I haven’t written a whole lot here in the past couple months, but it looks like that’s going to be changing. All of my time had been taken up by running my Earthdawn game and preparing for Privateer Press Weekend here in St. Louis but now that both of those are passed I should have more time to keep up with things here.
There are a couple of drafts that I have started in the back room here and there’s the Deadlands write-ups that I’d really like to finish as well. Since I don’t think Luke is going to be able to finish the Earthdawn write-ups I’d like to try and summarize that campaign as well as talk about what I learned from the grand experiment that was Earthdawn – Savaged and how I plan on going about changing things for the next time I run the game.
So check back soon – it’s time to try and catch back up.
Most every Sunday afternoon you can find the gaming group I’m a member of in my basement seated around an old dining room table throwing dice, drinking Dew, and munching Cheetos. In addition to the gaming group, my house has a trio of additional inhabitants – my fiancee and her two cats, Baroness and Puck.
Baroness is a well behaved tailless calico who spends most of the day curled up either in her bed upstairs or on my fiancee’s lap while she reads or watches TV. Puck is the anti-Baroness, who has made it his mission in life to cause whatever grief he can. Any bags of chips left unattended for longer than 30 seconds will be opened and scattered across the kitchen floor when you return. If the garbage disposal doesn’t mince absolutely every bit of food we put down in it, Puck will jump in the sink and try to get food out of the drain. On more than one occasion Puck has knocked a full pan of chili cheese dip – bubbling hot hot mind you – off the stove and onto the kitchen floor. I guess he needed some dip for the chips or something.
Still that didn’t compare to his antics yesterday.
The scene opened on the town or Rex, a battered and broken village in the hinterlands of Barsaive. The townspeople had fought a daily struggle to eek a meager living out of the dried and broken land, and just as their efforts began to pay off they became the target of a band of ork scorchers. Frequent raids kept the town on the brink of collapse but the orks were smart enough to always leave the town in good enough shape that it could recover… and be raided all over again.
Rex’s headwoman, an elf by the name of Emberica, was finally fed up with the cycle of destruction and called in some old favors which led Askari, a dwarven weaponsmith, to bring his small band of adepts to aid the town. The orks were not expecting any resistance, let alone a band of adepts, and a cunning trap sealed their doom. However they were not go quietly. Many good townsfolk lost their lives in the orks’ death rage, as did Askari himself.
I’ve finally made my return to Gamemastering, kicking off a new campaign with my gaming group at the end of March. This time around I went for my long-time favorite: Earthdawn. Now that we’ve gotten a couple of sessions under our collective belt we’re settling into the swing of things.
Although I’ve turned to the familiar setting of Barsiave for this game I’ve decided to try a few new things as well, the first of which was converting this fantastic game to a system more suitable to my players.
Despite my best intentions, I got absolutely no models finished in February. Not a single one. Talk about shooting my efficiency in the foot. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the primary culprit for this procrastination was an old nemesis which somehow caught back up with me: Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri. That cursed game consumed many hours back in college and when I made the mistake of reinstalling it I found myself falling into old habits. However March was an entirely different story.
We had last left the posse down one Ranger and up one mad scientist and one Harrowed guide after it was revealed a former companion was actually a skinwalker in disguise. With their new guide in tow the Rangers set off from Redrock investigate the manor where Sen. Grissom was last seen.
Located half a day’s ride from Redrock, the mansion was secluded from the main cattle trails by a smaller nearly overgrown path. The trip was uneventful other than the weather turning south as the posse approached the manor. They hoped to take shelter within from the storm while they looked around but unfortunately would find the dilapidated residence less uninhabited – and far less safe – than they had expected.
The St. Louis Riverdogs are pleased to announce our first Annual Privateer weekend at Diecon 8. This will be the premiere event for the Midwest prior to Gencon 2008. Privateer weekend contains 3 days of spine crushing, cortex smashing fun over more than 7 events. The terrain is amazing including specialized scenario tables. The competitors are top tier in both skill and personality. The gaming will be second to none. Featured events over the weekend include three steamroller competitions, an ongoing tour of duty competition, painting competitions, Iron Kingdom knowledge test against Capt Saulty Dog, and our main event, an official Hardcore tournament on Saturday.
Check out http://diecon.gamestlouis.com for our complete event schedule and follow the link to Diecon 8 to see other convention activities and preregister. Or check out http://www.diecon.com for general convention information. A summary of our event schedule is below.
I’m pretty happy how quickly I was able to get some painting done in January. I started my Blighted Legionnaires early on and was able to finish them in less that two weeks. While I was working on them I also completed my Swamp Gobbers Bellows Crew. After that I took about a week or so off and before deciding to break into the big stuff. I’ve had a few warbeasts sitting around primed – a second Carnivean, a second Seraph, and my Raek – that I decided to try to do all at once. It’s slow going and the process is pretty monotonous but they’ve been sitting in my miniature case primed for long enough.
Raek Flesh Details
I haven’t finished the warbeasts yet but I hope to in February. I’m taking my time and trying a slightly different color scheme – doing something a little more gray and a little less blue. I’m also adding a little bit of texture to the beasts’ musculature to give it some additional visual interest. I still have some shading to do on the skintones – especially on the Seraph – but I’m making pretty good progress. I finished up the dirt and stone on their bases and now just have to do the wrecked warjack on the Carnivean’s base, the Seraph’s wings, and the bone and mouths on all the beasts.
Angelius Tail Repose
On top of the painting I’ve also started work reposing my second Angelius. I hacked apart the end of its tail and repositioned it using an paper clip armature. I’ve added some bulk with greenstuff already but haven’t gotten any detail work done on the top layer. I’m looking to finish the sculpting and assembling the rest of the model by the end of the month. That way I can have both Angelii primed and ready to paint so I can do them both when the mood finally strikes me. Given how much I like using these beasts I hope the mood strikes me sooner rather than later.
I did pick up Aiyana and Holt as well as a box of Incubii and a Feralgeist in January. I also had a few gift certificates that let me get a second Angelius and a box of Farrow Bone Grinders. Thirteen models in and twelve out left me one in the whole for the month, dropping my running total to a negative seven – definitely not the direction I was hoping to go.
At least there’s only about 7 models from February through April that I’m interested in getting, so I’ve got a good chance of pulling back into the positive pretty soon as long as I can keep up a decent pace. With any luck I can be in the black by the end of March.
With the death of Manaburst our group has moved on to Deadlands, the Weird West roleplaying game. After two sessions I think it’s fair to say we’ve gotten back into the groove and are set to have an great campaign. I think that Luke might have some early-campaign jitters up in the GM’s chair but everyone else seems to be having a great time.
The first session took place January 20th and started out with three young Texas Rangers being called in from their field work assignments to meet with a ranger that had trained each of them at some point in the past, Elijah Peterson, in Redrock, Arizona, a small town just off the rail line. With the recent escalation of the Great Rail Wars the posse-to-be had expected to be assigned to assist the Dixie Rails but they soon found they were in for something completely different.
On January 10th we finished up our Bloodstone Marches Theatre of War campaign. Although the other factions fought hard the Legion of Everblight managed to win their third strategic objective, allowing Thagrosh to escape to recover from absorbing Pyromalific’s athanc in safety.
Everyone seemed to have had a good time during the league and the rule changes we made seemed to go over well. A few more were proposed for the next time – things like doing away with detachments completely. I can see where detachments were initially intended to make sure participants didn’t change lists mid-round but we play all our games in one day. On top of that the campaign is meant to be very casual for us, so it seemed like a fair suggestion to just let folks bring their lists to play on campaign night. It’s less record keeping for the campaign organizer and less work for the teams to get all the lists together early, so it’s win-win for everyone.
There were also a few inconsistencies between scenarios and some of the rules that seemed a bit confusing at time – things like columns that need destroying varying in rules between scenarios. I’m not sure how much can be done there without adjusting balance. There were also some complaints (from both sides) that a few scenarios seemed unbalanced. We’ll definitely have to look at the scenarios a little more closely if we run the Bloodstone Marches again.
But all in all the campaign seemed to be a success and I look forward to giving another Theater of War a shot in the future.
