Get some train scenery miniatures, 1:50, O scale. They were about $9.50 for 100. You can get them pre-painted or unpainted. The pre-painted are sloppily painted. I got these for $3 on eBay.
Then you need some kind of stand. Get some cheap bingo markers, size 2 cm. Got these on eBay for $2.50 for 100 of various colors. I guess pennies are cheaper. You can get 100 pennies for $1.
Painted and super glued to stands before dipping.
Dipped. So, that's about $0.06 each, not including labor and painting materials. See my earlier post on how to paint miniatures.
Close up for details, first 3 rows (ignore the last row, those were other miniatures I was painting at the same time).
Board games these days come with plastic miniatures that way they can charge more money for a game than one with cardboard pieces. I sometimes buy these games just to get the miniatures so I can use them in other RPGs.
I bought Last Night on Earth and Mansions of Madness which have horror related miniatures.
I used to paint lead and pewter miniatures for D&D and used enamel paints. I found out that the soft plastic may melt (become sticky) with enamel paints (oil based) and it's best to use acrylic (water based paints). The acrylic paints are non-toxic and easy to clean with just water.
1. Wash minis in warm sudsy water to remove any mold release residue on the plastic. Manufactures use a mold release spray to help the plastic come out of the injection mold, this may affect your paint as the mold release chemical is non-stick. Dry off your minis.
2. If the mini isn't quite straight, such as swords and weapons are crooked or even the mini doesn't stand properly, you can fix this by just boiling some water, put the water into a cup, and then drop the mini into the hot water. The plastic will just snap back to the original shape. You can then fish the mini out of the hot water and then drop it into a cup of cold water to harden, or bend the mini to the position you want before dropping it into cold water.
3. Clean off excess plastic with an X-ACTO knife.
4. Priming
If you prime your plastic, the chances of the paint cracking and peeling off is reduced. Also it helps the paint stick to the slick plastic.
Use a primer that binds to plastic. I used "ultra flat" white primer. This was $6 before tax from my local auto store for fixing your car. I saw some cheaper primer at the HomeDepot for $4.
Prime miniatures with a white primer if you want brighter colors or a black primer if you want darker colors. Do this outside and away from anything you care about as the primer will blow around and stick to things. Read the directions carefully. I held the spray about 12" from the miniatures and lightly coated them, 1 or 2 passes. You just need to have the primer stick with a light coating, not coat them completely. If you spray too much, you'll erase the nice details the plastic held. Best to be able to still see the original plastic color.
After priming, some details may show up and you might want to remove more excess plastic you might have missed. This primer did seem to make the red plastic miniatures a bit sticky, maybe a slightly different formulation for the plastic that reacts to the primer. Not sure why, but other people noticed the same thing.
Let primer dry overnight.
The primer is oil based, so you should make sure that it's completely dry before painting with acrylics.
5. Painting
Hobby paint is about $4 for 1/4 oz of paint. For a whole range of colors, that's a lot of money.
Instead, I bought cheap Satin Acrylic craft paint from Michaels Craft Store that cost about $1.50 to $0.50 a 2 oz bottle. There was also a variety pack for about $8 for 12 colors. I found "Flesh" and metallic gold and silver. Needed some brushes and palettes too. Paint was $10 total. Other stuff, $12. You can keep the cost down by finding the online Michaels coupon. Get either Satin or "flat" paint. Everything will get shiny when you dip the miniatures. Synthetic brushes are cheaper than natural bristles like camel hair, but you can only use the synthetic brushes with acrylics. The synthetic brushes will melt with enamel, thinner, or the dip. The acrylic paint is non-toxic, so you can do your painting inside.
The trick with painting is to paint inside-out. You start with skin, then hair, then underwear, then pants, coats, hats, etc. You can do ornaments like rings, watches, afterwards. This way, if the paint is strong enough, you can paint over mistakes from the lower layers. Also you can use a wet brush to clean off excess or wait for the paint to dry and do some touch up.
Zombie skin layer only.
Close up of final paint, bases not painted yet.
Final paint. Yeah, it looks pretty ugly because everything is flat and there's no detail. The primary colors are a bit bright, but not to worry. Wait until you see what it looks like after the dip process.
Let the paint dry overnight.
The latest thing is a set of Art Acrylic Paint Pens. They draw on most materials and dry quickly. They're great for touch up and detail work as the pen tips are pretty fine. I bought a set of 24 for less than $6.
6. Dip
Called dipping because originally, the whole miniature was dipped into the paint can and excess was shuck/spun/flicked off. That's pretty messy, contaminates your dip can, and is a waste of dip. I use a brush instead which gives you better control of how much stain to to apply and lets you brush dip off of areas that get too dark.
Get MinWax PolyShades "Dark Walnut". This is a stain combined with a Polyurethane sealer.
This was $13. You'll also need Thinner to clean your brushes, unless you plan on throwing out your brush that you use for dipping. Thinner was $8. (I did find out that as the can of paint dried out after sitting on my shelf for a few years, the paint thickened and the dark shade got too dark. So, the next can I bought is a lighter Oak shade).
I used a brush to brush the MinWax onto the painted miniatures. I just slopped it on. Don't worry about bubbles, they'll disappear. With a brush you can control the amount of shading that you use. Do not use a synthetic brush, the MinWax and Thinner will damage the bristles. I dip just inside my garage for adequate ventilation and left the miniatures there to dry as the fumes are toxic and I didn't want dirt particles blowing around and sticking to the miniatures.
Also, since the MinWax is oil based, you really need to make sure the acrylic paint on the miniatures are completely dry before dipping. Oil and Water does not mix.
Let the dip dry overnight.
Dipped and dried.
You can see highlights and shading that the dip creates without having to paint a base color, highlight, and shade color. The highlights and shading look more natural with a minimum of work. The details of the miniature stand out too. So, don't use too much primer or you'll wipe out the details.
June 18, 2016 was Free RPG Day. I went to my local game store which I had to find online and found they were running Night's Black Agents (NBA). I wanted to try it again because I was interested in running The Dracula Dossier and I wanted to try it again. The game went from 3-6pm. I enjoyed the game and learned about "cherries." When a General Ability is 8 or higher, special skills and options opens up for the character. The "Double Tap" supplement adds even more cherries. These cherries basically adds more "moves" in Apocalypse World parlance. I really loved the cherries because they added a lot to the action-spy-feel of Night's Black Agents.
The Van Helsing Letter was a fun scenario and definitely runs longer than the 3 hour time slot allotted to the game. I had fun. At one point some mooks confronted a shop owner and as my other wet work buddies started to strong arm the mooks, I opted to do something different and as the mook in front of me started to pull a gun out of his pants pocket, I reached in and pulled gun's trigger, shooting him in his leg. Ouch. Outside of the shop, our Parkour expert got into a chase and fight. As a side note, what I did wasn't a cherry, it was something I wanted to do and spent enough General Ability points to succeed in. One thing I was thinking of doing, grabbing the mook and using him as a shield, I was prevented from doing this because it was a cherry and I didn't have a high enough skill to get that move. So, what becomes odd is that when you want to try something unique, but it's codified into the rules, you're not even allowed to try. But if I try something that isn't codified, I can actually try and succeed. Sort of odd.
I enjoyed the game, but I'm still a bit luke warm on Night's Black Agents. With the cherries, it felt like a toned down version of Feng Shui 2. In that case, I'd rather go full bore Feng Shui 2 instead.
As a side note, one of the players in the Night's Black Agents game was very well versed in the game and is a big fan of the game. He pointed me to other starter scenarios and podcasts of NBA sessions.
I also watched a little bit of the 13th Age game, Swords Against the Dead. It was another combat heavy fantasy game. What was funny was there were two chaos mages in the game and their random spell effects basically messed a lot of things up. I can see the attraction of running them because they're fun to play and their randomness adds a bit of humor and wonkiness to the game. Thus there were two and too much wonkiness.
A bonus was I was able to pick up a hardcopy of The Derelict.
This year, KublaCon was a bit odd. I felt there were more shared rooms with overlapping games. It would have been better if we had private rooms, but even if the rooms were shared, it would have been better to put similar games together. I was in Jack's horror game and next to us was a table of 10 players playing a 10 hour Star Wars game. They were loud and it was hard to hear Jack and it ruined the atmosphere a bit.
There were a lot of no shows for games. One game I showed up for, three players and the GM didn't show up. The game was going to be in a room with 3 other games. Luckily for them, our game didn't happen.
For each game, there's an analysis of average play time per player. Dividing up the game duration by player isn't very scientific as time is spent in groups. The worst case is when all the players split up and each do their own thing. If the players hang together, then more than one player gets to share the spotlight. So, dividing game duration by player number is a worse case calculation.
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GOTTERDAMERUNG
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: The Orange Duke Nick Szczech
Players: 7
Date/Time: Thurs 5/26, 6pm (6 hrs duration, completed in 2-1/2 play hrs)
Characters: Provided,
It is 1945, Germany is losing the war, and Hitler has retreated to his bunker in Berlin to fight out a final battle with the Russian Marxist foe. As the war is coming to a close, the allies close in on what little is left of Germany, is there no hope? Hitler has promised that super weapons will save the Third Reich and that even know they are being developed. You know this is true, you are stationed in a secret underground base in Germany where scientists and occultists are developing the weapon to save the Reich, but can they do it before the world ends?
This was an invite-only pre-convention game. Last year, Nick also invited me to play in his pre-convention game. I liked the setting, the PCs and the NPCs. From what I can tell, Nick likes to run controlled chaos games where PCs have cross purposes, which I do like, but the issue with that is that there are a lot of break out sessions and the table is left alone to entertain themselves.
The problems I ran into was the same as last year. This time since the game only ran for 2-1/2 hours, if you do the math: 2.5 hrs * 60 mins / 7 players = 22 mins play time per player. To get to KublaCon before 6pm, you have to brave rush hour or go even earlier. I chose to brave rush hour and it took me 1-1/2 hours to get to KublaCon, then we waited 1 hr for some players who arrived late (we started playing at 7pm). So, 1.5 hr commute + 1 hr waiting for people + 2.5 hrs play time + 0.5 hr drive home = 5.5 hrs of time, I only really got to role play for 22 mins. That didn't seem like it was worth it.
We did stop the "big bad" with a mostly TPK. And other plays of this game ran longer, so maybe we were just too efficient in getting to the end.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
There were a lot of similarities with last years game. An underground bunker, a lab, PCs with cross purposes. We mainly needed to destroy what was in the lab, an alien creature making Vampires, before it escaped and it was slowly but surely converting PCs to its side either by mesmerizing them or vamping them.
One PC called in for a missile strike without the other players knowing. Later, another PC called HQ and learned about the missile strike and ordered everyone out of the bunker. Other players were already outside and were determined to not let anything or anyone exit the bunker. As the PCs gunned each other down outside the bunker, the missile strike came down and killed everyone and everything in the vicinity. The only PC that lived was a crazed Jewish scientist who had run off into the woods.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The Houndsditch Resurrectionists
System: Nemesis/The One Roll Engine
GM: Jack Young
Players: 6
Date/Time: Fri 5/27, 6pm (6 hrs duration)
Characters: Provided,
Levels: Shrewd but impoverished kids
London: 1872. In the wake of industrial revolution, the most prosperous society in history is also a sprawling calamity of crime, squalor and unimaginable poverty. Life is so dire you’ve had to resort to grave robbery and body thieving to just maybe get by. It’s good to have mates to watch your back for this job tonight, because no other soul in this city cares if you live or die.
Mature themes.
Another really good game by Jack Y. Loads of fun, lots of hi-jinks with adolescent kids in a graveyard.
6 hr game / 6 players = 1 hour role playing per player.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Jack started the PCs in 3 groups, so getting into the scenario was easy with less down time between groups of players.
While digging up a grave, my character took a hit of insanity from seeing a Ghoul trying to steal the same body as us. My character was an ex-chimney sweep, so he was supposed to be the sneaky small non-combat character. I had a choice of Fight, Flight, of Freeze. Freeze felt boring and running through the graveyard didn't seem like a good idea and also boring, so I picked Fight. So, I jumped into the grave and stabbed the Ghoul in the head. After a round of combat, the Ghoul decided to tunnel away. Well, still insane, I decided to go after it. Luckily, my buddy, another PC decided to grab me and pull me off the Ghoul as it disappeared underground. Suddenly, my PC became Belkar from Order of the Stick.
I also had a pet weasel that understood my commands and I befriended an enemy NPC's bloodhound.
In the graveyard, we rescued a girl who had escaped from a Workhouse. She was the daughter of a rich man, but she and her brother were kidnapped and ransom was paid, but they were never returned.
We then proceeded to the Workhouse (with it's mass graves in the backyard) and faced the terrors inside (killer dogs, men with shotguns slaughtering children, and a crazy syphilitic ax murderer) and rescued not only her brother but the other unfortunate children inside. Unfortunately, the evil head mistress escaped with 1000 gold crowns.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The Buffalo, the Pirate, and the Consulting Detective
System: TimeWatch
GM: Morgan Hua
Players: 5 (played with 6)
Date/Time: Sat 5/28, 10am (6 hrs duration)
Characters: Provided.
You are an elite TimeWatch agent trained to stop saboteurs from ripping history apart.
During Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1887, London, several historical figures are shot and killed, including Queen Victoria’s grandson George Albert (later King George V) and Kaiser Wilhelm II. And oddly, Sherlock Holmes is helping the police with their investigation.
Scenario written by Michael Rees.
I wanted to run TimeWatch because I was a KickStarter supporter and one of the first scenarios (written by Michael Rees) I ran for my local gaming group was amazing to me and I wanted to share it. Michael Rees wrote this scenario with a beta version of the Kickstarter rules, but his work was so well regarded that he got invited to write additional content for the Kickstarter.
What's interesting about TimeWatch is that it makes you think differently on how to solve problems. Like a lot of independent games, the setting is very white room and you have to bring your imagination to the table and fill the room with things that progresses the story and plot.
In running this game, I felt the pacing was a little slow, but I ran into some of the players a day later and they all said they had a great time. It's weird to experience the game from the inside and then getting feedback from the outside that didn't match.
6 hrs / 6 players = 1 hour role playing per player.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Link to Scenario. In addition to this scenario, you can check Michael Rees website for other scenarios.
Highlights of the game were:
Devon A. running an intelligent Neanderthal who understood language, but could only speak 12 words (Ouch Existentialism!). And other players riffing off of his vocabulary.
I had the Ezeru replace Queen Victoria as part of the plot. Well, they killed the Ezeru, and decided to put a Time Agent in her place temporarily. So, Skegg, the Sophosaur Time Agent got to be Queen of England for awhile.
Karen T. trying to hide that she was a liquid metal android (from Terminator 2) from the party when at least half of the party knew or suspected she wasn't human.
The anti-social mad scientist and all her attitude towards everything.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Spirit of 77 - Bicentennial Blues
System: Apocalypse World Engine
GM: Charles Picard
Players: 7
Date/Time: Sat 5/28, 6pm (6 hrs duration)
Characters: Created at table.
Last year was the Bicentennial, and all Uncle Sam has to show for it is a giant-sized hangover. What guitar-waving, car-exploding, street-fighting, Snake River Canyon-jumping insanity will birthday numero 201 bring? Can.. You…DIG IT?
I ran into Charles in line and he told me he was running this game. I met Charles last year in Death from a Jeep and he and his buddies were what made that game really fun. They were excellent role players. So, I changed my shuffler priorities to get into his game. Something new.
I had reservations about Apocalypse World, I've played it twice and I disliked the Sex moves especially in the Monster Hearts version of the game. The great thing is that this version of the system has no Sex movies. It's all about over the top action and big hair.
The character generation took about 1-1/2 hours. The templates and backstories were fine, but with 7 players, we had to generate hooks 5 hooks per PC, so that's 35 hooks that you have to make between characters and they have to agree on it. That took more time than it was worth and during play it had minimal impact.
My character was named Reverend Total Peace and he looked like Kojak and he had a gang of Hare Krishnas that he called his Peaceniks. He had political Connections and was greedy for money.
Anyway, once the game started, the game ran fine. Charles is a really good GM, but I think allowing 7 players into this game was over ambitious. I think making-characters-at-the-table games should have 4 to 5 players. When you get up to seven, it's exponentially too much to handle. I could see Charles trying to hook the individual story lines together and giving players enough stuff to do. But what could have been easily handled with 4 to 5 players becomes an extraordinary chore. Also with so many characters to juggle, the story winds up suffering.
(6 hrs - 1.5 hrs char creation) / 7 players = 38 mins of screen time per player.
I enjoyed the game, liked the system, but I felt there were too many players. Also, I didn't quite feel the seventies vibe. Not enough Seventies, baby!
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The game started with one of the players having a vision of something dire heading to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The year is 1977, a year after the bicentennial. SF China Town is going to have a parade / celebration and all the characters figure out how they get into the celebration.
During the parade, a vaporous dragon appears and injures and panics a large number of people. The players investigate and discover that ancient Chinese magics, long forgotten have accidentally activated. The dragons were used to wipe out Chinese foes. Now a spirit dragon has hatched and it plans on wiping out the SF Bay Area. We figure out that we have to kill the dragon by either/or:
Stab the dragon with a jade spear.
Marry it.
Remove its eyes.
In the end we discover we could only kill it by stabbing it in its eyes with jade.
The dragon's lair was an ancient Chinese junk buried under Alcatraz Island.
The spirit of the dragon can also possess people, so one of the PCs got possessed, later it possessed another who we stabbed with a jade spear and then force fed LSD to him, and then forced him out of the PCs body. The LSD tainted spirit merged back into it's geode egg haphazardly and was destroyed, so we were able to save the possessed PC and SF. The dragon's plan was to animate the Golden Gate Bridge and rampage through San Francisco.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
DRIVE INTO DARKNESS
System: Night’s Black Agents
GM: Gene Lancaster
Players: 5 (played with 3)
Date/Time: Sun 5/29, 12 noon (4 hrs duration, completed play in 3 hrs)
Characters: Provided
1950’s Memphis, Tennessee. 5 Criminals with guns and a plan. A bank robbery gone wrong. All hell breaks loose!
For most people, problems can be solved with money. Your problems, are solved with violence.
You are slayers of the undead... and the living.
See oldheroesneverdie.com for pics
Adults Only. New Players welcomed! A Vampire Crime-Thriller.
Take a psychobilly drive into darkness!
I heard great things about The Dracula Dossier and was thinking about running it. I've only played Night's Black Agents once and thought it was an okay experience, but not great. I wanted to try it again before deciding on running The Dracula Dossier.
Even though the game was full, only one person who signed up showed up for the game and there were two crashers (I was a crasher), but the other crasher had to leave after 3 hours. What is up with people who crash, but can't stay the whole duration? "Oh, yeah, I just need to kill a few hours, but I got something better to do later. Is that okay?" Seems a bit rude.
Gene has a lot of props and has been play testing this game for a while. The issue is that the game is longer than the time slot, so he's been removing parts and starting the game in media res which is fine. With only 3 players, we actually finished the game early enough so the crasher that had to leave could just leave without missing much.
It was interesting seeing a total different way of GMing a game. Gene definitely likes more of the action aspects of Gumshoe than the investigation. The game ran more like an action movie than what I expected from a Gumshoe game. But up front, Gene set our expectations with what the game was and what it wasn't. He said the game was a B movie, some things have logic holes, there will be continuity errors, it will be violent, but not abusive. He said it was Jason Bourne with Vampires.
So, I enjoyed the game for what it was.
3 hrs / 3 players = 1 hour per player.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I loved that he gave us the floor plan for the bank we were going to heist. Instead of going in blind, we did the smart thing and he started us off with a complete floor plan.
Since the game would run long, he started us on the 2nd floor. He did put dead bodies all over the 1st floor and half of the 2nd floor. He tells us we killed all those people, but we haven't cleared the other half of the 2nd floor. So, we proceed to do that. (He says this is where he gets problems from some players. Some players would have rather just sneak around.) I bought into his setup though.
We kill a couple of guards and then we find the bank manager who's a Vampire. We stake her (it took some effort) which immobilized her. Then we needed to get her to open up the vault which we didn't have the combination to. We did note that she could mesmerize the male characters, but our one female character had already resisted her charms. So, we chopped off the Vampire's limbs and had the female character interrogate the Vampire. Promising to let her go if she gave us the combination. Of course, once we opened the vault, we killed her permanently. There were two vaults and found coffins in both. One was empty, the other had a vampire in it which we dispatched.
Once we did that, the dead bodies animated and we had to fight our way out of the bank.
Of course, the GM then told us we never got the money from the vault downstairs. So we went back into the bank and found stairs leading down into ancient graveyard that the bank was built upon. We also found the money vault.
So we descended and found a Underwold-like vault for vampires and started dispatching them. While we were doing that, an elder Vampire attacked us and after a fight that did hurt us, we dispatched it.
At some points, he would ask if we wanted to spend our Vampire Lore points and what I liked was that we had only 3 Vampire Lore points among the three PCs, but we found more than 3 things where we could spend the points on. It made us pause. For some things, we decided to just pick up the items in question and save our points until later. That wound up being the right move.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
At the Hands of an Angry God
System: At the Hands of an Angry God
GM: Wilson Zorn
Players: 6 (played with 3)
Date/Time: Sun 5/29, 5pm (6 hrs duration, completed play in 3 hrs due to players having to leave)
Characters: Created at table.
Your family is leaving the rotten old world and establishing a principled colony on the frontier with like-minded families/tight-knit factions. Play includes setting and family/faction generation, families battle “fate” and compete with each other to establish the community and their own positions.
Interesting system, but a bit fiddly. I enjoyed it, but the other two players (crashers who had to leave 3 hours early) seemed a bit lost. Again? Or did they dislike the game and wanted an excuse to leave? Again my rant about crashers who can't commit to the full game. WTF. But Wilson told us that the game needed 3 players and was better with 4. So, 2 crashers that can't stay the whole time was better than no game at all. At least one of the crashers told us after Wilson explained the game that he couldn't stay the full time, so Wilson gave us a truncated game instead of being told at the last minute that the player had to leave..
The whole premise of the game is that the players represent their family (much like King Arthur Pendragon where players represent the whole history of their household including individual knights). The families come up with founding precepts for a utopian colony trying to establish itself. The GM represents the other NPC families and outside forces (The Angry God). The Players represent the major families in the colony.
The world and setting is determined by the players. I suggested a better Waterworld. So, we wound up being colonists finding a piece of land out in nowhere surrounded by water after catastrophic global warming.
We came up with 8 precepts for our utopian colony. It was free form, so came up with something socialist. All resources are shared. Everyone has a voice. No violence within the community. Punishment is based on withholding resources. Resource usage must be sustainable. No religion, but we must respect the spirit of the land.
The GM has a supply of tokens and the Colonists have a supply of shared tokens and each family has their own supply of tokens. During game play, tokens are shuffled between supplies based on play.
In each round the players and GM can bring up challenges and tokens are put forward to confront the challenge. The dynamics of families helping each other added bonus tokens from the community's supply. Dice (d6's) are rolled based on the number of tokens put forward and depending on the results, either the challenge is met with success or failure and 1's and 6's determine setbacks or benefits to the family being challenged. After a full round, tokens are returned to their token banks with benefits adding tokens to various families and setbacks removing tokens from those families.
The game ends when either the GM or the shared supply is emptied. If the GM supply is empty, the colony survives and becomes established. If the community's shared supply is empty, the colony fails and dies out.
In our game, the three families were the Watchers (my family), the Fixers, and the Stables.
In our mini-game, the Stables defeated the island's big bad, killing the local natives's god (a giant human eating octopus) which allowed the Watchers to convert the locals to our founding precepts of no religion. The colonists won establishing a stable colony, but the Fixers gained so many tokens they created an oligarchy. My Watchers wound up intermixing with the locals on the island and became a majority of the underclass, ready to start a rebellion. And that's how we ended the game, ready for a sequel.
I enjoyed the game, but the other two players were a little lost on how the tokens worked. I've played enough resource games and indie games to figure it out pretty fast. I think by the end, one other player finally figured it out.
Overall, I liked the world building and how it played out.
3 hrs / 3 players = 1 hour per player.
And Some Fell on Stony Ground
System: Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition
GM: Morgan Hua
Players: 6
Date/Time: Mon 5/30, 5pm (4 hrs duration)
Characters: Provided
Life in Stowell, an American small-town in 1923, is idyllic and safe. Family and friends are behaving strangely and then it all begins to descend into madness.
This is a published scenario by Paul Fricker from the Chaosium book “Nameless Horrors.”
A week before the GM submissions deadline, Chaosium reached out to me and asked me to run a game at KublaCon. I was already running TimeWatch and I didn't want to run a long game and not be able to play in other games during the convention, so I thought I would run a 4 hour game on Monday. I didn't have a short scenario written up and they recommended that I run a scenario from their "Nameless Horrors" book. Unfamiliar with any of the scenarios, they recommended "An Amaranthine Desire" or "And Some Fell on Stony Ground" as something that can be run in 4 hours. I read the summaries for both games, but "An Amaranthine Desire" was very close in plot device to "Gatsby and the Great Race" which was being run in 4 rooms with 6 players each at the same convention, so I didn't want to run something that similar. I was told that "And Some Fell on Stony Ground" might be longer than 4 hours, but it can be run in that time frame. My schedule had been busy, so I wasn't able to play test the game beforehand to work out any timing issues. Into the breach, my dear friends, into the breach.
4 hrs / 6 players = 40 mins role playing time per player. Due to the setup of the scenario and pre-gens, most of the players wanted to do their own things, so there was a lot of wait time between players. Eventually, they got together to work as a team. Not an ideal setup for a convention game.
Someone posted on Facebook that they greatly enjoyed the game and I was lucky enough to read his comment.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I really like the beginning of the scenario. There's two parts to it. The first part is where the players explore the building oddness to their home town. This is the really fun part of the game.
The 2nd part is as how one of the players put it: "Zombie Apocalypse." where the players escape the rampaging hordes of kill krazy townies. That was less interesting and the mechanism used luck instead of the CoC 7th chase rules.
Another thing I found odd was that the pre-gens for the scenario lacked in spot hidden and various other general skills PCs usually load up on. So, I was surprised that the PCs failed most of their rolls.
I also decided on a new home grown rule, instead of making each player roll Stealth and usually one player always fails and that seemed unfair, I asked for a group stealth roll (just like a group luck roll), having the player with the lowest stealth roll for the whole group sneaking around. That seemed to work fine. Let's say you have 3 people with 80% Stealth. Then if all three have to roll, the chance of failure is really 60% ((100% - 80%) * 3 = 60%). That's crazy bad. Sucks to be a team of navy seals, someone is bound to step on a branch, and that isn't the case. So, I think a 20% failure for the group is more reasonable.
One of the telling signs in the game were either fading black eyes or irritated eyes. I asked the players to make spot hidden rolls and they failed them all. Later, they finally made one and then I let them realize that they didn't notice the other anomalies in people they spoke with. In retrospect, I don't think this clue actually gives anything away. So, maybe if I ran this again, I would create a random chart for eye aliments with adjustments based on time since infection.
By the 3-1/2 hour mark, the players were still exploring the town and I didn't even get a chance to fully ratchet up the oddness. So, I think this game could go more than 8 hours, so definitely not a scenario for a convention game. Also, the solution to the scenario is the destruction of a telescope. Finding it was really hard. And upon the destruction, there was no player satisfaction that they had done the right deed. Not only that, the next night, the town goes crazy. Which is pretty funny in retrospect. The PCs do the right thing and it gets worse.
In my game, one player looked into the telescope, so when the town went crazy, that PC knew what was going on and could tell the other players that destroying the telescope was the right thing, but it still felt anti-climatic.
Overall, an interesting scenario and with some adjustments, it can be much better.
On the way to Placerville, I saw signs for $1 bag oranges at a truck parked off the road. Well, it was a double bait and switch. The bag only had 4 small oranges, or you can pay $4 for a 8 lb bag (with about 20 oranges). The sample slices she handed me tasted sweet, so I bought the bigger bag. Well, the big bag of oranges were different from the samples -- they weren't as deep orange (more pale yellow inside) nor as sweet. Double bait and switch.
So, if you see a lady selling oranges on the side of the road for $1 a bag, skip it. When I told my brother this story, he said, "Oranges aren't in season. That should have been a clue." So, I should have just drove away on the first indication of a scam. e.g. if the person is already willing to do unethical marketing practices, what's to prevent them from doing something worse?
One of the highlights of DoW was having Monday breakfast at Sweetie Pies. I got the smoked turkey wrapped around asparagus (diced) with extra crispy hash browns and cinnamon and walnut toast. Food was much better than Mel's and only slightly more expensive. It's a sad thing to say that Mel's put the Carrows (across the street from the Mel's) out of business in Placerville. It's sort of the battle of the meh.
This time, I didn't do any sight seeing before DoW, but I brought my ski equipment and went skiing for 4 days afterwards. It snowed Sunday, so I got to ski on powder on Monday and found some powder between the trees on the other days.
Heavenly Ski Resort on Monday
Heavenly Ski Resort on Weds, mostly empty of people
Kirkwood on Thurs, it took me hours to find this powder stash.
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Saturday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 6th Ed.
Scenario Title The Phantoms of Black Knife Ridge
GM: Badger McInnes
Variations: Some house rules
Power Level: You got callouses on yer hands from workin’ the range, or a sharp eye and smooth trigger finger
Number of Players: 6
Description: It’s November, 1901 in Black Knife Ridge, Oklahoma. The west is still wild out here, but folks from the East are starting to make the pilgrimage, what with all the money comin’ in from oil stakes and the like. Normally Black Knife Ridge is on the quiet side, but on this day, a special guest is rollin’ into town; singer Daisy Nash, giving a one-night performance during her country spanning tour. The locals are all a titter about the show, the dance hall is gonna be packed, and wouldn’t you know that the sheriff is off in another county today.
Gonna be a busy night.
The Phantom of Black Knife Ridge is a Wild Weird West scenario concerning a little bit of murder, quite a bit of snake oil shenanigans, a whole lot of corruption, and a big ol’ shitstorm of danger. Slap on those smoke wagons, grab your deputy badge…oh, and ya might wanna pocket that Elder Sign, too.
I enjoyed the game, but I felt the pace was a bit slow for me and the game fell in the standard template of investigate, find big bad, and blow it up. For me, the most enjoyable bits were the character interactions.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Daisy Nash gets gutted in her hotel room by something nasty. We investigate and find that it's associated with an oil man who is pumping out some alien goo from underground and that it is an elixir that can cure anything, but the side effect is that it makes you very compliant.
We kill all the miners and blow up the camp and oil derricks that are pumping out the goo.
Sort of simple, no?
My character was a Pinkerman Detective with the arrest warrant for another character (Duane's), an ex-US marshal, the body guard of Daisy Nash. The only bit of fright I got was when it appeared that there was some sort of lawman handshake between Duane's character and the Deputy in town (Josh's). So, I was worried that my arresting of Duane's character might run into double trouble. But I was able to discern that it was more of a professional acknowledgement vs a personal connection.
In the end, I learned that Duane's character committed justifiable homicide and decided to let him go and report that his character was killed in the finale. The Deputy was willing to confirm my story, so I was able to close my case.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Saturday 7pm
Game System: Reports from the Zone (The Veil)
Scenario Title: The Electric Psychopomp F**k Brigade vs. the Deranged Discotheque of the Damned
GM: Matthew Grau
Variations: None
Power Level: Paranormal Drug Addicts
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: In this mash-up of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Trainspotting, and Naked Lunch. Characters are drug fiends who have discovered the “Zone,” a place where they’re so altered that they see through reality. The world they’ve discovered is strange and dangerous, filled with existential threats, and they’re kind of the only ones who can do anything about it. However, they have to use a lot of drugs to do that, and that naturally makes them less… effective.
Fortunately, their crippling addictions have also given them new paranormal abilities to aid them in their fight – but these abilities also help drive deeper and deeper dependence. The Characters’ impaired judgment may easily lead them to make unsound choices – the horror is both external and internal.
Matt printed cards for The Veil. The collection of cards made up your character. For various tells for talents, you needed to write on the cards. Too bad Matt made really high quality glossy cards; it was hard to write on them as the ink/pencil didn't quite write on the high gloss. A matte finish would have worked better.
This was my favorite game that I played in at DoW. We each got to play various drug addicts with each drug of choice giving us benefits. Matt also did a great job of DJing various decades of music. Some of the music references were beyond me since I wasn't much of a pop music kind of guy -- I grew up playing the violin and listening to Mozart, Bach, and Vivaldi.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I sort of heard about Krokodil, but never paid any attention to it. Well, my character was a Krokodil addict. The other addicts were Marijuana, Heroine, LSD, Speed, and Alcohol.
The fun bit was that depending on your level of addiction, you get additional skill cards. I, of course, took the max (3 out of 3) which meant that I could die at any moment, at the GM's whim. We got to pick tells for each trait and I wound up looking like something out of a slasher horror movie. I carried a cinder block that was tied to a chain that was wrapped around my body. I also had barbed wire strung around my arms and legs. I also didn't know where to put my used needles, so I left them in my arm. Things (people, animals, and plants) die in my vicinity. I smell like something decaying, and my touch kills. When I lay still, people think I'm dead.
In the game, the spirit of Disco (represented by the Bee Gee-sus) was trying to prevent itself from getting killed (with the help of aliens, and sometimes over zealous cops), but in effect it would prevent the rise of Michael Jackson, YMCA, Phil Collins, Biggie G, 50-Cent, etc.
So, we the heroes had to make sure Disco died.
When we got connected with the spirit of Rap, my chain and cinder block got blinged out (24k baby!). To stop the man from intruding on our sing/dance off, I faced the man and flipped a tank that man had sent to stop us with. Cool!
In the end, we helped Rap send the Bee Gees back in time and saved the world.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu
Scenario Title: U-29 is Alive
GM: Gil Trevizo
Variations: Home rules
Power Level: Normal people
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: October 1918. The war is lost for Germany, but the Kaiser continues to feed the meatgrinders of the Western Front and crew after crew is lost on the bloodied seas of the Atlantic. Now the admirals have ordered one last foolhardy mission, to venture deep into enemy waters and “recover” the missing boat U-29, an experimental submarine lost over a year ago. Aboard its sister boat, U-31, the doomed crew will sail into black and forgotten depths and learn the silent secrets hiding beneath unfathomed waters for uncounted years.
I liked that this game gave us a lot of options even though we were stuck in a submarine and had a very rigid command structure. Gil spent a lot of time researching WWI submarines and the social structure at that time. I appreciated that and enjoyed the mini-lecture on the those subjects, that said, we spent 1-1/2 hours covering those subjects before we got to start playing.
I think part of the flaw was Gil trying to be true to a HP Lovecraft story (which I haven't read) instead of just taking it as an inspiration. Frank mentioned to me that it didn't really matter if it was a WWI submarine vs a modern day submarine. I think he was right, then you don't need to explain the social structures, the drawbacks on the submarine, etc.
For me this game was a close second to Matt Grau's game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We were ordered to recover something from a sunken merchant ship that U-29 sunk and to find U-29 (we were it's sister ship the U-31).
The something was the body of a statue. When we recovered it, the dead bodies on the ship animated and attacked us. At one point we thought of killing the NPC who brought us there until he said, "We need the statue, I know how to stop this." We had already taken the statue from him and tried to destroy it.
On the trip to the location of U-29, the ships crew slowly sank into madness as strange creatures swum along side the submarine and increased in numbers.
At the site of U-29, we found a drowned sailor clutching the head of the statue.
Strange creatures were performing a ritual underwater near a temple that had sunk underneath the waves.
Once put together, the NPC took the completed statue and jammed it into a glowing force containment field in the temple to free the trapped Ares. Before this, the players were conflicted as to whether they wanted this or not. Those driven insane wanted it. Conflicting NPCs wanted to either free the entity or to enslave it. As players, both sounded like bad ideas.
After a few torpedo shots and characters either staying or fleeing, the game ended.
What I liked was that you could: stay, help, hinder, or just flee. All were valid choices. In a lot of games, fleeing just takes you out of the game and the right choices were always help or hinder. In this game, all the choices were valid. I liked that.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday 7pm
Game System: Nemesis
Scenario Title: Welcome to the Clown Motel
GM: Morgan Hua
Variations: Highly Modified (Simplified Nemesis)
Power Level: Silver Miners, Bikers, Military Personnel, and Old Folks.
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: The Clown Motel is located next to the Tonopah Cemetery. Tonight is the night of the Blood Moon. Who will survive the night at the Clown Motel? Players will have multiple characters as they uncover the history and mysteries of Tonopah from 1902 to present day.
I wasn't able to play test this game before DoW and I was experimenting with various things. The game ran a bit short: 4 hours. Part of it was I had four players instead of the six I was expecting and I didn't spend any time explaining Nemesis which generally takes about 1/2 hour. Almost all of the players knew the system except for one player and he said, "Let's just play, and tell me what to roll." I also made the bad guys too powerful and they wiped out PCs faster than I expected -- more about this in the spoiler section where I breakdown the complete scenario.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Blood Moon
I didn't want to explain the setting, so I created a short two minute video/slide show of the Clown Motel, the Tonopah Cemetery, and the Tonopah Missile Test Site -- all key locations in the game.
The whole idea I had was what if I didn't have an insanity meter, that the horror drove the actions of the characters. Would it work?
So, I wanted something that was terrifying that was impossible to kill and relentless -- psychotic killer clowns. I wanted the killer clowns to hunt down the first batch of PCs and show the players that they were nigh impossible to kill or win against in a battle of strength. The idea was to scare the crap out of the players.
My first batch of PCs would be tough bikers with firearms. They are staying at the Clown Motel because:
In the middle of the night, during a blood moon, a car runs over their bikes which are parked outside of their rooms. Lo and behold, a cop car ran over their bikes. But who is inside the cop car? My Killer Psycho Clowns.
I gave the clowns 5d with 2 wiggle dice. That was a mistake. They were too powerful and basically killed all the PCs in two rounds. I wanted it to last a little bit longer. So only one wiggle dice would have been better. I also gave them shock and kill which is a mistake and it should have been only kill damage.
As the last biker was attacked, I had wishbones to determine 50/50 checks. The biker won, so he lived and the clown got run over by a tour bus.
This is when I introduced the real PC heroes. The picture on the left is what everyone sees. The back of the character portrait is the picture on the right -- that is how the PC thinks of themselves. The whole conceit was to let old retired folks solve the mystery that tough guys can't. I also handicapped all the PCs with canes, wheelchairs, and all manner of horrible mobility tools that old folks use. Yeah, you can't run and you can't fight. Go solve this mystery.
I started with the old folks at their nursing home being abused and bored. Today was their field trip to Las Vegas, freedom at last and their bus hits something on the road and they get thrown about and get stuck in Tonopah, at the Clown Motel.
I wanted the PCs to go through the Tonopah Cemetery and find the two groups of true historical burials: The 1902 Tonopah Plague and the 1911 Mine Fire.
So, the surviving clowns would drag the biker bodies through the cemetery and towards the Tonopah Missile Test Range, leaving a trail of blood and drag marks.
Once in the Tonopah Cemetery, a successful History Knowledge roll would unlock two flashbacks: The 1902 Tonopah Plague and the 1911 Mine Fire.
The Tonopah Plague starts with a new set of characters, miners from 1902:
Their story is uncovering an underground tunnel while mining silver during a Blood Moon. This tunnel has a weird totem/doll inside:
As the miners investigate the tunnel, they'll discover it goes very long and deep and gets hotter and more humid and almost unbearable. Before that though, they find a pile of human skeletal remains with bones crushed and skulls bashed in from violent acts. The remains are also mixed with pieces of native american dress. All indications are that the bodies are all native american.
That night or if the players keep on exploring the tunnel, at that time, Natives wearing Kachina masks attack the miners and the mining town. The natives are just as deadly as the clowns. Here is where the overkill clowns actually become a signature and the players actually figured out that the clowns as the natives were one and the same. During play, the players actually put up a DO NOT ENTER, DANGER sign up at the entrance to the tunnel. I asked each player whether they have family and whether they tell them about the new tunnel. A survivor would be the one that would write or tell someone about what really happened in 1902 and that is the story that the History Knowledge roll would have revealed. When a miner dies, I close their coffin with a SNAP!
In 1911, it is another blood moon and a new set of miners are the new PCs. Several have the same last names as the first set of miners and they are relatives, which gives them an excuse to know something of what really happened in 1902. There are more deaths by mask wearing natives (players never found out that -- hey, that's not a mask) and several players entered the mine and found a better wooden barrier with a DO NOT ENTER sign to the tunnel. The players decide to collapse part of the mine with explosives and close up the tunnel which causes a mine fire.
The players now know the origin of the psychotic killer clowns and need to do something about it.
They follow the drag marks of bodies into the Tonopah Missile Test Site.
Eventually, they'll be found by Military Police and arrested for trespassing as numerous UFO kooks sneak onto the base and think it's area 52, a sister UFO site to area 51.
While being arrested, more killer clowns would show up. Well, in the game, the PCs blew up the first ATV that showed up, so that messed up my game plan. So, I let them find the crater where a missile test had reopened the Katchina Tunnel to the underworld.
While exploring how to get into the crater, I sent two more ATVs to capture the PCs. Two PCs got down into the crater and found a crevasse that had old rotten timbers, remains of a mine shaft. James Bond blew his wheelchair roll and I killed him with an ejection seat that broke his neck on a malfunctioned landing. Prof McGonagall (played excellently by Frank) got captured by GI Joe (in the movie GI Joe was played by Bruce Willis) and GI Jane (in the movie GI Jane was played by Demi Moore) -- ironic, huh?
GI Jane
GI Joe
The purpose of GI Joe and GI Jane are to have some PCs with higher fire power and a sympathetic PC that can help the PCs get into the mine and use military grade explosives in order to collapse the mine again.
In the game I ran, the PCs dug through the pile of fresh bodies: police officers, bikers, towns people of Tonopah, dead GI Joes and Janes and found on the bottom a small Kachina figurine. With a successful Archaeology roll, you know it's an evil Kachina. There are good and evil Kachinas and when the Red Man was here, their Kachina dances summoned the Good Kachinas to hold back the Evil Kachinas. Now that silver was found here and all the natives were kicked off their land, nobody does the Kachina Spirit Dances anymore and nothing holds back the Evil Kachinas from leaving the underworld and making mischief -- e.g. slaughtering innocents. So, Elvis who found the Kachina figurine and did the Archaeology roll, decides to do a impromptu Kachina Spirit Dance and did very well, so I ruled that that would hold off the Evil Kachinas for this cycle of the blood moon.
GI Jane replaced the dead James Bond as a PC and that character was convinced by an attack at the airbase that the killer clowns did exist. Video showed the clowns vanish after being gunned down; they seemed to lay there and then vanish after a video glitch. The bodies only vanish when a person looks away. So, the GI Jane arranged for explosives to collapse a portion of the underworld tunnel.
At this point the PCs can stop, but they wanted to put the Evil Kachinas down for a longer period of time. With research, they found Good Kachinas could challenge the Evil Kachinas to contests and each win would hold the Evil Kachinas back for 100 years. So, the players stole Good Kachina masks from various museums and waited for the next blood moon and waited for the Evil Kachinas to show up so they could challenge them.
The players picked their best skills (and used some trickery) and were able to beat the Evil Kachinas and hold them back for 400 years.
