Dungeons and Doggies - Saint Bernard

Years ago we back the first Dungeons and Doggies kickstarter... When the doggos finally did show up we split them up. The only one I was really interested in, however, was this massive Saint Bernard. I'm not sure if the kids ever painted theirs...? Both seem to have lost interest in painting miniatures, for the most part (though Keiran DID paint three axolotl warriors from the last Reaper Bones kickstarter we backed... they may be the ONLY ones that have been painted... unless I painted some of the terrain bits I got...?) 

I cut it off it's original base and stuck it to a GW 32mm base with some cobblestones I made with a roller from Green Stuff World. 

It's a lovely minaiture, but, honestly, I'm not sure when or where I'll even use it... MAYBE, if I ever played Frostgrave again, I could use it there...? Apothecary? Mule? I don't know... 

I can't even think of a name... 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Twenty-Three

 

DAY 23 - MEMORY - INNOVATION - QUICK - SURPRISE

Which to do…? With some of these prompts I’ve had a hard time coming up with anything. Today, I had a few different ideas for each, but not sure which I could actually flesh out to more than a sentence or two… I think the easiest would be to focus on memory, specifically some of my salient memories of how I got started in all of this…

I’m not sure where I first heard of D&D I might have heard about the concerns of the satanic panic (and heard of Mazes and Monsters - but never saw it) I know it was mentioned briefly in the movie Taps (1981 - staring very young Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, and Tom Cruise - one of my favourite movies as a young pre-teen… or… pre-pre-teen, I guess I was nine when it came out) I think it also made a brief appearance in E.T. (also a favourite that year!). I can’t remember if I saw an actually copy of the game or the Endless Quest books which came out that same year. 

The first physical copy of Dungeons and Dragons that I saw was the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Second Edition) which included the red-covered basic rules and a copy of Keep on the Borderlands. Strangely, the place that ai saw it was a small toy store in the Wildwood Mall (which later combined - via underground tunnel -with the newer Circle Centre Mall to become the Centre at Circle and 8th). I’d bought Playmobil and smurfs and other action figures in that same toy store. The D&D game - and a small handful of Ral Partha miniatures display case at the back of the store near some standard family board games of the era and a couple of Avalon Hill “bookcase games” (Panzer Leader? Outdoor Survival?). 

It was the miniatures that REALLY caught. My eye. I’d had loads of plastic toy soldiers and models in 1/35 (and later 1/72), but those were almost exclusively World War Two models at that point (I think later I had an American Revolution set red British and blue Americans, and maybe a box of Napoleonic French in grey?). I was THRILLED by the idea of knights and wizards and fantasy creatures in miniature! 

Somehow I convinced my parents to buy it and my dad to play it with me - I did not know any other kids that played it at that point. My Dad read the rules and ran the game to start, but I was just too excited and full of ideas and quickly took over the role of DM.

My dad played a Cleric names Zaddoc and a thief named Runkha. We ALWAYS played D&D with multiple characters in that day - it wasn’t until years later and encountering different RPGs that I was even aware of the concept of playing a SINGLE character! Some time later I discovered two kids at my school that played D&D. Chris who I only played briefly with over a summer before he went to a different school, then Paul, who moved away the following year. Later I went to a different school… met a couple new friends, played different games (Top Secret, Star Frontiers… later Palladium games) . 

Skipping ahead, my next salient MEMORY is in my first year of high school. I met J.C. waiting out front of Miss Roger’s Grade 9 History class. He’s spotted me reading REvsed Recon in the hall and recognized it and came over to chat and invited me to join a D&D campaign just starting up with some of his elementary school friends, Christian and Paul. For the rest of grade nine we met every Sunday at Paul’s mom’s place and played all afternoon wandering through the Temple of Elemental Evil. 

I played a Human fighter and a halfling thief. I know Christian had a wizard… someone had a Paladin and someone had a cleric…? Maybe a Ranger…? The halfling collected all the jewelry that he could. I had a long list of all the jewelry that had been found - what they were made of and their value - he wore ALL of it. The other players couldn’t understand WHY I didn’t sell it in town when we went back for provisions and buy… stuff..? 

It was one of the longest campaigns I ever played in and still have very fond memories of it, despite how it all ended. I missed one session which wrapped up the campaign and Paul, the DM, let the others use my characters as meat shields in the final battle. They both died and just about everyone else survived and made off with all the loot - including looting all the jewelry that my halfling had collected. 

My other thought that I’ll touch on briefly is how much INNOVATION there has been in role-playing games SINCE those early days of D&D or AD&D - where you only got experience points for killing things and collecting treasure. Occasionally my son will dig out the books and make “old school” characters with his friends and laugh at how “absurd” the system is… I pretty much dropped D&D as soon as I discovered new games that focused on things other than slaying orcs. 

I have to say I DO appreciate all that INNOVATION that has taken place and love so much of all the games that are currently available, but none of that diminishes the fantastic, magical memories of those early days of play. We made due with what we had and despite there being little systemic encouragement to do so, MUCH role-playing happened if you were playing with the right people.  

As fond as those memories are, I have no desire to go back and play those same games - as many of my generation do - with the original games or games like Dungeon Crawl Classics. There’s so much better stuff to do, now! 

Once again ended up prattling on MUCH longer than I meant to… 

RPGaDay 2021 - Day Fifteen

 This would be half way... If I'd started on Day ONE!?  

A day late and a dollar short... but better late than never...?

Rather than discussing the obvious noun-version of supplement (my favourite suplement for a role-playing game or what I like to see in a supplement), I'd rather address the verb.  I very often feel I have to SUPPLEMENT published adventures with my own content as they are often so full of plot holes a battle cruiser could be flown through them...

I often feel this was due to the adventure not being play-tested by enough different people! If you just play things with the same group - that has the same sensibilities and assumptions about how a game is to be played, you will miss out on so many potential flaws. But that level of play-testing takes time and time constraints with having to keep up with the need to crank out NEW PRODUCT to keep everyone's attention (and money rolling in) prevents publishers from being able to do so. 

I think players DEMAND more "realism", in some ways, much like with making modern films. Making a World War Two movie in 1970s was easy - you just used whatever tanks you had on hand - Use modern Leopards for generic german tanks - why not? Nowadays, you can't get away with that. If that Tiger tanks doesn't look exactly like a Tiger tank - there will be a LOT of whiners. 

Maybe it's because we play as and with adults who "know better". If we played the same adventures as kids, no one would have noticed. 

As an example, I tried to run the classic Dragonlance games a few years back using Savage Worlds... in the FIRST adventure (of TWELVE!? - which I had spend some time and not a small amount of money to track down an acquire) one of the key plot points is recovering the Discs of Mishakal. Of course with the adult group I was running it for, when they came upon them, one of the players (an engineer) said "Wait, what are they made of...? Platinum...? There are 16 discs, each a foot in diameter and a 1/4" thick...?" Whips out phone, looks up density of platinum, calculated the volume of said discs and then the weight and declares... "yeah, that bunch of discs would be over a tonne..." Kind of just KILLED the momentum in that whole campaign right there... 

On the spot I suggested that the Discs of Mishakal were magical and, if carried by someone of Lawful Good alignment, it weighed next to nothing... but what about when it was loaded in the back of a cart - did they have to sit in the lap of someone with a lawful good alignment? Did the person holding them weigh more if someone not of lawful good alignment tried to push them or pick them up? 

And then there was the escape from that first dungeon - The cavern is slowly collapsing around the characters and they have to get out quick and the most obvious escape route is this "elevator" that's basically two bit "pots" attached to each other with a cable over a great big pulley at the top and you ring the bell and a bunch of slave Gully Dwarves at the top jump into the pot at the top, creating a greater weight than what's in the pot at the bottom, and the one descends while the other goes up... but... the Gully Dwarves aren't Lawful Good... so do even MORE have to jump in to help lift the carrier of the Discs of Mishakal... Is a character with Lawful Good alignment REALLY going to be cool with sending a giant pot full of Gully Dwarves to their ultimate doom so the player characters can make their escape? I could go on...

More recently I ran the first (of five) adventures in the first campaign book for Wrath & Glory and in said first adventure they are investigating the murder of a high-ranking member of a Noble house... the FIRST location they are sent to investigate the crime scene and, right away, one of the characters makes the completely sensible and obvious suggestion of asking to see the surveillance video... Despite the fact that that is the FIRST THING characters in EVERY modern investigative TV cop show, there is NO mention of any sort of surveillance - and indeed if there was, that would make ALL THE OTHER CLUES completely irrelevant!? So I said, "There are no surveillance cameras"... He said, "You're telling me, that in the far future, in the most paranoid, heavy-handed, authoritarian dictatorships... there are no surveillance cameras... anywhere!?" I feebly countered with "Not here, nobles prefer their privacy...?" He started to moan about how ridiculous that was and I said, let it be or I murder your character or you start losing glory point or something... In retrospect, I COULD have said, sure there were surveillance cameras... but they'd all be tampered with... but the level of technical expertise required to do so would have been vastly greater than the bad guys had at their disposal, if they had, they would have done much nastier things than just murder this one dude... and if they WERE that professional, they wouldn't have been so sloppy as to have left all of the other clues... GAH!? 

I almost feel like I just shouldn't bother with published adventures and just go with a hook and make shit up as I go... but that's hard when so much of a setting is about large webs of conspiracy - it's very difficult to make that shit up on the fly and make it seem believable. Also, with a system and setting I am new to, I like to use the published adventures as I feel like they SHOULD have thins sorted out - like having the right balance of bad guys for a starting party to deal with an "set the tone" for how the game is to be played... but so many just fall flat in that regard. 

Don't get me started about Tales from the Loop... i don't have all day. 

December 2019 Games

PART ONE - BEFORE the HOLIDAZE

December got off to a slow start...



But there was enough stuff going on that I'm going to separate this month into two parts: pre-Holidaze, and HOLIDAZE! As HOLIDAZE officially begins this afternoon, this is what we got up to so far this month...


Sunday, 1 December 2019

I did kick off the month with a game of Necromunda..



Brent came by and tried the game out. You can read all about the game here:

El-Akarm Market Massacre

I'd hoped that this would be an EVERY SUNDAY thing... but have only gotten in games two of the four Sundays (so far!) this month. On the 8th we all had tickets to ELF! The Musical at the Persephone Theatre. All their musicals are just wonderful...

And Finnegan did get in a bunch of D&D games...

There was his bi-weekly Tuesday game on the 3rd (of which the last few sessions had been cancelled for one reason or another, so this was the first time they'd gotten together in over a month)


Friday, 6 December 2019



Friday evening he ran a one-shot for a friend and his son and the son of ANOTHER friend while Amanda and I were out. (This and all his D&D games aren't on the calendar above, because I don't log HIS games - not the ones I'm not playing in, at least!)


Saturday, 7 December 2019



Saturday afternoon he ran his regular game...



There was an epic sea battle/boarding action - which required busting out my half-built ships...



It looked like everyone was having fun.


Friday, 13 December 2019

The weekend of Friday the 13th is when things really got going for us...

well...

sort of...



Brent and Barb came by for supper and games. We ended up playing three rounds of Marrying Mr. Darcy - which was really fun, because I don't think we've gotten to play that all year..?



In the first round I played Lizzy Barret - but did NOT get to marry Mr. Darcy because my absolutely horrid sister, Jane (played by Barb), stole him away early in the game with a surprise engagement and I was left with Mr. Denny... Amanda played Georgiana Darcy - and married Mr. Wickham - much to the horror of her brother! Brent played my dear friend Charlotte Lucas, who did very well for herself and married Colonel Fitzwilliam! (Barb won the game - with 25 points)



In the second game I played Georgiana Darcy and (AGAIN!) she was wed to Mr. Wickham - with a scandalous elopement! I thought I did very well for myself scoring 27 points! But I was edged out by Barb, who again won - with 29 points! She'd been playing Elizabeth Barret and DID get to marry my brother, Mr. Darcy! It was a SUPER tight game, though - Amanda also scored 27 points - playing Lydia Barret and marrying Mr. Denny, and Brent was only just behind us with 26 points - having played Caroline Bingley and marrying Colonel Fitzwilliam!



In the third round we played with the Emma expansion. I have not read Emma - and am not terribly familiar with the story... (I feel like I HAVE read Pride and Prejudice... I know I've read one or two of Austen's books at one point or another... but mostly I remember the movie - with Keira Knightly -  and a stage play that was put on by a local theatre company a couple years ago). I played Harriet Smith, Amanda played Miss Bates, Brent played Anne Taylor, and Barb Played Emma Woodhouse. Now, this was just the first time we played it... but it seemed a just little like Emma really had things stacked in her favour... maybe it was just how all the cards played out...? I'll have to watch for that in future games and, if it happens again, know that the others really need to keep a watch on her and GANG UP!!!

As it turns out both Amanda and I ended up OLD MAIDS, scoring 15 and 23 points respectively (Miss Bates, played by Amanda - actually gets a few bonus points if she ends up an old maid - other wise we'd have been a bit close!) Brent managed to get Anne Taylor married off to Mr. Elton - and scored 21 points. But Barb won big, again, marrying Emma off to a certain Mr. knightly for a whopping 32 points!

I'd forgotten how fun this game can be - especially if playing with other people that are really INTO IT! We'll have to try and get this into more regular rotation!

Still haven't tried out the Undead expansion!


Saturday, 14 December 2019



Finnegan ran his regular D&D game in the afternoon. This week it was ALL THE GIRLS!? The party continued their journey by sea to the Island where the entire campaign is to reach it's ultimate conclusion.

In the evening, we had more friends over for supper and games. This time Amanda had invited one of her co-workers, Kathleen, and her sister Maureen.



We started off teaching them to play 7 Wonders. I played Babylone, Kathleen played Ephesos, Amanda played Giza, and Maureen played Rhodes. Maureen was just crushing it with the military - I totally thought she might win her very first game!



But then... SCIENCE! It really adds up!! I ended up winning - by just a few points (55). Amanda and Maureen were tied at 48, and Kathleen was just a bit behind at 37



WE played again and I decided to try something new - Stonehenge! I've never played it before. Amanda and Kathleen just flipped their Wonder cards and played on the B side and maureen just played Rhodes A again.

Stonehenge is kind of interesting... and tricky. When I pointed out that the third stage of my wonder gave me points for every stone I had (which, for some reason, didn't actually help me BUILD any part of my wonder!? Stonehenge is built of clay, Wood, Ore Papyrus and textiles, I guess...?) I guess everyone decided to not let me get any Stone - they also burried or discarded any science that came their way, suspecting I might do science again (seriously, there was hardly ANY science out there at the end of the game). I still won... well... tied with Amanda at 49. Kathleen was at 34 and Maureen was at 28 this time! (Both Amanda and I built up some actual military this time!)

Still, seemed like they really enjoyed it and were even talking about picking it up for themselves!



Afterwards we played Marrying Mr. Darcy - which is always great fun - but even more fun when people are really into it, and Maureen is a Jane Austen fan! I played Jane Bennet and Maureen played my sister Elizabeth. Kathleen played Lizzie's friend Charlotte Lucas, and Amanda played Caroline Bingley. Early in the game I had an elopement Mr. Wickham - which I got out of by discarding a pile of Character cards, I then was offered a surprise proposal from Mr. Darcy... which is stupidly TURNED DOWN, thinking I might still have a chance at landing the lovely Mr. Bingley! In the end I married... Mr. Collins.... Ended the game with a grand total of 15 points...

Amanda did even worse with Caroline Bingley - she ended up an Old Maid after turning down Mr. Wickham and scored only 13. Kathleen, playing Charlotte Lucas managed to marry Mr. Denny and scored 18 points. Maureen was the big winner landing Mr. Darcy and scoring 37 points!!! THIRTY SEVEN!!! Almost as much as the rest of us combined!!

I don't know why we don't play this game more!

Seriously, if you know any Jane Austen fans that don't really play games, but you'e LIKE them to start playing games - THIS is the one to get them playing!

Sunday, 15 December 2019



I actually had THREE people come over to play necromunda on Sunday evening!? You can read all about that game here:

The Ratskin Hoarde


Friday, 20 December 2019

Not a game, per se, but game-nerdy and mostly game buddies were invited... The kids and I Performed our Second (Hopefully) Annual Very Scary Solstice Concert (okay, it TECHNICALLY wasn't solstice until Saturday, but the kids wanted to do it Friday night so they could play their D&D game on Saturday without me rushing around like a Mad Bastard trying to clean up things around them...)

The concert is basically a bunch of traditional Xmas Carols arranged for two violins and a cello, with... alternative lyrics... based on the writings of Howard Phillip Lovecraft. A couple years ago we bought CDs and Song Books from the HPL Historical Society.

Last year we did two concerts - one Very Scary Solstice Concert and a second one two days later for people interested in singing traditional carols. The first was well attended and quite a riot - people singing and laughing. Only my family showed up for the second... and my sister wouldn't even sing. So the kids decided they only wanted to do ONE concert this year.



Some homemade cookies baked just for the occasion.



Cthulhu Cookies - Made by Keira.



Elder Sign Cookies - also made by Keira.



Us, playing the concert.

Over TWENTY people showed up and crammed themselves into our living and dining rooms. We ended up having to set up in the space between the two rooms - which was a little bit awkward... but worked out well enough in the end.

Again it was a riot of laughter and singing. I hope I can convince the kids to do it again next year!


Saturday, 21 December



Finnegan ran the final session in his D&D5E campaign that he's been running every Saturday since the beginning of September. All but one was able to make it! (He's actually been running RPGs for this group since the beginning of January - but it was Dungeon Crawl Classics to start with).

I think he originally intended for the campaign to run a little longer, but recognized there were some major problems with how was going and the group dynamic and after much thinking and postulating and bouncing ideas off of me, he decided to wrap it up - HARD REBOOT! Start again in the new year.

He had, briefly, even considered trying a completely new game system in the new year, but had decided to stick with D&D for now...



the final showdown with the big boss baddies.



It was pretty epic.


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

In a week and a bit I'll have December Games Part Two - a wrap up of the rest of the month. Also around that time I'll have my traditional retrospective - looking back at the last year. Also I've been doing a lot of planning for 2020 - or, at least, the First Quarter of it! I also still have three posts about three of the Necromunda gangs I still need to finish up and post!? In addition to all that, I've been painting up Hellboy Miniatures - and am almost done enough to start playing TOMORROW!!!

For those celebrating Xmas today and tomorrow... and possibly the rest of the week - I hope you all have a very merry one. For those that aren't - I hope you all have an equally fabulous week/rest of your year!

30 Games in 30 Days

Last September I made a pledge with the kids that we would play a game every single day in September. I'd done this because, looking at my BGG stats, I realized we'd hardly played any games all summer. That is not the case this year - we played games just about every day through August... So this year, to make the challenge a bit more challenging, I thought I'd up the ante and make it a DIFFERENT game every day in September. Actually I kind of stole the different game every day idea from Viscount Eric who is doing the same thing over at Gaming with the Gnomies! 

So Far we have played:

1 September - Meridian - (didn't get a picture...)

2 September - Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition) - we've been going to the 5e Encounters run at our friendly local game store Dragon's Den Games. 

3 September - Ice Cream (and Meridian again!) - didn't get a picture of Ice Cream, but we played Meridian again with Amanda (as only the kids and I played it on Tuesday) so I got a picture of that! 

4 September - Monty Python Fluxx - my favourite of the Fluxx games so far... mostly because I can sing lots of the songs (which the kids still find highly entertaining... In a couple more years they'll just be embarrassed by me - so I gotta take what I can get while I can!) 

Tomorrow we'll get some Song of Blades and Heroes and/or Frostgrave going on...