Away until Sunday

I'm offline until the end of the Thanksgiving holiday - see you all in Felltower on Sunday.

Felltower Work

I only had a very short time tonight to work on game stuff, so the blog drew the short straw. I spent it:

- Making some tokens for future GURPS DF Felltower sessions. TokenStamp is very useful.

- Had to make some map modifications as I'd found I didn't properly line something up between my description and my actual map. I liked the description better so I needed to move something! It was a new area, and affects nothing, not for a while . . . but it was bugging me so I got out the eraser and stencils and ruler and fixed the mismatch. My players will read this and probably debate endlessly what I must have changed.

- I filled out the dungeon key with some more details.

- I stocked ahead. It is tough to figure out what monsters go where - I'm jealous of those old level-based random tables for AD&D . . . it would be handy to just roll some up. But it'll take more work to generate the tables than to just pick stuff!

I'm ready for Sunday, but we'll see what else I can cram in before game.

Barbarian WIP

I got a little painting in today:

Zoomed in with the camera, it's easy to see the details I can't see on the actual figure. I'm hoping better lighting will do it. I think I need to start trying to learn to paint with a magnifying glass, like this Alsatian gentleman:

I need to make him a little more colorful, too. Not sure where. Maybe I'll color his clothing, such as it is, with red and blue fringe or highlights.

Felltower & Swashbuckler Advantages

One of my players asked about a few Swashbuckler advantages by email. I answered by email but I though I'd post it here for ease of finding it later.

Audacity - useless, because we don't use the rules for Buying Successes.

Every One's A Critical - Used as written, except that since we don't roll on the Critical Hit Table, that portion of the advantage doesn't factor in. It's still worth 15 points.

Rapier Wit - Used as written, but will actually require the player to say something reasonably witty. That might be unfair, but so is Felltower.

Wizard Hunter - not appropriate for Felltower.

There were other questions, but nothing that really required a big, important ruling.

Saturday's Friday Random Links Post - 11/20/21

Short linky post for today, as I'm out an event related to my other profession.*

-

Holy Flurking Shnit! This is completely awesome.
Human Non-Universals, or: Make Your Own Vancian Culture (tm)

It really does give you Vancian weirdness. What a fantastic idea - especially inverting the universal traits of humanity.

- We’re Running An “After The End” Hexcrawl, Y’all!

We demand writeups, eh?**

- Doug talks to Tenkar about his Kickstarter.

- More good stuff from Lich Van Winkle - Coins in D&D and Found Advancement





* Getting more education, just because, and another certification, also just because.

** I'm still proud I was able to quote Mutants of 2051 A.D. in a GURPS article.

Tank Park - Full!

I completed all six of those cheap plastic snap-together tanks. Here they all are, with a proper-scaled 1/72 King Tiger and two 1/72 scale Wehrmacht soldiers for comparison.

Here they are:

Back row, left to right: Sturmtiger, Sturmpanzer, (proper-scaled) King Tiger.
Front row, left to right: Jagdpanzer IV/70, Tiger, Panther, Stug IV.

And here, for scale issue comparison, is a King Tiger heavy tank being dwarfed by a Tiger heavy tank and matched by a Panther medium tank.

Overall, they're fine. They lack details shown in the pictures (or on the actual tanks, such as the different barrel on the Sturmtiger). They weren't all that easy to assemble. They're nice enough, though, and I will probably mess around with them just for fun.

The model choices are interesting. The Jadgpanzer IV/70 isn't one of those famous and exciting AFVs, but it was an effective and workmanlike antitank weapon. I'm a big Stug fan, because I think they're a very effective vehicle and visually appealing. The Tiger and Panther are ones I own in multiple forms - hard plastic, soft plastic, and now these guys. The Sturmpanzer, as I've said, is a personal favorite even if its use was relatively limited. The Sturmtiger is a total waste. Fun to assemble and look at, but in reality, junk - and seriously, they made 18 of them. 18 other people could buy these kits and we'd have more Sturmtiger models than there were Sturmtigers. Also, they were inaccurate, slow, mechnically unreliable, and ineffective in actual use except - maybe! - one took out a bunch of Shermans with a very lucky hit from its 380mm rocket-mortar. Junk.

Glad I got these and made them.

DFRPG Nordland Bestiary Kickstarter

Gaming Ballistic's new Kickstarter is live:



So far, I'm backing for the PDF - but I may up for the PDF and VTT tokens, too, and will likely upgrade to the hardcover at some point as I like to flip through monster books!