Gaming on the Run

This blog category will deal with my approach to fitting in as much gaming as I can around work and family life. It’s not unique – see, for example, The Dice of Life – but may be of value, or at least interest, to like-minded souls.

Some constraints under which I will have to operate:

Time: On weekday evenings I have odd gaps of 10-30 minutes, in which I can write a blog post or do some preparation; and on Saturday night, a slot of 90-120 minutes when the rest of the family is otherwise occupied. All gaming activities must fit into those, along with reading, computer games, watching movies, surfing the web etc. Such other leisure time as I used to have has been consumed by commuting and the practice of holding meetings outside what are still laughingly called office hours.

Space: On the weekday evenings I have access to a desktop 18″ x 24″, which may or may not have piles of bills, letters, etc left behind by other family members consuming parts of it. On Saturday night I have a table roughly 5′ x 3′. I have two areas of cupboard space, 2′ high x 2′ deep x 4′ wide, in which all the gaming accoutrements must be kept concealed so that they don’t frighten visitors. (I blame all those newsagents who keep the wargaming and modelling magazines next to the pornography, thus linking the two in the minds of the general public.)

Money: After a little thought, the first lesson I learn from Gaming on the Run is that actually, money is not a limiting factor for me. Given the type of gaming I do (RPG or skirmish) and the space constraints, I will only need a couple of dozen figures and the rulebooks; I don’t expect I will have the room to store terrain anyway, so assume I must do without. Shame really, but there you go.

I shall divide the necessities for gaming into People (figures and characters), Places (the fields of battle, in whatever form), Plots (scenarios), Props (equipment, both for the characters and myself) and Rules, and hopefully conquer them piecemeal. We shall see.

Size Matters: Figure Scale

Now, this one used to drive me bonkers in the 1970s and 1980s. Let us consider figure scale for a moment. Common figure sizes are:

• 6mm, which is roughly 1/300th scale – microarmour territory.
• 10mm, which is about 1/180th scale and used for Games Workshop mass battle games such as Epic or Warmaster. This is roughly the same as N Gauge railway models.
• 15mm, roughly 1/120th scale. I have a weakness for this scale because the Traveller RPG used it back in the day, and I used to play a lot of Traveller.
• 20mm (1/90th or thereabouts). Both 15mm and 20mm are in the same ballpark as model railway HO Gauge (1/87th) or OO Gauge (1/76th). I’ve heard that 20mm was originally chosen so that it would match the most popular railway models and scenery, so this makes sense. Certainly it would explain Roco’s choice of 1/87th for its tanks, which always puzzled me.
• 25mm is close to 1/72nd and really ought to match all those aeroplane kits, but somehow never does; metal figures always look somehow bigger than their actual scale would suggest.
• 28mm is about 1/64th, but visually looks closer to 1/43rd, which is a common size for toy cars. Possibly because most “28mm” figures are actually 30mm or bigger – my Tau Ethereal is somewhere in the region of 35mm tall.
• 30mm is about 1/60th.
• 54mm is 1/32nd scale, and more often used for toys or painting competitions, although Inquisitor and a few other games use it.
• 90mm is nearly 1/20th and we’re into action figure territory now, so I’ll stop before the air gets too thin to breathe.

Let us pause for a moment to consider that the 98th percentile in humanoid height is around 8% variation from the average. Let’s be generous and say it’s 10%, because it makes the maths easier. Your 28mm figure, then, could reasonably claim to be that scale if it were between say 25mm and 31mm.

Why did this bug me? Because the wretched figures are getting bigger all the time. I started in 20mm, the old Airfix soft plastic infantry. And it served me well, a week’s pocket money would get me a platoon of infantry or a tank. Company level actions with simple rules across the living room carpet. Good times. Although the casualties from adult feet passing by were horrific.

Then I moved to University, and the figures were metal, and 25mm high. And in those days, not terribly well detailed. Gradually, they got bigger, and bigger, until manufacturers abandoned any pretence that they were actually 25mm, and started calling them 28mm – although by then they were generally 30mm in reality.

Now, manufacturers are starting to call their figures 30mm, and they are actually bigger than that. I haven’t weakened and bought any AT-43 troops yet, but from the looks of them they are nearly 40mm, which is starting to creep in as the scale for skirmish wargames.

D&D miniatures are about 30mm, but that works, because they are used on a square grid where one 25mm square is five feet. The Star Wars ones from the same company are a little bigger; mine seem to average 32mm, but they may not be representative as they come in random booster packs.

Soon we’ll be back to 54mm, where H G Wells started it all. Mind you, he was playing in his back garden, and we would have to as well.

Did I say it used to bug me? It sounds like it still does, a bit. Why? Because I don’t feel I can use different makes together – it doesn’t look right to me, and if I were not interested in the visual look of the game, I’d be playing with card counters. Except possibly 28mm Space Marines with my old 25mm figures; Space Marines are supposed to be seven feet tall, after all, which would mean they are in scale. I wonder if that’s where 28mm came from? If so, all the other GW figures are overscale.

Anyway: Today’s rant is brought to you courtesy of my wondering what figure scale would go best with the prepainted terrain in the local railway modelling shop. And this takes me into a whole new topic, Gaming on the Run, soon to have its own category on this very blog.

Size Matters: Ground Scale and Range

One of the delights of solo gaming is you can use whatever rules and figures (or tokens) you want, freely. This means I can address one of the issues that – well, doesn’t rankle exactly, but does itch sometimes; and that is the question of relative scale. Most wargamers play Games Workshop games with 28mm figures, and I have no problem with that; I do it myself sometimes, and not as often as I would like. However, like most wargames and roleplaying games, I feel these rules overemphasise the glorious charge into melee; they do this by playing fast and loose with scale.

I started thinking about this by wondering: Since I can use any size figures I like for solo play, what is the most realistic size for my table? Grab some tea or coffee and sit down, this will take a while.

Let’s consider for a moment the “regulation” 6′ x 4′ wargaming table. (Mine is closer to 5′ x 3′, but that’s my problem.) Let’s further assume that each side deploys across one of the long edges. Then let’s look at figure scale, ground scale and weapon range for three of my favourites: Savage Worlds, Two Hour Wargames’ reaction system, and Warhammer 40,000.

Some baseline real world data: Assault rifles have an effective range of between 300 and 800 metres, depending on whose view you accept and what model they are. Grenades can be thrown about 40 yards. The basic unit of manoeuvre for modern infantry is the squad or section, which covers a frontage of 50-100 yards on the advance, and maybe 200 yards in defence; a platoon advances on a 100-150 yard front, and defends across roughly a 500 yard front. During the First World War, the basic unit of manoeuvre was the company of maybe 100 men, which advanced in a line with a separation of one to five yards between men, depending on which army they belonged to, and how late in the war it was.

I’ve chosen those because my heart belongs to roleplaying and squad-level skirmishes, and W40K (which I also play) is essentially platoon-level action which I think is based vaguely on the First World War, at least as far as unit organisation and tactics go. I am assuming that the W40K lasgun is roughly equivalent to an assault rifle, because Imperial Guard armies can swap it for a basic slugthrower which has the same statistics, and it looks vaguely like an FN-FAL or G3. There’s enough wiggle room in the ranges I’m using that the difference between an assault rifle and a battle rifle won’t matter.

Still with me? Good.

Warhammer 40,000

Let’s look at W40K first, and an Imperial Guard platoon of 50 men advancing in true early WWI style, in base to base contact (arm’s length spacing); it needs a 50″ frontage, which is actually about right. The unit integrity distance of 2″ is a little less than two man-heights, so roughly four scale yards; not too bad. That means the typical move of 6″ is about 12 yards. (Of course tanks move at about the same speed, but then in World War I they did.) You could do that in 6 seconds at a brisk walk.

Note that the lasgun range of 24″ is now about 48 yards. Suppose that the figures were in scale with the weapon range; let’s call that 480 yards for simplicity, so the figures would have to be ten times smaller – 3mm high! 6″ of movement would now represent ten times as long, or about a minute of elapsed time. That feels much more appropriate to me for a platoon level game. One could go the other way, the traditional wargames route of saying that one figure represents many actual men; in this case, a single figure would represent about a squad, a squad would represent a company, and W40K would actually be a battalion- or possibly even regimental-level clash of arms.

Either way, though, W40K is understating weapon ranges and ground scale compared to the size of the figures, to fit them on the table. However, I suppose if I wanted realism I wouldn’t be playing a game with psychic space elves in it.

Savage Worlds

Savage Worlds – and the companion miniatures rules, Showdown – explicitly state that 1″ on the table represents two yards. Therefore, 25mm figures are the closest fit. A figure can throw a grenade up to 20″, which converts to 40 yards, so that fits. An assault rifle can shoot up to 96″, or 200 yards – a bit short, but frankly, who’s got a table more than 8′ long anyway? The typical move is still 6″, but 12 yards and a 6 second turn sound reasonable for roleplaying or squad-level skirmishes.

Two Hour Wargames

The various THW games have no specified ground scale, although the Yahoo! group seems to have settled on about two yards to the inch, like Savage Worlds. With a typical move of 6″ to 8″, again a turn would be about 6 seconds. Grenade throwing range is a bit short at 12 yards, and rifle ranges are about 48″, which suggests a ground scale of somewhere in the region of 1″ to 5 or 10 yards, but THW recommends play on a 4′ x 4′ table, so basically if it’s on the table you can hit it, and any range beyond that is irrelevant.

Most THW games seem to be played with 28mm figures, which are marginally too big for those scales, or 15mm ones, which are a little small. However, since a turn in THW games doesn’t have a fixed duration, these statements are difficult to prove.

The Right Size for the Table

Meanwhile, back at our regulation 6′ x 4′ table… It has 72″ of frontage for the toy soldiers.

At 54mm, this is roughly 65 scale yards, let’s say pistol range; good for Western shootouts, maybe, but an athletic 54mm figure could charge right across the table lengthways in under ten seconds, let’s say a single turn. 1/35th is close enough to this not to bother calculating separately, and in 40mm the table is only about 90 yards across. (Let’s not even talk about 90mm.)

At 25mm scale, it’s about 144 scale yards (less for 28mm or 30mm); at 20mm scale, about 180 scale yards; and at 15mm scale, some 240 scale yards. On a modern battlefield, this would be a squad-level skirmish, with 9-15 figures (one squad) in defence, and up to a platoon (30-50 figures) attacking them. You might see a couple of APCs at this level, but the tanks are likely to be a few feet further back, and the artillery is a couple of streets away. For World War I, it would be suitable for a company-level advance, with 100 or so figures marching across my tablecloth.

At 10mm scale, maybe 370 scale yards, and at 6mm, roughly 600 yards. Perhaps a modern platoon in defence, with a company assaulting it; you might credibly see a tank or two, although they are more likely to be in the next room. For our World War I, that would be a battalion-scale advance.

So for the sort of games I enjoy most, 15mm to 25mm would be roughly in scale to the table I have. I suspect that the regulation table size was derived from a similar train of thought, but starting from the other end of the track.

When next I muse on size mattering, I shall consider figure size, and its inexorable growth.

Savage Dungeons 1 – Daemon Summoning

This is a test of the Warhammer Quest dungeon crawl rules, with characters, monsters and combat lifted from Savage Worlds. Earlier, I determined that the group of heroes were bound into an ancient temple to thwart skaven plans to summon a daemon and bind it to their will.

To set up, I shuffle the encounter, treasure and dungeon cards (except those for the objective rooms, which I set aside). I deal 6 dungeon cards face down, and shuffle the relevant objective card (the Idol Room) into that deck. Then, I deal 6 further dungeon cards on top of it. I now know that the objective room is somewhere between cards 7 and 13 in the deck, but not exactly where. I draw the first card, which is a passageway, and play begins. Total setup time: 15 minutes.

Exploration Turn 1: We start with the power phase, and the wizard rolls 1d6. A 2 means no event; had he rolled 1 there would have been, and in Warhammer Quest any other result is the number of power points available, but since I’m using Savage Worlds magic that is irrelevant. Passageways are always empty unless a 1 is rolled or the scenario states otherwise, so we move on.

Exploration Turn 2: I draw a corner, and place it at one of three possible locations – left, right or ahead from the last tile. I choose ahead because it fits the table better. Rolling a 4, no event, and corners don’t usually have encounters of their own.

Exploration Turn 3: Another corridor, but this time the wizard rolls a 1, and I draw from the event deck to see what we have found; 2d6 giant rats. Hmm. Savage Worlds basic rules don’t have a giant rat, so we’ll call that a swarm of rats. Into combat time and I draw cards for the rats and each character. The wizard draws a King and goes first; this looks like a good time to use his Scroll of Bolt, which I decide is the same as casting a spell, except that this one costs no power points. He rolls 1d8 for his Spellcasting skill and 1d6 as a Wild Die, getting a 2 and a 4 respectively; the 4 will do, and the spell goes off as expected. We may as well make this three bolts each of 3d6 damage, and the swarm takes 11, 7 and 19 damage in turn (the 19 is because a damage die scoring 6 can be rerolled, and the new score added in as well). The swarm has Toughness 7, so the first bolt exceeds that by 4, succeeding with a raise; the swarm is Shaken and Wounded, which Incapacitates it and removes it from play. The other damage is overkill. The rest of the party stop in mid-swing, no longer needed. Their turn will come.

Rummaging through the debris – perhaps the rat swarm was nesting in an old sack? – we find 20 gold coins (printed on the encounter card) and draw a treasure card. This is a Deathstone, which in Warhammer Quest reduces the power point cost of casting spells. Hmm. OK, Savage Worlds has an Edge (Wizard) which does the same, so as long as the wizard carries the Deathstone, he counts as having the Wizard edge. Quite a useful find, actually.

Exploration Turn 4: Another passageway! What is going on here? Nothing, on a roll of 3.

Exploration Turn 5: A T-Junction, and a roll of 6, so no encounter. I now deal the dungeon cards into two separate piles, one for each fork. We go straight on, ignoring the side passage.

Exploration Turn 6: Aha! A room, specifically the Torture Chamber. Rooms always trigger an event, even though I rolled a 4 in the power phase, so I draw one from the event deck. One minotaur. The party tramps into the room, and then it strikes from the shadows without warning – they always do that in WHQ. I roll 1d4 to determine who it attacks: The wizard – oh, good choice. Combat time again, and cards are drawn. The barbarian draws an ace and goes first; he scuttles over to the minotaur and twats it with his longsword. With Fighting d6, he rolls 1d6 for his skill and 1d6 Wild Die, trying to equal or exceed the minotaur’s Parry of 7. Both roll a 5, so he misses. The wizard and the dwarf are also adjacent to the leaping minotaur, and both drew 8; in this case the suit decides who goes first, and it’s the dwarf, who attempts to kneecap the minotaur with his greataxe. He has Fighting d8, so rolls a d8 and a Wild d6, getting a 5 and a 4 – both less than the foe’s Parry, so he misses as well. The wizard now unlimbers another bolt at the minotaur (just the one 3d6 bolt this time – conserving power), rolling 8 for his Spellcasting skill on 1d8 and 5 on the wild die. I decide that since the two are up close and personal, the wizard should roll against the minotaur’s Parry rather than a straight 4. As the 8 is an “ace” (highest possible roll), he gets to roll it again and add the scores; a 7, for a total of 15. That’s 8 more than the minotaur’s Parry, so he hits with two raises – alas, only the first one helps, but it does give him an extra d6 on first bolt. He rolls 3, 5, 6, 6; rerolls the two 6s for 5, 1; and inflicts a whopping 26 damage, 15 over the minotaur’s Toughness of 11; the stench of burning minotaur fur fills the air and it drops as if poleaxed. Considering how much damage it would do if it hit, that was a good use of 2 power points. We loot the body and find 440 gold and some Incense of Healing, which sounds like it should be a one-shot healing potion.

Exploration Turn 7: Another room, appropriately the Minotaur’s Lair. And it has 1d3 minotaurs in it, just the one fortunately, who is probably in a bad mood now. This one decides to gore the dwarf, and we’re back in combat. The elf draws an ace of spades and goes first; good time for a bowshot, he thinks, and fires, rolling a d8 for skill and a d6 wild die. He hits, and inflicts 2d6 damage: 2 + 2 = 4, not enough to do any damage. Next up is the wizard on an ace of diamonds; well, the 3d6 bolt has worked well so far, so we’ll do that again. The wizard hits – just – and does 11 damage. Since this is at least the minotaur’s Toughness, but not at least 4 more, the minotaur is Shaken. The barbarian drew a jack so goes next, hitting with his longsword and inflicting 14 damage (1d8 for his Strength, and 1d8 for the longsword, which aced). That would shake the minotaur, but since it’s already Shaken, it takes a Wound instead; and not being a Wild Card, is Incapacitated and removed from play. Frisking it reveals another 440 gold and an Orb of Might, which has 1d6 power points in it. Sounds good, we’ll leave it like that in the new system. It has 3 power, which is good because the wizard is now down to 6 power points of his own.

Exploration Turns 8-13 are uneventful, revealing a corridor and a T-junction, both empty, after which we run out of cards for this section and return to the first T-junction to start on the other subdeck.

Exploration Turn 14: A dungeon room – the Well of Doom. This triggers an event, and we find a dying dwarf prospector, who hands a key to us, saying “This is the key to the portcullis. Without it, you will never get through.” There is no treasure card for this event, so after performing whatever rites the party dwarf feels appropriate, we move on. (As you’ll see, we never found the portcullis. Maybe it was past the second T-junction.)

Exploration Turn 15: The Idol Chamber is found! Inside, we find 12 skaven who immediately pounce upon us, plus one extra who is standing near a statue of a daemon at the far end of the chamber. We have 1d6 turns to kill all the skaven before the summoning ritual is complete. Roll 1d6; 3 turns. Skaven aren’t mentioned in the SW basic rules, so I shall use the soldier archetype for their statistics. As per WHQ, the skaven leap from the darkness and fill up all squares adjacent to the heroes, then they rest get as close as they can. (I now discard the other dungeon rooms, as once I’ve completed the mission I have no reason to explore further.) In an RPG session I would have a skaven seer present as well, but considering how cowardly they are, we shall assume he dived through a convenient gap in the masonry as soon as the heroes appeared.

The Ancient Temple of Daemon Summoning

(Above is a map of the dungeon at this point, drawn in Dungeon Crafter 1.4.1, still available from the Dungeon Crafter website free of charge.)

Combat Turn 1 of 3: The elf draws a king and goes first, firing an arrow into the nearest skaven. This hits with a raise, so does 3d6 damage; two of the damage dice ace, one of them twice, so this winds up doing 23 damage. Goodnight. The skaven go next; one shuffles forwards to fill in the gap left by its fallen comrade, and eight of them hack into the party. WHQ says attacks must be distributed as evenly as possible, so that’s two each. Since soldier archetypes have a d6 in everything, it’s straightforward hacking; astonishingly, given the elf’s Parry of 6, one manages to hit him with a raise (NPCs can ace too), doing 9 damage, which Wounds the elf (Toughness 5). The elf spends on of his three bennies to soak damage; he rolls 1d6 for his Vigour and 1d6 as a Wild Die, getting a 3 and a 5 – this is a success, so one Wound is soaked and the elf recovers immediately.

One skaven hits the barbarian, Shaking him. The barbarian must now make a Smarts roll (1d6 plus wild die) or go berserk; he makes it with a raise, and keeps his cool. The skaven miss the dwarf, but the wizard is also Shaken. The barbarian is up next, and makes a Spirit roll (d6 plus wild die) to recover; he does so, but not quickly enough, so I spend a benny for him to recover immediately. He now reaches out and touches a skaven with his longsword, hits with a raise, and inflicts 11 damage, dropping the vile creature in its tracks.

The wizard fails to recover and must spend a benny to do so; he then fires three bolts, using 3 power from the crystal and 3 of his own; alas he misses his skill roll, but another benny takes care of that, allowing a reroll which does succeed. 11, 10 and 21 damage (more aces) erase three skaven from existence, but the wizard is now down to one benny and 3 power points.

The dwarf now strikes with his greataxe, misses, spends a benny to reroll (so everyone except the wizard is now down to two bennies), misses again, and decides to leave it at that.

Combat Turn 2 of 3: The dwarf draws an ace, and tries again. He misses again; must be the beard getting in the way. Spending a benny doesn’t help either, and now he has only one left. Possibly the problem is that the greataxe requires more Strength than he has? I wouldn’t tell him that, if I were you. The elf drew a queen, and shoots – if this were an RPG session I would make the elf player go into melee, but under WHQ he would be allowed to carry on, so I shall merely require him to reach a target number of the skaven’s Parry rather than a 4… Twang! 13 damage and a skaven kebab. Wizard next, and no point taking power points home, so spend one to fire a 2d6 bolt into the nearest enemy. Since the skill test succeeds with a raise, this costs him no power. The skaven is Shaken by the bolt.

Now the bad guys go, and miss the elf. Two gang up on the barbarian to improve their hit chances (the main attacker gets +1 on his Fighting roll for each assist), but it doesn’t help. The two on the dwarf roll separately, but miss. The last one hits the wizard, shaking him. Finally, the barbarian kills another.

Combat Turn 3 of 3: Not looking good. The barbarian goes first, and decides to withdraw from the melee and move up to the lone skaven at the idol, since he has a gap through the skaven and this is the last chance. The two within melee reach each get a free attack; both miss, but the Bad Guys have been hoarding their 4 general-purpose bennies for just such an occasion, and use them to reroll. One hits, but fails to inflict more damage than the barbarian’s Toughness, and one can’t normally use bennies on damage rolls. He’s through, and moves up to the loner, hacking with his sword, hitting, and Shaking the foe. Now the barbarian has moved, the dwarf has a way through, and tries to do the same; however, one of the skaven gets in a lucky blow, doing 14 damage and Shaking him; the dwarf spends his last benny on removing that, and presses on, just managing to reach the enemy despite his lower Pace (5, rather than 6 for the others), and misses. He’s out of bennies, so that’s that.

The wizard recovers from Shaken thanks to a lucky Spirit roll, and decides to ignore the melee around him, firing off two of his last 3 power points in a 3d6 bolt at the loner. He hits, and thanks to aces scores 20 damage, dropping the intended avatar for the demon. This looks like a good time for the skaven to use bennies to soak damage; they’ll need a success and two raises to bring him back from the edge. However, this fails. The elf shoots at one of the survivors and misses. The surviving skaven decide they may as well sort out the wizard, for though he has thwarted the summoning he still has to read the Scroll of Banishment, and he can’t do that if he’s dead. Three approach him with wild war cries, and one hits, Shaking him. Two more assail the elf, but miss.

Combat Turn 4 of 3: Skaven first, and I realise that under WHQ rules they should reassign themselves to all surviving heroes as evenly as they can, so two peel off towards the barbarian and the dwarf. (Strictly I should rerun the last turn because of that, but I won’t.) One skaven hits the barbarian, but fails to wound him. The other misses, and since there is now a skaven next to the idol, and the Scroll of Banishment has not been read, I decide that since the requirements for raising the demon are met, it will appear. The unfortunate skaven spends his turn transforming into a minotaur, as per the scenario’s special rules. Since this is specified as having extra wounds, I’ll make it a Wild Card, so it gets two bennies of its own, plus possibly the remaining evil side benny.

The two now in reach of the elf gang up on him, but miss. The one near the wizard hits him with a raise, and since he is already Shaken, he takes two wounds. He uses a benny for a soak roll, succeeds with a raise, and soaks two Wounds, returning him to health. The dwarf finally gets the hang of his greataxe and hits something, killing his opponent outright. The wizard uses his last power point on a bolt, hits, and does an incredible 28 damage from 2d6. The barbarian decides now is a good time to skewer the minotaur, hits with a raise, and does 13 damage, Shaking it. It can’t do anything until next turn anyway, so reserves its bennies. The elf shoots a nearby skaven, killing it.

Combat Turn 5 of 3: Dwarf first, and he hacks lustily at the daemon minotaur, rolling 22 damage and Wounding it twice, since it is already Shaken. (Hmm, might have been better to lose the Shaken with a benny last turn.) The daemon uses a benny to soak damage, and recovers one Wound. It still has one Wound and is Shaken.

Sneakily, the wizard tries to cast again. He has no more power points, but thanks to the Deathstone, if he succeeds with a raise he can cast a bolt at no power point cost. Sadly, it’s not to be. The lone surviving skaven hits the elf with a raise, shaking him. The minotaur decides at random to squash the dwarf, and using a benny to recover from Shaken after failing its Spirit roll, misses – in a threatening sort of way. The elf recovers from Shaken, but since he does not succeed with a raise, takes the whole turn doing it. The barbarian misses.

Combat Turn 6 of 3: The dwarf draws a joker, so I must reshuffle the deck. He opts to go first and makes a wild attack on the minotaur, taking him up to a total of +4 to hit, +4 damage, and -2 Parry. He hits, and does 13 damage; this is 2 more than the minotaur’s Toughness of 11, so only Shakes him; but the minotaur is still Shaken from last time, so this escalates to another Wound. The minotaur uses a benny to soak damage, but fails; one benny left. The wizard again tries to cast on empty, but doesn’t quite make it. The barbarian makes a wild attack at the minotaur, and just hits, but doesn’t quite damage it. The elf ignores his skaven foe, moves up to get a better angle, and makes a called shot to the minotaur’s head (-4 to hit, +4 damage), which fails dismally. The skaven now runs up and stabs at the elf, missing. The minotaur swings at the barbarian with its mighty fist, Shaking him. (Who needs a weapon when your bare hand damage is d12+2, eh?)

Combat Turn 7 of 3: The skaven pulls a joker, and wastes it missing the elf. The barbarian spends this turn recovering from Shaken. The elf finally kills that pesky skaven. The wizard tries to case with no power again, mainly because it gives him a good excuse not to leap into combat with the minotaur, and this time it works! But the daemon shrugs off a measly 3 damage and continues, doing 15 damage to the dwarf, who is Shaken and Wounded as a result, with no bennies left. The dwarf, however, aces his Spirit roll and recovers from Shaken immediately, making a wild attack at the enemy and missing.

Combat Turn 8 of 3: Elf, dwarf and wizard reserve their turns, and everyone gangs up on the minotaur, giving the barbarian +3 to hit, which is just as well, since that is what they needed. The barbarian rolls 15 damage thanks to an ace, so Shakes and Wounds the minotaur. Unless it can soak this damage, the party has won; but it succeeds with a raise, and erases that wound. It now selects the wizard (at random) and wallops him for 5 damage, Shaking him.

Combat Turn 9 of 3: The wizard spends his turn recovering, but the minotaur kicks him while he’s down, and he staggers about Shaken and with two Wounds. The others gang up on the minotaur, and the barbarian hits, Shaking the enemy.

Combat Turn 10 of 3: The barbarian is obviously riled now, since he hits with a raise and aces on all three damage dice, two of which ace again, for a grand total of 43 damage. That’s gotta hurt. The daemon minotaur is already Shaken and with two Wounds; it now takes a further 8 Wounds, and nothing walks away from that. The party read the Scroll of Banishment for whatever good it may now do, and stagger from the ancient temple, battered and bleeding but victorious. They have looted 1,940 gold, an Orb of Might (now used up), a Deathstone, and Incense of Healing, plus 300 gold from a grateful Empire. If I were tracking experience, I would award them two points each.

Lessons learned: This approach is fast, easy, and much more fun than I expected; I do miss the old school dungeon crawls! As per the stories, the mooks drop fast, but they do ablate away some power points and bennies, so the fight with the Big Bad is more tense – the heroes are weaker than when they started, and the Big Bad is stronger than the foes bleeding them previously.

However, at just under 4 hours to play 15 exploration turns or so, it’s about 15 minutes per turn, including pauses to check rules and write up the action, plus the same to set up and knock down; it’ll take too long to fit into my two hour window. That wouldn’t matter with a dungeon generated from dice and tables, but the speed and convenience of drawing everything from a card deck is balanced by the inconvenience of having to keep four partial decks in the same shuffled state, possibly for a week or more, if I pack up for the night partway through. So, if this becomes a habit, I shall create random tables based off the card decks. That will introduce its own problems, since cards drawn from the deck change the probabilities for future draws, and rolls on a table don’t.

Finally, and again if this becomes a habit, I will create new characters, based on my view of what works best, rather than recreating the iconic WHQ heroes.

Review of Modern Ops by Great White Games

Summary: Modern skirmish rules based on Savage Worlds. Written by James Houlahan; for two-player (or two-team) competitive tabletop play using 28mm figures.

Although this was released in 2005, I couldn’t find a review which covered it in enough detail to decide whether to buy it or not. So I took the plunge, read the book a couple of times, and now I’ll write one. Now, I haven’t actually played it, but I have played the base rules engine (Savage Worlds) quite a bit, so I’m confident in what I write.

This is an 82 page book, at least in the PDF version, and weighs in at about 18 MB for the colour version and 6 MB for the printer-friendly one. It is stand-alone, in that you don’t need the Savage Worlds rulebook to play it, of which I approve. You do need a table or other playing surface, figures, a deck of cards and polyhedral dice – at least one each 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided, more is better.

The book is divided into four chapters and six appendices. Illustrations are a mixture of real-world photos and snaps of games in play, using Devil Dog miniatures (and that manufacturer gets several plugs which imply it makes preselected troop packs aimed at this game).

Chapter 1, Basic Training: This is essentially the Showdown rules, which you can get online at Pinnacle Entertainment (part of Great White Games, or is it the other way around?) free of charge. (Note that Modern Ops uses an earlier version of these, predating the Explorer’s Edition of Savage Worlds; it’s easy enough to convert, the only thing that leaps out as different is melee weapon damage.) Each unit draws a card to determine when it acts during a turn; in a turn the unit can essentially move and make an attack. Drawing a joker gives the unit some advantages, but also triggers a random event. When a unit tries to do something (e.g. shoot at the enemy), it rolls the die it has been assigned for the relevant skill (most often a d6), and if it scores 4 or more, it succeeds. Heroic figures (“Wild Cards”) roll an extra d6, as in Savage Worlds, and can choose which die to use; they also get “Bennies”, tokens which allow them to reroll tests. Movement is fairly normal for a miniatures game. Combat is based on tests against various skills and attributes using the above mechanic. Damage can cause a figure to be Shaken (“miss a turn”) or Wounded; Wild Cards can survive multiple wounds, but ordinary grunts lose interest and consciousness after the first. Although the game is aimed primarily at infantry skirmishes, there are rules for area effect attacks (off-map artillery) and vehicles (including aircraft). Victory is determined by who collects the most Victory Points, which you can get for achieving mission objectives or destroying enemy units.

This is all standard Savage Worlds and Showdown fare, which will be familiar to you if you have played either before; if not, download the test drive rules at the Pinnacle website and you’ll soon get it.

Chapter 2, Deployment: Here are the setting-specific rules which modify the basic Savage Worlds engine. Their overall effect is to make Modern Ops more gritty and deadlier than the RPG version; the key rules change as I see it is that even a Wild Card must make a Vigour roll to avoid Incapacitation if Wounded, and Wound penalties apply to that roll. The chapter also includes expanded rules for armoured vehicles, helicopters, and troop insertion by parachute, fast-roping or SCUBA. Finally, the different mission or scenario types are described, with objectives, setup notes, and any special rules or NPCs. There is a basic but effective campaign mechanism, which essentially selects a scenario at random from either the seven basic types or more unique missions called “Savage Tales”; six tales are provided, with the promise of more at the publisher’s website. They are easy enough to invent, also; just watch the news. Some of the special rules refer the players to Appendix 2 under certain conditions, wherein lurk surprise twists to the scenarios.

The clever part here is that a player who is outnumbered (say, because he has fewer suitable figures than his opponent) is allowed to make the game evenly balanced by using the points not spent on troops to buy defensive works, or choose some of the scenario conditions.

Finally, in a nod to the system’s roleplaying roots, successful troopers gain experience, and can use that to buy extra abilities.

Chapter 3, The Coalition: Army lists for the Western powers. We have basic troop types, vehicles and aircraft for the USA, Russian Federation, UK, Germany, mercenary units, and law enforcement. I’m no expert, but I couldn’t pick out anything appropriate to a pre-1980s game, so I guess these are suitable for any conflict from Grenada onwards. This is the only chapter that grated, and it did so because the designers refer to the British Army as the “Royal Army” throughout; we don’t call it that over here, chaps. They say nice things about it though, so I shan’t be too harsh.

Chapter 4, The Opposition: Army lists for the Taliban, Al Quaeda, Somalia, and prewar Iraq. The thrust of the rules is thus clearly towards a tabletop simulation of the War on Terror, although there’s no reason not to pit, say, law enforcers guarding a bank against mercenaries bent on robbing it, or SAS against Spetznatz in a South American forest.

All units are intended to be transferred to Unit Cards for quick reference during a game; blank ones are provided, and prefilled ones used to be available on the Pinnacle website, but seem to have been taken down at the moment, possibly because the Showdown rules are being rewritten.

Appendix 1, The Armoury: What it says on the tin. Quick reference sheets for the vehicles and weapons in the game.

Appendix 2, Events: One-off twists triggered by conditions in specific scenarios. These are meant to be a surprise to both sides, so the rules recommend not reading them in advance.

Appendix 3, Freak Events: As above, but more so. Some of these can make permanent changes to your unit’s attributes.

Appendix 4, Vehicle Notes: Again, what it says on the tin. I tend to glaze over at vehicle rules, because my collection of toy soldiers and my interest are focussed on infantry actions.

Appendix 5, Fieldworks, Mines and Artillery Support: Special rules and game statistics for these items, plus off-map artillery and air support.

Appendix 6, Abilities: These are the special attributes each troop type has; they are a subset of Savage Worlds Edges and Hindrances, eliminating the ones with subjective effects, which are appropriate for RPGs but not for miniatures games. Loyal and Bloodthirsty have special effects in Modern Ops; Loyal troops will stay with, and care for, their wounded, while Bloodthirsty ones will not. (If a unit is neither, the player can pick what it does.) Loyal troops tend to be better trained and motivated in the game, as reflected in their other attributes; but if you inflict enough casualties, their advance stalls as unwounded troopers drop out of the fight to protect wounded comrades.

The rules briefly mention possibilities of solo or co-operative play, but I couldn’t see any rules that covered either, so I’ve mentally tagged it as two-player competitive only, and for that reason I’m unlikely to play it as written; if workload permits my return to the friendly local games club, opponents there are wedded to Warhammer and Flames of War.

Where I think it will see some use is as a sourcebook for Savage Worlds roleplaying. I could mine it for ideas for the SG-13 campaign, use it to run Call of Duty 4 as a short roleplaying campaign, that sort of thing.

Talomir Nights, Encounter 6

In which Johann decides that discretion is the better part of valour.

Exterior, day. A lone farm stands in a clearing surrounded by woods.

Caption: October 986, Ekra

[JOHANN, GOTTFRIED and GERVAISE are lying concealed at the edge of the woods, watching a group of Ekraen soldiers settling in at the farmhouse.]

JOHANN: Are the de Plastiques here?

GOTTFRIED: I don’t think so. I don’t see their heraldry.

JOHANN: We need supplies. How about a raid on that farm when it gets dark?

GERVAISE: Ah doan sink so. Zey ‘ave got seex knights, and twenty eenfantry, most of zem weez crossbows and arquebuses; and zey are alert, watching for trouble. See ze pickets? You can go down zere eef you want. Me and Jean-Paul weel stay ‘ere and look after Beatrice, d’accord?

JOHANN: Well, I suppose when you put it like that…

[Our heroes crawl carefully back from the ridgeline and move off.]

Game notes: The quest for the de Plastiques continues in the Ekraen countryside, but they are not here. There is however an encounter (2d6 vs 2, 2, 1 = pass 2d6) with locals (1d6 vs 4, pass 1d6) at a farm in a wooded area. A 2d6 result of 7 means Johann’s troupe is the attacking side in a raid. The enemy are alert (2d6 vs 5: 2, 6 = pass 1d6). A roll of 12 means the enemy have twice our CV, i.e. 32, and rolls on the Ekraen army list give us an opposition of 6 mounted knights, 7 infantry, 5 crossbowmen, 2 peasant foot, 3 mercenary arquebusiers, and 3 peasant archers. Gervaise may be exagerrating about the proportion of missile weapons, but I can’t see a good outcome to this whatever happens. I considered using the Challenge rules to send Gottfried the thief in to pick their pockets, but that probably ends in a dead Gottfried and the rest of us running for our lives from Ekraen knights again. We’ll move on, but it doesn’t seem right to roll for advancement or pursuit, since all the troupe did was walk onto the board, and immediately walk off again. Better luck next time.

Halo 3 ODST

I finished this game earlier today, and find it the best of the Halo FPS games so far. This is partly because it has a more engaging storyline, and partly because it feels more tactical in play, by which I suppose I mean that tactics are more important than in the earlier games, where good hand-eye co-ordination and fast reflexes (which sadly I do not have) are the primary requirements.

Things I specifically like about it are:

• More “collectables” (in this case, audio files) and achievements. For me, these give a game more replay value, as I feel it’s worth trying again to collect the set.
• The VISR display, which can toggle you in and out of map mode, allowing you to see where enemies and friends are and plan accordingly. Not much use in a firefight, but helps you set one up to your advantage.
• The night vision mode. My pet hate of FPS games is that for some reason much of the action occurs in the dark, and torches run out of power unrealistically fast. I usually compensate by turning the brightness and contrast on the monitor way up, but the ODST night vision mode is even better.
• No flood. The flood were interesting for about one level in Halo, then they became just an obstacle that you had to grind your way through for the rest of the series. I got quite cross with them in Halo 2 and 3; I could see the dramatic purpose and value of them, but they were very boring and frustrating.
• Clever use of repetitive levels. Halo games have always overused levels; this might be to save development costs or it might be because the solo campaign is just a tutorial for the online games, but again this is boring. There is one level in the original Halo which you have to go through ten – yes, ten – times; it doesn’t do anything for the story, it just delays getting to the next cutscene. ODST is equally repetitive, but it didn’t bore me going through the same level in New Mombasa umpteen times; partly because it made sense in the storyline (the central character is trying to catch up with missing friends, so goes over the same ground they do – in essence you do each level once as the main character, then once in flashback as a comrade), and partly because minor changes in the scenery made it look different each time.

It’s clearly the first in another trilogy, because there is a major plot thread left open, with a teaser at the very end of the game, after the credits. I look forward to it.

28 Months Later – Encounter 2

Meanwhile, back in the House of Weird Games (as the children’s friends have christened Chez Slack)…

I think Encounter makes more sense than Episode for these little vignettes, so I’ll switch to that.

Let’s try something smaller. It’s February 2015, and our multicoloured heroes (now dubbed respectively Reed, Blaauw, Green, and Yale) decide to raid an isolated rural settlement for supplies, in the hope of meeting fewer zombies and/or trigger-happy survivors. That’ll be a “loot raid”, then.

The tables on p. 30 tell me there are 5 buildings and two vehicles on hand. Again, I run into a problem of how to determine what buildings are, which is important for deciding which ones are worth the risk of entry; I really must check the Yahoo group for that.

To show why this is an issue, let’s look at building #1. I roll 2d6 for each possible outcome, and work my way down the list in order. Is it a church (needs a 2 on 2d6)? I roll 8, so no. Is it a house (2-7)? Another 8, so no. Is it a military base (2)? 7, so no. Is it a restaurant (2-7)? A 5, so yes. OK, so I got an answer that time, but for episode 1 I went through the entire list and got nothing for half-a-dozen buildings. What were they, then? Ruins? So thoroughly looted that it doesn’t matter? Whatever the equivalent of Obviously Dead is for a house? It also seems such a clunky way of determining building purpose that I’m sure I’m doing it wrong.

By the same process, building #2 is a house, #3 is a house, #4 isn’t any of the listed items, and #5 is another restaurant. One ruin out of five seems reasonable so we’ll let #4 be a ruin, too badly damaged to be sure what it was originally. Two restaurants and two houses; that would make sense to me as a large road, with one restaurant on each side, each with a house for the former owners.

A similar process for the vehicles shows that we have a pickup truck and a semi with a trailer.

The tables on pp. 32-33 show me that the houses would be a good place to search for weapons and ammo, but likely to have zombies, and the restaurants are likely to have medical supplies, and likely to have survivors. Hey, there’s only four of ‘em; let’s just do them all and see what happens.

The Activity Level for Zombies in a rural area in phase one of the campaign is 1, so we have 1d6+1 = 2 zombies on the board at the start of the game, one 12″ to the group’s front and one 12″ to our left rear.

Unlike Warrior Heroes, it’s necessary to set the table up for each encounter. My plan was to use my Zombies boxed game, with the box halves representing the restaurants and DVD cases for the houses, and some sheets of blank paper to be the road; but my dining room table is otherwise engaged tonight, so I’m fighting on graph paper, as you can see below. I decide that the group is moving along the road, to give them the best chance of spotting zombies early on. And we’re ready to go, having spent about half an hour setting up.

Turn 1: Zombies roll 5 for activation, party rolls 2. Zombies don’t activate as they have Rep 4. Party opts to fast move, all of them pass 1d6 and so move 12” towards the nearest building, a house, hoping to get inside before the zeds turn around and see them.

Turn 2: Zombies roll 5, party rolls 6; neither side activates. Reed and his friends have stopped a couple of inches short of the building and are checking their weapons before they go in, glancing at the nearby car and wondering whether to examine that also. I decide to save that for the way out.

Turn 3: Zombies roll 4 and activate, party rolls 3 and activates (Reed’s Rep is 5). Zombies go first as they rolled higher. The closest zombie is 15” from the party (I’m using a ruler and graph paper with a scale of 5mm to the inch, if that makes sense). The zombies should now move towards the nearest human, but the party is not making noise and is not close enough to see (zeds can only see 12”). So they’re not sure which way to go. There is a wind direction table on p. 12 so I decide to use that for each zed; one moves east and one west, 6” in each case. The one moving east gets to the edge of the “table” so I decide he stops there.

Turn 4: Zombies roll 6 vs 4 and don’t activate; party rolls 3 vs 5 and does. Into the first house then; Reed and Green move in through the door, now an inch or so away, and Blaauw and Yale flatten themselves next to the door in support, watching the nearest zed, which is now close enough to see them, but there are buildings in the way so it has no line of sight. I now roll 2d6 against the Zombie Activity Level of 1 (for a rural area in phase 1 of the campaign); 3, 6 passes no dice, so although the rules don’t actually say so, I decide we meet no zombies. Then likewise against the Survivor Activity Level of 1; 2, 6 and again pass 0d6 – the building is empty. This would be a good time to loot the house; the loot table on p. 33 looks like I should roll 1d6 vs 3 for weapons (basic number of 2 in phase 1, +1 for it being a house) and 1d6 vs 2 for surplus ammo. I roll 5 and 4, and get nothing.

The zeds now move, and continue moving in the same direction as before (p. 26). This means one moves off the table completely, so I decide he will treat it as an obstable and turn right (left also takes him off the table). The other moves forward until he bumps into a restaurant, then turns (randomly) right, which moves him closer to the party.

Turn 5: Zeds roll 3 and activate; party rolls 6 and doesn’t. Oops. Their attention is obviously distracted by looting. The zeds carry on moving as before, one bumbling up the west edge of the table and one staggering towards Blaauw. The zombie staggers partway past the car parked outside the first house before I realise it should’ve seen the party earlier; never mind, we’ll go from where it is now. There seems to be no option for zombies to charge – these are obviously the shambling kind from 1950s B movies rather than the faster and more aggressive versions recently seen on our screens.

Turn 6: Zeds roll 3, party rolls 6 – same as before. The closer zombie gets into base contact with Blaauw. I realise I should have done an In Sight test earlier, as Blaauw and Yale would have seen the zombie in the middle of last turn, but press on regardless; let’s assume they were looking into the house. It seems reasonable that Blaauw takes a “Being Charged” check, though; this results in passing 2d6 so Blaauw can fire, then prepare for melee. This is no time for subtlety, and Blaauw fires twice. Rolls of 1 and 3 on the dice give results of 6 and 8; the 6 misses, the 8 hits. Rolling 1d6 against the weapon impact (2) gives a 2 – the zombie is “Obviously Dead”. Huzzah. However, shotguns are noisy, so at the end of the turn I roll two dice per shot for the number of zombies attracted; it’s a rural area, so each 6 will bring one. I roll 2, 3, 4, 6 and get one reinforcement zombie, which is placed to the party’s left rear, 12” away, by a die roll. Zombies are attracted from anywhere on the table to gunfire, so it’s time to move!

Turn 7: Both sides roll a 5 for activation, and Reed’s group moves. We’ll duck through a side door in the house and fast move over to the first restaurant. Everyone passes 1d6 on their fast move check except Green, who passes 2d6. This gives Green 16” of movement and everyone else 12”, which is enough to get them to the restaurant, though again I have everyone pause just outside the door. The zombies meanwhile march 6” towards the sound of the guns; this means one of them turns around and moves south along the wall of a building, as they are not smart enough to open doors and move through. This is the position shown in the photograph.

Left side door breach, stack up!

Turn 8: Both sides roll 3, so a tie; neither activates. Again, Reed and friends are checking their weapons before entering.

Turn 9: Zombies 3, Reed 5; both activate and Reed goes first, into the house; only one  person can enter this turn as it’s only a single door. I roll 1, 3 for zombies and 1, 1 for survivors, so we have survivors inside. I now roll 1d6 per Survivor Activity Level, with a 4-6 meaning a survivor is placed; I roll 5, so there is one in sight. A roll of 4 shows a location of 4” away from the wall Reed entered from, and a roll of 2 shows he is 2” from the wall to Reed’s left, putting him against the opposite wall – looking out of a window, no doubt, at the passing zombies.

Dice and cards reveal this survivor is Ambidextrous, with Rep 3 and a machine pistol. I now roll an Awareness Check on the table on p. 35, and even with the extra die for recent gunfire, the survivor passes 0d6 and is completely surprised. The survivor can’t roll an In Sight test, therefore, but Reed can; I roll 5, 6 and pass 1d6; Reed is the Star, so I use the Free Will rule to change this to passing 2d6 so I can hold fire. Reed can now “Talk the Talk” and does so. Reed’s group outnumbers the survivor by more than 2:1, and he has the drop on the survivor, so his effective Rep is 7. Since no die can roll higher than 6, he must pass 2d6. The survivor rolls 4, 6 vs 3 and passes 0d6. Reed passed two more dice, so strictly speaking should open fire because his group outnumbers the survivor; I decide to use Free Will again go to the Cooperation Table. Reed now rolls 1d6 vs Rep5, passing 1d6 (as he still has +2 on the roll); the groups join, and because the player side won, this is permanent. We have a new recruit; I have brown and black pawns left, so we’ll call this one Brown.

The zombies now move 6” towards the site of the last gunshots.

Turn 10: Largely because it still takes me a lot of flipping back and forth in the rulebook to figure things out, I’ve now been playing about 90 minutes and it’s getting late, so I call it a night.

“Come with me if you want to live,” says Reed. He and his four colleagues fast move off the board to the east.

Reed gets another experience point; I decide not to bother tracking experience for the others. Reed is already Rep 5, so needs 10 points to advance to Rep 6. I also decide to roll for gender of my little band; 1d6 per member, with odd numbers being male and even ones female. This tells me that Green, Yale and Brown are female, and the others male; so be it.

Savage Dungeons 0 – Setup

The last of the solo games I plan to try in this current exercise; solo dungeon crawls, using the Savage Worlds rules for characters and combat, because there are many such games and I don’t fancy coming to grips with a new basic system eachtime. My aims are to stay current with Savage Worlds between face to face sessions, and explore which of the various solo dungeon generators is the most fun.

I shall start with the dungeon and scenario generator from Warhammer Quest; the monsters for this are covered in Savage Worlds already, except skaven, for which I shall use the Soldier and Experienced Soldier ally templates with a “trapping” of “look like giant humanoid rats”.

(Trappings are one of the key features of Savage Worlds; essentially what something looks like in play is decoupled from the underlying game rules. So, for example, the various types of missile spell in D&D – magic missile, lightning bolt, finger of death, scorching ray, etc – would all be represented in Savage Worlds as the Bolt power, with different trappings. Some people like that approach, including me; and some don’t.)

It’s easy enough to convert the basic heroes to Savage Worlds, and here they are… I used an amalgam of the Heroquest, Advanced Heroquest, and Warhammer Quest versions of these iconic characters as a basis.

Barbarian

A savage warrior from the snow clad realm of Norsca whose love of battle and plunder has led him to the World’s Edge Mountains.

• Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d8, Vigor d6
• Skills: Fighting d6, Guts d6, Notice d6, Shooting d6, Survival d8, Tracking d8
• Charisma 0, Pace 6, Parry 5, Toughness 6.
• Hindrances: Greedy, Overconfident.
• Edges: Berserk.
• Gear: Longsword: Str+d8, Leather Armor: +1, Lantern.

Dwarf

The Dwarf seeks not only gold and adventure, but the opportunity to deal out retribution to the dark minions who now inhabit his ancestors’strongholds and mines.

• Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d8
• Skills: Fighting d8, Guts d6, Lockpicking d8, Notice d6, Repair d4, Shooting d6
• Charisma 0, Pace 5, Parry 5, Toughness 9
• Hindrances: Slow, Greedy, Vengeful.
• Edges: Low Light Vision, Tough, Brawny.
• Gear: Great Axe: Str+d10, Chain Hauberk: +2, Rope (10″).

Note that because the dwarf only has Strength d6, his damage with the greataxe is actually 2d6, because the weapon damage die can’t be bigger than his own Strength die. Clearly he will want to advance Strength early and often.

Elf

A nimble wood elf from the forest of Loren, whose passion for gems and jewels, along with his hatred for Orcs, Goblins and other evil races, has brought him to the dungeons of the World’s Edge Mountains.

• Attributes: Agility d12, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6
• Skills: Fighting d8, Guts d6, Notice d6, Shooting d8, Stealth d4, Survival d6, Tracking d6
• Charisma  -2, Pace 6, Parry 6, Toughness 5
• Hindrances: All Thumbs, Enemy: Orcs and Goblins, Greedy, Outsider.
• Edges: Low Light Vision, Agile.
• Gear: Bow: 2d6, Potion of Healing.

Wizard

Although not skilled in physical combat, the Wizard is a master of magic, and a powerful ally when exploring the dungeons of the World’s Edge Mountains.

• Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d6, Strength d6, Vigor d6
• Skills: Fighting d4, Guts d6, Healing d6, Knowledge (Arcana) d6, Notice d6, Shooting d4, Spellcasting d8
• Charisma 0, Pace 6, Parry 4, Toughness 5, Power Points 10
• Edges: Arcane Background (Magic).
• Powers: Armor, Bolt, Healing.
• Gear: Longsword: Str+d8, Scroll of Bolt.

I now roll randomly for the Objective Chamber (the place where the McGuffin will be), selecting the Idol Chamber, and for the quest, getting number 4, “Daemon Summoning”. This tells me that the group’s mission is to seek out an ancient temple, where a skaven warlord and his minions are trying to summon a daemon and bind it to their will, and read aloud a Scroll of Banishment (provided by whoever sent the party on this quest) to prevent this happening. So when next I have time and inclination to pursue this thread, that is what they will do.

The Arioniad – Scene 2

I roll 1d10 vs Chaos Factor (5), and discover that the scene proceeds as planned.

So, who is this guy? Clearly he is the Patron in Traveller terms, so I roll on that game’s Patron Table and get a result of 3, 4: Spy. Interesting.

• Does he work for Arion’s bloc? (50:50) Yes. Good, that will save some work, though I can see I will need to flesh out the political situation soon.
• Can he prove it? (Likely) Yes.

I make a mental note that just because he says he is a spy, and on the same side as Arion, that doesn’t necessarily make it either one so; and at this stage neither Arion nor I know if it is true – one of the strengths of Mythic.

• What’s going on here? This isn’t a question with a yes/no answer, so rather than split it into many yes/no questions, I roll percentile dice three times to get an event, which is composed of a focus (34, introduce a new NPC – let’s say that’s Dmitri), an action (52, “Adjourn”) and a subject (73, “Opulence”). The first explanation that comes to mind is that Dmitri is on leave and has been attacked.
• Does he know who has attacked him? (50:50) No.
• Does he need to grab anything before they leave? (Unlikely – he probably didn’t take anything too important on holiday, and if he did he will have grabbed it on the way.) No.

Arion leads his new acquaintance aboard ship – I shall use the standard Classic Traveller Type S scoutship to save work. They enter the empty payload bay and Arion closes the door. The maintenance unit on Arion’s shoulder decamps to do something useful and probably oily.

“Have a seat,” he says. “Now, who are you, and what’s going on, exactly?”

“Call me Dmitri,” says the man. “I work for the same people you used to work for.”

“Really. Can you prove that?” The newcomer looks up and says: “Computer: Authentication code Alpha Gamma Niner Three Two Kappa.”

“Voiceprint and authentication code confirmed,” the ship’s computer purrs.

“Hmm. OK, I’ll accept that for the moment. And the situation?”

“I’m here on leave – no, really, even spies get time off occasionally. I’m in the hotel restaurant eating breakfast, and those two turn up and try to drag me away. I run towards the starport, because I know there’s a friendly ship in port. I see you through the cafe window, in what’s left of a scout service uniform, and I figure you’re the pilot. The rest you know.”

“These thugs: Any idea who they are, or why they want you?”

“You know, in all the excitement I forgot to ask them,” Dmitri grins. “How soon can you lift?”

“As soon as I get clearance. Come on.” Arion leads the way to the ship’s bridge. “Anything you need to get before we go? Because if there is, learn to live without it.”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

I like to think of these adventures as movies, and in a movie we would now cut to Dmitri’s pursuers and see what they are up to. So another complex question: What are they doing? We get focus 36 (move towards a thread), action 80 (Trust) and subject 14 (Peace). There are only a couple of threads open, and I randomly determine that the event relates to Arion’s need for money. So…

Cut to an office somewhere. The two goons are reporting to a figure hidden from us by shadows.

“So, you lost him?” It is patrician voice, tinged with arrogance. The owner may be stroking a white cat in the shadows, who can tell?

“Yes, boss.”

“Either he has a safe house somewhere nearby, or he will try to get offplanet. If you had thought to check the ships currently in port, you would notice a detached duty scoutship called the ‘Dolphin’ which is owned by the same government to which he reports. I trust a peaceful solution will be possible; detached duty scouts are either spies, and thus by nature duplicitous; or poor; or both. Go there and offer him a large amount of money to hand over the target.”

The goons look at each other in surprise. The figure in the shadows laughs.

“Gentlemen, I said offer him a large amount of money. I said nothing about actually giving him a large amount of money. I trust you can fill in the gaps? Good. Be about it.”

List updates:

• NPCs: Add mysterious figure in the shadows (and possibly cat).
• Threads: No change.
• Chaos Factor: No change, still 5.