Strictly (Duke) Spinger - Day 007 (RRR)

This is another RRR day, third in a row. Time for an ad, but not a real ad. Reaper miniatures, in conjuncture with Dwarfstar have made many of their old games available. What is great about this is, if you follow the link above and scroll down, you can find tips and methods to use the digital files to reproduce the whole game with great looking counters.

Back to Duke.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
23 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket.

OSR Character Sheet

The people over at Cirsova have a new OSR character sheet for commercial use. That pretty cool. 

I thought of creating an OSR sheet, but 99% of my rational of uploading my AD&D character sheet was nostalgia. I've been using this particular sheet for decades and though other people would be amused by is simplistic design values. My second version was done on the oldest software I could find to continue the sight gag. 

This sheet is pretty cool because it has those nostalgia values AND it's free for commercial use. That super generous. If I do a OSR one shot, I'll totally use this sheet.

You can download my file at DriveThruRPG using the links on the upper right. 

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 006 (RRR)

Dilemma time. Having reviewed the game Star Smuggler, I'm playing it and posting the results here one day at a time. If you aren't familiar with the game, you can read the review here or download the whole game there.

I have reached the point where the characters are doing Rest, Repair and Recuperation and not a whole hell of lot happens.

Mechanically, when you engaging in RRR, you roll a die to see if you have a forced contact at the start of the day. Roll a 6, there is a chance of an encounter. There are 7 varieties of encounters for each area and some areas by virtue of what they are preclude some of those 7. The ruins are one of those.

Going forward on RRR days, I'll share stats then I will tell you about things related to science fiction, outside of the Star Smuggler game which will probably contain an ad for something for you to purchase. 

Dear Diary,

Day six is less exciting than day five. We engage in RRR, again. Some parts are literally watching paint dry.

Here is today's stats:

1 Antelope starship,
2 Hopper with 15 units of fuel,
1 Stasis pod 2 CU,
24 Repair units (one used to repair the boat).
2 Skimmer,
1 Damaged U-bot.
and the ship is fully fueled with 6 hypercharges.

Crew:
Emily, weekly pay 15 secs. She has a sidearm and 35 secs.
Ratchet, weekly pay 15 secs. He has 30 secs.
Doc, weekly pay 10. He has the 10 secs that I paid him on day one.

Designated Heir: Emily.

I still owe 120,000 secs. in principal on the ship. I still have 350 secs in my pocket.

Welp, it was good while it lasted... Feedmegames.com

It was good while it lasted. It appears that feedmegames.com is gone for good.

I had to yank that off of Google's cache. I missed it in real time.

On the upside, the Buffalo Bills have another chance next tear... er, I meant "year".

Star... er Space Viking Book Review

Title: Space Viking
Author: H. Beam Piper
Year: 1963
Pages: 191
Rating: ★★★

H. Beam Piper's Space Viking inspired many idea in science fiction gaming. There is a reference to it in Traveller, in the form of the Spinward Marches' Sword Worlds.

It is somewhat a post-apocalyptic genre, all action takes place in the Sword Worlds, colonies founded by the losing side in The Big War. In the aftermath, a Federation of planets has collapsed into barbarism and is under siege from the titular Space Vikings.

 Trask, the leader of the so-called Space Vikings starts a campaign of conquest and revenge for the murder of his wife.

Space Viking really doesn't break any new ground, but all of the pieces of a classic science fiction story are there. Space Battles, check. Technology hampered by resources, check. Intrigue and revenge, check.

It's a solid read, but doesn't really soar.

Armor in the Movies and in Games

This week, I had two ideas collide. I finally finished The Mandalorian on Disney+ and received my order of the book, What is Dungeons and Dragons?. The book takes you through the process of how to create for not just Dungeons and Dragons, but many game systems, while the TV show follows the adventures of Baby Yoda and his newly minted father figure, The Mandalorian.

One thing that stands out in the TV show is how armor should work. Mando gets blasted and knocked around, losing bits and pieces all over the place. Like the real world.

Apparently, Mandalorians are the only Star Wars characters with fully functioning armor. I'd like to bring that into my D&D campaign.

In the original Unearthed Arcana book, there are a couple of options for this. First, there is field plate, which acts like hit points and a matching Magic Armor spell which does the same. I use a fusion of B/X and AD&D so this isn't too outside the box.

What I would like to do is create a system where all armor works to reduce damage. AD&D's armor class is nicely suited for this as 10 is a person's street clothes armor class, which is not protective. It stands to reason that I could simply create a table where dividing each minus to AC by 4 reduces damage by one.

AC
10 0/4 is nothing, so No Damage Reduction
9 is -1/4=.25 No Damage Reduction
8 is -2/4=.50 for 1 Point of  Damage Reduction
7 is -3/4=.75 for 1 Point of  Damage Reduction
6 is -4/4=1.00 for 1 Point of Damage Reduction
5 is -5/4=1.25 for 1 Point of Damage Reduction
4 is -6/4=1.50 for 2 Points of Damage Reduction
3 is -7/4=1.75 for 2 Points of Damage Reduction
2 is -8/4=2.00 for 2 Points of Damage Reduction
1 is -9/4=2.25 for 2 Points of Damage Reduction
0 is -10/4=2.50 for 3 Points of Damage Reduction

This table is nice because it naturally places armor in groups: none, minimal, medium and heavy, which is kind of what the game books do anyway. The table requires division and rounding, which is easy enough on the brain to do on the fly or I could simply make an index sized card for quick reference.

What do you think?