Next Session

Next Savage Worlds, Sunday August 4th, 4pm

Mutants and Muskets, Episode 12

Jock (blue shield), Max (grey suit), and Pooh-Bear (brown apron) are swarmed by Hareballs on a hill in New Mexico.

A couple of notes from last night's game.  
First of all, the ape-sniper worked out really well, his position made the fight a interesting exercise. 

Secondly, I used the Mythic GM Emulator to pre-plan all the encounters and found that I really could have just re-rolled random encounters using the regular system.  It was good to do it ahead of time, the encounters weren't as spontaneously weird as other times (although insane clowns with blunderbusses on dune buggies does sound as weird as it gets), but I had the terrain features all mapped out in my head, and that helps to make the encounters interesting.

Thirdly,  why won't you guys fight the Apaches?  I'm getting tired of this "oh lets be nice to the Apaches."  Dammit, I have an Apache Chief Wild Card who can grow gigantic.

Fourthly, the "End Encounter Successfully" card was perfectly played to avoid the second run-in with the Insane Clowns on Dune-Buggies.  The "GM Emulator" dictated you seeing those guys twice, but once was enough.

Finally, nice job in avoiding and escaping encounters in order to keep the mission going, well played.

Gatavia III wiki

As Andrew mentioned below, the Gatavia III wiki:

Gatavia III wiki

is live and crammed full of goodness.  The old temporary page is gone.

An Ominous Message from my Grocery Store

Axe Cop Reminder

Just a reminder to set your TiVo or other recording device for the sneak peak first episode of AXE COP, 9:30 Sunday night on Fox.   We may be wrapping up Sunday's game, and you don't want to miss it.

Gatavia III Wiki

The Gatavia III ACKS wiki is up and running. Find it here:

http://lordsofhack.com/gatavia3

Be aware that this URL is case-sensitive. I considered "gataviaiii", but I'm afraid that looked *stupid*.

Andrew's LARP

I just read through Andrew's LARP wiki, and it looks really cool. You all should take a look at it:

Roses and Thorns

I do admit, I'm not up on the vampire terminology, so some of it's lost on me, but it does look like fun.

I'd be interested in Andrew sharing a little about how his LARP differs, for the better and for the worse, from our usual nonsense.

A little research

It looks like the Truck's trailer should be 2 squares (2 inches) by 6 squares (6 inches), corresponding to the real-world 8.5 feet by 28.5 feet maximum for a trailer.    That gives me something to work on for a template.

Hell Comes to Scarptown!

OMG! Look Out!

Look, it's Buster Jones, Weasel Lockspur and Spuds Markey, What do they see?

Behold, the peaceful outskirts of Post-apocalyptic Scarptown, Texas

Next Session

Next game is THIS Sunday, July 21, 4pm

Idle furniturational speculation

I've been thinking of sprucing up the utility of our game space lately.  I remember seeing 2-level game tables, where the upper level is just for miniatures, and you put all your papers, books etc, on the lower level.  We end up only using about a 3x3 space in the middle for miniatures, with the rest wasted.  It's not a problem for indoor stuff, but big outdoor fights always seem too cramped.

I think it would be pretty simple to add a second level to our current table.  I'd just need 2 sheets of plywood 5 feet x 2-1/2 feet.  Then I'd need a bunch of legs.  I'd attach the legs to the plywood and then set the two little tables on top of our current tables, and we're done.

There's one question, and one obstacle.   The question is just how big the space between the two levels should be.  Too high, and it's hard to see things from our seats, too low and it's too hard to use our papers.

The obstacle is my very erratic building skills.  Sometimes things miraculously come together.  Other times I'm Homer Simpson making a barbecue pit.

Too Late, Too Late

It's too late for Mutants and Muskets,   too Late.
Also, I don't know the scale:

Next Session

Next Mutants and Muskets game, Sunday July 14.

Time Constraints

We've been ending the sessions later and later recently, and this is a problem for Bob and his early-morning commute.   I want to work on moving some things along.

The problem is that the nature of the campaign makes it so that there is always a "Travel" segment takes a certain amount of time, and then the "Dungeon" segment takes another certain amount of time, and then there's the "Trip Home" segment.

One thing that helps a bit is the Truck, which cuts down travel time.   We also need to try to the "avoid encounter" rolls more often in the travel segment.

One possible solution is for me to decide whether the session is a "Travel and Search" session or a "Dungeon" session. If it's a "Dungeon" session I should do something to reduce the Travel encounters.    That worked in the Bat Cave session, since the cave was so close to home.   It would really pain me as a GM to hand wave the Travel entirely, since the Mutants and Muskets game world has an established, objective structure to it and it would seem a violation to ignore it.

On the Gnome Stew site, they suggest giving the party a "End this Scene Successfully Card".   If the players agree, at any point in the game (except a "Boss Fight" or other super key encounter) the players can collectively play this card and end the scene.   So, for example, you guys could have played it to "Find the Boat" or "Snatch the Gunsmith" or "Walk Back to the Boat Shed" during the last game, to speed things up.   I wouldn't have let you use it to kill King Zoidberg or to avoid the "Storm Wrecks the Boat" scene.   Here's the full article:

Gnome Stew: Get out of Scene Free Card

It seems like a good idea to me.

July Schedule and Beyond

The schedule for July would be July 14 and July 28.

However, I will be out of town on July 28.

I'm thinking of going for July 14, then July 21 (1 week apart).  And then back to a two week schedule after that.

Beyond that, the August schedule should be August 4th and August 18th.

Does that work for everyone?   I suppose I'll send an email soon to absolutely everyone.

I'm reckon Zach will be leaving us in August sometime to go off to school, if I was listening and cyphering correctly.    Perhaps we'll wrap up Mutants and Muskets with Zach's final game and then begin poking around with ACKS in September.   Maybe we'll do some test games in September (letting people test various classes and character options and get used to the flow of things) or do a board game break, and if Andrew is in fact returning in October, we'll start ACKS with his return.