Reading and Rambling

Haven't posted in awhile because I've done no gaming - work has been busy enough that I haven't felt like it when I get home, but not so busy that I absolutely have to kill something when I get home.

I've been reading a lot, though.

Still working on this one, mostly because I only read it in the bathroom. Up to about 1785. It's quite recent and very pro-Georgian (and very dismissive of the American viewpoint). The main takeaways are:

• that George III had very little at all to do with the American Revolution
• that George didn't suffer from porphyria, but was instead bipolar. While the author is very definite about this, from what I've read it is still a controversial claim. His 1765 attack is sympathetically described.

Two of his early prime ministers, Lord Bute and Lord North were close favorites (his teacher and childhood friend respectively) and neither was confident about their ability to be prime minister yet stayed because George practically begged them. This seems to be the real problem of the Revolutionary period - North was in office for twelve years and hated most of it, and the fact he was in debt to George made things worse. He kept trying to resign, but the only people available to replace him were practically pro-American, much less anti-government.

Roberts goes through every complaint against George III in the Declaration of Independence to demonstrate that all but one of them either weren't attributable to George (because Parliament was calling the shots and George knew it wasn't his job), or were put into place after the start of the war over a year before (thus not having been causes of the Revolution, but effects). It wasn't just at this point, and not just in America, but especially given that this was published just last year, there were terrifying antecedents to modern misinformation techniques at work. Hilariously, the Americans tried to convince Quebec to revolt with them, when they had stoked rage against Britain by invoking its toleration of its new Catholic French citizens as a sign of popery and incipient tyranny.

At more than one point during the war, elements of the government - and not just the opposition - were on the verge of offering the Americans practically everything they wanted. The entire theme of this section of the book is that George wasn't a tyrant, didn't want to be one, and wouldn't have been allowed by British law if he'd wanted to. He did, however, have a surprising amount of influence, and was instrumental in the rise to power of Pitt the Younger.

Also only partway through this, up to the point where the 24th discovered they were fucked. Good enough, though, that I have also borrowed Into the Jaws of Death and intend to read his other books. I've seen plenty of reviews on blogs and comments on the Colonial Wargaming Facebook group - particularly for his Go Strong Into the Desert - that I had to pick one, and the Kindle version was on sale.

I'm not very "up" on Isandlwana, though I've played Rorke's Drift several times with The Sword and the Flame rules (in 1:1!). Zulu Dawn is also a less regarded film than the classic Zulu. But it is of course the pivotal moment of the Zulu War, and Col. Snook's account is extremely detailed. The maps are useful, though in electronic form it's impossible to just switch back and forth when he goes on about specific dongas and kopjes. So I'm probably not getting everything possible out of this, but it remains a fascinating and tragic story. One thing I was unaware of was that the approaching Zulu army did not intend to attack that day; if not fired on they would have sent a delegation to politely demand of the British why they were invading. Things wouldn't have gone much better, I imagine! Another interesting note is that if the British had formed square, they might have survived; not only did they separate their forces in the face of the enemy (an obvious no-no), but contrary to depictions of close-set thin-red-lines, the infantry were spread out in open order.

Also, again contrary to received wisdom, although the 24th was still the 2nd Warwickshire at this time, it had been based at Brecon, Wales since 1873 and over half the 2nd Battalion were Welsh. So, yes, many of them would have known Men of Harlech.

A very interesting method of portable solo play. There have been many blogposts and reviews of this series lately. Haven't tried it yet; I ordered it because I have ECW Wofuns, but unfortunately the bases are 30mm and the hexes 25mm. Of course I could copy and resize them, but that would require splicing paper together or going to a shop to print on larger sheets. I will probably print some Junior General minis for the purpose, although I'm very tempted to buy some hex terrain - especially now with news that Heroscape may be republished!

I've finally got all five of this classic series. Sadly, two of them - this one and the American Civil War volume - have no rules, though both are fine beginner's guides to the period. Herbert's book does include reviews of rules from 1990, including The Sword and the Flame. He also has a few scenarios - I particularly like his suggestions for a 1:1 skirmish between Boers and Bushveldt Carbineers, the same one that led to the trial in the film Breaker Morant. (Morant was played by Edward Woodward, a gamer who headlined the first TV series about wargaming, Battleground.)

The reason I like this scenario is that it is clearly influenced by the RPG-forerunner skirmish games of the '70s. Names and character stats are even provided for the troops; though their meaning isn't stated I could probably use them with Free Kriegspiel techniques in a pinch. That's tempting. Though my local group are sometimes wary of new games, they have been remarkably tolerant of my efforts and interests. We'll see.

From the Sewers They Come

 Had another of my 1-hour semi-DnD sessions at work. For once, I had three players, but two of them were fellow staff. This was by design; the other adults are considering running games of their own, most likely as substitutes for mine. (I won't be at work next Thursday, for example.)

• Player 1: Student, playing a Level 3 druid with a chameleon familiar. (This is the same one who played the druid with a cat familiar in the displacer beast incident.) 
• Player 2: Fellow staff with an arcane magic-user, displaced from her own world. (From the Walking Library incident.)
• Player 3: Fellow staff with college-educated magic-user and a powerful magic staff. First game of XD20 for her, but an experienced RPG player and game-master.

When playing games like this, a group dynamic helps enormously, especially when the players know the basic mechanics - not of specific rules, but the social mechanics of working together, searching for clues, and bouncing ideas off each other. This is why I like to draw in adults when I can, even in sillier games like this one.

The party (nominally led by Player 1, who had received a promotion after a previous session in which she rescued a chocolatier held prisoner by brownies), was informed, "There's a giant crocodile coming out of the sewers between Main Street and Taverner's Row! Go handle it!"

They arrived to find milling and fleeing civilians, a giant crocodile clambering out of a pothole, and some nervous City Guard desperately hoping that our heroines would bail them out of this mess.

Fairly quickly, a divergence in method developed. Player 1, peaceful and with the natural world her responsibility, was pitted against Player 3, who defaulted to the usual violent methods inherent in your average DnD encounter. 

They discussed and explored the situation for a while. The Druid's familiar did its best to help sense the monster's mood (hungry), but she rolled badly on a communication attempt; the croc snapped at the poor lizard, whence it scampered back to its mistress and hid in her robes. Other spells the players tried included trapping it with vines (on a die roll we decided the nearby government buildings were covered with ivy) - they failed to hold it; and a cold spell to freeze the cold-blooded creature in its tracks - slowed it down but no more.

As they continued to discuss possibilities and the NPC guards started to panic, I suddenly demanded awareness and dodge checks. Something tentacled appeared out of the nearest manhole cover.

The situation at this point:
- center: giant croc in pit
- circles around croc: terrified guards
- top: tentacled horror
- "You": the players
- upper right: government building
- lower right: tavern

The guards scattered, most of them heading for a nicely fortified government building; they spent the rest of the session firing arrows at the croc.

Player 1 tried to distract the croc, successfully in the sense that it couldn't decide where to go or what to eat first.

Player 2 generally supported the others, helping lift things or adding power to spells, and also tried her best to stop the tentacled squid-thing from ripping apart a nearby tavern.

Player 3 asked if there was methane in the sewer (there was), then dashed into the bar across the street and negotiated for a barrel of ale. Fine Dragon's Brew XXX, to be precise.

Her aim was not precise (her intent was to drop it into the sewer under the still trundling croc), but a high roll for effect definitely scorched and knocked out the croc. It also stunned the squid.

Unfortunately, it also caused a fuel-air explosion underground. Several more manhole covers disappeared into orbit, and fire belched out of every latrine in the area to set the buildings on fire.

The druid, encouraged and assisted by the others, managed to draw rain from the clouds overhead to douse the flames. Amid a fuming haze and the sound of wailing hand-cranked sirens and protests of the citizenry, the drenched party hauled the monsters off to the zoo for disposal.

Still, mission accomplished, right?

Mini-INWarD

Had a fairly busy day at work, but got a little gaming in - a couple chess games in which I got badly trounced, and a quick solo round of Bob Cordery's Portable Naval Wargame - the old free version. Though hex-based, it wasn't hard to modify it for squares.

As today is the birthday of Fred T. Jane (International Naval Wargames Day), I was inspired by this:

Our system has most of the reprints from the '60s. I borrowed this for the original Jane rules in the back, but while they're too complex for my purposes the clean line drawings work great for hasty squadrons. I copied a couple Portuguese cruisers and Austrian torpedo boats at 50% and taped the side-ons to the top-downs. They turned out to be smaller than necessary:

Turn 2: The cruisers are still out of range, but the torpedo boats
launch ordnance at each other and hit. My opponent is sunk,
my own is damaged badly enough to retreat from the board.

The cruisers pound each other for a couple turns.
Here my opponent (left) is not in position to broadside,
so rolls half dice in exchange for my full four.

By the time I'd done four of six points damage to
my opponent, he'd done three to me. That forced
him off board, while my own miniscule paper ship
proudly sailed the seas...

It would have been more interesting had I built larger fleets, but I was in a hurry and also cutting very tiny silhouettes. I am tempted to purchase the Wofun Tsushima set, or 3D-print a fine Tsushima series from Thingiverse, but haven't gotten round to it yet. Whatever I use, the rules are simple enough for beginner's play. Still haven't had a chance to try DBN.

Happy INWarD!

Lookit, I Painted Something

 There has been some talk in my personal blogverse this week over the nature of blogging, and how it is sometimes just a series of "look, I made something" posts, without serious discussion or necessarily anything novel about what the blogger is doing. This is an interesting perspective to me, as I've noticed different frequencies of posting and different intensities or complexities of individual posts between bloggers. Perhaps we all have our own style. (Why am I saying "we?" Am I part of a community now?)

I sometimes envy Tradgardmastare his simpler, quicker style of blogging and wonder if I should emulate it. Just a photo or two and a few lines of text, but more frequent. It might work better for me given my all-too-wide range of interests.

I'm not quite opposite - I do post once or twice a week, and I'm not that comprehensive - but I tend to develop my posts more. Full-fledged battle reports and book review take longer to write (and assemble, when I include lots of links and photos). Perhaps a few "look, I made something" posts would be a useful change of pace.

So here's one. Still longer and more involved, though, since I'm being meta, and also talking a bit about photography and the cool stuff my library has.

You know what? I'm adding a "rambling" tag to this post.

OK. Tuesday afternoon I prepped a second round of my "painting at the library" program. I had one taker the first time, none the second. Though two of my coworkers who were busy were delighted with my painting skills (small knowledge pool, there) and sad that they hadn't been able to try. I ran DnD yesterday (with one player) and again the adults expressed more interest in the program than the kids. This is why I don't think having an ongoing scheduled program for this sort of thing works very well. One-offs, maybe, especially if they are for "special" events - a Call of Cthulhu game for Halloween, Black History games in February - like that.

But when I walked into YouMedia today and put my figures into their light-box, the teens crowded around to see what I was doing.

Just some of the cool gadgetry on display:

The counselors have been teaching photography the last couple weeks, and I scored a few tips. When these were my first results:

... one of them showed me how to touch my phone screen to pop up a "brightness" bar that allows me, I think, to open the aperture:

Damn! How cool is that!? I'll definitely use that feature in future.

Pity how the best photos always show up your mistakes. But still!

These goblins are from, I think, the 7th edition Warhammer boxed set. Both were undercoated with Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray, with skin in Militarum Green Contrast paint, details in Cadmium Yellow and wood in Burnt Umber. The spear-gobbo's robe is Chaos Black and the archer's robe Burnt Sienna. Interestingly, the latter was in terrible condition - very watery, more a wash than a layer paint - but I tried it anyway and rather liked the effect! The spear got Leadbelcher and the sword Runefang Steel, though it looks like the opposite in the photos (I did drybrush a little RS on the spear for effect, though).

This is the effect with just four or five colors and an hour's work. I'm tempted to blow the kids' minds with a Duncan Rhodes video. In fact, their interest was such that I wonder if I can get them to help me do a "look, WE painted something" post.

I can dream, right?

OK, rambling over. See you next time.