Universal soldiers and a past and future polycosmos

Thanks to John Till and Chirine ba Kal I recently found Bronze Age Miniatures. They have some real gems in 32mm, but the models that stand out for me are the three here.

They're up as 'space adventurers', but beyond maybe the trousers and a possible pistol on one hand they could be in many times and places. Are they sci-fi, fantasy, modern?

For 40K they could cover hive gangers, mercenaries or renegades, or some unknown faction, and they'd probably fit Infinity too. They could be D&D adventurers old school or new. They'd also work for pseudo-historical gladiators and Earth-bound post-apocalyptic.

Lightly armed? Maybe that facewear could be a kind of mandiblaster or banshee mask.

It makes me wonder...

Why do so few producers make near-universal models? Or, rather, what happened to the wide-open worlds of the past, the '60s, '70s and '80s? Have our minds closed..?

Local made good - collaborative campaign locations

This is a simple tool for generating locations in a campaign collaboratively, whether at the start or partway through. It's intended for both wargaming and roleplaying campaigns and it relates to the recent discussion with bombasticus at this post.

It's been tested with a group of five players who barely know each other and went down very well.

The central idea is this: the forces or characters that the players are guiding are part of the wider landscape, so they reflect this landscape and have relationships with elements of it. This tool treats them as a kind of inverse function to find the known nature of a given location.

                                                                                                                              

You'll need all of the players, plenty of dice (I'll assume d6s), a sheet of paper and at least one pencil or pen. The key elements are size, links, centre and features, and generation involves rolling dice on the sheet and marking the positions to form a map.

Warhammer xK and wargaming almost before war

There was a post at Kings Miniatures last week suggesting GW cuts prices by 50% and that we list what we'd buy if they did to encourage them.

I've been wondering what I'd put on a list at 50% off, but I haven't come up with anything yet. The Lord of the Rings line is there, but why drop into 25mm from 28mm and not go to 15mm, or better yet 6mm? For sci-fi and 40K at 6mm, check out the new not-titans from Steel Crown Productions.

Building on a discussion with Snord at BoLS, I don't much dig GW's heroic 28mm style any more. I think it looks odd. The bits can be useful though, and we might only now be learning how useful. Ork hands, say, can look simian on naturally proportioned humans.

I know I'm not alone in this, so here's another hypothetical. If GW's style is falling out of fashion, what else could the rulesets be used for? What if the settings got old?

To mention another discussion at BoLS, I recently joked some of the Dystopian Legions miniatures could inspire a Warhammer 20K, set 10,000 years further back from the 30K of the currently fashionable Horus Heresy. What about playing a Warhammer 2K in our near past or future, or c. 0K with ancients? Would the ruleset be up to the job?

That got me thinking about earlier periods. How about -40K? Or -400K? Have you ever seen a ruleset for wargaming or roleplaying encounters between early humans? This kind of thing. Various posts at The Subversive Archeologist - like this one - suggest plenty is still up in the air. Early human miniatures are relatively thin on the ground too.

If you have anything like that up your sleeve, you might want to read Lo's current series at HoP on getting new ideas out there, which is now up to the subject of self-publishing.

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The same old different new

A quick list of goings-on from the top blogroll themed around renewal and rediscovery.

• In an Expanse-friendly double-whammy, the delving mwschmeer at Rended Press has a long list not just of zines, but zines on 40K and Warhammer.

• Hopeful Monster Creations have put their first release out, Sean Robson's indie board game Megadungeon!, inspired by the old TSR microgames.
  

• Former GW designer Andy Hoare has been updating the narrative skirmish game Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies and any and all feedback is welcome.

• Sidney Roundwood and TOOFatLardies are designing for the Dark Ages - here and here - and going deep, with 1, 2, 3 reports reflecting the histories, and rules for goading; Arlequin has yet more insight for gaming the period.

• Stuart at Strange Magic has a simple approach to converting D&D monsters to player characters, Hereticwerks have a set of weird beings for Swords & Wizardry and S. P. at How to Succeed... has more adapted to fourth.

• And sad news to finish - Rustfoot has posted its last, but the blog is still up.

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... how does your garden grow?

Here's that second loosely-linked post, with some ideas for parks, gardens and farms.

This post at John's Toy Soldiers and the Lost Gardens of Heligan probably crystallised the thinking, around dinosaurs thanks to those photos. They give off a classic Doctor Who vibe too. I realised we don't see this kind of space much in gaming. Why not?

Parks and gardens can and do feature as house and castle grounds, or public or palace land in cities, and why not open-air courtyards deep inside dungeons? The same in more sci-fi-oriented settings, but here the greenery could be in sealed pulp-style domes, out in space or as a preserved landscape like those in Silent Running - mentioned here too - or in the TNG episode "The Survivors", or part of a dedicated agricultural world.

The various associations make for more interest, like raised terraces and labyrinths, ponds and lakes, tool stores, potting sheds and hothouses, lawns, patios and parties.

And thinking about circumstances, drainage and irrigation ditches could be flooded and animals free to wander, maybe released accidentally, maybe deliberately for confusion.

Directionality seems important too. There might be a difference in the difficulty of moving in a copse and a plantation based on axis taken, something I think Epic once covered.

Maps are easily put together, physical terrain less so, but the nature of a tabletop could be marked impressionistically with elements like this converted agri-world truck for 40K at Tales from the Maelstrom. Linked with this and the looting theme in the first post, Winter of '79 has a tractor playing a key role in a game in their alternative UK history.

Whole new creatures could also be created. Check out the barkrunner at A Field Guide To Doomsday, one of the best yet. There's also the spookier Abyss Monster at I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters... which is more damp. Maybe the gardens are decaying?

I had a go at adapting creatures with the Fat Frog entry Up the Gordian Path, and plan to return when Stokasis is ready. If you're looking for ideas for a weird green space, feel free to lift them from here. Besides the creatures, you could probably tweak some of the encounters and upland events, and the weather roll, for an overgrown or alien landscape.

Here it is again - click to zoom. I tried to get a sense of a natural order running ever on, and that seems to me key to this kind of landscape, the interactions between elements.

For something a bit more down to earth, I thought I might start with what for many of us could have been a literary seed. Here's a table inspired by The Secret Garden, a first 15 of the features met, in order. It's for DM Muse, and since gardens come up in a lot of children's books, I'll likely add new influences over time. It's a living table so open to all.

1. A pair of gates rises here.
2. This dark vault of trees runs on ahead.
3. A stone court stands before a long low house.
4. Here a door opens in a wall of shrubbery.
5. A wide lawn spreads, wound about with walks of clipped borders.
6. Trees and flowerbeds fill this space.
7. Evergreens stand here, clipped into unusual shapes.
8. A large pool is home to a weathered and grey fountain.
9. This long ivy-cloaked wall is set with a green door.
10. This entrance opens into a walled garden, from which another doorway leads.
11. This enclosed garden has frames over beds and fruit trees trained to a wall.
12. A figure bearing an implement enters this space, and appears startled.
13. A closed grassy space, this orchard has no other exits.
14. Treetops rise beyond this wall, but no entrance is to be found.
15. A small winged creature in the crown of a tree bursts into voice.

I've tried to keep them mysterious, and general to work in more fantastical settings. As ever, they're now in at DM Muse so the table should be live soon, ready for any more.

Back in reality, Jedediah gives advice for urban gardening at Book Scorpion's Lair.

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The power of ideas

I admire Sidney Roundwood at Roundwood's World, and I'd bet you do too, or will as soon as you visit the blog. I think he has what many of us aspire to, a full approach.

He's done me the honour of building on a post I wrote a couple of months ago, Getting out of the boat (1), a post representing a part of what the Expanse is all about. He used the ideas in a Great War battle over his superb trench boards featuring a mix of rules.

This and one or two other things currently in the pipeline have left me in a happy stupor.

Why?

Setting aside even the fact that it's Roundwood and others I respect, I think it's about seeing a contribution recognised, its value acknowledged, and in blogging knowing something hasn't just fallen by the wayside. It's understanding in some small way we've added to the sum of thinking and experience.

Every one of us who creates, suggests or speculates in whatever form is contributing just like this. We all do it in some way, and it's a very precious thing. And key I think in keeping the passion high and keeping the contributions coming is feedback.

If you see something good out there in the blogosphere or elsewhere, I'd encourage you to use it, respond, praise the positives and help improve the rest. Leave a comment, write a post, recommend it, especially if the source has a smaller audience.

Get involved in the exploration. If you're not sure where, start with the blogrolls here.

Thanks again to Sidney and to everyone who's run with an idea they saw here, and most of all to everyone beginning, continuing or supporting that wider exploration in any way.

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Blog standard

If this was an old school roleplaying blog, Trey's famous and fun advancement table at From the Sorcerer's Skull would mean I'd just levelled up, going from Maven to Pundit, at 160 followers.

Thanks very much to all of you, and to everyone who reads.

But it's not really an old school roleplaying blog, or at least not primarily. It's not a wargaming blog either, although it covers aspects of that. It's not even only a gaming blog. If it had a focus, I'd say it's fiction, or exploration of ideas. Speculation maybe.

In this sense, the number to look at seems less the number of followers and more the number of follows, or blogs in blogrolls.

Here are those numbers then.

I follow 304 blogs. In that light, especially given the common but rather silly idea that if someone follows you ought to follow them, having 160 followers actually makes me look fairly unpopular.

There are eight blogrolls in the left sidebar, although one is a collection of blogs from the other seven. In the seven the total number of blogs is 340. Again, Porky no-mates.

This means the ratio of blogs followed or listed to followers is about 2:1. I'm guessing this is quite high, but I don't think it really should be. After all, why not 3:1 or 10:1?