What's that buzzing?

If you've been following the ongoing one-upmanship in creating a collection of creatures using the Humanspace Empires ruleset from ix, you know we have all kinds of odd beasties, many based on creepy-crawlies with pulp science fantasy twists.

There's a list here, in yesterday's post on the famous bug hunter Suwár Tar.

Inspired by a comment from Needles on that post, here's another option, the cortical hornet. Rather than give this stats for one system, I'll make it the second piece of propluristemic content. The first is granulation.

It's in support of the idea of the polycosmos, my possible sketch of which is here. Propluristemic content is something marked up as intended for use in many systems and settings, and even non-gaming fiction, assuming some adaptation.

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They call him Swarm Breaker

So we now have snakes, beetles, spiders, ants, gigapedes and worms, both large and small, and some of these not even fully in our reality.

Humanspace really isn't looking like a space for humans who are squeamish.

Unless, born of a stray NetherWerks comment at the home blog ix, you find the man they call...

Suwár 'Debugger' Tar, 'Swarm Breaker'

An arachno-mutant turned from the hive, now a renowned underworld hire.

Born on the post-apocalyptic world of Hogintu, Suwár was adopted young by nekrobra smugglers when he showed an exceptional talent for charming. He was attacked on a run by space spiders and partially transformed, serving his arachnoid masters loyally before a dimensional distortion brought about by an unrecorded weapons test severed the connection. Discovered by a super-scientific explorer team, he was interned in a research establishment, before escaping into the underworld with other test subjects.

Bridge - thirst - cliff

Passing back down the trail you re-enter the meadow where the creatures prance. The bridge again stands before you, crushed plants leading down to the shadow beneath.

The sparkle of the water reminds you how thirsty you are, but as you walk over to the stream you find the bank here is a low cliff and the water inaccessible. Opposite, however, the bank runs down out of the wildflowers right up to the water.

Cross the bridge to investigate the shadow   Blog One   Blog Two   Blog Three

Cross to reach the surface of the stream   Blog One   Blog Two   Blog Three

Cross to return to the oak   Blog One   Blog Two   Blog Three

Head back up the trail   Blog One   Blog Two

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Speculative siblings told off for squabbling?

Here's a brief update on that article respected sci-fi author David Brin wrote at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies.

Three more comments have been posted, from some familiar names in our part of the blogosphere. That makes six in total. I suppose we just wait.

If you haven't already read it, it's quite short. I'll bet you have a thought or two.

Jennie's reply hasn't been released yet, but you can read it here at her blog.
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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?

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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?

Flash Fearstaken over - Granulation

This week's entry for Flash Fearsday, the microfiction writing challenge now hosted at Lunching on Lamias. (There's nothing up yet, but he's smart and probably trying to scare us.) The idea is to create horror in 140 characters, with line breaks counting one. And this week we also have the start of a whole new gaming project.

"It's caused by fear, sir."

"F-fear?" The air thickened.

"Yes, sir. G-granulation. Of the fabric of reality." The air had texture now.

"Ru-"

What's the gaming project then? It's propluristemic content, or maybe 2psc, or just pc. I also like (. It's something marked up as intended for many systems and settings, whatever the game type or precise laws of physics, even non-gaming fiction, assuming some adaptation. The rules are only guidance. Here's an example, for granulation.

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Is sci-fi's dad bigger than fantasy's dad?

I'm having a discussion with respected sci-fi author David Brin. Well, not quite. Actually not even near. But all the chooks are lined up and we're only waiting for him to get back.

To explain, he wrote a short article at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies.

I'll bet you have opinions on it too.

Here's a relevant quote, via Old School Heretic.

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CS S T W I Ld ?

I saw a 40K statline written up in a slightly different way yesterday and read a comment mentioning scaleability, and I'm still thinking about those polls at Warhammer 39,999.

Not for the first time I'm wondering if all the numbers in the game are needed, especially given the universal special rules and how vehicle armour works differently than body.

Remember, we're talking about creeping development over four edition changes and sourcebook after sourcebook, codex update after codex update, over 23 years. My feeling is there's a lot of clutter just waiting for a good spring clean.

Here's a thought experiment. Couldn't this work just as well?

CS  S  T  W  I  Ld

Some explanation.

Do the skrabs scrabble?

The response to the nekrobra was encouraging so here's a second creature of blue Hogintu, or the Cerulean Sphere as it will now be known thanks to the ever-inventive Justin S. Davis.

I've statted this one using Humanspace Empires too because I like the approach, but it would suit any generic sci-fi or fantasy setting, and is easily converted to other OSR systems.

Hush! Do the skrabs scrabble?

The skrab is a small blue insectoid creature apparently unique to Hogintu, and swarms wherever the cobalt sands drift, even deep within the ruins. It is an aggressive creature with a lightly-armoured, bulbous body and scurries rapidly on a dozen spindly legs, the forward three of which are needle-like and used for skewering its prey. A swarm brings down larger victims through the individuals attaching themselves and using their weight to topple and pin, all the while stabbing at vulnerable points until the victim succumbs.

The creature is of relatively recent provenance and in the short time since its appearance skrab populations have fluctuated dramatically for no clear reason. The skrab is seen as a mixed blessing, for when the skrabs are scrabbling, the nekrobra is rare...

Skrab

No. Enc.: 1D6+6

Alignment: Neutral

Move: 150' (50')

Armour Class: 6

Hit Dice: 1

Attacks: 1

Damage: 1D6 + pinning

Morale: 12

A skrab making a successful attack will also attach itself to the victim, who must then pass a force test or be brought to the ground. At the Referee's discretion, larger potential victims may require multiple skrabs to achieve this. If additional skrabs are in combat with the victim, all but one will now pile on. The victim has its armour class increased by one point for each multiple attached and the combat continues as normal, with all participants fighting. The victim may attempt to free itself in each subsequent round by making one force test per multiple; if any are failed, the victim remains pinned by all.
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Scent of man

An entry for today's Microfiction Muse challenge over at Diane Estrella's blog. It's a story in 140 characters - counting line breaks one - with the muse being the photo given.

The last human in a sterile future, he was the sole source of the galaxy's rarest material. Sweat.

As the agents closed in, the stakes rose.

No disrespect intended towards the gentleman in the photo of course. I look like that myself most days, and can get very scruffy. And we all sweat. For now anyway...
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A shot across the bows

Here's my poem for this week's One Shot Wednesday, hosted at One Stop Poetry.

Give it your best shot,

Or get shot,

Hotshot.

Shoot!

One shot,

To get shot?

Not by a long shot.

Shoot indeed.

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Storm of Magic in a teacup

I'm not sure if it's deep thinking. There's been a lot of quick posting, so maybe not.

Games Workshop is releasing a supplement for Warhammer - Storm of Magic - with a focus on magic and monsters, and some are already posturing, claiming that since magic, and maybe monsters too, are 'broken', it's a mistake. Another argument says it's a distraction from GW's bringing all of the factions up to date for eighth edition.

But would any organisation not listen like that? Maybe because magic and monsters are so criticised, they've decided a specific supplement is a good way to tweak them?

More likely, this is a set of rules for an alternative way of playing, like the Apocalypse supplement for Warhammer 40,000. In that case, there would be little or no effect on the basic game, but we might expect any effect to be positive. The new monsters due could even be a way of squeezing a quick boost into certain armies in lieu of a full book.

Who knows? It's all still possible. Anyway, best just wait till we know more.

If I'm wrong, I'll be happy to engage in a process of feedback and improvement.
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The Cobalt Cobras of Hogintu

The new miniatures in the Warhammer Tomb Kings range haven't been universally well received. Again, technically superb models have arguably less than superb concepts.

There's a flavour here at Subject to Stupidity of the case against, and also in potentially offensive language here at FightingFantasist. At Musings of a Smurf, here, there's an argument against even the detail on the latest GW minis, or maybe against the major games in their current form. CounterFett is doing his best here to find uses for the new parts in 40K, and Dark Future Games here has Thousand Sons space marines in mind.

I want to help too, and I have something in mind for the necropolis knight build, i.e. the cobra-like snakes with skeleton riders. By doing as little as removing the rider, there's something to work with. Filing off or filling in detail would also make them less obviously ancient Earth culture and more fantastical or alien. The heads are not very snake-like, but that could be fixed with greenstuff, and a compromise would be keeping the basic head structure and going wide and flat over it. They are pretty good giant serpents all in.

But I'll assume you don't want to make too many changes. Here's a possible use almost as is, riffing off the silliness and references, with one or two more thrown in; no prizes for guessing. I've statted them for Humanspace Empires by The Drune at ix with ideas from this post and inspiration from Mutant Future. The idea isn't aimed specifically at the Humanspace setting, but should suit generic pulp sci-fi or fantasy.

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Ice planet, freeze!

Here's my entry for this week's Succinctly Yours, the new microfiction challenge hosted at Grandma's Goulash. It's based on the photo given here, has 140 characters - with line breaks counting one - and it uses the word 'procrastinate'.

Spaceport's busy today. Suddenly a queue jumper.

"No!" I cry. "It's a glacial world!" Too late.

Blasters up, a command: "Procrastinate him."

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Help! Do you game in London?

I had an email yesterday from a reader who's staying in London for a while and wants to find a good wargaming club or group, ideally one with a less competitive , more story-oriented approach. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Come to think of it, recommendations for this kind of club or group anywhere in the world are welcome. Feel free to leave names or links in the comments. Maybe we can start a resource?
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From the Warp back in real space

That's right, Ron is posting again at From the Warp!

If you're a 40K fan, the lights are back on in an online home. If you're not, and you're not sure what's going on, FTW is a major hub for games based on Games Workshop IP, mainly those set in the 41st millennium.

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Feet on the ground

This is my entry for today's writing challenge at One Stop Poetry, inspired by the intriguing work of Lauren Randolph, and in particular this fun, funky and ever so slightly freaky photo.

I've gone for the Flash 55 option, i.e. 55 words or less - it's 55 - and some other criteria which this text is arguably a bit looser on.

It'll happen, they say. April 11, 2011. Things are gonna get turned on their heads. I don't know. Maybe a day. So long as the house don't pull away, I can sleep on the ceiling. Got water stacked right the way up and cushions on top of the fridge. Prices'll go through the roof though.

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