'Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,' the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. 'Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.'

-Robert E. Howard
Beyond The Black River

Corrupt Cliffs

Corrupt Cliffs
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Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Solomon Kane

The company that brought us Mythic: Battles Pantheon in association with Monolith, is going to bring us a new game. A new setting from the Pulp worlds of the great Robert E Howard.

SOLOMON KANE.

We don't know very much about the game right now, but it looks to be a kickstarter and miniature based(as their last 2 games were.)

I will be watching this one with keen interest.

Check out the teaser here:

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Miniature Scale Comparisons.

"How well do they scale?"

When people talk about miniatures from board games(BG) this is one of the first things that comes up. It is probably second only to people wondering how good they are.

Scale is a common concern among miniature gamers, and it gets asked about different figures from different companies all the time, it is not just asked about BGs.

I recently got my pledge for "Mythic Battles: Pantheon" and let me say, that I love these figures.  I was asked almost immediately about how well they scaled with Conan.  This blog post will attempt to compare and contrast a fairly decent range of figures including Bones, Bronze Age, Conan, Mythic, Wizkids pre-paints and the new line of unpainted figures from Wizkids.

One last caveat.  We are not scale modelers in my opinion.  We use our miniatures and our terrain to make our battles or rpgs come alive with cool ideas.  The figures and terrain we use are seeds to our imagination and serve to keep each of us playing more or less in the same frame.

Starting with  a group shot of all the figures.
Bronze Age, Bronze Age, Pre-paint, Bones, Bones, Bones, Deepcuts, Conan, Conan, Mythic, Mythic.

The last Mythic figure I simply included for fun as it is the "god" scale for the game.


These two images show a Bones Conan-eque figure next to some Bronze Age figures, both are your pro-typical barbarian figs. I think they are pretty similar in scale, with the Bronze Age figs perhaps being more physically proportional. Either way they will work fine together on the table.

The two males next to each other show the proportional differences much clearer. Despite these I still think they will work fine on the table together.
Here we have that same Bones figure next to one of the pre-paint figures. I think she is from the "Rise of the Runelords" collection, but I can't recall for sure. Again the scale is pretty good. She stands at a human height next to our hulking barbarian. He might even look a little short if their bases were the same height. But again I have no issues using these two figures together on the table.
This is a scale comparison between one of the Conan BG figures and our Conan-eque Bones figure again. Again we see more of the same. Decent scale, easily useable on the same table, even thought the Conan BG figure is a little talled.


Same scale we saw in the Conan BG figure, this Mythic BG figure is slightly taller than this Bones figure, but still useable together on the same table. I would also like to take this time to point out the excellent detail on the Mythic figure.
Now lets look at a few non-Bones comparisons. We have seen these two before, Conan BG vs Bronze Age. I think they stack up pretty well together. If I had to make a critical note on the scale differences, the Conan BG fig makes the Bronze age fig look like he has a giant head. From a tabletop perspective though, I think they will be great together.


Comparing one of the new Deep Cuts figures (or Nolzurs I can't actually remember which) to the Bronze Age figure. I think these two are a pretty good fit. She is smaller, but generally in fantasy (and other generally heroic and idealized) art women are drawn with smaller frames.

Not surprisingly the Conan BG and Mythic BG figures both scale very well together. Probably the most similar sized strong dude to strong dude of the lot.


To be complete here is the Bronze Age figure next to the Mythic BG figure. Nothing new here, pretty much what we saw when comparing the Bronze Age to the Conan BG figure.






One final shot of a Bones, Mythic God and Mythic Warrior....



This Bones Paladin is in a pretty similar stance as the Mythic Warrior, and has a base of about the same height. He stands nearly a head shorter. This is getting to the point where they might start to look funny in my opinion, but then again, maybe the Paladin is just a short human or an elf?

Are you more of a scale perfectionist than I am? Do some of these figures not work for you when placed together? Why not let me know what you thin and drop me a comment below?

Thursday, February 8, 2018

FG extension going forward

With a more or less working version, meaning I have a working PC and NPC sheet, I look to places where things can be better.

The combat tracker is the obvious one, it can be a powerful tool within FG to track an encounter, but I think it might be better to update it once we have a look at the full core book.  

One of the things I think that is needed is an additional momentum track.  ie one that stores current generated momentum, and that once a turn is complete can be transferred to the stored track.

To facilitate this I would ALSO like to make it easier to see momentum generated.  And for that I am looking at implementing task difficulty for the PC.  This will probably be implemented as a numberfield and perhaps a group of buttons.  Ideally it will be a numeric entry on the Combat Tracker. 

If we know the difficulty we can roll and determine success/failure as well as how much momentum was generated, which can then be transferred to the character sheet.

Anyhow that's all for now!

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

John Carter Fantasy Grounds Extension

I am posting what I am calling v.9 of the extension for people to have a look at and play with a little.

There are some things that need to be done to make it really slick, but it should be functional for the quickstart.

As this is a MoreCore extension you will need that ruleset as well.

The link here should allow you to download it.

John Carter Extension

There are a few static height anchor issues but that shouldn't affect anything functional.

I will try and get a demo up via livestream in the next day or so. Finally, the only thing the CT will really be good for right now is to see who is in combat, none of the JC fields are linked.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

John Carter Fantasy Grounds Extension v.99, a quick tour.

On the last to do list we have the following items:
  • Stress boxes
  • Spend button for Luck
  • Chat messages for momentum and luck spends
  • Finish adding in the stat rollers
  • Resolve the static anchor issues

After a little more work I can label all of those as completed, except for the last item. There is still some work to be handled with the momentum pools, but for all intents and purposes that are functional.

With that information completed I wanted to take a quick tour of the sheet, and I hope to do a live feed demonstrating it soon.

I wanted to make a quick note that I got an e-mail last night saying 3.3.4 of FG was released. I have yet to install this and I also need to update my verion of MORECORE. This could introduce new errors to the extension, but I can not confirm or deny that at this time.

Initial version of sheet with chat window showing some basic rolls and momentum spends.
Togglable stress & affliction buttons, as well max stress levels which control the useable stress boxes.  Stress on these maxes at 16, but another 4 could be added.
Momentum and luck, momentum can be on, off, selected or disabled.  All selected momentum is spent when the spend button is double clicked.  Luck can only present or not.  I need to cut this back to 5 max as well and change the graphic.  Double clicking on the spend button spends a single point.

Dice selector, defaults to 2.  They can be
toggled on and off to set number
of d20s to roll
Basic list allowing for talent entries with reference buttons to
the descriptions.

Character inventory window showing a shortened list of the
inventory from the inventory page.
Weapons list.  Taken from the Conan extension, will probably need some more work for the final JC rules, but functional for the quick start

If you have any feedback or comments, please drop me a note and let me know, I would love to hear your ideas and thoughts on this project!

FOR HELIUM!

Monday, February 5, 2018

New video up!

I finally managed to get the first half of a craft video up this weekend!

Hope everyone enjoys it, tried a bunch of new ideas with this one.

JC: FG Extension Update.

As expected I managed to get sometime to work on the project over the weekend. I sadly squandered some of my Saturday in Age of Conan, and although I didn't stream the session I did managed to escape Tortage and begin my quest into the main world.

Even having squandered that time I managed to get a fair it done.

Completed
  • Finish inventory list.
    • Completed the core inventory list on the main screen, pulls from same source as the MORECORE inventory tab.
  • Add talent list.
    • Completed a working list that ties to the talents tab of the MORECORE sheet.
  • Add weapons list.
    • Completed the Weapons list using the 2d20 weapons class, rollable, may need a couple of tweaks, but essentially functional.
  • Create graphics for Momentum, Threat and Luck.
    • Created momentum tokens, Luck tokens and threat tokens. Will re-design the luck tokens in the future.
  • Create momentum, luck and threat counters as well as spends.
    • Added selectable tokens for luck and momentum.
    • Momentum can be On, Off, Selected or disabled.
    • Momentum can be spent by double clicking the spend button.

To Do
  • Stress boxes
  • Spend button for Luck
  • Chat messages for momentum and luck spends
  • Finish adding in the stat rollers and resolve the static anchor issues


Latest version of the Character sheet showing Inventory, Talents, weapons, Momentum and Luck.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Further updates and a screenshot on the JC: FG extension.

Yesterday I gave a quick overview of the extension I am working on. I laid out a few things I felt I needed to complete. Here they are again in review so we can see what I have accomplished in the last day or so.

TO DO
  • Finish inventory list.
  • Add talent list.
  • Add weapons list.
  • Create graphics for Momentum, Threat and Luck.
  • Create momentum, luck and threat counters as well as spends.

And some new additions
  • Stress boxes

1. Add Weapon list -- Complete
  • I added the frame and pulled the weapon class and reference window from the Conan ruleset and renamed it to "2d20_weapon"
  • Copied over the "strings" document as the weapons entry window relies on it for labels.

2. Add Talents Frame -- In Progress
  • I have added the frame to hold the list, but not the list itself

3. Luck, Momentum and Threat Counters -- In Progress
  • Not much progress here, but I added frames for notes and flaws, so I know where I can place the counters.
4. Misc Bug fix -- In Progress
  • I noted today I had created a control to hold the number of dice being rolled as a stringfield and not a numberfield so it was throwing a type mismatch.

That is it for actual updates, but in the end I have worked on it for not much more than an hour since the last update, either way, here is a screenshot of the current character sheet

New version of the Character sheet showing addition of d20 selectors, weapons lists and various new frames.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

FG: John Carter Update & New Channel Video

I got a little more time to work on the JC: Adventures on a Dying World Fantasy Grounds extension. Currently working towards a functional quickstart setup.

Over the past few days I got the lists working for inventory and a set of 5 d20s that can be clicked on and off to determine the number you are going to roll. The dice graphics are the "Helium" d20s from the kickstart page. At present it is a column of 5 dice. 2 highlighted at all times and 3 greyed out that can be toggled on and off. Once the roll is completed it returns the 3 optional dice to their greyed out state.

I need to add a list for the weapons, which I will most likely pull from the Conan system as I am fairly happy with that and add a list for the Talents area. Finally I need to incorporate momentum/threat spends and graphics. It would also be nice to get the custom damage dice operational, which will be another pull from the Conan extension.

So that list looks like this:

TO DO
  • Finish inventory list.
  • Add talent list.
  • Add weapons list.
  • Create graphics for Momentum, Threat and Luck.
  • Create momentum, luck and threat counters as well as spends.

In other news I have almost finished the next crafting video for the channel, which will have a slightly new format, which I hope people enjoy.