In Praise of the 20 Page AD&D Character Sheet

So this is how I amuse myself. I made a 20 page character sheet from one sheet of paper. 

Let me tell you what a pain in the ass that was. Everything needed to be orientated correctly and having gotten it wrong twice, I realized I had it right the second time, but folded it wrong. 

Sigh. 

As soon as I get folding instructions done, I'll add it to my character sheet download at DriveThruRPG. It will strictly be a print and write on affair. I have no patience for PDF forms where some of the data is upside down. 

Book Review - Another Heaven, Another Earth by H. M. Hoover

Title: Another Heaven, Another Earth
Author: H. M. Hoover
Year: 1981
Pages: 224 pages
Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mary Helen Hoover was born in 1935, in Ohio. Her family home's basement that was dug back when Thomas Jefferson was president. From that humble beginning, she hopped from Los Angeles to New York City to finally land in Virginia. From 1973 to 1995, she wrote 16 published books. 

Another Heaven, Another Earth takes place on Xilan, a planet far from Earth. The crew of the Kekelu find it to be an idyllic place for potential colonization. Except for one problem. The colonists of Xilan had been there for over 500 years. Alerted by The Cube, a centuries old device of unknown origin, the healer Gareth stumbles on to the Kekelu's survey teams throwing their corporate colony venture into chaos. 

The crew of the Kekule struggle to discover the source of Gareth's people, research their devolved technology and question how they came to be abandoned while fighting disease and infection brought on by this unusual first contact situation. 

Gareth's people are revolted by the spacemen's attitude of superiority and treatment of the "primitives", seeing themselves not being "devolved" but survivors and masters of their world. Families struggled against the challenges of a new world while retaining what knowledge they could of the past.   

Hoover pulls no punches with this classic story of first contact while successfully weaving a story that resists time by resisting the typical technobabble of the 1980s. Due to this lack of technobabble, aside from the one mention of film, the book avoids all the tropes that would date it. 

While written for the young adult audience, it is wonderful story for people of all ages. 

Books by H. M. Hoover on AbeBooks.

To Traveller or Not to Traveller

I've got my hands full. A moment ago, I had a gift card. Now I have a reading list.

I've shared both Rick Wayne's series before and Mike and Shell "Presto" DeBaggio's books before. Probably a couple of times. Generally, I have a plan. 

What do these two series have to do with one another? 

My winter posting series will be about superhero games, Marvel Superheroes to be exact. I'll be reviewing all three series of books as they have inspired me to select this topic for my winter post series.  

Today, I'd like to talk about H. M. Hoover's books. Helen Mary Hoover (1935 to 2018) was an American children's writer. 

Or was she? 

I'm not a child and I enjoy these books. The Delkon is my favorite. They are slightly more mature than C. S. Lewis or Tolkien. And many of them are science fiction themed. It occurs to me that many would make a excellent setting for the Traveller ruleset. 

Why? 

Because as "children books" they don't have much violence. The potential is there but it never seems to get that bad. Which is great when you're using Traveller rules. 

Gunfire is deadly... very deadly. I think this is my hangup with the ruleset and since I would like to learn to play, I need to learn "To Violence Or Not To Violence". I didn't think of that, I totally stole it from SAFCOcast. Episode 23 to exact. I've listened to this one episode like 3 times and the more I listen, the more I think H. M. Hoover's settings would be perfect for the Traveller game system. 

The tech is there. The potentiality of a quick and final end when violencing is there. The not so obvious or completely obvious solution is there. It's built into the atmosphere of the setting. Ms, Hoover does an excellent job of hiding whether or not the solution is going to be the tricky one or the obvious one.  

Traveller has a very different science fiction atmosphere than what I am used to participating in. It seems to live in that space between tricky and obvious, with violence leading to just one of many obvious solutions. Other obvious solutions is tailoring responses to skills and talents of the players. It places far more emphasis on all of the skills available rather than just the ones that give immediate results. 

As I amble my way down to Traveller way, I'm gonna read a few books before I give it another try. 

Books by H. M. Hoover on AbeBooks.

Go Nuts!

Well, it's one of those days. Explosive creativity with little or no focus. In my last post, I shared the images I used to highlight my series posts. Not only did that involve Inkscape, it required Bluefish for html editing. I just need 5 more and I'll be done. I can do that another time. Can't stop now to finish something. 

I ran to the store for stuff for dinner. Before I left, I painted a panel of wood for a photographic background for my model series.

When I got home, the background was dry. So, I took some photos using a single lamp. It's not how I will do it when I launch this series, but I wanted quick results. No need to get all fancy with tiny details like using the correct lighting. 

I edited the photos down to web sized chunks. (For my own future sanity, I cropped each 2520 x 1800 then halved the resolution so they be 1260 by 900.)  

I took pictures of 3 unpainted ships and decided I needed some color. 

Well, that wasn't good enough. So I photographed an X-Wing toy. 

But that wasn't my paint job. I haven't painted figures in years. Since I had the paint out, I slapped some on a few mechs. Little details mostly, because I can't focus for more than a few minutes. 

Eh, whatever. It's just a few pictures, nothing important. 

My wife was listening to Dave Matthews Band which gave me an idea. I'd edit some album covers, for lord knows what reason. Perhaps to sell her on the idea that I need a vinyl cutter.

Not bad. I need some sort of vinyl cutter so I can do something with these. Because records are vinyl and these are images of records.

Yup. It all makes perfect sense. 

After that, I made dinner. Chicken and broccoli stir fry. I figured since I was at it, I'd make my special "dog fry" which is chicken scraps, a dash of rice and broccoli for the dog. Dogs can't eat onions or garlic, so this is a safe way to make her something special as a treat. 

I decided to add in a mix of water chestnuts, onions, celery and carrots. Sure, I'd have to go back to the store, but why not? I love that stuff. 

I had the cutting board out, I decided to treat myself with riced cauliflower. Since I was playing safe with the dog, riced cauliflower is better for me than rice. I chopped it all by hand. Riced cauliflower is great because I can't eat rice. I'm diabetic. 

Oh, shhhhiii....  I forgot one thing today. I didn't check my blood sugar after lunch. Hmm.

Yeah, I didn't notice that until I caught myself cooking, praying and talking to my son who is currently half a country away in Texas. That is classic automatism, when the body acts on it's own. It's pretty rare in diabetics, occuring in the tiny window between sanity and coma. 

Yeah... the little details. 

This is what I was fighting last year about this time. Nice to know things don't change. 

New Logos

Many years ago, I decided every post needed some artwork. It's more interesting that way. The other day, I decided that all series need a logo. I have only three built, but here they are.