Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (undead warband for Mordheim)

[Severian]

Thanks for the Dungeon World tip - I'm putting together a scenario or two (in the intervals of too much else) but hadn't fully settled on a system. I thought I'd probably go with basic D&D as it's what I learned on and I think I still know it pretty well. But some of the mechanics may be a bit much for my players (well, the younger ones anyway...). So I'll certainly have a look, thanks. Of course, my Trudvang books just arrived so I've been sidetracked yet again (of which more elsewhere, I suspect).

The mastiff-man is intriguing, isn't he. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

[fred]

Severian - it will be good to hear where you go with RPG rules - I can understand you wanting to go back to D&D, but I suspect you will find it is anything but basic, with lots of complex different ways of doing things. There are lots of newer lighter game engines, that are much more consistent mechanistically.

[Severian]

Thanks - I'll keep you all posted (though in my own thread rather than this one!).

Sorry, I had intended to capitalize Basic D&D to avoid confusion - I meant the tatty old red paperback with the Erol Otus cover that I played a LOT back in the early 80s, not to suggest that the D&D system is basic or simple or especially easy to pick up; as you rightly say, it's not really any of those things (certainly not in the Basic & AD&D iterations; I don't know the later versions). It's just the system I can most easily wing it with, whilst trying to keep the attention of two small boys (and possibly their mother and smaller sister) on whatever goblin-heavy circumstance I pitch them into...  

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks - I'll keep you all posted (though in my own thread rather than this one!).

This thread is always open for discussions of family RPGs!

It's just the system I can most easily wing it with, whilst trying to keep the attention of two small boys (and possibly their mother and smaller sister) on whatever goblin-heavy circumstance I pitch them into...  

That's a very good point.

One thing that might help with the sleeker modern takes on D&D is the unification of dice-rolling systems. So, for example, Whitehack's combat is very clear - roll under or equal to your attack value and roll over the opponent's AC. Stat checks are all equal or under on a D20 - which is great, because it makes the value of the stats very important. That's actually a failing of Dungeon World, which doesn't really need the traditional stats (just the modifiers derived from them). Its unified "moves" system is really good, though, because it's one mechanism for everything, pretty much.

But you can always port those things over. "Roll D20 - your charisma score or under - to persuade the ogre that he should go to the front gate", for example. The "use two D20s and take the best or worst" mechanism for advantage/disadvantage is great too. So, if an elf is trying to persuade an orc to let him pass, he uses the worst of two dice, but a half-orc would use the best of two.

Or, if you have modifiers (I forget which versions of D&D use them), roll 2D6 and add: less than seven fails; seven to nine is a partial success/success with consequences; and 10 or more is the desired result. All of that helps make the character sheets relevant: "Let Balin the Bold do the talking - he's got the highest charisma", etc.

Anyway, good luck - and keep us posted! Here's the first pandour. He's roughly painted from a black undercoat, but I quite like the scruffy outcome. I like the idea of beastmen being especially loyal troops: "Our law is not the law of reason. Our law is honour and obedience. We stay."

[Severian]

Thanks again - I'll let you know how we get on (and with what).

That's a great pandour: somehow the face really works even though it's largely masked. Good stuff!

I wonder whether the loyalty of mastiff-men might be a particular characteristic of mastiffs in particular rather than beast-men in general? Although I suppose since they are often splices with animals more or less domesticated it might be a common trait. But it would make sense to have mastiff-men as bodyguards rather than (say) hyena-men, or chihuahua-men...

I like this bit:

"When one hears of such creatures, one imagines something stable, midway between beast and human; but when one actually sees them...they are not like that at all. The best comparison I can make is to the flickering of a silver birch tossed by the wind. At one moment it seems a common tree, at the next, when the undersides of the leaves appear, a supernatural creation. So it is with the man-beasts. At first I thought a mastiff peered at me through the bars; then it seemed rather a man, nobly ugly, tawny-faced and amber-eyed..."

Not sure how one represents all this in 28mm, mind you. 

[Hobgoblin]

Yes, it's an extremely intriguing description. And one never learns whether the other man-beasts in the carriage are mastiff-men too, or something else. The earlier description at the end of The Shadow of the Torturer indicates that they have many forms: some horned, some fanged:

"The sides of the gate rose high above us, pierced at wide intervals by windows of some material thicker, yet clearer, than glass. Behind these windows we could see the moving figures of men and women, and of creatures that were neither men nor women. Cacogens, I think, were there, beings to whom the avern was but what a marigold or a marguerite is to us. Others seemed beasts with too much of men about them, so that horned heads watched us with eyes too wise, and mouths that appeared to speak showed teeth like nails or hooks. I asked Dr. Talos what these creatures were.

‘Soldiers,' he said. ‘The pandours of the Autarch.'"

I think there's a strong echo of The Island of Doctor Moreau in the man-beasts' code of honour: "This is the Law!" and all that.

I have vague plans to use space marines (probably in the colour scheme on the previous page) as stormtrooper-type enforces of the law or the regime in our sci-fi skirmishes, but I like the idea of their having bestial terror troops as well, who may actually be senior to them in the hierarchy, or at least more militarily potent: Sardaukar-style "soldier-fanatics". I've got a few more arms to convert these Frostgrave gnolls, but have also got some other bestial forms on the go.

After a quick audit, I see I am on roughly 307 miniatures for 2017 - almost 100 ahead of last year (all that 10 and 15mm helped!). A push to 350 over the holidays, perhaps ...

[swiftnick]

Great work Justin, very intriguing.
Gene Wolf managed to bypass me somehow at the time.

[Hobgoblin]

He's hard work, but well worth it. One of his ideas is that a good book should repay rereading, so a lot of the things that pass you by first time around (or just make no senes) become significant on the next reading. (He also invented the machine that makes Pringles ...)

And while we're on Wolfe, here's an alien beastie that could be an alzabo (can't remember what colour it's meant to be in the book, if any). He'll also make a decent demon in sword-and-sorcery games.

[Severian]

Very effective alzabo (or demon-beast). Great stripes!

I couldn't remember what colour they were either; Andre-Driussi's Lexicon Urthus says they're red, but doesn't give a reference...I reckon your colours work well, particularly for what's evidently an extraterrestrial beast. The name is an archaic transliteration of the Arabic al-dhi'b, "wolf or jackal", apparently. There's also something in Pliny about hyenas digging up corpses, and mimicking human voices to lure their victims out of doors, which is there in the mix.

I always tell people the moustachioed guy on the Pringles tube is a portrait of Wolfe. This may or may not be true.

One of his ideas is that a good book should repay rereading, so a lot of the things that pass you by first time around (or just make no senes) become significant on the next reading. 

An especially sneaky thing he does is write stories (like his early novel Peace, or his recent The Land Across) that appear to be about one thing, only for you to realize, often towards the end, that they're actually about something completely different (although the "surface" story is more-or-less coherent). Unreliable narrators aren't even the half of it...

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

An especially sneaky thing he does is write stories (like his early novel Peace, or his recent The Land Across) that appear to be about one thing, only for you to realize, often towards the end, that they're actually about something completely different (although the "surface" story is more-or-less coherent). Unreliable narrators aren't even the half of it...

Yes indeed. I really enjoyed Peace (not least the Chinese-dynasty-soft-drink joke). One thing that's always struck me as odd about the book, though, is the aunt's dog's name: Ming-Sno. The second syllable can't possibly be Chinese (in any form of transliteration). Maybe it's just a mistake. Or maybe it's a white dog missing its W ...

Here's a horrid little man who'll work as a Jawa-ish type. I tried a new technique with him: black undercoat, then sloppy drybrush of everything in a couple of shades of brown. Metals were drybrushed over the top of that, and then flesh done with a basecoat, wash, and two highlights (very quick on this model). I'm going to try the same on some of the Oathmark goblins

[thenamelessdead]

He's good. Or should I say bad?

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

Here's one more: a throwback to the very first post in this thread. I used the same black/burnt umber/flat earth/silver grey set-up as with the little fellow. The technique was very quick, so I imagine I'll use it a lot more.

These few would make a nice little warband for Mutants & Death Ray Guns, though I'll aim to stat them up for an inaugural game of Pulp Alley tomorrow.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks again - I'll let you know how we get on (and with what).

I meant to say - one thing that became clear from the five-session mini-campaign I ran for my kids and their friends in the autumn was that treasure is a really big deal. I think it's something I've always underplayed in games in the past; when I play RPGs, I'm generally much more interested in exploring/clearing out enemies/achieving objectives rather than accumulating stuff. But the kids went wild for treasure - and especially magic items. I actually started them off with a ring of invisibility (complete with miniature - a base with footprints!), and they found plenty of other items along the way. I used blank playing cards with a quick sketch of the item and sometimes some mechanical info (usually once they'd tried such items out). That helped a great deal with looting of each other's bodies and the like; on more than one occasion, certain PCs abandoned their companions to danger to rifle through the pockets of their fallen comrades!

[Jagannath]

Love the latest batch - a good bit of science-fantasy, lovely! The goblin, is particularly good.

[Severian]

Latest beastmen and bad hats look very good indeed. The beastman's eyes and shield boss are very effective.

Thanks for the treasure cards tip - given my children's attitude to their toy pirate doubloons, this is very likely to be a focus! Also a usefully familiar mechanic from Monopoly and so on. I made some similar cards for a Crom! game a while back, I think.

One thing that's always struck me as odd about the book, though, is the aunt's dog's name: Ming-Sno. The second syllable can't possibly be Chinese (in any form of transliteration). Maybe it's just a mistake. Or maybe it's a white dog missing its W ...

I have a vague theory that this may be a brand name (for fake snow spray, or similar?) and perhaps play into a running series of such gags. But I'd need to re-read (obviously!) to check this...