Tag Archives: 45A

Conventions, Pulp

Prepping For Trumpeter Salute 2011

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aof_ts2011
Trumpeter Salute 2011 will feature the Saturday Matinée Special .45 Adventure 2nd Edition version of Amulet of Fire! Click for full-size image.

Alongside the Lead Painters League over on LAF, the other thing keeping me amused this week is getting ready for Trumpeter Salute 2011 over in Vancouver (well, Burnaby, really, but close enough…) this weekend! Trumpeter is the region’s “big” gaming convention, really, at least on the Canadian side of the border. This will be my third visit in four years, and it’s always a highlight of my gaming year!

I’ll be running Amulet of Fire again, going over with a friend who has space in his car for the mesa and other stuff needed for it.

I’ve (possibly foolishly…) promised to run Amulet in the barely-just-released 2nd Edition of .45 Adventures, so I’m busy tonight rebuilding all 30 or so characters for all six teams of Amulet. I’d say “converting”, but really 45A 2nd Ed has a different enough character & skill system that I’m rebuilding! Some interesting differences between the new and old versions; must do a full review here of 2nd Ed after Trumpeter!

There will be a bit of a Lead Adventure West Coast meet-up, partly over my Amulet game on Saturday. Always nice to see some of the Vancouver-area folks again, throw more money at Bob Murch & Imperial Hobbies, loose at games, and all the other traditional convention activities!

Pulp, Terrain, Tutorials

Shoreline Part 2 (Sort of…)

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Found, buried in my harddrive, another couple of forgotten work-in-progress shots from the first round of shoreline/riverbank construction back in June 2009. The rest of the construction was written up last week.

shoreline wip1
Bare cardboard stage of construction of the first set of shoreline/riverbank pieces. Click for full size.
shoreline wip 2
Shoreline/riverbank beginning painting. Click for full size.
shoreline wip 3
Muddy brown paint on the banks, first coats of acrylic gloss varnish down on the water. Click for full size.
Pulp

The Caribbean’s Hidden Paradise!

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costa guano poster
Visit the Caribbean’s Hidden Paradise, Costa Guano! (View Larger on Flickr by clicking the image)

More pulp graphic lunacy via Inkscape and the peculiar inside of my skull. This time it’s a travel poster to that oft-forgotten tropical hellhole paradise, The Republic of Costa Guano, which with it’s various neighbours will, eventually, form the background for some pulp/Banana Wars games and pulp adventure lunacy.

“Costa Guano” is, I think, a name originally used in a Joseph Conrad novel I haven’t actually read, but it’s too good a joke to pass up. Pulp steamers and their adventuring crews on the swampy coasts; exiled gangsters and foreign agents skulking in the fetid, dangerous capital Montón De Guano; Lost Worlds in the unmapped jungle-shrouded interior; Banana Wars and uprisings… all these and more are possibly taking place right now in exciting Costa Guano. Book your zeppelin ticket from Miami (with stopover in Havana) today!

Pulp

45A 2nd Edition Demo out!

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[R]attrap Productions has just released the demo PDF of .45 Adventures 2nd Edition!

There’s a 22 page set of demo rules which include the full movement, combat, wound, vehicle, explosive and flying rules, as well as enough Archetypes to build some characters and teams to test the new shiny out.

There’s also a draft copy of the 2nd Edition Special Abilities PDF, with a good selection of the skills & special abilities that’ll be available in 2nd Ed.

More later perhaps when I’ve had a chance to look it over properly and build a character or two! Short version is that I like what I see, lots of streamlining and good tweaks to an already great system.

Full release of the rules is pencilled in for mid-March, apparently.

Pulp, Terrain, Tutorials

Shoreline or River Bank Terrain Pieces

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shoreline june 2009
Two feet of riverbank/shoreline, the original two from summer 2009. On the right, a 28mm hunter and a 28mm sabre-tooth tiger on a 20mm by 40mm base. Click for full-size image.


These riverbanks or shorelines made from picture-framing board (mattboard). I did the first set back in 2009 and another batch in the winter of 2010. They’re designed to form one edge of a playing board, especially on the 2’x2′ playing areas common to .45 Adventures. One of the really nice things about games like 45A that encourage smaller playing areas is that terrain projects become a whole lot more managable — no more having to crank out eight feet of river just to have enough to be usable on the table!
Each segment is 12″ (1 foot) long and 5″ deep, 4″ of river and 1″ of banks. The banks are the same mattboard as the rest, to keep them as low-profile as possible. The painting is black and two colours of blue, damp-blended right on the card. I tried to keep the edges mostly matched while painting the pieces. The water portions then got about six or so coats of acrylic gloss varnish so they looked like water. If I was going to paint them again, I’d do the water areas a greener shade with less black, as is often seen in murky jungle rivers.

riverbank with docks
The docks in place on the new riverbank section. Click for full-sized version.


In the winter of 2010 I added two new segments to the set, one another copy of the existing riverbank pieces, and the second incorporating a ramshackle wooden dock. The dock segment was wider than the others for most of the length, although obviously the same width at the ends. The docks were built up with baswood planks, with toothpicsk and bamboo skewers for the piilings. The large dock section is glued to the base; the three smaller sections are freestanding for flexibility.

riverbank, docks loose
The riverbank dock section, showing the freestanding dock segments. Click for full-size verison.

All four sections have been largely free of warping or damage, although the docks section does havea tendency to bow when stored. The eventual plan is to rebuild these riverbank sections in 2mm or 3mm MDF, using a bandsaw to cut the curves, but mattboard will do until then!

(these photos have been seen over on the Lead Adventure Forum and elsewhere previously, if you’re thinking they look a bit familiar…)

Conventions, Pulp

GottaCon Gone

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AoF Title
The Amulet of Fire poster
I only made it to Saturday’s sessions at GottaCon – busy Friday night and working Sunday – but it was good. Had a decent RPG session Saturday morning (I’m not much of a convention RPGer, but it was OK) and Saturday afternoon was my big one, the first outing of the “Amulet of Fire” scenario!

I got five players, four of whom were among my regular 45A crowd and one friend who’d never made it to our previous pulp games. We got set up, factions picked and off and running on the 1st Act, “The Missionary Position”.

Random highlights – the two Russian factions (White & Red Air Pirate) immediately started a brawl that lasted the whole Act and resulted in some sword wounds, lots of wasted lead, and one Red shot in the head. The British and the White Russians stitched up some sort of truce, based mostly on a mutual distaste for Bolshies.
Continue reading GottaCon Gone →

Conventions, Pulp

Convention Checklist

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Under 24hrs to go until my Gottacon game… checklist time.

Figures, Scenery & Stuff
Glue drying on the bases of the last figure needed. Dullcote tonight if I get to it, otherwise they’ll do for one game.
No scenery needed to be built, save a couple of small pieces. My brother has those under control, he assures me.
Vehicles… we have more than enough.
Black felt game cloth just to put under the scenery tiles… forgot that, will have to run without it. Not a big deal, it just would have looked neater with it.
Scenario & player handout material… all neccesary stuff finished, proofread and printed. I even have an 11×17 full colour version of the Amulet of Fire cover to put on one corner of the table!

Con Survival Kit
Bottle of water, large. Check.
Bottles of Coke (2)(Caffeine IS life). Check.
Chocolate bars (simple carbs = fast energy). Check.
Cold pizza (complex carbs are good, too). Check.
Comfy shoes. Check.

Still To-Do Tonight
Rearrange figure cases so all the figs I need for the scenario are in one case, instead of spread over five.
Rearrange scenery slightly so everything is in one banker’s box, not two.
Pick up car, deliver large scenery stuff to convention site, to stash under organizer’s table instead of wrestling with everything tomorrow morning.
Decent night’s sleep.

To-Do, Tomorrow
Find something worth playing in the morning.
2PM PST, inflict pulp mayhem upon the world!

Pulp

One Week Until GottaCon & “Amulet of Fire”!

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Next Friday GottaCon 2011 opens here in Victoria, and a week today, Saturday the 5th, is my pulp adventure game, “The Amulet of Fire”.

I’ve just finished the Encounter Cards for both Acts of Amulet. Here’s a few of the possible Encounters for Act One, “The Missionary Position”:
AoF Act One cards
Continue reading One Week Until GottaCon & “Amulet of Fire”! →

Pulp

The Amulet of Fire

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Fighting Tales: The Amulet Of Fire

After running last year’s .45 Adventures convention scenario at least six times, it was time to retire it. Few things worse than a bored gamemaster, trust me.

So this year’s convention scenario is going to be a two-act thing (two smaller scenarios instead of one larger one), and because my mind works in strange ways sometimes, the first thing I’ve finished is another “Fighting Tales” faux cover. (First three together here)

The rest of the scenario should be finished, first draft at least, this weekend, then it’s a playtest and on to it’s first public showing at GottaCon 2011, 4-6 Feb.

Pulp, Terrain

Building A 28mm Tent

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There’s been previous versions of this tutorial posted on Lead Adventure and the Speakeasy, but I figured it’s worth reposting here.

After killing a dress shirt (black ink leaking does that to white cotton) I realized it would work nicely as material for a large safari/expedition tent. I used a CD as the base, with small blobs of milliput holding long toothpicks vertically as the poles — three on the front, three on the back. After the putty holding the poles was dry (and reinforced with a bit of superglue) I wrapped thick sewing thread around the tips of the poles, with a dab of superglue holding it in place and a bit more superglue stiffening the thread after it was secured.

Model Tent
(click through to Flickr for a full-size image)

The fabric was cut twice as tall as it needed to be, and draped over the thread at the tops of each wall, with a generous layer of white glue on the inside of each piece. The walls were folded over, squeezed together and held whilst drying by clothspegs.

Two layers of shirt-weight cotton plus white glue makes for very solid walls!

Loitering Within Tent
(click through to Flickr for a full-size image)

The removable roof was made by first draping a piece of plastic wrap over the tent walls, then carefully folding and pinning the piece of glue-soaked cotton into position. I folded the eves up and trimmed them after the first coat of glue was dry, and it fits well; between the glue and the folding it’s more than rigid enough to hold it’s shape.

There’s an extra piece of cotton to form the floor, and most of the interior furniture is made of offcuts of basswood and styrene, with putty for the blanket and pillow. The maps were found on the internet, shrunk to appropriate tiny sizes, and printed out. The red coffee mug in the centre of the large map is a scrap of round styrene.

I’ve still got a good sized piece of this shirt; eventually more of it will live again as smaller tents to accompany this one. Recycling — it doesn’t just involve a blue bin, you know. Not for wargamers, anyway!