Ish

Well, my mom came through for me in epic fashion. She shipped me a giant 35 lbs. box of stuff, including my entire Samurai army, my box of bitz, and some AD&D2e books that were promptly stolen by my eldest. Two cross-state moves, five years in a storage locker, and then being UPS’d across the continent haven’t been kind. A lot of snapped spears, bent banner poles, and just good old fashioned “the glue done give’d out” has left my army a bit worse for wear... and my cavalry seems to have vanished into the Warp. Other than the missing cavalry, nothing that cannot be fixed with proper application of superglue and harsh language.

// Eat A Bag of Dicks (2+): 1️⃣ Failure. // Re-Roll: 1️⃣ Failure. // TURNOVER.

Character generation follows the Traveller school of design, with a lifepath system and a lot of random rolls. There’s an option already baked into the game that eliminates a lot (but not quite all) of the randomness... and it wouldn’t be too hard for a GM to say “meh, just pick what you want from the charts instead of rolling for it.” Modiphius also makes an online character generator available for the game. Greatly speeds up chargen, although it does help to have some idea of how the game works already since it assumes you’ve got access to the book(s). Its definitely a game and setting that requires a GM who is very familiar with the ‘verse.

I haven’t played the Infinity RPG (or the wargame for that matter), but I’ve played several other games from Modiphius. I cannot say enough good things about their Robert E. Howard’s Conan RPG, which I’ve loved since day one. Not only is it a true love-letter to Howard’s work, it’s probably one of the best fantasy roleplaying games ever... Wish I could find more people interested in it. I was an alpha- and beta-test GM for Star Trek which is also great. The only negative thing I can say about it is that I don’t like the layout of the final released corebook... White text on dark page backgrounds is just too damn hard to read. That’s it. That’s the only complaint I have. I’ve read the Infinity core rulebook and the Aridana (am I spelling that right?) faction book. Can’t speak to how faithfully it reflects the wargame, since I have zero knowledge of it, but looking at it as a standalone RPG it’s really cool. Modiphius using the same basic system for all of their games, tweaked a bit for each specific game in order to better emphasize themes and focuses of the game’s milieu. Conan puts a lot of emphasis on directly and physically overcoming difficult odds, swashbuckling combat, and High Adventure; Star Trek puts an emphasis on team-work and creative skill use to overcome challenges; Infinity puts equal emphasis on social engineering and intelligence gathering as it does guns blazing combat. If someone starts an Infinity campaign (and time permits) I’m there in a heartbeat.

It’s also why people should learn to distinguish puffery from dishonesty. Your local burger joint might advertise itself selling as “The World’s Greatest Chili-Cheese Fries!” No reasonable person interprets that as saying they have been certified by an third-party organization that did an objective, empirical, and falsifiable double-blind study of every plate of chili-cheese fries on Earth. It’s marketing hyperbole.

If you think Deep Space 9 didn’t involve exploration, you were watching the wrong show... “That may be the most important thing to understand about humans. It is the unknown that defines our existence. We are constantly searching, not just for answers to our questions, but for new questions. We are explorers. We explore our lives day by day, and we explore the galaxy trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge. And that is why I am here: not to conquer you with weapons or ideas, but to coexist and learn.” —Benjamin Sisko (S. 1, Ep. 1, ‘The Emissary’)

I’ve never known GW to make definitive statements of a “this always be thus” nature before... They usually leave themselves an out. But, even if they did say “this will always be thus,” it’d be pretty silly to bank on it. Competitive marketplaces require constant innovation and change.

What was our final Karma and cash from the last run?

Sex workers often ask their clients to pay for services rendered by buying them things on their Amazon Wish Lists, in lieu of or in addition to other forms of payment. The days of “leave the cash on the nightstand” are long over... Most “high class” sex workers won’t even take cash anymore (due to draconian asset forfeiture laws), most clients don’t want to pay with their regular credit cards (due to anonymity concerns), and no one wants to pay with or accept a personal check (because who the hell uses checks?). Sex work is almost all paid for via electronic transfer apps (e.g., Venmo) or prepaid gift cards. Then the clients will buy “gifts” for their favorite provider via their Amazon Wish List or similar. (An old high school friend of mine is criminal defense attorney and defending sex workers a sort of become her area of expertise. It’s a fascinating area of law if you’re a privacy rights politics wonk like me.) Frankly, I think this has a lot less to due with cracking down on sex workers (an iota of Amazon’s user base) and a lot more with Amazon trying to get as many people as possible to join their service. More registered users, more data collection, more data for the algorithms to crunch, more effective targeted marketing... More money for Amazon.

Please don’t suck... please don’t suck... please don’t suck...

Toilet paper and glue for some awesome looking water effects.

Man, Odo and Oscar the Grouch on the same day...

I've been poking around the internet, trying to learn more about De Bellis Antiquitatis. Currently in it's third edition, Amazon has the rulebook for under $20 USD. It's a historical game that's been around since the late Eighties and seems pretty interesting. One notable "selling point" to the game is that it only involves twelve "elements" in any given army, no more and no less. It's also usually played with 15 mm scale figures (although the rules can be easily adapted to 2 mm, 6 mm, 28 mm, or whatever else...) with multiple figures mounted onto standard sized bases. Consider this Third Crusade era army: The Knights (with lances) and the General (the knights with hand weapons) are mounted three riders to a base; the spearmen are mounted five to a base; the Swordsmen, up front, are five to a base; there are two groups of Archers three to a base... That's it. That's an entire army. Based on some very rough "back of the napkin" math and prices for 15 mm figures from places like Old Glory Miniatures, Essex Minitures, and so forth... I'm guessing that's maybe $40-50 USD. Give or take. Scotia Grendel sells "DBA Army Kits" that contain complete armies designed for the system, all you gotta do is slap some paint on `em, average price is about £25.00... Roughly $30 in Imperialist Yankee Freedom Bucks. And, of course, just as @Mack did with Command and Colors, it seems a fair few people enjoy playing DBA with simple blocks.

Carol Spinney has passed away, the puppeteer who played Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Bruno the Trashman, and more... I don’t think I need to explain his importance to our childhoods.