Old School Aphorisms

Søren Kierkegaard, on the development of players characters by play, and emphasising that 'story' is something made after play:

Life can only be understood backwards... but it can only be lived forwards.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, on eschewing railroads for more sandbox-y play (with an emphasis on exploration):

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. 

Both pinched from the University of York Vice-Chancellor's speech, celebrating 50 years of my alma mater. They weren't talking about Old School gaming, and neither was the VC. Can anyone else do violence to the thoughts of long dead thinkers by recruiting them into the OSR?

Hex Maps as In-Game Artefacts

The Second Empire of Humanity was dominated by Law. Angels lived deep inside the ziggurats, directing the affairs of humanity, motivating the Empire to civilise the heathens and bring order to the wild and weird beyond borderlands. Within civilised lands, Law demanded that the lands and people of the Empire were categorised and recorded. A key institution in this project was the Imperial School of Cartography, which instituted the model, maintained to this day, of idealised depictions of the nations of the Empire.

Something like this:

It is a shame that the Gazetteer series (and, actually, a lot of the BECMI D&D range) were not built to last - hardcovers were for the 'serious' AD&D gamers, it seems. Loose soft covers, unwieldy, if beautiful, hex maps - every time I dig something out of my box of GAZ goodness, the small tears grow a little bit bigger...  

Hex maps are wonderful gaming tools. They allow GMs and players to abstract movement and exploration to a level perfectly suited for sandbox play. More, they present the perfect foundations for a variety of sub games - domain management, trade, and war, for instance. It seems a pity, therefore, that when a player sees maps such as these, he or she sees them as objects that disassociate them from his or her characters in the game world. Thinking about this while on a lung busting run in the gym - incline up, heart rate at dangerous levels - I figured; 'why not make the hex map an object that exists in the world, so that when players consult a hex map (or fill one in, when mapping the wilderness ala The Isle of Dread) they can imagine that their characters are seeing the world abstracted in a similar fashion.'

[Of course, the production of hex maps that evoke these classic designs is within the reach of everyone, thanks to Hexographer.]

Harryhausen Tribute

So, Ray Harryhausen has died, a man who helped shaped the visual imagination of the fantastic for several generations. Not just what the fantastic should look like, but also how it should move - if I ask you to picture an animated skeleton, chances are the image in your mind will be moving as if it were animated by Harryhausen.

Now, countless better obituaries (see the BBC or the Guardian (which carried a couple of other pieces too [one, two] and a 'life in pictures' feature) than any that I would write - 'he lived a long life, his creations were extremely influential, and he was respected by most and revered by fans', - have been published - and plenty of bloggers (Warlord Paul and Telecanter, for example) have posted their own tributes to the influence that Ray Harryhausen  has had over their gaming imagination. 

So, having painted up some Harryhausen-esque skeletons, I decided let a bit more of Harryhausen's influence work its way into my gaming. I dug through my big box of bendy plastic fun, aka my Reaper Bones Vampire package, looking to find something else with echoes of the work of the great man. And I found this:

A GORGON! Armed with a bow, too. The details don't show up too well when the white plastic is bare, so...

A quick undercoat (despite what Reaper say, the Bones still benefit from some kind of priming) using Privateer Press' Menoth White Base, and then... 

... a liberal application of Vellejo Black Green Game Ink, and we can actually see what we're working with.

Umpteen different shades of green later (plus some Elf Flesh and Ogryn Flesh wash to give the upper body and face a bit of 'life') and we have a near finished miniature.

And here she is, based up and with the backing of a boy band's worth of Harryhausen-esque skeletons.

[Incidentally, for those of us Old School/Oldhammer bloggers with younger children (and a subscription to Lovefilm), the 'Claymation Story Book Classics' is actually a collection of very early Ray Harryhausen work - my daughter loves them, though I find them more than a bit sinister. But then I know what else moves in that manner, don't I?]

Balls!

So, nearly three weeks ago I wrote:

"As much as we might moan about GW, hidden away on their website are some classic miniatures and, while 'forgotten' games such as BloodBowl, Necromunda, and Mordheim might not get much support in the way of new stuff, the range of miniatures still available for these 'abandoned' lines is impressive. Snap them up before the moulds break!"

The instruction in the last line in now more urgent than ever. According to Epic Addiction (where I arrived, via Porky), "GW are cutting all metal production as they switch over to fine cast, and have let it be known that once stocks of Epic, BFG, Necromunda, Warmaster, Mordheim, Inquisitor run out, then they are gone for good." I'm not sure what this means for the Warhammer Fantasy and 40K Collectors' Ranges, but I can't see the full ranges currently sold being converted to Finecast.

I guess the real loss here will be the end of Epic and Necromunda. As nice as some of Mordheim miniatures are, generic fantasy figures are ten-a-penny (not quite literally, but Reaper Bones comes close), and while it's not my thing, there are a couple of decent-looking 6mm fantasy miniature ranges. And I suspect that BloodBowl might live on in Finecast, but even if it doesn't, fantastical football miniatures are in pretty good supply. For all these games, playing with miniatures from other manufacturers will hardly dent the experience. But while there are a whole bunch of generic sci-fi miniature ranges, few possess the same aesthetic as the Necromunda range, which more than anything in the current 40K range capture the Rogue Trader 'vibe'. While the Epic miniatures aren't quite as characterful, any manufacturer can supply Orcs and Dwarfs which capture something sufficiently similar to the aesthetic of Warhammer fantasy. Outside of some Russian or Chinese IP 'pirates', you won't be buying 6mm Space Marines or Eldar Grav Tanks.  

Which has changed the priorities of my gaming spending over the next few months, to say the least. I was never much of a 6mm man, though I did own Space Marine and bought a few 6mm Squats back-in-the-day, and it is a bit late to give into the temptation to game large-scale 40K tank battles. So, is it unwise to blow a chunk of your redundancy payment on a whole bunch of Necromunda miniatures? 

Hurry Up Harryhausen

The Reaper Bones arrived last week. A box full of bendy plastic miniatures. I decided to set to work straight away - at my own slow pace - and painted up some of the undead. Why undead? Well, they're easy to paint, using only a pretty limited pallette and there is no requirement that you attempt to bring the faces 'to life'!

I think they look pretty decent - the SKELETONS have a very 'Harryhausen' look about them - and it is certainly difficult to tell that they are made of bendy white plastic when painted up. Not so much though when you hold them, or waggle the end of the skeleton's spear - which waggles free and easy. Some of the models arrived quite bent, but this can be fixed with a dunk into very hot water, straightening the bent piece out by hand and dunking the straightened bit into cold water. I didn't even try to remove the mould lines, for three reasons. 1) Apparently, the material from which Reaper Bones doesn't file easily - and given how flexible it is, I'm happy to take the word of others there. 2) The point of miniatures this cheap is that they are gaming pieces. Nice looking gaming pieces, worth spending some time painting, but not worth investing in hours of effort to ensure that a ZOMBIE has a shoulder smooth as a baby's bum. And 3)  I've got bloody hundreds of these things to paint.

So what's in the big box?

A whole mess of miniatures. I'm starting painting the smallest stuff - the level 1 stuff, so to speak. The undead, then some GOBLINS (the classic kind, not the Pathfinder grinning munchkins), then some 'vermin' (swarms of RATS, SPIDERS and so on), and a small pack of KOBOLDS. But as you can see there are some more impressive monsters in there too - including a GIANT, though I'm not too impressed by his female counterpart, who appears to have that back problem that fantasy females tend to suffer from. You know, the lower back problem that leaves them sticking their arse out all the time! There are also townsfolk, some sci-fi miniatures (including a squad of what will work nicely as a Planetary Defence Force / Adeptus Arbites for 40K-ish games), a few bits and bobs of dungeon 'furniture', and endless varieties of Fighters, Elves, Magic Users etc - some overblown, some more modest in their 'awesomeness'. Not a bad haul.

So far, I'm pleased. If your tastes run to Forgeworld resin, then there isn't much for you in Reaper Bones - though I will say that the material handles bigger monsters better than it does things like a skeleton's spear. However, what I am getting from Bones is the urge to churn out painted monsters for my players to face (and I have some damn fool idea of painting up enough miniatures to handle the monster distributions on my random encounter tables), and psychologically, the cheapness and the 'obviously-not-collectors-items-or-for-winning-Golden-Demon' nature of these miniatures has me painting quickly.

Would I pick up more? Almost certainly, though it won't stop me buying lead, old and new.

A Hundredweight of d100 Fantasy

I bought (.pdf, have you seen the shipping costs that Chaosium quote for transatlantic shipping?!) the new version of Magic World, which is basically a reprint of Elric! stripped of it Moorcockisms. And very nice it looks too; a clean, relatively simple d100 fantasy game. The first supplement, Advanced Sorcery, is due soon - again it is largely a reprint of Elric! material, in this case The Bronze Grimoire. 

Chaosium should note* that they are selling .pdfs of Elric! on DriveThruRPG for a couple of quid cheaper, at current exchange rates, than Magic World. And, of course, that nothing short of free is quite a cheap as Legend, which itself is basically a reprint of Mongoose RuneQuest II stripped of its Gloranthaisms. And speaking of Elric, with Legend you could run the Mongoose version of everyone's favourite albino (outside the one played by Mel Smith in The Princess Bride), as all(?) their Elric of Melnibone stuff is on DriveThruRPG for less than £10 a book...

But as Brian Butterfield would say, "that's not all". So, what do we have on the d100 fantasy scene at the moment? Well, we have OpenQuest 2e on the way (I backed the IndieGoGo campaign, and am looking forward to seeing the improvements/additions that Newt Newport has made to this system). Slightly more complex than that, we have Magic World from Chaosium. An extra level of complexity is added - mainly by virtue of its 'faction' system - by Renaissance (now available in a Deluxe form), built on OpenQuest and Legend. One level more complex again is Legend, with its Combat Action 'economy' and system of Combat Manoeuvers  And then we have the big boss of d100 fantasy gaming, RuneQuest 6, which I haven't had a chance to look at yet, though I expect it to be stunning, if I bit too much for my current tastes. 

I own OpenQuest (and soon will have a copy of 2e), Magic World, Mongoose RuneQuest II and Legend, and Renaissance (in the free SRD and hardback Clockwork and Chivalry 2e form). I also own the Basic Roleplaying 'big gold book', will probably buy RuneQuest 6 if it ever appears with a UK supplier, and have a number of out-of-print d100 fantasy systems (I particularly like my GW-produced RQ3 books). With all these extant systems, and given the fact that many of them are OGL (and those that are not appear keen to licence third parties to produce supplements), this is a vibrant, lively time for d100 fantasy gaming.

Well, if there are many other gamers are as daft as me, willing will buy umpteen different versions of d100 fantasy, of course the d100 scene is vibrant! I can't quite decide which is my favourite d100 engine for fantasy gaming (which is yours?). "No, really?", I hear you say, shocked. "I had no idea that you suffered from gamer ADHD", you gasp. However, the intercompatibility of these systems - and the nature of the d100 system itself - not only its modularity, but the simplicity and consistency of the mechanics - means that GMs can pick and choose the best bits from each of these systems. Sadly(?), between Magic World, OpenQuest, and Renaissance, there is little need for Hammerstein! as yet another d100 system. But hopefully this flowering of d100 fantasy systems will stimulate the production of d100 fantasy adventures and other supplements for use at the table. 

*Hopefully, if Chaosium did take note (though given that they don't even notice e-mails, it seems) I'd hope this would not mean an end to the sale of the classic Stormbringer/Elric! .pdfs - we wouldn't accept other kinds of books being deliberately kept out-of-print, and the resurrection of out-of-print gaming books is one of the great success stories of recent RPG history - or an increase in their price, but rather a more reasonable .pdf pricing structure at Chaosium.com.

[Extra: Of course, this is not the limit to d100 fantasy built on a BRP(ish) chassis. In the pipeline are both AEONS, built on the D100II SRD, and Classic Fantasy (originally a BRP supplement) is being rewritten as a 'Legend compatible' complete game.]

Captain, My Captain? (Oldhammer 40K Marine squad, part two)

Well, I haven't made much progress on those Oldhammer 40K Marines. And boy, are they are bastard to put together; the way the arms fit into the shoulders means... no, sorry, the arms don't fit into the shoulders even in the single pose that is 'possible'. It does make you realise how well engineered most of the current plastic kits are, whatever their other faults. After putting together my 'test' marine I decided I needed to use a blob of greenstuff inside each shoulder pad. And using some conservative Saudi-style converting - cutting the hands off a few Marines (and sticking them back on again, of course) - I managed to create a modest variety of poses. Which leaves me with eight Marines as so:

Upright with the aid of blu-tack - I've taken to painting their legs separate from the rest of the body.  

I decided to go for an orange colour scheme because... I forget. I didn't want to paint the squad as part of any of the 'major' chapters, so I skimmed through the more obscure marine colour schemes in Rogue Trader and the Compendium. I thought about using one of the crazy 'alien terrain camouflage' schemes... And then painted them orange, go figure. Actually, the 'test' marine was a bit of a disaster. The glue didn't hold, I put a black ink wash (why?) on before the 'magnolia' undercoat had dried, leaving the model a mess of dirt grey. A catalogue of school boy errors would be a generous description. I gave the model a quick clean and undercoated using 'Macharius Solar Orange', a Citadel 'foundation' paint, and then used 'Blood Red', 'Blazing Orange' and 'Golden Yellow', with the metallic equipment painted with 'Greatcoat Grey' (a Privateer Press paint), 'Codex Grey' and 'Pig Iron' (another Privateer Press paint). Nothing fancy, and the results aren't too fancy, either!

I've achieved a much cleaner look on the second Marine. He didn't have a dirty, aborted base-coat, of course. They both still need a few more details - I'm thinking of adding some wings either side of the bull's head - not quite Blood Angles, but the Flying Buffalo Chapter?

But now for my Space Marine Captain. I was going to pick up a classic metal model, but instead I have these:

Finecast! Well, this will be my first experience painting Finecast. And of cleaning the 'flash' from Finecast! What I did find amusing that my first Finecast miniatures have the dates 1990 and 1991 stamped on the slotta tabs. In other words these sculpts are from the same era as my Oldhammer 40K Space Marines, even if they are made from new-fangled whatchamaresin. At £20.50 for five miniatures, they're not quite the bargain the e-Bay Marines were, but at just over £4 per miniature these are pretty competitively priced. Especially when compared to the cost of a single Finecast 'character' miniature (£10+ apiece). In fact, nearly all my Games Workshop purchases in the past couple of years have been from their 'Collectors' and 'Specialist Games' ranges. As much as we might moan about GW, hidden away on their website are some classic miniatures and, while 'forgotten' games such as BloodBowl, Necromunda, and Mordheim might not get much support in the way of new stuff, the range of miniatures still available for these 'abandoned' lines is impressive. Snap them up before the moulds break!

Anyway, 'Captain, My Captain!' Which of these should be the Space Marine Captain for my Oldhammer 40K tactical squad? Here's my thinking. The Marine in MKI armour (the one with the open face and plume) should probably be a Rogue Trader in antique armour. According the article by Rick Priestley in the Warhammer 40K Compilation (p19-25) - to which these miniatures are the partner pieces - the legs of the MKI suit are unpowered! What does that leave Marines wearing this with, Move 1? The Marine in the MKII armour - the one on the same sprue as the MKI - I'm thinking of using as a Chaplain, with the faceplate painted up as a stylised skull. The MKIII - the one with the Chainsword and Plasma Pistol - now that, I think is my Captain. The MKIV and the MKV - the other two on that sprue, from right to left - will probably end up as Captains of other, future Oldhammer 40K squads, though I might need to find some new arms and weapons as these guys are all armed with Bolters.

Now all I need is an Oldhammer 40K Marine with a Rocket Launcher.