[Games, Ponies] Beating an Undead Horse Part XVIII: THE BRIDLE OF FRANKENSTEED
Behold! The BRIDLE OF FRANKENSTEED! This is a companion piece to my "Frankensteed" figure conversion from earlier. This is another 2" PVC "My Little Pony" toy converted with Apoxie Sculpt 2-part epoxy putty and some acrylic paint, standing on a HeroClix base (about 1.5" diameter) textured with more putty. The background piece is a "Wayne Manor" Batman play set piece I picked up at a thrift store and supplemented with some cardstock, foam, and Hirst Arts Castlemold casts in order to make a table centerpiece / "GM screen" (originally for some Savage Ghostbusters games).
It's about time for game registration for Necronomicon 2014, held in Tampa, Florida, on October 3-5. The theme this year is pulp / weird science, and so I've got an incentive to finish out my "Frankensteed" set of figures. (Others include Dr. Frankensteed and the Hunchback Pony.) I've been entertaining the thought of having a whole set of "classic movie monster" characters -- not necessarily as adversaries per se, but as player-characters in a spin on my old "Advanced MonsterQuest" scenario. (I.e., you play the monsters, fending off mobs bearing torches and pitchforks as they lay siege to the castle/manor/haunted-house/mad-laboratory, making Scare Attacks and such.)
Other possible characters:
* The Wolfmare. (A wolf/pony? Pretty weird, huh? But an easy conversion.)
* Count Dracolta. (A vampony with cape and fangs and widow's peak mane.)
* Im-hoof-tep. (Mummy pony. Also an easy conversion since I just add wraps and "jewelry.")
* The Filly of the Opera. (I'm hoping for a better pun*. Has a half-mask.)
* The Seahorse of the Black Lagoon. (Hippocampus.)
So with the aforementioned Frankensteed clan, that'd bring to 9 total -- and I'd need 6 minimum for a convention game, but I like having 9 PC choices so the last player still gets some choices of sheets rather than being saddled (har!) with just one leftover.
I've also been working on some pony pirates, but that'd be another theme entirely. I don't imagine I need to run TWO pony games at the convention. (Still, I have some really bad puns, thanks in part to brainstorming by Gwendel and Digital_Rampage, including Captain Hoof and Mr. Steed, Long-Face Silver, Captain Coltless, etc. I originally just planned on having ONE pirate pony and giving him a pony-drawn CANNON as his special weapon. ;) )
Anyway, right now my likely scenario roundup for Necronomicon will be on the light side: a Savage Worlds pony game, a Savage Worlds fantasy game featuring Super Dungeon Explore "chibi" characters (and not-so-serious scenario), and quite possibly some Advanced HeroQuest -- all of them suggested at one point or another by Digital_Rampage (and he's my most regular player, so I tend to listen to him :) ).
Doing something with Star Wars or with Iron Kingdoms would seem a natural choice since I've been gearing up to run those lately, but I still have a lot of difficulty handling the Star Wars mechanics and I'd probably have trouble trying to introduce players to the concept at the convention. (Plus, I'd have to herd all those special, EXPENSIVE dice, and I don't know if I'd be up to the headaches.) Iron Kingdoms is something I'd love to run with, but I haven't even finished prepping for the still-upcoming campaign I'm to run, let alone writing up a one-shot scenario. It's best I not plan for that until I am a VETERAN at running that game system. So maybe NEXT year, if I'm still around.
Update: SavageGamerGirl has suggested "Phantom of the Horse Opera" for the Phantom. Also suggested "Phantom of the Clopera," but then warned that "clop" has some sort of unfortunate connotations in "pony fandom" circles.
SGG also suggested "Swayback" instead of "Hunchback." I could see going with the "Swayback of Notre Dame," for instance, but I was hoping for a riff off of Igor. I'm thinking of going with "I-yor," and having it be a donkey. Ideally, I'm hoping I can find a Winnie-the-Pooh "Eeyore" cake topper that's somewhere in the 1.5"-2" high range. I've found several on eBay, but shipping & handling comes into play there. I'll have to see if there are any local options. (If I get it new in store for a comparable price to what it would have cost for Ebay including shipping and handling, I'd consider it a bonus, because I can check the size myself, in person, and I prefer to "buy local" as a matter of course -- because with all the store closings around here, we need all the "buy local" we can get.)