Saturday, 20 March 2021

Sector 55 Blues - Prog 6 - Last Orders at The Two Ways Pub

Sector 55 Blues is a Judge Dredd Campaign using the Savage Dredd unnofficial Savage Worlds Expansion.  This is an online only game with members from Dragons Keep Roleplay Club.

Time to Call Last Orders

The Judges park their bikes in a row outside The Two Ways pub, a seedy city bottom dive of a bar in Benny Hill Block.

Messy Bar

As they walk in the 10 tonne receptionist demands 2 creds entry fee.  Judge Teal shouts "we're Judges we don't pay entry fees".  Judge Govan engages the boxy receptionist and asks "is Rabies in tonight?" to which she replies in a monotonic female voice

"I'M NOT SAYING ANYTHING JUDGE GOVAN"

The Two Way Regulars

The Judges walk up the stairs revealling a run down bar with mid 1980s decor dominated by an oval podium surrounded by a substantial plasteel and glassteel balustrade on which a shiny gold go-gobot gyrates robotically to the sound of celtic rock music. 

The Crushinator
The Crushinator
Giselle the Go-GoBot
Giselle the Go-GoBot
Davina
Davina
Big Tam
Big Tam
Wee Burnie Nesbitt
Wee Burnie Nesbitt
Jimmy the Landlord
Jimmy the Landlord
Jack
Jack
Victor
Victor
Rabies C Nesbitt
Rabies C Nesbitt

Sitting in the corner are two oldies in flat caps sipping their pints enjoying the show (Jack and Victor).

A tall man (Big Tam) stands at the bar and to his left a short juve (Wee Burnie) and to his left a man sits on a stool slumped over the bar (Rabies Nesbitt).  

Behind the bar is a thin man with long hair (Jimmy) and a young woman with curly brown hair (Davina) who bears a striking resemblance to Tri-D TV Star David Tennant.

Cully engages the Davina in conversation "We are looking for Rabies Nesbitt, is he here"

"I don't know any Rabies, what about you Big Tam?" Davina asks.

The question ping pongs around the regulars, each one saying that they've never heard of a Rabies Nesbitt and passing it to another until the question gets to Wee Burnie.  The juve sniggeringly blurts "we have rats but no rabies, what about you da?" pointing the question at the man to his left who is trying to climb over the bar.

The Polis Arrive

Judge Govan enters the bar, spots Rabies and orders

Judge Govan - Stay Where You are Rabies.  You're under arrest!
Judge Govan - He's the face of the Justive Department in Sector 163

The clientel simultaneously gasp "Oh no it's Judge Govan!"

Jack and Victor both pull stumpguns out from inside their jackets and blast with both barrels.  Uthred takes one to the chest sending him flying across the room and Judge Govan catches another knocking him down the stairs in a shower of blood.

Judge Hammer spins round and shoots Jack in the chest knocking him into the corner between two sofas. 

Davina pulls a stumpgun from below the bar "Nobody walks in an shoots up my bar unless I'm doing the shooting!" and unloads both barrells in Judge Cully's direction.  The recoil of the gun sends her two rounds into the podium lights showering the go-go bot in coloured glass as it runs off the stage towards the stairs.

Big Tam swings wildly at Judge Cully but misses and Judge Cully blasts Davina in the chest with two rounds and quickly targets Big Tam hitting him in the shoulder pushing him back against the bar.

Wee Burnie offers covering fire for his Da and shoots a small pistol in the general direction of Judge Teal.   Jimmy ducks for cover.

Teal dives behind what remains of the wall to the left of the stairs and hits Victor twice but the rounds don't penetrate the body armour he is wearing under his tweed jacket.

Cully shoots 3GP rounds at Victor hitting him with one in the chest and then one in the back of the head.

The crushinator trundles forward smashing through the reception wall screaming "DEFENSE, DEFENSE" as loud as her fembot voice unit can manage.

Hammer shoots Wee Burnie in the back and in the head.

The injured Uthred dives behind a sofa for cover and unleashes a volley of shots into Tam felling the big man like a caber.

In a scene which would be at home in a daytime detective serial Hammer leaps over the balustrade and threads his legs in the narrow space between bartop and overhead canopy.  His bum slides across the damp, shiny synthiwalnut effect surface and nails the landing behind the bar facing the wrong way.

Despite landing two high ex rounds into the pink refrigerator like fembot, the wounded Judge Govan is crushed to death slowly under her tremendous trundling treads.  In typical stoic fashion he never made as sound as the life was squeezed out from him like a tube of toothpaste.  

Uthred launches himself onto the slab sided crushinator as Teal fires three armour piercing rounds into her torso.  Her mechanical voice slowly sings "DA...I..S..Y   D...A...I...S....Y" and the self propelled car crushing behemoth grinds to a halt.

The Car Chase

As Hammer emerges from the bar to find Rabies already in the drivers seat of a red hatchback cranking its engine.  The engine roars into life and begins to pull away from its parking space. He plants a round in the windscreen shattering the safety glass into a crazed pattern, a second blows out the passenger side window and a third punches through the passenger side door.

Cully is in hot pusuit chasing the car down the street and firing a high ex into the tailgate which blows open and a cardboard box bounces out onto the road landing in a puddle.

The soggy sodden box begins to shake with a mind of its own and Hammer places a well aimed Incendiary round with pinpoint accuracy showering the box and the street in napalm.  High pitched animal screams can be heard briefly form inside the box as it is consumed by fire.

Cully dashes after the accelerating car and leaps onto roof as it careens down the street.  In an athletic move, she swings her legs into the car catching Rabies in the face with the heel of her boot.  Rabies head smashes into the glass of the drivers side window which shatters.

As the car turns the corner it careens into the row of neatly parked lawmasters smashing their shiny new body work as they tumble over onto one another like two wheeled dominos.  The damage will mostly buff out maybe.

Teal hears the comotion outside and emerges from the pub to see a flash of red with a judge hanging half in and out of the door.  He takes out the passenger side rear tyre.

Uthred calls to his bike "Bike to Me"... "Bike to me"... "OK Google, Bike to me" but no answer.

Hammer throws a tracking device at the fleeing automobile and it lands with a satisfyingly magnetic thunk on the back bumper next to a sticker that reads "My Other Car is a Mini".  "I got a bleeper on it" he triumphantly shouts into his helmet radio.

Giselle the Go-GoBot thought she had escaped the carage but as she runs down the street she hears the roaring engine of the red hatchback behind her.  A quick thinking Teal shoots the bot in the beehive knocking it out of the way of the speeding vehicle saving the innocent exotic dancing droid's life.   

Cully wants to take this perp down and she spies another two boxes of what are most probably wig beasts in the back of his car.  However, "This is getting precarious" she thinks "With a tracker on him let's see where he runs to" and indelicately hurls herself from the car rolling to a stop at the kerbside.

Hammer turns his turns his attention to the bikes and finds one of the five in a semi operational state it's bike computer flickers the text

Lamaster Computer Rebooting

With a squeal and sparks from the right side rear wheel the car hurtles round the corner and out of sight in the direction of the West Wall.

Next Prog

Back Issues

Prog 1 - Suits You Sir - Mosh 55 rob Zlooty Slute's Suits You and a body is discovered.

Prog 2 - Hair Today Gone Tomorrow - Rock Dwayneson's apartment and carnage at the Yes-A-Bout

Prog 3 - It's Ugly Out There - Fun and Games at the Ugly Pageant 

Prog 4 - Down, Down, Deeper and Down - Entering the sewers under RESYK

Prog 5 - The Big Wig - Confronting the beast below the city

Thursday, 18 March 2021

Jessie's Prints - Episode 13 - The Chardalyn Dragon

This week, I are mostly been printing...

The Chardalyn Dragon - Migeul Zavala - Shapeways

At my regular Friday night roleplay club Dragons Keep we often have at least one Dungeons & Dragons game running and at the moment this is Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden.

SPOILER ALERT: One of the big bad beasties you are probably going to encounter is the Chardalyn Dragon, a monstrous metallic magical construct which Wizkids have made available as an Icons of the Realm miniature

Wizkids Chardalyn Dragon
Wizkids Chardalyn Dragon - Buy one here


However, if your pockets aren't deep enough to afford that one, 3D miniature modelling guru Miguel Zavala (aka MZ4250 on Thingiverse)  has made his own for those of us who are lucky owners of 3D Printers.  You can download this for free on Shapeways.

Printing

This comes as a two piece model, a dragon with outstretched wings and a seperate flying base.  Great if you have a huge FDM printer.  However, if you are like me and restricted to a 200mm square build plate or a resin SLA printer you are going to need to cut this model up into smaller parts using meshmixer.

With the model cut into 4 parts, body, flying stand and two wings, I printed these in two batches at a fine 0.1mm layer height.  That's about 16 hours worth of printing.  I arranged the body on the bed with the legs pointing down.  From the players perspective they will be looking down on this miniature so having a metric ton of support lines hidden under the dragon was the way to go.  The wings were arranged vertically to minimise the need for support material.  

I don't know what it is with support material on my printer, it just seems to fuse itself to the model.  I don't know if this is a temperature thing, the filament I use always seems to want to print at the upper ends of the PLA temp range (200 to 220).  

I know that there is probably a setting in Cura that I can tweak, but if you have any advice please pop it in the comments below.

Assembly

I pinned the wings and glued them using 2 part epoxy.  Not my glue of choice for plastic miniatures but I had used up all my superglue on an exciting super secret mega project which I will reveal in due course when it is complete. I also opted to leave the flying base unglued so the DM can simulate a flying or landed version, the pose is a bit dual purpose unlike the wizkids version which is strictly ground based.

Note to self: when printing spindly objects with horizontal layer lines.  Remember they are fragile.  

The Kraken for King of Tokyo was exactly the same it had this bunch of octopus like leg tentacles.  They were an absolute nightmare to print and kept snapping.  Cura should invent a way to change the infill density for parts which are inherently week.  Something like and infill change at z-height or allow you to draw boxes round sections of an STL and change the infill.  

Anyway, the long and the short of it was that I broke the flying stand!!

A Chardalyn dragon in Poo brown PLA
Chardalyn Dragon in it's hot off the printer shade of brown

"Don't Panic" I thought "it was a bit short anyway" and so 10 minutes later it was sitting atop its new coat hanger wire stand.  This is a lot thinner and helps to give it that flying look which we were after in the first place.

Painting

This miniature was super easy to paint, "barely an inconvenience" a matt black primer coat and then a hit with a rattle can of "Wheel Silver".  This thing is supposed to be mechanical so I used a failed print of my 3D Printer control board cover to give it a subtle hexagonal pattern like mechanical scales.  I must invest in some fruit bags which would better conform to the shape and give a smaller pattern.

Hexagonal wing pattern
My attempt at a hexagonal wing pattern - too subtle?

The yellow details are not in the Miguel Zavala model but sometimes "You gotta fake it to make it" so I picked out the eyes and mouth in green and then overpainted in yellow to give it an alien looking vibe.

The flying base was shot in matt black as I have no idea what terrain the encounter will be using.

Chardalyn Dragon - Rime of the Frost Maiden
Chardalyn Dragon - Dungeons & Dragons - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frost Maiden

Wednesday, 17 March 2021

Happy Birthday William Gibson

Today is author, William Gibson's birthday.

William GIbson Cyberpunk
William Gibson

If you have never read one of his cyberpunk novels then you are really missing out.  He is an uncompromising author whose creations span the divide between contemporary literature and science-fiction.  

Gibson does not so much describe a near future world but rather puches you in the face with the sights, smells and sounds blending pop culture and contemporary history together into words with visceral meaning.

"The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel."

The Cyberpunk Genre

I encountered Gibson through the Cyberpunk roleplaying game and during the late 80s early 90s and  this was my go-to obsession for many years.  I voraciously consumed anything remotely cyberpunk and this unlocked the door to many other passions such as Anime and the internet which was barely a thing 20 something years ago.  

In fact I made my first cyberpunk RPG website featuring a clumsy netrunning simalcrum back in 1995 using the long discontinued AOLpress before gravitating to Dreamweaver.

Gibson's first novel Neuromancer was allegedly written on an outdated mechanical typewriter, a fact that just added to his mystique.  Of course he has since fully embraced the internet and can be found  @GreatDismal on twitter.



Monday, 15 March 2021

Reaper Bones #31 - Snake Kin, Medusa and a 6 Armed Snake Lady

More scaley monstrosities on Miniature Monday.

I confess, when painting my lizardmen last week I had the green pot of paint open and I just went for it.  The added bonus is that my lizardmen have at least two bad guys that they could be working for.

From left to right we have:

Vandorendra, Snakeman Warrior and Medusa

Vandorendra, Snake Demon (SKU 77117) - Julie Guthrie

Julie Guthrie knocks it out of the park again with theis crazy looking sculpt which will fit right into my Al-Quadim campaigns.  A truly frightening six bladed whirling dervish of a boss monster which looks like it just jumped out of Ray Harryhausen's sketchbook.

In Forgotten Realms these are also known as the Marilith, Type V demons who are apparently master tacticians to the Abyssal Hordes (which is nice) so all you D&Ders have a ready to use stat block thanks to the the D&D Wiki.  Apparently they made their first appearance back in 1e so they have been a feature of Dungeons & Dragons for as long as I have been a player and I have never encountered one.  A situation I must remedy immediately. 

Snakeman Warrior (SKU 77153) - Julie Guthrie

The thing that has always puzzled me about snakemen is how do they move around.  I mean they don't have the body length to form the S shape typically associated with snake locomotion.  Never mind this guy comes with two really big swords meaning he can still reach you. 

Medusa (SKU 77037) - Bobby Jackson

Of course no mythical fantasy monster collector would be seen dead without at least one medusa in their miniature collection.  Bobby Jackson nails it with this sculpt which is only made better by me stringing that naked bow with a bit of sewing thread and superglue.

Bones Progress

Sunday, 14 March 2021

Newsround 7th to 13th March 2021

This week's roundup of what caught my eye on the internet.

Pacific Rim The Black

If you are a Kaiju fan then you will probably have enjoyed the two Pacific Rim movies.  The debate rages on about whether the second movie was any good and whether or not Guillermo del Toro will ever return to the franchise.  

However, this week Netflix released a 7 part anime series called Pacific Rim: The Black. 

The creators of Pacific Rim have created an engaging and epic setting and one which definitely deserves a Role Playing Game adaptation.  It blends two of the best things of of modern Japanese culture; Giant Kaiju Monsters and Gian Mecha Robots.  

What isn't to like.

8 year old Invents Kickstarter Smash Hit Dungeon Crawl Boardgame

Coraquest by Cora & Dan Huges
Coraquest by Cora & Dan Huges

CoraQuest, a dungeon crawling co-operative family boardgame, is the brainchild of Cora (8) and Dan Huges (44) who have been making game review videos as Dice Tower content creators for 4 years. 

The duo from Huddersfield started designing the game as a home schooling project during Lockdown and decided to put it on Kickstarter where it raised over £150,000.  They have garnered a slew of media interest and have been featured on the BBC and in The Guardian.

If your kids are bored of Labyrinth but too young for D&D then this could be the game for you. Pre-order Coraquest on Gamefound for a measley £30. 

Oh and for the record Dad's are awesome.

GaryCon 13 - March 25th to Sunday March 28th, Lake Geneva, USA

GaryCon is the annual D&D convention which celebrates the life and work of Gary Gygax.  Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions the event will be virtual only.  For UK Roleplayers this means that you can save money on flights and hotel accommodation and attend from the comfort of your living room.

Tabletop Events has a full run down of the game schedules over this 3 day event.

 

Gary Gygax - Dungeons and Dragons
Gary Gygax - Co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons

UK Boardgame Rental Service - Rent-A-Meeple

Rent-A-Meeple
Whilst most boardgames are affordable around £30 a few can be quite expensive and they take up a lot of space, so if you are a cash and space limited boardgame fan what do you do?

You rent a boardgame.  Yes you can now rent a boardgame through Rent-A-Meeple.

Sign up to one of their monthly subscriptions from £14.99 a month and get 1 boardgame sent to you postage included.  You can keep the game as long as keep up your subscription or you can return it and replace it with a different boardgame.

As boardgamers we've all bought a game that was the new hotness or looked great on kickstarter but ended up being a lemon.  Using Rent-A-Meeple is a great way to try out that game before you buy.

There are 16 subscription options to suit every pocket and style of play and if you really like a game and want to buy it, just email the company and they will tell you if it is for sale.

Dragons Keep Affilliated with Online Games Retailer Gamessesh

Gamessesh.com
The management team are hard at work behind the scenes making my Friday night game group Dragons Keep Roleplay Club one of the best in the country.  We are proud to ammounce that we are now affiliated with online games retailer Gamessesh.  Club Members get a sizeable discount at checkout.  

Details of how you can access your discount are in the Members Benefits channel on the club discord server.

Join Dragons Keep for Tabletop Roleplaying in South East London 

If you are a tabletop gamer living in Bexley, Bromley, Chislehurst, Dartford, Eltham, Greenwich, Lewisham, Orpington or Sidcup then Dragons Keep might be your local games group in South East London.  

We are passionate gamers who meet every Friday from 7pm to 11pm at our venue in Chislehurst.  We are always looking for new players and we play a wide variety of tabletop Role Playing Games in addition to Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) we play Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds and many many more.

We also organise several Games Day events throughout the year at weekends so you can satisfy your tabletop boardgame obsession.  Contact Us through our website www.dragonskeep.co.uk our facebook page or our meetup page and talk to us about your passion.

We might be dragons but we don't bite.

Snarf - Thundercats
Snarf - Thundercats