Making bones about Nagash

The 'leak' is here for the new official miniature for Nagash, the necromancer in the Warhammer setting. It looks like a sleek, comfortably variable plastic kit, nipped and tucked neatly using CAD.

The previous one gets a lot of stick and seems widely regarded, online at least, as one of the worst ever Citadel miniatures. There's mention in this thread of the idea the skull was badly sculpted on purpose. If true, not badly enough for me. I've always been quite fond of the model, and I'd argue the skull's the key feature.

So this is an alternative perspective, a reappraisal for posterity, or possibly Midhammer.

Dragons & Dungeons

I wonder how different the world would look today if 'D&D' actually stood for 'Dragons & Dungeons'?

Maybe no different. The typical module might be creature-focused rather than site-based. But the cascading consequences of even that fine change, in minds across the lands and down the years, could have done odd things.

Towards a 'new' encounter - reading, comprehension

Very interesting discussions on OD&D go down (like lead balloons?) at Untimately. I like the blog a lot. Today in the comments Gus L and Brendan suggested - if I'm reading right - that the encounter distance, surprise and reaction rolls can be just a little lacking.

For those who don't speak OD&Dese, encounter distance is the distance at which another party or situation is spotted, a surprise roll determines - surprise, surprise - whether each side is surprised and the reaction roll is a roll made to determine how a potential threat reacts, usually on 2d6 modified by charisma or an equivalent.*

Gus wonders if there's a way to generate more specific circumstances, like what exactly the goblins are doing other than "'goblin things'". I can improvise goblins okay, but I would be interested in a useful tool. I'm also the kind of guy who might help make it, even link to the project. But my worry is a new tool is more complication, especially when different settings and GMs have different takes on who or what a goblin actually is.

So I have a simple idea.

A 40K campaign, but without the campaign?

Here's an idea I had while musing on psychology in Warhammer. If you want some of the feel of a 40K campaign, but don't have the time, ideas or consensus it can take to set one up, ponder this.

                                                                                                                              

At the end of each game, note the degree of damage done to each unit which took part.

If the unit was reduced to half strength or destroyed, casualties will be replaced with reserves or trainees: the unit is classed as rookie in the next game in which it is taken.

Any unit not reduced to half strength or destroyed is classed as hardened in later games, until it would be classed as rookie, at which point it reverts to its normal status.

Rookie units roll one extra die for each leadership test, discarding the single best result; hardened units roll one extra, discarding the single worst.* Where the unit is a vehicle, a rookie crew fires one weapon less than usual, while a hardened crew can fire one more.

                                                                                                                              

The variety of sixth edition means the wider strategic aspects can be assumed in the particular combination of factors in any given game. This just adds a little consequence.

It could go on until a climactic battle is arranged, agreed maybe 1D6 games in advance.

* Optional rules: Naïveté - if a rookie unit rolls a double or triple on the dice for any leadership test, the next casualty suffered fights on with a single wound; Shell shock - if a hardened unit rolls a double or triple on the dice for any leadership test, one model - chosen by an opposing player - is unwell and immediately lost.

Appendix OSR (2)

I've been reading The Secret History of Star Wars on a now mysterious Marcia Lucas and thinking.

Thinking it's another good text for that reading list.

Thinking we may think we create, and do, but not so much as we might like to think we do. We can hold worlds in our heads (with art or miniatures to help maybe, and numbers etc.), but mostly these are variations on this world even when they're not.

And how well do we actually know this one..? Or each other's version? Do we even know our own?

_

Deep thought Friday

This time I'll just direct you to two discussions.

One is SinSynn's considered post On Violence in Gaming at House of Paincakes, which is still picking up thoughtful responses two days later.

The other is Dark nights apprising here at the Expanse, which stayed oddly quiet once it was posted despite solid traffic - until James S took up the gauntlet earlier today and made things a lot more epistemological and DtF in the process.

_

Grilled Porky

The interview I did with Loquacious for the ID series is up here at World of Wonder. If you don't know the series, the subject is game design and it goes wide and deep. All of the interviews are here, and to anyone interested in gaming I recommend a good read. 

_