Observations of the Fox

I'm an Australian of strong Scottish heritage, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate the fine work of some great English game designers and manufacturers of miniatures. No, I'm not talking about Games Workshop... I'm talking about the independent guys, who are going to probably face a tough couple of years in the near future with the whole status of the UK with regard to the EU kerfuffle. I'm not going to get into the politics of it here. I generally save my rants about politics and religion for Facebook. What I know of a lot of them, I think I know how they probably voted. My only thoughts with this post are to let thewider community know about them, and maybe point a few sales in their direction to help them out as uncertainty looms (also helping the rest of us out while the British Pound is the weakest it's been for quite some time).  First up, I'm thinking of Mark Bednall from Grey Matter Figures who produces one of my favourite piece...

I'm determined to get a printed version of FUBAR ready before I go back to University, I'm also running a revised version of "Dead and FUBAR'd" at EttinCon at the end of the month. that means I need to start doing some layout work and it also means I need to finalise the text. The original version of FUBAR was deliberately experimental in it's page layout, and I feel the new version needs to be just as artistic, but perhaps a bit more user friendly. There are certain elements of the rules that people have indicated elusive over the years, so I'll have to make sure they are clearly explained with plenty of sidebars and play examples. Luckily that stuff is written up. The new version of the rules will probably blow out from 50 pages to 96, but that's mostly due to extra explanatory text and the inclusion of a setting. I did a series a few years ago where I looked at games I liked, then analysed them based on where certain game elements were place...

Because I like giving my players some decent props, I've drawn up a few maps for our Cold City campaign in progress. There will only be one more week of this mini campaign, but that doesn't mean we can't have nice things.  A warehouse raided in episode 1. The Nazi bunker that has been requisitioned as an underground base of operations by the heroes (with convenient entrances via the subway and sewer system of course). The Cathedral overtaken by cultists in episode 2.

I don't know the specific definition of Eugenics, but it is basically the science of optimising the human race through selective breeding. Cold City is a game about picking up the pieces in a variant Berlin after World War Two, the key variant in the Cold City Berlin is that the Nazi's were very close to unleashing a supernatural catastrophe or weapon that would have changed he course of history. There may be a single supernatural revelation, or there may have been many secretive laboratories all working on different forms of paranormal research...it's all up the the GM and the way the campaign unfolds. You can play it noir, pulp, thriller, slapstick, or you can go really dark. I like to tread the line between slapstick and dark when I do the GM duties, but I'm hoping to go a bit more noir this time around. When it comes to quasi-scientific Nazi research, it's only a matter of time before you run into eugenics as a concept. The whole idea of a master race is mired...