15mm Judge Dredd - Boingers

In the megalopolis of the future one of the more popular crazes is boinging.  I couldn't help but scratch build a few boingers to harrass my players in my next Judge Dredd RPG at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club.

What the Heck is Boinging?

One of the many crazy inventions which are an everyday occurence in Mega Dity One, Boing is a miracle plastic-in-a-can which saw its debut in the Daily Star serialised adventures of Judge Dredd between 1981 and 1998 and fully fleshed out in the Prog 136 story Palais de Boing

One spray with Boing encapsulates the user in a bouncy ball of plastic, turning them into a living pinball.  Within days of Boing hitting the streets the first casualties occurred it was made illegal but since when does that ever stop the citizens of Mega City One, and soon regulated and safe establishments sprang up in every sector to cater for the boing craze.  These Palais De Boing feature tubes and bumpers to really accentuate the boinging experience.

Needless to say the enterprising, and foolish, perps of MC-1 have occasionally used Boing in their criminal ventures and illegal use comes with a mandatory 20 year sentence or death as Boing is incredibly flammable.  Boing was notably used for good to encase Judge Anderson as she harboured the spirit of Judge Death.  However, the three other Dark Judges, Fire, Fear and Mortis managed to orchestrate his release.    

Make Your Own Boingers

My boingers are made from 40mm plastic fill yur own christmas baubles with hand sculpted figures made from milliput hot glued inside.  

My sculpting skills are pretty pathetic and I will definitely have another go at this.  I will probably try making an armature or using one of the 15mm "Dolly" miniatures from Alternative Armies.

But in anycase the mission statement for these guys is to be a surprise encounter for my players.

Judge Dredd Boardgames

Continuing with my current addiction to Judge Dredd I thought I would try and assemble a list of the boardgames which feature Uncle Joe aka old stoney face himself.

Judge Dredd - The original Games Workshop game that got this whole mess started and the one which started my own collection of Games Workshop Bookcase Games.  Designed for kids, this game is a simple roll and move and try to arrest a random perp doing a random crime.  The player with the most victory points combination of crimes and perps wins.  This does lead to some laughable combos like arresting Judge Death for littering, but it's a fun light hearted game.

 Judge Dredd The Cursed Earth - This 1 to 4 player push your luck card game sees Judges Dredd, Anderson and Giant battling various hazards and monsters through The Cursed Earth as they try to find Max Normal and the antidote to the disease that threatens Mega City One. 

This is a super hard game and I don't think I've ever won it despite numerous plays.  

3 Promo cards (The Cursed Island) were available at pre-order from Osprey and Judge Dredd Megazine #405 features print and play character cards for the classic Cursed Earth heroes Tweak and Spikes Harvey Rotten.  

Judge Dredd Helter Skelter - Less of a Judge Dredd game and more like a cavalcade of characters from the pages of 2000AD.  This is a 2 to 4 player game by prolific designer Martin Wallace (Age of Steam,  I don't own this one just yet, but it is on its way courtesy of eBay.

Judge Dredd Block War - Published by Game and a Curry (2018), this is a 2 player card game simulating a Block War between 2 gangs of perps.  I don't know much about it as this didn't get much distribution in the UK, but ebay has been informed and as soon as a reasonably priced copy comes up from a UK seller I'm on it. 

Supersurf! - A fan designed print and play boardgame for 2 to 6 Players.  This seems very familiar to me for some reason even though this was never commercially available.  Did it feature in an issue of the comic? I don't know but this is on the list of print and play games I need to make.  All the files are available for download from Board Game Geek.

Shuggy Hall Brawl - A weird tie in with Fighting Fantasy's Warlock Magazine #11 which featured an entire print and play Judge Dredd game.  It uses the basic fighting fantasy combat system and features upto 19 playable characters each with their own mission objectives.  I definitely want to play this as a mini meta game in a future Judge Dredd RPG campaign but this needs a lot of work to get it to the standard I want.  Simple things which take time to make such as individual character cards which contain the NPC stats and their goals.

That said, I am in the process of building this in 3D to use with my 15mm civillians and will update progress in a dedicated blog post once it is complete and this mega project has hit the table.  Here's a brief photo to whet your appetite.  This is going to be a lot of fun.

Free Judge Dredd Games

In Mega City One distributing comics is a crime but if you aren't scared of doing the time then 2000AD online has a bunch of games just for you.  These all at one time featured as cut out and play games in the pages of 2000AD.  I am dying to try Block War and see how it matches up against Block Mania.

Secret Damage, Wound States and Initiative Cards

This post might be controversial but when I am running my games I don't like my players knowing how many hitpoints they have left.  I know, crazy right... 

(shuts curtains and ignores baying horde of players brandishing pitch forks and flaming torches)

The Initiative Card

The core concept behind this is my use of 5x3 Record Cards as a sort of mini character sheet to record each character's current Initiative, Hit Points and any interesting side effects they may experience in combat.  Each character has one, but so do each of the monsters or NPCs that are engaged in the combat.

A used Initiative card will look something like this

Roll for Initiative

When the combat ensues the players write their initiative in the corner of their Initiative card and hand it to me.  I roll for the monsters and do the same.  These cards are then sorted into descending numerical order and the combat begins.  My role as DM is then to tell each player when their characters card comes up and they can resolve their action.  when they take damage I roll and record the result and then tell them how wounded they are.

In the Real World there are no Health Bars

In real life, if you become injured you don't know how close to death you might actually be.  Beyond the sensation of pain or a physical cut, stab wound or a broken leg you really have no idea if you are about to shuffle off this mortal coil or bleed out in 10 hours.  Cut to the RPG and we've all had the experience of taking the fight to the enemy even when we are on our last hit point.  Does that seem like the action of a hero to you?  It's the not knowing if you are going to make it which makes the self sacrifice heroic.

Enter the concept of Wound States these are simple subdivisions of your characters hit points into one of 4 wound states:

• Bruised - less than 75% (3 quarters) of your Hit Points left.
  
• Bloodied - less than 50% (half) of your Hit Points left. 
  
• Battered - less than 25% (1 quarter) of your Hit Points left.
  
• Unconcious - 0 Hit Points left.
  

When you get damaged by an opponents attack that moves your character into a new wound state then I will update you.  Armed with this knowledge It is your decision to push your luck and to continue to fight or not.

The inspiration for this push your luck mechanism was in the video game Driver 2 (correct me if I am wrong) in which you had to hazard a guess at how physically injured you were by the increasingly laboured way the character walked.

Passing Other Secret Info

I don't know about your players but some of mine are want to loot bodies and stash those special items before announcing that they didn't find anything.  Sometimes I want to drop a hint that they might have discovered something during combat that they don't realise is important until after the fight is done. The initiative card system allows me to do this effortlessley without breaking out of combat unnecessarily or telling the world and their wife what only the character should know.   

Am I still Crazy?

Now that you've heard about it, what do you think?  Am I still a madman or is this a technique you'd like to inject into your games?  Answers in the comments below.

Surf's Up - 15mm Judge Dredd Sky Surfers

In preparation for my next Judge Dredd Savage Worlds game at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club, I've been printing and painting like a banshee.  I covered this in my post about 15mm Judge Dredd Civillian Vehicles but now the Sky Surfers are complete.

Supersurf 7 and the Midnight Surfer

Illegal competitive Sky Surfing was first introduced to the Dredd universe in the Midnight Surfer story (Progs 424 thru 429) and one of the iconic thrill packed stories which I devoured when I was a kid. Prog 425 has a great line-up of the contenders which I used as the inspiration for my surf dudes.

The Competitors

Supersurf 7 had a huge number of entrants, 57 in total, and many got no more than a partial reference in text or their name printed on the bottom of their boards.   

• Dak Goodvibes - The first ever supersurf champion, and recently released from a five year stretch in Mega City Two's cubes, wipes out and gets impaled on a spikey sculpture at the Fountain of Yooth.
  
• Yogi Yakamoto - Current World Champ from the Fuji Territories in Hondo Cit gets knocked off his board by a truck's wing mirror in the Manfred Fox tunnel and saved at the last moment by Chopper.
  
• Natilda Stank - Aka The Flying Ozzer was arrested by Dredd an ultimately gave up the final route of the race, the Manfred Fox tunnel.  
  
• Klaus Reich - Shot and killed by a Judge
• Johnny Cuba - Gets squished in one of the Phoenix Scraps vehicle crushers
  
• Caruso - Crashed into the OkeyDokey Man and then headfirst through a Chemicool truck windscreen causing a multi vehicle pileup on the Kranski Zoomway.
  
• Fargo - Shot and killed by Judge
• Crazy Kwezi - Shot and killed by a Judge
  
• Tijuana Pino - Shot and killed by a Judge
• Marlon "Chopper" Shakespeare - Arrested after winning Super Surf 7 and saving Yakamoto's life. 

Chopper returns in the epic 26 episode story Judge Dredd in Oz (Progs 545 thru 570) where escapes the iso cubes and journeys to Oz to participate in Supersurf 10.  Good vibes indeed.

The Self Insert. Is this valid roleplay or just bad roleplay?

I came across this term whilst browsing YouTube and I have to confess that I hadn't heard of it before.  It would seem to originate from the world of academia and specifically media studies.  As the Urban Dictionary puts it:

  "When an author or writer puts themselves into a story they have written as a character."

I can see where this literary concept might be fun for the author and a hidden easter egg for the reader,  but does it translate to roleplaying games.

Who is the Author in an RPG?

Technically speaking it is the Games Master, they write the plot and the players inhabit characters within that plot.  That said, the players are collaboratively creating the story within the boundaries of the plot and could also be considered authors.  They certainly have free creative rein when it comes to their own character and how that character impacts on the world that they share with the other players.

I have witnessed that inexperienced players, or dare I say the less imaginative players, will naturally want to put themselves in the game rather than playing their character.  I think that this is a by-product of how we are exposed to fantasy and science fiction tropes these days and how they are born.

The creators of most RPGs drew their inspiration from the media of their day, the great fiction writers of the day who were collectively read by a large part of the RPG fandom.  We all read the same books so we had a shared understanding and acceptance of the concepts we consumed.  The characters were largely the work of one person, maybe two and often spanned epic cycles like scandanavian sagas.

A lot of the media we consume today is watched and not read and is the creative endeavour of many people from Directors to screenwriters to producers, each one has their own vision of what should happen and where the story should go.  These stories are then fed into the studio screening system where analysts record audience reaction in a minute detail.

The danger with this system is that we are forced to watch the current crop of Hollywood stars essentially play themselves in whichever cinematic masterpiece they are currently attached to.  You know the ones, Arnie, Sly, Statham, and Johnson.  They aren't being paid to be someone else they are being paid to play themselves.  This isn't the exclusive preserve of the action genre there are plenty of talented actors out there who can't help but play themselves, even the likes of method actors such as Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lawrence have their moments of phoning it in.   

I always try to encourage my players not to inject their personality or knowledge into their PC in order to inhabit the character.  If you were playing a Mega City One Judge you would play up the harsh and brutal nature of the job despite what your personal thoughts are about the crime and punishment.  Similarly if you are playing in a fantasy campaign it would be anachronistic to use modern understanding of science to Macguyver your way out of a situation.       

Your Character is not You

The challenge, nay the fun of roleplay is the opportunity to play someone other than yourself.  That might mean you are a 6 foot tall one legged retired pirate who pretends to be a Dwarf or a 85 year old art historian named Gertrude with a penchant for the hurdy gurdy.  These are not extensions of your own persona they are persona's all of their own.  

Your character sheet, stats, backstory and ephemera that you create to describe the person you are playing are all tools to help you to portray that person.  The art of roleplaying a character is to get inside your characters head and to come up with a believable and convincing portrayal.

Inserting yourself into your character is easy because your motivations and feelings are second nature.  If you are playing a streetwise orphan in a sprawling fantasy undercity your middle class sensibilities are going to seem out of place in a dog eat dog world where you have to survive on your wits and be prepared to do whatever it takes otherwise you don't eat tonight. 

Representation

I have heard it said that roleplaying games need to be more inclusive and representative.  The crux being that unless people see themselves represented in RPGs that they don't feel like it is "for them".  

I'm not so sure I get this argument which it would seem stems from traditional media such as books, movies, TV and even video games.  These media are traditionally consumed, the reader / player has limited agency with regards to the direction of the story or the major NPC characters encountered.  Even with video games where you might have some input in what your character looks like, if the options aren't programmed into the game then it doesn't appear.

Roleplaying has never suffered from these issues because you, the GM and the other players make the game what it is.  Important NPCs are often pulled directly from your back story, your species and their cultures have always been yours to houserule to your hearts content.  

This should not be confused with the goal of increasing diversity within the RPG Industry.  This is absolutely to be encouraged so that we get more diverse ideas and inspiration for the stories we continue to enjoy. 

What the designers of the latest D&D edition may put in their book may or may not make it to the table in my games and there's no way that anyone can "police" how I use the content once I've bought the books.  What flys at the table is that which the group collectively agree is acceptable.  If I want to include a story arc that has the heroes being enslaved by the villains so that they can bring the whole evil practice to a permanent end then I should be able to. The classic Heroes Journey as they confront absolute evil has to be a challenge otherwise it becomes insignificant.  Barely an inconvenience.  

Similarly If I want to outlaw the +1 wheelchair of dungeoneering in place of a house rule magical armature of mobility then so be it.  I might want all my drow to be evil to allow a player to be the mythical rebellious "Good" drow, then that's fine too.  In fact the whole concept of evil bad guys and good rebels throwing off their cultural heritage falls apart if these tropes don't exist. 

Okay which one of you is a rebel sympathiser?

Which is why I am a little bemused by the whole narrative that seems to swirl around the internet these days which states

"I can only feel comfortable and safe if I can see myself represented in the game and you are a bad person for not understanding my feelings".  

I thought the express purpose of roleplaying games was not to be yourself and to have fun being challenged with making decisions you might not personally agree with safe in the knowledge that this isn't real life, it's just makebelieve.  To demand that the industry makes RPGs some kind of non-triggering safe place by design removes that quintissential element of challenge and seems like the presumptuous demands of a self insert to me.

If the imaginary world you inhabit is safe and non threatening, why do we need heroes?