Star Crawl Space Battlefield

I took a break from proofreading Star Crawl to make a starfield battlemat for space battles (completely unnecessary for play, but I think it'll add something to con games & demos). I sent the image above to the printer  for a test run (it'll be 2'x3'). If it comes out nice, I'll get a couple more made for sale.

As briefly mentioned in a earlier post, ship combat will take place in the round area to the left- each line marks off a sector (used for range & movement: most weapons have range of 1 & a ship can freely move 1 sector in a turn). At the top of each turn, all ships make maneuvering rolls (using the ship's maneuvering die type) and move their ships in ascending order of the rolls (highest roll goes last, so they have a significant tactical advantage: facing is important when shooting). Ships then fire weapons in reverse, with the last ship placed firing first (this should be familiar to X-Wing players).

If a ship attempts to flee, they move to the Pursuit Tracker. Here, maneuverability is shelved for speed: ships move forward or back based on relative speed rolls. If the fleeing ship moves off the front of the track, they successfully escape;if the pursuer catches the fleeing ship, both return to the combat field.

*Update* I got the test mat back from the printer & it looks great! I went through Banners on the Cheap, using the image linked below. I used it for games at GaryCon & it was perfect.
Space Mat Image

Star Crawl Status Update

Star Crawl is getting ever closer: based on my current estimates, it should be complete & ready for sale by October. Later than I hoped, but I think it'll be worth the delay.

A few updates on progress the past few weeks:

• The cover art has been changed to the image above. I love my space bug, but that skull's just so much more striking.
• I've gotten preliminary approval from Joseph Goodman. I'll be sending him a final version before I send it to the printers, but we're pretty much set. And this may be the first 3rd party product to bear both the "Compatible with DCC" and "Compatible with MCC" logos!
• The book will be full size (8"x11") and about 120 pages. I'll determine the cover price once I have a final cost from the printer, but I'm thinking $15-20. 
• I've started work on two follow up books: an adventure and a hex-crawl supplement. Based on the response to Star Crawl, I may try to push those through for completion by March so I can bring one (or both) to GaryCon.

Star Crawl Art

Star Crawl's cover image

I'm into the final stretch on writing Star Crawl.With a few tables to finish up, the rules themselves are done. I'm still working on the maps for the 0-level funnel and a couple judges will be running playtests in the coming weeks so I can see how easy it is for others to run. As the project is closing in on completion, I've started what's on of the hardest parts for me: art.

I'm not a good artist, but I don't let that hold me back. I didn't do much art for Vehicle mayhem, just the cover & a couple quick drawings inside. For that book, photos of the board & cars seemed fitting, so it wasn't an issue. But with Star Crawl, I want to step it up, so I've been working on art from the beginning of the project. 

 

Interior art for Star Crawl

I also managed to get a few players from my group to make some contributions. I can't wait to share all the amazing work they've done, but below are just a couple samples.

Scene by Dave 8Cylinder

Alien monster by Brad Heiple

Virtual Mayhem

Here's a new scenario for Vehicle Mayhem: Virtual Mayhem! Virtual Mayhem is intended to simulate a car race in a virtual world. The race should move much quicker and be more dangerous than straight Vehicle Mayhem- perfect for a quick game. Mike Bolam came up with the concept as part of a very special 0-level funnel tournament he's running.

Virtual Mayhem Rules
For best results, print out this PDF double-sided and cut down the middle for two copies sized perfectly to fit in your Vehicle Mayhem rules.

I recommend giving identical cars to each player. When the game is so much more deadly, minor advantages in armor & weaponry can be greatly magnified. This character sheet includes two blank sheets & two of the identical cars I'm using for Virtual Mayhem.
Virtual Mayhem Pregens

And, just for fun, here's a bonus play aid for when you roll 1 or 12 on the Virtual Mayhem events table
Virtual Insanity

Star Crawl 0-Level Playtest

For those in the Pittsburgh area, I'll be running a Star Crawl playtest on Sunday, May 27th at Phantom of the Attic games in Oakland. This will be the first time I run "The Promethean Adventure", the 0-level funnel that will be released with Star Crawl. The event will be great for new & experienced DCC players: characters will be provided & rules will be taught.

This will also be the first session where I test out Star Crawl's 0-level characters. As with DCC, characters start out as normal people, only gaining standard character classes at 1st level. Unlike DCC, most 0-level characters don't have weapons of any kind. I'm leaning heavy into the idea of Star Crawl heroes being normal folks pressed into unusual circumstances and rising to the occasion. The Promethean Adventure is written with this in mind: most encounters will be more environmental and situational. It should be a good time!

The event is listed on Facebook under the DCCRPG Pittsburgh group.

Star Crawl Space Combat Preview

I've done testing with the Star Crawl space combat rules and I'm pretty close to a final version. This is a big part of the rules and a pretty significant milestone in being ready to publish Star Crawl.  

I used the Vehicle Mayhem rules as a starting point: those rules are excellent at representing relative movement and tracking armor damage. The image above includes the play areas I'm using for space combat. The left board would be for combat, with ships maneuvering around each other. On the right is the pursuit tracker, used when ships attempt to escape combat. My goal is to keep space battles exciting and fast past while maintaining a tactical feel. As the rules tighten up, I'll post more specifics.

Ship stats will again be similar to Vehicle Mayhem, with simple "dot" armor tracking as a key concept. To avoid massive numbers of dots as ships grow in size, I've added Damage Denominator (DD) as a ship stat. The size and class of the ship determines how much damage is required to remove a point of armor. So, a plasma burst rolls 12 points of damage. This would do 2 dots of damage to a fighter with DD 5 or 1 dot of damage to a battlecruiser with DD 10.

GaryCon X

Last weekend's GaryCon X was fantastic. Every year the con is awesome and this was no exception: the organizers go all out to make sure it's the best convention for gamers. We had the entire Geneva Ridge resort this year, providing massive amounts of play space.

I ran 5 games this year, and only 1 wasn't full (which is great for a con of this size). I started with Super Dungeon Explore on Thursday.

SDE is a fun chibi minitaures-based dungeon crawl game; I rarely get time to play at home, so I decided to run a session for the convention. It went very well, but we ran out of time towards the end & had to accelerate the final boss battle. Overall, everyone had a good time, but I don't see myself bringing it again next year: it's a lot of gear to lug & the setup/tear-down time are a bit much to rush through at a convention.

One of my convention standbys is Marvel Super Heroes and I had 2 sessions this year. It's the 5th year I've run MSH at GaryCon and I've got a few players that sign up every year. On Friday I ran "Project Prometheus", an adventure set in 1960. An unknown object is headed towards Earth and the government launches giant monsters towards it in the hopes they can stop or destroy whatever is controlling it. I had a great group who totally got into playing the crazy Jack Kirby monsters.
My second Marvel session was Saturday morning. That scenario was set in 1985, with the New Mutants trying to stop the Circus of Crime from looting Westchester. Again I has amazing players who seemed to have a blast with the game.
The old TSR Marvel system is great at swinging between the cosmic power levels of Fin Fang Foom and the relatively mundane abilities of Wolfsbane. Unquestionably one of my favorite systems.

I ran the first Vehicle Mayhem International Championship (sure, why not) on Friday night. The turnout was excellent, with around 17 players participating over the course of the race. It was very tight competition for the top spot and there were some great moments. One player successfully jumped to another car after his was destroyed. He convinced the driver of the car he was sharing to slam into the car that was in a three-way tie with them for first place (both cars were on the verge of destruction & that was a risky collision). But as the car moved, he successfully jumped to another vehicle. The other cars collided and both drivers were killed. Unfortunately, the jumper's new driver was less open to having a passenger: as the two fought in the car, it went out of control and both were killed.

The last game I ran was a playtest of Star Crawl. It was late afternoon on Saturday, prime time for play, and I had a few no-shows. But the 4 remaining players were spectacular. They took the rules through their paces and gave some excellent feedback. I got to try out the space combat rules, which worked fairly well but still need some work. I'll be running some local games in the next few months & should be able to tighten them up.

A big thanks to everyone who played in my games this year: hopefully I'll get to see you all again at GaryCon XI!