Opposition: The Open Beta is Here

Its time for me to let my creation see the light of day and get torn apart by the masses.

So here it is:

Opposition, for those who missed it, is a “Build your Own Miniatures” Ruleset, sort of a cross between DND, Heroscape, and Warmachine.  Its designed to be skirmish level.

Here is the URL for a PDF of the rules, along with a character sheet page, templates, and even tokens to use in testing.

THE OPEN BETA PDF

All I ask is that you let me know how you feel about the game, the mechanics, ect.

Please note that there is NO FLUFF in this download.

An Introduction to “Opposition”

The Plane of Opposition. A strange place, where a multitude of other lands, worlds, and planes dump into. Over the centuries, this has caused the land of Opposition to be littered with relics of ages past, of civilizations that have tried to survive in the strange and wondrous world that is Opposition. Inhabited by creatures from a multitude of worlds, Opposition is still largely unexplored.

Those who come to the plane generally do so voluntarily these days, as the portals into the world have been mapped and catalogued. However, new worlds are always gaining access to Opposition somehow, which has caused the land to become a veritable melting pot of cultures, peoples, and ideals.

Most who come to Opposition do so generally for one of two reasons: To escape their past and start over, or to hunt for the treasures of previous ages. The city of Intention sits in the very center of the plane, and underneath it lies the Halls. It is there, in the Halls, that people first appear when they come to the plane. From there, its a short ride through the trolley system to the surface, and into the city of Intention proper.

So let me welcome you, traveler, to Opposition. Your destiny awaits. Will you be a hero, lauded for your discoveries and assisting others? Will you be a villain, looking for more power to help further your goals? Or will you be neutral, working for whomever has the most coin and caring not what effects your actions have?

The choices are yours.

The land of Opposition awaits.

So there you have it folks.  The introduction blurb / back cover blurb of my upcoming miniatures ruleset “Opposition”.

I am dead serious about this project.  In fact, after this weekend’s testing the system SHOULD be ready for an open Beta Test of sorts.  I am rather nervous however of just posting a PDF of the crunch on the web but I need a broader base of testing.

Hopefully some of you out there actually read this stuff and are willing to help me out.

Opposition: Test 1 Results

Alright! My game has a name, titled Opposition. Has to do with the fluff and all. So after some work I finished my first draft of the rules, took em up to the game shop I used to go to when I was big into Warmachine with my friend Dan, and me, him, and 2 people who I used to play Warmachine went at it in a 4 way game.

Thats right, the first test run of my rule set was in a 4 way free for all. That was a bit nutty.

We each made our dudes for play, which everyone seemed to enjoy, and then we started it up. We had another person watching as when I explained how the game was to function he seemed very interested in it.

The game went smoothly albiet a bit slowly. Everyone but me had to check what their abilities did, and what spells they could cast.

Some things we quickly noticed:

I had 2 high level abilities that basically gave the person using them the effects of a Critical every time they hit. Those showed to be very obviously overpowered, so those 2 have been toned down a bit already.

The defense outscaled attack showed how easy it was to be a tank. Defense has been scaled down.

We figured that we need to mark which abilities are passive and which are active. Going to have to put down that active abilities cannot be used with each other, but Passives can be used with actives. To make sure people can tell what stacks with what.

Otherwise however, we didn’t find much wrong. Everyone enjoyed the ability to customize their creations, and for a game that I put about 12 hours of work total in (8 hours writing, 4 hours tweaking and formatting) its showing amazing promise.

Now to just start writing up some fluff and factions and make some generic dudes, and it will be good to go!

Project “Minions”

I enjoy wargaming.

No really! I enjoy pushing little metal/plastic dudes around a table, beating up other little dudes with dice.

I enjoy tabletop gaming.

DND and Pathfinder are two games that I do enjoy. I like making my own character, choosing powers and abilities and having a ball.

So last night, as I laid in bed I had an epiphiny.

I am going to make my own Miniatures ruleset!

Kinda crazy right? Well, I know that I cannot come up with anything complicated, nor would I want to. But I have decided I am going to come up with and design a ruleset that appeals to me first.

Here is what I have decided thus far:

1 – Its a ruleset only. No miniatures. Its going to be one of those “Use your own minis” rulesets.
2 – Its going to be a “Build your own Character” system. Similar to DND / Tabletop games, you will use a balanced system to build each hero in your team.
3 – Skirmish sized. I am a huge fan of small scale games. I aim to have 2-10 models per side.

I also decided on a stat system.

Each model will have the following stats:

HP
Move
Atk
ARM
Range

HP is obviously your hitpoints. Move is how far in inches you can go. Atk is your damage rating. ARM is your Armor. And Range is the max distance you can strike from.

I think I am gonna go with a 2d6 system. To attack you simply choose a target, and roll 2d6 and add your Atk. The defender rolls 2d6 and adds their ARM. For every point you beat their roll, you do a point of damage. Pretty simplistic, right?

Also, I have decided to use a “Talent” system as it were for abilities. Basically, you will have 3 “tiers” of Abilities, each one costing a certain number of points to take.

So lets explain my “Rough Outline” of building a character.

1 – Choose how many points the model will be worth.

2 – Based on that choice, you get a certain number of Stat Points and Ability Points.

3 – Spend your stat points.
3a – HP is 5 per 1 stat point spent
3b – Move is 1 per 1 sp spent
3c – Atk is 1 per 1 sp spent
3d – ARM is 2 per 1 sp spent
3e – Range 1 to 2 sp spent

4 – Spend your ability points. There will be a set number of abilities to choose from, each costing a different number of AP.
5 – Name your new character
6 – FIGHT

Action System: 2 actions per model a round. You can move, attack, use a special ability. You can do any 2 actions in a round. IE Move twice, attack twice, use 2 abilities (but not the same one twice!), Attack and use an Ability, Move attack, Attack move, ect.

Alternating actions. Each person activates a model in alternating turns. IE You activate one, opponent does. If one side runs out of activations, the other side can activate the rest in succession.

To determine who activates first, its a simple roll of 2d6 opposed. Higher score goes first that round.

Point Values: So far my idea to have models be either 1 point, 2 points, or 3 points. A 1 point model gets 10 stat points to spend, and 1 AP. A 2 pointer get 20 stat points, and 3 AP. A 3 pointer gets 30 stat points and 5 AP.

That’s what I have so far. The idea is for abilities to play a big role. Doing things like giving you shields, magic, extra attack options, ect. Hopefully this will work out. We will see.

This one is for your Oreet: It never goes away.

Nevermind that I do not play Warmachine / Hordes anymore. I still end up reading about it. Whether its GingerK1d’s stuff on his Workbench, or Kurt’s tweets, or Owen from FarFarAway, I still find myself fascinated by the game.

And while I am not a fan of the direction its going (Much larger scale battles) I can still appreciate the work that goes into planning, strategy, and the craft of painting.

What has made me want to post today however, is an old WoW buddy of mine by the name of Joe, aka Oreet. You see, apparently last month or so he started playing Warmachine. Now what I find funny is that I met him, oh, 4-5 years ago through World of Warcraft, and we have stayed in touch on and off throughout the years.

I want to say a year or two ago he started asking me for my help with Dungeons and Dragons as he started playing that. He then got into Minis with that, painting them for his friends.

I guess that is what drew him into Warmahordes.

He now has his own little Cygnar army, and I wanted to show off his work because, lets face it, it like many others is alot better then my work ever was!

You can find his stuff on the PP Boards here – http://privateerpressforums.com/showthread.php?80077-My-Cygnar-Army-Thread

But here are some pictures, at least of the ones I like the best.

I am hoping you guys can go to his thread and give him pointers and talk to him. Welcome him into the wide world of Privateer Press!

Oh, and teach him about Page 5

Another Weekly Update

Yea yea I know I am a few days late, what do you want? I had an interesting weekend. So I made myself a Fury Warrior in WoW, a Worgen. Mainly because 1) I have not really done the Worgen starting area, and 2) Worgen get extra Crit which helps a fury warrior.

The reason I went Fury was for Titans Grip, which I know won’t be till 70, but ya know what? I can wait

I hit 29 over the weekend with about 12 hours played. Untwinked besides some bags that my friends gave me. 2 of my new coworkers play WoW, and I made this guy on one, named Gabe, server. I also transferred my 85 DK Bludsnausage over to it. Server is Hellscream by the way for those who care.

Beyond that, I am playing Pokemon White again, and this time I am abusing the Dreamworld system. You see, the guys who did Pokemon setup for this edition a “Dreamworld” which is basically this Flash Game that can give you benefits in your actual game. Its setup through the Pokemon Global Link, which also keeps tabs on your wins and losses from matches played against other people via WiFi. I have not done that save for once, where some Japanese kid (it said he was in Japan at least) beat my ass in like no time flat.

What can you do in the Dreamworld? Well, find items and Pokemon that normally are not available till after you beat the main game, along with the ones who are normally there during the first half of the game. The best part though is that you can find these pokes with special Dream World abilities, which are unique, and they can come with attacks that they normally would not know.

For example, I found a Ponyta (a Fire Horse) who knew Thrash, which was a really powerful move that it cannot normally learn in any fashion. I ended up trading it (my first trade!) to someone for a Sawk, which worked for me cause Sawk is fuckin hardcore.

Other then WoW and Pokemon, I have not been doing too much. Got the Witcher 2 while it was on sale on GoG.com, and found that it really deserves its M rating.

Oh I watched Hell in a Cell last night (WWE Wrestling PPV) and was amused at the ending. If you guys want me to talk about it I can post something.

Maybe I should start doing written reviews of the WWE PPVs and shows. That could be fun.

What do you all want to see more of if anything?

Gotta Catch em All!

Hey folks its been a while. *checks his last post date* Wow I last posted in May! Gonna try to fix that, get at least 1 post per week in here and get things going again. Lets see if I can go over all my life changes the last few months…

1) Started playing Magic the Gathering again a bit
2) Made a few new friends
3) Got both a PSP and DS XL
4) Lost my job (was laid off)
5) Got a new PT Cruiser
6) Got a new job (been doing it for 2 weeks now)
7) Started messing around in WoW again

Yea its alot.

So what prompted me to post you might ask? Well a few things. Firstly somehow I still get 10-20 hits a day on here, without updating worth shite. Something has to be worth it around here. Also, I miss writing quite a bit. I found it soothing, in an odd way. Despite not playing Wargames anymore (just don’t have the time sadly) I am still interested in the hobby. Kinda wish I had the time to start playing something like Warhammer Fantasy TBH. Why has no one created an online 3D simulator of that game I wonder..

Another major reason though is I wanted to talk about something I have found a love for…and you people BETTER NOT LAUGH.

I love the Pokemon games.

Let me explain.

Back when the original GameBoy was hot shit, I had one. I owned Super Mario Land and Dr Mario for it. Then Pokemon Red and Blue came out and me and my sister each got one (blue for me, red for her). We played the CRAP outta those, and I ended up beating both at some point.

However, after that, I just stopped liking Pokemon. I think it was a combination of shame (being a highschooler) along with it being aimed at kids via the anime.

Fast forward to now. I get a DS XL from a friend of mine in trade, and convince him to give me a copy of Pokemon White. I figured “Hey, might as well have 1 Pokemon game for it.”

This was a MISTAKE. I could not put the game down. I spent 35 hours training up my team and beating the Elite 4 and the final boss in the main game, hit the post game and decided then and there I loved the series again. Since that day I have ended up buying the following Pokemon games for my DS.

1) White
2) SoulSilver
3) Platinum
4) Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time

I also went, restarted my game in White, and got an Event Pokemon called Zoroak for my new theme team, the “Pokemon of DarkWater”. Yea I went there.

Now you may ask WHY DO I LOVE THIS GAME?! ITS FOR KIDS! WHATS WRONG WITH YOU TURN IN YOUR MAN CARD AHHHH.

I counter with this.

Do you like RPGS? Do you like strategy? Do you like variety? Then you should play Pokemon. Once you get past the fact that its a kid fighting people with little cute critters, its a really deep and complicated game. I think there are something like 14 “Types” of pokemon, each with strengths and weaknesses vs other types. YOu got a fire type? Well his ass is weak to Water, Fighting, and I believe Ground moves, so watch it! Got a Steel type? Holy shit that thing is resistant to all sorts of crap! ECT ECT.

Furthermore, you are basically building a custom 6 man team from a pool of somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 characters. Alot of them share move pools (Same attacks) and whatnot, but have different actual stats (ATK, DEF, ect)

And then there is the fact that each Pokemon can only have 4 attacks at any given time! And each attack has a set amount of PP (basically action points) it can use per move. Some weaker moves have LOTS of PP so you can spam em. The heavy hitters or power moves can have as little as 5 PP (meaning after 5 uses you gotta refill its PP or its useless)

And then there is the cute factor. I will admit, I am a sucker for cute cuddly things. I owned Guinea Pigs at the age of 28 for god sakes.

So if enjoying a game series like Pokemon makes me a kid, immature, or any number of other things, then thats fine.

I will sit over here with my Tepig and burn some bitches to the ground. CAUSE THATS HOW I ROLL!

Behold, a Fire Pig. YOU KNOW YOU LOVE IT

I always come back here, dont I?

You know, all my blogs, all my websites, all my social sites, the one I always come back to, the one I always end up writing on or updating…is this one. Right here.

I guess it just feels like home. Like my own personal space on the web.

As if you guys didn’t notice (and I know people read this thing, I CAN TRACK YOU BWHAHAHA…ahem) I have started a “journal” of sorts for my adventures in Diablo 2. I love that game, its what got me hooked on the Action RPG Genre really, and that genre is one of the few that I can play for hours at a time.

Also, something I am working on: I am going to pick up an instrument.

Now don’t laugh when I tell you which one.

THE ALTO RECORDER!

I know you are laughing. I can tell. STOP IT *cries*

Now I bet you are wondering why that particular instrument. Well, here is a bit of history. Back in Elementary school I took music like most kids. I found I had a knack for it, and ended up taking piano lessons for 2 years before leaving elementary school. When I hit Middle School I had to take Band and Choir, and ended up joining Band and learning to play the bass clarient. I was really good at it to, one of the few things I was good at (and I still remember how to play it to this day, and with my shitty ass memory thats saying something!)

In fact, the major talent I have exibited over the years has been a skill with music. I am good at it, I grasp it quickly, and I can hum melodies and things that I make up on a whim and they sound (at least when I hum em) pretty awesome. I also appreciate classical music.

I have tried over the past few years to teach myself rock based instruments (guitar, bass) but in the end they don’t hold my interest, mainly because I dont like how you have to play them.

But sometimes, I find myself pretending to hold the big ol bass clarient, hearing the deep resonant tones in my head.

And I want that.

But, sadly, Bass Clarients are over $1000 in price! YIKES! But I still want to play and create music using a woodwinds instrument (my favorite type!) Thats where the Recorder comes in. You see, its a woodwinds instrument that can do roughly 2 octaves (plus a half) of notes, and the different records have different ranges. Now, the tenor recorder would most likely be the one that would be closest to a bass clarinet (interestingly enough) but the Alto seems more my speed (both in size and price)

So thats where my goal is. To pick one up. Hell I can get a cheap one off amazon.com for $15

Here is the kicker though!

I am going to be doing this without actually spending my own money. How you may ask? By doing online surveys. I am actually a member of several survey sites that do rewards in gift card format. The one I need however I havent used in FOREVER so earning the 22,000 points needed to get a $20 amazon gift card is gonna be a bit of a pain. But hey, thats life right?

Also, I have been doing Pathfinder via Play by Post lately. I play in 4 games, run 1, and am having a blast. If you want to play Table top RPGS and dont have time to really do it once a week look into Play by Post. Most games only want a single post a day from each player, and the sedate pace makes it perfect for working folk

Thats my life in a nutshell at the moment. Weeeeee

Oh and if you wanna donate to the “Get Clayton a Recorder” fund you can always just paypal me a couple bucks (its bluedragonlord23 AT gmail DOT com) HAHA not that I expect you guys to….but it was my Birthday back on the 13th HAHA

Diablo 2 Adventures Day 3: Radamant aint so Adamant Now!

Dear Diary,

Well I got out of jail…but whomever decided that the jail was the only thing to connect the inner and outer monestary should be shot! I mean, really, why not have a nice simple hallway between the two! But noooo we gotta have this huge jail complex that connects the two areas. BAH! Anyway, after I got out, I found a town portal scroll and ran back to the camp to tell Deckard Cain the news. He informed me that I needed to go back into there and find a demon named Andarial and kill her. Well, demons are demons and need killing so I went back in, found her, and mauled her. Being a bear is fun.

After I found and killed her, Warriv was then willing to take me across the land to Lut Gohlain, where the Dark Wanderer had gone. No one wanted to talk to me there cept for one lady, who begged me to go into the stinky sewers and find some critter named Radamant, and kill em. Well, since I am pretty good at that, I went and did it.

Now I smell like rotted meat. I need a bath.

So yea, last night I was able to accomplish both goals I had set out to do, AND go a bit farther! My main goals last night were as follows:

1) Find the runes and weapon to build the Runeword STEEL
2) Kill Andarial

Not only did I do both of those, I was also able to build the Runeword Stealth in some armor (I had plenty of runes thanks to the 7 Countess Runs I had to do to get the El and Tir for STEEL), and I killed both Andy and Radamant.

I also ended up respeccing and going Bear, intending eventually to go Fireclaws with a dash of Shockwave. Oh yea, gonna go big and angry and FIRE AND BURNINATION HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Ahem.

Yea….

ANYWAY! Next goal / milestone? GET THE HORADRIC CUBE! Yesssss must get cubey must MAKE THINGS.

Diablo 2 Adventures: Day 2 – Sent to Jail, do not pass Go!

Dear Diary,

Today I was sent to jail, in the worst place possible! I mean, I didn’t know that the fallen were a protected species! Besides, they kept trying to maul me with their angry little knives! Apparently however some demon police saw me murdering them in a rage, and decided that I would be better off in the old rogues jails.

Little did they know that I found a way out! Well, its really a way in deeper, but hey, eventually I will get out. Whoever designed those jails was a madman however. I mean, they keep twisting and changing and I swear that they are on tracks or something. I went to sleep, woke up, and the walls had shifted completely! Its maddening.

Ah well, time to delve deeper into this place. Maybe they got some cool stuff I can snag.

Ahh the jail. How I hate thee. So damn annoying, confusing, and complicated. So last night I made it through the Jail and into the Inner Cloister. I have not gone farther at the moment, but I fully intend to. I picked a few new items, nothing spectacular sadly, and I did take a screenshot of them this time. Hopefully I can survive to face off with Andy down in the depths.

I also suffered my first death last night. I got trapped and surrounded by a Stone Skinned Death Clan and his minion pack, and got mauled faster then the little bit of lifeleech that Fury afforded me. I think I need to put more points into that.

Overall I am having fun, and had I been more awake I would have kept playing last night. But the jails drove me nuts. Time to farm some XP before heading down though. Here is a shot of the loot I have found that is halfway decent. I got the sword from gambling.