Travelling in Karameikos, even on the Duke's Highway, can be hazardous. The Duchy is quite lawless. Footpads, robbers and cut-throats abound in the forests and hills away from civilisation. The goblin tribes are often on the war-path and the orcs are not renowned for their hospitality, so it is safer to travel in a group. This is why most travellers get together with others that are heading in their direction. You have all done the same and are now a party of six heading for Threshold on the northern frontier. You are all young and there are fortunes to be made in Threshold, by all accounts, if you have the nerve. With all the cockiness of youth, you expect to be rich by this time next week.
The journey has gone smoothly so far, but the skies are dark when you leave the town of Verge with your new companions. Still, you expect to reach Threshold by nightfall all being well. Unfortunately, things do not go to plan. The skies open a couple of hours after you leave the town and soon the road ahead of you is thick mud. Travelling is tiring, but still you push on. By noon you are desperately in need of rest, so you stop in the best shelter you can and have lunch, before continuing. By mid-afternoon you are still some miles from Threshold when one of the feared mountain storms opens up. Thunder crashes overhead and lightning forks to the ground, while huge hailstones pelt down around you, heavy enough to bruise where they hit. There is no option to continue now. You must find shelter and sit out the storm. Ahead, a large, rocky tor rises from the ground, silhouetted at regular intervals by great branches of forked lightning. It promises some shelter, so you climb it. A few narrow ledges offer some shelter, but further inspection reveals a large opening in the hillside. Great fragments of a large round rock lie before it. The opening promises a dry haven for you all so you enter. Within is a huge stone chamber. Traces of paint and decorative stonework on the walls indicate that it must once have been decorated with some care, but the style is unknown to you, and, whatismore, not actually that important. Even the stone doors in each of the chambers' walls carry less significance than lighting a fire at this time.
With the fire blazing and the storm blowing outside, you settle down to wait out the storm. Given its fury, you are sure that you will have to stay the night here, so you make the most of it and introduce yourselves properly ...
Showing posts with label introduction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label introduction. Show all posts
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Thursday, 18 December 2008
What's it all about, Alfie?
M'buddy, Steve, and I are easily led. We both suffer from the Ooh Shiny Complex. This is when your mind alights butterfly-like on a new project and you instantly take it to heart. It is shiny and new, so you want to do it immediately. All the old projects are forgotten, possibly even discarded, in the excitement of this shiny new one. Unfortunately, newer, shinier projects appear with depressing regularity. The internet makes this worse because it gives you access to so many obscure ranges that are appealing, but which you would never have discovered if the internet were not there. A typical conversation over the gaming table might go like this:
Me: "Hey, Steve, you know what would be really cool?"
Steve: "No, what?"
Me: “What would be cool would be gaming the Gran Chaco War in 1:39 scale.”
Steve: “Hey yeah, that’s a great idea! We could even have little miniature guinea pigs as messengers.”
Two hours later, the credit cards have taken a hammering and we have bought a vast number of new figures. We begin painting the new figures with great gusto for a week or two, but then at the next gaming session …
Steve: “Hey, Ruarigh, I have had a great idea.”
Me: “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
Steve: “Let’s do a game based on a lost tribe of pygmy Vikings in central Australasia.”
Me: “Hey, that’s brilliant. We can convert CheapMiniatures™ Dwarves to use as the Vikings, but we shall also need an albino U-Boat Crew and some wheels on the U-Boat so that they can take it overland.”
Steve: "Yeah, and we need a Doug McClure figure."
Two hours later the story begins to repeat itself. The miniature guinea pigs lovingly crafted from fur left behind by my cat now languish in the drawer beside the half-painted Bolivian army. No doubt the pygmy Vikings will go the way of all lead and find their way into the storage in the attic. The story repeats ad nauseam like the remains of last Christmas' turkey. But then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, Dave over at A Year of Frugal Gaming posted about his quest to reduce his lead mountain on TMP and on his blog. I saw in his quest one that parallels my own needs. Times are hard (well maybe not that hard but the old wargaming budget is diminishing rapidly) and the lead mountain needs scaling. Time to cut back, methinks.
Me: "Hey, Steve, I have had a great idea. See, there is this guy, Dave, and he is blogging about his attempts to buy less, play more and paint more. Why don't we try something similar?"
Steve: "That's a great idea. How are we going to do this?"
You see, this idea, even though it does not involve buying figures, is a shiny new idea. Therefore we both became immediately attached to it. Our goals and New Year's Resolutions are:
Our first game of the following month will use the newly painted figures and preferably a rules set that we have not used before. We shall post a battle report for the battle on the blog and get on with painting the next project. Hopefully, by posting our aims on a blog, the threat of public humiliation will spur us on to complete each project and reduce the lead mountains. I look forward to seeing how it all works out and if we can sustain the effort required. Thus begins Mission: Ooh Shiny.
Me: "Hey, Steve, you know what would be really cool?"
Steve: "No, what?"
Me: “What would be cool would be gaming the Gran Chaco War in 1:39 scale.”
Steve: “Hey yeah, that’s a great idea! We could even have little miniature guinea pigs as messengers.”
Two hours later, the credit cards have taken a hammering and we have bought a vast number of new figures. We begin painting the new figures with great gusto for a week or two, but then at the next gaming session …
Steve: “Hey, Ruarigh, I have had a great idea.”
Me: “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
Steve: “Let’s do a game based on a lost tribe of pygmy Vikings in central Australasia.”
Me: “Hey, that’s brilliant. We can convert CheapMiniatures™ Dwarves to use as the Vikings, but we shall also need an albino U-Boat Crew and some wheels on the U-Boat so that they can take it overland.”
Steve: "Yeah, and we need a Doug McClure figure."
Two hours later the story begins to repeat itself. The miniature guinea pigs lovingly crafted from fur left behind by my cat now languish in the drawer beside the half-painted Bolivian army. No doubt the pygmy Vikings will go the way of all lead and find their way into the storage in the attic. The story repeats ad nauseam like the remains of last Christmas' turkey. But then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, Dave over at A Year of Frugal Gaming posted about his quest to reduce his lead mountain on TMP and on his blog. I saw in his quest one that parallels my own needs. Times are hard (well maybe not that hard but the old wargaming budget is diminishing rapidly) and the lead mountain needs scaling. Time to cut back, methinks.
Me: "Hey, Steve, I have had a great idea. See, there is this guy, Dave, and he is blogging about his attempts to buy less, play more and paint more. Why don't we try something similar?"
Steve: "That's a great idea. How are we going to do this?"
You see, this idea, even though it does not involve buying figures, is a shiny new idea. Therefore we both became immediately attached to it. Our goals and New Year's Resolutions are:
- To spend less on figures in 2009;
- To paint more of the lead we already own; and
- To play games using our newly painted lead
Our first game of the following month will use the newly painted figures and preferably a rules set that we have not used before. We shall post a battle report for the battle on the blog and get on with painting the next project. Hopefully, by posting our aims on a blog, the threat of public humiliation will spur us on to complete each project and reduce the lead mountains. I look forward to seeing how it all works out and if we can sustain the effort required. Thus begins Mission: Ooh Shiny.
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