Eight Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge

To mark my return to a normal wargaming and blogging schedule, my first post since late April is to announce my participation for the third time in Curt's Painting Challenge. For those not in the llop, this is a friendly painting competition among wargamers across the world, organised by Canadian Curt Campbell, who I'm very fortunate to have met personally (him and his lovely wife Sarah) in a trip to Spain last year.

The Challenge launch also marks the final countdown to Christmas. The Challneg works by each participat setting his own target in the form of points awarded from painting your minis, and extends between Decemeber 20 2017 and March 20 2018. No best way to spend this dark and cold afternoons!.

In addition to the points with your painted inis and models, you get additional points participating in the thematic bonus rounds, always named with strange names to squeeze our heads with a little bit of creativity. This year's themes are the following:

• Flight' (January 6th submission / displayed January 7th / voting results January 14th)
• BFG: Big Freakin' Gun' (January 20st submission / displayed January 21st / voting results January 28th)
• 'Music/Musician' (February 3rd submission / displayed February 4th / voting results February 11th)
• 'Childhood' (February 17th submission / displayed February 18th / voting results February 25th)
• 'Monstrous' (March 3rd submission / displayed March 4th / voting results March 11th)

Any ideas on how to approach the themes are more than welcome!

Over the past two years I have focused on one single project (German Fallschirmjager in 2015/16 and Napoleonics in 2016/17). this year won't be different and will continue swelling the ranks of my Napoleonics collection to play General d'Armee. The only new news is that I'll be painting 20mm minis in addition to my traditional and favourite 28mm scale minis.

This year Curt has also added terrain to the challenge. I'm not a great modeller and therefore I'm not expecting to take advantage of the addition, but who knows.

So expect a little more of activity in the blog in the coming weeks and months

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Let Us Don the Gnomish Headgear

The kids got me a new hat last weekend.  I appreciate that they couldn't wait until Christmas.

It shall to fair and fitting to wear it around, as today is SATLOF (Saturday After Thanksgiving Left-Over Feast) which I am bailing early on family functions and skipping my 25th High School Reunion entirely to attend.

Eat copious amounts of leftovers, imbibe beverages to your appropriate level of responsbility, and play a game or two!

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(Kickstarter) Starbowl Revival Fantasy Football Figures

I'm not a Blood Bowl player, but I understand the simplicity and attraction of the GW game.   It seems that every week, some bloke is trying to crowdfund another team for the greater community, and most surprisingly meet their goals.

The latest that I've seen that actually tickled my fancy is the very unsubtle Starbowl Revivial Miniatures for Fantasy Football by Rykar Jove

The team seems to be completely fleshed out, with star players, coaches, tokens, etc. and the prices are comparable with other teams.  Plus the theme is outstanding.

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(Kickstarter) Flash Gordon RPG for Savage Worlds

It's a bad week for Kickstarters I should otherwise love.  It must be the upcoming holidays blues.

Shane Hensley and Pinnacle Entertainment Group have recently launched their Flash Gordon RPG for Savage Worlds.

I'm thinking the Savage Rifts Kickstarter hit my sweet spot.  The softcovers/pdf from Savage Rifts for just over $30 hits that middle ground between Flash Gordon's $20 pdfs and $45 (+$9 S&H) for the limited edition hardcovers. The baubles, add-ons, and trinkets do nothing for me.  

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Black Friday Combat

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Happy Thanksgiving 2017

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5e and the Online Thespian Generation

An article over at The Verge is connecting the rise of 5e and RPG liveplays, largely the popular video and live streaming actual plays found on YouTube and Twitch.

I can't argue with that.  If the new (and returning) generations of players are making D&D have its most profitable year ever in an Amazon-related world, it makes sense that they are turning to online instant gratification.  In part, it's solid entertainment value, but it's also the "How do we play this thing?" that we grognards with the blue ink module maps and cheesy dice in the boxed sets longed to have answered in our early days.

The problem, of course, is that these players are being deceived.  Despite all the plot-driven fantasy storylines, the angst-driven brooding, the old school renaissances, and the indy-press revolutions, unless you and your friends are a bunch of improv masters, voice-over actors, and card carrying members of SAG with wicked editing skills, your weekly sessions will than likely carry out like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off running a combat.

Having just been to a convention with plenty of old school and new wave gamers in attendance, I'm quite certain that many were fans of the liveplay series, but very little of their own pedestrian games would warrant their own camera and Twitch channel.

That includes all the My Little Pony games I ran on the Kid's track.  There's 30 seconds or so of video of me running one of those sessions, and despite my 25 years experience and the session being entertaining for all the players, I'm not setting up my own channel to broadcast future MLP games.

I am biased towards the radio-play style that traditional podcasts present gaming sessions in.  There are two things, however, that I keep in mind when listening them.  1) Audio editing can turn enjoyable games into gold, and in reverse, a lack of it and kill a game with promise.  2) The traditional players from podcasts like Skype of Cthulhu are always going to sound like their struggling when put up against professional improv players from the Campaign Podcast.

I always hearken back to a phrase I used repeatedly on this blog, "I'm not the demographic they're targeting." 

What could have been cool a decade or two ago has now vanished from my horizon.  Celebrity gamers (save the game designers themselves) loose their fascination with me, especially when the meat of many of those games is so dry.  Whether its failing to grok Fantasy Flight Star Wars dice, or belittling a setting like Rifts when their own personal favorites fall equally flat in execution, I can only hope the players at the online table have a good time.

So whether you're playing 5e, Pathfinder, or PotA, enjoy the gameplay, and try not to overdramatize the game when a simple 5-ft move or a timely punch in the face will do.  

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