Sleepless In Sheffield: A Tale Of Dogs, Demogorgons & Giant Robots.
Well, it's been a long and odd year so far.
I've been really busy, which is of course good, but I am ready for a break. The last week has been mostly 15 hour days to ensure I met all my commitments before closing my doors as it were on Friday at 9PM.
I'd got everything ship shape, gone out for a bit of late night grocery shopping, and was waiting in the car for the memsahib to fill the car ready for the first day of our holiday, when we were to go over the Pennines to Preston in Mordor, when I heard on the news that Preston was to be locked down at midnight.
Now, we were going over there to collect our new Scottie pup, Maggie, so it was not something we were going to be able to just reschedule.
Well, I was calling the breeder (a very charming lady and the best breeder I've met) and the memsahib was driving as fast as legally possible, to get home, drop off the shopping, grab the box of money for Maggie from the safe, and hopefully (based on the outcome of my call) get over into the Dark Realm before midnight.
Well, armed with only a pack of snack sized pork pies and a couple of cans of sparkling water, we made it, despite roadworks on the Woodhead Pass.
This was the result:
We were awake after only 5 hours sleep, but this little lady ('Hellcat' Maggie 'Momo' McFuzzle) was bouncing with energy and taking three adult Scotties and a Westie in her stride.
She has filled the hole in our hearts, that the loss of our eldest and first Scottie, Dougal left, and she's settled in better than I could have imagined.
In the last 24 hours, she has brought life to the household again, and has even learned to paw at the door when she wants to go out for a wide.
EDIT: At this point, life intervened, and so, I am picking up, 2 days later. Maggie is ruling the roost, sleeping through the night and you would think she'd been here a lot longer as she's slipped right into her place in the family.
Gaming-wise, I'm having one of those crisis moments, where you find yourself seeking a particular 'feel', be it an army or as in my case a roleplaying system. I've recently revised Gamma World and Star Frontiers, seeking a more 'pulpy' rather than 'sharp' sic-fi experience, but ended up with the Fighting Fantasy 'Interstellar Adventures' which, whilst a good system, was not filling the cup of satisfaction.
So, I was looking for 'something' and not finding it, that was obvious.
Whilst taking a break during a 15 hour working day, last week, I came across 'Tales From The Loop' which looked fabulous and sounded pretty well thought out, but for some reason, it just did not quite work for me. It is set in the 80s, but an 80s which never came to pass insofar as in the TFTL timeline, the 50s and 60s see a continuation of the technological leaps, so that by the 80s, machine technology is way in advance of where we are today. Also, there were a few elements of the game, overemphasising the mundanity of the day to day world which just did not feel right for the people I'd be playing with.
But, looking around that obstacle, the 'Stranger Things' vibe and feel of the classic films such as 'Goonies', E.T etc hooked me.
Okay, so I had a spark here and the gas was on, I just needed to make the two go 'BANG!'
Next I looked 'Kids On Bikes' an RPG which as the title suggests, is an RPG about the archetypical 80s 'pesky kids' movies inspired by the success of Stranger Things. However, the covers just didn't work for me and the reviews I found were ambivalent, so that wrote off KOB for me.
And then, I came across 'Dark Places & Demogorgons' by Bloat Games...
The reviews were very, very favourable indeed, the books are a 6x9 format making it a comfortable-to-hold read, and the covers just scream out 'YES, YES, YES Big Boy... GIVE ME THAT OLD SCHOOL FEELING!' Well, you know what I mean... Should I rather say that it oozes with old school charm, as you can see:
This game is a work of love for the authors and this comes through in the J-Town supplement, which presents the small town of Jefferson, Kentucky in great detail, giving the GM a brilliant starting point.
What really caught my crusty old eye, was the fact that you can add in elements of background using supplements which allow you to introduce elements such as martial arts (Karate Kid), vampires (Lost Boys) etc to your 80s sandbox.
Although I bought everything, I love the fact that rather than an over large book cramming in everything you get a comfortable 202 page rule book with 'bolt on' options.
And I hear you exclaim, 'AHA! They get you to fork out ridiculous amounts for all the extras, you sap!'
But no, in actual fact, the entire range is superbly priced:
Core Rules £17.91
Cryptic Manual £20.96
J-Town Setting Guide £3.81
Player Options & GMs Guide £7.62
Ghost Hunter's Handbook £8.00
Vampire Sourcebook £4.00
UFO Investigator's Handbook £8.00
Werewolves £4.95
Hundreds and hundreds of pages of gaming goodness for the price of 3 boxes of plastic figures makes this a 'must have' no-brainer for me.
J-Town alone is 140 pages for under £4!
In other news, assisted by the memsahib, I spent a very uncomfortable day, yesterday in ridiculous temperatures building the first 84 of 264 Perry plastic AWI. Despite the hellish heat (I left my sample in the sun, and it was so hot that the blade literally cut through the warm plastic like a katana through butter) all of the command groups are now done as well as a Carolinian regiment converted from the riflemen sprue and a standard command sprue. Tricky work, but they look rather splendid in their light infantry caps.
And as if all of that was not exciting enough, I've been rediscovering my interest in 100 ton giant mecha, in the form of Battletech, which I played a fair bit of in the mid 80s before discovering black clothing, night clubs and moving in with a bunny boiling she-devil for 3 years (not the memsahib I might add, who, is a well balanced lady who knows that steaming domestic pets is not clever), and drifting away from what was a fun game.
So, it was with great pleasure that I picked up the two original 'core' sets for a total of £30 on Facebook and eBay respectively:
I've been really busy, which is of course good, but I am ready for a break. The last week has been mostly 15 hour days to ensure I met all my commitments before closing my doors as it were on Friday at 9PM.
I'd got everything ship shape, gone out for a bit of late night grocery shopping, and was waiting in the car for the memsahib to fill the car ready for the first day of our holiday, when we were to go over the Pennines to Preston in Mordor, when I heard on the news that Preston was to be locked down at midnight.
Now, we were going over there to collect our new Scottie pup, Maggie, so it was not something we were going to be able to just reschedule.
Well, I was calling the breeder (a very charming lady and the best breeder I've met) and the memsahib was driving as fast as legally possible, to get home, drop off the shopping, grab the box of money for Maggie from the safe, and hopefully (based on the outcome of my call) get over into the Dark Realm before midnight.
Well, armed with only a pack of snack sized pork pies and a couple of cans of sparkling water, we made it, despite roadworks on the Woodhead Pass.
This was the result:
We were awake after only 5 hours sleep, but this little lady ('Hellcat' Maggie 'Momo' McFuzzle) was bouncing with energy and taking three adult Scotties and a Westie in her stride.
She has filled the hole in our hearts, that the loss of our eldest and first Scottie, Dougal left, and she's settled in better than I could have imagined.
In the last 24 hours, she has brought life to the household again, and has even learned to paw at the door when she wants to go out for a wide.
EDIT: At this point, life intervened, and so, I am picking up, 2 days later. Maggie is ruling the roost, sleeping through the night and you would think she'd been here a lot longer as she's slipped right into her place in the family.
Gaming-wise, I'm having one of those crisis moments, where you find yourself seeking a particular 'feel', be it an army or as in my case a roleplaying system. I've recently revised Gamma World and Star Frontiers, seeking a more 'pulpy' rather than 'sharp' sic-fi experience, but ended up with the Fighting Fantasy 'Interstellar Adventures' which, whilst a good system, was not filling the cup of satisfaction.
So, I was looking for 'something' and not finding it, that was obvious.
Whilst taking a break during a 15 hour working day, last week, I came across 'Tales From The Loop' which looked fabulous and sounded pretty well thought out, but for some reason, it just did not quite work for me. It is set in the 80s, but an 80s which never came to pass insofar as in the TFTL timeline, the 50s and 60s see a continuation of the technological leaps, so that by the 80s, machine technology is way in advance of where we are today. Also, there were a few elements of the game, overemphasising the mundanity of the day to day world which just did not feel right for the people I'd be playing with.
But, looking around that obstacle, the 'Stranger Things' vibe and feel of the classic films such as 'Goonies', E.T etc hooked me.
Okay, so I had a spark here and the gas was on, I just needed to make the two go 'BANG!'
Next I looked 'Kids On Bikes' an RPG which as the title suggests, is an RPG about the archetypical 80s 'pesky kids' movies inspired by the success of Stranger Things. However, the covers just didn't work for me and the reviews I found were ambivalent, so that wrote off KOB for me.
And then, I came across 'Dark Places & Demogorgons' by Bloat Games...
The reviews were very, very favourable indeed, the books are a 6x9 format making it a comfortable-to-hold read, and the covers just scream out 'YES, YES, YES Big Boy... GIVE ME THAT OLD SCHOOL FEELING!' Well, you know what I mean... Should I rather say that it oozes with old school charm, as you can see:
This game is a work of love for the authors and this comes through in the J-Town supplement, which presents the small town of Jefferson, Kentucky in great detail, giving the GM a brilliant starting point.
What really caught my crusty old eye, was the fact that you can add in elements of background using supplements which allow you to introduce elements such as martial arts (Karate Kid), vampires (Lost Boys) etc to your 80s sandbox.
Although I bought everything, I love the fact that rather than an over large book cramming in everything you get a comfortable 202 page rule book with 'bolt on' options.
And I hear you exclaim, 'AHA! They get you to fork out ridiculous amounts for all the extras, you sap!'
But no, in actual fact, the entire range is superbly priced:
Core Rules £17.91
Cryptic Manual £20.96
J-Town Setting Guide £3.81
Player Options & GMs Guide £7.62
Ghost Hunter's Handbook £8.00
Vampire Sourcebook £4.00
UFO Investigator's Handbook £8.00
Werewolves £4.95
Hundreds and hundreds of pages of gaming goodness for the price of 3 boxes of plastic figures makes this a 'must have' no-brainer for me.
J-Town alone is 140 pages for under £4!
In other news, assisted by the memsahib, I spent a very uncomfortable day, yesterday in ridiculous temperatures building the first 84 of 264 Perry plastic AWI. Despite the hellish heat (I left my sample in the sun, and it was so hot that the blade literally cut through the warm plastic like a katana through butter) all of the command groups are now done as well as a Carolinian regiment converted from the riflemen sprue and a standard command sprue. Tricky work, but they look rather splendid in their light infantry caps.
And as if all of that was not exciting enough, I've been rediscovering my interest in 100 ton giant mecha, in the form of Battletech, which I played a fair bit of in the mid 80s before discovering black clothing, night clubs and moving in with a bunny boiling she-devil for 3 years (not the memsahib I might add, who, is a well balanced lady who knows that steaming domestic pets is not clever), and drifting away from what was a fun game.
So, it was with great pleasure that I picked up the two original 'core' sets for a total of £30 on Facebook and eBay respectively:
I also bagged 7 copies of the old Battle Technology magazine yesterday bagging them for £35 as opposed to the original £56 asking price, so all in all I'm as pleased as a hook-nosed, wife beating hand puppet with a speech impediment.
Right, although I am on holiday until the end of the month I am off to do a day's work, so if you will excuse me, I'll bid you all a farewell.
TTFN
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