Bloody Initiative

The "other day" Stuart and I played some Blood & Steel. It's a competent platoon-level wargame but doesn't feel much like the era and setting it's purporting to model. It does have some compelling mechanics, not least the initiative rules and I am always interested in interesting initiative rules.

(I tried to get more "i" words in there. I really did.)

In Blood & Steel you roll a number of d10s based on your army's size, one per discrete unit, at the start of a turn. A four or higher means that dice grants two actions, otherwise it's only one.

If you roll more ones than tens, something bad happens, which is generated from a random table. If it's more tens than ones, then you get a bonus, also from a random table. Some of the benefits and mishaps almost seemed like the opposite, which I think is by design.

Then each player selects a dice -- in secret! -- and the players reveal their selected dice together. The player with the highest revealed dice goes first. One assumes that in multiplayer games, other players would go in order of results.

The winning player selects a unit and then takes one or more -- depending on the result -- actions, before handing over to the next player. Then the players select their next dice.

I like a lot about this. It has the basic simplicity of rolling high to go first, but the benefits/mishaps add a bit of extra randomness and surprise to it. The secret selection brings in a little bit of strategy so it's not totally random, and you can make plans even with a terrible set of rolls.

(I can imagine there are situations in which you might want to select a low roll, or even engage in a bit of bluffing. I don't really have the personality for bluffing, and in the game with Stuart, I kept rolling tens anyway, so it didn't come up.)

This seems like it would be easy to bolt on to other wargames, and I feel like it could probably be adapted to a role-playing game too.

Overcompensating, Yes?

It's #DrawDeathsHeadDay 2025! The most freelance peacekeeping day of the year! And, coincidentally, Simon Furman's birthday too!

A skinny, angry-looking DH this year. Maybe he's short of cash.

Sketched in pencil, "inked" in Krita, and a bit experimental. I'm still trying to find my confidence and style, so I went for something loose and messy, in an attempt to not overthink things and let the picture develop.

Dragonlance: Thirteenth Age

Here's an idea, combining two of my favourite role-playing games.

It's completely untested; we're learning as we're doing. Let's go!

Let's first of all generate the Icons we're going to use for this hypothetical campaign. We'll arrange them in the traditional three-by-three "alignment" grid, and for this purpose nine Icons work well, but there's no reason you can't have fewer or more.

Then we'll draw our Icons from the Fate Deck, like so:

I like the idea of drawing "in order" rather than shuffling them around to fit, but that's the Old-Schooler in me; if a "good" character is sitting in the Chaotic Evil spot, then that's interesting and worth exploring. The Icons don't necessarily map to those alignments, because neither 13th Age nor Dragonlance: Fifth Age really have alignment in the exact same way D&D has, but if it's useful to think of them, um, aligning in that way, then go ahead.

(The DL5A cards have black, red, or white icons that map to the good, neutral, or evil factions/moons/wizards; you can use these as a guide.)

The characters on the cards can be the actual Icons if you want -- which would make for an interesting alternate Dragonlance setting -- or they could be an example -- eg, Chot stands in for a generic Minotaur Warlord Icon, or Goldmoon is the Barbarian Priestess or something -- or it can be someone completely different that just shares those personality traits, or it can be any combination of the preceding. Go wild.

Make a note of this Icon grid. Maybe take a photo. Those cards need to now go back into the Fate Deck.

Icon Relationships

Now we have our Icons, player-characters can define their relationships with them. This can be done as normal, with starting PCs spending up to three points on positive, conflicted, or negative relationships with Icons of their choice. Those definitions should be obvious, but if not have a look at the 13A Icon rules.

(13A has limits on how to spend the points, depending on the alignments of the Icon and the PC, but I'm ignoring those as I don't like them. If you want to put all three points into a negative relationship with an "evil" Icon, go for it. The 13A limits can be seen at the above link if you want to use them.)

"Rolling Relationship Dice"

As a GM, use a PC's icon relationships three different ways, just as in 13A:

• At the start of a session to generate ideas about which Icons will be involved in that session's events.
• During a specific important event or moment, to determine if an Icon is involved, or if the PCs can get an advantage or assistance from an Icon.
• As a "sting" to see if an Icon is somehow involved with a "random" plot event.

Each player draws cards equal to their points with the relevant Icon:

• If the suit matches that of the Icon, then it provides an umambiguous advantage or benefit, the 13A equivalent of a 6. Unless it is a Dragon card.
• If the card is a Dragon, then it is advantageous as above, except there is also a complication, like an obligation to a "good" Icon, or unwanted attention from an "evil" Icon. The equivalent of a 13A 5 result.
• If the card drawn is the Icon card itself, then the Icon makes a personal intervention! Let's call it a 7; in 13A the Icons are not really supposed to appear in person, but drawing the Icon's actual card seems like it should warrant a special effect.

(The probabilities are a bit lower here than in 13A but they are not massively off, and the addition of the third, "7", result feels like it balances things. A bit. Ish.)

Combinations of results are allowed and encouraged! A 5 and a 6 is interesting, a 5 and a 7 even more so!

I think cards should be shuffled back into the Fate Deck after each Icon "roll", or at least after each player has had a go, except perhaps with the exception of any direct interventions, but this probably requires testing.

Changing Relationships

When a PC gets to Hero reputation -- 16 to 21 Quests -- they get an extra relationship point to spend. They can also switch an existing relationship point to a different or new Icon, as long as it makes sense within the context of the campaign.

At Archetype -- 29 Quests! -- reputation a PC again gains a new relationship point and can again switch one point around. At this stage a single relationship can be increased to a new maximum of four, to reflect the PC becoming a VIPI.

(A Very Important Person Indeed!)

Carrier-er

I've just read the collection of Blood Hunt, Marvel's recent vampire crossover event thing. It's not bad, although it seems to lose interest in itself about two thirds of the way through in favour of setting up the next crossover. It starts well though, and in pace and scale feels a lot like the first couple of years of The Authority, before that comic went a bit bad.

Not least because the Avengers have -- since 2023 -- been zipping about in this:

That's the Impossible City, a huge, um, city-sized space ship from another dimension. Possibly sapient, but with its memory and history erased, and with a distinctive teleportation ability, with which it opens "doors" to locations the Avengers need to access to do Avengering.

That's the Carrier, a huge city-sized space ship from another dimension. Possibly sapient, but with its memory and history erased, and with a distinctive teleportation ability, with which it opens "doors" to locations the Authority needs to access to do cynical posturing and widescreen property damage.

Hm.

Almost Forgot

Epic Excuses for Giant Robots!

The Horus Heresy, the foundational story and grand tragedy at the heart of Warhammer 40,000, is an excuse.

Back in the grim darkness of 1988 Games Workshop released the first version of its Epic teeny tiny wargames system, Adeptus Titanicus:

Epic battles between giant robots! Ace!

Except all the "giant robots" in that first box were Imperial, so GW needed to come up with a reason why the humans were fighting each other. And so, one back-of-the-napkin later, we get the Horus Heresy, gengineered brother versus gengineered brother, lots of overwrought high drama, about a million tie-in novels, a spinoff tabletop wargame, and soon a role-playing game.

(We're not counting the "3D Roleplay" graphic on the AT box...)

I'm not convinced by this announcement -- what are players going to actually do in this setting? -- but I'm intrigued.

Leather Bound Video (Not Like That)

I watched the BBC series Video Nasty the other day. It's pretty good. The trailers made it look like a period comedy set during the 1980's video nasty scare -- of which I am a bit young to have direct experience, but I remember well its legacy -- and it is sort of that, but let's just say the trailer is a bit misleading.

Anyway.

One early scene takes place in a video shop, one of the hundreds of independent -- and slightly dodgy -- establishments that dotted the nation before the chains took over. This shop had its own branded VHS cases, as you'd recognise if you'd ever been in a video shop from 1990ish onwards. Except that's not how I remember 1980's shops operating.

I remember that you'd browse the shelves in the pokey little room behind the newsagent, pick your film, take it to the counter, and then you'd get your rental VHS in a case that looked like a faux leather book. Like this:

I find this both cute and weird. Not only because people thought the appropriate way to display a VHS was to make it look like a generic leather-bound book, but also because there was apparently some need or desire to display or shelve a film you were only going to have in your house for two or three days. It looks eccentric and odd from 2025. To be fair, it looked eccentric and odd from 1995!

The Revisitation

Following on from the role-playing games I have and haven't played, here are the games I've played but would very much like to play again before my body fails and my essence returns to the cosmos.

Or something.

13th Age - Probably my favourite version of "advanced" D&D. I think we still have much to explore with this game, not least a big old dungeon.

Barbarians of Lemuria - I enjoyed the last time I played this, only 13 years ago (!). I liked a few of the system mechanics and I also liked how the game captured the feel of pulp fantasy.

Cold City - Great fun. I would love to play this or its cousin Hot War again.

Dragonlance: The Fifth Age - The system is quite unlike anything else but I've only played it in short bursts; I'd like to give it a try for a longer term campaign to see how it goes.

Feng Shui - I'm not fully on board with the rules of the game, as I think they sort of get in the way of what they are trying to do, but I love the concept and setting, and I'd like to give it another try one day. Maybe with different rules?

Mutant Year Zero - It's a solid ruleset -- a descendant of which we played recently -- and I like the blend of base building and wilderness exploration, and how each feed into the other. I think my mistake when running it was in making things feel aimless and giving the impression that everything was randomly generated; if I ran it again I'd make more effort to highlight interesting locations and even perhaps create actual "missions" to give some added focus.

Pendragon - Just because it's Pendragon, and it's great, although I prefer a sort of loose picaresque wander about Mythic England as opposed to the Allegedly Great Pendragon Campaign, which really doesn't do much for me.

Rogue Trader - The ruleset is not the best but the setting has a great deal of potential; my previous attempt was more focussed on plot and story, and I wonder how a more freeform "space crawl" approach would go down.

Star Wars - The D6 variant. I played a fair bit of this in my teens and it was good fun, even if I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan. The expansion of the franchise in recent years has broadened the type of stories told on screen, and reminds me of the sort of off-piste adventures we had in the setting back in the dim and distant 1990s.

(Please! Where is Call of Cthulhu? Well, it gets played about once a year by my group so I don't feel the need to add it to the list. Just assume that I always want to play Call of Cthulhu Iä, fhtaghn, etc.)

Alien 1999

I played a couple of sessions of the Alien role-playing game over the past couple of weeks.

Well, not exactly.

I played a couple of sessions of the Space: 1999 role-playing game.

Well, not exactly.

What in fact happened was Stuart ran a Space: 1999 adventure using the Alien system, and it was good fun. I've always enjoyed the late-period Gerry Anderson series -- although I think UFO is better -- so it was fun to play around in that setting, just before the Moonbase Alpha accident that kicks the series off. The Alien ruleset -- derived from one of my favourites, Mutant Year Zero -- is quite good too, and worked well for the relatively low-tech world of 70s UK science fiction TV. It does tend towards horror and stress -- as you'd expect -- so it created a bit of a different tone for Space: 1999, perhaps the sort of thing you'd get if the series had been made in 1985 rather than 1975.

I'm not sure I have any interest in Alien itself as a game setting, but the system seems flexible and applicable for all sorts of things. I wonder how it would handle the Cthulhu Mythos?

Hmm...

Stuart's summary of the first session is here, and the second here.

Aged Like Rusted Iron

From 1987's "Armo(u)r Wars" storyline in Iron Man:

Oh dear.

Oh dear.