Tuesday, March 31, 2020

The TEK - March 2020

Sales are dead for 2020. No help for that with problems we all have now. I've rethought my presence on DriveThruRPG and I am now in to raw downloads from DriveThru. Making people happy with fun, free stuff. I still have price listed on my products, but I am encouraging people to pay nothing at all. There are so many other people out there who need help. Please by all means, save your money for them.

March 2020 Downloads via DriveThruRPG:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 6
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 2
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 7
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 7
Swashbucklers Character Class - 5

I want to share my all time download stats this month:
AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 93
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 137
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 125
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 248
Swashbucklers Character Class - 91

I am close to reaching a couple of thresholds on each product. I will be doing a happy dance if I can hit 100 downloads for each and every product and 250 for Zero to Hero. I'll let you know when that happens.

Webstats were amazing, even at 1 pm on the last day of the month.


You can see the spike when everything shut down. I am very happy that readers came to visit in times of worry and stress. Thank you for doing that, it was a ray of sunshine on a very bad day.

Google Analytics Pageviews - 2,466
Google Analytics Sessions - 1,696
Pageviews per Session - 1.454

I had been working with a new ad provider, but I picked a horrible time to change things up. All affiliate clicks have zero'ed out except for DriveThruRPG which is up 474%. Crazy times we live in, when games take a backseat to Amazon.

I would like to thank you. the readers, who make this project a fulfilling experience. In order to continue, I need to hear from you. Post those reviews, leave those comments and make suggestions on social media like MeWe.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 101 – March 31th.

Duke and David are regulated to the ship’s med bay, wherever that is. Emily leads Deadeye, Lefty out to look for stuff.

One of the problems with a high tech world is, you are always detected on entry. In this case, the contact roll leads us right to the table I want to roll on. However, this one time only takes an hour instead of 5.

I probably should have scooted back to the Spaceport Med Center, but we are here.

They find one intact PS-bot and one repair unit. We get one extra chance to roll for stuff, but all we find are damaged U-Suits. They aren't worth the effort so we discard them. While this isn’t a great haul, I can now assign a PS-bot to Audrey.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Monday, March 30, 2020

100th Day Post Celebration

Today, I made it to my 100 day playing Star Smuggler. I thought I should do something to celebrate. A few weeks ago, my dad sent me a foam cutter, so I decided to try it out using my drawing of the Buffalo Heavy Transport. 


Not bad so far. You'll notice I have a very shaky hand. My Dad uses these foam cutters like a kid uses crayons. I'm not very good right now, so why not check out one of his castles
Top view
Cockpit, top down
Cockpit, bottom up
Rear of ship, bottom side
Bottom of ship
I've only cut the rough details and not even all of them. The aft bottom of the ship is nearly featureless. I can't wait to finish this project.

Wish me luck!

And thank you for sticking around for 100 days of game play.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 100 – March 30th.

If Duke took off his beret, he
wouldn't look like this. 
If Han Solo had a beret, he wouldn't
look like this. 
This trip was unrewarding, so we are off to Nipna.

We enter the system in the middle of a space battle. We slink away and make landfall in the ruins. We get an interesting roll on landing. We are attacked by a Mynkurian death squad. Two guys have suicide vests, two have poison darts and the last two have heavy hand weapons. The event describes them as attacking no matter the tactical situation.

I call BS and decide that we need something more cinematic for day 100!

If that last instruction is followed, they will run up to the ship as it lands, and I will slowly gun them down as heavy weapons, bombs or poison can't hurt the ship.

Instead, let’s try this. David, Lefty, and Duke are leaving the ship via the ramp when they get charged by these guys. They have Tech Level 6 equipment, while Duke, David and Lefty have TL-4 Heavy Weapons, Military U-Suits and PS-Bots. There is no air on this world, so this will be brutal and short.

All six guys try to charge to the ship's ramp in their first round. Deadeye, from the gun turret has a shot at them. Audrey’s turret can’t turn that far, so she doesn’t get a shot. Besides, we won't ask her to kill anyone on her first day. Deadeye has tech level 1 guns and a 6 marksmanship. He needs to roll 7 or less.  He rolls a six and one guy takes 10 hits.

Duke needs a 9, Lefty a 10 and David needs an 8. All three hit. Duke hit’s the other guy with a suicide vest and he explodes (The guy had 3 Endurance, so he's toast on a 2-7 and dead by vacuum on 8-12). Lefty hits one of the poison dart guys as does David. One takes 4 points of damage while the other takes 2. That doesn’t kill either of them, but their suits breach and they go down. They’ll die if no one helps them. None of us are all that helpful.

Next round. The guys with heavy weapons stop running and open fire. Each has a markmanship score of 4, with TL-6 weapons, gives them a 10 to hit. They shoot first. Both hit, one on Lefty and one on Duke. Duke takes 7 points of damage while Lefty is knocked out by concussion. Duke’s suit is breached and the PS-bot begins emergency life support. David fires and hits one guy, knocking him out by concussion.

At this point, Emily realizes something is wrong and jerks the ship into the air, allowing Deadeye another shot (they were too close to the ramp before). The last guy is vaporized, but Deadeye and Audrey take a moment to hose the bodies with the ship’s guns. This takes 3 more rounds.

In the aftermath, Emily sets the ship down and investigates. I am going to rule that all of attacker’s equipment is destroyed.

Emily takes a team out to search the ruins while the medics patch up the team. Emily comes home with a small collection of coins worth 30 secs. Instead of adding them to our inventory, she distributes all of them among the crew.

We have 218,186 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

You probably noticed a lack of ads in these posts. That's because affiliate clicks have jumped off a cliff. However, if you have $5 or $18 or $20 lying around, I would like to suggest The Gardens of Ynn. It is a procedurally generated adventure, it has a curious setting which allows for plug n play into any adventure setting. Personally, I'd use it for D&D, but the book is pretty close to rule set agnostic.

A Great Book from DriveThruRPG
 Gardens of Ynn
Gardens of Ynn

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 99 – March 29th.

We have reduced the outing party to David, Lefty, and Duke. By leaving Emily back we can have a hopper and the ship come to our rescue.

We get the same option to ransack an office and again we pass on it. We interview and hire a Starship gunner. We hire her on for 100 right now and the typical 1% for the crew. I totally made that up on the fly, she would normally get much less. We outfit her from the Cargo Bay, so she has weapons and a U-suit. I'll get her a PS-Bot soon enough.

Our final roll is for Hopper Guns, again. They are not armor piercing, so we pass.

While Duke and the gang are shopping, our engineers are engaging in RRR to install those boat guns.


Saturday, March 28, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 98 – March 28th.

This planet is dangerous as they are at war with Nipna. Duke, Lefty, David and Emily are out to get supplies. Michael and Jonathon are at the ready to pilot the ship and one of the hoppers. Deadeye is manning the guns for the ship.

Each roll is four hours, but if we can start an activity we are allowed to finish it. So that is three rolls.

We start with a 2, ransack an office. This is a bad idea which could get us arrested, so we pass on it.

Next we purchase some boat guns. Before the buy, we check to see if these are military grade, armor piercing guns (e54). They are not. They are tech level 6, so we’ll take that. They cost 150 each times 10. Well worth the money at 3000 secs. for two.

We get heavy hand weapons as our final roll (e50). They are Tech Level 4, have explosive rounds and cost a base price of 30. They end up costing 150 each, so we pass on them. We will try again tomorrow.

We have 219,360 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Stars Wallpaper and Heavily Hinting

I am putting together files for an upcoming project and wanted to share my stars wallpaper. This will be background art for this new project. I'm using Ubuntu 19.04, but it should be good form anyone. Sorry, it's not seamless or fractal in nature, so it probably wouldn't look good tiled or stretched.

Obviously, this new project is science fiction based and takes place in space. I can't wait to get more done so I can start sharing real details.

The image in the file below is 2560 x 1600. Click to download.


Another feature of this new project is a planet. I have wallpaper for that in 1024×576. It's meant to be blurry so I couldn't scale it up as the source was much smaller. Again, click to download.


Friday, March 27, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 97 – March 27th.


We have some choices to make. New Karma is a double world system with a Tech Level of 1 and a Wealth of 70. I need higher tech items at cheaper price. The two systems with connections to New Karma are Uruskop and Mynkuria. Mynkuria has two planets and each are Wealth 30 and Tech Level 60. They are also at war with Nipna. Uruskop is a single isolationist planet with an asteroid belt at Wealth of 40 and a Tech of 40. Given my choices, we are off to Mynkuria for the tech code.

We don’t make any contacts on the way in and we land on the second planet, at the military base. This planet has no air and a gravity of 5. The gravity ain’t bad, but combat here will be deadly.

Our contact roll indicates we found a strange device of unknown purpose. You know what? This ship is new and I’m not touching anything.

With that done, we settle in for bed.

We have 222,360 in cash, have 7 hypercharges.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Seeking Zeros (Product Plug)

I'm looking for a few zeros and not in the way you'd expect.

Today I did a review of my products on DriveThruRPG and realized I am pretty close to some thresholds I'd like to hit. Here is a list of my total downloads for all 5 of my products.

AD&D Character Sheet For Use with Unearthed Arcana - 91
Compass Rose Inn Minisetting - 135
Kobold Folly Minisetting - 122
Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners - 244
Swashbucklers Character Class - 87

What I would like to see is at least 100 for my Character Sheet and Swashbuckler Character Class. I wish I was at 250 for Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners.

Let me recap what each product is:

The Character Sheet is just a character sheet with the 7 stats from AD&D and Unearthed Arcana, 1st edition.

The Swashbuckler Character Class is a gimmick character class, someplace between thief and fighter. The Swashbuckler does little to no damage per round, attempting to set themselves for killing strike on a roll of 20 or better. They are fast and adventurous, but perhaps not the greatest warriors. Very Errol Flynn.

Zero to Hero: Uncommon Commoners is a framework for creating NPC characters with specific non-combat abilities which balanced for D&D and AD&D 1st Edition. The booklet can also be used to create secondary or professional skills for PCs, which don't push the limits or make them OP.

The Compass Rose Inn Minisetting and Kobold's Folly are two maps sets for a generic campaign setting and are rules agnostic. They come with maps that can be printed as 1 inch=5 feet battlemat. Character backgrounds are provided to make these locations come to life with gossip and intrigue. 

I would like to invite all of you to download these products. Each is Pay What You Want. In this time of crisis, the "Pay" and "Want" should go away. Download them at $0.00. It's cool, that's how this works. Help me reach these goals, even though they are probably silly.

I appreciate every download.

Review of SM03 Cityguide to the City of Karan

Review of SM03 Cityguide to the City of Karan, available now on DriveThruRPG.



Title:  SM03 The City of Karan
Author: Dunromin University Press (Simon Miles)
Illustrator: Gareth Sleightholme and Simon Miles
Rule Set: OSRIC
Year: 2020
Pages: 70
Number of Players: N/A
Rating: ★★★★★

This book is a gazette style introduction to the City of Karen, the second city of the Land of the Young in the Barnarnia setting. I used the word gazette, but this book is 70 pages long. Each section delivers what the DM needs to walk their players through this excellent and unique setting.

The artwork is a step above Dunromin's normal work, Miles' typical artwork is there but Gareth Sleighthomlme really kicks it up a notch. Core to the product are three maps, one of the Land of the Young and the other two are maps of the City of Karan and the caves below the city. Check out the other books in the series, I just can't get over the art.

Priced a pay what you want, you can't go wrong with this title. I can't wait to check out the rest of the series.

Check out my other reviews from this series:

ORSIC Module Review - SM12 The Trials of a Young Wizard
Dunromin University Press' SM00 A Traveller's Atlas of Dunromin and the Land of the Young Review
OSRIC Module Review - M06 The Warren

The King's Cold, Kobold's Folly Map Set and #TBT

The King's Cold is a magical item owned by the House of Minwan, a tribe of kobolds. It is one of two magical items found by the tribe in the Folly that they now live in. They do not understand the nature or purpose of this torc-like device and it serves as a crown to the kobold king.

King Minwan has observed that the torc will make him unnaturally cold, even on the hottest days on the savanna. This is one power of the device, but isn't it's true purpose. Minwan does not like to wear the torc as a crown due to this property, he is often seen fidgeting with it. On particularly hot days he uses it as a reward, passing it from kobold to kobold so they may gain relief from the heat. This closer to the device's true purpose.

Before the Empire came with it's roads and supply lines, the indigenous half-elves created many of these devices to support their construction efforts. Each crew was 11 workers under a supervisor. The supervisor was identified by his torc, a mark of office. As he gave out assignments, the workers would tap the torc on his arm. This conveyed 4 hours of immunity to the sunburn and proofed them against the heat. When the work was fully completed, the supervisor would often bury his torc as an offering. The kobold's digging in the Folly uncovered the device that is now known as The King's Cold.

There are variants which protect against cold as well as heat.

This item first appeared in The Kobold's Folly, which is a series of maps available on DriveThruRPG.

The Kobold's Folly is one of the first mini-settings I created, initially hand drawn but then spiced up with Worldographer.


These two images comprise the 3rd floor and has a scale of 1" equals 5 feet. The whole set of maps, interior and exterior are in this scale so you can print your own battlemat.



This set of maps are ruleset agnostic, meaning you could use them for D&D just as much as Traveller. 

WTF. Traveller? 

This tribe of Kobolds takes care of horses. They almost worship them and some are quiet special. In my campaign, they have two beasts which are unique to the area and are rarely seen by outsiders. 


Yes, they have mechanical horses. These creatures are not described in the book Kobold's Folly, only here as an addendum to my campaign information to show how adaptable these maps really are. While this is meant to be a low danger setting, it could be cranked up to any level the game master requires. It only takes a little imagination. 

Star Smuggler - Elegant Agency

So far, I have played 96 days, game time or 86 days in real life of Star Smuggler and posted an synopsis of these adventures here.

One of the criticisms of Star Smuggler and many other games is a specific type of flaw in the system: a single die roll ending. In playing this one game for many decades, (yes, decades) and other solo games, I have noticed that the great ones have a very strong amount of user agency baked right in. This means that single die roll endings are relatively uncommon despite perceptions otherwise.

Over the years, I have noticed a rhythm and tempo to solo games. They are intended to be completed in an afternoon, however, since I have run through 86 days of play on this one game, this can be extended for an arbitrarily length of time. It doesn't even take practice, all games ending in failure or success can be replayed, on whim.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, I have had enough time on my hands to map this entire game using pen and paper.

 In doing this sort of analysis, I have noted that there are 5 basic structures to the story. There are events based on planetary locations, events based which system you enter,  events which lead to other events in a story format, electable or avoidable combat and standard events which are singular.

Working backwards, the standard events are usually options to purchase a mundane item such as hypercharges or weapons. There is no way to end the game in these events. Combat is often elected and therefore avoidable, so only the player is responsible for endings in combat. There is no way to quantify how many ends are a result of combat.

The next 3 items require some explanation and numeration. There are 230 events described in the whole game and one of those is for setting up game play. I have counted that in all of my calculations even though it is not "really" a step or event, it merely describes assumptions for the rest of the game.

Duke starts on the planet Regari, at the spaceport. The mechanics of the game are slightly altered in this one scenario. Duke doesn't have to move and therefore is only subject to a contact roll which may or may not result in a specific entry from the booklet. If he moves to another system, he is subject to an entry roll and a contact roll when landing, which are random events based on one or more die rolls.

System events and contact rolls are largely thematic to wherever Duke is. Each system has a specific set of themes and these are reflected in the list of possible events. All of them assume Duke is in his spaceship, although events may force him away from the ship. Contact rolls are also thematic, so events in the City are different than events on a Spacestation. Typically, Duke is not in his ship, although if the player decides he is, he generally is. This ruling is ambiguous.

The third and last type of entry is one entry that leads to another entry, as the story line progresses. They also tend to be thematic to wherever they occur.

Type of Event Number of Entries Number of Endings Percentage of endings
All 
230
21
9%
Contact 
53
1
1.8%
System 
27
4
14.8%
Story Entries
135
3
2%
Mundane Purchase
41
0
0%

As you can see the most game endings, outside of combat, occur when they player changes systems and is forced to roll an entry event. Since the player doesn't really have to change systems, owing to the fact that many systems either have Ruins or gambling which generate free money and equipment or have two planets where a trade route can be established, game play can continue in a repetitive fashion for a long time. 

When in comes to endings, there are very few that simply stop the game with or without a die roll. I didn't bother to count, because these are a standard trope of choose your own adventure style products. They complete a particular story in a special way.

Star Smuggler does have a trope all it's own, called "Going to Prison". Escaping prison is ludicrously easy, but it strips your player of all resources. It's an end without a solid ending because unless your bank account is higher than the price of a ship, it's all over. Every single game that ends this way lands on e023. Modification of this one entry would remove these limbo like endings.

EventsNumber of EntriesNumber Limbo EndingsPercentage
All 
230
7
3%
Contact 
53
0
0%
System 
27
1
3.7%
Story Entries
135
3
2.2%
Mundane Purchase
41
0
0%

When looking at the game structure from the perspective of limbo endings, other details become apparent. The events booklet has 230 entries divided in to two groups, events numbered 1-199 and 31 events numbered over 400. Judging by this fact, I suspect that either two people were working on entries and widely spaced the numbers for speed or a lot of information was cut to reduce the printing cost. There is no telling which.

Armed with both this structural knowledge and a sense of how game mechanics work, a player can keep this game going for a good long time. So why don't they? Well, it is meant to be played in a single afternoon AND some players have expectations which are not aligned with the possible outcomes. For example, the rules booklet does not deal with psionics or extreme technology like time machines, ECM, power armor and forcefields. The player literally doesn't see these events coming unless they played enough to know that they are possible. Once that happens, the player can guide him or herself to or away from these entries.

In producing this series, I have noticed one other style of play that results in a quick ending. When polling my children on what I should do next, given a lack of background, they tend to select options that have a specific goal in mind, no matter how improbable that goal is. And they have a tendency to make that choice consistently over long periods of time to the exact same end. Their expectations are unrealistic given the limited options in the game.

By using foresight, I have been keeping this series on Star Smuggler live for a very long time. Probably longer than most players would.

One other item is briefly mentioned in the rules booklet, which is easily overlooked. The author intended the reader to repurpose Star Smuggler to other rule systems without naming a system. Traveller comes to mind, but with the resurgence of all manner of old school games, it could be anyone of hundreds of systems. Keep that in mind when you download this great game.

I hope you have been enjoying this blog series on Star Smuggler.

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 96 – March 26th.

I need to change the dynamic of the game to make continuing a meaningful endeavor. Right now, I have 200,000+ secs. and no deadlines or meaningful limitations. I love NPC characters, as evidenced by D&D supplemental Zero to Hero, so having a veritable army of them also means I fewer challenges.  Heck, I increased their pay to 1% of all sales and still have hundreds of thousands secs.

I need to put the lock back in place. We are going to purchase a ship via my rewritten e036 rules. We will trade the Antelopes for a new ship. When I rewrote e036, I did not anticipate having multiple ships. I made that detail up on a whim. To even things out, Duke will trade his ship in for 60,000 credit on the principal and Emily will sell hers for half of that or 30,000. Used car dealers…

Our choice of ships is the Buffalo Class Heavy Transport. It costs 300,000, which is reduced by 60,000 to 240,000. We pay a reduced interest rate of 600 per week because of the trade. We make that payment now and I do not have another payment until Day 106.

Here is a blank sheet which assumes that the player has two hoppers in the bay.


To soak up more cash, the used Buffalo Heavy Transport doesn’t come with boats, guns, boat guns and has a single hypercharge. We decide to purchase all of them at the dealership, which comes at a premium price. We pay 1,300 for each hopper, 900 for each starship guns, and 1,800 for boats guns (each) plus 3,500 for hypercharges. This planet is Tech Level 10, so all of our stuff is Tech Level 1.

That sets us back 11,500 which is subtracted from Emily’s trade in of 30,000. We made 18,500 today in the trade. Since this wasn’t a “sale” per se, the crew gets nothing off the deal except new digs. We spend the rest of the day transferring cargo from the old ships to the new. The new e036 rules specifically state that we cannot transfer hoppers, guns, or the stasis unit in pilotage. It's a shame, because those guns were sweet. We'll have to upgrade what we have later.

Here is our new "Buffalo as Character Sheet". I have moved all of the cargo to the ship except for the 4 vials of pheromones and crew equipment, which are on each individual's character sheet.

We have 222,360 in cash, have 8 hypercharges and a new ship.  We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 95 – March 25th.

We manage to roll well and sell the boats (5,400), the extra boat guns (150), the U-bots (300) and purchase hypercharges. Hypercharges set us back 1000. We also buy Ace a PS bot at 600.


We dish out 585 to the crew, pay the 1600 for the hypercharges and the PS-bot. We pocket 3,665 today.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 203,860 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Morphing Styles - Emily Revisited

I've been rocking out so much work, my hands hurt. Better than being bored. I've been drawing a lot of inspiration from my wife, Kitty and my daughter, Cat. 

The first image I did over the weekend was actually sparked by a class I'm taking, Children's Lit. It's Prince Philip and Aurora under a tree. After I got my groove on, I started taking requests. That lead to Alice then Ariel. I've been working entirely in ink up to this point. Well, not "entirely", I sketched out the designs in pencil first and then diligently erased the lines.

The final request was from Kitty and was really outside of my comfort zone. It was Marie from Aristocats. I love the artwork in this movie, it's classic 1970's stuff. In many parts of the film you can still see guide and the sketch lines under the colorful animation.

I don't remotely work in this style but decided to give it a shot. I worked with only two pens and 4 colored pencils. I can't say that I am entirely comfortable with the colored pencils, as I am more of a charcoal or ink sort of guy, but I really enjoyed the process.

I don't even own a set of colored pencils, I raided Cat's school supplies for them. I worked until about 2 am last night to get it done and framed.

I have to say, framing up 3 of four pieces of art in as many days feels good. But now I am Disney'ed out. I want to get back to my own favorite subjects.

A few weeks ago, I accidentally closed an open pen in my sketchbook, marring a favorite drawing of a character named Emily. I did have a photo of the sketch which I thought would help recreate it. I was going to throw it on my lightboard and go at it. But I was still feeling adventurous and decided not to redo something that I felt was done. Instead, I set out to create a new pose of Emily, in the classic Rosie the Riveter style. To enhance the retro feel, I replaced her 1980's styled space suit with one from the Mercury missions.

I had thought that this would be another ink job, but as I worked with my daughter's colored pencils in reach, I decided to give them a try. It's missing something, so I know I be reworking her again. But the process was very enjoyable.  





Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 93 to Day 94 – March 24st.

On Day 92 and 93, we take another two days of RRR for accelerated healing. Everyone is back to full health before we take off at a cost of 225 secs. My primary motive for doing this was resyncing the days to the real date.

I have never been clear on the mechanics of going from planet to planet. I think it takes one move out and one move in for a total of 2 hours. Maybe I’ll change that some day. We land at the spaceport with 8 hours or 8 rolls left.

We don’t manage to sell or buy anything useful today.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
3 U-bots,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 200,195 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 92 – March 23rd.

We land at the colony and go for medical help. We pay 225 for 3 points of healing each and it takes all day. Healing is limited due to the tech level of the planet.

In the meantime, Emily sells the books we found for base price 12,000. We roll a 3 on the multiple table and this turns into 36,000. Nice. Each crewman receives 1% (360 secs.) of this leaving 32400 for Duke and Emily.

I’d like to unload these skimmers. It takes 2 hours to get skimmers from the list. We sell them for 90 each or 360 secs. total. Again, the crew gets a cut of 1%. We’ll round to four secs. each and we take in 320 secs.

Today is done.

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe nothing.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.

Cargo of note:
1 Boat guns, TL-2,
4 CU Status Unit (e103),
9 Side Arms TL-1
2 TL-4 heavy hand weapons with explosive effects,
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
4 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket,
3 U-bots,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.


1 Alicorn starship with TL-1 Guns. We owe nothing.
1 Hopper with TL-2 Boat guns,

Cargo of note:
5 Military U-suits (e044)
5 TL-1 Heavy Hand Weapons,
and the ship is fueled with 5 hypercharges.

We have 200,420 in cash and we are wanted on Palatek.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Pandemic Radio for Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

Back in the day, I would've made you cassette tape but in this day and age, those are no longer supported. Even still, this is TheseOldGames and while technology changes the sentiment remains the same.

This series will continue as long as deemed interesting. You can also catch my latest daily series, Strictly (Duke) Springer here. If you like artwork, I also have a semi-series where I've been doing inking.



This list includes the following songs:

White Stripes - My Doorbell
Chumbawamba - Tubthumping
Len - Steal My Sunshine
Barenaked Ladies - One Week
Tegan and Sara - Closer
BTO - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
Tea Party - Heaven Coming Down
Delerium/Sarah McLachlan - Silence
Moby/Swen Stefani - Southside
Talking Heads - Burning Down the House

Youtube was selects as an option as I felt it would be the most accessible. Having said that, someone will probably get the message "Not available in your region/country".

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 082 to 91 – March 22nd.

Ok, time to cheat some more and change the parameters of these posts. We are going to spend a whole week here in this one post, as each roll takes 5 hours or half a day.

Doc, Ratchet, Bones, Ace and Lucy are staying on the ships to guard them. They actually have very little combat abilities, it’s more to keep them out of the way. In Duke’s group, we have Lefty and Jon. Emily has David and Deadeye. We are loaded for bear, each character has a Heavy Side Arm, a U-Suit and a PS-bot. The Ruins are pretty dangerous, which is why I left the non-combat characters behind. Ace doesn’t have a PS-bot, so I would have to take a medic along, which I don’t want to do.

Let’s look at the ships as they stand now. I have shuffled a lot of stuff around with only three parameters. First, each ship’s hopper must be able to serve as a lifeboat, so they need 6 empty CU. They are jammed packed with all kinds of things. I put some useful items in the crew quarters, u-suits and life support units. The Antelope has 34 empty cargo bay slots while Alicorn has 50. Theoretically, I could pack 10 or more items into other spaces on the ship, but I don’t want to do that.



I want to find a lot of items here, primarily skimmers and ship’s boats. They will eat up repair units to get them working but it will be worth it. Skimmers are worth a base of 30. Boats are worth a base price of 600 but have the special problem that they can’t get into orbit themselves and there is no place to sell them here. However, I can do the Russian doll trick and pack them into the cargo bay, one per ship and fly them to orbit and then to the next planet in this system. Theoretically, I have 5 pilots, so I could get 3 into orbit in one trip then pick up 2 more per ship for a total of 7. It’s tricky but doable.

Now, I have this cheat in place. Duke’s team will explore and Emily’s team will haul the stuff back to the ships. Technically it isn’t cheating, but I have a veritable army of helpers.

Day 82: we roll 7 and 9. Seven is a damaged skimmer and nine is a damaged robot, U-Bot. The Engineers get to work. The skimmer needs a repair unit as does the robot. We had 35 RU and are down to 33. Everything we find here is tech level one.

Day 83: we roll 10 and 2. We find a side arm and ship’s boat. The boat is needs 3 hits of repair. The skimmer and U-bot from yesterday are repaired. 

Day 84: We find some books in a room (e88) and an intact U-bot. The boat requires one day of repair with 2 engineers working on it. We are down to 30 RU.

Day 85: We find some damaged U-suits which may or may not work if repaired with a repair unit each. We chuck them as they are a waste of time and RU. We also find another room with 30 secs. worth of coins. The boat is repaired.

Day 86: More damaged U-suits, which we throw away. We also find a single RU. We now have 31 RU.

Day 87: We find a pair of damaged skimmers.

Day 88: We find another RU and a side arm. The skimmers from Day 6 are repaired. We now have 30 RU.

Day 89: We find a second boat with 2 hits and another intact U-bot.

Day 90: We get another RU and more damaged suits. The boat is repaired and we are down to 29 RU.

Day 91: We find an intact skimmer before disaster strikes. We get hit by a pulse of radiation and our suits causes a secondary flash which doubles the damage. Duke is down to 2 hits while Lefty and Jonathon are reduced to zero hits. Their PS-bots keep them alive until help arrives.

Here is our haul: 3 U-bots, 2 ships boats, 4 skimmers, a set of books (e88), 30 secs. in coins, and 2 TL-1 side arms. We have 29 RU left. Doc and Bones can keep Lefty and Jon alive, while Duke sits there, slightly charred.

On the display below, I don’t bother to show the u-bots and books. Each cargo bay is holding a 40 CU hopper and two 10 CU skimmers. We are ready for lift-off.

We are heading to the colony for healing and a used skimmer lot.

We have 167,925 in cash and we are still wanted on Palatek.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

More Pen Work

What do you think is going on? My wife has asked for a new tattoo, I've been doing starship deckplans. How could those to things come together.

Perhaps, one is warm up for the other. 


Maybe I am thinking of a new project.


Or two.



Pandemic Radio for Saturday, March 21st, 2020

Back in the day, I would've made you cassette tape but in this day and age, those are no longer supported. Even still, this is TheseOldGames and while technology changes the sentiment remains the same.

This series will continue as long as deemed interesting. You can also catch my latest daily series, Strictly (Duke) Springer here



This list includes the following songs:

Lightning Seeds  -  Pure
Peter Gabriel - Big Time
Seal - Crazy
Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains
Fatboy Slim - Weapon Of Choice
Utah Saints - Something Good f/ Kate Bush
Sneaker Pimps - Wasted Early Sunday Morning
Ximena Sarinana - Different
INXS - New Sensation
The KIllers - Somebody Told Me
Pop Will Eat Itself - Karmadrome

Youtube was selects as an option as I felt it would be the most accessible. Having said that, someone will probably get the message "Not available in your region/country".

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 081 – March 21st.

Aw geeze. I screwed up. I bought 660 side arms at 15 each only to realize I can only sell them for a maximum of 20 each. That is hardly worth the effort. We made 13200, but I have to pay the crew 1,188 or 132 each leaving 12,012. That was a great roll, but poor effect.

I'll probably get around to redrawing Deadeye. It looks like he's wearing a steel diaper. Since he or she never takes the mask off, I am not sure if he is a man or a woman. Perhaps we need a gender reveal because I know I've been flip flopping pronouns. As an added bonus, I wiped eraser dust off the drawing and it all ended up in the crotch area. "I don't need glasses to erase junk..."

We spend the last hour of the day moving to the Ruins. Deadeye is now fully healed.

I have 155,883 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek.

Friday, March 20, 2020

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 080 – March 20th.

We spend all day trying to buy side arms. We get them for 15 secs. each. They are tech level 1. We purchase 660 of them for 9,900. We have two hours left and move to the slums.

On entry we get trailed by bandits, but since we can outrun them in the ship, nothing happens.

Deadeye has one more day of rest before fully healed.

I have 155,883 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

New Artwork

Not much to say, these are inked artworks for my wife. The first image has a circle scribed around it. Not sure why I did that but Kitty says it needs to be inked. Not sure how to handle that one. We'll see.


Next up is Ariel. It's a pretty simple design. Kitty wants it as a tattoo, so I may redo it so that Ariel's back is arched more to be the cap on a shoulder sleeve. Again, we'll see.