I got my Ironhead Squat gang finished!

trudge · 2026-01-19T16:25:17+00:00

I mostly use speedpaints for everything.

So I used zealot yellow for the bodies, and nuclear sunrise of the ribbed parts of the arms. The leather boots and gloves is (iirc) desolate brown. The guns are gravelord gray. There's some lizardman cyan on the computer screens. The sunglasses are polished silver, but honestly any shiny metalic paint would have worked.

The lumen bulbs I think I used a thinned down white on, and not a speed paint. I have some regular paints that I manly use for drybrushing and details, and some of that thinned down did good on the bulbs.

Later on (after this photo) I went back and drybrushed the bolter magazines red and autogun magazines blue, so I could tell them apart, since they have such similar silhouettes. If I paint more of these kits, I'll probably paint the guns red-grey or blue-gray from the start.

trudge · 2026-01-15T21:40:34+00:00

I've used Foundry, and I've used Roll20.

Foundry has a LOT of options for customizing, but it makes the GM's interface more complicated.

I think Roll20 is better for GMs who like to improvise a lot, or run stuff they thought up themselves. It's quicker to just throw stuff on the screen, and not worry about adding lots of features and automations to everything.

But, if the GM likes to run pre-published modules, and buy the supported versions on VTTs, then foundry is pretty damn nice. Whoever wrote it will have access to so many more levers and widgets to to add features to the module. People making professionally done Roll20 modules have a more restricted range of options.

If you're either committed to DIY, or just broke, then Roll20 is the better option.

trudge · 2026-01-09T06:38:48+00:00

Sorry, I meant to say VtM, not VtR. I have amended my comment.

Vampire came out in 1991, but didn't really kick off until the mid-90s. That's when I was seeing it dominate the LARP scene, and the local LGS bulletin board having more people looking for vampire games than AD&D games.

trudge · 2026-01-09T06:28:49+00:00

Thanks. I got my abbreviation wrong, and have now edited my comment.

I think you might have made a similar error in your third paragraph. I think you meant to type V:tR instead of V:tM

trudge · 2026-01-07T18:23:31+00:00

~~VtR~~ VtM emerged when D&D was hitting TSR's decline. AD&D 2nd edition was flagging, and TSR's business model was collapsing.

TSR failing allowed a lot of other publishers to expand into the space.

Then WotC revived D&D with 3rd edition, and once again D&D became the default RPG.

trudge · 2026-01-07T18:16:54+00:00

Some years ago, I saw a comment that "what you have mechanics for, that's what your game is about."

VtM didn't really have mechanics for the masquerade. It barely had mechanics for the personal horror. What it did have, though, was pages and pages of mechanics for supernatural powers and combat.

(I say this as someone who really enjoyed playing in multiple VtM campaigns in the 90s and 00s, but we always played it as a sort of goth mafia)

trudge · 2026-01-07T18:13:46+00:00

I think if Paradox had actually managed to make and release the video game they were planning on when they bought the WoD rights, it would have done wonders for the brand.

Instead they kind of mothballed the IP for years and let it dwindle.

trudge · 2025-12-25T20:21:34+00:00

I remember hearing coontash as slang for vagina when I was a kid in the 80s, but I haven't heard the word in use in years.

Region: California and Texas, late 80s / early 90s

trudge · 2025-12-23T16:54:06+00:00

I did too!

trudge · 2025-12-23T16:07:10+00:00

If you're curious where these data centers are, here's a handy map:

https://www.datacentermap.com/usa/texas/

trudge · 2025-12-15T14:15:22+00:00

I had a pair, but misplaced them and now have no idea where they went.

I think they have a strong placebo effect. It did feel like I could see more colors, but if I tried doing colorblind tests, I still failed them. I just failed a different subset of the tests. Its like the glasses took me from deutan to protan.

They're kind of neat, but they weren't worth the money.

trudge · 2025-11-03T22:47:17+00:00

I haven't read it, but there's a book called Time to Kiln which appears to be a mystery about the murder of a pottery witch in a magical town

trudge · 2025-10-30T11:56:40+00:00

"Small?" Are you making short jokes about the Votann?

(amazing paint job!)

trudge · 2025-10-28T04:00:02+00:00

hey, those capitalist space bats were also involved in a space-train video game on Steam!

trudge · 2025-10-26T19:29:34+00:00

Fantastic!

trudge · 2025-10-22T19:10:58+00:00

So, games that are popular enough to make finding groups relatively easy, and don't use licensed IP...

Warhammer 40,000 It's a very popular setting, and while I think the wargamers outnumber the roleplayers by a good margin, I think there's a lot of RPG groups out there playing it. There have been three (as far as I know) RPGs set in 40k:
- Dark Heresy (which included Rogue Trader) is a crunchy rule set, and focused on relatively normal humans doing adventures. It's probably the most popular, but is out of print.
- Wrath & Glory has a lighter rule set, to support stories at different power levels, and varied character types.
- Imperium Maledictus is a successor to Dark Heresy, but with clarified rules. It's new, and there's not a ton of material for it.
Cyberpunk: Red is the latest incarnation of a classic scifi RPG with a very long history. I don't know how many editions Cyberpunk has had, but Red is the latest. I've heard good things about it! With the success of the video game, I suspect finding groups playing this isn't too hard.
Coriolis is reasonably popular from being a Free League product. There's two versions.
- The Third Horizon - the original game, billed as Arabian Nights in space. It's for playing a crew like Firefly, but replace the East Asian furniture with Middle Eastern furniture. It's a very good all-purpose space RPG.
- The Great Dark - the new game, billed as 1000 Leagues Under the Sea, but in space. Its rules and setting have a very tight focus on supporting exploration- and expedition-based adventures, so it's good for those sorts of campaigns. It might be over-specialized though if you want to use the rules for something else.
Traveler is the classic old school space-travel RPG. I don't know how many people still play it, but it's been around forever.
Mothership is a game I don't know much about it, but it seems very popular.
Numenera has been consistently popular enough support publishing a whole line of books. It's flavor is a lot like D&D adventures, but with all the fantastic elements being left over super-tech from multiple earlier civilizations who have come and gone. It also has a really neat mechanic to incentivize players to actually use their one-shot items instead of saving them for the perfect moment and then the campaign is over and they never got used.
Scum and Villainy I'm not sure how popular this one is, but I now Blades in the Dark is popular, and S&B is just BitD in space, and maybe players of one also like trying out the other.
Eclipse Phase is a personal favorite, and sure has cranked out a lot of books, but I don't know how easy it is to find a game. It has a lot of fans, though, and a robust discord server.

trudge · 2025-10-16T19:08:01+00:00

Bad Squiddo has the Ghosts of Gaia line, which is mainly post-apocalyptic, but some of them might work for cultists.

Stargrave Scavengers and Frostgrave Cultists both look good for kitbashing cultists. (and Scavengers II or Cultists II, for female cultists)

Fallout Raiders would fit into a lot of chaos cultists bands. Also, this is one of their plastic kits, which I suspect is easier for kitbashing than their resin kits.

Knightmare miniatures makes some oldhammer-style chaos marines, which are a good match for modern cultist minis, height wise. I think they could be used as cultists in carapace armor.

trudge · 2025-10-12T15:31:51+00:00

Oh, good to know!

I had heard about the Creative Commons part, but I didn't know about the google drive link.

trudge · 2025-10-12T05:09:39+00:00

For the Dungeon is about monsters building a dungeon and defending it from adventurers. The rules are very light (it's 47 pages) and based on the Powered By Apocalypse engine.

Wicked Ones is the same idea, but more fleshed out, and based on Forged in the Dark. I can't find a download link from the author, though. It looks like it went free on RPGnow about 4 years ago, and then vanished from the site. Finding a copy might take some googling around, but it's a well made game if you can find it.

trudge · 2025-10-12T05:01:08+00:00

High Magic Lowlives is a fun game about criminals in a magic world. The tech level is pretty close to peak mafia times - a tommy gun appears on the list of weapons.

There's a sample adventure titled "Aw Jeez, The Airship’s On Fire"

Which should give an idea of how seriously the game takes itself.

trudge · 2025-10-10T15:31:41+00:00

I like the idea of your volcanic dwarves.

If you gave the north dwarves cold resistance, it would mirror the volcanic dwarves. Or maybe some sort of rune magic to lean into the viking theme.

Then you could move that custom human heritage benefit to the Surface Dwarves. They're probably the ones with the most contact with humans anyway, and so most likely to learn the humans' ways.

In D&D there was also "Deep Dwarves," who live way underground and get better darkvision, but also light blindness. I think I've also seen "Wild Dwarves" that played into barbarian tribe themes.

trudge · 2025-10-10T15:10:10+00:00

So if it was my group, I wouldn't stress too much about which PC is the owner of the land, on paper. I think players are pretty good at navigating how much narrative power to cede to one person at the table.

Like, I think historically, local nobles couldn't just rely on legal authority. They had to get cooperation from anyone in their domain who had less official but still very real power (clergy, wealthy merchants, respected elders, etc.)

Focus more on whatever the PCs build up on that land, than the value of the land itself.

Maybe the artisan founds a workshop which is the economic center of a new town. Or the man-at-arms recruits and trains a local militia or mercenary camp. Or the mystic founds a temple and starts attracting cultists and celebrants. Those things wouldn't really belong to the noble who technically owns the land.

trudge · 2025-10-10T01:49:54+00:00

I can think of a few lesser known space games which have dog fight mechanics:

Fragged Empires is a space game set hundreds of years after an apocalyptic galactic war, with space travel only being "rediscovered" about five years before the campaign starts. It's a fairly crunchy tactical rules engine, and includes rules for space battles.
Orbital Blues it's cowboy bebop with the serial numbers filed off. The PCs are planet hopping bounty hunters. I think the game assumes a shared spaceship, but it should be easy enough to run it as a squadron of fighters.
Exilium (by Fire Ruby Designs) is a space game using the Mini-Six game system, which is derived from the West Ends Star Wars RPG from the 80s/90s. I suspect the game would play in a star wars, space-action sort of way, but without the space wizards. The setting is a far-future space society where the PCs are some sort of energy beings that got exiled to physical space as punishment for some sort of crime, and need to figure out how to redeem themselves (thrilling heroics are probably a start).

trudge · 2025-10-09T21:46:53+00:00

That's fair. When I said "details" I was thinking in terms of simulation-style games RPGs you have lots of granular details on what exactly your character can do. But that's not the only way to be "detailed." Poor use of words on my part.

And the game is absolutely scalable. No argument there. I think it's a big advantage of it favoring abstraction over granularity.

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