Reaper Bones #3: A Carcase of Skeletons

The Reaper Bones Painting Marathon continues, this time I have a carcase of skeletons.

So far I've been pretty impressed with the PVC material the bones minis are made from.  It's much more robust than the plastic that the WotC D&D or Paizo Pathfinder plastic miniatures are made from and the sculpts have been intentionally strengthened in some areas to ensure that they don't break or bend excessively.

The skeletons are a prime example of this as during transit they tend to get a bit bent, particularly in the polearm and base/ankle areas, which means when you unbox them they can have some weird lean angles. I had to use the hot water / cold water dipping technique on a few of them to refresh the plastic's memory and return them to their intended poses.  If you want to change a pose slightly you can, you just have to overbend them slightly as the plastic really wants to go back to its original shape.   

DHL Classic Skeletons x3 (Ed Pugh SKU: 03467)

Six skeletons (Front)

Six skeletons (Back)

From the pictures you'll see that these are the first Bones I've tried to mod.  I was pretty unhappy with the flexibility of the upper bow limbs, so I decided to string them to give them a bit of extra realism and to give the bow limb a bit of support. This involves a few steps:

1. Heat a thin guage sewing needle over a naked flame until it glows cherry red, then pierce the miniature between the bottom limb of the bow and the skeleton's leg.  This will create a hole through which you can feed your bow string. 
   
2. Cut a suitable length of solid thin wire to form your arrow and glue this between the drawing hand and the thumb with small dabs of superglue.  My knocked arrows are way too long to fit into the skeleton's quiver and I should really cut them down, but I like the way that they fit the skeleton's half draw pose so I'll leave them for now.
   
3. Take a length of sewing thread and knot one end.  Then thread it through the hole you made in the bow in step 1 and set with a dab of superglue.  Stretch the thread in as straight a line as you can to the flight end of the arrow (ie the bit the skeleton is pulling) and set with a dab of superglue.
   
4. Make a loop in the end of the thread and hook it over the topmost bow limb.  Tighten this thread until both bow limbs are symetrical and then set the knot with superglue.
   
5. Coat the thread in superglue on both sides.  Once the superglue dries, the string becomes rigid and supports the upper bow limb and prevents any excessive flexing.
   
6. The final stage is to cover up the drawn end of the bow with a flight.  Make this by pressing a small amount of modelling clay (milliput or green stuff) into a thin diamond shape on a cutting mat.  Whilst still pliable cut the diamond into two triangular halves and then stick one to the end of the bow.  You don't have to be too great at modelling to do this, just patient.

Bones Progress

Reaper Bones: 245 - Painted: 30

Related Posts:

• Reaper Bones #1: The Marathon Begins - Where I paint a dozen Giant Rats
• Reaper Bones #2: Kobolds, Are They Dogs or Dragons? - Where I paint a dozen kobolds. 

Movie Watch: The Brass Teapot

I love indie films, they can often get away with things that Hollywood wouldn't or couldn't get through its exhaustive audience testing process.   

The Brass Teapot is one such film, it's essentially a morality tale disguised as a comedy with a supernatural focus in the form of a magical teapot which gives you money in exchange for pain.

The tale follows the likeable, but struggling young couple, Juno Temple (Atonement, Killer Joe) and Michael Angarano (The Forbidden Kingdom, Sky High) who discover a magical, money producing teapot and set about using it to change their lives.  The pair are likeable although a little stereotypical, and are surrounded by a plethora of family, friends and enemies who are all exploited by the pair as they gradually fall under the spell of the teapot. 

Add in the pair of Jewish grandsons and the strange Chinese Professor of Antiquity who both know the true power of the teapot and things turn comically dark. 

What's in it for role players

Well obviously it's the magic teapot.  I loved the way the story of this cursed item played out for the couple and it would pose a challenge to any greedy character in your game.   Essentially the teapot rewards you financially in exchange for experiencing pain but the longer you use the teapot more it's power grows, and it moves on to the next stage of its reward structure.

• Stage 1: Accidental Injury to oneself. 
• Stage 2: Self Inflicted Injury
• Stage 3: Injury inflicted by another
• Stage 4: Injury to a stranger
• Stage 5: Injury of a friend
• Stage 6: Death of a stranger
• Stage 7: Death of a friend
• Stage 8: Death of a thousand
• Stage 9: Death of a town
• Stage 10: Death of a Nation
• Stage 11: Death of a species or race.

I'd make sure that it was found as a side treasure in a tomb and be pretty but mundane looking, either functional or at best semi-valuable, so as not to become an instant trade. 

Have the items power hidden for a time and only revealed to one or two characters (preferably a thief) who can keep a secret.  Allowing them to gradually discover the teapot's secret should add some interesting side story to your party.  As the owner becomes blasé about using the teapot's power, it should start paying less, or stop altogether.  They won't get a similar payout again until they find a new way of causing pain, which could be fun in it's own way.

Enjoy...

Cleopatra and The Society of Architects

I've been trying to get a copy of this sadly out of print game for a few years now and thanks to eBay managed to bag an un-punched German language copy last week.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects

Published in 2006, by Days of Wonder, design by Bruno Cathala (Shadows over Camelot) and Ludovic Maublanc (Cash 'n' Guns), Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a sumptuous 3 to 5 player game with an Egyptian theme.  Each player is an architect trying to impress Queen Cleopatra (and guarantee a prosperous afterlife) by constructing architectural features for her new palace project.  These adornments are represented by gorgeous plastic miniatures in the shape of 6 Sphinx, 2 Obelisks, 9 Column sections, 2 Door frames and Cleopatra's Throne and pedestal.

The Completed Palace

Ingeniously, the game utilises the box lid as a 3D game board onto which you lay the tessellating Mosaics of The Gods, Cleopatra's Throne and its Pedestal.  Columns and Door frames are placed around the sides of the box and interact with each other to score even more cash when built.  This gives the whole game a wonderful 3 dimensional feel which adds to its appeal and to be honest Days of Wonder could have made this game using traditional card components but it just wouldn't have had the visual impact (but would not have deserved the £40 price tag) or the tactile element which is so fun.

The game itself has a simple concept, collect resources from the market and build various items to decorate Cleopatra's new Palace.  Each time you build you earn money and the object of the game is be the richest surviving architect.

A smorgasbord of components

Yes, I did say "Surviving", because along the way you will inevitably acquire corruption amulets for having to use "tainted" resources, not offering enough cash to the high priest or simply trying to do dodgy deals with various "Worshippers of Sobek".  These corruption amulets get counted up in the end game and the most corrupt architect is fed to Cleopatra's crocodile.

There's a ton of different mechanics in the game from area control to trick taking and even a blind auction so there's plenty of opportunity for you to different strategies to try to win.  The multiple mechanics for gaining and removing corruption tokens means that you never really know who is in the lead at any time making for a tense and fun end game.  This is always something high on my priority list when I look at a new game.

As I said before my copy is German, and I foolishly thought that I could get away this as the majority of the cards just have the German names for Wood, Stone, Marble and Craftsmen.  However, the "Worshippers of Sobek" (aka the tainted character cards) had other ideas.  These cards have complex instructions on their use which needs to be readily available to the players.  My solution was to photoshop the German Summary Cards and replace the text with English, no mean feat I can tell you.  If anyone has scans of the English summary cards to donate, I would be most grateful.

Playing the game with 4 players

Outrider: My First Print On Demand Experience

I've been buying PDFs from the likes of RPGNow / DriveThruRPG and printing them at home for a few years now, but recently I took the plunge and decided to order my first Print on Demand (PoD) product.  Being based in the UK, I've always been reticent to use the PoD option as the costs have been quite high to have things printed in the US and shipped to the UK, but a couple of things made made me take the plunge.

• I had an interesting conversation with the CEO of OBS, Steve Wieck, via his blog OneBlogShelf, which re-energised my passion for making games.  I've had a few ideas for card games in the past and so this was a great opportunity to try out the PoD option particularly with respect to cards.
•  Another advantage of OBS was that I could convert some of the proceeds from my own product sales into credit with which to purchase the PoD copy of the Outrider cards
• Following the recent launch of DriveThruCards, a One Book Shelf (OBS) site which specialises in printing card games, I discovered Outrider, an auto duelling tabletop game by Dice Fest Games which featutures an innovative movement/manoeuvre mechanism using cards.  I'm a sucker for post apocalyptic road racing games and sook took advantage of the Launch Discount and got the whole PDF + POD Cards for £17.04 including delivery.

What Makes Playing Cards so Special?

I've made my own cards in the past for things like my DM's Decision Deck and My Item Cards and whilst I'm really happy with the results from my own prints there are a few things unique to playing card printing which are pretty insurmountable for the Print-at-Home (PaH) user.

Double Sided Printing - The major advantage of PoD over PaH is that you get access to commercial grade print technology Yes with a little lot of trial and error you can get pretty good results, but you will never match commercial printers which use registration marks for alignment.

Print / Paper Quality - Home printers have come on in leaps and bounds but there is no escaping that with every incremental increase in quality you have an exponential increase in cost.  High grade papers are really pricey and tend to drink ink like a vampires drink blood.  If you want a photo quality result you have to suffer that slightly tacky feel which as you can imagine does not make for good playing cards.  Casino's are very particular about their casino quality cardstock which has a very high opacity preventing stopping people seeing the card values through the substrate.

Cutting - Several cards are usually printed on a single sheet and unlike books are not bound together before guillotining.  I've had some great results at home, but inevitably you do end up with cards either not having precisely the same dimensions or being gaffed in some way.

What You Get

The Outrider download consists of 8 files; the rules, a scenario booklet, a series of optional Terrain Tiles and 5 files of cards, counters and dashboards.  The printed cards which will be delivered to you from the printer consist of:

• 18 x Manouevre cards.
• 8 x Vehicle cards (double sided 16 vehicles in total).
• 8 x Dashboards (double sided 1 for each vehicle).
• 15 x Counter cards (require cutting up before use).
• 3 x Range Cards (double sided single/double fire lanes).
• 1 x Turn Order/Control Loss Reference Card.
• 1 x Lucky/Second Wind car.

A sample of the 54 different cards contained in the deck

I would have preferred to have multiple sets of the manoeuvre cards included in the PoD element rather than the included tokens.  Personally, I find thicker cardstock counters are easier to pick up during play and would have been happy to do a little bit of DIY before being able to play.  Similarly the included Dashboards and Vehicle cards are double sided meaning that you can only play one of each style of vehicle unless you print your own duplicates.  At the end of the day you have all the files necessary in the PDF element so it's not too much of a hassle to print additional cards.

From the point of order it took about 12 days for my order to arrive, which is pretty good considering that it has to be processed, printed and delivered to the UK.  I suspect that if a UK printer/distributer  could be sourced this time lag would be greatly reduced.

A really nice poker style plastic card box was supplied for free (sadly, mine had a little crack in the lid)

The cards come cellophane wrapped, with a nice plastic poker style protective case.  Print quality is superb with a nice glossy finish.  Although the cardstock used was nice enough, it is slightly thinner in weight to regular playing cards.  This may become an issue in the future as I'm not confidentt it will stand up to normal gaming wear and tear from a bunch of hamfisted boardgamers.

How did the costs stack up

As I mentioned before, the discounted price for the PDF and POD Cards was £17.04 (which includes USPS First Class postage to the UK at £6.73) which compares favourably with say a Fantasy Flight Silverline game such as Bruno Faidutti's Citadels.  The cost of postage from the US to the UK is a significant proportion of the price (almost 40%).  This is of course largely out of the hands of either the printer or OBS and is the one issue which needs to be overcome if PoD as a concept will become generally accepted.

Final Thoughts

For me although the cost was comparable to a mass printed card game, the quality of the cardstock was a little dissapointing.  I also hope that the guys at OBS can source some UK based printing companies to add to their cadre of US ones.  This would certainly go a long way to making me choose PoD as a viable alternative to just buying from one of the big games manufacturers.  At the moment it's a bit of a 50/50 choice, which will most likely be decided by how much I lust after a particular game or not.

I have yet to actually play the game, so stay tuned for a follow up review.

Fiasco: The Sins of Anarchy's Sons

On Friday night I ran a FIASCO using the Sins of Anarchy's Sons playset created by Chris Groff and Rob Wakefield which is loosely based on the hit FX TV Show, Sons of Anarchy.  If you've not seen the show it's follows the exploits of an outlaw motorcycle club (the Sons of Anarchy MC) trying to keep their powderkeg of criminal activity from blowing up in their faces.

I've run FIASCO a couple of times before with varying degrees of success and decided to change things up for this session.

FIASCO by Bully Pulpit Games

This time I decided to be the "Director"

FIASCO is cinematic in concept and I've found that players can often struggle with closing a scene because they try to resolve all of the loose ends right there and then.  I've put this down to in part to their lack of experience with FIASCO but mostly because they all want to get in on the action and develop their own stories.  The role of the director is to look at the whole picture and shout "CUT!" when he spots a great cliff hanger, one liner or that the players are drifting from one scene into something else. 

As director I also get to play any NPCs which get created and through them drive the story in interesting ways, primarily to stop the players from having meatshields, but also to create conflict.

My players are very familiar with other RPGs which contain concepts of self preservation, character progression and achieving goals collaboratively.  FIASCO is about going to hell in a handbasket in the most messed up way possible and this is difficult for players to reconcile.  It really only works, If they manage to put away any silly notions that they're going to come out of this alive and start to selfishly concentrate on achieving their own NEEDS.

How it went

Here's the setup for friday's game (with TILTS)

Friday Night's Sins of Anarchy's Sons Setup (Click image to enlarge)

Mel Carver's high school friend Misty turns up at the Junkyard (which doubles as the MC's Clubhouse) claiming to be on the run from a Federal Taskforce Agent (Mario Marquez) who used her as an informant against the Colombian Cartel.  She wants the MC to kill the fed and destroy his list of informants and is willing to pay the club a lot of money in return.

Flashback to a couple of months ago when Spanner, Dice, Blanco and Bull are dismantling a stolen car that Bull and Blanco acquired.  Inside the door pockets of the Red Ford Taurus are 8 kilos of coke.  A heated debate ensues as to where they got the car from and how they're gonna turn the uncut coke into a huge amount of cash.

Flash forward to Blanco and Bull burying a teenage meth chef in the desert after having just shut down his laboratory.  His wallet has fallen on the ground and they discover he's Ernesto Marquez.

Bull and Blanco have set up a meet with Agent Marquez to buy the list of informants from him.  Marquez is receptive to this as he is trying to rebuild his life after his wife kicked him out, blaming him for the disappearance of their son Ernesto.  During the exchange muffled cries can be heard coming from the trunk of the agent's SUV.  For some unexplained reason a very pissed off Mel is being held captive in the trunk.  She manages to get free and stabs Marquez in the groin with a tyre iron, Bull and Blanco finish him off by shooting him in the head and they take his car and body to the Junkyard.

At the Junkyard the MC agree to meet with the colombians and give them Marquez's head as a gesture of good faith.  The rest of him gets put in a bath tub full of battery acid... (nice).  They also decide that Misty is too nice to hand over to the Cartel (particularly as she was very grateful to Arnie) who will end up killing her for being a narc and so Dice doctors the list of informants and removes her name.

Flashback to Puff and teenage Meth chef Ernesto in bed at Puff's house.  Bull calls asking Puff to come to the clubhouse to discuss how they're going to cut 8 kilos of coke and distribute it.  With hindsight this scene doesn't quite work in the timeline (as Ernesto should be dead) but nobody noticed at the time.

The MC members meet with the Colombian Cartel's representative General Garcia who is grateful to the MC for disposing of Agent Marquez.  He then asks them to help locate the people who stole his 8 kilos of coke for which he will pay them $250K.  As he departs in his Humvee he tells them that he will contact them in two weeks, if they haven't found the thieves he will kill them all.

Back at the clubhouse Puff, who still carries a torch for Bull, has just observed him getting freaky with Misty and so shoots her in the head from outside his window.  Bull throws the Misty onto the floor, grabs his gun and leaps through the window.  The back of the clubhouse is littered with junk and he ends up cutting his foot on something and giving up the chase.  Dice goes to look around outside and finds Puff's monagrammed derringer outside Bull's window.

Arnie calls a chapel meeting to decide what to do about the mexicans and Bull and Blanco decide that two of them have to be given up to the Cartel and it isn't going to be them.  Bull punches Arnie who then pulls his gun.  Dice tries to ring his FBI contact and relay the whole confrontation to him but in the fracas his phone is knocked from his hand and spins out onto the chapel tabel.  Everyone's eyes are transfixed by the phone as a voice crackles "Hello... This is Agent Johnson".  Arnie shoots Dice through the head.

Meanwhile Mel has taken Agent Marquez's SUV out of the junkyard to dispose of it when she is followed by a rival gang of mexican bikers intent on killing the taskforce agent for some reason.  She runs one of them off the road but the others open fire on the SUV causing her to veer into oncoming traffic and getting hit by a semi-trailer.  The SUV spins off the road and down an embankment.  Barely alive she is beginning to think about how to get herself out of the crumpled vehicle when the bikers turn up to finish the job.

Unfortunately we ran out of time to complete all the scenes, but as there were only white dice left in the pool everyone just took one.

Almost everyone survived the Aftermath but in typical FIASCO fashion most were "dead on the inside"  The final scene was Puff trying to hitch a ride down a lonesome desert highway with her life in tatters.

What I'll do differently next time

Character Generation - We usually manage to get about 3 hours of actual gaming done on a Friday night, character generation (in my experience) normally takes a group of 5 players (or 6 in this games case) about 50-60 minutes of dice rolling consulting charts and mulling options.  This leaves about 60 minutes for each act which means it's quite a push to get round the table four times and allocate all of a players dice.

I put this delay partly down to my players coming to the table burdened with other RPG experience, and partly the "picking" aspect of the games character gen, so next time I'm just going to give them the option of either rolling two dice (finding the result and then choosing which relationship card to write it on) or choosing one of the available pregenenerated setups.  I hope that this way we can reduce the prep time and get down to the enjoying the mayhem.

Roles with Conflict Built In - Even using all the presets, the players managed to engineer characters who all had some connection with the MC and were not in roles of direct conflict, for example no-one was playing a cop or other town luminary charged with shutting the club down.  This may have been a direct result of the playset's design and to be fair we didn't really need it to create a good enough game, but I felt it didn't reflect the feel of the show where the MC are beset on all sides by authority figures trying to crush them.  Hopefully future games (with different playsets) will result in PCs with roles which already have the conflict built in to them.

Did They Enjoy it? 

Only two of the players had any experience with FIASCO, and about half were familiar with the TV Show.  Despite this, everyone said that they'd had a good time, it was refreshing to play something totally different and would definitely play again.  It was by far the best FIASCO I've run so far and I can reccomend the playset to those gamers (and fans of the show) wanting to recreate their own little version of Charming.