge?

The CRPG fanatic began playing a computer game based on Das Schwarze Auge - "The Dark Eye." That game is Realms of Arcania. I have not played either.

I've long been casually curious about Das Schwarze Auge. It's one of those games that for me just seemed to come up in online forum discussions. People would refer to it, but it was only in German so that was that. You'd have to take someone's word on what it contained, how it was, what you were missing out on, etc.

There is now a Wikipedia entry on it and a number of editions. One of them was translated to English.

It's the earlier ones that hold the most interest to me though. It's the game I flet was teased around the edges as this novel, innovative game that catered to the German market in a way that D&D and other English-language games never could.

Have any of the earlier editions, especially the first, ever been translated into English? It seems from Wikipedia that it's only in German up until 4th (and now 5th) editions. It seems like someone must have made the effort, especially given the interest in the last 10 years or so in older game editions. It would be interesting to read.

Initiative in T2K over at The Ranting Savant

Thanks to Kalizweb I've been reading The Savant's Rantings, a blog with a lot of posts on Twilight: 2000. It's usually v2.2, which I own but I'm less familiar with than with v1.0, the T2K I played originally.

One of the posts I really liked was this one about initiative:

Take the Initiative - Twilight: 2000 Initiative Mechanics and Options

What's interesting about T2K, in its original and later incarnations, is that physical agility and movement speed aren't relevant in initiative. What is, is a mental readiness to act based on several in-game factors. In the original game, which forced you to skip turns based on your "Coolness Under Fire," you could act quickly but not often if you weren't elite or a veteran. In the later game, it's not exactly like that but your experience matters a lot.

It's an interesting concept to think of for a game - basing when you act on your experience and not your dexterity. The analysis in the blog post is worth the time to read if you are mucking about with initiative house rules in your own games.

Shapeshifting Flying Pigs II: The Elric! RPG

It occurred to me today that the Oonai, that'd I'd mentioned yesterday, probably had stats in Elric! Dark Fantasy Roleplaying.* And that in fact, I did own a copy of that game.


Given that I have a Chaosium-to-GURPS 3e conversion chart (from GURPS Cthulhupunk) and a GURPS 3e-to-4e conversion chart (from SJG and my own experience), statting up any of the Elric! creatures is easy enough.

Unfortunately, their stats are pretty mundane - they're kinda big, kinda strong, not too bright but not too dumb. Their real power is shapeshifting - they gain the attacks and defenses of whatever they mimic. So much so that it's easier to just whip up a set of stats for something like this and then set it loose than to "loyally" follow the stats in Elric!

On the bright side, though, I do have some easy stats to convert over for DF, such as, oh, Quaolnargn, the Mist Giant, the Grahluk and Elenoin, Prince Yrkoon . . .




*Yes, the game's title has an exclamation point.

Trogdor the Game - Inside Look

I had some time today to open up Trogdor - "A cooperative game of Burnination, Majesty, and Consumate V's" and give the pieces a look and the rules a read.

First, the images:







The bits are all very nice.

The box is, like every game I've gotten recently, provided with a spacer because the components are too small for the box. I'm not sure why not just a thinner box. Shelf space is at a premium for me and this takes up a lot.

The playing pieces are well made, solid, heavy enough without being overly so, and attractive. Mostly - the guards are kind of bland, but whatever, they're bland in the video game, too. The extra "original" variations of Trogdor are nice - the original "Draw an S for . . . dragon" one, the snake-y Coach Z version, Strong Sad's chiaroscuro shaded version, and Strong Mad's one as well. The DAGRON one by Strong Mad is backed by the "Taster's Choice" version by Homsar, so you really get one more. Plus the "final" version of Trogdor.

The tiles and cards are also attractive and solid.

The rules are well explained (as far as I can see without a playthrough) and very well illustrated.

I plan to give this a go as soon as possible - solo if I can't find the time with my gaming group to play it. I'm reasonably satisfied with my purchase. It looks like a lot of fun.

Trogdor the Burninator - The Game!

I'll open this up tomorrow and try to do an unboxing/quick review. But for now, the answer to "What's in the box (on my stoop)?" was:

Free Game - Barbarian Prince

Actually, it's free games - a number of Dwarfstar games are available for free.

But the one I'm talking about now is Barbarian Prince. Mostly because it came up on boardgame day the other day, and I wanted to make sure I blogged about it so my players would get a chance to check it out.



This is one of those games which I wish was an app or a PC game. I'd play round after round on my computer, where as setting up and playing a solo adventure game is a lot of work I find that - even with a copy printed out - I just won't do. I will soon so I can review it . . . but just looking at it, I'd like to play it repeatedly and offload all of the page flipping, counter moving, and time and resource tracking. Having a physical copy means needing a physical space to play it, and means reading the rules and double-checking to ensure I'm doing it right. Having a computer-arbitrated version means no physical space needed, it's portable, and I can play and learn as I go.

Like Ogre, actually, which also screams out to be a playable one-person game. There was one, but there should be a new one. Along with a PC Barbarian Prince.


Still, I'd pick a physically attractive and well-made reprint of this game up if one were made, especially if it came with a mini I could paint.

4 Games I'd like to Run

Because others I respect have been writing about these, here is my current four in no particular order. Most have five, but I really one have four games I'd really be up for right now. I'm running the other one I'd be up for already.

1) Gamma World - using the setting from 1e/2e Gamma World, pulling partially from Metamorphosis Alpha and seen a little through the eyes of Paranoia.

Probably unfrozen special operations troopers (always a winner), or using an alternative method like the one suggests in The Best of Dragon 1, called "An Alternative Beginning Sequence for Metamorphosis Alpha" by Guy W. McLimore, Jr. of Microtactix, which basically has the PCs generated as clones dispatched to effect repairs. Either way, probably not the usual primitive tribesmen approach, although I like that too.

Obviously, I'd use GURPS. I think GURPS does Gamma World better than Gamma World did, having played the setting with both rules sets.

2) Dungeon Fantasy Gamma - As #1, but with a drop-in group of DF characters. If only to get the players familiar with Gamma World through something they are very familiar with.

It would have to be somewhat powerful DF guys, but wouldn't need to be crazy powerful. Plus, it would really be "depend on what is on your sheet" and not "depend on buying up replacement gear and consumables in town and come back later when the odds are better." You are stuck in Gamma World, deal with it. Use your magic to find out what those pre-loaded hypodermic needles do, and hope one heals 1d HP or restores 1d FP lost to spellcasting.

3) Immortals - our very long discussed but never run game with Immortal characters, run as episodes across history. Inspired by The Highlander and this article in Roleplayer magazine.

4) A short retro-clone campaign. S&W Complete, Labyrinth Lord, or Basic Fantasy. Just to remember what I like about those games and remind me of what I like about GURPS when we get back to it. Maybe even D&D, as in Moldvay, with d6 HP thieves because D4 HP thieves seems like a crazed slap to a class that barely is able to do what it does anyway. It's only +1 HP per level to all of the NPC thieves, anyway - easy enough to implement. Either that or a massive ramping up of their actual thief abilities, so they don't suck at their own job. One of those.

Board Game Day report

Yesterday, two of my DF group and I played board games, since we had nowhere near enough for a good DF session in the current state of things.

Instead we played a few games.


Ogre Designer's Edition - two games here, both the basic rules, since neither of the other guys played before. First game I was the defender, and lost - Ogre marginal victory. Some of it was not terribly efficient defense, but a good part of it was my utter inability to hit treads, period. I was shooting far under 1-in-3 against threads so the Ogre had Move 3 up until only a few turn's move from my CP. I managed to keep it from escaping with GEVs, but lost everything else.

On the next game, the Ogre player went against another defender. His luck turned when he got swamped and chose to stay in place, ramming and fighting, and rolled abysmally on some otherwise easy shots, and then watches as his treads were chipped away rapidly.

We moved on to the next game after that, but maybe another time we'll tackle a full Ogre-and-armor game with multiple units on both sides. I do need to reorganize the box, though - it didn't take storage on edge very well, and the counters were all in a big mess, even the large terrain overlays. Less than half of them stayed in their original slots. The ogres and buildings were fine, but I'll bag the counters for the future.

Munchkin - one very long game of Munchkin, using sets 1-5, 7-8, More Good Cards, and Conan (not that any Conan cards came up.) I got to level 9 and fought a tough monster but someone played Dead and killed it, and the next guy up ran up to level 10 because us other two had nothing left after the previous turn. Happens a lot - the only thing that kept me from winning was expended and couldn't keep the next guy from winning.

Vampyre - So I had this plastic box TSR minigame since 1982 or 3. I know I never played it. I punched out the counters, never read the book until today, and that was that. Today, we read it and played it. In the Basic Game, one of the players won by taking out 3 of Dracula's coffins and chose silver crucifix. He died in the Extended Game as we tried to take out Dracula in his castle. I got a taste of my own medicine when I rolled up 6 Gypsies as opponents, promptly rolled a 6, and then consulted the Melee Table and saw they beat me on a 1-6 on a d6. Sounds exactly like me - "You fail on a 3 or higher on 3d" or "Roll until you fail."

I engaged Dracula and got bitten, but the other player was six moves away . . . and rolled a six, ran up, rolled another 6, +1 for his crucifix, and bang, dead Dracula. Hurrah!

Fun game, although the movement rules are utterly wonky - you roll and resolve movement different based on the worst terrain . . . yet it's a hexcrawl, so it's just easier if you assign movement rates to terrain types. We ended up doing that.

Dominion - Final game, Dominion. Never played this. Deck building game, but since you never have more than a handful of cards, all repeats from ones you picked yourself with your resources, it was easy to get a handle on. I won, 31 vs. 26 vs. 25, with 5 Provinces, 3 Estates, and 2 -1 curses. I had enough of an idea what I was doing that I could compete. I was glad to win something after losing the rest of the time.

All in all, fun gaming. I'd play any of those again - Vampyre after we fix the movement rules a little bit, maybe with a "round down, minimum 1 hex move" approach so there aren't so many optimal movement paths and more choices to make.

Ogre, semi-portable edition

So I'm packing up some games for our non-RPG filled fun-fest of games today. One of them is Ogre: Semi-Portable Edition.

I mean, Kickstarter Edition.



It is approximately the same overall size as the milk crate I use to bring all of my DF related stuff (most of which I don't use) to game. It's so big I kind of don't want to bring much else.

We lost a great Paranoia GM

I got an email yesterday saying that one of my long-time friends, Ed, had passed away. But this is a gaming blog, not a personal blog. So by way of memorial, let me tell you about what an awesome Paranoia GM Ed was.



Remember when I posted about wanting to play the game you imagined, and how that could clash with the game the the GM was imagining?

With Ed behind the "Ignorance and Fear, Fear and Ignorance" emblazoned Paranoia GMs screen, that was not an issue. Not for a second. Ed's grasp on what Paranoia could be and was, was second to none. It was exactly the game you'd see in Jim Halloway's illustrations and in the game books.

I'd practically memorized the books from reading them so many times, hoping to play.

All that got me was more ignorance and more fear.

Playing with Ed behind the screen felt like playing with the Computer itself behind the screen. He was cheerful and happy, eager to have you enjoy the game, and cruelly logically "fair" as you'd squirm and die.

Ed was the kind of GM who'd give you a big red button not to press, and wait until you pressed it. He'd give you the terrible choice of R&D weaponry or not taking R&D weaponry - knowing if you did, it would kill you, but if you didn't, the adventure and the R&D weaponry of your fellow Troubleshooters would do for you. He'd give you a task you couldn't complete without getting past a door you weren't cleared for. He'd give you all the rope you asked for and let you hang your own six clones with it, one after another, laughing heartily with you as they died.

Every decision was horrible, was wrong, and was indefensible in the eyes of the computer. But they only seemed unfair in the sense of Paranoia, not because the GM was being unfair. You knew there was a way to explain your actions, but that your explanation wasn't going to win Ed over just because you'd cowed the GM. Oh no. You would have to have airtight explanations of your traitorous actions to even have a chance at getting him boxed into a place he couldn't justify an execution. You could argue for support and leniency, and you'd sometimes get it, but it wouldn't save you in the end.

You wouldn't necessarily end every mission with a TPK. But you might end it wondering how it was you didn't manage to die six times.

Yet the game was fun. Just fun. You didn't feel frustration, not matter how much your hapless PC was frustrated (Paranoia speak for "repeatedly killed while failing.")

It was good stuff. It's been years since he was up for gaming, or healthy enough to even entertain the idea of even a one-shot. But I enjoyed all the gaming I did with him. Online (endless hours of Mechwarrior as part of Clan Godzilla, mostly fighting each other instead of other clans), by mail (PBMs, I mean), and in person, gaming with him was always fun. I'll miss that chagrined chuckle and sigh of his when we'd once again all team up to take him out because he was too dangerous to let live in a multiplayer game. And I'll remember those Paranoia days.

ACKS Encumbrance - A question

I've been slowly reading through ACKS.

One thing I've been wondering about is the encumbrance system?

As written, it seems like it's reaching for a simplification of encumbrance but manages to make it pretty complex. Instead of a single unit (coins, gp, pounds, kg), you have a number of "stone" you can carry. But a stone isn't really equal to a specific weight (not even the common measurement, the "stone"). Heavy items are 1 stone. Armor is 1 stone. A bundle of smaller items is 1 item, and 6 items is 1 stone, although it's not quite clear to me what the standard, assumed bundle size is.

So it reads like it would take a lot of actual thinking and tinkering to get your encumbrance worked out.

But I've said, the rules aren't the game, how it plays at the table is the game.

So - for ACKS players and refs:

How does it actually play at the table?

Basically, if you run it as written, how is it to run? If you're changing it, that's fine, but not my question.

I'm curious if this is actually smoother and easier than accounting for everything with a common real-world or common in-game metric of weight.

Far Away Land Quick Start

Erik Tenkar is a big, big fan of Far Away Land.

I think thanks in part to him, there are some FAL Quick Start rules available. They are PWYW - Pay What You Want. AKA, get it for free, come back sometime later and give them some money because you liked the work.

Here is Tenkar's post about the rules availability:

Free - Far Away Land Quick Start

Or if you prefer a direct link from here, click on the image:



You have nothing to risk getting them. And from what I've seen so far of them, they are attractive and a fun read. Hopefully I'll get to sit in on one of Tenkar's Roll20 sessions and see how it plays.

PWYW for Computer Board Games

I saw a news article about this:

Humble Bundle

It's Pay What You Want (PWYW) for Talisman and two other games, and if you pay more than $7 you get Settlers of Catan and a few more games on top of that.

I'd really like these in a format I could run on my Kindle Fire, not my PC, but if that's an option I don't see it. But I might go in for the lower level, just to get Talisman. Settlers is immensely popular, but that's the main reason I am interested in it. It must be popular for a reason. But I'm not a build-and-trade kind of guy. I'm a tactical or strategic wargamer type. But Talisman - yeah, Talisman. I want that. It was free for a bit but that was before I had my Kindle and I couldn't bank it without a device to deliver it to. So this might be my chance to play that classic game.

Car Wars Arenas kickstarter

There is a new Kickstarter campaign for Car Wars, for an arena supplement. This is for Classic Car Wars, aka the old version not the 5e re-start or the eventually-being-done 6e version.



It looks good - an old-style boxed set of arena maps, scaled for the countermix and rules I'm used to.

I'm holding off, for now, for two reasons:

- I have the supplements these maps were taken from, and in fact I've hand-drawn at least two of them.

- I haven't played Car Wars more than twice in the past two decades (!) and not even once in the past decade. That tells me these maps aren't likely to see a lot of use.

I may eventually join in, if I stumble across an unused gift card balance or just decide I like all of the extras enough to jump in an support SJG and a game I love and played so many times. But for now, I'm just passing along the word.

How I deal with encumbrance in non-GURPS games.

The other day I mentioned that I run encumbrance strictly in GURPS, and that I think the importance it rates in the game and the ease of handling it (clear and discrete levels, real world measurement) encouraged me to do that.

In Swords & Wizardry, I said I just eyeball my gear and estimate. There is a pretty good reason for this. As far as I can tell, in S&W Complete:

- Weapons are extremely heavy (10 pound bastard swords, 10 pound spears, 2 pound daggers, etc.)
- Armor isn't exactly light, either (70 pound plate armor)
- Non-weapon equipment doesn't have any listed weights at all.
- A "normal" level of gear, not counting armor and weapons, is 10 pounds.
- We're playing a 100 coins/pound treasure system.

So I eyeball it. Non-weapon gear is a basically set amount of vague total weight for a nebulous amount of gear. Maybe to make up for that, armor and weapons are very heavy. My armor and weapons load alone puts me close to my 105 limit for move 12. Add in the 10 pounds and treasure and I go right to move 9. Move 6 is like 70 pounds away from my starting point, which is 7000 coins. Most of the time that's not what we're carrying around. Since my move can't ever go up to 12, and rarely (let's say never in actual play) goes to 6. So I don't track encumbrance. The game makes it not-important. It doesn't care so I sure don't either. (On the other hand, I have a five-digit XP total exact down to the ones column, and a treasure total tracked the same way. Those matter a whole lot in S&W! I bet most other OSR types have their XP total as exact as I do, too)

In D&D5, encumbrance is a little more detailed. But I found that my armor choice determined my move and encumbrance level rather more than anything else. So again, eyeballing it based on my very large gear choices. I don't carry a lot of assorted crud in dungeons (probably a smaller assortment of gear than the stuff I carry in my actual toted-to-work-and-play backpack, which is chock full of everything). So I could make an almost certainly accurate assessment of my load based mainly on my big combat gear.

In our AD&D days, tracking encumbrance was such a pain I think I started handing out Heward's Handy Haversacks and Bags of Holding ASAP so I'd have an excuse to not keep track. I still don't really get the whole coins-to-relative-bulk-and-weight thing. I mean, I understand the intent but I had to look up everything, and I don't think anyone really knew what to do with it all. We played totally mapless and didn't track torch burning times or anything, either, so movement rate didn't matter unless you were faster than human. We'd read about poor Dimwall and Drudge but we wouldn't calculate encumbrance. We might go as far as counting our load the first time we made a character, but it was quickly ignored in actual play.

This isn't to say I don't look at old-school dungeons that have a 10' pit with a dead thief in it with a sack filled with 3000 sp and leather armor and don't think "He was carrying 300 pounds of coins?" It's just that I couldn't tell you what leather armor did to your encumbrance level without looking it up each time.

I wish I could recall how we did it in Rolemaster. Maybe the wrong way, I can't recall. Maybe not at all, since it was basically my AD&D group, minus a few others, that made the jump. Same with most of the non-fantasy games - it's been too long, but since I can't tell you off the top of my head how encumbrance worked in Top Secret, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, Twilight 2000, Traveller, etc. means we probably didn't pay attention to them. None of them are very gear-carrying-centric games, though, since you always had a vehicle around or got dumped on Volturnus with nothing.

But that's why I think the game system matters. The approach you choose matters, the effect of encumbrance matters, and if the game system doesn't think it's important, or makes it clunky to track, I don't track it. If it makes it easy enough, and important enough, I'll do it.

Strict Encumbrance, GURPS, & My Games

"STRICT ENCUMBRANCE MUST BE TRACKED OR YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL LOGISTICAL CHALLENGE."

- Not the DMG.

Apologies to Gary Gygax, whose "Meaningful campaign" quote has been much mocked but also much commented upon.

Encumbrance seems to be one of the issues that splits old-school gamers. Track it strictly? Track it strictly but come up with an alternative method, such as item slots or large items vs. small items? Come up with some alternative? Appendix O doesn't get the love that Appendix N or the Random Harlot Sub-Table receive.

I go with strict tracking.

In my GURPS games, in fact, in every one of my GURPS campaigns, encumbrance is tracked pretty strictly. On a 5-point strictness scale, with 5 being "by the book, always" and 1 being "who cares?", we play every game at either a 4 or a 5. Usually both.

I think this is because encumbrance is so deeply embedded into the core of GURPS.

Encumbrance is handled with a simple, concrete, real-world metric - weight. Bulk matters abstractly (hard to hide under a table with a halberd, say) but weight is concrete and tracked. Your strength (ST) stat directly translates to your maximum load. Just about all gear comes with weight. We routinely keep track of weight and I expect all of my players to be able to quote me their loaded weight (PC + gear) at any time.

Why I say it's the game system is that I don't really do more than eyeball my S&W character's gear. I didn't even think about encumbrance for my D&D5 guy. But GURPS, I know to the pound what people are carrying in their normal loadout.

We'll eyeball things and wing it a little in play - it's easy to say that you've got 60 pounds between "Light" and "Medium" encumbrance so adding on this treasure puts you at Medium and that's that, without doing the math beyond estimation.

Like I said, I think it's the rules. Since encumbrance effects so much (Move, Dodge, fatigue after a fight, penalties to load-limited skills, etc.) and the limits are so embedded into the system, and the metric for it is so common and easy to grasp, it's something we all track. No "200 gp weight for a scroll, and GP are 10 to the pound, but scrolls are bulky and have more encumbrance" to foul up tracking. No bulk-conflated-with-weight issues. You need to deal with bulk on its own, with a GM's judgement, but it's easy to get strict encumbrance tracking.

And so every GURPS game I've played, back to when we just messed around killing each other in Man-to-Man, we've known how much gear we're carrying. It's easy enough, and a big enough deal to not be a big deal at all.

Paranormal Exterminator Minis

I'm not saying I need these. Or that I'll use them. Or that my players must buy these for me.



Nothing of the sort.

But I am just saying that I own a complete and intact copy of West End Games' Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game.

That's all.

Honduran Ape City

This is one of those articles which inadvertently acts as the elevator pitch for a GURPS campaign:

Lost City Discovered in the Honduran Rain Forest

Or to put it better - Lost APE CIVILIZATION Discovered in Honduran Rain Forest, And For Some Reason We Need Former SAS Bodyguards. You know, for reasons.



Gee, GURPS Action anyone, combined with a crypto-zoological/Planet of the Apes bent and a crazed Bond villain with his ape army? Monster Hunters, finding all-too-horrible proof that apes ruled us in the past and were-apes walk amongst us?


You could easily re-skin this for an 19th century explorers campaign set in Space:1889, a Call of Cthulhu-type investigation game, a Cliffhangers game, or peel it all the way back for fantasy gaming (although you wouldn't have archeologists.)

It is kind of sad, though, to see that King Gorillicus the Great's great empire went the away of Ozymandius's mighty works, though.

Call of Cthulhu vs. Dungeon Fantasy

Inspired by the comments on my previous post, and my own experiences in DF and CoC:

In CoC:

You hear about Cthulhu from moldy books that sear your grasp on reality away, or from the gibbering of insane cultists.

In DF:

You hear about Cthulhu in a bar, from a veteran adventurer who says it ate 1d6 of his hirelings automatically per turn.

In CoC:

Cthulhu has cultists, and, except for their warped magic-using leader, are all degenerate sub-humans who threaten you with illegal firearms and disregard for your life.

In DF:

Cthulhu has cultists, but like their warped magic-using leader, are all degenerate sub-humans with extra powers because Degenerate and Sub-Human are power-increasing monster prefixes, and who threaten you through sheer numbers.

In CoC:

If you see Cthulhu, or even a minor tentacled horror, you lose SAN and then start to lose PCs, too. Any damage suffered is basically permanent.

In DF:

If you see Cthulhu, you make your Fright Check and then start casting buff spells. It's going to be a rough fight. You might lose some PCs, but they can be brought back with Great Wish or Resurrection.

In CoC:

Cthulhu cannot be destroyed. He can barely even be countered. Victory is keeping him from fully awakening.

In DF:

Cthulhu has HP. You may not be able to kill him just by whittling off his HP, but you can kill him or at least his physical form. Keeping from fully awakening is the key to making the fight easier.

In CoC:

The reward for "defeating" Cthulhu is that some of your investigators still have some of their sanity.

In DF:

Cthulhu has treasure. Lots of it - he's a boss monster!

Seek, Locate, Exterminate - some Dalek minis

Black Tree Design extended their holiday sale, so I picked up some stuff I was waffling about from my first order.

First and foremost on that list was a Dalek Patrol going for 20% off. Six Daleks plus a Heavy Weapons Dalek, which AFAIK was first seen in the Sylvester McCoy/7th Doctor era. I didn't really A) need a Heavy Weapons Dalek, or B) Seven Daleks, or indeed C) need any Daleks, so you can see how I couldn't resist a package deal that included 7 Daleks for the price of slightly more than 6. When you're buying minis just to have them, buy a set.

Here they are, as yet in pieces.



They're pretty small, in that even Dryst's mini would come up to the disruptor and plunger on these guys. But nonetheless they are extremely cool. They've got the details right and after some careful prep work I see no reason they shouldn't paint up well. It's just a question of color - grey, black, or white and gold? Probably grey, I always liked that scheme for Daleks.



It's unlikely I'll have a gaming use for these guys, right?

I've got the FASA Doctor Who game, a needlessly overcomplicated game if I ever saw one, even compared to Space:1889 or Space Opera or Aftermath. And the only supplement I got was the Dalek set.



But I'm not going to run Doctor Who (heck, I don't even watch it anymore - last eps I saw were years back, re-runs broadcast while I was in Japan and watching literally anything they'd show in English on BSN.) I can't see where else I'd use them offhand.

Although, there is this Jim Holloway picture for inspiration, and at least one set of Dalek stats for a retro-clone . . .



In GURPS they'd be overwhelming unless you found a way to tip them over. Or fought them around stairs, the (IMO silly looking) flying Daleks aside. I'm more of a fan of Daleks solving the "stair problem" by leveling the building or using their time corridor tech to go back and kill the inventor of stairs, not adapting to silly humanoid contrivances. They are the superior beings!

But once they're done, I'll have my own patrol ready to Seek, Locate, and EXTERMINATE!