Thursday, February 28, 2013

Shield Hit Markers for Starship Miniatures

I whipped these up today in the GIMP (an open-source version of Photoshop) to use in Noble Armada, but they could work equally well in any game or RPG where you want to see how many hits a ship sustained to its shields.

You may freely use/distribute these, it took almost no effort to create them so enjoy them! Print them on heavy cardstock or glue a printed page to cardboard, either way they make cheap and effective markers. I plan on having a game later, I'll post pictures of them in action when I am able.

click to view full-size
(NOTE: They are a bit large as-is, so I suggest adjusting the scale down to size them to taste when printing.)

New project: Stars Without Number

So I came across a gem of a RPG system during one of my surfs the other day: Stars Without Number (SWN). The best comparison I can come up with is that it is like a mix between old school D&D with Traveller. It is very rules-light, but it has great tools for a GM to generate worlds and stories. The ship combat doesn't seem too bad either, effectively being an extension of the regular combat system similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

Some of the setting features are fairly unique as well. For example, in SWN, the FTL drive is called a "Spike Drive" that "drills" into another plane of existence where space is compressed, similar to a hyperspace drive. It really conveys the sense that the Spike Drive uses brute force rather than a refined technique.

Other setting features are not so unique... In the game's setting, humanity constantly expanded through the stars, and as they skipped through other dimensions to travel faster than light, some became "touched" by Multi-Dimensional-Exposure-Sickness (or MES), gaining new psychic abilities. They used their new-found psychic abilities to form jump gates that used psychics to plot courses through space, faster and more effectively than possible with spike drives. After a time, a cataclysmic event known as the "Scream" caused a great amount of psychic backlash that killed most of the psychics. This also led to the collapse of the jump gate network, disrupting space travel and reverting the massive empire back into chaos. Sound familiar?

Old tropes aside, this game seems like the perfect basis for a space-faring adventure that doesn't get too bogged down by rules. The system generation system alone is worth looking into, as it gives you a great way to create an explorable universe.

I will be writing some stuff in the coming weeks, detailing the following:

Ship designs
Planet Summaries
Character Biographies
Adventure seeds

NSL Scout Vessel
Should be a fun project.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Zaraphiston - Abaddon's Foremost Sorcerer

Found another picture I hadn't uploaded yet. Here is the DV Lord/sorcerer model, which I have chosen to represent Zaraphiston, Abaddon's adviser and diviner of things that may come to pass. I was bummed that sorcerers don't get access to the Divination powers, but with Biomancy it's hard to complain. Telepathy works to an extent flavor-wise, controlling enemies as you would expect an evil chaos sorcerer to do.

Counts-as Abaddon

I just realized I never posted these, so here you go:




Basing still needs finished, but for the most part the painting is done.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Why iPhone Cameras Just Don't Cut It


Yes, I'm back after a long hiatus again. Hi.

I had some stirrings of creativity the last month or so and so finally tried to revisit the hobby to provide an outlet for all that energy. I did a decent enough job considering that all my paints are drying up and caking in the bottom of the GW pots (I'll be switching to Vallejo indefinitely after this). At least, I thought so!

However, it is something of a stifle when the camera just does not do the model justice.  This Dark Angel Librarian from the Dark Vengeance set came out fairly well, but the camera in the iPhone 4 just doesn't have the capacity to bring out the detail that I worked so meticulously on. No amount of lighting changes or background switches could help. I tried a multitude of different backgrounds and lighting situations... but in the end, I settled on this picture. This was the best of a bad lot and that is pretty frustrating to me.

Guess I'll be asking for a new digital camera for my upcoming b-day this month...

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