One more time!!

Well, it turns out that last session of my Gamma World game actually wasn't the LAST session of my Gamma World game.

Things worked out for us to get together today to finish the campaign.

They started off by fighting some of the Gallus Gallus chicken men, who were gathering russet mold near a crashed alien ship, and they discovered that it was the alien ship, and specifically the green slime leaking from it and the mold growing around the slime, that was creating the Vegepygmy plant men that were causing such problems in the area. More popped up out of the slime/.

During the encounter, we took a picture to send to the two players who were absent...

Heh.

Then we took the Purple Worm and the two Fire Elementals off the map and continued on with the encounter. :)

They defeated the vegepygmies and chicken men, with one of the Gallus Gallus' surrendering and joining the group. He told them that a bunch of Klickies, mutant cockroaches, had gone into the ship, to scavenge technology from it. The group didn't like the idea of the trouble these Klickies cause with alien technology, so they proceeded into the alien ship to stop them.

Just beyond the large hole in the hull that the Klickies entered through, the PCs found a few aliens trying to keep a couple of Klickies and a strange creature called a Neep-Neep from stealing stuff, and joined in the fight to stop them. Once they had succeeded, and began to talk to the aliens, they found that BlOB could, unexpectedly, understand them. He translated, and told the group that the aliens were saying a bunch of Klickies had gone through into the next room, where the Power Core was, and they needed to be stopped.

The group hustled on to the Power Core finding the room under siege!

An alien envoy was in the control chamber, trying to keep things under control, while another alien was up on the scaffolding around the power plant, trying to keep a klicky from reaching the power core controls. Just as the group entered the room, though, one of the other klickies ripped something off one of the other control panels, causing the power core to destabilize!

Fighting the Klickies, while avoiding the various "attacks" of the power core as it approached critical mass, the group used almost all their resources, but they prevailed, and helped the aliens to shut down the reactor to avoid a meltdown and explosion.

The day was won! The aliens repaired their ship. The group collected a shipment of chicken from the automated chicken factory and they delivered the shipment to LJ before leaving the planet.

One final revelation... the aliens did not know BlOB, or where he came from, but an analysis of his composition and genetic structure found that he was a byproduct of the alien ship's waste reclamation system. It was damaged during the crash, releasing its contents, which reacted to Earth's contaminated environment, and created a new form of life... from alien pooh.

Well, it had to happen eventually...

I killed one of the characters in my Gamma World game last session.

Unit D-5 will be long-remembered. How he'd spit caustic fluid in people's eyes. How he'd give people "The Clamps".

("You mean these clamps? These clamps that I use for just about everything and want to use all the time? Those clamps?")

Given how lethal Gamma World is, I'm actually surprised that there haven't been more deaths so far. There have been a couple of close calls. The giant bug that attacked them on their way up Fort Mountain almost killed Rad-Cat(TM), and he almost died again at the Battle of the Big Chicken, but that's it.

Fortunately, rolling up characters is fairly quick and easy, so, in the transient post-apocalyptic world that is Gamma World, another character showed up, and the group moved on.

Madame Blanc was the new character... a cryogenic reanimator. So, she had ice powers and she could summon an undead minion to attack for her. We named him Pierre. Icy Pierre, to be exact. He was always very fashionably dressed, even though his outfit might not be appropriate for the occasions he was called forth, and instead of the typical zombie "Uuuuuhhhnnnn" noise, he instead started out with that very stereotypical French laugh, "Hoah Hoah Houuuuuuuuhhhnnn".

And another thing that had to happen eventually... that will be our last Gamma World adventure for awhile. We'd have been done with the current Gamma World arch as of the end of May, and then would have moved on to an Astral Pirates D&D game, but scheduling conflicts have forced us to cancel the next two sessions of our game. I didn't want to hold things up for the Pirates game, since one of the players will be leaving the group at the end of the summer, and I wanted to give him as much play time in the game as possible, so I suggested we leave Gamma World now, and switch to the Pirates game.

It's a tiny bit disappointing, but it's not a bad thing. The disappointment comes from the fact that I was becoming more comfortable with being the DM, and I was having fun with it... especially coming up with my various little projects to make the encounters more interesting. Awww... I just realized that the group won't get to actually use that cool 3D tile truck that I made. Oh well. I assume we'll get back to the game eventually.

With GenCon coming up, I've decided to write up a Gamma World adventure to bring along with me. It won't be anything official, because event submission and registration has long since passed, but it will be a pickup game that I can play with my friends. I think I may combine a bunch of my creations for that adventure. :)

For now, though, I'm in the process of putting together a bunch of ship tiles for the Pirates game, including the ship the PCs use. It's a fun project. I have high hopes for how these turn out. I will post pictures when I'm done.

When will it end??!!

How much fun can you have with tiles, I ask you??!!

Well, for starters, I updated tile pickup truck that I made. This was a good start, but I put the design through a couple of revisions, and I took new images of the original model, and the result was this...

After I was done, I brought that over to Craig's where it will stay for the duration of our Gamma World adventures, because it is a little bit fragile. I decided to put some rubber cement in the slots, to make it hold together better, leaving only the roof as a "free" tile, so that minis can be put inside the truck.

Just the other day, I decided to try a motorcycle (since my Gamma World group has one). This design took a little bit of thought, since I would have to accommodate the base of the miniature. My first idea was to make three pieces, the front of the bike, the back of the bike, and a flat piece that the miniature's base would sit on, and which the front and back would slot into. That would work fine, but it suddenly dawned on me yesterday that each miniature comes with a built-in "flat piece". So, the final design became a front and back piece, each supported by a cross-piece for stability, and then a slot was cut near the bottom of both pieces which the miniature's base would slot into.

Check this out!

It's a little rough at the moment. I'm tempted to cut some of the white parts a bit closer to the graphic.

Now, I just need to make a few more of them, in other varieties of motorcycle. Next up... The Chopper. :)

The Big Chicken

When we finished our last D&D campaign arch, Craig said that he wanted to run Deadlands, the horror western game. I'd heard of Deadlands, but I'd never played it, and I'd never played in a western game before. I came up with an interesting character, and I'd been enjoying the game. Craig had this boxed set of 8.5"x11" Old West Town tiles, but they lacked any kind of reference grid to track movement on, so I offered to scan them in, add a grid, and print them out on cardstock. That way, we could use the printouts, and pretty much muck about with them however we liked, and still preserve the originals.

In the process of working on this, which I found to be an interesting project, I started looking into whether or not anyone out there in the ether had put together 3D models of an old west town. I was looking for plastic toys, basically, but this is when I stumbled upon Papercrafting.

This is, apparently, a big thing. There are many many sites out there with paper models, and there are even sites that gather together links to other sites with paper models on them. Buildings, monuments, cars, trains, planes, etc.

The page I originally found was on the "Rules with No Name" site, which gave link after link to Old West models, miniatures, and papercraft. Many of the papercraft items were free when that page was originally written, but times being what they are, most of those have disappeared or have gone commercial, as people realized they could sell the pdfs of the papercraft models. I don't fault them, but it's really a shame I didn't discover this sooner.

Anyway, I hadn't really done anything with the whole Papercraft idea until a few weeks ago. I'm running the Famine in Far-Go campaign for Gamma World, but I converted the Far-Go and East Dah-Koh-Tah setting to Full-Ton and the North Jee-Ore-Jah area. My group started off in LJ (Ellijay, GA), and traveled down to Marietta, GA to investigate why a shipment of food was late. This kicked off the campaign, as the group encountered herd zombies, obbs, and vegepygmies who were attacking a small area north of the town.

When they reached the town center, they beheld The Big Chicken, in all its glory...

Marring the sight was a bunch of zombies and vegepygmies chasing the unfortunate citizens of Marietta towards their save haven! The group dispatched the menace, albeit with some difficulty (Rad-Cat almost died!), and they met Sanders, the current Manager of the Church of Pesco, the Big Chicken.

Constructing the Big Chicken was an idea that came to me a few days before the game. I was trying to use Google Maps to download a satellite image of the area and convert that into gaming tiles to put down for the map, but the resolution was so bad that the tiles were coming out far too pixelated to be of use. In a google image search for any possibly-higher-resolution images, I saw picture after picture of the Big Chicken itself, and it suddenly dawned on me that I didn't need the overhead view... it would be MUCH more impressive to make a papercraft Big Chicken!

It didn't take me too long to work it out. I grabbed a side image of the Big Chicken, doctored it so that it was more "post-apocalyptic", and then grabbed images of the KFC it's attached to... the front, the north side and the south side. I made sure everything was to the 1"=5feet scale, and all the pieces were to scale with each other, and everything looked right. Then, it was a simple matter of printing it all out on cardstock, cutting it out, and slotting it all together. I had to apply some glue to the Big Chicken, gluing the front together so there wouldn't be a seam, and I cut slots in the front of the building to fit the sides of the Big Chicken down into. I even made sure that the doors lined up with the battlemat squares, and that there was a "passage" cut underneath the Big Chicken (since such a passage exists in the real thing). Then I drew the building perimeter, interior and parking lot onto my battlemat. I even created a roof out of foam, but it was too much of a hassle to use, so I just left it at home when it came time to head to Craig's for the game.

I think this has to be one of the best things I've created for a game so far. :)

More Fun with Tiles

Back in this post, you can see that I used a model of a Ford F-100 pickup truck for the pickup truck Jennifer's character started out with.

The model was very neat, and I think everyone enjoyed using it, however there is one problem with it... it is too small. I was hoping that I could play around with the model and make it possible for miniatures to fit in the cab and in the back, but it's just too small for that.

Craig has offered the tiles he has made using an old battlemat that got marked up, which he turned into various vehicle tiles (wagon, pickup truck, motorcycle, dump truck, etc), which are very neat, but I'm still keeping to my use of 3D terrain as much as I can.

So, in keeping with that, I turned this...

into this...

and here's a top view...

I used the same design as the cart tiles in the Desert of Athas tileset. In this version of the pickup truck, the back is 2x2 squares, and can now hold 4 miniatures, as it should be able to, and I'm designing the cab so that it can hold two miniatures inside. I'm just putting together the "seat" tile that will go directly underneath the roof, with enough vertical space to allow two miniatures to stand inside and still put the roof on. Once I've done that, I'll likely glue the truck together, to give it more stability, and only leave the roof tile as removable.

I'm really excited to put this into use in the next session, and I'm pretty sure that my players will like it.

Gamma World

No pictures from last week's game. I forgot to bring my camera to the session. Too bad too, because I showcased more of my miniature "proxies" in this session. More on that, further down.

I think the game went really well again. I'm enjoying it. My players seem to enjoy it as well. They seem quite well invested in the wackiness.

There are times, though, when my brain kind of takes a step back from the game, while I'm running it, and points out how dull it seems... or how dull I'm making it... going around the table, each person taking their turns... the monsters taking their turn... ho hum. Then the moment passes. Or sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it lingers on for awhile, which causes part of my brain to start thinking "Why am I doing this? I'm clearly horrible at this."

I'm left wondering if this happens to "Neuro-Typical" DMs (if there is such a thing. ha ha). In this case, "Neuro-Typical" being those without ADHD. It's a simple matter of the dopamine response, really, but I am curious.

When I plan out the adventures, I have a lot of fun with the creative process. I laugh at the little puns or in-jokes that I insert into the encounters. I have one coming up in the next session that I've called "There's Yur Problem!", which the players will understand once they're into the encounter. heh.

It's just when I'm actually running it that this problem comes out. I wonder if I'm being boring. If everyone is just sitting there, just waiting for their turn so that they can get it over with and the whole ordeal will just be over and done with that much quicker.

I highly doubt that they actually ARE thinking that, by the way. At least in the Gamma World game, they're laughing and having fun, so I have to take something positive from that. Right?

Anyway, the session went pretty well. I still forgot a few things, but that was from the fact that I grabbed the encounter locales from the rulebook, and didn't read up on them sufficiently beforehand. Had I written everything myself, the details would have stuck in my mind better (hopefully).

Still, it was fun.

Now, to relate this to the purpose for the blog, I had snagged some Warhammer 40k Tau Drone miniatures off eBay.

I paid $8.50 for the lot (17 of them) plus $5 for priority shipping, when sets of 4 typically retail for $10. As you can see, they are mostly pre-painted, and they have these tiny little magnets on the bottoms of the drones, and the tops of the flight bases, so that you can transport them easier and then just pop them onto their bases when you need them. Very cool! These only had three bases with magnets, but I bought some more of the "rare earth" magnets off the internet, so I can now complete the other ones. I'll probably end up selling most of them, as I don't need that many. heh.

My players thought they were pretty cool. It's also remarkable how much these match the look of the various Gamma World robots that are stat'd up. Sentrybots and Laserbots, especially.

A while ago, I'd bought some "Rocket Raccoon" Heroclix figures on the cheap (about 25 cents each), and I'd won an eBay auction of mixed miniatures, which included these Heroscape "Airborne Elite" soldier figures. Some quick head, tail and helmet transplants, and I came up with these Dabbers (raccoon men):

They were similarly impressed with these. Craig, our usual DM, said "Well, I can't DM you guys anymore!" He better not carry through with that threat. I like DMing, but I don't want to take over his game. :)

Progress of another kind.

Speaking of progress, I ran a Gamma World game session today.

It went really well. Oh, there were a couple of things I'd have liked better... like the encounters lasting a bit longer, especially the second one, but they were damned fun, and I really liked the way they ran and the way they turned out. :)

The first encounter was the group - a radiation/felinoid named "Rad-Cat", an android/cockroach named "Unit D5", and an android/yeti named "George" - exiting a mountain trail and discovering an apparently abandoned property. A barn was the first thing they saw, looking run-down but still intact. Walking around to the front, they spotted the house, which appeared to be in the same condition as the barn.

Investigating the barn, they found the door chained shut and secured with a padlock. After a mix of success and failure in opening the door, Unit D5 picked the lock and they were in! Pushing the doors open, they discovered a completely intact Ford F-100 pickup truck, avocado green. Moving further in, they found what appeared to be the remains of a moonshine still, with only the glass and metal components still intact. Under the cabinet the still was on top of, they found three jugs of moonshine, still extremely potent after all this time.

Just then, a mass of black tar flowed out from under the truck and attacked!

(Yes, indeed, that is a Tar Horror miniature that I made myself out of black clay the night before the game. :) )

Rad-Cat stepped up to the plate, slipping Rad-Cat's skateboard off Rad-Cat's arm and zipping over to the Tar Horror, slamming it with Rad-Cat's sledgehammer! The impact of Rad-Cat's blow damaged the thing, but also set off the thing's "Noisome Breach", exploding acidic tar back onto Rad-Cat, wounding Rad-Cat, slowing Rad-Cat, and burning Rad-Cat with ongoing 10 acid damage (save ends both)! Dee went next, hopping into the truck, trying to start it up (and failing), and then shooting the Tar Horror. He damaged it, and it spewed tar onto the truck in response, but it missed Dee. George grabbed two of the jugs of moonshine and hopped into the back of the truck.

The Tar Horror attacked, slamming Rad-Cat, burning Rad-Cat with more acid and immobilizingRad-Cat (save ends). Rad-Cat went again, activating Rad-Cat's Artificial Blood omega tech, which allowed Rad-Cat to replace any save with a 10, until the end of the encounter. This allowed Rad-Cat to shed the immobilization and ongoing damage at the end of Rad-Cat's round.

Dee got the truck started about this time, the exhaust giving off a terrific backfire as the engine turned over. Dee and George shot at the Tar Horror, and then Dee tried to run the thing over as they exited the barn, but it flowed out of the way, and tried (and failed) to slam them in response.

Just then, the back door of the house burst open and a hulking brute shambled out. Sickly grey skin stretched over its massively obese form, and it gave off a horrid stench of death. It let out a groan and moved forward to slam Rad-Cat, but Rad-Cat dodged out of the way, and shifted backwards, in front of the truck, where Rad-Cat grabbed hold of the front, and held on while Dee drove them off the property and to safety... but not before Dee hocked an acid/bile loogy at the zombie, missed, hit the corner of the house behind the zombie, burned through the support beam of that corner, causing the entire house to collapse as they drove off.

Proceeding further up the mountain, driving along the winding Chatsworth Highway, with Dee driving, George in the back, and Rad-Cat being pulled along on Rad-Cat's skateboard, their noisy truck drowning everything out...

they did not hear what was coming until the last moment...

as a gang of bikers crested the next rise and came into view! It was the Porker bikers, Kewl, And, and The Gang! George won initiative, and dropped a Gravity Well behind the gang. The well pulled Kewl off his bike, giving him a nasty case of road-rash! One of The Gang was pulled off of And's ATV, meeting his death under And's wheels, and the well continued to influence the area, doubling the cost of movement into any square within 5 squares of it.

Rad-Cat held off for now, falling back behind the truck for cover.

Kewl, recovering from his face-plant, quickly jumped to his feet, ran against the pulling force of the gravity well, until he caught up with his bike, which was still rolling forward at half-speed. Reaching it, he jumped back on and kept driving! He's so Kewl!! ;)

Dee wove the truck between the wrecked cars on the road, targeting Kewl with his next attack. He bloodied Kewl, which knocked the Porker gang boss off his bike, and caused his bike to be destroyed... and after such a great recovery too! Oh the indignity!!

And drove his ATV around the wrecks and came up on the driver side of the truck, hacking at Dee with his axe, but his attack bounced harmlessly off the door! George used his Disruptor Pike and launched an attack on the bikers, killing one of The Gang and damaging his motorcycle, which crashed. Rad-Cat worked Rad-Cat's way around to the other side of the truck, pulled Rad-Cat's pogo-stick off Rad-Cat's back, and jammed it in the spokes of the front left wheel of And's ATV!

Two of The Gang zipped up along the passenger side of the truck and swung their chains at George, trying to pull him off the truck, but whereas they were able to hit him, they were unable to unseat him from the truck. Kewl pulled a scattergun off his back, and waited...

Dee gunned it, ran over the back left wheel of And's ATV, then pulled a 180 degree hairpin turn, swiping the back of the truck at Kewl to hit him.

When they got close, Kewl got his readied action and let off a blast from his scattergun! Fortunately for George and Dee, the truck was adequate cover and protected them from the shot!

Dee completed his swerve nearly plowing into Kewl, but he managed to dive out of the way, ending up prone on the ground!

Dee followed up by blasting The Gang member "Lenny", who was driving the go-cart in the back, killing him! Poor Lenny! He just wanted to belong to something!

And jumped off the back of his ATV as it ran over Rad-Cat and then skidded to a stop, both left wheels ruined. Rad-Cat used the opportunity to use Adaptive Resistance, overcharging it successfully and becoming immune to physical damage for the rest of the encounter!! Ending up prone next to And, And swept out and attacked Rad-Cat with his axe, but the axe blow just bounced harmlessly off Rad-Cat.

George took his heavy crossbow off his back and fired a shot at Kewl, putting the heavy bolt right through Kewl's eye and pinning his head to the ground! It took a crit to kill the porker... he was just that Kewl! George then hopped out of the truck and made his way towards the last of The Gang.

Rad-Cat stood up, pulled his Leaky Fusion Rifle off his back, and blasted poor prone And, doing more than twice the number of hit points And had left...

completely disintegrating him!

The last member of The Gang, seeing the rest of his gang torn to shreds in a matter of about 18 seconds, guns his engine and takes off, exiting the map.

That entire fight with the gang took only 3 rounds. Wow. The group had some very high-powered Alpha and Omega cards, so it's no surprise, but wow, did they tear that gang apart! :)

Continuing on up the mountain, they found where they were supposed to be... the "Ft" in "Ft Mountain"...

and discovered a secret set of stairs down under the shale fort, leading into a very out-of-place technological underground base. They will explore the base next session, but this session was lots of fun. :)

Creative Substitution

I like to think I'm a fairly creative guy most of the time... but I'm not above admitting that I need help with it. For that help, I typically turn to Critical Hits, NewbieDM, SlyFlourish, and Sarah Darkmagic. The tips I read about on their sites have really helped me, both in following their instructions, and in coming up with my own ideas. They've really helped to get my creative juices flowing at times.

When Gamma World was released, I was very interested in running the game. The tokens that came with the game are fine, but I'm really a much bigger fan of miniatures.

While reading the WotC Gamma World forum, I started posting in the "Miniature Proxies" thread, and in searching through various miniature websites (Trollandtoad.com, MiniatureMarket.com, Auggies Games, and eBay) looking for miniatures that could stand in for Gamma World monsters. I came up with quite a few good ones, and I'm still looking for more.

Here is my big post for it.

Most of my ideas have come from D&D, Star Wars, Mage Knight, Monsterpocalypse, Horrorclix, Heroclix, Heroscape, and Warhammer 40k. I've also started looking into AT-43 recently, and there are some miniatures in that line that I really like.

LEGO is another resource that I've started to tap. While at Walt Disney World before Christmas, I bought a small bin of various lego pieces, and I bought a set from their Atlantis line that has a giant crab in it. Monster Crab Clash. It looks mechanical enough that it would fit in well with some ideas I've had for the game.

Just the other day, I was in Target and saw that they were clearing out a bunch of toys. Included in the sale was another of the Atlantis sets, Wreck Raider. Now, this set, as built by the instructions, isn't very useful to me (well, not until Legion of Gold comes out... if they stuck with the basic concept of the original adventure, that is), but hey... you know what? Lego can be made into pretty much anything you can think of!! Did you know that?! ;-)

After taking the Wreck Raider apart again, I futzed around with the pieces for awhile, pulling in other pieces from that bin I bought, and from a small Star Destroyer set, and I came up with a very cool flying Hunter-Killer robot.

Oh, and since I just finished painting it tonight, I figured I'd show this off as well. I recently bought a Castle Ravenloft miniature from Auggies Games, of Gravestorm, the Dracolich. Using some paint that my wife had in her art supplies, and some basic techniques for painting undead miniatures (learned from Games Workshop), I turned this...

into this:

Hmph. A lot of the detail is lost in that picture. I'll take another one tomorrow and post it... if our power is still on... this winter storm that has hit the Southeast could cause some problems with the power grid, what with all the freezing rain in the forecast.

Well, here's hoping. *crosses fingers*