Here are the pics from my first battle with with my Necron army against Dennis’ Dark Eldar army. For a good turn by turn accounting of the match (I believe they are referred to as battle reports) I suggest you head over to Dennis’ blog and read Night with Necrons.
… with the players. So that Scooby-Doo- esque wrestling farm league idea I mentioned in the previous Scion post, ya… about that. I mentioned the idea to some of the prospective players and a few of them had reservations about the theme of the game. Not because they hated the idea, just that we had already attempted something like it and they didn’t want to try to repeat it. They started brain storming, and one suggested pirates. Within seconds, the other people at the table started responding to the idea, well, let’s say favorably.Well, I’m nothing if not willing to work with my players so…
Scions of the Caribbean.
That’s right, over the top, pirate action combined with the children of gods. I’ve spent most of a day putting together what I like to refer to as an idea repository. It’s a document full of links to things that could inspire the game. Stories of piracy, legendary sea monsters, famous lost islands that could make great terra incognita, things like that. As I’ve stated in the past, one of the greatest skills a game master can develop is the fine art of plagiarism, so yes, I’ll be borrowing extremely heavily from movies and TV shows that I’ve seen. From there I’ve started to come up with a dozen or so adventure seeds for the game. (I can’t post them here until after they get used because most of the players read this blog.) I don’t want to come up with too many before the game starts so that I can develop them off off of what the players come up with for characters and their backgrounds. I’ve tried to plan out lots of adventures for a game in the past (such as the Ghostbusters: LA game) and I felt that the adventures didn’t really pick up until I was able to integrate the characters backgrounds into them. (I’m going to expand on that with a few examples from said Ghostbusters game in a future post.)
I’ve run some “wacky fun pirate adventures” in the past with mostly the same group (two separate Spelljammer campaigns with one of them) so I’ve been trying to work on some possible angles to keep this from turning into another “protagonist not hero” game like the last Spelljammer game I ran. Don’t get me wrong, that can be a lot of fun, but as a GM it really binds my hands as far as plot hooks I can dangle in front of the party, but I’ll be helped out this time around by the fact that the Scion characters should be somewhat constrained in the pounding of the “Yarrr!” button by the virtues of their pantheon choices. I’m predicting that the players will most likely end up as privateers within three or four game sessions, starting the game without a ship of their own and not having recieved their visitstion from their divine parent. I’m going to need to wait until I have their characters’ backstories before really filling in the outline for the first few game sessions.
Look, if I had something witty to put here this wouldn’t be a collection of random quotes, now would it?
That’s what we can see when you guys just put down the masks of fake concern, politeness and interest: condescension, arrogance, and a very palpable anger and insecurity about yourselves, what you believe in and what you like and dislike.
People have to agree with you, or they are just rejects that deserve spite and hatred.
You then try to manipulate people into hating them too, moderators into casting them aside, practice the rhetoric of the dishonest and the mental gymnastics of the poor of mind, learn to set the word-traps of those who have no truth to stand by their side, and try to appeal to the lowest common denominators you can find in your audiences to destroy your intended targets: people who happen to dislike something you like, to criticize something you let define you, who like things you find threatening to whatever you must defend… people who just happen to not think like you do.
When all this fails, you just turn back into the slithering bastards you never ceased to be and insult the hell out of people in hopes of getting a rise out of them. They will hopefully look worse than you did, and you will win on appearances rather than contents or convictions.
Well. Nope. Not this time.
Now where was I?
After recording the recent “Mistakes We’ve Made” podcast, many of the Undergophers sat down to play another game of Gamma World, and like all adventures of the UnderGopher Gamma World Traveling Freak Show we recorded an actual play episode. (Fun Fact: until a third actual play episode gets recorded I’m holding it in my pocket as a sort of strategic podcast reserve.) Here’s another batch of Gamma World play photos.
It was another great game run by the Undergopher’s own WDR. Gamma World really lends itself to the idea of a pickup game when a few members of the regular crew can’t make it for the regular game. I’m still not convinced that there’s enough there to run a long term campaign like you would under Pathfinder or D&D 4e.
In case you’re interested, here’s the links to the previous Gamma World pictures. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.
For this week’s bonus podcast Hooligan and Slacker join WDR and I in discussing the UnderDiscussion Shameless Self Promotion Tour we recently took where we visited the major gaming stores in the Kansas City metro area. We braved outrageous gas prices and the perils of an all you can eat Italian buffet to spread the good word about UnderDiscussion to some stores that had previously exceeded our usual gaming commute. We talk about how we feel that local stores are vital to the hobby. All and all I would say that we had a really good time on the trip, met a lot of friendly game store owners and most of us walked away with gaming stuff we had been looking for. This bonus episode clocks in at around seventeen minutes.
Also, I would like to remind you that we are currently running a contest to give away an IronDie basic set of metal d6′s. All you need to do to get an entry in the hat is like our facebook page (there’s a convenient like button in the sidebar of the website, but if, for some reason you can’t see it here’s a link.) If you want to improve your odds all you need to do is get your friends to like the facebook page and mention that you were the one who referred them with the phrase “[your name] said I would gopher this.” You still have until the end of April 29th for everyone to get signed up.
In order of visitation we went to:
The Basement – Games and Hobbies in the Zona Rosa shopping center. I took a few pics of some sweet converted Warhammer 40k orks there.
31st Century Games & Hobbies in Olathe, KS
Tabletop Game and Hobby in Overland Park, Ks
Big City Comics and Games in Kansas City, Mo (This is a correction from the podcast, Big City is on the Missouri side of State Line Road.)
Here’s the link to our iTunes feed.
Here’s the link to the UnderDiscussion RSS Feed.
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