Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 111 and 112 – April 7th.

We blast off for the space station, because that is the only place you can sell starship guns apparently. We spend an hour moving to orbit, another to get to other planet’s space station.

We make a contact on the way in and purchase 3 vials of pheromones for 720 secs. Good deal.

Our first roll is nearly as fruitful. We get repair, life support and fuel units. For some reason, you can’t sell life support units here. We can sell fuel and repair units for 10 and 5 each. It turns out that we can’t really sell any fuel units and still have a reserve, so we purchase one for 20 secs. We take in 75 for this transaction.

We spend the whole rest of the day rolling to no effect. 95 secs isn’t very much so it’s distributed among the crew.

The next day (112) we get our roll for starship guns. We managed sell for 200 each. We also make another 600 secs interest payment. I have to be honest, I am only making sure we pay every ten days or better. I am pretty sure we are two weeks in advance but I’m not tracking that.

We have 186,646 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Art with Jeremy Hart

Jeremy Hart is a great artist over on MeWe, Facebook and Patreon. He has a whole series of items on DriveThruRPG (link to all of it), but I want to focus on his paper minis.

Jeremy Hart Solo Mini Eidolon A1 Solo Paper Mini]

So, I have dilemma. How do I post about paper minis without artwork? I mean as minis, a screen grab is essentially the product... so... you know, I don't want to do that.

The other day, I complained that I have no idea what I am doing with these colored pencils. It's not a format I normally work in. Rather than give up, I figured I'd just teach myself. It's a lot harder than it looks. Part of the issue is, I get a drawing done and want to get it colored, which will complete the work. Instead, I end up "ruining" it. Or at least not do it very well.

Sigh... artist's brain...

Here is where Jeremy Hart comes in. He makes these amazing drawings of monsters for whatever game you are playing. They are two sided little minis. A lot of them are black and white but some of them are in color. I am pretty sure he is using a computer and tablet combo, but this is an excellent opportunity to try out colored pencils. I don't have to trouble myself by drawing something to use the pencils. In fact, if you wanted to, you could run through his whole back catalog and print yourself a great coloring book.

The images below are close ups of his work, the green one is Jeremy's while the purplish one is my attempt with colored pencils.

This is a bad cell phone pix, actual images are
razor sharp and clear. 

The great thing about these Solo Minis are the price. Jeremy has them on sale for $0.10 each. That's a steal. I meant to download just one, but ended up with more than 12. Go give some these a try. You don't have to be a nut like me and use them for coloring sheets, you can incorporate them into your game.

These monsters are unique, so you'll either have to get his stat'ed products or make up some of your own stats. Don't forget, Jeremy has a patreon page which can score you monsters and stats starting at a dollar a month.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 110 – April 6th.

Duke, Emily, Deadeye, Audrey and David are out attempting to make contact with a buyer or seller of those high tech items we found yesterday. We get a few meaningless rolls, such as a repossession team before we get that offer. The repo team ignores you so long as you are current on your bills and not wanted.

We can purchase a regrowth tank, which will heal someone 1d6 a day. If it breaks down at the end of the day, it will cause 1d6 points of damage. I like it. They have a base price of 2000 times 2. So, I purchase 2 for 8,000.

We also purchase our hypercharges at 1,500.

We have 186,290 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

The Post About Fighters

Gurwinder as Keeper

Welcome back. I haven't posted much about D&D and AD&D lately.

Gurwinder as Warrior

Let's fix that with some thoughts on fighters. In B/X D&D fighters were characters who specialized in putting their weapon on someone and hard. Exactly what kind of guy or gal he was was totally in the theater of the mind. They could be any kind of fighting man or woman.

Not so in AD&D. Fighters gained sub-classes, the ranger and the paladin. For years, no decades, I always thought of paladins as being the guys with great armor and heavy weapons and rangers were archers due to the their outdoorsy nature and good dexterity. Plain old fighters were a mix of the two, using a short bow, sword and board. While fighters might have horses that they use and care for, the paladin has a horse built into their character but rangers often had dogs and wolves as companions. And these animals were not so friendly company.

However, the big thing that sets rangers and paladins apart from fighters is their use of magic. Paladins have spiritual magic while rangers have arcane spells.

Not Venus Genetrix,
but Venus Bellatrix. 

In the campaign I have been playing, there is a fighter, Gurwinder A’flumine. She is a small woman with a bow and knife. She wears a stola, palla and tunic at all times. She is reserved and calm, but the player has done her best to make her the leader of a band of misfit rangers, mages and daredevils. There was no declaration of intent, but she leads from the front.

While I rolled her up and foisted her off on the player, that player accepted her as she was designed, a fighter. But as she played, the character changed.

A slight change her stats to that of a paladin mechanically alters very little, except retainers. Gurwinder would have a modest boost in strength and constitution, which would not change her combat stats. Her charisma would climb by 7, which is huge but not out of character as with a 10, she was the de facto leader of this motley band. She retains no monies for herself, has not sought a horse or armor, or even better weapons. This player has redefined how I thought of fighters and their subclasses since I began playing.

What do you think? Let me know if I should offer to retroactively reclass this character as a paladin in the comment below.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 109 – April 5th.

Every planet has a theme.  Mynkuria’s theme is to win the war with Nipna via unusual tech. Nipna’s theme is to win the war via high tech.  Mynkuria isn’t working out for us, so we travel back to Nipna.

On our way back into the system, we encounter gun buoys. Emily manages to get the ship away before they can fire on us.

We head for the spaceport on the first planet and are detected on entry. We are approached with the opportunity to purchase some high tech items. We’re offered starship defensive screens for 2,500. We take ‘em.

This uses up all of our time for the day, but it was a super effective use of time.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 5 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 106, 107 and 108 – April 4th.

On Day 106, we take a day of RRR to heal up the entire crew. We also pay 300 in interest.

On Day 107, we get cracking on those Stasis Units we picked up from e103. In the first stasis unit, we find a wounded pilot. The medics lead him off to the crew quarters.

The next unit is more problematical. We open it and 4 guys jump out. Based on the last encounter, I’m going to decide that Duke tries to talk to them. Everyone except the medics and the newly found pilot are here.

The bodyguards open fire. They have the following stats:
Marksmanship: 4
Melee: 1
Endurance: 6
TL-5 side arms.

Duke makes his cunning roll and they do not surprise us. Lucy, Ratchet, Jon and Mike all have TL-6 side arms so they shoot first. All of them hit, but only Lucy scores a critical. 3 of these guys take a single point, while the last takes 5.

They return fire. They shoot at Duke, Mike, David and Lucy. Each needs a 9. Duke, Mike and Lucy are hit. Duke takes 3 points as a critical, while the other two take one point of damage.

To finish the round, Duke, Lefty, Deadeye, Emily, and Audrey shoot back with heavy weapons. Ace shoots with a TL-1 side arm. All four guys go down in a hail of gun fire.

We call for medical help and all of the wounded, including our newly found pilot, are transported to the city for treatment. This is expensive, but it avoids encounter checks. We pay 600 for the service.

On Day 108, Emily brings the ship to the city to pick up Duke and the gang. Nothing really interesting happens. On entry to the city we have a chance to sell TL-5 or six side arms, but the crew doesn’t want to sell. This is a rest day for Duke, Mike and Lucy.

Emily makes her rolls for the ship as we would like to sell these TL-1 level weapons. No deal on those, but we do get buy life support (1 secs. base), repair units (2 to buy, 1 to sell) and fuel (1 secs. to buy and sell). Twice, each actually.

This creates a dilemma for the solo player. If a player first makes all of their rolls for the day like I did, effectively, they can see the future. So, in order to blind myself, Emily decides to purchase 10 each at the first transaction, then possibly sell some on the second transaction if the price is right.

The first round results in Life Support for 3 each (30 for 10), Repair units for 2 each (20 for 10) and fuel at one each for a total of 10. This is due to the price multipler. We paid a more for the LSU, and base price for the other two. In the second round, the multiplier is 1, so we would lose money if we sold, so we don’t. A player can always refuse to buy or sell based on price, the problem comes in when you know that you have multiple chances.

We have 195,790 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now owe 194,863 on our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.