The Point- A Strange Durance?

Anyone else remember that trippy movie, The Point? With Oblio and Arrow?

The needlepoint album cover puts me in mind of Mannikins...

Imagine that as a Durance. And what fabulous, vicious Beast, Elementals or even Ogres could come of it.

An Old Idea With Fun Twists

This idea is completely and totally stolen, but fun nonetheless. Here's the setup:

In one of my husband's HS6E superheroic games, the team has been accosted by a string of bad dudes over a series of weeks/months. The team investigates the latest guys, who appear to have been sent after them by a bigger, badder bad dude. (Actually in this case is a dudette, and she is one of the 3 villains in the campaign marked with 5 stars on a 5 star scale.) They find some banking information that was used in the hiring of the bad dudes by the bigger bad dude and decide to --

follow the money.

They not only find the money, they find a LOT!!!!!!!!!!!! of money (five commas, folks). Somehow, the idea to TAKE the money gets bandied about, and not only do they take the money, but they put the money in an obvious account marked with the name of one of the team members' public persona.

Leaving aside all the ramifications of what they've done, and the hilarity in which all of this occurred, I was hit by the idea that this is not really a new plot. Taking what the bad guys want (or preventing the bad guys from having it) is pretty old. What makes it fun is all about how it happens.

Some of my favorite stories & movies involve this theme in some way. Wasn't The Maltese Falcon just a big game of "Keep Away"? Casablanca had elements of attrition. Blues Brothers at its core was about keeping a bad guy's objective from occuring. I know there are far more examples, but I'm chosing to use illustrations that are fairly different from each other as an example of how far reaching this theme can get.

Different times, genres and intensities- all spurred at least a little, by a small idea.

I like it.

[HS6E] Introducing Diamond

Diamond is my HS6E character for a campaign set in Hawaii.

She's mid-to-late 20's and was a professional athelete until about a year ago. She's 6'1", blonde, blue eyes, tan, atheletically built but still has curves- a fairly typical beach babe from California.

There are a whole lot of skills she should have but doesn't (yet) due to the cost of building a brick without limitations in the new system. I intended her to have a surfing, beach/volleyball, basketball and wrestling background. She started off with basketball and wrestling, and I think I'm adding volleyball next. Surfing will probably be last, just due to her power set.

As mentioned, she's a brick, with the special effect of being really dense ALL THE TIME. (NO DI, as that implies the ability to actually change density.) She got this way through taking experimental muscle growth drugs- itnended to increase density and mass for better development and improvement.

The drugs were offered by the team sponsor, and she didn't think she had anything to lose. She was overseas at the time with no real hope of getting back to the US in the WNBA (at least without drugs, was her thought process).

The drugs worked- she got denser muscles- to the tune of weighing about 25 tons. Diamond's better half, a lawyer; got a cushy settlement and she's using the money to create a "normal life". She took a battle cruiser back to the states, where she settled on Hawaii as a place of residence and built a custom home.

I'm honestly still hammering out some of the personality and behaviors I want her to have. I had some ideas in mind while working on her but they haven't really played out. I'll probably give her another couple sessions before I take the surgeon's scapel to her and reform her.

Introducing FunDave's 40K Blog

The local 40K scene at my FLGS is pretty fun as a rule. Most of the players enjoy playing, have a nice time with each other, and have good personalities.There's quite a bit of good natured joking and teasing with each other on things such as army selection (Tau suck) and rolling ability (several guys have hilarious reputations).  It's not all "fun & games"; there are a couple of serious players that while very fun to play against are pretty interested in winning.

In an effort to showcase this "little engine that could" (the community stuck it out through the world's tiniest store, an ownership change and a move), I decided to see about getting one of our guys to do a blog about 40K and the league. He very graciously agreed, and has put up the first couple of entries. At the moment, he's doing a "beatdown" and a "meltdown" of the week, and may expand out as he gets his feet under him.

The current league is a team escalation deal, with random partners. 1st week's scenario was kind of a "relay" where each partner had to control an objective one after the other, and 2nd week was a "guard duty" sort of deal.

Here are FunDave's write ups of the weeks' best (and worst) moments.

http://www.armored-gopher.com/node/1542
 
and

http://www.armored-gopher.com/node/1543


What FunDave missed for week 2 was not a beatdown or a meltdown, as much as a hilarious moment. Our League organizer was playing a private game in the back. LO was playing Nids against a well respected player running Orks. I overheard some of the game, and pretty much every other roll was "crap, I missed" or "crap, I missed that save". League games had finished and several players were milling around, hanging out and some were offering peanut gallery comments on the Nids/Orks conflict. One player, Jake, had rolled pretty terrible all night and was getting razzed about it. From the back, the Nids player and the Orks player said - in unison-  "Come back here and watch us, Jake. You'll feel better".

Paint & Metal

I have a large collection of WarMachine figures. I truly enjoy painting miniatures and I might just pick back up once my house is more unpacked. I recently asked for a critique on my painting ability and the scheme I picked, but realized I have so much undone it isn't funny. So maybe more critiques will come.

Here's the list of what I have:

Vlad
Sorscha

Devastator
Juggernaut
Destroyer

Assault Commandos
Doom Reavers
Man-O-War Shock Troopers
Man-O-War Demo Corps
Man-O-War Kovnik
Widowmakers
Iron Fang Pikemen
And Fluffy the War Dog

So now I have a good bit. I might actually be able to field an army if I ever decide to play... but I don't know about that yet.  Some of them came with paint because I bought them used, and I can live with that. For the most part, they match what I already have going one. One or two squads will need to be repainted because they are very shiny silver rather than the grungy brass theme I'm doing.

And I am trying to keep to Khador, but I'm not really trying to PLAY. I am interesting in painting at this point. Why Red? I just like the way they RedMachine looks, and find it easy to paint. There's a lot of wide, open metal to put my brushes on, and that's just the way I like it until I get MUCH, MUCH better.

I'm ----- NO. GOOD. ---- at "fiddly bits".

Sharing With Others

I'm helping a friend learn to blog; specifically regarding my favorite game I don't play, 40K.

I find that sharing my knowledge, experience, ideas and perspective with others is one of the many ways I can enrich my gaming life. Most of the time, I don't feel QUITE creative enough to do things completely on my own, so going in for the assist is effective and rewarding.

I'm excited to see how the project turns out, which I hope will be in just a few days.

Zombie Gamers Want Tacos, Not Brains

My regular WOD group heard a couple weeks ago that I was planning to move. I had scheduled today (Sunday) as my move day but they volunteered to help me instead of gaming on Saturday (yesterday). This group is pretty large, and then several others in my gaming circle decided to join in as well. I offered my husband's famous tacos as reward for the volunteers, and that got around. More people came to help; many having been lured by the promise of food.

I had 20 people show up to help me move.

The group of us arrived at my house in a convoy (10+ vehicles) and we began loading up. Just a few hours later, my stuff was at my new place. 

I was one of the last to arrive at the new place, and it was later in the day (actually full dark out) and there was a large group of my friends waiting for me on my lawn. My son had coordinated all of them to zombie shuffle towards my vehicle, moaning

"Taaaaaaaaaacoooooooooooooooos"

I  have not laughed that hard in a while.

The slavering horde was fed, and I am proud to know that many zombies.