Archive | PermalinkSteve the Aboleth

This is Steve the Aboleth.

That is all.

Keywords: artwork

Archive | PermalinkPaper Minis: Edge of the Empire Beginner Game

So, since Star Wars Edge of the Empire role playing game core rulebook will be delayed another couple of months, many early adopters of the game will still be using the Beta rulebook and the Beginner Game boxed set to run their adventures. As previously stated, the boxed set has four pregenerated character folios and two free for download character folios from the Fantasy Flight Games website.

Download the paper miniature characters for the four from the Beginner Game (41-VEX, Lowhhrick, Oskara and Pash) and the two from the website (Mathus and Sasha) at the link below. Click on the thumbnail of Mathus the technician and Oskara the bounty hunter on the right to view the full pdf sheet.

You can use them If you're running the Beginner Game and/or using the downloadable folios for any adventure and/or just looking for general Star Wars paper minis for your own use in any system of Star Wars RPG, be it EotE, D6, Saga, d20, Savage Worlds, FATE, Risus, ORE or whichever floats your boat or flips your ship.

Download and assemble the bases used in the photo below from the One Monk Miniatures website.

Download the zipped pdf here (380 kb).

Keywords: edge_of_the_empire,paper_minis,rpg,star_wars

Archive | PermalinkGOKL Escapes The Insurmountable Ned

Earlier today I ran Star Wars Edge of the Empire for GOKL for the second time, using the Beginner Game truncated rules and extra stuff found on the internet.

Everyone was given 10 XPs from the previous session with an option to advance their characters. Qillian Ryn the Trianii and Darter Kel the Zeltron advanced their characters. 41-VEX the manumitted colonist droid saved his XPs for later.

NPC stats and GM notes and stuff

A Brief Prologue

A brief prologue was run to account for the absence players of Lowhhrick, Oskara and Nora. The commandeered Corellian YT-1300 light freighter Krayt Fang landed on a small oceanside shadowport on Rodia. Actually before landing, they kicked the ousted slaver captain Trex out into the humid Rodian swamps a hundred klicks from nowhere. An outlaw tech would be able to install a new BoSS transponder on their ship, but only for 10,000 credits as times are tough. Seeing that the crew did not have the money, the outlaw tech suggested they look for work at the Ithorian herdship that just made orbit recently.

Landing Bay 1138

This particular Ithorian herdship, named Green Fields, was an interstellar starship that was disc 5 klicks in diameter and had a giant transparisteel canopy 4/5th of the diameter that has a living jungle and ocean biomes.There was a central island that formed a mountain 400 meters tall. This type of herdship travelled from system to system and opened their doors to locals as tourists, encouranging them to visit their biomes, to stay in their hotels, to go on safaris and to generally spend a lot of money there.

Krayt Fang was berthed at Landing Bay 1138 at the rim of the Green Fields. Darter, 41-VEX and Qillian went out into the bustling landing bay which was able to support two medium ships and eight light ships such as their own. There were technicians, deck officers, tourist groups heading to or from their ships, load lifter droids, security droids, hustlers, businessmen, entrepreneurs and wanderers. Thanks to some fast talking Darter found a terminal that listed immediate job ads. Most did not pay well, but one ad from Captain Beru Highbringer paid 4000 credits per successful applicant. The job: crew of a Corellian YV-664 converted freighter - now a tour ship - that brought tourists offship to visit gorgeous astronomical sights of the region.

Landing Bay 1142

There were three Lambda-class Imperial shuttles berthed in Landing Bay 1142. Worried, Darter asked around about them. An Ithorian deck officer told them not to worry. Imperials were always boarding the herdship wherever they stopped; always looking for rebels - especially when there were so many outsiders aboard the ship. So far they had never found any.

The trio met with Captain Highbringer at the cantina at Landing Bay 1142. She was a grizzled spacer, as grizzled as a 28 year old human female with long, wavy blond locks could be. It disturbed them that she kept disrupting Darter's spirited pitch to her by whispering to the old force pike by her side as if it was alive. It was even more disturbing when she hired them and paid them half in advance when it seemed that the force pike allowed her to.

Before leaving they noticed four humans in casual tourist garb slipping into the cantina, a woman and three men. They were all clearly on edge, as if on the run from pursuers. The group decided not to interact with them.

They returned to the Krayt Fang to pick up their gear as well as extra space suits. (Yes, even VEX grabbed a space suit for arcane reasons.) They had a light lunch with Nora, Oskara and Lowhhrick before returning to Landing Bay 1142.

The group's initial pool of 4 Destiny Points among 3 PCs 

Keywords: edge_of_the_empire,gokl,rpg,rpg_actual_play,star_wars

Archive | PermalinkNight's Black Agents: The Eurovision Job Ends

And thus ends the Eurovision Song Contest Job where the company investigates a white supremacist terror group in Malmö, Sweden. This arc of the game took four sessions and in the final session, things go south for the group and then some. A game campaign recap can be found here, followed by descriptions of certain scenes that led us to the finale.

A thematic change in the game is that the players discovered that the Lampir-blood boosted terrorists were not merely from a fringe group, but part of the consipracy that led to the top levels of the Försvarsdepartementet (Ministry of Defence), who was trying to bring down the Socialdepartementet (Ministry of Health and Social Services) who had become our allies in Sweden. Therefore, we were not just running our operation in neutral territory, but in a country that was steadily becoming an enemy terrority.

The party split up between Jacob, Misha, Rose with borzoi hound Abraham Lincoln; and Sami, Zlatan, David with the other borzoi hound Abraham Van Helsing.

Team one would guard Romany singer Milla Cesarescu - lead singer and social activist of the band Half Kingdom - in her Malmö hotel room before the contest from attacks that her security detail will not be prepared to deal with. Team two would rendezvous with Snorre Dahlquist, the Health Ministry Special Agent, to visit the late (no thanks to Zlatan) Dr. Ishmael Sjöberg's house in Blackeberg, near Stockholm.

Three game highlights followed.

Keywords: gokl,nights_black_agent,rpg,rpg_actual_play

Archive | PermalinkSWAG: Squeak, Claire and Dutch

I love it when children play RPGs. Their young imagination make any game soar. If there's any way to help introverted children to help express themselves more and be better speakers, I would always recommend parents to run tabletop RPGs for them.

This was why I immediately took this request on the Star Wars Artists' Guild, which was requested by Juanflaco. He gamemastered a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG game for his children, ages 12, 9 and 7. The 12-year-old plays Claire, the young teenager on the run from Tatooine. The 7-year-old plays R2-79 a.k.a. "Squeak", Claire's astromech droid. The 9-year-old plays Dutch an amnesiac former Clone pilot who has to protect the two.

Click here for the forum request.

Click here for the SWAG art post.

Click here for a larger image at DeviantArt.

Keywords: artwork,edge_of_the_empire,rpg,star_wars,swag

Archive | PermalinkBareBones Covert Ops: Rogue's Gallery

What sort of enemies can you populate your BareBones Covert Ops campaign? What would you model your enemy organisation on? SPECTRE? SMERSH? HYDRA? Cobra? Here's a visual example of enemies you can employ to hinder your heroes in your game.

Keywords: artwork,bare_bones_system,rpg

Archive | PermalinkBareBones Fantasy: The TableTop Day Session

For International TableTop Day, I thought I'd run another a continuation of BareBones Fantasy RPG campaign for Irfan. Thus, Irfan's Jake Hastur the halfling wizard and my GM-run NPC Finn Riverwyld the warrior-scholar go once more unto the breach in the city of Kingsbridge in the Keranak Kingdoms.

The game began at approximately 1000 hours local time on Saturday morning (+8 hours UTC) and we stopped for lunch at 1200 hours. We thought we could continue later at night, maybe after dinner, but it was not meant to be. We will continue tomorrow.

Session One: Journey to Netharak Island

BareBones Fantasy uses the d00 percentile system, with percentile Ability and Skill rolls, while damages are sum of d10 rolls.

Before we began, Finn bought a new longsword. Jake desired a spear, so Finn gave him his own which he had not enough Warrior (melee) skill to wield properly. Irfan spent his Development Points to bring Jake's Strength from 45 up to 50 so he can use his spear effectively and without any Strength penalty.

The story began with the duo being summoned to the House of Duchess Lyla Keranak at the swanky part of Kingsbridge.  The Duchess would pay them 250 gold pieces each (100 in advance) to search for her missing younger brother, the House's captain of the guard Kane Keranak. They are to return Kane back to the House, or if he was dead bring his ring back to her. He was last seen going on an unknown quest to the Isle of Netharak, which Duchess Lyla pointed out to them on the map. When they reach the island, they are to report to a Mr. Bonewall in the fishing village of Dronak, who will report of their arrival to the Duchess via a message hawk, and let them know where Kane Keranak journeyed off to.

After paying the stable 2 gold pieces for taking care of Jack the horse, they both rode for a day westward to the foothills of the mountain range know as the Shielding Wall. Finn's successful Scholar roll revealed that the mining town of Hammerclash was nearby.

Keywords: bare_bones_system,irfan,rpg,rpg_actual_play

Archive | PermalinkSnivvian Long Distance Lovers

Derf requested a pair of Snivvian lovers for his Star Wars RPG campaign. He plays a Snivvian student on Coruscant who has a long-distance relationship with a holodrama scenist back on Cadomai. Painted in monochome digitally with MyPaint, and coloured using GIMP 2.8.

Click here to check out the image (as well as Ryan's "DAWWWW") on DeviantArt.

Keywords: artwork,star_wars,swag

Archive | PermalinkThings To Do In BareBones Covert Ops

Here are more interior artwork for DwD Studios's upcoming BareBones Covert Ops RPG. Covert Ops allow players to be part of a crack covert team of agents - military or civilians - and do a bunch of spy stuff. For research, I saw some 007 movies, Mission: Impossible movies, Person of Interest (for the civilian black ops angle) and Archer ("Well there's false flags, dead drops, drop outs, cut outs, active doubles, passive doubles, dangled moles. The often under appreciated honeypot. One of my favorites.") It also helped that I am in the midst of playing a Night's Black Agents campaign. Later, I also realised that Fast Five is a great heist movie that shows player characters as primarily wheel artists.

This batch of art shows activities you can do in the game, such as baking a cake, having a stroll, mowing the lawn, getting a mortgage for your secret island base:

Defeat a tank with a knife:

Get your doctor mad at you for not adhering to your prescribed diet:

Ride on a train:

Keywords: artwork,bare_bones_system,rpg

Archive | PermalinkNight's Black Agents: Zlatan's Story

This is not a full actual play report of the recent Night's Black Agents session gamemastered by Kai, but it highlights one of the reasons why I roleplay. One of the many descriptions of a tabletop RPG is a cooperative storytelling game where the gamemaster (GM) sets up a story and referees in-story conflicts and their outcomes. At the same time, players act accordingly as characters in that story and also provide foil for the GM to feed information and story points back at the players in a dramatically satisfactory way, if possible.

In a way, we are reading a spy novel or watching a spy movie as we are developing it together.

Here's what happened which involved me playing the Bosnian wheel artist Zlatan Kljujic:

But First, A Campaign Recap

Here's what happened beforehand during the first three game sessions of the "Eurovision Song Contest Job":

Sami Härkönen obtained two borzoi hounds which he trained and renamed Abraham Van Helsing and Abraham Lincoln.

The agents received information from Rose of the Camon Gang that they'd found a relative of Vin, their Romany hitter who displayed vampiric characteristics. This cousin is one Milla Cesarescu, a singer for a Romany punk band Half Kingdom who would be participating in Eurovision Song Contest 2013 in Malmö. Milla had publicly announced that she was going to unmask racist elements in the Swedish government and upon arriving at Malmö, Jacob, Sami, Abraham van Helsing discovered that a white supremacist terror group had targeted her.

Meanwhile Misha, Abraham Lincoln and a new addition to the company, the cleaner and medical examiner David Verdasco who stayed back in London to monitor the remnants of the Camon Gang witnessed the slaughter of Gary Camon and his men by an unknown group who displayed superhuman strength. The gang's terrified survivors, Rose and Mister Grey, joined up with the agents, informed them that Vin had been taken and wanted their help to leave the country.

Back in Sweden, while Jacob and his media contact Ebba Östberg investigated Milla, discovering that one of the terrorists named Mikko Mikkel-Mikkelsen displayed superhuman strength and limited mind control abilities. Sami and Abraham van Helsing shadowed Mikko while gaining a shadow themselves, one Snorre Dahlquist, a special agent for the Swedish Ministry of Health. Thanks to Sami, Snorre - who had also been investigating the terrorists as well - became an ally.

As Misha and David smuggled Grey and Rose out of England, Snorre, Sami and Zlatan tracked Mikko to a cottage in the woods near Nybro. In the cellar, viewed with a endoscope, Zlatan discovered Nova Lind, the aging mentor of Half Kingdom who disappeared some years ago, strapped to a chair being drained of blood, which is used to give the terrorists the superhuman strength.

Zlatan of course had made his mind up what these creatures are.

But Second, A Zlatan Recap

Keywords: gokl,nights_black_agent,rpg,rpg_actual_play

Archive | PermalinkIssyka

Issyka is The Secret DM's fantasy setting for a Play-by-Post game engine. Artwork commission for Issyka? Here you go:

There is a hint of planetary romance with swapped gender tropes. Also, who is actually afraid of who in the drawing? The humans or the Illadon? Watch this space for more announcements on Issyka.

Keywords: artwork,issyka,rpg

Archive | PermalinkWestward Locations Artwork 2

This is the second of two blog posts featuring location artwork of cities and prefectures on the planet Westward, where human colonists have been marooned for centuries with only an exotic steam-powered technology to run their machines. Over the years, new politics, allegiances and social dynamics have driven the inhabitants of Westward.

How would you play characters in an alien western steampunk setting?

Look out for the Westward RPG to be released soon!

Brimstone

Aquarium

Fort Gowchain

Fort Darling

Fort Spine

Fort Amarell

There's even a sideslicer on the hillside beneath Fort Gowchain there. Click here to see part one of two.

Keywords: artwork,cinema6,rpg,westward