Friday, May 4, 2012

Come, Come My Child


Come, come my child, come rescue your downed pilot and the glorious and loyal soldiers of the Democratic People's Republic of Glory will spank you until the heavens' turn red with jarhead blood.  Come, come my child, and enjoy your thrashing.

- Ark

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Dungeonspiration: RIP Chartreuse


Chartreuse, by Angel Urena

Chartreuse, my 5th level wood elf ranger died last night at approximately 11:45 pm in Crazy-ass Tim's 2nd edition AD&D game.

It's been at least 30 years since I played a character enough to reach such a high level.  Actually, Chartreuse was only 52 XP away from being 6th level.  Dammit.

I played Chartreuse as a ranger with an emphasis on 'range.'  She talked a big talk and rained horrible slurs down upon her foes, but she was allergic to melee something fierce.  If she was 20 yards away from combat, she was too close.  If she could be up in the tree branches, far above the party, she would be there.  She even slept in the trees.  She had a very nice hammock.  Any excuse to be away from potential physical harm was a good one.  I really enjoyed playing her.

Chartreuse Drinking
The only thing that would cause Chartreuse to actually endanger herself was to protect her sister Serendipity.  The campaign began with Chartreuse attempting to find and rescue Serendipity (as well as some other party relatives.)  Regretfully, Serendipity joined the party, so Chartreuse had to be on double duty - protecting her sister while staying out of harms way.  It was a difficult task, however, as Serendipity was such a awful mage/thief that she earned the nickname Seren-derpity.

Early in last night's session, Chartreuse has finally convinced Serendipity to go off and retire from adventuring.  Perhaps it was the new found sense of not having to babysit her sister - perhaps it was just something wrong in the air - but this one night, this one dungeon delve, Chartreuse wasn't as cowardly as she needed to be.

A room had been found containing a pack of beetles and an sadistic ogre assaulting said beetles with a whip.  Torvalds, the suicidal mage, dropped two burning hands spells on the roomular inhabitants, assured that he would clear the place out in a hurry.  Regretfully, the DM didn't have time to mention that these were 11 foot friggin long beetles.  And now, they were angry beetles.  I had decided to start calling them John, Paul, George, and Ringo, because that's the way I roll.

Chartreuse Drunk
As Torvalds was standing in the doorway, the beetles rushed him, knocked him unconscious, and went for the party.  They all picked Chartreuse to attack, because crazy-ass Tim hates me or something.  Who knows why DMs do what they do?  After being knocked down to 2 hit points, Chartreuse used her newly acquired ring of jumping 30 feet the fuck away to jump 30 feet the fuck away, back down the hall, and proceeded to arrow the beetles to death.

Two heals from the cleric gave her a whopping 3 hit points back.  That's when the ogre magi appeared.  Well, she was an invisible ogre magi, so appeared isn't quite the right word.  The hidden ogre magi sent a cone of frost down the hallway. Chartreuse failed the save in a major way and suddenly found herself at -25 hit points.  She turned blue, iced over, and shattered into a million little fragments.  In my mind, at least.

Ouch.

What's even more poignant is that Kaye, who has been trying to purposefully get Torvalds killed, survived with flying colors.  Of course, he had help.  When he was at -9 hp, the cleric maliciously saved his life.  Out of spite.  Really.  Torvalds has actually become one of the more useful and productive members of our party, but that hasn't stopped Kaye from hating to play him.

The End
Now I have this annoying sense of loss from the death of someone who didn't even exist.  It's interesting to see how it feels on the other side of the DM's screen.  okay, interesting isn't the word.  It sucks.  But I guess it doesn't suck bad enough to have some sudden burst of empathy and not want to kill PCs in my own games. :)

One big problem is that I have this alternate reality Chartreuse in my Rather Gamey Comic.  The intention was her to be a major character in the story.  Yeah, she's not the 'real' Chartreuse, so it really shouldn't really matter what happens in the game - but it does.  She's dead.  Right now, I dont' have any interest in having her in the story or even drawing her.  I just want to mourn her and move on.

Weird.

So here is to the characters that we play and how they inspire us to try on different personalities for other people's amusement - including our own.

Rest in Peace, Chartreuse.

- Ark

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Quote of the Game

Quote of the Game for Saturday's SWN game:

"Can we rewind back to 15 minutes ago?  If this were a computer game, I would have saved right before we entered this derelict battle cruiser and powered it up.  Right before.  Can we rewind?  Then we can go back and turn around and never look at this thing again.  This isn't going to end well.  This isn't going to end well at all."

-Merwyn, playing Captain Goodnight, as a giant mech controlled by a crazy rogue AI blasted them with a plasma cannon on the Engineering Deck, but missed with a natural '1' and accidentally shot full force into the meta-dimensional energy reactor.

- Ark

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

36 Cent War


I've been reading the rules for the Tomorrow's War scifi wargame and am impressed by the combat system.  The design seems to focus on having the game feel like a fluid, interactive battle, rather than a chess match.

As always, table size is one of my biggest concerns.  If I use my 28mm Star Wars figures, the intro game would be on a six by six foot game board.  At 15mm, it plays on a 3x3, which is quite a bit better.  But before I go invest in 15mm pewter, I figured I could do something with copper.  Well, zinc.  Abraham ain't made of the same metal that he used to be.

Merwyn, however, has some very spiffy 15mm scifi grutns and hover tanks, so after my beta testing, I'll go over and play with his toys. :)

- Ark

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Stars Without Number: Dramatis Personæ


I just got home and am still basking in the glow of a particularly successful Stars Without Number game.  I've promised some accounts of our gaming sessions on the blog, so I'll start off by introducing the players (even though some of this information is outdated by the sweeping events of tonight's game.):

Reginald Goodnight, 
Captain of the Fat Tuesday
Merwyn plays Captain Goodnight, who started off life as a two-bit computer hacker.  Merwyn's natural sense of initiative tends to have him rushing in where angels fear to tread, and his inborn charisma tends to cause the rest of the party follow him.  When they seized a pirate ship and repurposed it for their own ends, Merwyn was willing to pay the npc crew out of his own pocket, making him defacto captain of the ship.

Jermayne Starace, 
Astrogator Extraordinaire
Ron plays the ship's pilot, Jermayne.  Mr. Starace was a pilot aboard a boring commercial starliner when he ran into the party, who was busy fighting off a bounty hunter/pirate at the time.  Jermayne quit his job and threw in with the ruff and tumble party, never to look back.  He tends to be very lucky, making wild maneuvers in space combat and drilling holes through meta-space that no sane astrogator would ever try.  While Jermayne doesn't have a great deal of statistical charisma, he is also lucky in love as well, finding a warm bed and a soft partner in just about every port.

Darth Nerf, 
Ship's Psychic
Crazy-Ass Tim plays the disgruntled psychic aboard the Fat Tuesday.  Darth Nerf's parents hated him, thus giving him his awful name.  Darth entered a life of crime at an early age, using his skills of persuasion and his psychic abilities to steal, swindle, and coerce.  Having angered law enforcement officials in his home sector, he left and met up with the party en route to greener pastures.  An incident with the strange aliens known as Methans left him with an arm that could turn into a bow and shoot bone fragments at enemies, but with enough chromosomal damage to cut his lifespan in half.

Kevalt Loranzo, 
Head of Security
The Boy plays Sgt. Loranzo.  Kevalt's father once ran with the party, but was killed in action during a casino heist.  Kevalt found the group and joined it, providing all the heavy fire power needed.  He's a no nonsense warrior, focusing on little else in life.  Over their adventures, Loranzo has assembled a trio of npc marines, all female, that the crew have taken to calling Kevalt's Angels.  They are vicious when fighting space pirates, and very loyal to their Sergeant.

AR-50, 
Alien Robot
Kay runs the ship's robot.  AR-50 is a stealth robot created by the Methans, who can take on various humanoid shapes and pass various biometric tests given enough DNA samples of a subject.  AR-50 is obsessed with upgrading himself, grafting various implements into his system, and pushing his components to the limit.  This has caused quite a few problems for him, and the entire party, as his expansions tend to make him vulnerable to being hacked and taken over by enemies.

Minnie Man, 
Ship's Doctor
Kayette plays Dr. Man, who was encountered by the party on planet Amazon.  Minnie was a maltech researcher on the jungle planet, investigating the Amazon Floral Hive Mind before it went berserk and eradicated all humans there, except her.  Dr. Man now works on the Fat Tuesday, helping to patch up the party when it gets injured, and experimenting with dangerous, forbidden maltech on her off hours.  She also enjoy running over people in a grav tank far more than she probably should.

So, there you have it - the six party members that tend to show up the most.  There have been others that make cameo appearances every so often, but I won't mention them here.

- Ark

Friday, April 27, 2012

Echos and an Awesome New Drawing . . .

. . . that I can't show.  Because . . . you know . . . boobs. Why on Earth would I draw Super Mario Galaxy's Rosalina without any clothes on?  Um . . . better not answer that one.

Anyway, like most of the things I draw, I think this one is the most spiffy to date.  I spat it out in record time - a couple of hours. Tomorrow I'll hate it, for sure. That's a little chunk of it over on the side.  You can go over to my deviantArt gallery to see the nekkified version, if you want.  Pervert.

In other news, An Echo, Resounding showed up in my mailbox yesterday.  Yay!  While I'm not DMing a fantasy game at the moment, I'm interested in running a 'domain game' at some point.  ACKS is all popular right now, but rather than go with a whole new rpg, I decided to first look at An Echo, Resounding which is a domain 'strap on' for Labrynth Lord.

Strap on.  I'm funny.

Anyway, An Echo, Resounding: Lordship and War in Untamed Lands, is by Kevin Crawford of Stars Without Number fame.  It looks pretty damn spiffy, with domain game and mass combat rules.  It looks like you could run it with any pre-3rd edition D&D game with little or no fiddling.  I don't know how it compares to ACKS, but judging from my brief glance, I don't think I'll need any other domainish products.

- Ark

Thursday, April 26, 2012

I Thought That Word Meant Underground Prison


I'm particularly happy with this comic.  Not for the art or humor or anything like that, but for the fact that I actually finished it on time.  It's been a very busy and hectic fortnight, and it was looking like I'd have to delay - again. But I put my big boy britches on and pushed through to completion.

I tossed the strip I had been working on - a big, long monstrosity with various experimental techniques, including three point perspective, and tried my hardest to fit my big, fat ideas into a tiny place.  Three panels later and I have a comic strip.

Now, I have no idea what the heck is happening with my style.  I'm in some kind of weird transition between what once was, and then something I have no idea what is.  Chartreuse up there is a prime example.  She's about a thousand times more realistic than the last time I drew her.  The problem is, I didn't intend to do that.  In fact, i didn't even notice it until I started coloring her.

So - I don't know what the heck my style will look like next time around.  I've been experimenting with a lot of things C- mentioned, and that has led to my daily sketches rarely looking like what I intended.  Even attempting to stick to a style has been fruitless.  I just don't know what is happening - but I figure I should just go with the flow.

Anyway, enjoy the comic.  Well, if it is any good.  I can't tell.  I just don't have the right perspective.

Har har.  Art joke.

- Ark