Greetings,
Well, finally getting a moment to catch my breath, thought I'd take the time
I'm inhaling to do my ACR.
A couple days pre-con Jon Tuffley arrived in Baltimore. After I
picked him up, he took a day to quietly hang out, rest, relax, and unwind from
the flight over, adjust to the time zone change, and prepare his FMA scenario
that would be run Friday evening. The evening before the con Scott Field
arrived in Baltimore from New Mexico. He has been wanting to come out for
several years now,
but his work schedule and travel-out-East-for-training schedule
has always been a week or two off from the con weekend. Now, finally, they
coincided.
Friday morning we loaded the car with con supplies, personal supplies and
luggage (esp in the case of Scott, as he was not going to be coming
back to Baltimore post-con), and then squeezed the three of us into
my Honda (good thing I upgraded to a 4-door from the 2-door/hatchback I
some years ago!). Since we had the day ahead of us, we went off to go check
out the Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance Museum (yes, open to the public),
not 35 minutes from my apartment (it's sad to think that I've lived in B'more
over 15 years and this was the first time I've gotten to the museum). Despite
the rather nippy day (temps were a comfortable 45 F or so, but the wind...),
we visited each and every piece of war machine set out on display (Scott was
enamored with the Leopold railway
artillery gun ;-), browsed the interior portions of the museum, and
rummaged through the giftshop (finding two copies of "Panzer Truppen" by
Thomas L. Jentz; Jon T could not say enough about how great these books were,
which, in the end, convinced both Scott and I to pick one
up each - we also learned these were signed copies that the giftshop
had). From there we buzzed up to Havre de Grace, had lunch, then did
some non-highway driving to head up to Lancaster. We would later learn
that we were fortuitous in not going the regular route (up I-83 out of
Baltimore to York, then Rte 30 to Lancaster) as I-83 northbound was
shut down completely due to a fatal and nasty accident. Many people who came
from or through Baltimore that afternoon arrived anywhere from
3-5 hours later than they had expected.
At the con we got checked in, met Jon Davis, Jerry Han, David of DLD, and the
slowly growing contingent of ECCers. I was slated to play in Tom Pope's "War
of the World", a Dirtside II game set in about 1940. As Tom was unable to make
it due to work interference, John Lerchey
stepped in to take GM Command and ran a fine game. In the initial set-
up, John had placed some haystacks he had requested I bring (when he learned I
had some 6mm ones painted up) as well as a couple stands of sheep and I think
7 stands of cows. It didn't *seem* important at first; looked more like
enhancements to the board scenery. As I was one of the Americans, I made the
comment that the Martians were coming to take the cows away (making an oblique
reference to the first episode of South Park from years ago). Little did I
know how right I was...
Tony Finan played the Martians and had walkers, flyers, and infantry galore.
The Americans (consisting of Aaron Teske, David Raynes, and I), on the other
hand, had hordes of Shermans and Stuarts. Our gun weaponry *sucked*, but that
was par for course with these vehicles. We would just have to do the best we
could.
We set up our 3 companies in two sections: Dave on the right side of
our set-up area, Aaron and I to the left, with Aaron more center than
I (his job was to go up to the hill and swing around right, while I ran up the
left edge to hit a flank; David was to come in from the
other flank while we had the Martians occupied - but you know what
they say about the best-laid plans ;-). The Martians divided up
their forces: a handful of flyers attacked Dave's company from over the woods
ahead of Dave, while the rest moved ahead of the walkers and began engaging
Aaron's and my companies. The walkers moved in after the flyers had our
attentions.
We discovered that the Martians had screens - a rude surprise, esp
when we learned that *any* valid hit, no matter how much damage done,
would only reduce a screen by one strength point. Flyers had 10-point
strength screens. Walkers had 8-point screens, and infantry we would
learn had 6-point screens. Screens would regenerate 1 point a the start
of each new turn. However, we had a little break in discovering that 'Boom!'
chits would disable the screen generator permenantly, dropping the screen
completely, letting us engage the Martians on a more level playing field.
Unfortunately for the Martians, we ended up drawing a rather high percentage
of 'Boom!' chits during the game, dropping a lot of screens (of course some of
these were after we had knocked down a flyer's screen from 10 to 2). Once
screens were down, the Martians began dying quickly.
However, while we were learning about the screens, we saw that the walkers
were starting to make off with the cows! I personally can only theorize that
they have too many chocolate chip cookies on Mars and finally figured out what
all those "Got Milk?" commercials meant (though there is a slight problem with
the timing issues of the
commercials and when this scenario was to have taken place - but it's
a minor technicality that you should just ignore for now...absolutely nothing
happened in sector 83 by 9 by 12...).
At this point David was fully engaged with 3-4 flyers, I was taking on
2-3 flyers (and trying to save my 105mm Shermans from getting thumped
by Martian DFFGs), and Aaron was taking on the remaining Martian units. While
the Martians had us all engaged, they couldn't hit the side of a hill most of
the time. I really expected our forces to die in droves, but lucky die rolling
enabled us to dodge many blasts (either that or
the Martians were actually pervy cow-loving Martians and were rather
distracted at all the hot beefcake in the field; for the sake of the younger
and mixed members reading this, we'll go with the official
story that the Martians are just udderly pervy cow-loving tripods).
After I finished off the flyers that were assaulting my company, I
made it a priority to save the damsel moo-ers in distress and had
two walkers in my targetting reticule (ignoring the fact that my Shermans
probably didn't have said reticules, of course).
Much fighting ensued (esp with the infantry, who dismounted from the walkers
when the walkers got to the cows; the infantry proved rather difficult to take
out with platoons of tanks), and in the end, only a handful of walkers (3)
managed to escape with cows. The rest were destroyed, and the cows they were
carrying waved. Yes, we GOT MILK!
Saturday came all too quickly (there was a "ski" group in the hotel this year
who were....enjoying the heightened volume of the stereo
their dj was playing - could sense it all the way to the 8th floor;
plus all the door slamming at 4am :-( ). A troop of us went off to
breakfast at a small establishment nearby, then back to the con! There people
began stirring, gathering, and setting up. I was to be involved in another
Dirtside II game, another one taking place in WW2. This time, however, no
Martians. Just Soviets, Italians, and German. John
Lerchey, GM for the Martians vs WW2-era Shermans, was on the Soviet
side, and was dug in - a lot. Dave Hornung was running this event, and
was using 'hidden' movement. We all assigned counters to our units, then moved
the counters on the board. The only way the composition of a counter could be
determined was for the opposing side to make a successful spotting roll. This
roll was based on the unit's quality die as well as a movement die (if it did
not move, it got a d12; if it moved some percentage of it's total movement,
the die type dropped accordingly). The unit being spotted had only its quality
die to roll (unless it was in cover, in which case it got another die to roll;
in the case of this game, the
Sovs were hiding in woods and got an additional d10 anti-spotting roll).
The unit composition was revealed if the spotter beat all anti-spotting
die results. If only partially successful (ie, the spotter beat only one
of the two anti-spotting die), we got an idea of what might be in the
unit (e.g., small wheeled vehicles, tracked vehicles, armored squirrels, or
some shadowy people).
Anyway, as the game progressed, the Soviets were succeeding about 50% of
the time in IDing the German/Italien forces. The Axis powers were
succeeding about...10% of the time in IDing the Soviet forces. So while we
were busy trying to figure out what the hell was shooting at us, the Soviets
were ripping through our lighter units (if you read John Lerchey's report, you
know he removed from the board a motorcycle group as well as a group of
kubelwagons - both of which were mine, dammit! ;-).
We were unable to finish the game as the time slot for it to run in ended. So
it wasn't clear to me who might have won. We got to turn three, but the turn
three reinforcements (Panzer IIIs with stubby guns on the German side, not
Panzer IVs) were JUST entering the field of battle, and were still
1-2
turns away from being able to engage in combat. Despite that, it was a fun
little scenario. I'm intrigued by the hidden movement idea, but I think the
Soviets had a serious advantage in that with the added d10 anti-spotting
die for being entrenched in the woods.
During this time period (Saturday am) people submitted many entries to the
minis painting contest. Even in the 15mm category (in which the past two years
only Stuart Murray and I entered minis). During the afternoon time slot people
could then vote for the minis they liked best and after the dinner break but
before the evening gaming session winners would be announced.
In the afternoon I joined in on Dean Gundberg's Sci-Fi Crossover FT
game. Given a choice of commands, I dearly wanted to play with the White Star,
so got that as well as an Earth Alliance heavy cruiser (Hyperion-class).
We also had an Omega (run by Noam), a battlestar (Atlantia, run by a guy named
Jerry), and a Mons Calimari cruiser, run by a guy named Scott or
Steve (I am drawing a complete blank on his name now :-( ). We four
faced off against 5 Evil Players, consisting of Scott Field, Jim Bell, Mike
Miserendino, Nick Caldwell, and <sigh> someone else I'm drawing a blank
on at the moment. :-( In any event, Jim wanted to take out my ships; I
could see it in his eyes. Noam, however, got in Jim's way. Unfortunately for
Noam, one critical die roll on initiative cost us the Omega (Dean was running
squadron fire instead of individual ship fire; had it been
indivi-
dual ship fire, Noam's Omega would have been able to toast one of the D7s it
was staring at before being gutted by the remaining ships: that's the one
problem with squadron fire, but it does make larger FT games play faster).
Most of the Alliance of Good jumped on Scott Field's super duper star
destroyer monster, and by the end of the game we had taken it out. But at a
serious cost that only the Mons Calimari cruiser had any hope of being able to
escape. We only destroyed a couple of the Evil Empire ships all total, I
believe.
Nevertheless, it was a fun game to play, AND it turned out to be another
of Dean's FB3/FT3 playtest games (which was cool, as I haven't had the
opportunity to test the current grazer idea out myself before this game; the
new fighter rules I have played with before and think they work okay). We all
gave feedback to Dean and broke for the dinner break.
During this time I tallied up the votes for the minis contest. It's a humbling
thing to thing that minis you might have entered because you thought they
weren't bad got zero votes (as basically three of my four
entries did ;-). I got more work to do...
During the break, after dinner but before the evening session kicked off, we
introduced and thanked Jon Tuffley for being able to make it over to our
little gathering. He gave a little speech (at our prodding, of course
;-), and handed out 45 copies of FT3*, under the grounds that we were
not to tell the list members about this (so just ignore the fact you read
that, forget about FT3, and go about your business; nothing to see here...).
He also showed us the only copy of Full Thrust in Polish on this side of the
Atlantic. It was a very well-done, well-put together book combining FT
and FB1. Nice artwork as well. But difficult to read unless you understand
Polish. ;-)
After this we did the minis contest winners announcements. I don't have the
list of winners with me, so this is by memory:
In the FT category Aaron Neumann took first, Nick Caldwell took second. It was
a VERY close race; I think Aaron beat Nick by 1.5 votes. I don't
remember who got third. :-(
Keith Swearington took first place in the SGII-25mm category. John
Lerchey got second I think in the DSII category.
I'm drawing a complete blank on who else got what in which category :-(
But Adrian J, Mike Miserendino, and Bryan Connell (Connelly?) all won a place
with their entries. Dopey me didn't write down the winners on a seperate sheet
of paper, and all the tally sheets are at home.
Anyway, after that the evening sessions kicked off. JOhn Lerchey and I
were co-running the OGRE Bash scenario. With four people to a side, we
tried to give them roughly balanced forces of OGREs (using the OGRE Mk V as a
benchmark). THis was a DSII game using John's developed OGRE rules (that I've
been helping test since last summer; they have come together quite nicely, I
must say; they retain the feel and flavor of OGRE, yet work within the DSII
rules). A lot of arty (OGRE missiles) was exchanged between the OGREs, but not
much direct fire, as the players were less than enthusiastic to be the first
to rush out into the middle of the table only to be targetted by every other
OGRE on the board and blasted to bits. This, unfortunately, added to the
already slow game (the OGRE rules are good, but they play slower than regular
DSII games; an artifact of how the
OGREs are designed, and is workable in smaller engagements - but
difficult with more than a dozen OGREs on the board!), so we had to push the
rules a bit and made the players use all their movement on turn 2 then fire
all their weaponry. This gives bonuses to the OGRE missiles (which act as
artillery), but by then most missiles had been fired, so the overall effect
wasn't that bad. After this we called the game good and assigned prizes based
on the number of systems a player *didn't* have destroyed. At this point there
was only one OGRE totally fried, but a good many others who were in real
unhappy shape. Only a couple were still pristine.
The night was once again long with our resident partying "ski" group (that no
one really believed were skiers, but were using skiing as an excuse to gather
together and party extremely hard; the hotel staff and several of the ECCers
noted that gee, gamers were much quieter, and MUCH cleaner, than the "normal"
people who were partying and trashing the place; I felt sorry for the hotel
staff that had to clean up after the "skiers").
Sunday morning came and I set up for my Battle for Durango scenario, yet
another DSII game (I think more DSII games were run this year than any of the
prior ECCs; and if not, it certainly felt like it). This game went two turns
as well (due to an hour late start while morning things got taken care of).
The Anglicans were attempting to take Durango from the redneck Seperationists;
the Durango Defenders were attempting to throw back the government domineering
forces. There were some amusing chit draws on both sides (the best was when
Jerry pulled a Firing Systems Down chit, and when someone said don't pull that
chit again, he did), and both sides made what I considered (as GM who designed
the scenario) some tactical errors, but in
the end the most important thing was accomplished - they all had fun.
:-)
On the game board the Durango Defenders were just starting to get hammered,
and hadn't hammered hard enough on the Anglican Confederation (although they
did a good job early in turn 1, almost removing the entire AC howitzer
platoon!), although the Durango Defenders *did* get their infantry into a
position in which to harass the AC from a distance. The AC never got their
infantry into any action. This is probably because not many people play with
infantry in DSII tank battles (something that, I hope, will change with
DS3).
After the con was finished, we wrapped things up and re-packed the car.
The car was now *fuller* than when we had come, because Jon had picked up a
whole
box of DLD minis. ;-) Scott Field, sitting in the back seat, was in a
quite cozy corner.
Scott, Jon, and I headed over to Gettysburg to see some of the battlefield
there in the late afternoon, then we dropped Scott off at the training center
he had to be at this week. Monday I took Jon to D.C., toured the Mall and the
Air&Space Museum, then subjected him to a meeting of the local group of the
American Alpine Club (where someone was giving a really
nice presentation of mountain climbing in the French/Swiss/Italien
Alps). As I write this Jon is currently unwinding from the con, catching his
breath once again, packing, and thinking thoughts about future projects for
the
test list. ;-) He'll be on his way back to England this evening, and
once he wades through all the spam and misc emails, be available to bug you
all
once again. ;-)
The Quote Board quotes will hopefully be posted this evening. Stay tuned for
that.
Waiting now eagerly for ECC VIII. Got lots of ideas for scenarios that
I can do... (15mm OGRE, anyone? ;-D )
Mk
> Indy wrote:
[...]
> During the break, after dinner but before the evening session kicked
He
> also showed us the only copy of Full Thrust in Polish on this side of
[...]
Forgot to add two things to my report.
1) mid-morning Sunday we, at the request of Jon, auctioned off the
Polish FT book. Carl Scheu won it for $25. All proceeds went to the con funds
for next year.
2) * - re: FT3....it was a joke, son, a joke. get it?
:-)
Mk
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:21:09AM -0500, Indy wrote:
> The night was once again long with our resident partying "ski" group
Sounds about right. A line I've heard from hotel staff about general SF
conventions is that we "drink like rugby clubs, and break up the hotel
like chess clubs". :-)
> Indy wrote:
> 2) * - re: FT3....it was a joke, son, a joke. get it?
Oh :-(
That'll be why it's not on the GZG website then....
Indy wrote (along with a good AAR):
> Waiting now eagerly for ECC VIII. Got lots of ideas for scenarios that
At GenCon a few years ago I played in a 25mm Ogre game. *grin*
It sounds like a number of the con games were too long. Do you have any
suggestions for running shorter games? I realize that it's very hard to
make a multi-player game where everyone has some chance to play and
_not_ have it take all day. Perhaps the same, smaller scenario run
simultaneously is the key (though this means that you need more terrain). I'd
be interested in your take on this.
> agoodall@att.net wrote:
> Indy wrote (along with a good AAR):
Yeah, I've seen those monsters (they have a website somewhere, I believe
the official OGRE pages have a link to them). They're just /scary/...
> Since we had the day ahead of us, we went off to go
That's been a dream for a long time; alas, AFTER I was in Baltimore many years
ago. I've heard that the Imperial War Museum tops by a great deal, but in
spite of the fact the mileage isn't THAT much greater, crossing the briny
remains a distant fantasy.
> The night was once again long with our resident partying "ski" group
Well, big cons have similar problems with small groups of wild and crazy
gamers. Couple of the LARPs my daughter joined got a bit out of hand.
And the hours were well offset; I've mentioned before hot bedding with my
Vampire youngun'.
In the main, though, dumped ice chests were about the worst you'd see.
> At GenCon a few years ago I played in a 25mm Ogre game. *grin*
Sci Fi Supply, the same folks that used micro machine Star Wars fighters that
looked correct next to the 6 foot long Star Destroyer...
> It sounds like a number of the con games were too long. Do you have any
Tough unless everybody knows what they're doing, and does it, and things can
happen simultaneously at different parts of the table.
> 2) * - re: FT3....it was a joke, son, a joke. get it?
That's just cruel.
The_Beast
I've actually been thinking about this issue for the last couple of days. One
thing (at least for DSII) might be to give each player far fewer
units. I'm thinking like 1-3 platoons per. Makes for a much smaller
number of units, which means less die rolling, which means less time.
Additionally, if someone gets really hammered and loses most or all of their
command, it makes seeing the potential for resultion much more likely. That
is, if lose 7 of my 8 tanks, I clearly did not *win*, unless, of course, I'm
the the only one left.
I'll be kicking this around more, and will likely try to get in playtests
along these lines in the coming year. I have some ideas for some DSII games
that would work with smallish forces, so assuming I can get them ironed out,
I'll be thinking about running one or more at ECC VIII.
J
John K. Lerchey Computer and Network Security Coordinator Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2004 agoodall@att.net wrote:
> Indy wrote (along with a good AAR):
> I've actually been thinking about this issue for the last couple of
Here's an idea adapted from some of PanzerBlitz gaming I did many moons ago.
The boards in PB are shaped like those in (Advanced) Squad Leader though the
ground scale was different. Point being that the short edge of the board
represented either a kilometer or a mile. Don't remember which offhand.
Using this fact we'd do multi-player games where your units were
assigned an avenue of advance (surprise! we used the boards themselves). You
could assist your friends on either side of you but your units couldn't
venture into the other lanes.
Using this idea you could have 4, 6, or 8 players per side all activating at
the same time. You would have some slowdown occur as players on one side
attempted to help each other throughout the turn...
It might be something to try if you know you are gaming with folks who are
familiar with DS.
> agoodall@att.net wrote:
I think the con games that ran long were primarily DSII, and mostly because
not all the players were familiar enough with the rules to kick off
immediately on the word go. This can apply to GMs as well when one remembers
one thing about the rules, someone else remembers something else, then an
inordinate amount of time is used up trying to track the rule down. Sometimes
newbies are in a game to check it out, and getting them up to speed will take
longer in all respects than it would in FT. Set up is also longer than, say,
in FT (as players tend to study the terrain and place their units accordingly;
there usually ain't no
terrain in space ;-).
The OGRE game was set up for having X number of players with Y number of
points. Having fewer points would have meant smaller OGREs, and really, if
you're going to play an OGRE game, you wanna play with the Mk Vs if
possible. ;-) We also wanted to field a variety of OGREs, and that in
and of itself immediately slows down a game. So in that particular game it was
artificially induced to slow down. It was too big in the number of units that
were fielded (plus the players, as John pointed out, spent the first turn just
trying to learn how to maneuver and fight with their OGREs; that ate up a lot
of time).
The Durango scenario got started an hour late. THis was partly due to the fact
I had other con business to attend to with limited time to
attend to it, biting into my own set-up time for my scenario quite a
bit, and partly due to players arriving late. Nothing can be done about either
of these unless I drop the con business stuff I needed to deal with. And
having players make *sure* they get up on time (but that means getting to
sleep earlier and hopefully not having a "skier" party next door or two floors
below blasting their sound system).
Thirdly (or fourthly, or whatever), the GM doesn't want to ride herd on the
players, since they are there for fun, so trying to push them into moving
units in a timely manner is....stressful, for the GM and the players.
In addition to this, special house rules can *also* slow down (or speed up,
depending on the house rule) a game. The spotting rolls
the Germans and Italiens were failing repeatedly in the WWII/DSII
game meant we were unable to fire on Soviet positions at all (unless they were
fully spotted and exposed). If we had been able to fire on them from the
moment they were within LOS, things would have heated up (and moved) much
faster.
Having smaller numbers of units would also help quicken play as there would be
fewer units to activate in any given turn. However, fewer units means if
someone is pounded hard enough early on, they
are out of the game. A balancing act. But you know that bit. ;-)
Optionally, limit the number of players to, say, 4. The Martian game had only
4 players. We ended on time (and three of the players had *entire companies*
of tanks to maneuver about, plus command units, and at least one additional
support element for me).
Lots of things that need to be overcome to make DSII play faster
in a con setting. Just need to work on it some more. :-)
Mk
Hi All,
So, I'm thinking about some scenaro development that might make for more
easily resolved games. I was thinking about the GEV "breakthrough" scenario.
The GEVs are attacking, but want to break through to operate behind enemy
lines. Victory points are assigned based on how many GEVs get off the far end
of the table. That kind of thing with VTOLs and hover craft for the "GEVs",
and the defender having ADS and normal units could be fun. Also, a game where
you have a road or two, with defensive positions, a sighting system, and a
supply column with escorts could be cool. The attackers have to get the convoy
trucks safely through and off the other side. The defenders are there to stop
them, but have to make hard choices about positions and such since despite
their objectives, the escorts are clearly going to be "nearest threat"
targets, so they won't be able to fire past tanks to hit trucks.
I'm going to paint up more units and give both of these a try in the next few
months.
I think that in both cases, if there are few enough units (and I think that
I've decided that I don't care much if a player loses everything in
one turn - if I had only had 2 platoons in durango, that could have been
me!) - it's one way to speed up the game. "Sorry, but your units have
been destroyed. Stick around til the end of the game, or come back then so you
can pick up a prize and see the outome!"
Also, the fully clear objectives (which are not always "kill the enemy") may
speed things up. If my objective is "get my stuff off the other side", I'm
gonna MOVE as much as I can, and try to avoid contact. The guy trying to stop
me won't, but *I* will. If I'm smart, and want to win.
Since this was the first time that I've run a game at a con, I'll admit that I
didn't know what to expect, and yes, my games bogged down a bit. I'll work on
making sure that that is less of an issue next year.:)
J
Hi All,
I've put up some pics from the con. Jerry, if there is anything you want
there for the ECC-VII pages, feel free to grab 'em.
> agoodall@att.net wrote:
> It sounds like a number of the con games were too long. Do you
Dirtside games have been notorious for running too long at the ECC convention.
(Carter Island, anyone?) It requires a measure of playtesting to get the unit
levels and number of players correct in order to fit in the time slot. Another
problem with Dirtside, can be the initial setup times.
I ran a Dirtside event entitled Hot Spot a number of years ago. My playtest
game for eight players took five hours to reach a conclusion. When I cut the
number of players down to six, it fit in the four hour slot. I also sped up
play by drawing hidden chits for damage when an attack was announced. If the
shot missed, I kept the chits hidden until an attack needed them.
Playtesting and GM preparation are key to running a well timed event.
Thanks, if you don't mind, I'll probably just link to them. (8-)
JGH
> John K Lerchey wrote:
> John K Lerchey wrote:
Problem is, it's not a lot of fun if you get knocked out of a game in the
first half hour, and then have 3.5 hours to kill. What might be okay among
friends you know well is different when you're at a
Con and running an event for anybody coming in the door -- you're not
just providing a good time, you're showcasing a system and your scenario.
As Jon Davis pointed out, the only real solution is preparation and
playtesting. Plus, if you're planning to run a large scenario, just lay down
the law and say "Sorry, you can't play this unless you're an experienced DS2
player" or whatever. That way, you can try and run your big scenario and the
person won't be overwhelmed
and can go and find an event more suited to his/her skill level.
(Of course, this is contingent on people running scenarios at that skill
level. This is why I like running McGuffin, it's a great introduction to FT,
with just a couple of house rules to make things a little more interesting.
Plus, if you make a bad mistake, the respawn rules means you get another
chance, as opposed to being knocked out and spending the next three hours
twiddling your thumbs.)
*shrug*
JGH
Jerry,
That's fine. Link away.:)
J
John K. Lerchey Computer and Network Security Coordinator Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Jerry Han wrote:
> Thanks, if you don't mind, I'll probably just link to them. (8-)
> On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 11:47:30PM -0500, Jerry Han wrote:
> Problem is, it's not a lot of fun if you get knocked out of a game
Unless you have a slipped schedule so that there's something starting
every 30-60 minutes... or there are enough people milling around that
you can have a chat or play something short.
***
Unless you have a slipped schedule so that there's something starting
every 30-60 minutes... or there are enough people milling around that
you can have a chat or play something short.
***
I've always thought a con should have a few drop in games. I've mentioned an
idea for an FT one here, and think my Aliens board game, which can
finish in a usual 20-30, would fit the bill.
However, you start a game, get involved, and have to wait the rest of the
period to see how it ends, either sitting mostly mute watching, or wandering
off to something else. Does take the gild off the lily, to be perfectly
archaic.
The_Beast
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Jon Davis wrote:
> Playtesting and GM preparation are key to running a well timed event.
I think staying on top of the action and being an actively involved GM is
important; I really tried to keep up the pace in my game (Zombie Smackdown,
Part 2) by making sure it was clear whose turn it was, applying gentle
pressure to make moves and keep the game flowing, and overlapping the end of
one side's move with the beginning of the other's when there was no direct
confrontation involved.
Cheers,
I've been involved in the running of a number of participation games at UK
shows over the years. Punters at our events are far more shopping oriented and
are less inclined to spend time at a game, so we catered for that reduced
concentration span by making our games time driven so that the players had to
achieve their objective in a given time frame
(we always set our games to be 55 minutes - we cycle round every hour
with five minutes to reset the game). The best example was our 'Berlin or
Bust' WW2 game that had the participants playing the US forces and effectively
all they had to do was get to the other end of the table in their allotted
time. Because the game is driven by real time, not game time (ie number of
turns) there is an obvious incentive to get on with it. We found that,
especially towards the end of games when the objective was in sight, players
would deliberately hold back from
time-consuming but unnecessary actions (you know the sort of thing -
"I'll just take a speculative pot-shot at that church tower, you never
know if there's a sniper in it!") because they just wanted to get on with the
next turn.
This works fine for GM'd games where the participants are only playing
one side - obviously there would be massive potential for time-wasting
if participants were on both sides.
> Jerry Acord wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Jon Davis wrote:
> I think staying on top of the action and being an actively involved GM
> is important; I really tried to keep up the pace in my game (Zombie
Both these, agreed. Also, the cards used in the Carnage con Queso are a good
way to keep attention focused, since a number of them had very useful
applications during someone else's turn.
-P.
I wrote this for my local gaming group called "TNGG" which stands for
"Thursday Night Gaming Group." The group has a lot of FT players and
has been around for 8+ years or thereabouts.
Nick
=============================
I've said it before, but I'll say it again -- if you like Full Thrust at
all you owe it to yourself to go to GZG con and play it for 3 straight days.
You won't find a nicer group of people (present company excepted, of course)
whose primary goal is to have fun with the game, not argue rules.
Jon Tuffley has a wicked sense of humor. Some comments from the FMA Sheep game
are not repeatable (but were laugh out loud funny). Truly a nice and humble
guy who sincerely cares about his game and is thankful to everyone for buying
it. He would fit in seamlessly with TNGG.
Friday night -- played in the 3rd Annual Pod Racing (From Star Wars Ep
1) game. This uses FT movement with an Emergency Manuever mechanic to race.
Won an award for dismal die rolling as my pod crashed and burned
after mis-timing a particularly long jump. I did see the new land speed
record set -- 124" velocity. I couldn't plan manuevers going that fast,
which is why I crashed and burned.
Sat morning -- Suart Murray's Cinegrunt Victorian Science-Fiction game.
I played the sneaky Americans who sailed a submarine onto Carter Island to
steal giant rubies from the natives so that we could fight the Martians as the
War of the Worlds raged around us. We sneaked in beneath the Prussians and
British who were fighting in the skies (Brits brought an Aphid aether flyer to
the battle) and jungles, negotiated a trade with the natives (rubies for
tobacco) and sneaked out again. Very American. We were the only group to
achieve our objectives.
Sat afternoon -- Dean Gundenburg's (of the Starship Combat News
http://www.star-ranger.com/Home.htm) Sci-Fi crossover FT game. I played
Imperials from Star Wars and managed to destroy a B5 Omega Destroyer and
Hyperion Cruiser as well as a Battlestar (not the Galactica). Great
photo from the game -- the B5 Omega being attacked by Tie Fighters which
were in turn attacked by Vipers from the Battlestar. The Evil Side won this
won handily.
Oh, and this featured several GREAT FT rules tryouts that are on the beta list
for FT3.
Sat Evening -- the afore-mentioned FMA Sheep game. FMA being the name
for the skirmish rules. The less said about this one the better. I deny that
the event ever happened, that anyone was flocked and that any Elder Gods were
attacked by nuclear weapons. Yes, nuclear weapons. In a skirmish game. It
wasn't pretty.
Sun morning -- awesome B5 game run by Aaron Newman. I played the Narns,
who were trying to steal a Centauri warship. Narns are not good
thieves. Going in, we knew we were going to fail -- it was just a
matter of how spectacularly we were going to fail. Climax of the game
-- I had stolen the ship, but the Centauri were about to recapture it.
I asked if I could blow it up with my one remaining boarding party. "Only if
you roll a 1". "1". The Centauri asked if they could stop the
self-destruct countdown. "Fight his remaining boarding party with your
five. However many survive can attempt to disarm the countdown with a 6." My 1
party killed 4 of 5 of the Centauri players and the Centauri failed the roll.
***BOOM*** The Centauri player and I won an additional participation award for
best cinematic moment during the game.
Vendors: Nice range of vendors this year. DLD Productions was there --
their stuff looks awesome in person. The website doesn't do it
justice. I bought 2 of their sensor drones for FT as well as the generic
battleship and transport ships.
GZG brought the new FT ships they just released (NSL corvette, New Isreali,
Islamic Federation). Really like the Islamic ships with their crescent shape.
Wargames Express was there with their decals. I recently started using decals
quite a bit for starships and 6mm aircraft, so I picked up their Skull and
Crossbones and Warning (Biohazard and Nuclear) decal sheets.
Sunday morning a guy showed up selling resin Star Wars miniatures. I bought
the Blockade Runner and Nebulon B frigates. These were in scale
to the Star Destroyers he was selling -- which means they are tiny! As
they should be -- in scale with GZG corevettes and frigates while the
Star Destroyer was in scale with GZG dreadnoughts. I know what he's doing is
illegal but they sure looked nice!
Oh, and my Babylon 5 Wars Olympia Corvette took second place behind Aaron
Newman's "Newman" class starship by 1 vote in the painting competition. Aaron
beat me last year by 1 vote to win his name on Brigade's new dreadnought
starship. I told him I'd beat him next year.
:-)
> I told him I'd beat him next year. :-)
Er, in the parking lot? *tee hee*
The_Beast
> Nick Caldwell wrote:
> Sat Evening -- the afore-mentioned FMA Sheep game. FMA being the name
> game. It wasn't pretty.
Of course it wasn't pretty. How could it be? It never happened, after
all...
;-)
Thanks to all for the piccies so far!
Will there be any forthcoming of the Cinegrunt Vicky Sci Fi?
The_Beast
> Doug Evans wrote:
We've got a few spaces that are usually open for a pick up game. Dan Blezek
and Stuart Murray were playing Space Hulk on Friday night after the game ended
in the first timeslot.
I'd like to put together one or more "Scenario in a Box" for the next
convention. The idea is that the box would contain a small scenario
(1 - 2 hours) for Full Thrust for 2-4 players with figures, setup
instructions, SSDs, and play balancing instructions for advanced and new
players. The boxes would be available at the registration desk for whomever
wanted to play it. They'd belong to the convention, so they'd be back each
year.
Comments?
I think it's an awesome idea. Small fleet actions with each player having
2-4 light ships, so that play would be fast for pickup games would be
really nice.
J
John K. Lerchey Computer and Network Security Coordinator Computing Services
Carnegie Mellon University
> On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Jon Davis wrote:
> Doug Evans wrote:
> Nicholas Caldwell wrote:
Nonsense. It was an Elder Sponge, and there was only one nuke.
I've asked about piccies, but none are forthcoming, least not the Cinegrunt.
However, if you follow the link below to War of the Worlds, you can see a
simple Dirtside Martians again Shermans and Stuarts...
http://okapi.andrew.cmu.edu/lerchey/www/ECC-VII/
Also, something I gather was called a Zombie Smackdown; you might be
interested in the Copplestone:
http://imagiware.com/acord/gallery/miniatures/
> I've asked about piccies, but none are forthcoming, least not the
Sorry, that was for a friend interested in Vicky Sci Fi. He thought the
Cinegrunt description very interesting.
The_Beast
> On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 05:43:12PM -0500, Jon Davis wrote:
> I'd like to put together one or more "Scenario in a Box" for the next
I think that's an excellent idea. Could even change the scenarios around as
time went on...
Sounds like a neat idea, Jon.
I was just going to point out that Dean also ran a few playtest
scenarios as drop-in games this year. I believe 3 games were run.
Hey, is there any interest in having one of those games be with alien fleets?
I didn't notice anyone using Fleet Book 2 this year and that's a shame.
Nick
[quoted original message omitted]
> Nicholas Caldwell wrote:
> Sounds like a neat idea, Jon.
I don't think any Phalons, Sa'Vas'Ku, or KraVak showed up this year.
I think the scenario could remain the same and alien ships introduced as an
alternative to the human tech ships.
> On 3/4/04 6:16 PM, "Jon Davis" <davisje@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
> I think the scenario could remain the same and alien ships introduced
I think it would be kind of neat to mould your emergency-scenarios
as
conflicts in the general Human/Kra'Vak war. You could still do the
standard human vs. human fights (they'll never stop).
For newbs it teases them into the background.