I have a new addiction - mucking about making contour lines look more 'realistic' on maps I'm drawing for military science fiction RPGs. I want game maps which look like proper topographic maps, not like fantasy novel frontispiece maps. I'm using CorelDraw and making the initial pile of contours is dead easy. But then I can spend DAYS titvating ( Read more... )

The Hairy Brother has just departed back to the frozen north, after a Christmas of gaming goodness.

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Context for those not already in the know: I've been running Night's Black Agents, which is spies versus vampires. I'd been doing a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth, because the player group is so risk averse that they'd managed about half a dozen sessions without actually finding out that vampires exist. They've seen some weird ( Read more... )

Life seems to be very busy at the moment. Previous few weeks have included:

• Armadacon
• Visiting Stockport to see keith_martin, then a day trip to Manchester.
• Seeing various films at the cinema: Dr Strange, Arrival, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them. (Interestingly the cinema in Manchester was much cheaper than the ones in Bristol ( Read more... )

It felt a bit weird that Keith wasn't there to natter to at length on geeky topics, but nevertheless I had a great time at Summer Stabcon. I ran three RPG sessions:

1. Gentle Ladies' Tea, Monstrosity Destroying and Quilting Circle. They were doing fine until they accidentally got Queen Victoria turned into a vampire...!
2. Hammer's Slammers: A ( Read more... )

Back from Summer Stabcon which was, as usual, terrific fun.

RPGs played:
- Small Folk, run by Phil Masters. We were rather inept, but in an entertaining way. http://www.warehouse23.com/products/the-small-folk

RPGs run:
- Maschine Zeit. I ran the Abusement Park scenario, but it is a bit patchy and the GM needs to do a lot of the heavy lifting to ( Read more... )

Firefly RPG art FTW! The majority of the illustrations are stills from the TV show, but their artwork for the character gen section is just frakking awesome. Middle aged people! Old people! Non-white people! Women wearing clothes suitable for their jobs. Middle aged non-white women wearing clothes suitable for their jobs! And not a hint of tits and ( Read more... )

I’ve been doing prep work in anticipation of running Terracide in a few weeks. The players will have a starship, and are likely to be carrying cargo and passengers around. So I’ve been reading those sections of the rulebooks in Terracide, Traveller and the like. But I’m having a lot of WTF moments…

( Read the details here )

Had a fun time at Summer Stabcon as usual. Ran three games, which is unusual for me - normally only do one or two- and didn’t play any boardgames this year, but spent lots of time chatting with old friends and making new ones. ( More info here )

Got back from Congenial (RPG convention) last night. The only travel hassle was not because of the anticipated "Doom! Doom! London Transport will grind to a halt because of the Olympics!". Instead it was the Cambridge to King's Cross train being 12 minutes late, then there being no taxis and a huuuuuuge queue for the non-existent taxis at Bristol, ( Read more... )