Plataea Outpost

In our family Vanguard Saga campaign, the heroes have crossed a harsh, arid wasteland and at last have reached a remote military outpost where they will work with the local garrison to undertake their mission here on the planet Elysion. 

They've also caught up with the Demeter, their trusty transport ship, from which they were separated shortly after arriving on this world. That ship is, of course, is a Warhammer 40k Valkyrie. Cheers to 40k for a wide range of models that I can use in roleplaying campaigns -- but jeers to our 3D printer, which crapped out when I really could have used a few more chain-link fence segments!

Sanctuary

In our family Vanguard Saga campaign, the heroes have undertaken a new mission to the barren but mineral-rich world of Elysion. After being separated from their transport ship, the companions make their way on foot to the nearest settlement, a ramshackle mining community known as Sanctuary. Here's a shot of the group and their Sanctuary Militia escorts approaching the town...

And now a zoomed-in view of the community. Note the cute little outhouse! Aside from that a few other items, the rest of the stuff was 3D printed and painted by yours truly. Inside, the buildings are all stocked with beds, tables, chairs, etc., and plenty of NPCs for the heroes to interact with.

Here's a shot of Sanctuary from the front...

And a side view...

I wonder if any wasteland-dwelling raiders will attack this place while the heroes are here...?

Better Late Than Never!

It's been years, but Dungeons Pop has finally delivered! This long-awaited Kickstarter arrived today, and I'm stoked to have this incredibly cool pop-up 3D terrain for use in fantasy campaigns. Here are two of the larger maps...

Each lies perfectly flat when folded up, but unfolds when you open it to display a flavorful adventure site. Nathaniel and I are already talking about how we can weave all the sites together into a campaign. 

The set also includes a couple of blank maps to be used with the dozen or so Mini Pops -- smaller pop-up terrain pieces that stay open thanks to clear plastic sleeves attached to the bottom. Below are two Mini Pops on one of the generic maps.

Great stuff! Well, kids, Merry Christmas from 2023!

Welcome to Wenro

We're inching closer to starting our zombie apocalypse game! I set up the buildings that form the core of Wenro Center, a small community off of Interstate 86 in western New York. All the buildings (as well as the smaller terrain elements and townspeople) were printed on our 3D printer and -- for better or for worse -- painted by yours truly. 

Nary a zombie to be found! Well, at least, not yet...

This story is set in the same world and time period as our Tales of the Ternion campaign, but it's a horror/survival theme rather than comic book superheroes, and the title will be Dark Enigma -- named after a spooky campaign of yesteryear. Can't wait to get started!

2023 Goal Achieved

Looking back on the year that was, I could rattle off any number of gaming-related accomplishments. (Yes, granted, it's all recreational, but I view anything I learn or do as an opportunity to accomplish something.) I painted tons of 3D-printed terrain, delved into retrogaming, and ran a Doctor Who campaign that was pretty dang cool, but I think I'm most proud of reinvigorating the Druid Cycle world. Matthew and Nathaniel had played most of their D&D in my Shattered Realm setting, but in 2023, they leveled up to the big leagues. We started one campaign just for them, and then a separate one where their two older cousins join us via Zoom, and in both cases it's been absolutely fantastic. It's like 1998 all over again!

TWD DOA

Sometime this week, we'll be receiving a package that contains various materials for The Walking Dead RPG, which I was glad to back on Kickstarter. It will make for some fun reading material over the Thanksgiving holiday, but unfortunately it won't serve as the rules system for our upcoming zombie campaign. 

Nathaniel and I have spent many hours combing through the PDF version of the core rulebook, and we both came to the conclusion that the system really needs to be used for "theater of the mind" gaming, and is altogether impractical for a fully 3D campaign like the one I've been cooking up. The rules are fast and fun, and -- like its sister game, the Alien RPG -- shockingly lethal to player characters. They are also abstract. Like, really abstract. This is not a game for maps and miniatures, let alone an entirely 3D environment. Nathaniel and I went down some house-ruling rabbit holes but ultimately were rewriting the game. We even explored the possibility of re-skinning Alien for a modern setting, but that don't work out very well either. 

As such, I've landed on the TinyD6 system, which we used for the Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign and then again more recently for our Doctor Who game. I really wanted to make TWD work, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Butts and Zombies

With Matthew and Amy at a swim meet this weekend, Nathaniel and I have been keeping ourselves busy with some gaming fun. I completed Delphine's renowned Another World on my Evercade, albeit with some assistance from the internet to get past some of the more opaque puzzles. I gave Future Wars a go, but the port to Evercade makes a certain early section of the game unplayable due to the Evercade's controls, so I'm wondering if users of this recently released cart will complain loudly enough for some sort of patch to be released. Undaunted, I moved on to a third Delphine title, Operation Stealth, a James Bond-style adventure that's been loads of fun so far -- even though I haven't yet managed to get my secret agent through customs and out of the airport!

When Nathaniel finished his homework, we got down to business with a few hilarious games of Butts in Space, and then turned to more serious business: adapting the brand-new The Walking Dead RPG rules for use in our upcoming family campaign (a loose sequel to the recent Tales of the Ternion) that will utilize all the 3D buildings I've printed (and laboriously painted) and hordes of zombies from Zombicide (also laboriously painted). The TWG rules don't quite meet our needs; the main sticking point is that combat with walkers is abstracted and not played out round-by-round, whereas our fully 3D campaign will require much more precise rules for how many walkers there are, how far away from the heroes they are, etc. Nathaniel is always up for discussing game rules, however, so I think we'll land on some solid house rules before our packed calendar affords us time to get the campaign started.

TWD Inbound!

I received an email indicating that The Walking Dead RPG that I backed on Kickstarter is going to be shipping soon! We'll be using this system (which features the same core game mechanics as the Alien RPG) for a Front Porch Multiverse campaign that is, in some ways, a loose sequel to our recent Tales of the Ternion superhero story. The intrepid heroes of this new game will be trapped by a devastating winter storm in a remote corner of upstate New York just as a zombie outbreak is occurring all around them.

This campaign will also be the first we've ever done that uses entirely 3D terrain. As I've mentioned over the past year or so, I've printed out and painted numerous buildings and countless smaller objects (tables,  beds, garbage cans, etc.). The campaign will feature three distinct settings -- the "downtown" of a small community, a top-secret military base, and a survivalist compound in the wilderness -- that the players will explore. The final task in my long list of preparations is to round up the zombies because, well, you know, you kinda need zombies for a zombie campaign! The minis from the excellent cooperative board game Zombicide are the same scale as the minis we use for our RPG campaigns, so I've pressed them into service. And, yes, I'm painting them. I was able to repurpose fifty-six miniatures from Zombicide, so I'm now in the midst of slapping some color on them. They won't be great, but no two will be the same, and at least they'll look better than flat gray plastic.

Done!

For better or for worse, I finished painting all the 3D buildings that I printed out last year. It's a big milestone that gets us closer to the massive zombie apocalypse campaign that I've planned for Amy and the boys. It will be our first-ever all-3D campaign, with three fully-fleshed-out locations (a sleepy town in upstate New York, a military base, and a survivalist compound) and enough random odds and ends to create ad hoc wilderness settings as well. I'll share photos here on the blog as the players encounter each of the major locations. 

And now that Matthew and I have repaired our 3D printer, we can actually print more buildings. But that would be crazy, right...?

A Year Already?

I used to keep detailed game session notes back in high school -- probably still accessible on the hard drive of our old Tandy 1000SX in my father's basement! -- but I got away from the practice as an adult and always regretted it. I resolved to start drafting session notes again when the boys and I started Tales of the Ternion, a superhero campaign that was, essentially, a sequel to my first-ever campaign, Earth Commanders. I was just looking through some records and noticed that Tales began exactly one year ago today. Wow, a whole year! I'm surprised it's been that long. 

I'm really proud of Tales, and would rank it among my top ten or even top five campaigns of all time. It was character-driven, dealt with a lot of weighty and topical issues, and featured some really nifty plot twists -- all while stitching together the most important threads from our modern-setting campaigns of the '80s and '90s, bringing them fully into the Front Porch multiverse. We'll be returning to the setting of Tales in a few months with a follow-up campaign, for which I'll be using all that 3D-printed terrain I've been painting...

Dungeons Pop

In my never-ending search for RPG and wargaming terrain, I love the idea of using 3D terrain, but there are a lot of complicating factors -- cost, storage space, time and effort for painting, etc. -- that make it tough to implement 3D on a large scale. To date, I haven't found a great solution that addresses all of those considerations...until, maybe, now? There's a new Kickstarter called Dungeons Pop, and it offers full-color 3D terrain at an affordable price and requiring very little storage space. How do they pull it off? Well, it's basically like a pop-up book! I'm backing this project not only to get the products shown on the page, but in the hope that the creators eventually branch out into other genres, like sci-fi and modern urban settings. Keep an eye on these folks!

The Walking Dead RPG

The official RPG for The Walking Dead funded on Kickstarter in just eight minutes this morning, and I'm pleased to say that I was one of the backers who jumped in right when the project launched. I'll be using this system (the same ruleset as the Alien RPG) for my upcoming post-apocalyptic campaign. (Even Amy is going to play in that one!) With a delivery date of November, I now have plenty of time to finish painting all those 3D buildings I've printed. Oh, wait, now it sounds like the preliminary digital rulebook will be available next month...

Near Year, New Games!

Lots of great game stuff on tap for us here in early 2023. I need to challenge the boys to a rematch of Conquest of Nerath after they crushed my evil empires last week, and Nathaniel and I are both itching to get started with the Game of Thrones board game (although the real question is whether we can get Amy and Matthew interested). Both boys got lots of Warhammer stuff for Christmas (the new Astra Militarum boxed set for Matthew and the Warhammer: The Horus Heresy core set for Nathaniel) that still needs to be put together. On the RPG front, I'm almost ready to get the boys into a full-scale Doctor Who campaign using the Doctor Who Exterminate! wargame miniatures and a hodgepodge of other minis and maps. On top of all that, my niece and nephew are interested in joining us for some D&D, so I'll be creating a new campaign set in the Druid Cycle world. I guess I really won't have time to finish panting all those 3D-printed buildings...

What's Next?

The boys are inching closer to the end of our Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign. Well, not the end, but the climax of the current story arc. This campaign has really exceeded my wildest expectations, and it's been an absolute joy to weave together all those old modern-setting Front Porch campaigns from the '90s into something like a single narrative that fits neatly within this multiverse. I have a follow-up campaign planned out that will take place during the same timeframe and involve some of the same characters, but that game requires our 3D terrain, and, well, we all know that I haven't made too much progress in painting it!

So, what's next? Matthew asked me yesterday what's on tap for after we finish this phase of Tales. For the first time in a long time, I don't have the next thing lined up. I anticipate we'll wrap this storyline around Christmastime, so I'll get a bit of a breather as the boys and I devote our time toward some of their awesome gaming-related gifts. But what is the next campaign? I have to admit that I'm not terribly motivated to cook up another long-term adventure in either the fantasy or sci-fi settings of the Shattered Realm universe and would much rather get the boys into the Druid Cycle, but they know little about that setting and don't seem especially eager to dive in at this point. I get it -- the Shattered Realm stuff is what they know and love. 

Meanwhile, I've been buying and painting Doctor Who Exterminate! miniatures as that wargame line nears the end of its lifespan. I'm looking forward to playing out some cool "what if?" battles, like Cybermen vs. Ice Warriors, or a Time War conflict of Gallifreyans vs. Daleks. But hey, since I've got all these great minis, why not use them for a roleplaying campaign too? Dare I try my hand at a Doctor Who storyline? It feels almost like sacrilege for me to approach that setting, but I would dearly love to get the boys interested in the Whoniverse. So, I'll put on my thinking cap (a fez, of course) and see what ideas start to grow...

Monday TARDIS Blues

Grandfather Nurgle was the guest of honor at our Thanksgiving this year (henceforth it will be known as "That Pancake Thanksgiving"), and he continued to share his blessings on my birthday. Since we weren't in any shape to continue our Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign, I tried to get some painting done. As I'm still trying to avoid tackling the growing pile (it's now a full shelf) of 3D-printed buildings, I made some progress on my Doctor Who Exterminate! miniatures, finishing up my unit of UNIT infantry. I got to work on the TARDIS and thought I could knock it out quickly. Hey, it's only two colors, right? Well, even with careful drybrushing to get the tiny raised lettering of "Police Box" and "Public Call", I managed to screw up the "Public Call" on one side really badly. I could strip off all the paint and start the whole model over from scratch, but I also have to acknowledge that my my kids and I are the only ones who will ever see this stuff and it doesn't have to be perfect. Heck, the boys have been playing a multi-battle campaign with the Necrons against all of our other factions and half the models they're using are half-finished, just undercoated, or not even painted at all! They're having fun, and that's what matters at the end of the day. I need to learn that lesson, because I was still grumbling about the janky TARDIS lettering on my way to work this morning. Going through all the emails I missed over the long weekend, I saw that my team had chipped in to get me a Games Workshop gift certificate for my birthday. I'm going to spend it on something fun that the boys and I can all enjoy together, and not worry so much if it's painted to a "parade ready" (or even "battle ready") standard. 

(That sounded convincing, right?)

Doctor Who Exterminate! The Miniatures Game

I've nearly completed painting the free Warhammer Age of Sigmar set that came as a result of our Warhammer+ membership and, of course, I'm still dreading the massive array of 3D-printed buildings I have yet to tackle. (At least I've been smart enough not to print any more buildings!) 

How else can I procrastinate? Why not invest in an entirely new wargame and paint all of those miniatures first?! Done! 

I just ordered a copy of  the rather awkwardly titled Doctor Who Exterminate! The Miniatures Game from Warlord Games. The starter set has plastic Daleks and Cybermen, but the rest of the line appears to be pewter. I'd prefer plastic, but I'm very keen on staging some cool Whoniverse battles, so if the minis need to be metal, fair enough. I don't know anything about the game stats and how the individual factions play, but I will most likely look to field a strike team of my beloved Ice Warriors. Maybe a team-up between those stolid Martians and Earth's plucky UNIT troopers against a massive Dalek invasion? 

So...many...buildings...

We've made a lot of 28mm-scale buildings with our 3D printer. A lot. The intent is to use all this 3D terrain for modern-setting campaigns in the Front Porch multiverse. For example, our Tales of the Ternion superhero campaign currently uses flat maps, but it's just crying out for a more dynamic environment to host all the larger-than-life action of characters who can scale walls, leap over buildings, hurl vehicles down the street, etc. I'm also knee-deep in narrative for a spinoff campaign that involves a zombie outbreak in a sleepy little town. With scores of zombie minis from Zombicide, the vast array of 3D buildings we've printed, and custom hero minis from Hero Forge, it's going to have absolutely blockbuster visuals! 

There's only one problem: I have to paint all this stuff!

Looking at the gargantuan pile of gray plastic in the corner of our game room actually fills me with anxiety. First-world problems, I know, but I'm kind of freaking out about how long it's going to take to paint these buildings. I'm also looking for any excuse to put it off, so various other paint projects keep moving to the head of the line. Just yesterday, in fact, I received the latest free mini that comes with my Warhammer+ subscription; it's a chaos sorcerer (with a bevy of cute-yet-evil little familiars!) for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, but I'll repurpose it for our Shattered Realm D&D campaign. After that? Well, do I have any other unpainted models besides the buildings...?

The City Is Growing!

I haven't posted much about our 3D printer since those earlier warehouse pics because we've been troubleshooting some bed adhesion issues. Now we're using a raft with each print and it's working out very well. Construction of our city continues apace!

Above is a free model that Corvus Games Terrain allows you to download from their site. Why not include a game shop in our town?!

I love this model because it's so versatile. It's a modular design, so you can print and stack as many stories as you like. I'm going to use the same files to create a three-story building next. As you can see, there's an empty rectangular space just above the door and street-level windows; this area is for gluing one of the many signs that were included among the files, so I'll glue different signs onto this building and its future three-story cousin. Plus, the building has internal floors, so you have lots of opportunities for interior play as well!  

And now my favorite: the pizza parlor! I might re-print the roof to try to get better resolution on the letters and numbers on the sign, but for now it's fine. We also have quite a backlog of stuff to print, as Matthew and I went on a bit of a shopping spree on Corvus this morning, purchasing files for more city shops, an industrial building, and a military base. 

Just please don't ask me about how these are going to get painted...

Playoff Preview

Our 3D printer has been running virtually non-stop. Based on our experience thus far, I think it's going to be fantastic for printing terrain and buildings, but less so for printing minis. We've now printed four of the generic trooper dudes from my earlier post, and two of them are essentially unusable because the printer somehow messed up the rifle and/or the right arm. 

Anyway, back to hockey! It's playoff time for my historical guys, and Season 7 is the first to feature two full rounds of best-of-five play. Sadly, the Millionaires and the expansion Bearcats are heading home, but the other four teams now have their opening-round playoff assignments.

Comets (1st) vs. Thistles (4th)

It was a magical season for the Comets (11-3-6) and many of their players, four of whom finished in the top ten in points: Blair Russell (third), Mike Grant (fourth), Frank Foyston (fifth), and captain George Richardson (seventh). Behind this elite quartet, the league's all-time goals-scored leader, Frank McGee, notched a dozen tallies. If the team has a weakness, however, it's on the penalty kill. The Comets finished dead last with 70.37%. Their first-round opponent, the Thistles, had an uneven year. They were the only playoff team to finish below .500 (6-8-6) and with a negative goal differential (-5). On the positive side, Alf Smith came alive in the second half and finished with 14 goals and rookie Jack Darragh chipped in 10 of his own. 

Prediction: Comets in four.

Victorias (2nd) vs. Bulldogs (3rd)

The Vics had the league's best goal differential (+19) and absolutely dominated on special teams, pacing the circuit in both power play (24.62%) and penalty kill (92.16% -- the best percentage in league history). They weren't as strong at five-on-five, but stars Newsy Lalonde and Cyclone Taylor finished first and second, respectively, in the scoring race. The Bulldogs, meanwhile, were carried by veteran netminder Paddy Moran, the odds-on favorite to win his first Goaltender MVP trophy after backstopping the team to a league-low 2.40 goals against per game. His fine work covered for down years (relatively speaking) by Gord Roberts and the Dogs' other stars. Journeyman winger Jack Ruttan, a trade deadline acquisition, exceeded expectations by scoring five goals in eight games to close out the regular season.

Prediction: Victorias in four.

First 3D Building!

Behold, our first 3D-printed building! This warehouse features double doors that actually slide open and a removable roof to allow access to the interior. 

Matthew has already claimed it as his hero's lair in our Tales of the Ternion campaign! Next up, we'll be printing a pizza shop. It's not Picnic Pizza, but it will have to suffice!