Session Tracker Freebie

Fahhh!  the Quantum Ogre has attacked!  This blog's updates are coming more slowly and less accurately than before... For which I am not expressing guilt - my hobby/gaming is as regular on the DM end as ever, and furthermore as my other awesome blog shows, I am productive after a fashion and keeping it on the learning end and having fun.  But traditional Fantasy/Sci-Fi Dungeon Crawling gaming (as a genre or mode) is becoming less central and more like the sprinkles on a really fun donut LIKE THIS ONE

AS I WAS SAYING that encompasses a lot of hands on and cerebral and social stuff for me.  I regularly run games, but rarely play. Not for lack of interest but when the building of a hive city in my basement and making and painting the inhabitants is the thing, then it must come after family life and leave narrow margins for other things. And of course I prefer to run games more than play on the PC side, these days.  Not because my Hangout community peers aren't great but...  I don't know. I don't see a great number of games I'm interested in playing in for some reason. I think Dave Y.'s introduction to In A Wicked Age really blew the doors off for me.  I think probably Camp Nerdly is a turning point and as my kid gets older and the wife is more into it, I think I'll try to do it more.

Anyways, I MADE THIS. It's a tracking sheet and fairly useful for the kind of game I usually run.  I try to refer to PCs and henchies by name - maybe it helps immersion, I don't know.  GLAMROD THE ELF, WHAT ARE YOU DOING NOW?  BEWARE THE SACRILEGE!  We all have a little thing we do like this to keep our SAN score up; its use ought to be fairly self-evident. I think when I ran barrowmaze, like 95 percent of the games conformed to this sort of format.  Maybe that's why I am running out of steam on this end for gaming of a particular type.  It seems like all games I've played or run or seen sort of go like this...  Not that it's bad - I always have fun and I think the players do, too.  One little tool in your box of stuffs; surely it's been done and like HEY MAN IF IT MAKES IT EASIER THEN GOOD

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8k5lj5mVs3lT0RCNzU3NE5IQTA

Experiment Success

The Progenitor, Patriarch/Broodlord of the Taint Cola Company

So, I consider the dual-priming method a pretty fun success.  I highly encourage your use of it, if you like easy and handsome results.  I'm happy with my previous attempts at Genestealers, but this new way makes interesting things happen on the model that you might appreciate, too.  Namely, for little in the way of work, you get nice highlights and lowlights (midtones not so great, maybe) and you can embellish those with your style of washes and highlights as you like.  All you need to do is start with black and white primers, then thin down your paints to a glaze, and then off you go.  When the Progenitor's base is done, I will put up a decent pick of him and his scuttling crew.

Observe the differences between the classic Genestealer below left, and her sister to the right, who has been dual-primed.  I like the starker claws on the left but that's about it.  I had serious trouble drybrushing the ridges etc. after priming the model black.  There just wasn't any place to put color on after that.  However, the crevices and lowlights are nicer, maybe.  I'm growing more comfortable with good consistent ink washes and glazes, now, but it's still not something I'm very good at eyeballing.

Anyway, now to finish these and base them as best as I am able... My back is wildly off kilter, and I may save painting and hobbies for tomorrow and just go watch some scary ass movies, instead.

Old-Way of Painting (Left) vs. Dual-Primed Highlight Method

Dual-Primed Genestealers

I'm going slowly on the Cult of Taint Soda, so to speak, but the objects of affection (The Genestealers) are coming along pretty swimmingly.

Trying this dual-priming/pre-shading method I learned from here:

http://www.corehammer.com/painting-classic-genestealers-quickly/

And I like the results enough to keep it up. It seems to me that all the painting I do is a "cheat" somehow but I maybe that's part of the hobby for me. Watching the dry-brushing work, watching the hacking of minis come together.

Beating the system with a subversion

Anyways, we'll see how it goes.

DIY Terrain Progress

I stayed up late last night, again, noodling around and trying things out.  Hot glue was flying and I moved forward with the dual-generators-made-from-kid's-toys. Suitably greebled up and going to flock with some kitty litter/sand/tea combo. I think I will need some matte black spray before I proceed, and maybe a file or something to smooth the edges of the laminate base.  I'll post pictures of that when it's primed and ready.  Meanwhile some shack/platform (shackform?) and a big ass Pthalo Green wall.  These are odd sizes - 2x4's are actually 3 and 3/4 by 1 and 3/4 inches.  Imagine both these puppies liberally slathered in laser-burn, Imperialist Propaganda, and bullet holes.

Also, I've had this Imperial Preacher primed and waiting for paint for maybe 5 years (possibly longer!) and only just late last night got around to sorting him out. My impulse is to use too much wash and I often muddy everything up with one coat too much.  I'll need to sit on it for a little longer and see; maybe I will go back and glaze the shoulder portion of his habit again to get it a little more pink.  Still sorting out skin tones and eyes (after 20 years of painting I know now why I prefer dry-brushed Space Marines. Although I enjoy paining figs I'm not necessarily technically skilled or aesthetically a natural and it takes enough work and patience that I find it aversive sometimes. My eyes don't work like they used too, either...  I have a serious urge to dumpster-dive at work and bring home a dead laser printer to raid its guts.  MUST RESIST.  Just now I found that water has damaged my copy of Space Hulk (well, the components look pretty good but the box has some water damage and appears to have harbored some heretical beetles).  Time to paint all those GS and Termies.  It occurred to me during a brief moment of acrylic-driven clarity that I have a great number of Termies and never field them.  Do I feel like they are cheating, or something?  Gosh, I don't know.  Way back, I think, I always viewed that guy - the one with a jillion termies - as kind of a goat fucker, but now I think it's a matter of inflation and my sins of old are mere pecadilloes.

next: prepping the platforms and gantries 

The Papodiles of Awz

Papists!  We all Hate 'Em.  Amiright?

I'll say again that the spirit of the Baum Oz books ought to, by rights, pervade all our DnD'ing.  So the kicker is that we needed some stuff for a nasty Oz-flavored thing in which to express our IT GETS WORSE motif.  It was good times.

+Evan Lindsey and +Bryan Mullins as Billy Buttons the Blunderbussing 10-year old, and Ransom Calabash, a inexpertly glued together victim of the 1000-yards of Verdun.  He went starkers as a melodic spell was cast at him and literally fell to pieces and was pitched off a cliff.

1) Howell, the Tattered Woggle Bug Sangrita Blast Salesman
2) a Half Dozen Minus One Irritable Kalidahs
3) Miss Petunia, the Buff Orpington Photographer
4) The Black Carniv'rous Heliotrope
5) Whistler, the Shrunken Apple Headed King of the Western Orchard Lands

A thing which the Internet gave us but which sadly we could not use owing to time constraints and the limitations of my frail human frame was the above, the Papodiles.  Behold, their Toothy Mitermaws!  Their babbling Proselyzations (SAN damage) and in other systems we determined that you can take damage depending upon your alignment, but I was thinking that if (for example) your SAN or your Willpower ran out, then of course you'd be Catholic and convert and just go on your merry way to play out whatever Catholicism means to you.  Not as a spiteful thing, mind you, but in the spirit of the times of Baum and Nast (so like maybe a little spiteful since they weren't enlighten'd then as we are, now).

I'm going to say in the interests of hot social commentary that these Ravenous Beasts are amphibian, Lawful Evil, and they horde gold and unread bibles at the bottom of their murky lairs, and they especially love to prey upon the poor, the young, the winsome, and that all three qualities in a single individual (e.g. Master Buttons, above) draws them as a moth to the proverbial thing-which-yeah.

I don't know, 4HD or something, 3 x bite (1d8), droning preaching (DC 15 Save or stop and listen closely, then a DC 15 Save or switch to Catholicism/Law OR take metaphysical damage each round, with +1D damage for non-Lawful characters)

in Into the Odd, pretty easy to stat out.  15 HP, 2 Armor, the attacks are pretty straightforward as 1d6 or 1d12 if the victim is forced to listen to the spiel.  A failed save means the victim takes (in our little game tonight) 1d8 SAN damage in addition to HP loss when the droning, Latinate chanting begins.

RRAAAAARRRGHLAAG PLEASE TURN TO GOSPEL OF ST ROCH CHAPTER 4 VERSE 73, AND LO, JUDAS ISCARIOT WENT UNTO ANTIOCH AND MADE WAR UPON THE DAUGHTERS CHOMP CHOMP WAGNAGHL OF NAPTHALENE AND YEA VERILY BLAH BLAH BLAH IN NOMINE PATRI ET SPIRITU BAALZEBOOOV FEAR NOT FOR THE END IS NIGH AND REPENT REPENT REPENT GIVE UNTO US WHAT IS CAESAR'S AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH SNICKERSNACK

And with the firey eyes and the chomping of glistening golden vorpal miter-teeth and then you are dragged below to do penance and never receive charity