I’ve had various (ed: poor) success with building things competitions in the past. I’ve singularly failed to finish a single one I’ve entered, even the Build Something Small and Encounter Terrain 10×10, both of which were small things. So the natural thing to do was to organize the next round of Building Something Competition (BSC) on Lead Adventure!
If you’re not familiar with BSC, it is a friendly competition on the Lead Adventure Forum, running for more than a decade. Both Brian and I have entered at various times, he’s even finished something:
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to build this year – either a spaceport or a vertical mill thing for my hellscape terrain. As you can probably gather from the title, I decided on a spaceport. I’ve been doodling a few different options for a little bit, starting with one giant 12″x18″ piece, but nothing was really gelling for me.
First concepts 1First concepts 2First concepts 3
So I decided to try a few different layouts in FreeCAD, see what I liked. I found this cardboard tube from something paper that I wanted to use as the main upright. And I knew I wanted a 9″x9″ building for the main warehouse building. I initially tried a single larger building on a 12″x12″ base, but that didn’t work either. I also tried the landing pad on a big 12″x12″ base. I also didn’t like that
Concept 1Concept 1 with pillarConcept for landing pad
So I decided to split it into multiple bases, the building and starport each on one. And I knew I needed a way to have pads lift up into the sky, so I decided on magnets and printed pads. That is what the orange vertical pieces are – holders for either magnets or metal strips. Those pads will land on a yet another 6″x”6 base.
Main warehouse buildingStarport plus landing pad
Printing things!
I’ve been fighting off some sort of stomach issue for the past few weeks, so progress has been slow, but I finally have printed pieces ready to show at least. But first, a whole lot of failures. I needed to find out if I’d measured the tube correctly (which I hadn’t) and then I decided to use an empty pill bottle as a fuel tank to add on. So several failed prints for those look like this:
Test pieces for main tube holderTest and successful pieces for fuel tank
And finally, the printed pieces (mostly). I haven’t been able to print the holder fully successfully yet, but that is next to go on the printer again tonight. But I have the borders at least done – base, starport base, landing pad base and fuel tank.
Our group tried out Patrick Todoroff’s Nightwatch today, a coop fantasy/horror monster hunting skirmish game he published a few years ago. We play a lot of cooperative games, mostly Sellswords & Spellslingers and the new scifi variant I’m working on, so we’re always keen to try something new.
Our First Game
We decided to play the intro scenario set as laid out in the book, which was the big bad or Atrocity, as a necromancer, so lots and lots of skeletons for us. Good thing all three of us have lots of skeletons already. Brian choose a ranged fighter, Sean a melee fighter and myself an alchemist. As we were an odd set (in more ways than one), we ended up with Sean getting a d10 minion to balance the pact Brian and I shared (apparently we ran up a gambling debt together).
The first mission is an escort one – get Derek across the table. Here we bumped into the first challenge, as we couldn’t see exactly what stats Derek was supposed to have. We ended up playing him as having a single free move and nothing else – this did make it an 8 turn game (another challenge, it wasn’t clear to us what the term limit was – it is implied to be 7 turns elsewhere).
Nightwatch begins very quietly. There isn’t a single foe on the table in the first Pact turn. We moved as much as we could given we had to wait for Derek, so that meant the Darkness got lots of turn to spawn. The early turns were fairly easy – we shot or used explosive grenades on foes and got rid of them quite easily.
Brian’s ranged fighter faces off against a bow-wielding skeleton over the graveyard
By turn 3 or 4, it was quite different. The Darkness was now spawning many more skeletons than we could handle in a turn, so out came the smoke grenades. These work wonderfully – any foe inside them moves in a random direction, but this also ended up being a place where some more explanation in the rules would have been nice. it wasn’t clear to us what happened with foes outside the smoke – would they move through it, then randomly once they were in it? And if they moved randomly out of the smoke, would they change direction once out of it to move towards the PCs?
Then the end was coming – one way or the other. Two of us got wounded and that meant we lost our d10 action. Thankfully a pair more smoke bombs and then some flashpowder to get my alchemist free followed by the last explosive grenado my alchemist had.
The end. The PCs and Derek are up in the top corner, about to escape while the hordes close in. Another smoke bomb can be seen in the upper right.
Closing thoughts
Overall, we quite liked the game. It played well and fairly quickly – 2 hours for a game including time to build characters and understand the rules. The core of game is the alternating turns between the PCs (the Pact) and the foes (the Darkness). The second major mechanic is around activations – both PCs and the foes activate worked well too – the PCs get three activation dice (d6, d8 and d10) and use them for their actions looking for successes with a 4+. This gives you some options about what you choose to do.
We rather liked the wounding system – it wasn’t everything to nothing, PCs lose their best actions as they get wounded, all the way down to 3 wounds where they can only move, and then dead at 4 wounds. This meant that PCs degrade naturally, although we never had a PC with more than a single wound.
Sean quite liked the fighting system and how the shield bash and other abilities worked, although we forgot about our guild abilities quite often. The abstract different melee/ranged weapons combinations was an interesting way to cover off many types of weapons without naming them all.
The rulebook is well written, but needed another pass to reorganize and clean up bits. We found ourselves flipping through many pieces to find rules, including some basic stuff like Free Move can be used for reload, which isn’t listed on the quick reference. The author did mention that this was basically a home-brewed system expanded into a commercial product, and as someone who is putting the final touches on a beta for playtesting for a ruleset, I know just how hard this can be.
Sellswords has a nice flow chart for foe action that would be good to incorporate, although the wording around how foes act is quite nice – gives players a flavour for how they are supposed to act, not just as mindless creatures.
We’re definitely going to play at least a few more times, likely through the intro scenario. And I’d definitely recommend others try it out, it does play quickly and well.
Sellswords & Spellslingers is a fantastic co-op fantasy skirmish game, but it does have one small challenge – it works well for games that take place outside or in large areas, but not so well for a classic dungeon crawl, where bits of the dungeon are revealed as the players explore. So I thought I would set out to design some basic rules for this.
What’s the challenge?
Sellswords biggest challenge comes with how it spawns the foe – continuously and in great volume. This means that if players are in a small space, that is going to get really deadly, really quickly.
Creating a dungeon that gets discovered as you go
Sellwords usually works where you lay the whole board out in the beginning, so I had to create a way to have the dungeon, some foes and a few lost adventurers show up. I used a standard deck of cards and split it up – you’ll see the cards in the shots below. We tried two different versions – the first with 10 terrain pieces + 10 foe cards and then a second version with 6 of each. The second worked much better
So how does it play?
Just as deadly as regular Sellswords. Our second game we took 7 PCs into in, found 2 lost adventurers and still finished the game with nobody alive.
It began quite well. Up until the photo below, we had killed most of the skeletons that had popped up, we’d recovered the lost friendly Goblin (metal figure furthest up the picture) and we’d discovered another lost adventurer (a friendly gnoll), but we has Out of Action behind a pillar in a far room.
Near the beginning, as we have got out of the initial corridor and are headed into the linked rooms on the upper left
And then it all started to go downhill. One little group of skeletons – one horde and one ambush, did for 3 characters – two dead outright.
Right when it all started to go wrong. Sean’s witch leader is down, his archer already dead and my mousling archer about to go down.
After the massive death in the upper left room, death was soon to follow us into the next rooms. Quickly enough my first mousling archer and one of Brian’s were downed. All that remained were two. We did discover the NPC merchant, but he only watched as the skeletons slaughtered us.
And then there were two – Brian’s witch finder and my last mousling – Robin the Good.
And a few turns later, it was all over. Brian’s witch finder was able to revive the friendly Gnoll – Fur Face – but he quickly fell to an ambushing skeleton.
All down, just a short distance from the end.
What’s Next?
Not sure, I’ve got some rules, but I also know that the author Sellswords & Spellslingers has been working on some dungeon crawling, so likely going to wait for that.
As for my hell terrain, it will soon be much more colourful, but that’s a post for another time.
Brian and I (plus friends) attended Trumpeter Salute 2023 last weekend. No, not the UK one, the smaller one in Vancouver, Canada. We all had a great deal of fun, our first major miniatures convention since 2019 – after Bottos Con, which is primarily a board game convention, in Nov of last year.
Under Alien Suns (working title) – Coop scifi rules under heavy development
Friday afternoon in the first slot I ran another public beta test of my under development coop scifi skirmish ruleset, Under Alien Suns (the working title). It was a great deal of fun, autonomous vehicles got used as weapons, and there were many laughs. Also lots of great feedback.
Players were fighting in New Antares – against a mixed enemy – zombies from the former townsfolk & Halite Confederation soldiers
Vikings vs Saxons – Aftermath of the Raid
There were a pair of linked games both using Ravensfeast (a free online ruleset)- one of a Viking raid and then a 2nd of the Vikings attempted to get their stolen booty home. I missed the first game, but caught the second one. Also a chance to try out my new camera – a Canon RP with my older 60mm macro lens!
It ended up being a minor Viking victory, as they got the major loot (the laden donkey) off the table, and took down both my lord and the local bishop with his
Gaslands pickup game – Death Race!
As we were late getting back to the main hall after dinner on Saturday, we ended up running the first of a pair of pickup Gaslands games. This death race ended up with the leaders taking each other out and the person in last place at the start claiming victory.
But the most glorious moment was the double jump – jump, slide, spin, jump again. Amazing to watch
Operation Sea Lion – Bolt Action
Sunday is one big slot, but we ended up having time to play a pair of games. First up, a four-table Operation Sea Lion, the start of a larger Bolt Action Campaign. On our table, it is a very minor German victory, as we cheeseweasled some troops off at the end.
It all started badly, however, as the Brits took out 1/3 of our force on turn 1 and we failed our prepatory bombardment roll. But our crowning glory was storming the ruined house held only by Dad’s Army types, who inflicted huge casualties, but we did more.
One last Gaslands game – Flag Tag
We had one last Gaslands game – Flag Tag. Team red vs the other colours, which also happened to be the younger players, including a friend’s son, against the older players (Brian, Martin and Tony).
All in all, twas fun but you never get enough photos. I did also have a participatory art project this year – I asked players to graffiti my buildings for my scifi terrain. Photos of those shortly and thanks to all that participated, I got some great stuff.
Til next year!
Update! Martin has uploaded his photos to flickr – he played many of the same games as Brian and I and even has shots of Brian’s boat game – something apparently Brian himself failed to get
Sellswords & Spellslingers, like a lot of similar games, often has bad guys (foes in Sellsword parlance) appear at random locations or randomly along the board edge. This process can slow down the game, so I’ve been dreaming up ways to speed it up for a while now. Given I own a 3D printer, I decided to do some designing FreeCAD to create some board edges for Sellswords, Warcry and the upcoming scifi Sellswords variant I’m working on.
Screenshot of the edges in FreeCAD
As I knew I was designing these once, I took some short cuts with my FreeCAD and just bodged it together. The base is a pair of 3″ Openlock templates, with Oxanium font and some ticks extruded onto them. Once printed and with the border corners designed and printed, I got a finished product, numbers from 1 to 35, as a Sellswords board is usually 36″x36″.
Printed but unpainted board edges and corner piece, with an empty 6″x6″ tile
And that is how they sat for many months with little action. I had a convention (BottosCon 2022) in November, so I spent a bunch of time painting up buildings but didn’t get to the edges. So they were black for that first con. Only after the con did I get a base coat of rust on them.
The rust is mostly Liquitex Burnt Sienna Acrylic, with some Liquitex Raw Sienna and Red Oxide, all sponged on to provide texture.
Which brings us to this week, where I finally got the paint job finished. I gloss coated the edges, then put down Vallejo chipping medium with an airbrush. After that was dry, I added blues – mostly Reaper’s True Blue, but also some Sky Blue and Brilliant Blue for accents – all by airbrush
All the many colours of blue!
After the blues were down, I chipped them using a tooth brush, then hand painted on some a cheap craft titanium white and rechipped them. The white nicely toned down as the chipping medium + water means the paint runs a bit.
Just before I finished, I also added some 18 to 21 edges, as we also play Warcry, which has the very strange board size of 30″ by 22″.
Where can you find the files?
I haven’t uploaded them anywhere yet, but will get them on Thingiverse shortly!
On the wreck of the Z15A, near the Great Plain, there are three wrecks near a large lake/sea that always attract attention. The Green, Red and Blue ships are not spaceships, but rather waterborne craft from the ship’s former life, all now rusted wrecks that will float no longer.
All three can be found in The Galleries. This area, located port-side amidships, are where the structure of the ship blends seamlessly into buildings on the Great Plains itself. Many of the transportation links into the inner world start or end here, including the docks that these ships presumably used.
The Ships
All three ships are huge – the intact hull of the Red Ship is some 1000m in length, while the less intact Green and Blue ships were estimated to be in the 750 length.
Blue Ship
The most ruined of all three ships, all that is left of the Blue Ship is half a hull rotting. Large parts of this ship have apparently been cut up over the possible centuries it has been a wreck, possibly even as far back as the original inhabitants. Most of its equipment has similarly been carefully gutted, which speaks to re-purposing.
Green Ship
The Green Ship, resting on water-sodden grass, looks to have been deliberately run aground. On its hull can be found the remnants of scaffolding and work, possibly after it was run aground.
Unlike the other two ships, the Green Ship looks to have been a pleasure craft of some sort, with many features still found on terrestrial or space cruise ships today, including many open areas and more.
Red Ship
With lines that are reminiscent of an Earth-submarine during their second great war, this ship is the most intact in some ways, as the full hull is still visible. As the seas of the Great Plain are never more than a few metres deep at most (one way we know Z15A original inhabitants were not aquatic), it is unlikely the Red Ship actually was a submarine.
Inside the Red Ship is a maze of small passageways, with some decks being less a metre in height. On the side of the ship are doors that open, possibly for launching or retrieving other craft.
The Galleries
The Galleries are the main interface between the rest of the ship and the Great Plains. While other connections exist, only in the Galleries are there big enough connections to move full small ships or big equipment into the Great Plains.
The Galleries are named mostly because of the view they give – across the Great Plain. There are hundreds of km of window overlooking the Great Plain, parts of which could be considered places to rest or stop – whether to eat or not is unknown at this point.
Main Gallery
The Main Gallery is located exactly amidships on the port side, and contains the two largest airlocks on the ship, as well as a cavernous space between the two to allow transfer of materials. The outer pairs have long been breached, leaving most of the galleries open to space. But the inner pair are both intact. Each airlock was a 1 km cube of space, allowing moving all but the largest of vehicles all the way onto the Great Plain.
Today we head back to Mephistopheles Cluster and the giant wreck of Z15A. A wrecked generation ship, Z15A is so named because of where it it is – Z sector, 15th quadrant, largest object in that quadrant, according to first Terran survey of the cluster.
The Z15A main concourse – this large corridor on the very top of the ship is now open to space (Stable Diffusion)
Z15A has a number of notable features – it is huge (over 1000km long), it is apparently still sort of working (there is a breathable nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere in parts) and nobody really truly knows who originally built it.
Major parts of Z15A
In the thousands of rooms, corridors, bays and other spaces of Z15A, there are several that stand out as noteable.
Chi-nith-ra (Great Plain)
A massive space in the centre of the ship, the Chi-nith-ra or Great Plain more resembles a slice of a planet than the spaceship it is. Amazingly, this space retains both an atmosphere and heat, so can be walked around without a space suit.
Ruins of the living quarters on the Great Plain (Stable Diffusion)
During The Closing, inhabitants of several space stations retreated here as systems started failing on their stations. These humans and other species still squat here, despite all efforts to move them.
Shanty town below ruins of living quarters (Stable Diffusion)
There are three distinct settlements within the Great Plain – New Hope is a primarily Human settlement, from the major Solar Compact station as well as few outer colonies. The Halite Commonwealth has formally accepted the small remnant of Qoss and Yishk who live in Britli-kat as part of the Commonwealth, although no other power recognizes their de-facto ownership and control over this part of the ship.
Lastly the reclusive Bredensonee, a large herbivorous species that resembles a bipedal woolly mammoth, have a large settlement in the far stern end of the plain. They are a descendants of a large family ship that was caught in the cluster due to The Closing on its was to a colony world. By far the most numerous settlement (really settlements), the Bredensonee have resisted efforts by their government to resettle them of Z15A, the suspicion amongst the others who live in Z15A is that this settlement is some type of religious order who may have fled to avoid persecution, although neither they, nor the central Bredensonsee government are saying anything.
Main Concourse
Running down the centre top of the whole ship, from above the bridge at the front to the large docking bay at the rear, the main concourse is almost all open to space.
Docking and Ship Building Bays
A big part of the external parts of Z15A comprise the many docking and ship building bays that befitted a ship of this class. Most of them are empty, possibly when the original inhabitants left the ship, but some are filled with debris and parts of starships.
One of the many ship building bays, filled with junk and debris littered around (Stable Diffusion)
In the explorations of the ship, nobody has of yet found any intact small ships, but it is possible deeper in some of the bays, beyond the debris piles, there are complete starships.
Robots and other automated beasts
While Z15A is very definitely clear of any of the original inhabitants and large parts of it are open to vacuum, the ship is far from dead. The fusion reactors or whatever power the ship still function and the energy signal is very faintly detectable. Some parts of the ship retain atmosphere and heat, notably the vast inside space known as Chi-nith-ra. There are also a fair number of smaller robots that still function, some of which can pack a fair punch.
Security Bots
The stern end of the port side, beyond some empty ship building bays is an area that is shielded and still patrolled by security bots – armed with fairly primitive but highly effect lasers as well as low-velocity slug throwers. They appear to be guarding room that is approximately 500m cubed. It is on the exterior of the ship, with a large bay door that is similarly shielded and armed. Nobody has successfully entered this area and reported back, although it is possible a stealthier mission might have penetrated the defences here.
Security bots can be found scattered throughout the rest of the ship as well, although most are inactive. They appear near what look like former weapons installations (all removed or destroyed) or in a few of the small craft hangers
Cleaning and Repair Bots
Far more numerous are the cleaning and repair bots that function in some parts of the ship. These vary in size from the size of a bread box to large vehicle size, depending on the area. Most of these are harmless, although some malfunction and their tools can be harmful or even lethal.
The Great Plain has a variety of robots that work around it – underneath in the passageways that service the ecosystem
Today we find ourselves on Halite, the namesake planet of the Halite Commonwealth and homeworld of two separate intelligent species – the related lizard-like Qoss and the snake-like Yishk. On Halite is the cliffside monastery of Sheksha-kah, a famous religious centre in the commonwealth and a common retreat location for the wealthy and powerful to avoid unwanted notice or rehabilitate their image.
The Myth of Othaos
Perched high above the seas below on a narrow ledge, the monastery was founded by famous Halite scholar and skeptic turned prophet Othaos. They (neuter gender Qoss) famously boasted that “The gods don’t exist” and lead a group of atheist scholars that were seeking to unseat the orthodoxy.
Legend says (as told by Othaos themselves) that they were on a small boat travelling to Scorzetti when a massive, unseasonable storm suddenly descended upon their little ship. Soon all hope for control was lost as the heavy waves and wind pounded them. For hours the storm raged, pushed them closer and closer to the menacing cliffs they were pushed. Othaos said they prayed to the Goddess Sheksha of the Light Moon (the larger of the two of Halite’s natural satellites) in his time of need.
Othaos’ ship founders in the storm, as the light moon breaks through the clouds (Stable Diffusion)
Shortly after midnight , the Light Moon broke through the clouds and illuminated them, pointing them at a gap in the cliffs. Through that cliff was a small protected beach and stairs up to the ledge high above the seas. Through skillful navigation, the small ship found its way on the beach, nearly swamped.
Othaos promised then and there to build the grandest monastery on Halite, the building that now stands on the ledge to this day. How much of this tale is true is left up to the reader.
Adventure Hooks
As the monastery often hosts the wealthy and powerful who are looking to avoid some public scrutiny or atone for a public failing, the possibilities for adventures include smuggling people or goods out of the monastery, a covert assassination or similar nefarious things. The monastery can only be reached by foot – either up Othaos’ cliffside route or the newer path alongside the cliff. Both are under easy view of the monastery staff at all times, so any party would need excellent skills and some luck to pull off an action. Conversely, if defending the monastery the powerful storms that whip up in the seas below it often prevent easy reinforcements, so if players are defending the monastery, they might need to hold for quite some time with limited resources.
Authors Note: The above is also being rolled into an upcoming Sellswords & Spellslingers source booked tentatively called The Free Cities of the Rift, a Venice-like city in the world of Norindaal
I was going to do a piece on the Halite Commonwealth capital city today, but I thought I would detour with a stop at Sonnoros, a Saturn-like planet in the Halite system home to the intelligent Zennanesh race, a very large floating jellyfish-like species.
Sonnoros with two of its moons (Planet created with the PlanetMaker)
Native hydrogen breathers and from a gas giant, Zennanesh are the first known intelligent species of their type in the galaxy.
Native Sonnoros Zennanesh (Stable Diffusion)
Sonnoros also hosts the Halite Legislature (somewhat similar to how the European Union or South Africa used to function, where the executive is hosted in a different city from the legislature)
Halite Legislature building (Stable Diffusion)
Adventure Hooks
As most player characters aren’t capable of either flying or breathing hydrogen, adventures in Sonnoros will be limited to either the main floating stations – often mining stations for rare elements in Sonnoros’ atmosphere, or meeting points. Although the Halite Commonwealth is stable, wealthy and safe, even the richest places have their underbelly.
Players have been approached to smuggle some goods off of a mining platform. They have to move the objects across the table to the airlock (and their ship). The loading dock is busy with civilians, so lethal force is not allowed. Players must create distractions so the port police don’t notice what they are doing.
Today we turn to an odd enigma – the Mephistopheles Cloud – named for the swirling colours and massive graveyard of ships and space stations that dot the cloud.
An area of space around 1/4 of the AU across, the Mephistopheles Cloud is home to some 15 warp gates and at last catalogue, some 90 years ago, 524 individual space stations or ships, most of which are abandoned. Both Solar Compact (Earth and most of the solar system) and the Halite Commonwealth maintain active stations here, as this is a waypoint to just about anywhere else.
The mystery comes in – how did the warp gates end up here? Nearly every else that has warp gates is by a major gravitational feature – a star or something similar. It wasn’t until after The Opening that a chance discovery lead to the finding of the grooves in space. Somebody dragged every warp gate from the systems many light years around to this cloud. And that “dragging” left telltale grooves in the universe.
Adventure Hooks
The biggest ship here is the generation ship Z15A. Massing millions of tonnes and some 1000 km long, this is a remnant of an alien race leaving their dying sun.
Bridge of the Z15A (stable diffusion)
Players are tasked with retrieving a lost scavenger party. The ship retains power through fusion generators, so many of the automated systems are still active. Foes include sentry robots and automated cannons, while stasis traps catch the unwary.
