Finally! BX Red and BX Blue!

 It finally happened, both the BX Red and BX Blue are now available on DriveThruRPG as POD. 

Not only did I buy them, but I also used them for a one-off adventure. 

You can order them here (Red) and here (Blue). The last couple of pages of each printing include the flyers that would have been packed out in the box with the dice, crayon, and book. I have owned several copies of these, as I read the covers right off of them. I am really glad to have them back in my collection.

I had to cook up an adventure for characters of levels 1-3, and I will share a few details of this in the future. 

I believe this series of posts will land squarely on my Ko-Fi page. Right now, I have virtually no followers and zero membership fees. If you have a Ko-Fi account, come and follow this adventure there. 

Connections! What I didn't know about Dennis Sustare

 I happened to catch a video on YouTube about D&D Druids, called What are the Druids Supposed to be? by Daddy Rolled a 1. A name I hadn't expected popped up: Dennis Sustare. 

If that name sounds familiar, he was the creator of one of my favorite games: Star Smuggler. He has along list of creations and contributions and I a pretty sure Star Smuggler is pretty low on his list of achievements, but it's my favorite. 

I had no idea he created the D&D class for druids. That is really cool. 

Studio Bergstrom - Quality Models

I am on a side quest of sorts. I have a favorite website for spaceship models. I would like to share it with all of you. The website is called Studio Bergstrom, and I love these models. Take a look: 

Had I been thinking, I would have lined them up with the grid. The largest is about and inch and the smallest, half that. They are so cool. 

I need some brushes for models, oil painting, and my new hobby, watercolors. All of these links go to MeedenArt.com, my new advertiser. I may receive a commission on qualifying purchases made through these links. 

My oil painting case survived the fire through some sort of freaking miracle, so I have a ton of brushes of the wrong kind for painting models. But if I have learned nothing, if you have something, you can make it work for you. 

I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but this box belonged to my grandmother. The fact that it somehow survived warms my heart. If I had time and energy, I'd make this my one and only tool kit for art and carry it everywhere. This image is from over a decade ago. I have upgraded my paint set to 170 ml tubes with this set from MeedenArt. 

I hope she knows how much I love this thing, no matter how much the contents change. 

Anyway, back to the task at hand. Making stuff work. I used the smallest oil painting brush I could find on these tiny models, and the results were not horrible. Not perfect, but considering what I had on hand, I feel good about them. 

This could start a whole second tangent here, but this green scheme is modeled on Hera Syndulla's Green Squadron from Rebels. While painting these models, I listened to more than watched Return of the Jedi. 

There really was a Green Leader and Green Squadron of A-Wings in Return of the Jedi, which is a great... call forward? to the Greens of Star Wars Rebels. In RotJ they have red ships and green uniforms, but it's a cool touch. 

These are free-painted, using a mammoth 1/32 inch brush. As I said before, I need to buy some new tools, but I think I made it work. 

Studio Bergstrom also makes two different kinds of bases. These are described as resin, but to the average dude like me, they feel like rubber. All of them are black. You put a standard pin in them and glue the model down or up, if you look at the second picture below. 

The links to Studio Bergstrom are a part of this post for review purposes. They are not a sponsor, nor do I receive payment from them. Click to your heart's content. 

These stands are super cheap and a great option for any number of flying models. The website has a disclaimer: "Does not take paint well," which I took to be a challenge. You'll notice I didn't paint the bases. These are spaceships. Why paint a black base a color? 

I could paint them if I meant to use them on a different colored surface, but I'm not, so I won't. I trust that the company knows best, but I want to try sanding, then a clear coat, before slapping paint on these. I'll post the results when I am done. 

I will post a full spread of all of the models at the end of this series, but I really wanted to focus on Green Squadron today and A-Wings in particular. 

I purchased 18 A-Wings, 3 B-Wings, 3 X-Wings, and 6 Y-Wings. This distribution seems to be about right for the Rebels Era. The Rebels don't really go crazy for X-Wings until Star Wars, which is just a few years later. 

Here are 2 images of the bases, first large: 

And the next, small. 

Yes, they require some handiwork, but nothing serious. I sat outside with my wife, with a glass of wine and a pair of scissors, trimming away. All of these took less time than a bottle of wine to finish. 

Now for the crazy bit: Studio Bergstrom does these in two different scales. A 1" scale which is what I have, but he does a smaller fleet scale series. Those are really tiny. To be honest, I can't give you a true scale, but if I had to guess, the 1" fighters are 1:600 scale. The fleet scale might be 1:2400, but that is a wild guess on my part. They do look nice. 

Here is a handy table of links for the models I have: 

Fighter Model	1" Scale (single fighter)	Fleet Scale (set of 6)
A-Wing	Click here	Click here
B-Wing	Click here	Click here
X-Wing	Click here	Click here
Y-Wing	Click here	Click here

In another piece of transparency, over on Studio Bergstrom's Facebook page, I urged him to raise prices. Since 2017, the very reasonable prices have only increased by about 11%, which is not enough. He tries to keep things reasonable and stable for his buyers, possibly too reasonable in my opinion. 

This is the first of a whole series of posts. I need to cover B-Wings and Y-Wings, then some other models I bought for A Billion Suns. I hope to alternate between model posts and D&D posts with the odd review post in between. 

In closing, let's remember one of the craziest A-Wing moments from Return of the Jedi. 

X2 - Castle Amber 2026 - Session 6.1 - Curses and Boons

We Were Promised Jetpacks are from Scotland.
This statue is cursed. 

In my last post, I didn't detail what each party member received from the Statues. 

Lance received a magic item, a +2 shortsword. Merry was given a +2 flaming sword, which he gave to Khouri. Both also received a ring of fire resistance, which they each kept. This means every member of the party has at least one magic weapon and a magic item. 

Khouri was cursed to grow a tail, which would slow her movement. As a post-human, she is immune to haste and slow. Instead, she was briefly incapacitated as her systems fought off the curse. She gets very hot when these sorts of alterations hit her. She might be able to fight or run while under this effect, but at a penalty. I love this effect as it is both helpful while coming at a cost. 

Merry was diseased, but he has a divine immunity to diseases. No effect. 

This is a Disney Magic Sword.

Sybil had her Intelligence go up from 13 to 14. This is not entirely helpful since she is chaotic with a disastrously low Wisdom of 6. On the positive side, she gains another bonus 1st-level spell. I use the old D&D Wisdom table for Magic-Users, switching out Intelligence for Wisdom. I got the idea from the Goldbox game Champions of Kyrnn.

The final curse is very interesting. Dorian was cursed with Empathic Healing. I totally ripped this off from the text-based game, Gemstone IV. 

Here is how Empathic Healing works: 

Dorian's cure and heal spells only work on himself. He can't directly cast them on others. Nor can he cast the reverse of a healing or cure spell at all. They don't function for him.  

When healing someone else, he picks a fixed amount of damage to cure: 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, or 20. You'll notice these numbers match dice. The subject of the healing immediately receives these hit points, up to their maximum HP. He cannot over-cure someone to more HP than what they had. Any extra HP is lost. When curing blindness, disease, etc., the subject is cured immediately. 

In the next round, the damage or status is moved from the healed to Dorian. 

Transferring hit point damage works like this: Dorian picks a number from the list above. He rolls a die to see how much damage he suffered in the transference. But there is a push-down effect. If he attempted to restore 20 HP, he rolls a 1d12 to see how much actual damage he took. A choice of 12 results in a 1d10 die roll, 10 points is reduced to a 1d8, and so on. Curing 4 HP, he receives a flat 2 points of damage. Dorian needs to be aware of his own resources since this could kill him outright if he doesn't have enough HP. 

In the third round, he can cast whatever spell he wants on himself to get rid of the damage. 

In the case of blindness, disease, etc. Dorian is allowed the same saving throw the victim failed. If necessary, he can cast the appropriate cure on himself, either immediately or when he has time. Since Clerics pray for spells, he can do this even when blind, deaf*, poisoned, cursed, or diseased. This is a benefit to Dorian here as the allowed saving throw can eliminate the need for casting a spell.

There is one more effect of this curse: it is communicable. If someone uses magic to heal Dorian, like Merry the Paladin or a different cleric casts a spell on him, the healer could also be cursed to have Empathic Healing, too. 

I like curses that work like legal stipulations. There is some good with even the worst curse. Khouri and Gabby have equally weird curses on them. Khouri is nearly immortal, but she is not subject to haste or slow spells. Other magical effects won't work on her, but I haven't explored all of these options yet. Gabby accidentally let a spell get away from her when she cast the Bonds of Hospitality on the Unicorn and Dragon**. She is forever bound to be hospitable to them because they are immortal. The same goes for Alexei, which is less of an issue as he is insubstantial. This will become a plot point later. 

Curses that become a definition of a character are the best because no one has to work to remember them. They just are. 

Next time, the party will meet a person slightly more cursed than themselves. 

*A second campaign note: I have a status for being deafened, and there is a second spell for curing it. It is the same level as the one for blindness. 

**Third campaign note: Unicorns and Dragons are effectively immortal in my campaign. They can only die from violence and misadventure. 

The IRL Update - Where did I go, What happened to Fiver and AI Shenanigans

The last 5 weeks have been Shenanigans. Things went sideways when our boy Fiver broke a leg. We have no idea how this happened, but it did. It was a bad break that required surgery. 

Of course, this happened a day before we planned to go to Lake George and a week before my daughter Catherine was going to move out. Neither could be canceled, so Catherine got him to the vet for an assessment while we went off on vacation. The break required some screws and plates, something the local vet was not able to do. The other option was amputation, again, something the local vet wasn't equipped to do. 

I said the local vet couldn't do this or that like that is a bad thing. It wasn't. They were able to get us to the appropriate animal hospital, coordinate appointments, and stabilize him with medication for comfort. They were awesome. 

As soon as my wife and I got back from Lake George, Catherine and Jen packed up Fiver and drove to the closest animal hospital that could do the surgery: Cornell University Exotic Pet Hospital. They did an amazing job. Fiver spent the week at their facility before coming home. 

During this time, I managed to get the garden ready. As you can see from the image, Fiver gets a daily pile of fresh herbs. He was not happy with the cage at first, but he got used to it. It's more like a cage in a pen. The whole area is about 8 feet long and six feet wide, with a small dog crate inside. There is nothing stopping the cats from getting in there to visit their buddy, and Fiver is smart enough to get out. But he doesn't feel like escaping right now. We don't lock him in the crate unless he is traveling, and he uses it as a bedroom. 

I know virtually everyone in the world has rabbits outside their homes, but what makes all rabbits "exotic" is the equipment and resources necessary to provide care. Our vet can't do surgeries on rabbits, especially a giant rabbit. They don't have much call for it. Dogs and cats have surgery all of the time, perhaps many times a day. They are equipped for those procedures because of the frequency of the need. Also, it's relatively cheap because of the frequency; the volume creates a built-in subsidy for that care. For that reason, getting a dog or cat neutered or spayed is super cheap. In case you were wondering, that cost us over $500 for Fiver's neutering, and it had nothing to do with his extraordinary size. The leg surgery was many, many times more.  

Think twice before you buy a rabbit. They really are exotic. 

The garden is tied to Fiver. We grow a lot of food for him. This year, I used AI for planning the garden. It helped me schedule when to start seeds, what to grow, how to arrange plants, etc. It could tell me what sort of things were safe for rabbits or bad for them. This is a big help as Fiver broke his leg at the exact moment all of these tasks were due. 

One of the drawbacks of AI like Gemini and ChatGPT is the lack of persistent memory. From the user's perspective, every new chat is a blank slate. You can schedule events in Calendar or Gmail, and make lists in Keep, but it isn't the same as having a little avatar waiting for you. Creating an account allows you to access prior chats, and both services have a persistent memory of what has gone before, but it's really weird. 

For example, when the LLM updates or the interface changes, I have to remind the AI to stop calling me "Phil". I know who I am. The other odd thing is, sometimes the language model will dredge up information and fixate on a couple of random bits, often in the form of "safety warnings". 

For example, it is aware that I like wine and I have diabetes. Out of the blue, it will suggest alcohol treatment centers or a better doctor. Thanks. It's conflating my purchasing wine for birthdays and holiday gifts with actual consumption. I do 3 wine tastings a year, and I use AI to keep a running tab of what my preferences, those of my wife, and family members and friends I buy gifts for, so it is kind of understandable that it thinks I drink a lot. 

In my last post, I mentioned that AI fixated on 4 characters from my Castle Amber Sessions. I asked it to find many of the misspellings I made in those posts. However, it also noticed that the names Lance, Gabby, Khouri, and Dorian appear more often than not and it locked on to them when I asked it to simulate the statues interacting with the party. 

One of the more perplexing things is the name Rakshasa. Both AI and my spellchecker are horrible at correcting typos of this name. I am fixing that today, without the help of AI. I write using my 1999 iBook, and all of the text exported from there is fine, but when I throw it in Blogger, Gemini and the built-in spellchecker go nuts. I just have to compare what I originally wrote to what was actually posted. 

In my next post, I will detail what the party received from the Statues. Right after I fix the Rakshasa issue... manually. 

These IRL updates won't be shared on social media because they are outside the genre of games, so if you like these posts, click that follow button or try Campaign Wiki, which gathers blog posts for you.