February 29

Delta Green : Storage Battles

I’m still a bit under the weather which means my creativity is in full flow again.

While I was watching some TV and trying to recuperate I had a flash of inspiration.  One of the programmes I saw was Storage Wars and followed a group of people bidding on the contents of abandoned lockers and seeing what trash or treasure was inside.

This got me thinking, what if one of these lockers was a green box?   A green box is a private storage repository established by operatives of Delta Green and could contain all manner of weird stuff.

Here’s a link to a random Green Box Generator: http://www.palinola.com/projects/lab/greenbox/

 

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November 10

Kickstarter – Cthulhu Wars : Onslaught Two

The Great Old Ones have returned to claim the ruins of Earth, and you are one of them! Cthulhu Wars is a competitive strategy game in which 2 to 8 players face-off to determine the fate of the planet. You’ll recruit cultists and summon monsters, cast spells, open interdimensional gates, and awaken your Great Old One!

Now this looks like a pretty cool Kickstarter that I would love to back it but it’s a bit too expensive for me and I don’t know if I’d get to play it with my current group, so I’m going to hold off on this project.

 

October 15

October 2015 Blog Carnival: What Walks Into Town

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This month the host is Scot Newbury of Dice and Dragons .

It’s been a few months since I wrote for the carnival and when October rolls around I seem to have a dozen or so ideas rattling around in my skull which is the perfect thing for this months carnival.

Picture the scene, a small 1950s town in California where things seem to be perfectly normal on the outside but beneath the town has a dark underside.  The residents go about their daily lives blissfully unaware that in a few days a time traveller will appear that will set a chain of events in motion which if unchecked threaten to unravel the fabric of space and time firstly by killing the family and friends of this stranger;  then slowly erasing the whole world from existence.

Our time traveller finds himself stranded in his new time, his time machine requires a specialised fuel to power it and that is something that is very hard to come by in the 1950s.  If there is one thing in his favour is that when he landed he did so at the edge of town so his arrival goes largely unnoticed by the general population; the only contact he has is with a deranged farmer who was convinced he came from outer space to eat his brain.

Also, since he has travelled through time and not space he can blend in with only a few odd looks from the locals, his clothing is slightly different and made from an advanced fabric, he speaks in a strange slang which is unknown to the good people.  Conversely there are things here that are alien to him;  auto-mobiles are very low tech and all appear to be stick shift and not the automatic vehicles from his home time.  People gather at the bandstand to listen to music being played, this structure has a very different use in his time; this is very much the era of live music, the theatre and going to school dance; even getting a simple shave or h.aircut can be entertaining with a quartet of barbers to hand.

After a chance encounter with a friend from his own time he is made aware that every interaction he has causes ripples that subtly alter the time-line around him; he has become like a butterfly flapping his wings here and a storm occurring over there.  A second accidental encounter means he meets his own parents and must atone for the damage he has caused to their relationship or else the aforementioned doom will befall him.

All the while he wanders he has knowledge of what is to come, maybe not to all the residents of this sleepy town but there are a few important people here and there with an important part to play in the future of this town.   So our poor traveller stuck in his past must tread a fine line or risk upsetting the cosmic apple cart.

Note.

When I wrote this I was going to reveal the identity of the traveller as it is based on someone but then I realised that it would spoil the set-up of the mysterious stranger and this would no longer be What Walks Into Town but Who Walks Into Town. So take what I have given you, change it if you will and use your own time traveller rather than mine.

I won’t stop you having a guess if you want in the comments below but even if you guess right; I won’t publicly acknowledge it.

October 6

Kickstarter – Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game

Originally released as a softback book with a campaign supplement that followed soon after Delta Green for me combined two elements I really love; the Cthlhu mythos and the conspiracy genre.  Where games like Dark Conspiracy and Conspiracy X both shine in their own niches, only Delta Green brought the mythos bang up to date.  It is a very different beast than Cthulhu Now which was the official modern day sourcebook for CoC and it taps into the idea that aliens have visited Earth using spaceships.

Now they are releasing a stand alone game which builds upon the work that has gone beforehand and it really does stand on the shoulders of giants.  There are various pledge levels available, enough to suit each persons pocket.

September 29

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 16: Longest Game Session

When I first started gaming and I had an almost unquenchable thirst for gaming I would think nothing of gaming for seven nights a week but even that wasn’t long enough for me as occasionally we’d game Saturday and into Sunday or Sunday into a bank holiday Monday.  One time we even played right into the new year so we could all wish ourselves a happy new year!

Looking back on it now, I realise it may have been a mistake to try and play longer and longer without much rest,  I recall arguments over trivial things when we were all sleep deprived. Stupid things like can someone with super-leaping drop down a height they can leap?

I know, daft things that seemed really important at the time.

These days I tend to game responsibly and try to not game for too long as I don’t appear to have the endurance for it these days.  Call of Cthulhu isn’t much fun when you’re unable to process the clues but tend to connect you to the great green giant itself 🙂

 

 

 

September 28

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 15: Longest Campaign Played

In all my years of gaming I have only really participated in one long campaign; Games Workshop’s The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

With the exception of the final chapter I was using the Hogshead reprints of the classic adventure and with the additions of the Doomstones campaign which also got inserted into the mix as well as The Dying of the Light, the campaign ran for three years of real-time play.

It was such an epic campaign that I think of it a lot and wonder what I could do to try to recreate the mammoth scale of adventuring;  I did add in my own touches to the scenarios keep the players guessing as to what was coming next.  From barge burning, to unexpected pied piper style shenanigans within the great city of Middenheim I had fun throwing encounters and random things to the players and they stood up to the challenge and rose above the adversity.

I think what I really liked was seeing the characters improve and grow from lowly street filth to movers and shakers with The Old World.

I still have the books, maps, notes and character sheets from the old game.  I don’t think I could run it again with the same players as I don’t think I could do it justice again and it would tarnish the memory of the whole shared experience.

Perhaps I’ll dig my notes out and scan them for posterity.