Toyin' Around Game Session Pics: October 19th 2005 (Part 4 of 4!!!!)
Want to know how long it's taken me to post the pictures from 4 Game Sessions during the month of October? Eight. Years. Yes, EIGHT YEARS. Part 1 of the October 5th Game Session was posted on October 25th 2008 and here we are on October 27th 2016 and I am finally finishing off that month's worth of photos.
Where the hell did the time go? Back then I was happy that it was only 3 years since I took those pictures. Oh, had I only finished it back then....
BUT! Now is not the time for being sad, now is the time for excitement! I still have November 2nd and 9th's game sessions to edit and text, but once that happens I will have finished the project that has taken me over a decade to accomplish...and that feels pretty damn good.
Okay, so last time on our "show": The Insiders met a Playmobil pirate captain named "Braid Beard" who is a friend to the Blue Berret. Hearing about their plight, he lends them a special ship to sail through the Ocean Zone and into Billy's attic where they were last seen.
Below, as usual, 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)
I "got into" collecting Playmobil late in life, like when I was 23 or 24. I had heard about it as a kid, had a McDonald's Indian figure, a few of the Playmospace toys and that was it. But...then in 2002-2003 I saw it again and it bit me HARD. The nostalgic design of the packaging, the attention to detail, the perfect 3" size of all the figures: I was hooked. The Pirate & Western themes were my favorite, but by the time I started collecting all the Western stuff had been discontinued and was starting to leave stores. I did not have the same problem with the Pirates stuff and bought a TON of that theme. This made setting up this scene for the players a lot of fun and super easy to do.
Another crappy photographing job by me resulted in WAY to much light hitting the pirate in this scene. I did a quickie editing job on it so the background would be brightened and not the foreground, so it could be better.
I dunno why Lifeline is just staring at the ground like that. Maybe the skull with a hat in the tree is talking to him...o_O
I think I had even more Pirates stuff then this, but I didn't bust a lot of it out for this shoot. I had really wanted to get the players into the ocean zone at some point and was super excited to find a good ship for them to use. Had I had the money or was able to find it, I'd have gotten Hasbro's Pirates of Dark Water "Wraith" ship. That may have fit the toys better then this one did, but after just looking up pictures of it I might actually say this boat was better.
More terrain! What I love about the Playmobil terrain is that any surface can be useful to it. here, with just a yard or so of light blue Felt fabric and a few bits of rocky terrain AND an island playset and *BOOM*: you have an ocean adventure. I hope I didn't sell off all or most of my Playmobil Pirate stuff during one of my recent purges, those sets really do come in handy...
This was a cool little mini-playset to have, and really was designed as a place for a pirate to keep an English naval officer prisoner. Hooray!
Thankfully the tallest toy on this ship was Kurt, everyone else was just about 4" tall or shorter so it didn't get too crowded on there that fast. PLUS, if they had really needed the space the orange roof sections along the sides can hold x1 figure each. Since this shot gives us a very nice look shot at it, was from Mattel's Aladdin toy line:
It was a cool little ship and actually had a lot going on for it: x2 cannons, a plank, it could FLY...wait, well it could have flown had I made it apart of the stats for it, I really only wanted it for use as a boat so they could have gone through the Ocean Zone. Had it actually be useable as a Flying Ship, well then they possibly could have just FLOWN up to the attic....moving on...
Ahh yes, the Inglehoffer German Honey Mustard, a staple of all our late-night game sessions. Typically, we'd get food to eat before gaming, hang out, eat, get everyone's Experience Points allocated to their characters while I set up for that week's session and then start to play. The most economical choice for us was going to the King Kullen in Selden (which has since closed btw, but only within the last 2 or so months) where their Deli counter was open until 9:30. We'd buy an 8-pack of Kaiser rolls (x2 for each of us) and then a few different kinds of cold cuts. It required very little from each of us, typically $5 or so, and we'd each get a decent meal out of it. This honey mustard was a favorite of Nolan & I so it's funny to see it in the picture here complete with my parent's OLD white handled knife.
Encountering random things in the ocean zone was way different then in the swamp zone. There, the group typically would have to engage in a fight but here, if things seemed a little too risky, they'd just sail off in the other direction. Most of the group would need to attack from the ship with ranged weapons but they never needed to do so. They DID have cannons on this ship though, I think Minds-I could have easily shot a cannon at them but they might not have helped the situation any.
I also recall this whole time spent on the sea was a way for me to show the group WEIRD stuff on different islands. Encountering a spectral pirate who is literally torturing another toy definitely gave the group a "WTF???" moment.
Playmobil figures are perfectly suited for digital editing. The simplistic nature of their facial expressions makes painting on new ones for different reactions way to easy. I knew this pirate was scaring them off in this scene, so adding the monstrous face is just the icing on the cake.
In the videos we took, Nolan enjoyed playing with this Playmobil shark, and this was a fun little shot, and a good place to end (get it, Kurt's tail...the end...eh eh???) for the night. Hell, by 4am we all got a little bit loopey I think, so this is when alot of the goofiest stuff tended to surface with us. Also, after looking at other non-used pictures, I believe Mike was taking a nap during game this week, again which was why Py-Roh was left behind to "guard Castle Grayskull".
This was a decently long game session, starting around 11:09pm and ending here at 3:58am, the players gamed almost 5 hours and did a lot of stuff in that time span.
I'm probably going to make another entry here on Livejournal after all the November photos have been edited and uploaded, and that entry will include any and all behind-the-scenes photos I have for us to get a kick out of.
With the October Toyin' Around RPG Game Session pictures all edited and uploaded to Live Journal, it's a bittersweet feeling of accomplishment. I'm very happy to have FINALLY uploaded the pictures that took me the better part of 11 years to get around to doing but it's dad to know that there are only 2 more 2005 Game Sessions worth of pictures and then the 2005 Era of Toyin' Around will have drawn to a close.
With that being said, stay tuned here between now & November to see those last two sessions uploaded for your viewing pleasure. Ideally, I'd love to have the November 2nd photos done & uploaded on Nov 2nd, and Nov 9th's uploaded on Nov 9th. Wish me luck!