Wipers Salient - Released in physical form

My game 'Wipers Salient' is now available pre-printed from Gamecrafter. Get your WWI deck building fix!

Here's a vid of me unboxing the proof copy..

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Basement? What basement?

In the fourth session of our Basic D&D campaign, the PCs completely did not enter the dungeon/basement, it's like they saw the rails and ran the other way!

They returned to the Inn with the captured Mayor (see last session report) and found the usual collection of townspeople inside. There was some discussion about how to put him on trial. They ended up with three judges, a prosecution and a defence, that was what you might expect, their choices for the roles was where it went a little weird. The Prosecution was the PCs, the judges included a drunken priest, the Inn keeper that they were buying the Inn from, and one of the PCs. The Defence was being played by the Mayor's ex-slave (freed by the PCs, the same day).

All of the mayors "crimes" were illiterated. The mayor responded with spiting and anger. Then they called on the Defence to make a statement. The ex-slave put down his pie and his beer, stood up and said "We should hang him!" There was a lot of agreement from the people in the Inn. The PCs hackles went up, this wasn't the defence they had expected! The Cleric (a PC) stepped into the breech and after a short break made a heart felt plea for mercy.This ended up with the mayor being chained to a post in the stables until a permanent solution could be devised.

The PCs didn't want to leave a power vacuum so called an election in the middle of town. By a raising of hands they would vote for a new mayor. The only candidate was the Inn keeper, as everyone else there seemed a little confused by the process. Once he was elected he immediately turned to the other townsfolk and started demanding money from them. The PCs intervened and discovered that demanding money is what the old mayor did so he thought he should do it too. They told him it was no way to behave and packed him off to the mayor's house with a thousand gold coins of their own. He took their money with a sly smile and headed off.

Now they wanted some inspiration, as there were missing people that needed to be found. The pot boy from the inn and the Assay for instance. The cleric asked his god for guidance. He started turning on the spot with mace extended he waited for inspiration. As his eyes were closed he didn't see a new NPC fighter pushing through the crowd. Of course the cleric clonked him on the head as he swung around.

The fighter was injured, carrying a bloodied sword with broken shield, and now a bruised head. He revealed that he had staggered here after fighting to free some captives from slavers in the nearby woods. Thinking this might be where the missing people had ended up, the PCs healed the fighter, who was named Garthan. He lead them back to the place where he had fought with the slavers. It looked like he had killed two of them before being driven off.

They followed the slavers trail to a clearing. In the middle of this open area was a raised mound and an iron bound door set into the side. The thief popped the lock and the PCs slipped in finding themselves in a room with two armed sleeping men. Without issuing a challenge they killed them both. Through a door, across a corridor,and opening another door they found themselves in an underground stable. Three men were watering the horses. Without a pause they dropped the buckets and charged. Hacky, slashy, thump. Two of them were killed and the third pounded to the ground. They wanted him alive for questioning. He gave them directions to where the big boss could be found before being knocked out.

Following the directions led them to a large room with a pool in the corner. The floor of the room had buckets all over it collecting water that was dripping from the roof, and the "riddit" sounds coming from the pool advertised the fact that there was a giant frog in here. The pool was by the door  they needed to get through. Of course the frog went for them as they neared that door. Poor silly frog, should have known better, may he rest in pieces.

Through the door along a corridor and they had reached the end of the directions they'd extracted. Our heroic fighter PC tried listening at the door. There was a flash of light (but no sound) and he was thrown to the floor badly hurt. Magical trap! Thinking that perhaps the "J" tattoo that all of these enemies had might help here, they went back to the stable and dragged the unconscious man back to the door and used his hand to open the door. It worked!

Inside they found a big man rising from his bed. They attacked. Maces, swords, arrows and backstabs! The man fought back with with a flaming fist. He put up a good fight and some of his friends turned up starting a second fight at the door as Garthan tried to hold them off. The PCs took some hurt and pretty soon laid out the big guy. The sight of his beheaded corpse set his friends running.

An extensive and detailed search of the room turned up a small chest and a magical scroll. Unfortunately the thief took a very dangerous dart as he opened the chest but did find a horde of 500gp inside.

The very next door they tried led revealed the missing townsfolk chained to the walls of a prison. They quickly freed them and headed for town on the ten ponies from the stables. There was much jubilation and cheering. They had been left with the impression that there may have been more people kept as prisoners in the mound, but before heading back they decided spend the night healing up and buying more healing potions. They cleared out the potion seller and it's likely to be a few weeks before he has any more potions.

A visit to check on the mayor found him hungry and thirsty. It looked like someone had emptied his own slop bucket over him.  Feeling a little sorry for him the Cleric freed him intending to get him food, water, and a wash, but the mayor attacked. His attack was weak and hopeless so he was quickly subdued and returned to his chains.

Karrbo, the mayors ex-slave and ex-defence-lawyer was offered the job of bar tender which he was glad to take. The PCs were hoping to keep the Inn ticking over until they returned to take ownership. So with everything in-hand they headed back to the mound in the woods.

They found the door closed and locked. When the rapped on the door they heard things being piled against the door. It seemed the slavers were not all dead!. The thief popped the lock (again) and they barged in...into a hail of arrows! Five guys were waiting, three with bows and two with swords drawn. The swordsmen attacked but were quickly swatted aside. The bowmen ran through a door but not before one took an arrow in the back.

There ended the session. The players now have two partially explored dungeons within reach of their home. A home I might add, that has had its power structures turned upside down by our friendly murder-hobos.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Unboxing Wipers Salient

The first pre-printed copy of my game Wipers Salient has just turned up, and here's me unboxing it.. Oooh I was so excited and nervous!

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Solitaire Memoir '44 Sword Beach

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Solitaire Memoir '44 Sainte Mere-Eglise

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Solitaire "Memoir '44" Pegasus Bridge

Here's me playing Memoir '44 by myself and only making half a dozen mistakes.

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What would you do? Memoir 44

Here's a quick video asking a question about Memoir 44. What card would you play and which units would you activate?

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Basement 3: Son of Basement

Last night's game of Basic Dungeons and Dragons was the third installment of a scenario all about clearing the basement beneath the inn. Things did not go according to my plans.

Between sessions I had teased some events and answered a few in character questions. The PCs started by asking around the gathered populous about the daggers and the ladle they had recovered from the basement. Only the local blacksmith had something to say. He examined the rusty knife, and had nothing to say other than being surprised that a rusty knife was still so sharp. He looked over the dagger with the gold inlay, remarked that it was well made, but was not impressed with gold being inlaid. He is far too practical a man for that sort of nonsense. He knew nothing about the ladle. They asked if he thought they were magical, and he knew nothing but suggested they might visit the wizard across town, but to be careful as he was a cantankerous git.

The mayor of the town stuck his oar in too when the PCs emerged from the dungeon. Trying to play to the crowd saying that the fact that the PCs had come out again without clearing the dungeon proved how dangerous the place was, and that "he" who cared so much for the town should be given the Inn to keep it safe and to keep the people safe. It didn't go down to well. However it was the precursor to another play that would come up later.

The session proper started with the players visiting the wizard. They found him in an empty stable sitting on a trunk. After a wee bit of back a forth, which included him demanding presents, he set himself to looking over their daggers and of course the ladle.  The rusty knife he flicked away contemptuously simply saying "Silver dagger". Which left the PCs wondering how a silver dagger could be rusty. The ladle he again dismissed as a Cleric's or Healer's ladle (and indeed it later proved to restore a hit point when used to serve) but he had more to say about the fancy dagger. It was of Elvish origin made probably hundreds of  years ago. It was a made to kill lycanthropes and wouldn't kills elves. They gave the wizard a few coins and left him "reading" his invisible (or at least they couldn't see) book, with a promise to bring him any books they came across.

Back at the Inn They prepared to descend once more into the dungeon basement, when one of the Mayors thugs came over and demanded he come with them, and that they give him 10gp. They declined but he clearly told them that was not an option. Things started to get a bit fruity, words were thrown, and shoulders were pushed and it ended with a thinly veiled threat that they would regret it as "the boss" didn't like to be disobeyed.

Our heroes entered the basement and stayed quiet in order to hear if the thug was going to do any thing. It turned out he WAS doing something, he was nailing the blummin door shut! They set to the door and eventually smashed thorough and found the thug with hammer in hand and nails between his lips. Bish bash bosh they knocked him out and offered the innkeeper 10gp for the repair of his door and asked him to feed the brute when he woke. Very considerate I thought.

Back into the dark they went and consulting their map they found a door they hadn't previously opened. Listening at it they heard a burning fire. Quietly they opened the door onto a little room with a door opposite that had gaps and knot holes. The thief had a bit of a peek and saw four man sitting around a fire of burning barrel staves. They knocked. The door was opened and the men invited them in and to sit by their fire which they duly did. One of the men went to shut the door and as he turned back to them he and his comrades transformed into rat men and attacked the PCs. In the ensuing fight the magic daggers were put to use along with the fighter's silver headed, if jury rigged, spear. The cleric however turned into a crazed flame thrower and he sent bottle after bottle of flaming oil at the beasties. The thief also did that most dastardly of things the backstab!

With the monsters dead and the PCs not too well off, they started an exacting and detailed search of the room by firelight. After tripping over it, they discovered an invisible chest filled with coins. A merry and delightful happenstance that lead the PCs to considering the purchase of the Inn above them. Thus they promptly left my Dungeon Masterly rails and headed into the wild blue yonder (eek!).

Back at the Inn, they found the thug and the mayor were gone and tried to purchase the Inn by offering a thousand coins or so, and even offered the Innkeeper the chance to carry on running the place. He asked why if he had all that money he would continue to work as an innkeeper, to which no satisfactory answer could be given.

He was up for the idea but wanted to check that this horde of coin was not fools gold. They suggested he take a random coin or two and check, there was an assay in the town. The Innkeeper was suspicious and didn't want to wander over there with a couple of coins, as the remainder might be swapped in his absence. The PCs didn't want to let him go with the money either.

In the end one of the pot-boys was sent to bring the assay to the Inn. They waited, and waited and waited. Neither the boy nor the assay appeared. With another Inn-boy as guide they went out to the assay's abode and found the front door open, the fire burning down, but no assay and no boy.

As morning came they visited the missing boy's mother suspecting that the little tearaway had simply gone home. She was horrified and ran out to the assay's looking for her lad, then to the Inn but he was not to be found.

With people going missing our heroes decided it was time to visit the Mayor and see what he would do about this matter. The Mayor's house sat within its own hedged grounds and as they passed the hedge they were confronted by two of his guards. "You shall not pass" was their message but the heroes really wanted to pass and so it came to blows. Swords were draw and subduing damage done. In fact one of the guards was subdued to the floor in a bloody pulp. The other broke, and ran for the house. The Cleric whipped out is sling and promptly dropped the runner with a single shot.

They stepped over the runners body and knocked on the front door of the mayors house.A little rat of a man answered and they pushed their way in knocking him to the floor.

The mayor appeared in his dressing gown, was horrified to find armed men entering his house with violence. They asked him what he knew about the disappearances but he claimed not to know and to care less. "Peasants disappear all the time, how should I know what happens to them?"

He promptly shut and barricaded the door leaving our heroes in the hallway. They checked the rest of the house finding plenty of pies which they tried. Then they sent the little man with an armful of pies off to the Inn (and thereby setting the Mayors serf free).

With the door barricaded they went round the outside of the house looking for a window and they soon found the Mayors bedroom. With no Mayor to be found they suspected he'd done a runner via the open window. The thief jumped to the thatch for a looksee and spotted the brave Mayor running like a mad man beyond the hedge. They set out after him. The fighter was the only one able to keep up and out enduranced(CON) the Mayor. They manacled him and dragged him back to the Inn for some kind of trial.

There ended the session. What will happen next time? I haven't a clue, this train aint got no rails.

Edit: Our thief has reached second level!

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Actual Play of Lovecraftian Shorts

"The Redacted Files" podcast published an actual-play recording of themselves playing my game, Lovecraftian Shorts . I'm pretty pumped to hear strangers having such a good time with my game.

They nailed it.

Go to The Redacted Files

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I killed the Alien!

Today was truely my day of days! I played "Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building" game

and I won. Every other play of it up to this point had ended in bloody disaster, twice with the Nostromo blowing up killing everyone. But not today!

I was playing solitaire with four characters. Having tried previously with just two I can now say that four is better. Both times when I've played with four I've had much more control over the game.

I played slightly differently to previously, and let's face it that's how you beat these games. Is this a constantly winning strategy, who knows, but anecdotally it worked during this play.

In my previous plays I paid a lot of attention to trying to give each character matching symbols to unlock the extra abilities. During this game I didn't do this. Instead I tried to simply duplicate cards in a characters hand to do the same thing, and this worked at least three times.

The second difference was not filling my hand with new cards just because I had money to spend. Instead I wasted some money rather than grab 1-attack cards. This actually led to the row of available cards filling with what I considered "junk". This happened twice, but did lead me to get a couple of duplicate-card purchases which helped later.

The final tactic, was minor but made a huge difference. As I drew a new hand of cards I always sorted the "coordinate" cards and placed these face up. This made sure they were always front and center. These were critical to the win. I constantly used other avatar's cards to purchase or attack, there was no thought of reserving a "coordinate" card. If I could use it I did, except on one occasion where I had to leave one attack card to deal with a face-hugger. By always using these cards I increased each individuals purchasing power enabling me to get the better cards sooner.

It so happened that I never deliberately scanned a room, only doing this when I had spare attack value that I couldn't use to actually attack. I always scanned the most expensive room that the cards allowed.

So I have completed the first film. Next time I play it'll be the "Aliens" movie, and I'm looking forward to getting a close look at the cards for that film.


... and I've just heard that a Predator version is coming, I'd better hurry up and get through the next three films!

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Back to the Basement - Basic D&D session report

Last night was a return for the players to the basement beneath the Filter Inn. Their first port of call down there was to the undead zombie creature that they'd left trapped in a barrel last time. They came armed with flasks of oil. The young cleric however wanted give turning it another try. He powered up his holy symbol..PHUT. Nothing, again. So the barrel was dowsed in three, yes three, bottles of oil and lit on fire. Then just to be sure, the burnt remains were dismembered and scattered about the dungeon.

Then is was back to exploring. The first door opened found the Kobolds from last session in a new room hard at work. The floor of the room had been excavated (10 feet of course) except for a pillar in the center, on which stood a golden statue. the kobolds were trying to construct a bridge of planks and rope to reach the statue, but the PCs thought that they themselves should be the owners of said piece of artwork. After some deft rope work and an artful piece of rope-bridge-climbing by the team's Thief they soon recovered the heavy statue and somewhat miffed the kobolds. However! The fighter had brought pie. So he delivered pie unto the kobolds and thereby placated them.

Back to the basement entrance to deposit the statue and then on to explore further. The next door opened to reveal two angry giant fire beetles. These were quickly dispatched and their juices swept into the empty oil flasks for use later.

The next door revealed two more beetles hanging on the ceiling (wandering monster beetles in fact) and these were quickly dispatched.

Into the next room which turned out to be rather empty. A bundle of sticks, perhaps firewood, was in the middle of the floor, but buried in amongst it a well kept ladle. Odd. Perhaps lost/left by the previous heroes who tried to clear this basement.

The next encounter with was a small group of Kobolds bedding down (very sleepy wandering monsters these), the PCs backed slowly out of the room leaving them to their Zs. It seems the PCs wish to find a less violent way of dealing with Kobolds.

Two more corridors led them to another pair of Fire Beetles which were guarding a hole in the floor. They were quickly dispatched and a rusty dagger was found in the rubbish scattered around the room.

When they reached a room where a partial collapse had brought down some of the ceiling they were obviously wary of a collapsing roof trap, but braved the room anyway. A banging against one of the room's doors caught their attention. When they opened the door, a veritable force of nature burst in knocking a couple of PC's to the ground. It was a large wooden trunk running along on hundreds of dear little legs. It ignored the PCs, shot across the room through the opposite open door and disappeared beyond sight. (Farewell Terry).

With the new door open they nipped through it and along the corridor beyond opening a door into what can only be described as a chapel. Bench seating was in disarray  and a large symbol was carved into the end wall. Investigation of the symbol gave the poor Cleric a bad headache (-1 for 20 mins), as it's pure evil could be felt. He set to it with hammer and destroyed this evil manifestation.

After peeking into a frog infested well the final encounter of the night was with a group of Gnomes. Some discussion with the grumpy Gnomes led the PCs to understand that they were not welcome in what the Gnomes considered their home. The PCs backed out of the room and promptly pittoned the door shut.

The PCs left for the night, returning to the upper world and the Inn. They still have a challenge before them. They were tasked with clearing the basement, but now have two groups of Kobolds and a bunch of Gnomes that aren't quite monsters, yet still need to be dealt with, it is after all harder to kill a Kobold you've shared a pie with!

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

D&D - clearing the basement

Last night I DM'ed my first game of actual basic D&D in quite a few years. It was a good mixed

party of first level characters, Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Elf , and surprise of surprises there were no characters deaths. Unthinkable for 1st level adventuring!

In the town of Sift is the Filter Inn, which has an annual event of sorts where young adventurers put themselves forwards for a 100gp bounty. All they have to do is clear the Inn's extensive basement of the "things" that have moved in. There is great honour to be had in achieving this goal, as well as the money, hence our brave PCs volunteered (read that as rail-roaded by the DM).

The Inn-keeper lead them to the basement, cleared the barrels out of the way told them the secret knock (the only way he'd open the door to someone on the other side) and shoved them down the steps.

They lit a torch and examined the first room. There was the body of a man there with shield and sword and even a few gold coins which they promptly liberated. Then commenced a series of door listening rolls that carried on all evening.  With the fighter and cleric leading the way they started  the clearing operation.

After moving through a bunch of empty rooms the only things they'd found was a small chest containing a vial of unidentified liquid and a barrel filled with salted fish. Somewhat disappointing for them, but things were soon to get interesting. The next door revealed another body. When they approached, the obviously dead individual rose to its feet and tried to strangle them. The cleric boldly stood forth and proceeded to not turn the creature. They laid into the corpse with swords, maces, arrows, sling stones and daggers. They managed to knock it to the ground a couple of times but it just wouldn't die. The cleric took a serious hit and risked drinking the vial they'd found earlier which fortunately turned out to be a healing potion.

When they came to the conclusion that the monster just was not going to die the elf came up with plan 2b. Rushing back to the salt fish barrel, he emptied it and dragged it back to the fight. The fighter slammed the beastie to the ground and they stuffed the thrashing dead man head first into the barrel and sat on top, pinning it in place. The only problem being, someone needed to stay on top of the barrel!

Looking around they found the monster had been laying of a sack of copper coins, one thousand of them. So they hoofed that on top of the barrel to hold it in place. reluctantly they left the money to hold the undead thing and moved on.

Their next encounter was a pit-turned-pool that housed two giant frogs. The first arrow fired caused the frogs to leap to the attack, but it was a fly-less effort (that's frog speak for fruitless) as they were soon clobbered into a greasy paste,

The very next door was a wandering monster. HUZZAR! They found themselves facing a man who blinked at their torch light and begged them to lead him out of the dungeon. They offered to take him out but became suspicious when he insisted on wanting to be at the back of the party. Then when they questioned him, he became agitated, then angry and then violent. The man transformed into a man-rat and attacked. He ended up not being too much of a threat and he was soon downed. When dead he transformed into a simple big rat.

Suspicious of the dead end corridor they found themselves in, the elf did his elfy-searchy-thingy and revealed a hidden door. Listening at it told them there were many strange voices beyond. Carefully they opened the door and surprised a horde of kobolds setting up camp. The kobolds tightened their grip on their weapons but did not attack. There was no way to talk with them so the party made conciliatory noises and even offered them hunks of rat and frog meat. That settled it, although not friends they were at least not enemies. The PCs ducked back out of the room and heard the kobolds hammering the door shut.

They examined their map looking for another way round and headed for the next unopened door. What they found was a tiny room with another door and when they listened at that, they again heard kobold voices. When they carefully opened they door they discovered the same kobolds, so backed out of the room. Once again the kobolds started hammering and sealing that door.

Back to the map, back through a few rooms to the next door. Kobold voices again. Peek. yep, it's them again. Irate kobold remonstrations about the disturbance as the PCs backed out. Hammering sounds as the kobolds sealed yet another door.

Onto the next door. It revealed a large room with a raised stone platform at the far end with a coffin on it. Between the PCs and the coffin, eight armed and animate skeletons which turned to attack. Realising the enemy could outflank them the PCs pulled back to the doorway as the elf cast his magical shield spell. The cleric warmed up his magical symbol to turn the skeletons but alas he must have left the key at home as it failed again. The skeletons attacked. Swords proved rather poor for this work but the fighter made up for that by managing to clobber all of the weak enemies. The cleric did his macely duty and the elf and thief sent a hail of missile fire into the foes.

In next to no time the skeletons were dust, and they investigated the coffin. Fearing Dracular himself they opened the box and discovered it empty. When they moved the coffin however they found a recess below and inside that, 600gp and a gold-inlaid dagger.

Here ended the session. The basement was by no means clear of monsters. The kobolds were contained (by themselves), the undead thing was barrelled, the skeletons, frogs and rat-man disposed of. They decided to retire for the night back upstairs and lick their wounds.

Next time, the adventure continues...

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Wipers Salient

After what seems like forever I've finally released my card game ... WIPERS SALIENT.

During WWI, Ypres was the centre of intense and sustained battles between German and Allied forces. In the game of Wipers Salient you play the part of the Allies trying to hold back the massive forces of Germany during a series of incessant attacks.

Wipers Salient is a solitaire deck building game using a deck of 52 specialised cards. You have to gather your resources to maintain your Health and Morale, whilst attacking the enemy to avoid being overwhelmed.

Included in the zipped up package:
The rules in PDF format.
The cards in a printable PDF.
All of the individual card images in a high resolution, so that you can print them using a card printing service (but please refer to the readme.txt file before doing so for licensing information).

You can purchase Wipers Salient from WargameVault

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Dungeon Mapping for players

I've created a video to help players map a dungeon in a way that doesn't lead to arguments and mistakes!

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Progress report...

My work on my WWI deck builder game is progressing nicely. I'm finally working on the rules for the game. This includes not only words but quite a few diagrams to help explain whats what and how. I'd kind of forgotten that the rules would require this. After spend weeks doing all the cards I finished the last card and was pretty darned glad to have got it done and dusted....

Only then I realised I needed some art for a couple of stat-tracks. Then I noticed that I'd done the text wrong on nine of the cards. Then I started the rules and more graphics work is needed.

I can only say, I'm so very glad I'm starting to get a handle on Inkscape. This software makes the kind of work I'm doing here fairly easy, and being SVG based it scales to any size should I need to. So if I want to convert it to use hobbit sized cards or even giant cards, I'm set :)

The problem is, I'm getting pretty worn down, working on this game. I'm so close to the end and the lure of the next game is niggling and trying to drag me away from completing this project. I will overcome!

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Mechs COPS - Session 3

The third session was planned to be the final session. With the heroes having saved the city from a nuclear detonation last time, I was left pondering how to up the pressure. In the end I started teasing the final session by making a series of posts throughout the week, as follows....

 -----

++ ALERT ++
Satellite intel indicate Kargan assault forces may be forming at multiple naval ports.

-----

++ ACTION ALERT ++
Satellite intel confirms heat blooms in the all ships and submarines along the Kargan coast.
++ ACTION ++
All military forces engage DEFCON 3 readiness protocols.
++ ACTION ++
All civil authorities prepare coastline evacuation plans.

-----

++ MISSILE LAUNCH WARNING ++
SET STATUS DEFCON-1
ACTIVATE MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEMS.
MILITARY UNITS TO COASTAL DEFENCE STATIONS.
CIVILIAN LEADERSHIP TO BUNKERS.
MARTIAL LAW DECLARED.
CIVILIAN TRAFFIC FORBIDDEN WITHIN 100 MILES OF COAST.
CIVIL DEFENSE UNITS ACTIVATED.

-----

 ++ CONTACT REPORT ++

MISSILE DEFENC[]S 96% EFFECTIVE.
MOYKO BA[]E. NO CONTACT.
HONOR[]TO BASE. NO CONTA[]T.
JINO NAVAL []ASE. CARRIER SU[]K. SABOTAGE. INFIL[]RATORS.

-----

++ CONTACT REPORT ++
KARGAN INF[]NTRY ON THE GROUND: KIANNA AI[]BASE.
KIANNA CITY MILITIA  CLOSE ON BASE.

-----

"Thanks, John. I'm standing one mile from Jino naval base. As you can see I'm wearing a rad suit, and the scene behind me makes it obvious why. The thousands of destroyed homes that previously occupied this rubble strewn landscape were owned by navy personnel and civilian naval workers.

"I'm told that the Kargan nuclear missile that struck at Jino was one of ten aimed at the docks. This reporter supposes the Kargans targeted Jino because of the military vessels docked there. But as you can see, the collateral damage is extensive.

"How many people perished here? Certainly thousands. Most I hope, are safe in the shelters and will survive this unmitigated and  unnecessary attack.I...I...I for one, will be joining the militia right after I terminate this broadcast. I'm close to tears right now...They dare to call it a war of liberation! Liberation!...I swear to you all, I will kill the first Kargan bastard I see.

"Back to the studio. Miko Yasuki, channel three seven five."

-----

++ CONTACT REPORT ++
AIR RAID APP[]OACHING JINO COAST.
ESTIMATE 600 AIRCRAFT.
ALL AIR []NITS INTERCEPT, TARGET TRANSPORTS FIRST.

-----

The aid held out the radio-phone for Major General Hoata White, but the General hesitated. His mind was a whirl of despair-level decisions and he was almost afraid to talk to phone.

It didn't matter who was on the other end of the line, he knew what they wanted. They wanted help, something he couldn't give them. As he paused he felt a shaking fear rising from the pit of his stomach. He remembered when this had started, shit, only sixteen hours ago! Back then, he'd had three complete divisions under his command, plus a mecha air wing, and a battalion of front line combat mecha.

Now what did he have? Nothing. He was left pushing around the crumbs of his forces. No strike unit, no reserves. What could he offer the man on the other end of line. Hope? Was that it, was he reduced to giving his men hope?

The General blinked, twice. Hope. There was, Hope.

He snapped the phone from his aid's hand, covered the pick up with a gnarled hand and whispered to the aid. "Get me the District 6 police bunker. Now!"

He cleared his throat and spoke calmly into the radio-phone.

Police Lt Hope

"Report soldier. How can I help?"

-----

So the session proper started. With the military devastated, the militia gone, they turned to the COPS. Lt Hope answered his army-uncle's call and loaded his mekton unit up onto the road-train. Each PC's mekton was issued a heavy duty shield which snapped onto their backs.

All the PCs knew was that they were wanted out at Jino navy base. The road train rushed them out of the city and onto the interstate. The train rolled to a standstill on an elevated road that crossed an extensive marsh. A couple of hundred meters of the road was missing leaving a marshy gap.

After puzzling about a way to get across, they convinced the train driver to uncouple the tractor unit and reattach at the other end and push the first few cars over the edge to form a ladder down to the marsh. When he was in position Tanaka climbed down the cars to the marsh where he started sinking. Yamamoto jumped his mekton down from the road and immediately sunk to his chest. Tanaka slipped the shield off his mekton's back and used it to spread his weight. He was then able to help pull Yamamoto free. When Tylor descended down the "ladder" they found themselves stuck.

It didn't take long for Tanaka to start knocking up some mekton-marsh-skis from the now wrecked road-train. With the skis fitted they were able to cross the gap in the road and reach the first road-support pillar on the other side of the break. The first two to attempt the climb up to the road failed, sliding back to earth, but the third PC made the climb and punched a a hole through the road so they could climb up. The other two made it through and they turned to say farewell to the rest of the COPS unit who were just starting to make their way down the opposite end of the break.

In the outskirts of the city, or rather the wreck of a now-radio-active city, they found  a mech hand twitching and sticking out from underneath the huge piece of masonry. Between them they managed to free the mech, which turned out to be the sole survivor of a military unit. Getting crushed beneath the rock must have saved his life. His mech was a wreck but Tanaka managed to do some field repairs that got him running.

Round about now they realised they didn't know the purpose of the mission! A quick radio call back to Lt Hope revealed what they needed to do. Vital launch codes were unsecured and still on the sunken aircraft carrier in Jino. The PCs needed to recover the suitcase full of codes.

They could see a flying mech in the distance running figure eights over where the navy port was supposed to be and making occasional strafing runs. They didn't fancy taking it on, so looked for a subterranean route to the navy base. The metro system proved to be closed and locked down behind blast doors, as it was used by the populous as a bomb shelter.

Scouting around revealed storm drains running below the surface, so they dung their way in and started shuffling along the drain system.  After some time they reached the end of the drains, and dug their way upwards , ending up sheltering in a crater.

It was time to do something with that enemy flying mech. Tanaka decided to try one of his strike missiles. In what can only be called phenomenal luck, he not only hit it, but got a head strike that took it out in a single hit. The enemy mech spiraled into the ground.

From the crater they could see the aircraft carrier, laying on it side on the far side of the bay. Enemy mechs were moving in the distance to either side so they opted for the submerged option. Sprinting for the water they sealed up and dived beneath the surface. They waded across the floor of the bay, even at one point feeling a vessel move above them, until they reached the carrier. Here they were a bit nonplussed and unsure how to proceed.

In the end they moved (still underwater) to the rear of the ship and found one of the screws. It was a matter of minutes to disconnect the screw from the shaft. It whooshed to the muddy bottom leaving the hollow shaft open to the water. In they went, crawling to the end of the shaft and melting their way out with liberal use of plasma guns.

In the engine room they wondered where the codes would be and decided they would be in CIC. A little investigation soon found a map stuck to the wall. Unfortunately the insides of the aircraft carrier was not designed for mechs so they had to start kicking and tearing their way through the ship, spelunking their way to a soggy CIC.

When they found it, they realised it was the armoured heart of the ship and they couldn't tear a way in. As they moved around to the doorway vibrations and noise indicated the enemy were here too.

In a rush the tore through the final wall to find themselves in a shaft. The enemy had cut their way into the ship from its upturned side, effectively driving a shaft down to the CIC. A large energy drill was working on cutting it way through the wall of CIC (which was the scene's floor as the ship was on its side) and was being operated by a big enemy mech.

I should remind you, at this point, that this is still all underwater (in the ship).

They laid into the mech. Yamamoto went in with mecha-claws acting s as a kind of distraction while the others started plinking it with plasma rifles. The improved Military Grade armour proved very effective against their police weapons. The plasma beams seemed to just be pock marking its surface. Fortunately for them the barrage of shots kept the enemy mech staggered and thrashing about unable to retaliate.

A Strike missile was fired and burnt through the leg armour and Tanaka took advatage of this. While the mech was still fighting and reeling with the others, he slipped in behind it and with some quick moves disconnected the leg and proceeded to beat the mech with the dismembered limb!

In the end though, the three PCs and their NPC army buddy wore the Kargan mech down and left it in pieces.

Yamamoto set the drill back into position, it had been knocked during the fight, and burnt his way  through the wall of CIC. A man sized hole was made.

At this point one of the PCs was supposed to de-mech in this watery radio-active hell hole and go get the brief case with the codes. Dying a heroes death while saving the nation. Of course, PCs will be PCs so it didn't go down that way.

The drill, which had a massive internal power source, was slipped from its braces, pushed through the hole into CIC and detonated with a Strike missile. Everything in the room was vapourised, including the codes. - Darned PCs, ruining my bittersweet endings!

Knowing there were more Kargans topside, they elected to leave the ship the way they came it, only this time ensuring the nuclear engines would overheat and explode, thereby ridding the world of more Kargans.

So ended the mini campaign.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Mecha COPS - Session 2

We ended our last session with our heroes half way up the stairs of the Herego building about to start trading shots with heavily armed and armoured bud guys across the atrium.

I opened the session with a bit of a cut scene. Simultaneously the PCs heard screams from the floor above and noise below. Above them and across the atrium a man in a business suit was fighting for his life as a pistol armed bad guy was trying to push him over the glass banister.

The noise from below turned out to be another bad guy, but this one seated in a strange looking mekton. Unlike most mektons which are enclosed this one was open fronted. It was also armed with a strange very large gun that was discharged towards the heroes. It appeared to be a sonic weapon as it made all of the PCs feel sick but otherwise did not hurt them. In these same few seconds their lieutenant spoke over the radio informing them that he was unsure if they had declared a nuclear emergency or not so he was dispatching a road-train with their mektons (the full size mecha, and not the puny road-striker-mecha they had been in so far.).

This was the end of the cut scene, but it allowed me to present the players with a dilemma. People above in trouble and a threat below. I then threw them each a personal flash back to reinforce the split decision thing.

Tanaka was a child walking through a park his dog on its lead, his older cousin holding his hand. Then two large bully-boys slapped the lead from his hand. The dog ran for the lake and the ducks. It jumped into the water but couldn't get out because of the concrete ledge around the water. He ran to the water's edge just as the bullies started slapping his cousin around. He ran back to the bullies and attacked them, and was slapped to the ground for his trouble. The bullies turned on Tanaka and he shouted for his cousin to save the dog...

Yamamoto was in his early mekton training on a road patrol when a burning building caught his eye and he ran that way. At the building he found a woman leaning out of a window screaming for help. She was out of reach of the mekton so our hero piled up some civilian cars and climbed onto them. He could see the room behind the woman was about to collapse, but the woman was shouting to Yamamoto to rescue her daughter, another floor up and another window over. He couldn't reach the girl and the woman's room was about to collapse. He shouted for the girl to jump into his mekton's arms. She jumped...short...

Tylor's flashback took her back a year or two before she joined the mekton squad.She was a sniper on overwatch at a hostage scene. She was watching through a scope as a bad guy threw a civilian against the buildings window and started to swing a knife into his throat...just as her radio alerted her to the fact that the negotiation had gone bad and the villians were going to set off a bomb. In the next window over she could see a bad guy about to press a detonating button. She switched target to the guy with the detonator and fired...

Then the session proper started.

Tylor and Yamamoto took the fight upwards, climbing the stairs and shooting down both the heavily armed men. Tanaka still in his bear-form striker-mekton decided to take on the bad guy down below. He leaped from the stairs plummeting fours floors to pound the mekton below through the wooden floor.

As Tylor and Yamamoto climbed the stairs they discovered the company employees under the guns of a five bad guys. As they took them out Tanaka mauled the mekton driver and used his bear's energy gun to decapitate the last bad guy on the ground floor.

When it was over, ten bad guys and one civilian were dead. Our heroes followed the surviving and handcuffed bad guy to the hospital and put the virtual thumb screws on him. They soon discovered that when they left the Herego building they'd left a nuclear bomb behind! They finally called the boss and declared the nuclear emergency.

They raced back to the Herego building as the population headed for the shelters. At the scene of the previous battle, only the police tape and rubble was left to show that anything had happened. They raced down into the basement.

18

They smashed through the doors.

17

They smashed through the inner doors.

16

Tanaka de-meched and edged into the first room.

15

Then he saw the corpses in the side rooms.

14

...and edged into the control room.

13

After a sharp breath Tanaka burst through the door, bullets blasted all around.

12

Yamamoto and Tylor took out the two bad guys.

11

Tanaka took a look at the bomb with its ticking-down counter.

10

Red wire...or blue

9

Blue.

8

The countdown stopped.

Our heroes returned to ground level but there were no cheering crowds, only Lieutenant Hope on the radio telling them there was a "real" emergency to deal with. One of the planets mega-fauna had broken through the defensive protection and was in the park. They quickly jumped into the police mektons which were sitting on the road train and set off towards the park.

When they reached the park there was a large hole in the wall, but no sight of the mega fauna. They moved carefully into the park and discovered movement under the water of the river. A plasma cannon soon got this winkle out of his shell. A massive snake-like creature erupted from the water and towered over them. They opened fire. The creature flailed smashing one of our heroes across the park into a number of cars. Another thrash opened up a massive hole in the ground as the massive beast collapsed the roof of an underground metro system. The heroes poured in the fire burning up the beast little step by little step until they finally brought it down.

And there ended the session. The PCs have saved the city from terrorists, a nuclear device and a massive mega fauna capable of crushing buildings with a flick of its tail.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

P.A.G. Space Battles - published

P.A.G. Space Battles is two player wargame played with cards laid on a tabletop, each card represents one space ship or piece of terrain.

The Pink Empire and the Green Conglomerate have been at war for centuries with no end in sight. You take control of one these factions, play out your space ships onto the tabletop and seek to DESTROY the opposing force with laser cannons and manoeuvre.

Using a comic art style and an easy-to-learn system P.A.G Space Battles will appeal to the younger player, or the older player just looking for a beer and pretzel game. Games can last anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes depending of the selected scenario and the size of the forces involved.

Five scenarios are included, but you're not limited to just those games. Select your fleets, place down some terrain and battle away in the vacuum!

P.A.G. Space Battles is a print and play game. 7 page rules PDF. 1 page counter sheet PDF. 5 page ship-cards PDF (2 pages of ships, 2.5 pages of terrain, 1 page of card backs)

Currently available from

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Card design for a deck builder

I'm working on a deck builder card game, and have just completed the play testing phase. I've been dickering around with the design of the card for much of the day, and I'm finally narrowing down the final format. As it's a deck-builder game the cards do not have to be used in-the-hand so I haven't had to worry too much about sticking information in the corners of the cards.

It's tricky because I want the art to show through, but still make the cards easy to see and read. A classic design problem. I'm aware that the edges should really be white to avoid the wear issue, but I am otherwise quite happy with where I've got to.

 

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Mecha COPS - Session 1

Mekton II cover

Last night we played our first session of a mini campaign of Mekton II, a mecha themed game from 1987. I've had this game for about 10 years and it was way overdue for a dusting off.

As a theme I opted to have the player's be Mecha COPS, an "elite" segment of the force who operate in ... mecha. Each character was given a Road Striker (that's a small transformer) for personal use but also had access to a full size mecha (Mekton) when the situation would call for it.

All the characters had recently transferred to the Mecha COPS and their new Captain was not happy about the transfers, so he gave them the crappy jobs. I started the session with each PC getting a little spotlight scene in which to shine.

Bruce Yamamoto had been sent off to do a rolling road patrol downtown, where nothing much happened. He was pulling his mecha-car into a fast food drive thru when a young lad driving driving a buggy screeched into the area, bounced over a path making pedestrians flee to safety, and skidded his car directly into line in-front of Yamamoto. A small sign in the rear of the car lit up saying "you lose",  played la cucaracha and belched a thick black cloud of smoke out the exhaust all over Yamamoto's mecha-car.

Bruce transformed and stepped round the front of the car. The open mouthed driver shoved his car into reverse. Yamamoto grabbed the front of the car and lifted. Through the mech's P.A. he demanded the driver put up his hands and get out his paperwork. The driver tried to comply, keeping his hands up and trying to grab his paper work in his teeth.

Yamamoto's radio blared with an urgent call...

Emiko Tylor's mecha-bike was parked beside the road on which she played the roll of replacement traffic-light at a four way intersection. Blaring horns alerted her to trouble on the uphill road. Turning she saw a school bus careening downhill in her direction with the driver slumped over the wheel. she ran for her mecha bike.

The kids on the bus were screaming (as you might expect) and one was even trying to climb out the back window. Emiko dived onto her mech-bike, transformed and ran back into the road.

Realising her mecha didn't have the weight to stand in front of the bus she let it pass and grabbed onto the rear as it whizzed by. With her mech's heels digging furrows in the tarmac she brought the bus to a halt and the kid that had been climbing out the back window dropped into her mech's arms.

Tylor's radio blared with an urgent call...

Jimmy Tanaka had been detailed to do foot patrol in Popsi park. That suited him as his beast-mecha had a feature that allowed it to follow him under its own steam. At an intersection ahead he saw an altercation between a man and a woman.

As he got closer the altercation got worse, the man grabbed the woman's child and held a knife to its throat, the screaming started. Tanaka used his bespoke mecha-remote to have his mecha ( in bear form ) growl and tower over the man. He flipped out, dropped the knife (and the kid) and ran for it.

Before Tanaka could follow, his radio blared with an urgent call...

[As an aside, I was unhappy with the above scene, it wasn't dynamic enough I should have come up with something with more action - sorry Brian]

The radio call summoned the players to the scene of a police incident, where terrorists had taken

Cutaway view of the Herego building

control of the Herego building. Police had tried to storm the building, and twenty of them had been shot down in a storm of fire, they needed mecha support!

Tylor on the speedy mecha-bike screeched to a halt outside the line of cops and ambulances and liased with the sergeant on the scene. He explained what had happened in a stressed voice and demanded the Mecha COPS do something.

Transformed Tylor crossed the road and went up the steps to the glass doors. In her imagination she could hear the Captain screaming at her about damage to the building, so she carefully reached for the door handles. Just at that moment grenades dropped all around her from the roof top shattering the door anyway. She edged into the lobby and stalled looking at the next set of glass doors.

Having carefully negotiated these she was in the security entrance. Through the security window she could see that the guard had been killed. The next doors were wooden. She peeked through the portholes into the atrium beyond and then proceeded to try and open the doors. Unfortunately the mecha hands punched through the door and knocked it off its hinges. Doh!

Yamamoto arrived at the scene, transformed and spotted movement on the roof of the Herego building. Bullets started spattering  across his front and off the tarmac all around him. He whipped round his beam weapon and blasted a hole in the wall around the roof.

Fearing more damage to the building Tylor de-meched (is that a word?) and stepped into the foyer, but found herself under fire from a doorway. She traded fire using her rifle and brought down her man. He was wearing torso armor and instead of killing him, her shot felled him. It was the work of a few moments to have him in cuffs.

Yamamoto moved away from the police, hoping to draw enemy fire away from the unarmoured normal cops.

Tanaka trotted onto the scene riding on top of his beast mecha but on seeing the scene of carnage transformed into an upright bear with himself inside its armoured hull.

A bad guy appeared  on the roof holding a rocket launcher. Yamamoto took his shot and vapourised the man and setting off his rocket in a secondary explosion.

Tylor started up the central stairwell and was a level up when Tanaka crashed through the remains of the doors into the atrium and started following her up the stairs. His mech leaving a trail of destruction on the wooden floor and stairs. A grenade was rolled down the stairs towards our heroes.

Outside Yamamoto traded fire with another roof top villain, this time removing his target's head. The body fell over the parapet to crash onto the stairs out front. Bruce ran for the building's entrance de-meched (that word again) and sprinted for the stairs.

Tanaka wrapped Tylor in his mech's arms and raced over the grenade where it exploded harmlessly behind, the shrapnel bouncing off his mech's armour. They rounded the next turn in the stairs and found themselves facing three bad guys.

Tylor took a shot, blowing a leg off of one gentlemen. Her next shot knocked another to the ground, then she ducked behind Tanaka. Bullets bounced all around and off the mech as they returned fire. One of the bad guys had a weird large-muzzled weapon which appeared to fire ...fire, in a lance...so it was maybe a fire lance? Whatever it was, it missed and set fire to a few inspirational posters of cats.

Tanaka used a huge paw to swipe at the bad guys but they easily ducked aside. Yamamoto arrived in time to see Tylor blast the arm off of a second criminal. Tanaka pinned down the remaining obstreperous  bad guy until they had them cuffed/bound/incapacitated, and then he moved further up, fortunately only squashing the severed limbs and not the bad guys, and demolishing more stairs as he went.

Yamamoto and Tylor stayed behind a moment when they spotted a "device" hanging out the coat of one of the villains. they examined it but couldn't make it out. Realising Tanaka was the expert they took it to him for identification. When they dropped it into his mech-paw he soon recognised it as a remote detonator for a nuke. A hurried call to the police outside left everyone confused as the sergeant out there asked if they were declaring a nuclear emergency and they wouldn't confirm or deny the emergency status.

Yamamoto had seen people on the top floor of the building when outside, so the players decided to keep heading up. At the next turn in the stairs they spotted two individuals across the atrium opposite them. These men were armed with BIG rifles, and unlike the other bad guys who only had torso armor, these guys also had helmets.

There ended session 1.

As stated above, I was disapointed in myself for Tanaka's opening scene, but otherwise I think it went well. It's been a while since I've played a game with such a detailed combat system and I was surprised at how long it took to actually do the fighting. I thought we would have blown through the scenes I had planned at the Herego building, but fighting is rather drawn out. Mind you, the detail in the system stopped it from becoming boring, as the results helped the narration.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Classic Traveller Podcast

I've just published the first episode of a new podcast designed for referees and players of the classic version of Traveller. It's got the cool name of "Behind the Claw".  Get your RPG podcast fix!

The podcast's homepage

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

Classic Traveller - Lament for Oretroos

Between the last session and this another radio intercept was picked up...

Radio Intercept

The session started with the PCs and thirty of their mercenary company standing on the riverbank as a horde of writhing fish/frog-like things rolled towards them.

Keeping out of reach they split up to see how wide-spread the horde was. As far as they could tell it was all along the river. They rejoined the unit, formed a defensive circle and started pouring out the fire. A rough calculation showed them collectively doing around 1600 points of damage per round.

The horde of creatures just didn't stop, they kept coming, and an hour later ammunition was running low and even the FGMPs were overheating, but still they came. During the combat they PCs noticed that the creatures were attacking each other as well as coming for them and that they were cannibalistic too.

They decided to pull out and head for the nearby (ish) native village and the caves there that they thought would be more defensible. In wedge formation with the FGMPs carving out the path they headed for the village. As they moved away from the water the animals thinned out until soon only the odd one or two had to be eliminated. Behind them the horde was destroying everything, buildings trees and even each other.

They spent the night unmolested in the cave, and dawn, ever the hope of man, showed bright and clear with no sign of pursuit by the horde. They started to head back towards the camp site and called down a shuttle from the King Richard. The shuttle swept high over the camp reporting the devastation and then came by for closer pass. As the crew were reporting what they found at the camp the radio went dead. Fearing the worst the PCs hurried onto the camp and could soon see that the shuttle was burning on the ground.

As they moved towards it they suffered from another of the EMP-like pulses and a third of the team found their power armour powering down. At the same time they came under laser fire from the woods. The team went to ground and started returning fire at unseen targets.

After a few rounds of blind fire, two of the company were down, and the first of the enemy were seen. At first all the PCs could see was silver reflect-like shields and the snouts of laser rifles . When they hit them with the FGMPs which would normally melt through reflec, they found the the plasma beams were near useless! In a heartbeat they commanded the mercs to switch to projectile weapons and a suppressing fire of Snub rounds was sent towards the enemy.

More of the shields appeared as the team split into three. Jocko lead his squad straight-in with Bear and Kepler's squads flanking to either side. The enemy turned out to be a small squad of lightly armoured Aslan. The battle didn't last long, but two men from each team went down to the Aslan lasers, bringing the total casualties to eight. The last two Aslan made a break for it, running with the shields held behind their backs. For our intrepid heroes, shooting enemies in the back has never been a problem, the last of the Aslan were therefore cut down without concern. They looted the bodies discovering a few interesting things. The Aslan were dirty and grubby, obviously having been in the field for some time. They were also carrying iron-claws the Aslan equivalent of swords, but of most interest were the shields they'd been using. they were thin foil like devices that folded easily into a pocket and "popped" out to form the reflec-like shields.

It seemed to the players that the Aslan invasion of the sub sector had obviously reached this world and that it was time to get the heck out.

As Kepler the medic went to work (and only losing two of the casualties) the team spread out to search the area. They located an Aslan mortar and took possession of it. They advanced to the downed shuttle and sent out patrols to secure the area. The only survivor on the shuttle turned out to be none other that the head steward from the King Richard who had got caught on the shuttle went it emergency-launched.

Once the area was declared clear of enemy forces they called the remaining shuttle to come and pick them up. As it entered the atmosphere those on the ground caught sight of something...

On a distant ridge line a huge biped could be seen, when examined it was revealed to be large Aslan robot, much bigger than the one's the team had previous appropriated. It appeared to be carrying a large dual barreled weapon. It became obvious that the thing had seen them and as it raised it's gun, then melted it with their FGMPs. As it crumpled a group of 10+ Aslan were seen to come running over the ridge and down into the trees with another robot. They set up the mortar and fired off the remaining rounds in the general direction of the Aslan forces, hoping to disable the Aslan force with what they hoped were EMP mortar rounds.

As the shuttle swept towards them the Aslan fired at it, the PCs could see the laser beams skimming past but missing the shuttle. They rushed all of their people onto the shuttle and headed space-side at the double quick.

Once on board the King Richard the PCs had some trouble convincing the Captain to jump out of system ASAP as he was still thinking of completing the passengers "holiday". This was however given short shrift and a few "kill him and take the ship" asides were swapped. The next question was were to go.

The ship was scheduled to rendezvous with the refueling ship in the deep dark between systems as it had on the way out, but the PCs seriously wanted to head to one of the nearby planets, one of which had a Navy base. The Captain was dead against this. He didn't have funds to refuel the ship at an unscheduled port and sending for funds could take months. The passengers would be screaming blue murder if they did that. In the end it was settled to make the jump out into the dark.

The refueling ship however had been attacked. It was right where is should have been, but there was no life sign. Investigation showed that the ship had been hit with scathing laser fire. The PCs boarded and ensured there were no enemies aboard and then shunted some of the King Richards engineers across to look at the situation. The main transfer pumps were out of action but after getting one of the generators online they were able to jury rig a new pump. Unfortunately this new system would be like filling a swimming pool with a garden hose, it would take days.

Back on the quiet peaceful King Richard a day or two later there was a minor explosion in the engineering section that rocked this ship and upset the passengers. The engineer reported that the jury rigged pumping system had been the root cause but that he would watch it carefully from now on.

A good while later a fire was reported in a cabin. The crew took care of it but when the PCs wandered down to take a look at the situation, they found bodies amongst the debris. They were the bodies of the Montaski's. The PCs immediately went looking for the Curdelets. The men of these families had been at each other throats on the way out. They found Mrs Curdelet in her stateroom, and she thought her husband was in a bar somewhere.

They pounded down to the nearest bar, found one of their Vargr troopers struggling to drink from a human pint-glass. He indicated that the man they wanted was in the corner booth. In the booth they found a well sozzled Mr Curdelet. After a brief inquisition they didn't get anything out of him and he tried to walk away. Out came the Snub pistol and tranq rounds. The first round went into the Vargr and the second into Mr Curdelet. There was more panic and screams from the nearby passengers who only saw men with guns shooting people down in the bar.

As you can imagine the passengers and crew of the King Richard are becoming jumpy and scared. The trip out was dotted with missing people and talk of Vargr monsters attacking people. Then the visit to the planet had turned into a series of animal attacks, bloodshed, Aslan, and death. And here on the return trip, explosions, attacked ships, and now the guards shooting people in the bars.

The man was locked into his room with the pass-key and the Vargr dropped off with the other Vargr troopers who had a good laugh at his expense.

I'm an author, I write adventure game books.

How To Write a Gamebook

I just realised that I haven't posted here about my video series on how you can write a gamebook!

I've a few of these books under my belt now, so I thought I'd create a short series on how to write them. So if you're bucket-list includes writing a book, why not watch this series and share a new game book with the world. This is the first in the series, but I have just posted the fourth, and there will be more coming.

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Classic Traveller - What? Eh? Say again?

Recap -The PCs are leading a group of mercenaries acting as security on a cruise liner going to an off-limits world.

Between last night's session and the previous one I set up a few teasers before we started, I posted this after the previous session...

"Day 1: The initial survey was followed up with the establishment of a safe swim-zone on a likely looking beach. Before the passengers were allowed on the surface, an area of sea  close to the beach was ringed with a strong net and small explosives dropped inside that ring to kill all life within. Then the surface was skimmed and finally the passengers allowed down to enjoy the waters and beach.

"One shuttle is running a regular ground to surface route and the other is being used to establish a jungle camp someway inland from the safe-beach."

Then the next day I posted...

"Day 2: A Jungle camp is established five miles from the Swim Zone set up on Day 1. A clearing has been made, and tents for refreshments and overnight stays for around 50 people erected. A partially cleared path has been made/mapped between the two camps so the passengers can "make trail". The camp is surrounded by a "bug fence" for keeping out flying insects and small ground creatures.

"A cliff no more than 2 miles from Jungle Camp, has been identified for the establishment of a climbing camp.

"A 'Hide' has been placed close to a native village for those wishing to view the natives. However up to this point, no natives have been seen. The native village is 5 miles further inland from Jungle Camp."

Then the next day a posted a tease for the players other PCs (known as the home-team) who are still back at the sub sector capital, a snippet from the local news source...

"The enforced evacuation of Stallone has now been confirmed by refugee-Indes employees appearing at the various ports of the system. Indes representatives were not available for comment."

Then subsequent to the snippets above I posted the following radio intercept (yes the one I posted in the last session report and should have saved to go here...

Radio Intercept (only 1 minute 34 seconds of MP3 audio)

.. finally the session started.

We established how the troops were distributed between the three camps, beach, jungle, cliff, and the ship. Then things started to happen. The beach camp was ringed by laser posts effectively providing a zappy bug screen to protect the tourists. The PC 'Jocko' noticed a child standing close the zap fence staring out into the jungle. He approached the child asked what was happening and the kid told him he thought there was a critter in the bushes.

William who was running the bar on the beach, was approached by one of the rich passengers and offered a couple of thousand creds to accompany this guy on a little unscheduled hunting. He wanted to get himself a trophy-head of one of the autocthones. William turned him down and suggested he might want to have a word with the Vargr contingent, and sent him on his way.

Jocko started to move the kid away from the fence and the critter, when the flying-snake-with-wings-thing (a.k.a. fire lizard) launched itself at the kid. Jocko used the cape of his uniform to shield the child and smacked the critter to the floor. Then he swung round his ACR and let fly at the thing with a full auto burst. shots went everywhere but not into the creature! It lunged for the kid and got a grasp of his arm. Another PC, William, dived in, and heaving a cutlass (or was it an axe?) killed the wee beastie. Sadly this left the child in very poor health.

The child was rushed to a shuttle and the team's medic Kepler, took off rushing to get him to the ship and the med bay up there. As it ascended the pilot called Keplers attention to a shape in the water below. An very large animal, 80 to 90 meters long was swimming below the surface towards the beach. Was it a danger to the holiday makers? Kepler risked the life of the child by ordering the shuttle to spend time and circle around so that he could a few warning shots across it's bow with his plasma gun. This didn't seem to work, the creature slipped about the columns of boiling water he created and continued to the beach. When he turned back to the child, he was dead. There was nothing else for him to do now, but to head back to the beach and start an evacuation.

At the beach, the PCs started a near-panic by ushering people away from the water line and along the path to the jungle camp by telling them a monster was coming.  The shuttles landed near the beach and the PCs reversed direction and started herding people towards them to get them off planet.

The beast raised up out of the water, a massive thing with hundreds of small tentacles where the head should have been and smashed over the safety fence and flopped its "head" onto the beach. The head split open into five main tentacles and huge bulbs started swelling up on each tentacle.

William opened up from the beach with his FGMP and burned into one of the pods (doing 58 points of damage) which exploded in a cloud of spider-silk-like filaments that started drifting towards the beach. Jocko turned on the beast with an entire magazine of RAM grenades from his ACR. (another 70 odd points!) Explosions rippled along its body.

One of the tentacle pods exploded of it's own accord and thick strands of "silk" shot out in all directions, which the PCs managed to dodge but which hooked six of the passengers and started dragging them back to the root of the tentacle.

Kepler took a shot now as he leapt from the shuttle. His plasma burned into the creature doing an equally stupid amount of damage! William came back for a second shot and this time the creature was killed before it could swallow any of the tourists. However these people were seriously hurt. Not only dragged along the ground and crushed, but when the "silk" was peeled off  it had caused some reactions. The injured were loaded onto a shuttle and sent space-side.

On the ship, the shuttle was met by the ship's captain and he was not happy to find scared passengers pouring back to the ship but also injured guests! He remonstrated with Kepler who was supposed to have kept the people safe from harm, and had allowed them to be harmed. He was not a happy man.

Jocko decided to get a closer look at the monster and started to cut it open. Immediately a horde to writhing wormy creatures poured out of the wound, swimming in the water and writhing around on the sand but didn't cause any harm.

From here things calmed down a little. The beach camp was abandoned and people settled into jungle camp. The laser fence from beach camp was retrieved and set up as a second inner barrier around the camp. The PCs were starting to get a new respect for the unknown fauna.

Many of the passengers took to fishing in the nearby river. What they were fishing out were eel-like with frog faces, and a pair of small arms near the front. They tasted good, and barbeques were very popular. Over the next couple of days the PCs noticed how these fish were getting bigger over time. The first ones brought out of the water had been five or six inches in length but over the next day or two those pulled out were a few inches bigger.

During the night, the patrols noted how the zapper fence along the river was very busy zapping something. In the morning the floor was found littered with the dead fish-frog things. Many of these dead creatures were larger again.

Jocko wanted to get a look at one of the autocthones and so set off to the "hide". When he joined his Vargr compatriots at the hide he was disappointed to note there were no locals about. The Vargr reported that, actually none had been seen they arrived.

The PCs decided to investigate the village. It was set within a shallow bowl in the landscape. Rude beehive huts constructed of mud were scattered around, and there were cave mouths around the edge of the bowl. Inside the huts they found the scattered remnants and accouterments of a neanderthal like life style but no locals. Investigating one of the caves they found the bodies of locals who appeared to have been dead for some while. There was no evidence of foul play.

They returned to camp and jumped into a shuttle for a trip to another village, in search of any of the local tribes. At the next village they found the same story. At the next it was the same again. Various theories were advanced but no definitive answer was arrived at.

As they took off to head back to camp and only ten feet up alarms and claxons sounded and the shuttle's systems simply shut down and it dropped onto its landing struts.  Fearing an attack of some sort, Jocko pulled up his ACR intending to use its infrared to scan the surround jungle, only to find it wasn't working. All the electronic gear was down, only the coms built into their suits was working (hardened electronics). The theory that won out, was that they had been hit by some kind of EMP. It turned out that the jungle camp was in a similar position, it's fences had shut down. Fortunately the other shuttle had been spaceside and hadn't been effected by the ...whatever it was. They ordered the camp evacuated and set to work trying to get the shuttle up and running.

A few hours passed before they managed to get it running. When they arrived back at the camp they had powerful lights erected around the camp and most of their mercs on the ground and prepared for an assault. As darkness fell they saw a horde of eyes reflecting the lamp light, emerge from the water...

And we ended the session there.

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