Toyin' Around Game Session Pics: October 26th 2005 (Part 1 of 4)
Last time (week? year? DECADE??) the Insiders found Castle Grayskull and made it their official base of operations nestled inside the Swamp Zone. Since then, Blue Berret and his Brigade have gone missing. Blue Berret and his toys are the ones that animated Py-Roh and Kurt Nightcrawler back in September and have been apart of Donny's life since the very beginning (sometime in the spring/summer of 2005). They last heard from them in the attic of Billy's house and it's possible they might be lost, been captured or (and worst scenario) maybe even de-animated. Our group needed to find out the answers, so they began asking around on how they could get to the attic. The normal way humans get up there, by means of a folding ladder, was not an option BUT some toys told the group that there was another way.
Since Mr. Smile-E-Fayce has been messing with portals, toy science and toy magic the imaginary toy world has been bleeding over into the human world- specifically inside little Billy's house. Part of the world is what the toys here call "The Ocean Zone" and if boarding a ship or boat, one could sail to their desired destination. The group headed to this zone and found some pirates selling ships. For a decent price, the group rented a magical purple boat and charted it to little Billy's attic and back. This is where we find our players now, sailing on their rented boat and heading, hopefully to rescue Blue Berret and their other friends.
Below are links to all of the other Toyin' Around 2005 Game Session photo LJ posts, so you all can more quickly catch up if you forgot what our rag-tag group of action figures had been up to last time:
September 21st 2005
September 28th 2005 (Part 1 of 2)
September 28th 2005 (Part 2 of 2)
October 6th 2005 (Part 1 of 3)
October 6th, 2005 (Part 2 of 3)
October 6th, 2005 (Part 3 of 3)
October 13th 2005 (Part 1 of 3)
October 13th 2005 (Part 2 of 3)
October 13th 2005 (Part 3 of 3)
October 19th 2005 (Part 1 of 4)
October 19th 2005 (Part 2 of 4)
October 19th 2005 (Part 3 of 4)
October 19th 2005 (Part 4 of 4)
Note: (Commentary is under each photo)
The world where toys live was created due to playing these game sessions, but back then it was not nearly as figured out as it is today (i.e. in 2016). I had alot of fun using different colors of felt and fabric to really help the players get visually into the game. This blue felt made perfect water.
I had (and probably still have) a very extensive toy collection, so anything I could toss in during the group's journey to entertain them I tried to do. This is a somewhat rare old Playmobil Pirates set with a castaway stranded on a tiny island. I had the group approach it to talk to the guy....but he was super super crazy (as seen in a video I need to upload here) and they got the heck outta there ASAP. I think he was crazy because sharks were always trying to eat him? Can't remember exactly, but this just goes to prove why not taking ELEVEN YEARS to upload photos from a game session is a bad idea.
This set was from the orignal and old Dragons line from MEGA BLOKS. That company, man they made some cool fun little Fantasy lines. The dragons are always nicely sculpted, the knights very detailed and the sets easily could be used in a table top miniatures game like War Machine or Warhammer. These guys, again, were just "window dressing" and the group (as far as I can recall) didn't interact with them too much. I also did apparently not dust much back then either...
Nolan would often put Kurt all over the place during game, I really think he enjoyed playing in these toy games, I know we all had alot of fun each week. This may have been just before Nolan got really tired (or maybe really bored O_O) and nodded off on the couch. This was not an uncommon thing and it happened a couple of times through out the 8 or 9 weeks that I ran this campaign with them.
These are two Beast Wars toys that I really loved. Throwing Transformers at my players was always a lot of fun for me as the Toy Master as I'd get the oppurtunity to see just what all that information on their Tech Specs could do in combat settings. Rampage was a prominent character in Season 2 of the Beast Wars cartoon show, and Aqua Sting (Or was it Injector? They changed the name during production) while never featured on the show was a crazy looking part of their Fuzors sub-line. He's half Hornet, Half Lionfish and allll creepy. I didn't own many oceanic Decepticon or Predacon toys, otherwise Rampage's group would have been a bit larger.
Since the Ocean Zone was entirely made out of water, I think I remember Mike (Py-Roh's player) asking me "Boglin, if Py-Roh fell into the ocean here...what exactly would happen?" to which I replied "You'd be de-animated quicker then you could blink. Think of this as the molten lava equivalent to a fire elemental.". Thankfully, all Inferno Fury Xevoz figures can fly and this is why you never see Py-Roh in the majoirty of the shots: he's always flying overhead and just out of frame.
Great, great, great toy. HORRIBLE robot mode though, which is why he always remains as a robotic crab. It's still an amazing toy, but the claws are so heavy that when in Robot mode they have to be used as kick-stands to keep him standing up. I wish that purple, bottom jaw was in the same color as the head, at a quick glance you'd never know this guy had a 2nd part to his mouth.
God that thing is freaky. Kenner (as they technically were still their own company but owned by Hasbro at the time) really did a great job making some very unique looking robot modes for their Beast Wars toys. I love this figure because of that weirdness.
Xevoz was such a great, great toy line back then. The ability to literally 'loot the bodies' of your fallen opponents was always taken advantage of by Mike and he often used any parts to re-configure Py-Roh into more and more powerful forms. He stayed in this shape for a little while, using some Tomb Wraith parts and a piece from a Sledge Trooper to give himself some ranged combat access. Although he does virtually nothing while on the boat, aside from man one of the front cannons, Mind-Zei the psionic super hero Stikfas figure gets kinda lost in the background due to the fact that he matches the color of the boat. You can juuuust about see him in the top left corner of this photo.
Like I said above, Nolan napped during game sessions sometimes but in his defense we did often game VERY late. Typically the group would try to get here around 7pm, sometimes earlier? I know we'd either play right away then break for dinner or they'd get here, we'd get food and begin playing afterwards. All I know is a lot of the time stamps on this photos puts the games from 11pm-to-2 or 3 am, so Nolan might have been just at the end of his rope in terms of being able to stay awake. We all were close friends by this point so I think it was a good thing that Nolan was so comfortable around us that he could fall asleep there.
Well this is part 1 of this adventure from ELEVEN YEARS AGO, I'm adding text to the rest of the October 26th game session and then I think that just about does it for the October game session photos. There are I think 2 more sessions following that in November, the 2nd and the 9th but I need to double check my iMac and look at the file dates.
I'm also going to try and upload the videos we took during these game sessions, regardless of how small, dark and of ancient quality they are. It was 2005 and these were videos from my camera, not a camcorder. Most of them are a minute to 30 seconds long but they are still a valuable part of the sessions that took place that day and forever more will be a snippet from a time long since past.
Stop back tomorrow for part 2 of the October 26th game session and be sure to comment if you still have a Live Journal account with which to do so. ^_^