All posts by The Plaid Mentat

Gaming

Kicking off a Role-Playing Game

A couple of weeks ago, I kicked off a new role-playing game.  I decided I wanted to use the Savage Worlds game system (alongside the science fiction companion) to run a space-romp in the Orion arm of the galaxy.  I was inspired to this after listening to the Openly Gamer Theatre’s production of Tower of the Ape, where they played Savage Worlds in the Conan universe (which introduced me to the Savage Worlds game system) and their even older Power of the Darkside which was a Star Wars Saga Edition game (which reminded me how much I love space romps)

While I’ve certainly role-played now and again over the years (either one-shots or short-term games), this is the first time in a while I’ve set out to play a long-term campaign.  To make this work, though, I would need to solve a number of issues: Continue reading Kicking off a Role-Playing Game →

Gaming

GMing Again

Video

Whenever I start GMing again, my mind drifts to a simpler time when the following was a good enough hook:

Feeling brave tonight?  How brave!  Brave enough to do battle with hideous monsters, hmmm?  Brave enough to sneak around dank castles in the dark and chance being the next victim?  Of a dragon strike!

Gaming

Organizing Kingdom Death: Monster

I took the opportunity the other day re-organize my Kingdom Death: Monster box.  As is typical, the main issue was that the insert didn’t really support sleeved cards.  However, instead of not fitting the length of the cards as is typical, the KD:M insert wasn’t really set up to hold the additional girth of the cards, so the specialized sections didn’t work anymore.  The neat thing though is that KD:M came with card dividers, so I didn’t actually have to make specialized tabs!

Pictures of the completed project after the jump. Continue reading Organizing Kingdom Death: Monster →

Books

Light on the Sound

I’ve been taking a break from the H. P. Lovecraft collection I have been reading to re-read one of my favorite science fiction series: The Chronicles of the High Inquest.  I finished the first book the other day, and I wanted to blog a bit about why I like this series so much.

First and most obvious is that these books are science fiction.  From the very first page, the characters talk about displacement plates which teleport matter from one place to another, and before long we are introduced to humans that live in complete darkness without eyes and ears, tachyon bubbles used to travel through space, and carnivorous alien plants.  However, Somtow doesn’t leave it there, there are fantastic elements as well – the twin cities of Effelkang and Kallendrang where the latter hangs inverted above the former, the purple trees of Shtoma, and the whale-like delphinoids that float in the currents of the wind and make their music and light shows. Continue reading Light on the Sound →

Gaming

Kingdom Death: Monster

I’ve been playing a fair bit of Kingdom Death: Monster the last few days, and I expect to embark on a second campaign soon.  I pre-ordered this game as one of the Black Friday specials after the kickstarter was over (I wasn’t even on kickstarter at the time it was), and I got all the goodies.  I’ve already talked a bit about the miniatures, but, here, I want to talk about the quality of the other components and the gameplay. Continue reading Kingdom Death: Monster →

Gaming

Why I Like Plastic over Resin or Metal

I spent my last post talking a lot about various plastic models. Here, I want to dedicate a bit of time to the other model materials that I’ve put together over the years – metal and resin. While I generally have a positive outlook on plastic models, I’m a lot more mixed on resin and metal, and instead of organizing by creator, I’m going to organize this post by materials.

Metal

Generally, I don’t mind a good metal model, however, I have noticed that plastic typically has a few advantages over metal – it’s lighter and easier to modify. On the other hand, metal models typically have fewer pieces, so they can be easier to assemble and have fewer noticeable joins. For me, the main trouble I have is the weight – I really hate to see a model that can completely demolish itself under its own weight. Continue reading Why I Like Plastic over Resin or Metal →

Pseudorandom

The Scanning and Location Problem

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A couple weeks ago, I posted a math problem that I was playing around with. This problem was born of our some ideas for my new role-playing game, as well as the basic scanning mechanism of EVE Online.

In EVE Online, if you are trying to scan down an object in space, you launch some probes and they report back the distance from the probe to the anomaly, with some amount of error, up to some maximum range. Your ship’s computer then aggregates that information and renders it as an overlay on the scanning screen. If two of your probes received responses, you would get a circle where the two spheres intersect, with three you would get two points, and with four you would get a single point (with some degree of error). You then decrease the range of the probes (increasing their signal strength) to narrow in on your target – a pretty simple and fun min-game which tickles my imagination and makes me think I know something about how science fiction scanning might occur. Continue reading The Scanning and Location Problem →

Gaming

A Comparison by Plastic

I’ve built a lot of different models from a lot of different materials since I started playing Warhammer many years ago. However, the models I enjoy assembling most are plastics. Putting together my most recent Kingdom Death model reminded me that a good plastic model is fun to build, regardless of how complex it is. I realize that a poorly done plastic model can be just as frustrating as any other medium, but I feel like the industry has figure this one out, because it has been quite some time since I’ve run into a plastic model that didn’t go together well.

I wanted to go through the various creators of plastic models and briefly touch on how they make their models fun to put together (in reverse chronological order). Continue reading A Comparison by Plastic →

Gaming

Mercs: Recon

As is becoming traditional, my gaming group and I recently did an initial play through of MERCS: Recon, so I wanted to capture my initial thoughts about the game. I found the game to be quite good, and it flowed well, but I found a number of nit-picks that would have improved the polish of the game. For me, this wasn’t unexpected or problematic in the sense that they are things that could be smoothed out over time playing the game, but they do provide a higher barrier to entry, which is always a struggle.

First, and probably the most minor nit-pick was the internal packaging. All the tiles were shrink-wrapped together, and, since they were different sizes, the shrink-wrap deformed a lot of the tiles. This didn’t cause any damage (sans a little warping), but it was a little disheartening to see when opening the box. The other noticeable item right out of the box was that the miniatures all needed to be assembled (a total of 40 miniatures). This wasn’t unexpected for me, as they mentioned it in the kickstarter updates, but it was a lot of extra work to get the game playable. I generally enjoy putting together miniatures, and these were fairly easy, so it was not a problem, but it felt like a barrier to actually getting to play the game. Continue reading Mercs: Recon →