Happy Year of the Dragon

Not much to post. Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Year of the Dragon. 恭喜发财！

I have been able to get Space Hulk to work on DOS Box 0.73 for some reason it won't work on 0.74

Now the main problem is I get ripped to shreds be Genestealers. Oh yeah, Soul suckers in Star Crusade are Genestealers, not Tyranids. Shows what I know.

I did play another Star Crusade mission, this time with the Ultra Marines and was doing okay. The one exception was a marine with the flamer being vaporized by a booby trap. The real problems came when I went into the main room only to find a dreadnought. The graphic of the smoking boots of my heavy gunner was whimsical, but it all went downhill from there.

The main thing I need to figure out for that game is how to make the AI quicker, most of game play is sitting around waiting for the computer to do its thing.

Star Crusade

After being inspired by brutpaul's 5150 post here. I decided to do a search for Space Hulk, Star Crusade and Doom games. What I found was some abandon ware of the old DOS games for Space Hulk and Space Crusade (also known as Star Quest in Europe). Space Hulk still won't run but Space Crusade did after some finagling and forum reading.

The mission started off great, I was coming upon individuals an overwhelming them with firepower from my squad from the Imperial Fist Legion. However when we ran into a large room with doors to either side, we ran into trouble. A soul sucker (Tyranid) was in one of the rooms and the other room had assorted gretchin and ork. Suddenly my combat rolls were crap and the soul sucker was unbeatable in hand to hand. I tried to fall back to a corridor and lay down some cover fire, but was swarmed and died a grisly death.

Fun, but frustrating when your rolls suddenly go bad when you need them.

Nuts & Bolts #1: Blod Orn – Prologue

For my first Nuts & Bolts article I'll try to elucidate how I used various resources to guide the story of my Viking Character in the Talomir setting.

So I started with a given, we want a Viking theme in Talomir so we start in Mirholme. I tried some random generators for a prophecy for this character and ended up narrowing down a list from donjon, but as of right now it still doesn't fit. Or at least I don't know how to make use of it yet in the story.

What did make sense was the Age of Fable character motivation table. I believe the available tables were Barbarian, Peasant and Noble. A quick d6 roll gave me Noble (1-2, 3-4, 5-6 if you're wondering). Rolling on that table I received a result of [Committed a crime and was let off on condition they go into exile (innocent)]

Mirholme is made up of two provinces so 1-3 capital (western) province, 4-6 Eastern. And I got Capital.

So it was at this point that I felt I needed to flesh out the back story a little more. I came up with the idea of a succession struggle and our main character being framed for kidnapping the clergy who would be needed to coronate the next King. I could have just written a narrative, but I decided to give Mythic GME a try to help me drive the story forward.

Mythic Questions ( Chaos Level 5):

Is the person who framed him a family member? [50/50 Roll 90 = No, 91 would have been an exceptional no.]

Is the person who framed him now the King? [ 50/50 Roll 73 = No]

Has the person who framed him been granted possession of his lands? [Likely Roll 97 = Exceptional No]

Does he have a younger brother who is now in charge? [Very Likely Roll = 76 Yes]

Does this brother support the new king? [Likely Roll = 34 Yes]

Is the new King from the other province of Mirholme? [Very Likely Roll = 74 yes]

So from this line of questioning we see that the younger brother has now taken over our heroes duties and has, while not framing him outright, supported the rival faction.

Now we had characters to name. I chose to name the characters with the Age of Blood naming table and I made up an IPT file to do so which you can get here.

Main characters:

Our Hero: Hemming Wulfgarson, his brother (Dag), the High Priest (Stakard Svafrlamirson), the evil Jarl (Aun Bjarnisson) and the characters of Oleg Vikarson (the young spearman) and Fafnir Svafrlamirson (the grizzled vet). These last two were his shieldmates so to speak who would help him on his adventures, essentially so he wouldn't be killed outright.

This brought about one more Mythic question:

Are Fafnir and the priest brothers? They have the same patronimic. [Likely Roll = 58 Yes]

I ended up not really doing anything with this story line, but it may be useful later.

So that is how I used Mythic and Age of Fable to start the campaign.

Blod Orn – Prologue

  The sky began to lighten as Hemming Wulfgarson readied his pack for the long trip ahead. His fathers old Huscarl, Fafnir Svafrlamirson, was sharpening his axe while the young Bondi, Oleg Vikarson, thanked the Farmer for his hospitality. Hemming's head swam at the thought of how he had gone from inheriting his fathers lands to exile in just two short seasons.

  Wulfgar had died from age and illness in the Summer of 985. Hemming had taken over as Jarl and his brother Dag had inherited a few farmsteads to the north. Hemming remained a loyal supporter of the King, Haakon Thrandson, and all was well. This continued through the fall and winter of that year and it wasn't until shortly after the new year, in the Spring of 986, that things all began to go horribly wrong.

  First the King had died suddenly and without an heir. All the Jarls were quickly called to the capital and the factions began to jockey for support. Hemming had sided with the Jarls of the Western Province in backing a distant relative of King Haakon. Those from the East backed the Grandson of the King before Haakon. They were at an impasse and it looked as if the country would be torn by civil war. It was at this point that Aun Bjarnisson pulled Hemming aside. He said he had a way to make a deal with the Eastern Jarls but he needed Hemming to go a get Odin's Godi, Stakard Svafrlamirson, to quickly coronate the new heir before they had a chance to change their minds. In order for this to work, Aun explained, Hemming's brother Dag would have to be present to cast his vote while Hemming brought the priest.

  The road had been hard and Hemming had been waylaid by bandits, but two days later he brought Stakard to the Council chambers. It was then he learned he had been duped. Aun's sly tongue had fooled him and preyed upon his brothers sympathy for the Eastern Jarls. Dag had cast the deciding vote for the candidate of the Western Jarls. They then claimed that Hemming had kidnapped the Godi to prevent the coronation. Rather than further shame his family name or challenge his beloved brother to combat, Hemming accepted the penalty of exile.

  Now he would follow the winds to fame and fortune and cut a swath across the fat belly of the decadent southern lands. If he could make it out of Mirholme alive.

Mythic GME & Age of Fable Links

In yesterdays post I had made mention of two game aids that I am using, but forgot to add links to them. So for Mythic GME you can look here. I believe I bought it from Paizo.

The Age of Fable tables can be found here.

Enjoy!

Talomir Campaign – Blod Orn (Blood Eagle)

Following in the footsteps of TalomirTales, Javier at War, Chroniques du Fort Bastiani and HalfwayStation; I am starting a campaign set in the Two Hour Wargames setting of Talomir. This is a fairly stock Fantasy setting with Elves and Orcs, Good and Evil etc. In it I will try to tell the story of Hemming Wulfgarson, an exiled noble from Mirholme, using the Warrior Heroes: Armies & Adventures (WHAA) rule set for his adventures. For larger geo-political events I will use Rally Round the King (RRtK). To help drive the story I have been using a combination of Mythic Game Master Emulator (Mythic GME)¹ and random tables from Age of Fable, as well as other random generators from around the web. I'll try to point those out as I go along.

As is usual for any project I do, I have gotten so far ahead of myself without even playing that I have become bogged down in minutiae. So to reign that in I am, more or less, following what they are doing over at Talomir Tales. To that end I am focusing on that portion of Talomir referred to, by some, as Norwes. This will include the countries of Mirholme (Vikings), Altengard (German Imperialist), Capalan (Italian Condatta) and Tereken (Irish in the rules but Saxon for me).² Therefore I can use the Viking and Saxon figures I already have (still unpainted) and concentrate on amassing only two more somewhat similar armies.

So the first issue to resolve is the Army List for the now Saxon lands of Tereken³ . I could use the one from Talomir Tales here, but I am not sure about having so many mounted. Age of Blood has some provision for mounted Nobles and another Army List for WHAA for the Anglo-Danish armies of 1066 has 6% chance for mounted Huscarls. However, the brief blurbs I skimmed about Hastings (and Stamford Bridge for that matter) make no mention of Anglo-Saxon cavalry and if anything only mention that some Huscarls rode to battle and then dismounted to fight. This same WHAA Army List has a 9^th century Saxon list which includes no cavalry. I'm leaning towards this as I want the Vikings and Saxons to be roughly equivalent.

So I shall endeavor to post AAR's and a more story like telling of the tale in subsequent posts. Nuts and bolts, game mechanics and figure sourcing, as well as general thinking out loud will be separated into their own posts so as not to totally destroy the narrative.

Well it's off to online traffic school for me, I've put it off for almost too long.

Notes:

1. I first read about Mythic GME on The Old Dessauer's Table. It was a great blog and seems to be out of action at the moment. The impetus to actually start using Mythic GME came after reading this series of posts on Solo Nexus.
2. Again, blatantly taking this from Ruaridh over at Talomir Tales. I also cannot find any Medieval Irish figures in my preferred scale of 1/72.
3. Interestingly enough a Google search for Tereken turns up the Belgian (Flemish) town here.

Welcome to BragonDorn of Bragondorn's Asylum and A Squirrels Tail. Quirky stories, observations and reviews. Looks like fun.

Oh and I submitted my site to the TableTop Gaming News Blog Network, but I have no idea if I've been accepted.

Happy New Year

Just wanted to say Happy New Year to all of you who follow this blog or happen to stop by. As is usual for me this time of year I tend to focus a little more on lost opportunity than I should. So I am reading the blogs of others and looking for some inspiration/ insight into making some progress on the modelling and gaming fronts.

I always joke that my goal is to one day have goals, but I will be taking stock of my lead and plastic piles and formulating some kind of strategy for actually playing and painting. And I will be looking to various blogs for inspiration so I hope that you all keep doing what you're doing. As you may have noticed I have shamelessly lifted ideas in blog presentation from most of you that I read. Right now I am in the process of fleshing out the back story for a campaign set in the Two Hour Wargames setting of Talomir. Hmm, set in the setting seems rather incoherent. Perhaps the lingering effects of Akvavit.

Not too much gaming swag for Christmas, but I did receive:

and am halfway through reading:

I highly recommend this series. If you like Conan and you like comics you can't go wrong.

And finally I saw both Tintin and Sherlock Holmes 2, notable as the wife and I rarely get out to see the movies. I'll try to give a review of Tintin in another post but it will suffice to say for now that the Tintin fans in our group enjoyed the movie, the others could take it or leave it.

Well, Happy Blogging, Happy Gaming, and Happy New Year.