New Stuff and Tuesday Game Night Update.

WITH BONUS RPG PHILOSOPHY!

Tomorrow I will post pictures and the like for the TWO 40K battles that I played in today, but this post will be a general update of.. stuff.

New Goodies!
My Ogre Miniatures and Car Wars order from SJGames came in today, giving me 3 more of the AADA Road Atlas books, bringing me up to 23 US states (and not US states in the game fiction..) where cars can war and shoot each other.

For some upcoming LOTR Miniatures goodness, I took advantage of 50% off to grab a box each of Mordor Orcs and Men of Harad, and a command blister for both of them. For the next few weeks I will get a few more, mostly focusing on the good forces since my horde of evil is rather large now. Close to 150 evil models. Its insane how reasonably priced LOTR minis are to GW's other lines. 24 single pose plastics for 25 bucks MSRP is a DAMNED FINE DEAL. The metals are a bit up there, but I guess 12 bucks for 2 metal command figures isn't too bad, and at half off its quite reasonable. For what I wanted from the clearance blisters there was quite a few Rohan and Gondor elite troops, and a little mail order should finish up them nicely. They had a nice selection of the sourcebooks and some neat metal box sets I might grab over the next few weeks or months too. Half off the metal Balrog or Sauron? Siege weapons? Sweet! Of course evil seems to have more of what I really want, but the forces of good are so hero heavy as to make up for it in some degree. (One of these days I will post on how LOTR is really an underrated game system. Its really quite excellent and many of its rules ought to be in WH Fantasy and 40K.)

More of the 1 dollar RPG books. I have another run or 2 to do on them, but I am getting some fair stuff I would have never bought for MSRP. 3 Last Unicorn Games Star Trek RPG books I picked up for Pico, GURPS Castle Falkenstein and the same's Ottoman Empire sourcebook, the X Crawl GM Screen & Adventure Module, and Robot Warriors by Hero Games for me. They had a ton of White Wolf's Trinity sourcebooks for a buck so they should be mine next week, mostly bringing what I found interesting in the buck a book section to a close.

So now I have a ton to read, a ton to assemble (and never get around to painting!), and a ton of money saved. 188 dollars of stuff. For 42 bucks. ROCK.

The game room is coming along nicely as well. The table setup is pretty good now, though more things need putting away in the next few weeks for more space and player convenience. The room has the potential to fit 10 people around the table, though 8 or 9 is probably as far as it can go comfort wise. At 10 it would be VERY cramped, and anything beyond that is pretty much a total no go. If we ever get enough people for that to matter we can worry about it then I suppose.

Tuesday's game day was a solid performer. More Hero Quest. To keep myself from getting cranky over the game I half paid attention, half based up some Ogre and LOTR minis. Not caring as much and the adventures getting easier as we level up made for a much better time overall. Pico is still taking the game a bit too serious as it is his first experience GMing, but I am sure he will learn to stop worrying and learn to love player whining sooner or later! :) (Yes he does read this. No, don't worry about it. Its a kids' game! Screw up, have fun, and don't worry about it dude!) He has begun learning the important GM skill of difficulty modifying on the fly, and our last mission wasn't a cakewalk compared to what it should be as written. Honestly Heroquest works best as some stress free childish fun. Unless the dice are really bad or the players do some really stupid things they should win most missions without too much damage.

Its actually something most of these dungeon boardgames seem to have issues with. They are either so hard as to be an unfun everyone dies suckfest, or they are pathetically easy if played as written. I've seen it with Doom and Space Crusade, and all the reports on Warhammer Quest and Descent seem to be the same as well.

I guess its better to be on the light, fun, and easy side than player abuse. The infamous AD&D adventure "The Tomb of Horrors" is always there if we need a PLAYERS MUST DIE LIKE SCUM BWAHAHA!! experience. And Paranoia, though Paranoia also encourages the players to hose each other over too for extra body count fun. (We really need to play that game someday...)

(As an aside, heavy character death is probably the reason D&D and RPGs have a bad rep. Tons of people played them in the 70 and 80s, with visions of being Aragorn, Elric, Conan, or whatever other scifi and fantasy hero you can think of. Then their dudes got killed in the first or second combat they entered, or ran into some deathtrap they had little to no chance of surviving. Most probably left right then, considering the game a bit of suck. Its sort of understandable.)

But he is getting the hang of it, and things will improve as he relaxes and gets into it. I really am interested in seeing what he can put together for his planned Savage Worlds Deep Space Nine game.

GMing is a skillset one really can't learn except on the job. Mistakes WILL happen. The trick is to never make the same mistake more than once. Everything a GM does right or wrong should be a learning experience to make their next session all that much better. As long as the players aren't a bunch of knuckleheads (and luckily my group are there as much to socialize and hang out as we are to game.. there is a reason our old 40K games always had the official unofficial Bullsh!^%ing Phase after all..) it can be a good time.

And THAT is what it is all about, really.

Having a good time!