Prototyping and Fun

Back in 2021, I reviewed Atlas Game's The White Box Set. This is the handiest game set I've ever owned. The primary part is a 100+ book of essays that every game producer needs to read. It is loaded with a lot of research, details, and facts. I love it for that alone. 

The bits and bobs are perfect for role-playing and board games, even if you are not a content producer. They are so useful, I have five sets. 

Each box comes with:

3 counter sheets with 71 pre-printed and 49 blank counters,

150 small wooden cubes in 6 colors,

36 wooden meeples in 6 colors, 

6 large cubes in 6 colors, 

12 1d6 dice, again in 6 colors, 

110 bingo disks in 8 colors, 

Several clear bags for storage, 

102 page book of essays. 

These little bits and bobs are perfect for resource management in RPGS, replacing lost pieces from board games like dice, highlighting areas on maps without marking them up, etc. You have so many options. 

It's extremely useful. 

But now I have 5 copies of the same book. Well, 4 of those will be going up on my Ko-Fi store. I'll let you know when I have that done. I am on-call this week making a bad time for monitoring orders. 

If you must have this book now, I suggest the Atlas Game store as it's on clearance for $22.00 for the whole set. 

If you need it faster than physical shipping would allow, I suggest DriveThru RPG. Driverthu has two different products: a PDF and an Audiobook. 

Each of these products are LESS than the 10 bucks I plan to sell used copies on Ko-Fi. I want to see what sort of costs are associated with selling physical goods on Ko-Fi. Esty is a non-starter due to the terms and fees. The $10 dollar price point is to make the math easy. These books will be clearly marked with a warning that you are helping me with an order and there are better options out there. 

#MiniMonday

Here are two of my least favorite things about minis: storage and bases. 

Why do I keep my models in a terrarium? My cats are dicks. There isn't much I can do about that, if Youtube is any indicator, all cats are dicks. 

Anyway, my second least favorite thing about models is doing the bases. 

Why? 

Because if you don't straight-up paint them, you end up with materials that are a completely different palette than the paint you used. 

The best you can do is hit the grass and sand with some paint or ink to try and get it close. Sometimes, that works. The other downside is, that sometimes your grass-like material is "sticky". Either actually sticky or it has a static-magnetic effect.

There is some irony that the grass tends to stick to metal models more than plastic models, despite the metal being completely non-magnetic. 

The last un-fun part of doing bases is, let's say you get this looking great, where the tones match your models and the table you use. It isn't long before you show up at a friend's house, or a comic book store with nice tables, and your bases look bad again. 

I suppose it's just like painting, I guess I need to practice. 

February Update - Catching Up

Since Christmas, I have been alternating between Football and illness, either me or someone in the house. Football is over, but this new ick still has me. Last week, 1-3 people were out of the office daily with one thing or another. It was a rough week.  

Let's start with the fun part of the update: Rabbits. 

Fiver has a new house. It's a Snoopy house for a small dog or cat. Fiver barely fits, but he likes it. He shares with the cats, but not at the same time. He'd squish them. He is rapidly approaching 30 lbs. 

Now to the dog, Tori. She has been very sick since Christmas week. More than a few times we thought we'd lose her. She was on a ridiculous amount of pills. As of now, she is down to just 2. Unfortunately, one of these is a steroid. She is packing on the weight and is very unpredictable. 

When I say, unpredictable, I mean really it. Sometimes she lays on her side like a stuffed animal with all four paws poking straight out. If something bothers her in this position, she barks like Cujo. It is surreal because she doesn't move at all. Just barks like a crazy thing.  

Once she recovers, the two of us are going walking each night. Between her lovely weight gain and my diabetes, we need it. If this lasts 'til spring, she will be out there with me re-doing the garden. I don't need to expand, I need to clean up.  

This post wouldn't be complete without circling back to rabbits. We have a family of bunnies in the backyard. Sometimes, I go out there and see 2-3 of them hiding in plain sight. Tori never notices them, or if she does, she ignores them. 

I expect to do battle with them over my garden. I don't mind, I sort of count on it. I have an area under a tree where I can plant strawberries for the rabbits. I might try carrots and radishes, too. I want to kill off the grass there so I don't have to mow that space. My real gardening spaces are fenced, so the rabbits can't do too much damage. 

I'll share pictures as the cleanup begins. Right now, I have a picture as a hint for the next post. I'm planning more than gardening:

Guest Stars - Star Wars Campaign 2025

Since I set my campaign just after the Battle of Endor, I have many main characters from the movies and TV shows to guest star in the campaign. However, some of them are poor choices. 

Luke and Leia are right out. They would break continuity. 

Han, Chewie, and Lando are available from the original movies while Ashoka, Zeb, Sabine, Hera, and Agent Kallus from Rebels could appear. I can tack on a few more such as a very old Kelleran Beq and slightly younger versions of the characters from the Mandolorian. 

That is not a bad group for the heroes to meet. 

But who do they fight? 

The Empire is collapsing. I will hypothesize that the remaining Imperial ships need planetary systems to resupply, which is why they are interested in the Meneth System. There will also be the usual scum and villains passing through and maybe sticking around. 

Meneth is strong enough to not align with either the Republic or the Imperial remnants. I've decided that the Menethian leadership thinks of itself as the core of a new Empire. Not having Sith lurking around makes them more self-centered than evil. They also had enough trouble in the system to prevent them from participating in a war-like colonization program. They are the ship in the bottle in Star Wars form. 

As far as bad guys go, I can have Imperial remnants, the old droid army kicking around, plus a handful of Night Sisters, and maybe an escaped Inquisitor or two. The Inquisitors were a pit of vipers and it stands to reason if one of them survived to the Ashoka TV show, there is more than one. That also adds in people like Baylan Skoll, Shin Hati, and their ilk who are good fodder for guest stars.  

The Home Town Heroes are going to be the characters. Of the original 6 Jedi, 4 force adepts, and 6 children Jedi candidates, 3 force adepts and 3 Jedi survived. That leaves the 6 force-sensitive children who are adults by now. Star Wars has no demographic info, we can guess that Meneth may have its own emerging force adepts to supplement these numbers. The players should have no trouble creating Jedi-like characters. This was my player's main complaint in my last Star Wars adventure. The Rebel base is there to provide other types of heroes like pilots and fringers while nobles and such can be from Meneth. 

I will keep my Neimoidian bounty hunter, La'ow Houd from my last series as a contact. He is a data dealer, not a killer. I like the idea of someone who has more than adequate defenses to punch way over their weight class.

Wining and Winning

My wife, Kitty, and I love wine tasting. Our favorite destination is the Adirondack Winery in Lake George, New York. It’s not just a stop for us; it’s a tradition. We visit four times a year. We try once a season and hit the mark almost every year. 

Adirondack Winery has an impressive lineup of over 40 wine varieties. We’ve proudly or shamefully sampled and purchased every single one. It’s no surprise we’re members of their Case Club, which comes with a variety of perks for those who purchase at least 12 bottles a year. For us, that’s easy. During each visit, we usually leave with a case in hand, and we keep going by adding three more bottles to our collection every month.

We are rapidly running out of room for wine. In our living room, we have a wine rack with about a dozen bottles. In the dining room, the legs of our dinner table have slots for 12 more bottles. Since we are gifting a bunch of bottles, we have at least a case of bottles waiting to be wrapped. 

Maybe you noticed that I had an ad for wine.com on my blog. It didn't work. No one clicked it. Not even once so I took it down. The link provided in the post is informational only, I don't receive anything from ADK for promoting them. 

The bottles are shipped in excellent packaging, a type of form-fitted cardboard. They use FedEx so the wine can be directed to a secondary drop-off point like Walgreens. In NY you need to show ID for wine deliveries. 

This growing collection has led to my latest project: designing a wine cellar. Kitty has officially put me in charge. To that end, Kitty selected a special Christmas gift that will be used to make this happen. I can't wait to start showing that off next year. 

But you know what I really want? 

Toys. Models. Buildings. Spaceships. 

I missed Mecha Monday this week, but I did make two posts this week to make up for it. If you like to order wine or know of a winery, you might be able to pick up some of these bottle-form containers. 

If you cut them apart with a pair of scissors and slap some paint on them, they start to look like buildings. This one looks a bit like a hanger or bunker to me. They have that old adobe Star Wars look, like Mos Eisley. 

I realized I don't have any grass or sand, so I will need to pick some up to texture the bottom edge. 

Depending on your paint job, you can deck them out for many different scales and themes. The slab-like arches can be painted to look like garage doors or regular man-sized doors depending on need. I have to say the Commando looks massive and threatening next to this thing. 

Since my last post was about Star Wars, I hope to do a campaign using a lot of Star Fighters. My pick for these are either Bandai 1:144 scale models from my local comic shop or small metal models from Studio Bergstrom. I have purchased a few ships from Studio Bergstrom and I suspect I will amass a lot in the future because I like models as much as wine. 

The three or four dozen ships I already have are going to be the focus of a lot of Miniature Mondays. I will be mixing that up with Mecha Monday, because a good mech is like good wine.