Sleeper RPG: Playtest @ Birmingham Games Expo 2012 (Updated)

Introduction

[30 May - Added scans of documents

13 June - Added more scans of missing characters. Thanks Anna :) ]

I turned up for my first ever games expo excitedly on Friday morning to pick up my tickets and rush off to play an unreleased RPG game called Sleeper.  A disaster occurred, they could not find my tickets. Within minutes someone introduced himself as Tony and whisked me away and sorted me out with tickets then virtually escorted me across the road for the game.

Thanks Tony, disaster to superb customer experience in minutes.

Sleeper RPG: Before The Game

UK Games Expo: Game Link - http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG37

Having never played a game at an expo before I thought I would try something new. The write up above looked quite intriguing and the briefest of scans of the Death Spiral website helped.

A bald gentleman introduced himself as Ben Counter, freelance author and one of the creators of the game, and said he would be running the session.

After a few minutes I figured out where I knew the name from, minus ten points for me.

The Famous Ben Counter

Sleeper RPG: Introduction

Ben introduced the general game concept. (from the Site)

Sleeper is a roleplaying game of Cold War relics and secret wars. It pits your character’s superhuman powers and elite training against the deadliest relics of the Cold War. The game combines military action, ultramodern gear, science fiction horror and the secret history of the twentieth century in deadly and thrilling battle for the survival of the world. During the darkest days of that conflict, the superpowers came to believe that nuclear war was a likely event. So they took their biggest secrets – the artificially enhanced agents and soldiers, possessing superhuman powers and the highest levels of training – and buried them in secret facilities from which they would wake when nuclear war had finished. These sleepers would then help found the post-nuclear world according to the principles of the regimes that created them.

I had a feeling of Cold City, Hot War meets military action movie. We had six pre gen characters to choose from. I selected Gravedigger as he was frankly the best. A teleporting KGB sniper agent. When I played him he developed a strange liking for the hot tub, I don't really know why.

Gravedigger

Public Domain: Old Newspapers at the Library of Congress

Here is my very rough guide about searching for newspapers at the Library of Congress. Everything used is either public domain (US) or for non-profit educational purposes. Rights may vary in other countries.

The Library of Congress

The American Library of Congress, online, is a wonderful place to be. The treasure contained within and freely shared are an example on how these things should be done, how they should be done right.  Included in their treasures is a section called Chronicling America, which is a large collection of old scanned newspapers. From their own site:

Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.

This is akin to saying the Sistine Chapel  is a bit of Dulux (tm) slapped on the ceiling.

The long way there is to go here: http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="800" caption="http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html"][/caption]

Thunderbirds Review

[caption id="attachment_520" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Thunderbirds 2004 Movie Poster"][/caption]

Why Now?

Why am I reviewing a movie from 2004 that is currently running at 4.0 out of 10 at IMDb. Two reasons:

1. It can now be found very cheaply in bargain buckets up and down the land. Watching a bad movie at the cinema for a lot of money is quite different from watching a bad £1.99 DVD at home.


2. I have been made it watch it at least weekly by my four year old son weekly for what feels like the last 23 years, fnord!

Zombiaki 2: Attack On Moscow Review [BGG]

Zombiaki 2: Attack On Moscow Review

This is my first review for BGG and is based on about four plays of the game with my better half.

Introduction

Zombiaki II Attack On Moscow is a two player strategic card game between zombies and humans. One player plays the defending humans the other the attacking zombies. The human player wins by stopping the zombies from overcoming their defences. The zombie player wins by overcoming the human defences before dawn.

Archos 70 Mini Review - Turns Out Not To Be A Small iPad

From the official Archos site:

Slim and light Android™ internet tablet

At home and on the go. The slim and light design of the ARCHOS 70 internet tablet makes it both portable and generous for sharing your best moments with your family and friends. All the functions of a computer: your apps, the Internet, your photos, music and videos, eBooks and 3D games.

Background.

There are wheens of these things about. Go Google for Android Tablet and see whatr happens. There is the Android Vega (whichy I initially considered), Creative Zii0, Samsung Galaxy Tabs and more coming to an Internet near you by Christmas time. I have played with an iPad for a few days and can safely say the Archos 70 is not really better in any way. Except two.

Metacreator and Savage Worlds

I purchased Savage Worlds recently and quite like the look of it. More information can be found here.

The Savage Worlds Game System

Essentially it a a universal rules system for RPGs. Looks pretty good and I intend to test it with a bunch of total newbies in a week or two.

The problem is that I have been out of the way of running RPGs for almost fifteen odd years. I am pretty rusty and the Savage Worlds system while fairly simple is new to me.

I have a few plot ideas but thought it would be handy if I could find something to make my life a bit easier, especially with making up some pre-generated  characters. Using the power of Google™ I discovered Metacreator.

Metacreator

Put the spark of life into your characters with Metacreator, the customizable application for creating roleplaying game characters. The website was pretty stark and not very welcoming but as I had seen the software recommended in a forum somewhere and had some credit in my Paypal account I thought I would try it. The download link came through in seconds and the software seems to be working fine on my Windows 7 box. Running under Wine on Linux did not seem to be so successful. Also seems to work well on my Windows XP netbook.

Here is my brief introduction to Metacreator. Which will also serve as my learning experience for using Windows Live Writer.

The Dangers of Dalmatians

[caption id="attachment_109" align="alignleft" width="214" caption="101 Dalmations Cover"][/caption]

This is a really good movie. One I have enjoyed thoroughly. More information can be found about it here:

One Hundred and One Dalmatians(1961)

The problem is dalmatians and children, in this case, do not mix very well.

The Gizmondo As A Modern Handheld Console

Right then a slightly bigger write up of the Gizmondo scene as it is today. After a thorough few days of investigation.

Firstly these things still seem to be fairly easy to buy from both Amazon and eBay. Funnily enough Amazon does seem to be slightly cheaper. I got mine for about forty quid as I was aware that at least there used to be a homebrew scene once people learned how to run unsigned code.