Week 3: 8-Legged Subletting, Station Life, Role-play Inception, and More Pre-Game Action

Random Thoughts: Spiderly Neighbours

Usually, I’m notoriously bad at improvisation, so I avoid it like the plague, or pretend I’m improvising when I actually had stuff planned, or pretend I’m improvising when I actually didn’t have stuff planned and secretly pretend I had stuff planned to see if I fool myself and get away with actually improvising.  In spite of this condition, which I’ll tentatively call, Living On Rails Daily (LORE), some days hit me like a whole lot of helium and I spout off a whole lot of rubbish that actually works at the time.  To most people, this would be those days when your brain works super-quick and you have answers for everything firing out of a secret holster you keep your fastest wit in.  Most of the time, I can’t remember where I put that holster, or if I managed to get around to labelling it correctly.

This particular day - not this day, but another recent day like this day when the Earth was in a similar but not quite exactly the same position as it was today - I was discussing local spiders with colleagues in the workplace.  I mentioned throwing a stick into the top of a spider’s web, which a particularly entrepreneuring spider built in the corner of our back yard.

I had been content to leave the web there for a few weeks as it was doing a good job of catching mosquitoes but I decided it was time to huff and puff and blow that web down with the help of a stick.  I threw the stick, and rather than going through the web’s upper supporting strands it got caught in the web.  Perhaps the stick thought it was an insect.  Perhaps I was fooled by a particularly talented stick insect’s camouflage and had unwittingly lobbed the creature to its doom.  No; the stick was in fact a stick.  Sometimes sticks are just sticks.  Orb spider webs are sometimes just stronger than sticks.  There’s a lesson there somewhere.

“Touche, spider,” I had said, and the stick-adorned web stayed stick-adorned.

Back at work, I mentioned that I had thought that maybe the next time I looked at the web, the spider would have learned to use the stick as additional structural support and make the web even stronger and more elaborate.  Maybe it would actually begin to crane in additional sticks with web strands in order to build a proper miniature house for the modern arachnid - four bedrooms, ensuite, and a modern kitchen.  Perhaps the next time I go out to the back yard, the spider will be collecting its bug delivery off its miniature porch and is waving to me in a neighbourly fashion, or asking me obtusely what I think I’m looking at before slamming its miniature door.  Am I a bad person for hoping I don’t have to share my wheelie bin with this guy?

Another Snippet from The Last Journey of the Eye of Odin

The Station was huge. Juno knew that before coming here, but somehow it still surprised her.  Every day she discovered new sections of it that she hadn't seen before. Someone had told her yesterday that there were still areas that were too damaged to enter, and she remembered seeing zero­-G construction crews entering an airlock on the day she had arrived. Some of the least damaged parts of the Station looked surprisingly human­-built, but she knew that it wasn't. As far as the government-­paid Research crew had determined, this structure had been here since prehistoric times. Apparently there were some alloys in its construction that they still hadn't identified as well – maybe made from minerals found in one of the star systems that one of the damaged jump gates once led to.

“Juno!” A familiar voice rang through the crowded fighter bay.

Juno turned to see the hilariously unkempt blonde hair she had expected. She smiled. “What's up, Peters?”

“Distress signal! They're sending a squad out, so I volunteered us! Come on!”

Peters had come aboard with the same recruitment drive as Juno, and they had gotten to know each other well – going through orientation together and basic training. She had come to think of the boisterous young man as a brother – always keen to get them both in trouble.

Excitedly, he pulled on her arm and Juno laughed. “All right, all right!”

The pair ran to the Marshalling Yard, as it was called. The original purpose of this large space near the fighter bays still had yet to be determined, as much of the equipment originally found within it was destroyed. Engineering had used the scrap, and Research had taken usable remains for study, so now the area was used mostly by the pilot crews to organise themselves before missions.

A heavy set man known to the pilots as Bellows shouted out into the Yard. He stood on top of a set of containers that had been welded together into a makeshift podium for mission briefings and medal ceremonies. “All right all you wannabe heroes! I need six volunteers for a search and rescue mission with possible ship or scrap recovery!”

A few groups were already sitting around in the area on their time off, and others were walking through the Yard on their way to other parts of the station. Some pilots looked to each other before responding, and a few put their hands up quickly – obviously bored with Station life and wanting to get back in the saddle quickly.

“Connors!” Bellows started taking the volunteer's names. “Handel! Rigger!”

“Us, Sir!” Peters pulled Juno in front of the podium. “Pick us!”

Bellows rolled his eyes. “All right. Peters! Juno!” He looked around. “Chin! All of you report to Major Gosford in ten minutes. “Go!”

Peters turned to Juno with a gleeful grin on his face. “Yes! Let's go!”

Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Character Stuff

It's no secret. Whether reading about them, watching them being portrayed on film, or playing them myself at an RPG table, I like elaborate characters with lots of depth.  No cardboard cut-outs for me, unless that’s something to do with the plan - some kind of decoy maybe?  Anyway, I usually can’t help myself and put lots of over-thinking and pizzazz into characters that I play, even when they come mostly written for me, such as in Rogue Trader.  In cases like this, I try to put a new spin on the character, or taking the given role's features to new extremes - hopefully without ruining the general gist of what the whole point of the role is.

Truly, it is hard to pick a favourite character from the cast that I’ve played.  There was Ralrra, the wookiee technician with a raging bad temper, a penchant for whacking huge vibro-axes at anyone who messed up his intricate wiring, and yelling abuse at people who couldn’t understand him - which was just about everyone.  There was Ugg, the cleric of impossibly low intellect who I’m actually amazed was able to communicate without mooing, and many others in between.  

One of my more memorable characters was Rokar, the spot-light hogging sea-kin (*) extrovert show-off who improvised every second of his life.  He was extremely unreliable - often to his own health.  One such time saw him actually die, and he was brought back to life by the power of reincarnation.  After this, Rokar was an elf who was constantly disappointed in his own unnaturally-acquired inability to hold his breath underwater.

* Sea-kin are a sub-race of humans with a naturally acquired ability to hold their breath for long periods of time and swim well in strong currents and otherwise bad water conditions.

I thought it would be amusing to build a 5th edition character that has grown up amongst the aged heroic stories of Rokar the Magnificent (probably written by himself after he was probably thrown in prison for being a public nuisance).  I want a character who lives for the idea of finding the kind of fame that Rokar must have had in his own mind.  But they need to be an unknown to begin with, and the best kind of fame-seeking unknowns are undiscovered actors.  Role-playing an actor who is role-playing someone else?  How does that even work?!   CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

So I’ve written up a character, backstory, and character sheet document, for you to take a look at.

Tabletop Fantasy Strategy Ruleset - continued

This week we're going to cover some of the native races that existed in the world before each of the Sides came to be.  This is the second stage of the pre-game game, where the strategy revolves around where native villages are placed, how each of these villages will interact with each other once game turns commence, and how convenient villages might be to potential site locations for each Side's starting City.

Native Races and Villages

After all terrain hexes are placed, native villages are placed.  The type of village depends on the hex chosen.  The players take turn choosing hexes to place villages in, just as they did with placing the terrain, until all the villages are placed.  Roll a dice again to determine a new order of turns.  The village types are listed below, next to each of their corresponding terrain types.

Dragon eyries are located in mountain hexes.

Dwarven villages are located in hills and mountain hexes.

Elvish villages are located in forest hexes.

Fae rings are located in forest hexes.

Giant villages are located in hills and mountain hexes.

Giant Eagle eyries are located in mountain hexes.

Giant Spider nests are located in forest hexes.

Goblin villages are located in hills, forest, and mountain hexes.

Halfling villages are located in grassland and hills hexes.

Human villages are located in grassland hexes.

Orc villages are located in grassland and mountain hexes.

It is possible for a Side to control nearby villages and this is talked about later, but also note that these races do not all get along.  Here is a list of the native races with their corresponding natural enemies listed.

Dragons are enemies of giant eagles.

Dwarves are enemies of goblins, and orcs.

Elves are enemies of orcs, and giant spiders.

Fae do not have natural enemies.

Giant Eagles are enemies of dragons.

Giant Spiders are enemies of elves, and halflings.

Goblins are enemies of dwarves, and halflings.

Halflings are enemies of goblins, orcs, and giant spiders.

Humans do not have natural enemies.

Orcs are enemies of dwarves, elves, and halflings.

While undead feature further in this document as a race, they do not have villages.  However, once summoned, they function as any other race would, and are hated by all other races.

All villages will spawn a basic unit on their own, at the end of every round, acting as one big psuedo-Side.  The unit will stay on the village hex, defending the village, unless a natural enemy unit is within 3 hexes of the village - in which case they will move to attack.  The target can be a unit of a player’s Side, or it could be the neutral unit of another village.  This can lead to the destruction of a village, preventing capture and control by a Side, so there are some tactics involved in placing the villages in the first place.  A player could place one specifically to have it wiped out, or to wipe out another village, or they could be trying to specifically spread out village types in key locations to limit the convenient places for opponents to choose their starting City locations, which come next.  Also note that villages have limited logistical support, so they cannot have more than one unit moving beyond their village hex at any time.  This means that eventually they will not be able to produce any more units, as their village garrison stack will reach the default stack size maximum of eight units, and they may already have a unit out in the field.

Next week, it’ll be time to choose locations for starting cities, so we’ll cover an overview of Cities as well.

Ineffective Rainy Day Siege Engines

As a general rule, rain doesn’t bother me.  In fact, I prefer it to the hot and humid climate generally experienced in this part of the world at this point in the Earth’s orbit.  I should really get around to replacing my car’s windscreen wipers though, as only one is effective and it isn’t the driver side one.  The other one is bent, so half the time it actually makes it harder to see, and occasionally it collides with the good one, which is enough to unhook the arm from the car - at which point the power contained within the spring (that holds the wiper against the window) sends it catapulting off in the direction of the curb.  This is when I have to pull over, step out of the car, find and reattach the wiper, and then get back into the car.  I am generally soaked to the bone at this point.

After several of these pit stops, I start thinking about investing in a scuba suit, or vague pseudo-scientific windscreen drying technologies that don’t yet exist, like high-powered desiccation systems or extreme air pressure bubbles or bulky non-aerodynamic awnings with some kind of rocking chair and a corn field.  Maybe in the future they will just quantum-entangle windscreens with one that is kept in a nice dry safe somewhere, so that all windscreens remain dry at all times.  I guess they could just get rid of the windscreens altogether, and just have a completely enclosed cabin with big monitor displays showing virtual representations of the road and other cars - without the rain.  And if they’re doing that, why not just make the cars fly?  I mean, it’s 2015 now; cars should be flying already.  What kind of cheap future is this?

Have a great week, and we can catch up again in Week 4.

-Ix.