Keep on the Borderlands: Nuthin' But Goblins

The last two characters painted up for the players, my son's fighter and my wife's magic user.

After escaping with their lives from their first aborted attack on the hobgoblin halls, the party (a gaggle of PCs and NPCs being run by my wife and son) resupplied at the Keep and then headed back to the Caves of Chaos.

My wife's halfling thief hireling investigating the ogre's cave.

Deciding to pursue a more cautious infiltration, they scouted a lower cave they'd bypassed on an earlier excursion into the ravine. Within the natural cave mouth, thick with a sour stench, their halfling thief spied a slumbering(?) bear. Curious, they investigated and discovered it was simply a bear pelt thrown over a pile of leaves as a makeshift bed or nest. As the party gathered in the cave to search the area they alerted the denizen of an adjoining cavern, an enormous ogre who fell upon the intruders with club and fist.

The ogre, surrounded and cut down by my son and the party's meatshields.

Despite his great strength, the ogre was nursing fresh wounds from a recent battle leaving him vulnerable. Coupled with the weight of numbers on the party's side the adventurers slew him quickly.

The party recovered treasure from the creature's lair and then ascended a hidden natural stairway at the rear of its cave, popping out in the middle of the familiar goblin warrens.

I expected my wife and son to either dispense with the goblins quickly or head off to their real objective, attacking the hobgoblins. What ensued was an hour and half of my wife interrogating, negotiating and belittling the poor creatures. She's always declared she doesn't like role playing, but she has really latched onto playing her snotty, haughty, 7 Charisma magic user to the hilt. Her halfling thief is great, but this wizard is the most annoying character I've DMed for. Really looking forward to throwing her into a nest of rot grubs.

Eventually the party was blamed by the goblins for inciting the hobgoblins into attacking the tribe (the hobgoblin attack was repulsed by the goblin's ogre ally, the only protector the tiny creatures had, now dead by the party's hand). A power struggle ensued between goblins who wished to ally with the party for protection and those that wanted to turn them over to the hobgoblins as a peace offering. Naturally, it came to blows, all centered around controlling the goblin chief's sacred shield, a symbol of goblin authority and "chiefhood" of the goblin clan.

Taking on the goblin chief while his bodyguards head for an exit on the opposite side of the room. Those bodyguards couldn't possibly be trying to flank the party, could they?

The players were astonished when goblin reinforcements appeared from a flanking tunnel.

When the halls of the goblins finally fell silent nearly the entire tribe had been wiped out, but the party's magic user had claimed the goblin shield and with it a loyal tribe of the four remaining goblins.

With the hour growing late, low on spells, unconscious party members and packs full of ogre loot, the party decided to head once again back to the Keep, admonishing the four remaining goblins not to go anywhere and not to steal any of the chief's stuff that now belonged to the party. Certainly four injured goblins guarding the wealth of their chief will go unmolested within the Caves of Chaos until the party comes back.

Once More Unto the Keep: Another expedition into the "Keep on the Borderlands"

When we rejoined our merry band, they had retreated from the Caves of Chaos to the Keep itself to rest and claim the bounty on "goblin heads" posted by the Keep's bailiff. While he scoffed at their initial report that hobgoblins were lurking in the caves, the hard proof of hobgoblin heads was enough to convince him that the militaristic humanoids had made a foothold in the caves.

The bailiff suggested further scouting into the caverns, as the position of "Chief Scouts of the Keep" had recently been vacated, (the previous holder's of that office having encountered and been slain by DOOMKNIGHT, a terrifying undead thing that lurked in the woods to the north.)

With blades sharpened, torches purchased and loins girded, the party set off once again into the wilds beyond the safety of the Keep's walls. Join them after the jump.

A Summer Vacation to the Keep on the Borderlands.

Some classic 25mm scale figures finally painted after spending 20 years, untouched, in the lead pile.

Last summer I took a brief break from working on my sci-fi game to play through a short Battletech campaign with my son. This summer I figured he was ready to tackle some Dungeons and Dragons, but I wanted to start him the with the classic edition I grew up with.  I've been noodling around with some OSR variant rule sets and picking through the classic Keep on the Borderlands module in preparation. With the end of the school year in sight I was looking forward to rolling some dice and killing some orcs with the boy.

My wife must have picked up on my plans, because a few weeks ago when I suggested we pick a movie for our family's traditional Friday "wine and pizza night" she suggested "Why don't we play D&D?" 

She didn't have to ask twice. (Thank you wine, ur the best)

So with five minutes of prep and only half remembered rules my wife and son each rolled up a pair of characters and were dropped unceremoniously at the mouth of the ravine that played host to the Caves of Chaos. (pretty sure the wine's effect would only last 1d4 hours, and I needed to get to the Good Stuff).

Light a torch and kick in the door with us after the jump.

Star Schlock: First Look

Joe's wife Ellen Levy shot a ton of great photos of the game. The crappy ones are mine. Anything good in this battle report is her work. Thanks Ellen!

I've been working on a set of sci-fi skirmish rules for a few years, and finally brought them to test with the Scrum Club. The rules are still in an "alpha" state and I'll be posting about them more as they approach a publicly available "beta", but I thought I could share this battle report so you could see what I've been up to.

An innocent bystander gazing off into the distance, little heeding the terrible peril into which she'll soon be thrust. Heed the peril, Dawn! Heed your ass back inside where it's safe!

Star Schlock is designed to simulate the low budget, forgotten sci fi films and tv shows produced between 1968 and 1988 on the tabletop. I've got a soft spot for such gems as Starcrash, Battle Beyond the Stars, and Robot Jox, but Star Schlock should work for getting high brow fare like Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes, Dune and Star Trek on the table as well.

For this game, four players would face off divided into two allied teams. Rich and Josh took the sinister forces of the Totalitarian Overlords while Walt and Joe commanded an allied native resistance and a stranded Baroness caught in the crossfire.

The battlefield, quiet before the storm.

Each force had their own objectives, unique to them. The asymmetric goals for each player are intended to capture the battles from sci fi movies which aren't always evenly matched set piece battles.

The Baddies

In this matchup, the white armored soldiers of the Totalitarian Dominion were intent on conquering the rebellious locals, with the detachment of their force under the alien Captain Vrok leading the assault.

The Totalitarian Overlord and his white clad dronetroopers

Captain Vrok, outfitted in his dashing red uniform. 

The Goodies

The Baroness, stranded on the planet after her starship came under attack by Dominion forces, was intent on escaping the battlefield.

The Baroness, her trusty robot companion R-TOOT, and her personal guard preparing for battle.

Aiding the Baroness were a collection of primitive alien rabble led by Doctor Owens, an anthropologist who came to study them but instigated their insurgency to resist Dominion rule instead.

The alien rabble gawk as the Baroness' personal guard rush into battle.

Doctor Owens, xeno-anthropologist

The key to their victory would be Doctor Owens' daughter, Space Cadet Owens who knew of a vital weakness in the Dominion's forces that could swing the tide of battle.

Space Cadet Owens. Probably joined the Space Rangers because she loves a man in a uniform.

The Battle

As battle was joined, both sides surged towards the objectives essential to securing victory. The  red clad personal guard of the Baroness dashed through the native village to capture the communication objectives so the Baroness could call in an escape vessel to escape the Dominion's clutches.

Darting through the village towards the communications beacon.

Charging forward the Dominion quickly claimed a number of important battlefield objectives: energy picket towers on the outskirts of town.

Captain Vrok's flanking force moving into the hills to meet the alien natives.

First Fire

That Baroness darted towards her landing zone, while her valiant defenders attempted to hold the line against the Dominion assault.

Josh's pic of his terrifying dronetroopers.

With the Baronesses troops dug in around a central objective choke point, the vile Overlord of the Totalitarian Dominion floated forward on his hover throne to direct an orbital bombardment from his personal cruiser hovering in orbit.

PEW PEW! A furious firefight breaks out as blaster beams lance between opposing squads.

The vile Overlord floats into battle with his dronetrooper guards to break the stalemate.

The orbiting Dominion starship fires. An explosion rocks the battlefield!

With a hole in the line, a second squad of guard took a building overlooking the Dominion advance, while the Dominion dronetroopers pushed into the newly opened gap.

The natives exchanged intermittent fire with Captain Vrok's force.

The Overlord slipped into the guards's line, unleashing a one-two blow of noxious fumes that overcame all units within short range, as well as calling in another orbital strike on the native resistance.

The Overlord unleashes a Vile Cloud.

...and unleashes a second orbital bombardment.

That one dead ewok. You know the one.

With the Dominion closing in on the leaders of the resistance, they make a last ditch effort to secure a victory. Having called in an escape vessel, the Baroness braves a hail of fire to reach the landing zone.

The Baroness reaching the edge of the battlefield.

Space Cadet Owens, having used her rocket pack to move around the flank of the Dominion forces strides out from cover.

She cries out to Captain Vrok, begging him to abandon the Dominion cause and join her. "You can't deny it Vrok! You love me, and I love you! We can make it together, we just have to try!"

Tragically Walt's dice failed him and he was unable to secure the Forbidden Love objective. Vrok rejected Space Cadet Owens' plea, "It could never work between us! Bumpy forhead, smooth forhead, our differences will always tear us apart!"

Dominion forces push the guards back.

With the Dominion forces slaughtering the resistance and capturing a number of objectives, they were able to force the end of the battle. Both sides totaled victory points, the Dominion scoring a total of 23 and the allied resistance scoring 19. Had Walt's dice been a bit hotter and Space Cadet Owens able to convince Vrok to admit his love for her and join the resistance, the Goodies may have been able to squeak out a win.

Conclusion

And that was it! Teaching a new system, especially one that's still under construction, is always bumpy, but overall I was pleased with how the game turned out. I still have more refinement to do on Star Schlock, but I can sense that these rules are starting to gel. I was happy to see players having to make challenging decisions, planning and executing strategies several turns ahead, and delivering at least a handful of memorable highlights. After working on them for nearly three years I was worried I'd start getting sick of them, but I'm honestly jonesing to play again immediately.

There's more work and play testing ahead, but I do want to give a shout out to the Second Saturday Scrum Club, my Monday night game crew, my family and my patient ex roommate Mark and his wife who have already helped me get this far. Thanks play testers! I couldn't have done this without you!

A third faction of alien horrors would have appeared in this battle as well, but a player dropped out at the last moment. Next time!

"Somebody call a doctor!" Sci Fi figures and markers

I've been making progress on the sci-fi game I've been writing, and with it came a host of core hobby projects that I needed to complete: grunts and soldiers for multiple factions, bystanders and table scatter. With those basic components completed, I'm starting to work on some of the more unique bits for the game.

Sci fi figures that don't look like they've leapt out of the GWs 41st millenium are uncommon, but thankfully Reaper Miniatures has a number in their Chronscope line that work for my needs.

I'm aiming for a late 1970's sci fi cinema vibe for the game, and while this space cadet has a definite 1950s rocket girl overtones, she gets a pass by way of Erin Gray's "Buck Rogers" jumpsuit.

In the original script for Star Wars, Uncle Owen was an anthropologist studying wookiees. In a nod to that forgotten manuscript, I've painted up this Captain Nemo from Reaper as Doctor Owens, a wilderness explorer leading a similar band of wooly alien natives.

Opposing this heroic duo will be a horde of space monsters, each with a grisly melee attack. The results of those attacks will leave the battlefield littered with bloody messes, tokens that are part of game play.

I pressed a number of abandoned miniatures, left over parts and miscasts along with copious amounts of putty to create these disgusting markers. Gross! Fun!

With all of the bits I need finished they'll be hitting the table this evening for another playtest.

Can you spare some sculpting feedback?

With 3D sculpting becoming commonplace in the production of wargaming miniatures I thought it was time to take a chance at sculpting some figures myself. I've never sculpted anything before, but I'm not one to let gross ignorance stop me from pursuing my hobby goals.

I've been tweaking my first full body human model, and before I start creating variants running, gunning and getting up to no good, I was hoping you could provide any feedback to help me refine this base model. Any suggestions you have to improve it will be welcome, whether you are a sculptor, caster, 3D modeler, printer or miniature painter.

1) This is a static pose, with some unfinished wrinkles and detailing in the clothing. Final sculpts will be more dynamically posed, with less obvious mirroring of body parts.
2) I intend to send the models to be SLA printed to create masters for eventual spin casting. Do you see any red flags I need to keep in mind when reposing? I'm a bit concerned about the undercut that will be necessary for the back of the helmet.
3) I like big chunky minis ala Games Workshop circa 1988. The head and hands are intentionally scaled up for this mini, but not sure if I need to enlarge them even more to give it a proper old school, comic book inspired panache.

Thanks for any feedback you can provide!

Painting Challenge: March of the Dead

This post originally appeared on the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

I had high hopes for this year's painting challenge, but I wasn't able to carve out the time to make much of a dent in my leadpile. With a paltry few hundred points completed, I expect these undead figures to push me over my self imposed minimum threshold of 500 points, alleviating my shame a bit.

I've wanted an undead army since spotting a fantasy scenario featuring a skeletal horde in Battlesystem 2nd Edition, nearly 30 years ago. Manufacturers never seemed to have the same vision for the undead that I did though. Game Workshop took a decidedly Egyptian feel with their Tomb Kings, and many of the more recently released undead miniatures have been too dynamic in pose and expression for my taste.

When I saw these figures based on the 1562 painting "Triumph of Death" by Bruegel the Elder, I knew I'd found my guys. While an undead shambling horde represents our own inevitable mortality, I also think they are a metaphor for the unfeeling, unsensing march of time, scouring all before them. These staid, emotionless automatons marching in their perfect ranks, with halberds and javelins at the ready don't slay out of hatred, but as part of the entropic machine that will inevitably collapse all of man's creations, grind mountains to dust and darken every star in the sky.

That's a bit dark, but don't be glum. This skelly brought a giant fish to cheer you up. What a whacky guy!

All 83 of these 28mm figures will likely be my final entry in this year's Analogue Painting Challenge.

 For my Curtgeld I've donated to Veteran's K-9 Corps, an organization that provides service animals for veterans and first responders. Thanks to Curt and the minions for managing the challenge, and loosening the entry rules to allow some decidedly non-historical figures into competition.