Sir, You Are NOT Being Hunted part 1

So I decided that I need some gaming to relax my mind. Like, really relax it. That got me an idea: What if I take an old favourite of mine, Sir, You Are Being Hunted, and turn it into a walking simulator? No threat. Just the moody, gloomy, but ultimately pretty and relaxing British countryside and the need to eat every once in a while? The game certainly makes that possible, without having to be modded or anything. So I got to work:

No evil robots appearing with these settings. It'll be just me and some wildlife. Perhaps I can even hunt and cook a pheasant? Never done that in the game before, I was always too afraid of lighting a fire and didn't want to waste ammunition. I let the British Countryside Generator do its thing and then go into the game world.

After the short tutorial-steps that always start the game, I decide to head for the nearest village. Since I'm not a man on the run, I walk there leisurely and don't cross the field. Wouldn't want to trample someone's harvest. I make my way along the fence, through a small thicket and then reach Leafy Eating.

Despite the sign at the village entrance, the place is calm and quiet. As I need some supplies for the exploration to come, I go looting all the houses like I would in a regular game of Sir – albeit at a much slower pace. In real life I wouldn't run in this situation, so why should I do that here?

As night starts to fall, I head towards a ruined farm next to the village. I do something I never do in a regular game of Sir and switch on the flashlight I found in one of the houses.

This makes exploration a lot easier. I now feel a bit like I'm urban exploring. Nice.

I make my way along the road towards the next village. It's called Kings Burrow.

Since I'm starting to get thirsty/hungry, I chug down a bottle of sherry, to the usual effect. Drunkenly I stagger through the deserted village.

And then, sobering up, down the road towards Nimby Tweaking in-the-Wold.

I gather whatever the residents of Nimby Tweaking have left behind and seems useful to me. Then I tetris my inventory so it looks nice and ordered. I think I'm ready for a nice hike on one of the outlying islands.

The road going through Nimby Tweaking terminates around a large, dead tree. Where I'm from this would be the village oak.

I follow coast towards the first boat. I plan to collect the teleporter bits on the centre island last. So, next up: The North Island.

It's a calming experience to play this game like that. Birds are chirping. I met a hare. It's a bit like playing a homeless person in a post-apocalyptic Britain. But the nice kind of apocalypse, that left nature intact and only removed most people.

Reverse engineering Gaslands

 My firstborn and I have been inspired by some YouTube-videos to reverse engineer Gaslands into a game we can play for free. Started by building our first vehicles to do battle with:

The black one is by my son. It has a double medium machine gun on an outrigger that can swing 90° to the right. It also has three rifles on the hood and a reinforced bumper. Mine is the red one. It has two light machine guns on the hood but the main armament is the ram in the front coupled with four nitrous injection systems.

We took two toy cars we had (the kids recently haven't been playing with them anyways) and modded them with plastic bits that were left over from a set of Warhammer 40k Tau scouts my son uses as an army for One Page Rules GDF Firefight. I ground a mesh-pattern into the windshield of my car, attached drone parts as motor bits, added some pockets and pouches on the door and doodads for machine guns on the roof. Then I crafted the ram from leftover bits of plastic frame. Also some wire clippings for the side windows.

We played some duels for testing* and I've been refining our rules. The game already supports vehicles from motorcycles up to war rigs of theoreticall limitless size. It has a wide array of weaponry and funcioning rules for maneuvering (it lacks the slides and out-of-control-spins that the original Gaslands has – if you want the original, buy it. Seriously, buy Gaslands, it's a great game!). We'll make some more vehicles until the year is over. Perhaps I'll even write a rules-doc in English and publish it on my itch page.

*All of which my son won. While his car costs 22 points vs my 20 points I believe it is more likely due to the fact that in a 1 vs. 1 fight the car with more firepower has a nice advantage. In a melee with more participants, things may work out differently.

Free Release: The Discarded Giant's Boot

 I made another one-page-dungeon: The Discarded Giant's Boot.

It's a the adventure I played on a long car ride with my son, as written down in this post. It was meant to be played with Arnold K.'s Copper GLOG but can probably be easily adapted an dumped into any sufficiently weird/magical play world. Wherever a twenty-kilometer-tall giant may have existed somewhere in the very distant past.

Have fun!

Airships!

 I love Zeppelins. Not blimps. Airships. Rigid structure, an aerodynamic hull around a series of gas chambers. That sort of thing. Now for the past year or so my older son and I have sometimes dabbled in One Page Rules Grimdark Future FTL Warfleets. The rules are simple enough (two pages, not one, but one may argue that you can print double-sided). But it takes place in space. My son loves it. I like it too. But I feel one could do an airship mod.

Working on it. Of course.

Now airships _were_ used as weapons of war for a couple of years that included World War I. Afterwards there were some attempts to have them in a military role by the victorious powers. The USA built the USS Akon, which was a flying aircraft carrier – although more of a scouting vessel than made for direct sorties against hostile targets. I think the British and French also built them. Germany wasn't allowed the big toys anymore after the Treaty of Versailles so the greatest fans of the technology only built civilian airships.

A little aside on those: The Graf Zeppelin was the vessel which I personally would want to travel on if I ever got my hands on a time machine. Global readers will associate the term Zeppelin with the Hindenburg, however. It was known for two things: Having swastikas on its tailfins and spectacularly (and on camera!) going up in flames. Two things to save the honor of that airship: The Nazis didn't like Zeppelins because by that time airplanes were faster, more reliable and had more range than before and they thought the Zeppelin technology to be of no use for the military. The swastikas on the tailfins were not supposed to show how nazi the ship was but simply the national flag at the time. As for the fireball: The Hindenburg was designed to be run with (nonflammable) helium gas. But pre-war sanctions against Germany meant that the one big producer of helium at the time, the USA, didn't deliver that gas so they had to go with hydrogen, which has somewhat (8%) greater lift and far greater risk.

Alright, aside's over, let's talk about these hypothetical war Zeppelins. An airship is mostly gas-bags and the structure supporting them. The gondolas, both for command/control and with motors, are tiny attachments to that. Yet, an airship cannot carry all that much additional cargo/ammunition/personell. One cubic meter of helium only lifts something like 1.1 Kilogramms. That is not much and the reason, airships were so large.

So if we're gonna make a tabletop game out of this, we'd have to assume helium as lift-gas and ignore fire and loss of lift due to damage entirely. I dislike my games to be bogged down by to many detailed rules. Ships in Grimdark Future have between two (light) and four (heavy) ship systems. I'd go one lower for my airship mod because installing a cannon on such a craft is a big deal. Also, ships in the original game have turrets that become more powerful for the bigger craft. Airships will have a set of machine gun emplacements around their hull which means they all have the same base "turret" weaponry.

What weapons could one sensibly attach to an airship? Bombs (the most common weapon for such craft historically) are, of course, irrelevant in air-to-air battles. But there are other options:

Machine Gun Battery: If you expect to encounter lots of enemy planes trying to swarm you, this would be a sensible option. It simply means that there are _more_ machine guns on your ships - with the respective crews to fire them.

Anti Air Howitzer: I suppose an airship can carry a heavy infantry howitzer like mountain troops used to lug around. 150mm caliber, airburst-ammunition – this would be the king of weapons in the skies.

PomPom Battery: Heavier than machine guns, heavier than even heavy machine guns. The PomPom was a maxim machine gun upscaled to a 1-inch-caliber and did indeed see use as an anti-aircraft-weapon in WWI.

Dumbfire Rocket Rack: Just a bunch of rockets to saturate a distant area of the sky with explosions and shrapnell. The original game already has something like this which barely needs any modifications to work.

Wire Guided Missile System: This is the sniping weapon of the game, I guess. It could be made even though it is more of a WWII-kind of technology. We are doing Dieselpunk here so I guess it'll be alright.

3"-AA-Battery: This is the broadside-weapon in this system. Imagine like two cannons per side of the airship, firing smallish howitzer-rounds.

With weaponry out of the way, what ship systems would seem somewhat plausible?

Reinforced Structure: Your typical armour-upgrade. HP instead of anything actively useful.

Crew Parachutes: Good for morale if you play with such a thing.

Extra Motor Gondola: More speed!

Weapon Swivel-Mount: Choose one of your weapons. It can now turn 360 degrees. I imagine it's hanging below the ship.

Advanced Fire Control: Hit better.

Airplane Support Bays: Helps the swarms of fighters around you somehow.

Turret-Upgrade: Replaces the generic MGs with PomPoms?

Harpoon-Cannons: Entangle an enemy ship. This makes sense if you are smaller and want to hinder a larger craft from participating in the fight more.

This is missing rules for boarding, which I bemoan. I once met a nice oder lady at a lecture on airships who was not only leader of a club of Zeppelin-enthusiasts but also the granddaughter of Germanys only air corsair (the man had, in WWI, actually captured a Norwegian seagoing vessel with his airship). I believe that boarding may be unrealistic but is cool enough that it should be an option (in the base game as well - send over those space marines with boarding pods!). Have to think about it but I fear it would complicate things too much.

A theory on dungeonness

 What exactly makes a dungeon a dungeon? I've previously thought about the minimum size of one but the very nature is something else entirely. I've been working on a series of novellas lately (expect a link to the release of the first one in October – but it'll be in German) and started wondering, what of the adventures my hero has actually constitutes a dungeon.

I believe that there are three hard factors and a checklist of soft factors that make a location into a dungeon. Of course, your personal definition may vary but this one is mine:

A dungeon must be an enclosed location. Open air maze? No dungeon.
A dungoen must have some sort of treasure in it. That treasure can be abstract, like an information, knowledge etc.

Now it also needs to confirm with my minimum dungeon size (see link above) so:

A dungeon must not be completely visible from the entrance. If it's just a single, unobstructed room, that's no dungeon.

Let's talk about soft factors. The dungeon should have at least two of these (and it can be multiples in the same category):

A dungeon should have an obstacle.
A dungeon should have a riddle.
A dungeon should have a trap.
A dungeon should have an enemy.

These make up the dungeon-score. Let's put the thing to the test using Indiana Jones (because I'm writing pulp adventure and don't want to spoil my own stories.

The temple in the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark:

-Is an enclosed location.
-Has a very obvious treasure.
-Is pretty damn big and cannot be overseen from anywhere.

So check for the hard factors. Soft factors?
-Has an obstacle (pit that Indy and his lackey swing across).
-Has a riddle (the trap trigger underneath the golden idol).
-Has (at least) three traps (spikes, arrow-launchers, stone-ball self destruct mechanism)
-Whether or not it has an enemy is arguable but let's say it doesn't.

So it comes out with a dungeon score of five. Pretty good.

The excavation site in Egypt in Raiders of the Lost Ark:

-Is an enclosed location.
-Has treasure in the form of information: Where is the Ark?
-Has nooks and corners.

Check for thard factors. Let's go to the soft factors:
-Has an arguable obstacle: Indy needs to climb into the place, after all.
-Has a really cool riddle with that staff and the light and all.

This one comes out with a dungeon score of just two but that's enough to qualify (if not much more than that).

The well of souls in Egypt in Raiders of the Lost Ark:

-Is an enclosed location.
-Has arguably the most valuable treasure in the world.
-Has nooks, corners, and even hidden rooms full of mummies.

Hard factors are check. Soft factors?
-Has the same arguable obstacle of needing to climb into it.
-Has another obstacle in the shape of a wall Indy must tear down.
-Has what is either a trap or an enemy in the form of swarms of snakes.

So it has a dungeon score of three. I have this as a Lego set sitting next to me (my kids gave it to me as a birthday gift). Love it.

Godzilla Minus One - some thoughts on an aircraft safety feature

 If you haven't watched Godzilla Minus One, do so. This text will contain spoilers and the movie is (very) good. Don't believe me, believe Kevin Smith. Or even my wife who said that the film was alright - that's very high praise for a kaiju-movie coming from her. So, spoilers ahead.

Play report: Copper GLOG Session 1

On a longish car ride (your definition of what constitutes a long car ride may greatly vary), my older son and I played a session of Copper GLOG, as invented by my favourite ttrpg-blogger of all times, Arnold K. For our randomizer we used even/uneven licence plate end numbers (foreign ones didn't count even if they did end in a number) of cars we passed or that passed us, depending on what came first.

My son chose a ratling warrior as his character class – Fighter level 1, good skill sneaking, special equipment: Bow and arrow. He was sent by his clan to rescue the princess of his clan, the forest ratlings. She had been kidnapped by goblins, presumably for some higher-up ruler, and dragged to the Discarded Giant's Boot, a one-index-card-dungeon I had made up sometime last year. The nameless ratling hero started before the gaping maw of the enormous boot (the entrance into it is about half a kilometer wide), a mountain cave made out of leather of an ancient beast of titanic proportions.

The ratling managed to sneak into the boot's shaft, which contained the hovels of a goblin village. Listening to two of the greenskins converse in one of the huts he found out that the princess had been brought into the boot's tip. He left the goblin village, going deeper into the boot. There was little light coming from holes rotted into the thick leather roof, otherwise it was a detritus-strewn dark cave. A random encounter got our hero his first fight: A giant flea (Level 1) attacked. The ratling managed to fend it off but got hurt in the fight, losing one of his two HP.

He decided to take lunch and move on, triggering another random encounter, this time with a herd of fleas herded by goblin herdsmen, who were driving their disgusting flock towards the village. A successful stealth check meant that the ratling was undiscovered but listening to the goblins only revealed dirty songs the goblin herdsmen were singing.

Delving deeper into the boot, the hero found himself with the choice of going left towards the boot's tip or into a hole gnawed into the heel, where the goblins presumably were mining leather. He decided to explore the leather mine first, went inside and found himself in a hollowed-out area with a big mushroom surrounded by slime on the floor, out of which half-finished goblins were growing. This was their mothershroom, the place where the goblins of the village spawned. On the far end, he could make out cages.

He decided to investigate, sneaking around the half-grown goblins and reaching the caves. One contained five of the fleas, one contained a desiccated skeleton, one a live ratling who begged to be released. The hero freed the prisoner and gave him his bow and arrow, making a Friend for the rest of the adventure. The two of them, however, failed to sneak out – and had to fight their way through four half-grown goblins (Level 0). They succeeded after a long and somewhat tedious battle, losing no HP in the process.

Despite the freed prisoner's fear of the deeper areas of the boot, they pressed onwards towards the tip. They managed to sneak past a giant earwig (Level 2) and saw the lit entrance of a wooden house at the end of the cavernous boot-cave. The house was larger than human-sized (enormous for two ratlings, who stand about a meter tall in our world) and guarded by two goblins. One of them was asleep, the other was picking his nose – the Friend killed both with well-placed arrows.

The two ratlings had to stand on top of each other in order to reach the doorknob. They did and went into the house. On the ground floor, the first door lead into a room full of cages. Six of them contained princesses: The ratling princess, an orc princess, a human princess, an aelph princess, a beetle princess and a kobold princess. The princesses told the two ratlings that the keys to their prison were in the posession of the Orgre (Level 3, two attacks) whose house this was. He was planning to make a Princess Stew, the recipe of which demanded for eight different types of princess.

The two ratlings snuk up the stairs to confront the monster. The orgre had been lying on his bed but smelled the two newcomers enter his bedroom. Grabbing two huge butcher-knives from the nightstand, he got up and a healthbar grew on the bottom of the screen and boss-music started. The two Level-1-ratlings had a difficult time with this boss monster but in the end were successful. The nameless hero slew the ogre with one HP left and the resusciated his Friend who was at 0 HP. He'd have to stay in the back, shooting arrows, from now on.

The two heroes freed all six princesses from their cages – and then armed them with oversized kitchen utensils. They princesses counted as a Swarm of Princesses (Level 6, fights as level 0 single creature but has Lvl HP). The group left the house and went back towards the heel of the boot.

On the way a random encounter delivered an agressive giant earwig their way. The ratling hero attacked in close combat, the princesses did too and the Friend fired arrows. In the end, the hero had to be patched up after the battle (0 HP) but the group succeeded. This marked the occasion of the hero leveling up (10x current level in XP; Defeating monsters results in Monster-Lvl XP). Now level 2 he'd be a better fighter still but do not gain an additional HP yet.

At the leather mine into the heel, the ratlings decided that a large-scale distraction was needed if the group was to get through the goblin village and leave the boot. They snuk past the mothershroom and freed the captive giant fleas which fled into the larger cave, spooking the herds of fleas the goblins were keeping and causing widespread chaos, pandemonium and destruction.

A failed stealth-roll led to the princesses each having to do a roll on their survival. Luckily, only two of them didn't make it out: The human princess and the beetle princess died upon trying to get through the chaos of the goblin village. Five rescued prisoners brought our hero another five XP. He had also accomplished the mission (rescue the ratling princess) and made some valuable new allies. With the ogre dead, the goblins would soon be subject to a new ruler and we decided it would make sense for the orc princess to return with a retinue of her warriors to now become ruling queen of the discarded giant's boot.

The whole thing took about three hours of play time, which we spent with some interruptions, whenever I had to concentrate on more complicated parts of the road. The simple resolution system makes for an easy way of playing hands-free and the minimal bookkeeping helps as well. You can only use a simple dungeon if you want to keep it all in your head – I did cheat in that by placing one dungeon (the ogre's house) inside another dungeon (the giant's boot). But keep it simple and this works just fine. Thanks,Arnold!