Space marines in space

With 40K getting old, and a sixth edition probably on the way, I thought I'd ask a few questions and suggest some ideas, as a series, maybe with a title like 'flashes in a grim darkness'.

It's partly for the designers at GW, to lend a hand, even if we know they won't always want or be able to use the ideas. It's also for designers everywhere, who can add them to games direct. The point is to inspire and help keep things spicy.

The first is for space marines as a whole, who do after all look to be the buttresses holding the edifice up. Get them wrong at the edition change and it might end badly for shareholders.

40K OSR? (1)

An OSR for 40K? Might be a good thing. Not necessarily an Old School Renaissance. Better would be an Other School Renaissance or Optional School Renaissance.

GW's giving us a helping hand with the first, with the new Jokaero for example. But the essence of the others is doing it ourselves, and getting new ideas out there. And let's not forget, 40K's roots are in roleplaying and improvisation. Rogue Trader used a GM.

Let's follow up.

I propose a weekly compilation, or maybe compendium, when there's material.

Here's the first. If you play 40K, I recommend at least browsing all of the bold links. It'll take a few minutes max, and could be game-changing.

• This week we had Von's response at GAME OVER to the criticism of kill points - second-edition style missions. He has a table of six ready to go, an intuitive approach to victory and a set of rules for tournaments. It's a big tent.

• Auberon at Digital Waaagh! can always be relied on for good old school material. This week he has Ork madboyz, specifically frantiks. Here's the original. Politically correct it may not be, but that's how it was.

• Big Jim almost is a one-man OSR. Killzone is a good skirmish game if you play 40K or would like to, for the overlap in models and rules. There's a rundown at Dark Future Games. Old School Terminator was lucky enough to play at AdeptiCon on the tables made by Brian, formerly b.smoove.

• Re another of Big Jim's ideas, the Soul Reapers Fandex, there's a contest running at Table Top War to support both the book and The Codex Project as a whole. The first video is here at Galaxy in Flames.

• I had my humble offering too, a suggestion for a pruning of the basic ruleset, and that got a bit of back and forth going a couple of days ago.

This week I was also reminded of Gotthammer's intriguing three-part discussion of updating 40K for the 21st century, which starts here, at Collegia Titanica.

So join in. Get under the hood. Get greasy and let's tweak this baby.

Update: I forgot Warpstone Flux's homebrew for the quantum cannon, and he's just
             posted more for daemon carriers, and he actually has far more homebrew
             and house rules at the blog than I thought, all here.

Update: Colonel Kane at Tales from the Maelstrom has just posted too, and those
             guys epitomise this, mixing up old and new. He has a question, about rules
             for getting hordes of less-detailed characters into Inquisitor. Can anyone help?

_

Squeeze for juice

We're talking about energy generation, but isn't a vast amount more energy all but on tap now?

A chance comment today reminded me that while we can't seem to get close to perpetual motion, and we are the heart of our problem, our hearts could also be part of an easy solution.

We could easily each produce what we need to run the device we're using right now for example. Could you do a little light pedalling too?

Think how much less power we'd need if every television on the planet was driven by the viewer. Think how much less television we'd watch...

If we did still need to go for a walk or run after watching a favourite show, why couldn't shoes or belts extract energy from the muscular movements as standard - or even clothes the excess body heat - in the same way as automatic watches or bike lamps?

Moving into speculation a little, the Fremen in Dune had their stillsuits using breathing and other movement to recycle water, and The Matrix saw the human body power its own prison (cf. the TV example). This is all still near future stuff - at the very most.

What else might be used with no need for a strange new material or process?

dʒ is for Dune, Jokaero...

How might Dune have inspired GW? Warp Signal has that post up now, along with a working definition of science fantasy. To explore one of the key themes of the novels - free will - try the latest instalment of the Spinoza series I mentioned here.

On the subject of early GW, the Jokaero are back! Tabletop Fix has an image of what is likely to be a choice from the Grey Knight codex. Do I want to know more about this! All Things Fett recently spotted a possible alternative model, good for variety.

Update: The Veil's Edge has just posted a look at the Jokaero in the 40K universe.

Update: Tales from the Maelstrom has a classic Jokaero mini painted up too, good
             for more variety if you can find one; BoLS is saying here it's a 1985 release.
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Character building

Another day, another discursive Bell of Lost Souls discussion. This time a good post by Just_Me on creating new characters in 40K runs into roleplaying - not as regular a theme as the past two days would suggest - old sourcebooks, Dune and geopolitics.

Ecumenical Monday

Interesting departure today, getting away from everything from the God-Emperor of Dune to small gods, every kind of religion in fiction in fact. With a slight humanist angle possibly detected in the last post - and presumably secular humanism, unlikely if so - I thought you might appreciate a couple of links on religion informing fiction.

A couple of days ago I mentioned the zen of modelling re the latest Ork in the series, and we're all aware of the Christian influence on fantasy set in Middle-earth and Narnia, but how many of us know anything about Jewish fantasy or Islamic SF? Didn't think so. Then that seems like a reasonable place to start. Time for a revelation or two perhaps?

Thanks to Bibliophile Stalker for the second link, and possibly the first indirectly.

Viva la revolución!

Happy new Gregorian calendar year! Here's to another orbit of the sun, more or less!

If you want gaming inspiration for 2011, you might start with the personal summaries of games played - or not - at Creepy Corridor, Fire Broadside!, ArmChairGeneral, Plastic Legions, Super Galactic Dreadnought and Mik's Minis, all of which cover various options.

Need your lists of bests? Lazy Thoughts From a Boomer has best bits in blogs, books and movies. Asking the Wrong Questions has opinions I trust on best and worst books, while shadowplay does movies that appeared only in alternate universes...

Papa JJ at diceRolla has something similar, a list unpublished posts. This seems to me dangerously like the approach Zanazaz took at Have dice, will travel... re iron spikes...

Resolutions abound, but the reading list at Huge Ruined Pile is a huge ambitious pile. If that helps put you in your place in time, see Slight Foxing for your place in existence.

Finally, there may or may not be an actual arrow of time, but there is an Arrow of Time at Tower of the Archmage. Impeccable timing.

With Earth history moving on, I thought you might also appreciate a few speculative timelines, elements of histories and/or info on calendars. Here they are then, by scope.

All mines?

Here's a brief list of fictional mines and other mining-related resources, hopefully useful to someone at some point for settings, scenarios or terrain, in whatever kind of game or fiction. I'll update as I find or remember more, with your suggestions too if you have any.

Have a look at the original post for a few thoughts on how these or similar places might fit into games. With the length of the list as it is, they do seem relatively underused.

Gold struck

On the subject of gifts, a brief look at wealth, specifically mining in games. One of the three wise men gave gold and mining is a real ghost of past, present and future.

The past we know about - 2010 was a year the human cost really made the news. In the present we have the battle for rare earth metals, a big one - you could easily have some of these in whatever you're using to read this. For the future, if you think Branson et al are interested only in tourism and lifting, think again - a smart investor would be growing the technology to mine the moon and asteroids. There's money in them thar belts.

How to fit all of this into a game?

They live among us (2) - The sandworm of Dune

Had a good ponder? Me too.

In case you missed it, the starting point was the realism of aliens in fiction, whether wargames, cinema or literature. The whole thing was set off by our new friend, the squid worm. The question was how the preoccupation of the moment might mean we make the alien less realistic.

Let's start with a biggie, Dune by Frank Herbert, and the sandworms. Look away now if you're squeamish - the film version is definitely not for you.



I was grinning by the final shot. Remember, it is a David Lynch film...