Laser Swords and Spider Women (Hobby Origins, the Beginning...)

Not the name of a new tabletop game but rather my earliest recollections of the fantastical.

I don't remember a time when I wasn't interested in fantasy and sci-fi subjects.  The original Star Wars film debuted while I was still in diapers, with cheap imitations saturating the media landscape while I took my first steps.  Kenner Star Wars toys and their knock-offs were ubiquitous and my toddler eyes no doubt saw them in the bedrooms of older cousins.

My first concrete memory of anything fantastical is watching The Empire Strikes Back upon its theater release in 1980.  I clearly remember the Imperial Walker battle scene and the lightsaber duel but little else, and I think I slept through most of that first showing.  

Star Wars toys featured prominently at that 1980 Christmas, and I was hooked.  My rural hometown routinely brought back popular movies (maybe this was normal back then?) and either the following summer in '81, or a year later in '82 I saw ESB in the theater again, this time soaking it all in.  Knowing the general thrust of the story (ice planet fight, swamp planet stuff, cloud planet stuff) but then being amazed at the Vader-as-Luke's-Father revelation (SPOILER ALERT!) stands as a very clear memory.  

The few readers of this blog know that comic books are my one true love.  Despite stupidly selling my collection decades ago, my earliest comics survived the purge due to their extremely poor and therefore unmarketable conditions.  Armed with these actual copies and the unparalleled Mike's Amazing World of Comics database (R.I.P. Mike), I reordered my jumbled memories.

My first comic?  Spider-Woman #34.  Curious choice for a young boy but then I remember economics and not my preferences played the primary role in my earliest, preschool, comic book acquisitions.  The spinner rack resided at the liquor store* and perhaps in early 1981 I spied a Star Wars comic, or maybe recognized Spider-Man from the old '60s cartoon that was in syndication.  The memory is fuzzy but I remember being told "no", only to have the gruff salesman intervene and offer my dad a discounted comic to placate me.  This happened a number of times, with the shop owner selling my folks comics that either were damaged or poor sellers about to be discarded to make room for the next month's editions.  I believe Spider-Woman #34 fell into the latter category.  None of that mattered to me... the bright colors, slam-bang action, and over-the-top characters were more than my pre-kindergarten brain could ask for.  Remember Hammer and Anvil, two escaped convicts connected at the wrists by an alien super-chain?  As I type this, my nearly 50 year-old brain realizes what a wonderfully wacky supervillain concept this was; there was no chance a child could understand.  But I was enthralled.  I think that my inability to comprehend the comic's plot (I couldn't read yet), coupled with the intense visual imagery (violence, Kirby-crackle, Spider-Woman's curves, etc.) suggested to me that comics were for "big-kids".  I felt like I was being let into a secret world.  And I was hooked for life.

*Note: this is not as seedy as it sounds.  Where I'm from in the western USA, "liquor store" was (in the 80s at least) a term for a general convenience store.  Dad was typically stopping in there to just grab the paper, a half-gallon of milk, maybe some chewing tobacco, or get some fishing tackle.  And yes, some beer.  As evidenced by the spinner rack right at the front door though, it was a kid-friendly place and the foundation of my comic book collection.      

(Pictures copyright original owners, used without permission but at resolutions intended for educational purposes only.  Buy Marvel Comics).

 

Bitten by a Radioactive Space Marine Miniature (Hobby Origins: Intro)

Recently I returned from visiting my parents out west for the holidays, an eight day trip by car with only my dog for company.  The USA is a damn big place.  

Despite the monotony of road, binging a handful of good podcasts made the miles fly by.  All the podcasts I consumed focused on gaming, naturally, with the biggest standouts being The Bedroom Battlefields Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast and The Crown of Command Podcast.

I noticed that I particularly enjoyed the episodes where guests recounted their "origin stories", telling how they first started into the tabletop hobby.  All that driving gave me time to reflect on why those episodes appealed to me, and I think the key factor is the commonality of experiences.

Of course, hearing all those stories about the adolescent glory days of hobby time in the 80s and 90s made me think about my own origin story.  How did it all begin?  When did it all begin?  As it turns out, questions harder to answer than anticipated.

The older I get, the fuzzier the memories get, with events getting transposed and intermingled.  Some hobby memories are burned into my soul, never to be forgotten.  Others are only vague suggestions.  I've therefore decided to start a number of short posts here to recount my hobby origin.

I don't anticipate anyone will read them (except the bots from Singapore), but really only I am the intended audience.  I hope that by writing down my journey into the tabletop gaming hobby I can not only experience that warm glow of nostalgia, but recover some lost memories and maybe even correct some false ones. 

Keep or Sell? Indiana Jones (West End Games)

Star Wars (the movie series) is quintessentially pulp at its core, and the d6 system West End Games designed for their licensed RPG emulates it beautifully.  As a huge Indiana Jones fan (well, the first three movies at least), and formerly an avid GM of the WEG Star Wars RPG, I eagerly snapped up The World of Indiana Jones boxed set not long after WEG released it in the '90s.

Despite having a ready-made pulp emulator at their fingertips, WEG decided to go instead with the fiddly Masterbook "universal" rule system for Indiana Jones.  I scanned said rules system, spat out a "yuck", and promptly sold the boxed set off.

Fast-forward a few decades and find me transformed from a gamer to a game tourist, where I read and write more about playing than actually rolling dice.  Collecting games plays a big part in the life of a reluctant game tourist, and lo and behold, I find myself with The World of Indiana Jones on my shelf again. 

The love of the Indy IP coupled with the desire to run it using a different system means that not only did I reacquire the main boxed set but actually the entire run of supplements.  Since the game came out in West End Games' twilight years, the print runs of these supplements were presumably low, as evidenced by their general rarity.  Tracking them all down cost a modest amount of both time and money.

Boxing up my RPG collection while preparing for our impending move, I felt a mixed swell of both pride and shame as I grabbed the WEG Indy stuff.  Seeing the entire run of an RPG sitting in that bookcase gave me joy, until I started flipping through a few of them and realizing I had never done so before.  "Am I ever going to use these," I thought?

Complicating matters, I just discovered the Crown of Command Podcast and listened to their deep dive on Man O'War, Games Workshop's wonky fantasy naval battle game from the early '90s.  Man O'War always piqued my curiosity back in high school, but other miniatures games stretched my adolescent funds too thin.  Although Man O'War rules and minis go for stupid prices on today's secondhand market, after listening to those podcasts... I want in!

So, I'm sitting on a complete collection of a rare RPG, in great shape, which I believe I could easily convert into cash-for-miniatures.  Finding a single opponent for a miniatures game, even an old one, is a much easier feat than organizing an RPG group, especially one willing to play anything besides D&D.  It's a no-brainer right?  Then I look at that logo, the fedora, the leather jacket and think, "how can I let Indy go?"

Decisions decisions...    

PS EDIT: Any fans of The World of Indiana Jones know that WEG realized their mistake with the Masterbook rules and actually provided conversion rules in the Indiana Jones Adventures to allow use of the classic WEG d6 mechanics.  A step in the right direction yes, but not a compelling reason to keep the lot.  The conversion rules occupy maybe a page if memory serves... yet WEG produced an entire generic d6 rulebook.  That leads me to believe there would be a lot of unanswered "how do I...?" questions.

Converting all the stats from Masterbook to d6 rules takes nearly as much time as just making them up on the fly.  As I stated in the Comments section below, I've never had much use for RPG adventures and sourcebooks are only occasionally helpful, especially with media IP-based settings.  I know all the Indiana Jones tropes, how the universe works, and WEG produced a much more accessible generic d6 rulebook.  Other than the Artifacts book, and maybe the Africa supplement, I don't see a lot of ideas I couldn't plunder from other sources.      

Micro Crafting Station (Idea)

My last post commemorated my former hobby space, now defunct as the Missus and I downsize and set out on a new domestic adventure. The lessons-learned from this experience made me ponder ways to keep my hoarding habits at bay and confining my hobby area to a smaller space seems like one reasonable solution.

How small a space is the question and a reasonably challenging answer is: whatever I can fit on a small table. I’ve therefore sketched a custom crafting station design, to help me keep everything tidy and near to hand. I won’t know until I buy all the pieces and put it together but the to-scale model below, built from online research, suggests it should work.

 Three silicone muffin pans (of the type pictured here) form the foundation of the crafting station. The pans can nest inside each other for easy storage when not in use. The muffin cups on each pan serve as obvious mixing containers, with the silicone construction making for easy clean-up. The cups offer temporary storage for scratch building bits, or receptacles for more permanent tool-holders.

The stacking nature of the muffin pans should allow interlocking them, Lego-style, as shown in the mockup plan view below. A cheap wooden cutting board with four added plaster “feet” will complete the station and provide the main working surface. Casting the feet directly in the silicone muffin cups ensures a perfect interlocking fit for the cutting board, itself attached to the feet via two-part epoxy.

Assembling the crafting station leaves eight open cups on the left side of the cutting board, four to the right, and five more across the top. I estimate all eight of the left cups plus one along the top will house various tools. I’ll likely squish a plug of silicone putty into the bottom of each cup, into which I’ll imbed a short length of PVC pipe. A thin layer of dish soap should prevent the silicone putty from sticking to the inside of the silicone cup permanently, but the silicone-on-silicone interface should be sufficiently “grabby”. Alternatively, I can just imbed the PVC pipes in plaster. The PVC tool holders serve to organize the different tools by categories.

The remaining cups will remain open for use as temporary bits receptacles and mixing cups. Sponges, cut into muffin shapes, will occupy two of the cups to act as wet palettes.

The entire assembly sits at only 54 cm wide, with the cutting board spanning only 30 cm; definitely a micro work area. At the scales I like to work, it should be plenty though. I can’t wait to build it!

Is There a Worse Hobby for Moving House?

Alternate title: Worst Hobby Room Tour Ever

Seriously though, is there a worse hobby for moving house than wargaming? Maybe horse-breeding? Restoring old cars? 

OK, I guess any pastime where one collects things, living or not, is problematic for a big move. Wargaming proves no exception, especially for those of us who focus mostly on the DIY/crafting aspects of the hobby.

My wife and I have been planning a move since the springtime, and it’s finally here. The house is under contract and soon we’ll be leaving after 10 years in the same abode. Unlike past moves, we’re downsizing drastically instead of just shipping everything. Getting the house prepped for showing over the last month meant getting rid of many things, forcing me to do a lot of self-reflection. 

A decade is a lot of time to accumulate junk, especially when you have the “scratch-builder’s eye”. “Ooo, that food packaging looks like the perfect robo-tank turret. I’m sure I’ll use that soon; let me just put that here in the attic for safe keeping”. Of course, I never used most of the stuff I squirreled away, and that came back to haunt me when I finally had to get rid of it.

How much crap did I collect? Behold, the hoard!




Our house features a luxurious “crawlspace“ that’s closer to a basement, with enough headspace for me to stand and hang Christmas lights from the floor joists… the perfect man-cave. And a perfect place to store every bit of foam for terrain making. Of course, no major metropolitan administration wants to deal with foam so getting rid of this pile-o-plastic looked problematic. Luckily, one of my gamer friends came to the rescue and took it all! To sweeten the deal, I gave him a box of thousands of Middle Earth CCG cards. And you know what? I don’t miss them at all.

I also gave my friend my DIY airbrush spray booth. Since the prices of those duct fans have jumped so drastically in the last year, that one hurt a little. So why not take it with me? The missus and I are planning on moving internationally, and unfortunately, very few of our electrical devices will work properly or safely in our new home. Oh well; it’ll give me a chance to build a new and improved (sorry George Carlin) version of the spray booth.

My D&D compatriot saved me from the crawlspace hoard, but no one could help me deal with the real man-cave, the hobby room. Spending over half of my five decades of life in “conveyances of war”, as the VA calls them, has left my back, neck, and spine an angry mess. Prowling eBay all these years to slowly rebuild my RPG and wargame collection felt good; boxing them all up and carrying them off to storage in a single day did not. Why did I have to pick upstairs for the hobby space? 

Halfway through my packing up of the hobby space, I decided to capture its memory with a panoramic picture. A pity I didn’t think of this BEFORE I started dismantling it. Oh well. Below I present my half-dismantled hobby room, with the description that follows serving as the Worst Hobby Room Tour Ever.



I shot this panoramic photo sitting on a swivel chair against the middle of the north wall of the room. The far left side of the photo therefore actually shows looking directly East along that wall, while the right side of the photo shows looking directly West.  More simply put: the entry door and the window actually sit opposite each other.  Great lesson-learned for me: when shooting panoramic photos, maybe do two 90 degree shots versus one 180 degree pic.

Starting on the left, we see my custom computer desk. I got a bit of ribbing from my wife for this, but I constructed the desk out of insulation foam board for the table top, mounted on top of cheap MDF book cases. My design focused on two things: affordability and space-utilization. A small closet near the room’s entry door breaks up the space, creating a little “L”-shaped nook. Using insulation foam meant I could easily cut the table top to not only perfectly to sit in this corner, but also conform around my normal sitting position using an organic curve. The missus wanted me to get some fancy kidney-shaped IKEA office desk or some such, but I preferred the price on this custom build.

Continuing to the right we see a stack of nine plastic 3-drawer organizers. Although a jumbled pile and empty in this picture, during the hobby room glory days the organizers sat snugly in a nine-cube MDF storage shelf, each drawer crammed full of all manner of tools, parts, and supplies.

On the floor just in front of the stack of organizers sit three cardboard boxes, ready to ship off to Noble Knight Games. The boxes hold about 1/3 of my RPG collection, including all of my 1st Edition AD&D books. Yes, I finally sold them. Don’t despair though, I only sold those RPGs from my collection that I knew I could get (or already have), legitimately, on PDF.

Against the south wall lies a small door to the attic, which runs the entire length of the house and is SO convenient to access.   Just imagine how easy it would be to throw unfinished projects in there. Trust me, it was.  Oh dear...

Just past the attic entrance and almost hidden by the chair, sits an empty nine-cube MDF shelf system. Although we have (er… had) a separate library, I kept most of my RPGs and wargames on this shelf. It was a beautiful sight to behold, with every cube full and books and cards overflowing to cover the top. All of those games now sit in storage (or have been sold); all that is except my copy of Leaving Earth (and expansions), as seen in the picture. My absolute favorite gaming experience of the last decade, Leaving Earth will be hand-carried in my luggage so it can be the inaugural game in the new home.

Moving on, we see in the center of the picture, my gaming table, which indeed occupied the center of the room. Another custom creation, the table consisted of three layers of insulation foam board, resting on top of more MDF bookcases and covered by a felt gaming cloth. I stored my terrain in cardboard boxes wedged between the bookcases; these served to prop up the table’s center and prevent sagging. The stitching process of the panoramic picture makes the table top appear triangular; in fact the quite rectangular table top had 1.0m x 1.2m sides.

The bookcases on the far side of the table held all my old CCGs. Closer to the viewer we see the white cabinet with the door ajar. My miniatures lived in here, stacked tightly in storage boxes that shared space with boardgames. My miniature collection took up a surprisingly small amount of room but only because most of the figures are not based or painted, if even removed from their packaging at all!

Various hobby gear sits on top of the table, my trusty Milliput and Sculpey, my faithful paper cutter, my cliche Crown Royal tin of dice, and my pewter casting kit in the foreground.

Just left of the west-facing window sits my three-tiered supply shelf. The photo shows a cluttered top shelf but in normal practice I kept this surface clear for measuring and mixing silicone, resins, plasters and such. The plastic bins hold all the various media I dabbled in but never mastered: oil and polymer clays, sculpting and casting waxes, and all the requisite tools.

We have a wonderful organization here in my (current) hometown called a “creative reuse” where folks can donate crafting supplies that are then resold to generate money for charity. The store portion is “pay-what-you-can” so it’s incredibly fortunate that I never discovered this place years ago. I would have so much more to get rid of! Anyways, I found this organization when we decided to downsize, so a majority of the hobby room ended up there. I’m already kicking myself about a few of the donations. I had a beautiful slab of homemade toy wax that I could’ve easily shipped to the new place.

Still with me? Almost done.

Our final stop, sitting right of the window is my primary crafting space, the drafting table. The mouth of my homemade airbrush booth rests at the back of the table, with the remaining components neatly tucked underneath. My reliable, 14 year old Ott light illuminates my craft tool bag, a fancy shaving kit I was gifted (and promptly repurposed).

Over one hundred square feet of dedicated hobby space (not even including the crawlspace). It was great while it lasted!

If you’ve made it this far, I’m amazed and appreciative. In hindsight, I think this post was more for me than for you, just so I can remember the good hobby times in this house.

Spaghetti Spaceships WIP 2024

Always looking for the cheapest, easiest, fastest ways to make convincing spaceships, last winter I experimented with a new technique, where I start with a piece of cereal packet.  The thin cardboard is cut to provide a symmetrical outline and solid foundation on which to glue various pasta shapes to bulk out the hulls.  Tiny (1-3mm long) regular shapes, also made from cereal packet, provided the final details.

I really liked how the sample ships turned out but I promptly forgot about them as I shifted on to other hobbies.

Cleaning up the hobby room and throwing things away, I came across these cereal packet spaceships and was about to pitch them in the garbage.  I'm supposed to be tidying and decluttering but I couldn't help thinking "why not just give them a couple of coats of spray paint, just to see".

I grabbed green because it was the closest thing to hand down in the basement.  The color turned out looking good and the paint pulls all the disparate components together into convincing (to my overactive imagination) illusions of massive spacecraft.

  Unfortunately I didn't get a "before" pic of the smaller ship, the design of which I prefer of the two.

I did a very aggressive drybrush, intentionally sloppy, just to pick out the edges.  I plan to use ink to make the edge-to-recess contrast even higher, then do some fine brush work to further pick out the edges with bone white.  All of this will then be covered with a thin coat of Russian Uniform Green via airbrush.

Then they'll still probably go in the trash.

Fate Core RPG Life-Path Character Generation (Using Cards)

Howdy.

Long time no blog. Well, I figure since we’re in the last three months of democracy, I might as well throw a couple of posts out there. Fiddling while Rome burns and all that…

One RPG I really like, at least conceptually, is Fate, specifically the Fate Core rules published in 2013. I’ve been fortunate enough to run a couple of games of Fate (or, as I like to call it: FATE) but it’s certainly a game that traditional RPGers bounce off of. I found that the more experience a player has in an old school system such as, say, AD&D 1st Edition, the harder it is for that player to grasp FATE’s key concepts like invoking/compelling Aspects.

Still, I dream about the day I get a fully invested RPG group to help me world-build like the example group in the Fate Core rulebook. Until that day, I’ll probably be doing a lot of solo world-building. One method I’ve come up with to support my solo efforts is using playing cards for a life-path style NPC generation method. FATE GMs: give it a try.

First, determine the skill list used in your setting. I try to keep the number at 18 skills, just like the default list in Fate Core, although I may rename, combine, and expand individual skills. I focus on the number 18 because 54, the number of cards in a standard Poker deck (including Jokers), evenly divides into 3 groups of 18. Using this fact, you can then take a cheap playing card deck and write one skill each on one card with a marker (or construct a virtual deck on the computer using MS Excel… that’s what I do). Repeating this twice more gives you 54 cards featuring three instances of each skill.

Next, determine the power level of your PCs. For the example below, I am using a “gritty noir” level where PCs get 15 skill points distributed among 8 skills. Supporting NPCs are considered (here at least) slightly less powerful than the PCs, so they start with 12 skill points, distributed among 6 skills. This gives the NPCs two skill columns rather than a skill pyramid.

Start generating an NPC by shuffling the deck and then drawing six cards. The eldest two (unique) cards indicate the two apex skills at +3, the next two cards the +2 skills, etc. Duplicates of a particular skill indicate a stunt involving that skill and generate additional draws until six unique cards are drawn. This method can obviously be stopped here and used as a super-quick random generation process.

The full life-path process uses this initial card draw to indicate the NPC’s “aspirational state” at the beginning of the life-path process, i.e. what they expected to be based on their origin, environment, social-standing etc. Note the scores and let the character’s early life background start to form in your head. For example, let’s say in a sci-fi setting you draw a +3 Piloting and +3 Contacts for the initial draw. Perhaps this NPC’s parent was a high-ranking officer in a space fleet, and the expectation is the NPC will attend the star academy and one day command her own ship. Life has other plans though…

Begin the life-path process by placing all six drawn cards in the same row. All skills are all now considered +1. Begin drawing from the deck discarding, face-up as a record, any card that features a new skill not among the initial six. Drawing a duplicate of one of the original six skills elevates that skill to a +2 and pauses the process temporarily. Looking at the discard pile, use the skills listed to come up with a quick narrative regarding some challenge the NPC had to face, and how using the relevant skill (the one just raised to +2) helped overcome the challenge (or not).

Continue the process, drawing and discarding until another skill is raised to +2 (or that first skill is raised to +3), making sure these subsequent discard piles remain separate as their own story records.

Once the NPC reaches a total of 9 skill points, again pause the process and review their story so far. You should have enough to form their High Concept Aspect, at least a rough draft.

Continue the process until reaching two columns of three skills each, one +3, +2, and +1 skill per column. Once the final card draw is complete, you should have enough story fragments contained in the discard piles to refine the High Concept and also decide the NPC’s Trouble Aspect.

Note that once you have the +3 and +2 skills assigned, the NPC cannot elevate the other skills any higher, resulting in duplicate draws of those skills being discarded. This is fine, as that indicates Stunts using those skills (I turn these cards sideways in the discard pile to remind myself).

Since this method generates new NPCs quickly, I’ll make 5-6 at a time and then create a “virtual seating order” with each NPC then interacting with the NPC to their immediate left in the seating order. Looking at each character’s High Concept and Trouble, plus the Setting Issues and Places, I can generally come up with a good relational Aspect between the two. This constitutes the NPC’s first adventure, Phase One of the Phase Trio (possibly the coolest concept from Fate Core).

That’s as far as I’ve gotten with the process for solo world-building. Going through the life-path process does really help give the characters some motivation.

I envision using this method with actual players. My idea would be to pre-generate, as above, two NPCs for every PC. Then, during Phase One of PC generation, I’d have each player randomly draw an NPC’s character sheet and include that NPC in the PC’s first adventure. Phase Two of PC generation would be “by-the-book”, with players swapping just between themselves to establish the PC-to-PC connections. Phase Three would then feature a random exchange of all character sheets, PC and NPC, making some PCs more connected to the PC group, while others have stronger bonds to the game world.