Dungeon Dressing

I very seldom use dungeon dressing props like these, even less frequently than I use character or monster figures, which isn't very often at all. Nevertheless, I've got them, so I thought I'd paint them: not least because I felt like doing a bit of painting, but didn't feel like anything very challenging just for the moment.

These are more of Reaper's "Bones" plastic figures.

Kea-Griffon: Close, so close

The Reaper "Bones" griffon I got via their last Kickstarter is grinding slowly, so slowly, to completion.

All that's left to do now is to fair the wings into the torso — not an insignificant task, but not too difficult. I had hoped I'd get away without having to do it, but the join looked a lot less obvious in the bare white plastic than it does now, painted.

Multiple Characters for Players

One of the recently-released Old School RPG systems (I forget the name of it) makes use of the idea of the "sieve" for starting characters, in which, to begin with, each player begins with three or five or however many lowest-level characters. As they inevitably die off one by one, the player will end up with one, which (hopefully) has proven to be tough and lucky enough to have a better than even chance of extended survival, and which will become the player's only character for some time. Effectively, it's kind of like the video game concept of extra lives.

Giving each PC a posse can be an excellent opportunity for the GM to introduce some intra-party conflict and rivalry without actually going the PvP route; effectively the PCs would all be very minor gang leaders in cooperation with other gang leaders for a specific goal.

I'd draw up a fairly simple relationship chart for the various factions (and maybe some of the individuals) and let them go for it, treating the members of their posses as followers, their actions usually under the direct control of the player with the understanding that the GM may direct their actions as NPCs at any time for dramatic purposes.

It's possible — even likely — that one or more players might want to try a bit of backbiting, bribery and corruption amongst his or her fellow PC's entourages. This is not the sort of behaviour that any self-respecting GM should discourage. :)

And, of course, let the players know that their posse is their available pool of backup characters in case of their unfortunate but inevitable grisly demise. If a player starts using his posse as meat-shields to protect his or her own worthless skin, they may find themselves abandoned as their erstwhile followers transfer their loyalties (or simply run away) ....kind of a permanent loss of hit-points.

I suppose the players could choose whichever of their posse they want to inhabit as and when they die off and have to transfer characters, but to maintain the idea of the player being the gang leader, I'd suggest it would be better to rank them in order of Charisma, with the surviving follower with the highest CHA becoming the new leader (PC).

Tsuro

I was introduced, a short time ago, to a cute little tile-placement game called Tsuro.

It's very simple, plays quickly, and will cater to two – eight players.

I couldn't find a copy locally, so I thought I might as well make a set of my own. This is (almost) it — I still have to make the layout grid (the work of a moment, hopefully) and find something to use as player markers... probably painted chess pawns or the like.

The tiles are 50mm squares of 3mm MDF, lovingly painted by yours truly. I could probably have done them more neatly, but these will serve quite well I think. The blank one in the bottom-right corner isn't used in the game layout; it's a marker tile which indicates who gets the next draw of the tiles. In the proper game it has a dragon printed on it; I've just painted mine metallic gold.

I think, if I were to do it again, I'd bump up the tile size to 75 or 80 mm square, and maybe do them in stained oak or something, with the tracks outlined in pyrogravure.

Traveller

Tonight's game: Zombie Apocalypse in SPAAAAACE!!!

It was all fun and games until somebody foolishly alerted the authorities to the situation, so now we've been declared Plague Ships and have SDBs in-bound to make sure we don't go infecting their precious system. Spoilsports!