I haven’t had a chance to shoot one of these, but they look like they’re about to be the 2o-teens Desert Eagle, for film-makers (it’s already being featured in Total Recall.) Stats might need a change the first chance I get to lay paws on one of these.
CHIAPPA RHINO
The Chiappa Rhino is a clever new revolver from the designer of the Mateba revolver. Chambered in .357 magnum, the revolver fires from the six-o’clock position (the bottom chamber of the cylinder) rather than the usual 12-o’clock position. This drops the bore axis dramatically and reduces recoil to almost nothing. Firing full 125 grain hot loads feels like firing a typical .38 snubnose. The sides of the cylinder are also flattened, giving it a hexagonal profile and making the weapon more concealable. It can be had in 2″, 4″, and 6″ barrels. There is a chromed-version called the White Rhino.
Accuracy on the gun is very good and it can be fired quickly, even in double-action. With practice, the Rhino is faster on follow-up shots than any magnum revolver.
UPDATE: There’s also a .40S&W and 9x21mm IMI (used by Israeli forces) version: The only change is DC — G for the longer barrels, F for the short.
UPDATE OF THE UPDATE: There’s been a run on these puppies and quality control on the trigger group seems to be off. As a result, GM’s might want to give the player a “mushy trigger” — Jam is 96 and the gun will malfunction and be unusable with a 97+. it will need a new trigger job to work (warranty work.)
Second night of “episode 107” for our Battlestar Galactica campaign. The crew are tracking an archeologist from the University of Leonis that was at the Sagittaron dig that’s causing all the social and political strife in our game world after they found out he was a doppleganger of a missing astronomer rom a deep-range outpost that was attacked and unmanned from our “pilot” episode. they had looked through his apartment, found out he wasn’t in town from his phone and credit card records. They also ascertained he’s traveling/living with a woman who had spoofed the credit chit numbers of a rich guy here in Luminere.
They start pulling data together that morning and find the DNA and fingerprints of the guy are a match to the missing astronomer. He was snatched 5 months ago with the rest of the observation post, and has turned up a few weeks before the Sagittaron dig as an archeologist…it can’t be coincidence. The DNA from the woman’s hair matches nothing in the police databases, but they’ve managed to link the phone to a Caprican woman, Vala Inviere.
The main issue they’re up against in the episode is relativity. I’m using the Quantum Mechanix map for the Colonies, and the distance between Leonis and Caprica is roughly 110SU, or 15 light hours, away…we’re starting to find out that records between the colonies are incomplete and getting fast data requests from the other worlds can take days just due to latency. There are special courier ships that synch the interplanetary web servers from time to time, but that means that the cops are working with incomplete data, even though this is a high-tech universe. (it’s worse between the Helios Alpha/Beta and Helios Gamma/Delta colonies, where latency is upward of over a month.)
They take a fanblade VTOL to Hedon, a Monaco-esque town on Leonis to try and do surveillance on the couple. The town is one of the last vestiges of the deposed monarchy of the planet — the “Prince of Hedon” (once the title of the eldest son to the King of Leonis) owns the Hedon Grand Casino, which was formerly the vacation palace of the monarchy. The place is spectacular — a combination of old and grand architecture and modern technology. The security is superb, and they have records fo the comings and goings of the guests.
Their initial target, the Corbett/Yanos man is in his room, but his companion left late last night (only a few hours after the incident with the security bot in Yanos’ apartment. She hasn’t returned, but she did have a suitcase with her. The characters are waiting on a courier raptor they had sent to Caprica to try and get more information on Yanos’ legend (he’s supposed to be Caprican) and the woman. Meanwhile, Yanos goes out to play triad at the casino. Commander Pindarus, the CO character, decides to play as well and chat the guy up. He seems genuine…not some grifter or enemy agent.
They get back intel from Caprica about this point on their cell phones: Mark Yanos died at 22 of alcohol poisoning during a binge at university; this guy took his identity. they knew he was a fake, but now they have the proof to arrest him for identity theft. The woman, Inviere, turns out to have an extensive background that is — like Yanos’ — doctored. She appeared out of whole cloth two years ago. She travels extensively throughout the colonies, and particularly those centers of government: Picon, Caprica, and Libran. And she works for the largest lobbying firm in the colonies, the Pindarus Group…the commander’s wife runs it!
The arrest and question Yanos over four hours, but they guy doesn’t break character. However, they notice his memories of his past seem very limited and his phrasing is exactly the same. It’s a script, but he doesn’t seem to know. Presenting him with all the DNA evidence and his past causes him to have a seizure and pass out. They get him to the hospital for a brain scan, but he wakes to tell them that they know! that he was broken, that he remembers his real past. He and the others were captured, tortured, programmed…by the Cylons! And they always know what is going on with their agents. He doesn’t know how.
The brainscan is dramatic when the back of his skull explodes. Some kind of kill switch? The scan only had started — they have no data on what happened. While the forensics folks get to work, the characters leave Hedon for the Cavoir CMC Reservation, get their intelligence people to work on trying to track this Inviere’s whereabouts and movements, then they procure a raptor for a trip to Caprica to try and find the woman and investigate the Pindarus Group connection.
The good: there’s a lot of fleshing out of the minutiae of the world — the latency issues for the interplanetary webs, etc. as well as creating new “sets” like Luminere and Hedon. We found out that you can make cell calls from Caprica to Gemenon. There was a nice cameo of Galactica patrolling the Gemenon-Caprica spacelanes. The mystery of the Cylon spies and the possibility of programmed human agents has created a very paranoid Cold War era feel. The links to the players through their friends and family has also given them ties to the world.
Also, we’ve fleshed out other aspects of this BSG universe: the technology levels have been better established. There’s cybernetics in the world — prosthetics and the like — so the implant idea wasn’t out of their realm of experience, but the implications of controlling a subject still chilling. We saw holographic screens in the expensive Hedon casino environment and I established that these are only used for big billboards most places because of the expense. (the characters were miffed their fancy battlestars don’t have them.) We saw normal (if sci-fi-ish) aircraft. We established that the Leonine aristocracy mostly fled to neighboring Virgon after they were struck from the planet’s civil list. Communications inside a star system (say between Virgon and Leonis is relatively normal — vid and text messages take a few minutes to an hour to get back and forth, but other colonies are nearly a day away, and others are completely out of communications range and require “packet boats” to move massive data from one set of colonies to the next. We also established a few campaign specific organizations: the Colonial Security Service (sort of the Colonial FBI), that there is a Colonial Marshal Service that almost exclusively hunts interplanetary fugitives, and that there is a Colonial Fleet Security Bureau (NCIS-like group.)
The bad: I was off script most of the night and had to tap dance a lot. It was also a big crosstalk night. One of the players hasn’t been here for a few weeks, so there was a lot of out of character/game chat about movies, TV, and the like. I don’t mind this, like some gamers — gaming is first and foremost a social thing for me — but it did slow the action for the first hour or so. We also had another player be quite late.
Overall, I like how the campaign is coming together . I was a bit iffy on it until the Sagittaron stuff, and I think this last storyline has really established the feel of our first “season” and the moving the action from one colony to the next is fleshing out the game universe and making the Colonies a real place. When the Cylons show up, it should feel like a real place they don’t want destroyed.
The filling out of the universe is essential in any campaign, but it can serve to help make a licensed universe more your own. Just the adding of the communications problems and law enforcement groups could lead to completely different styles of play, as well as creating verisimilitude. It also sets up a reason for the Command Navigation Program (which automatically syncs ships and bases so that they have the information and location of other units with less need for the courier raptors.) It also set up another reason the Cylons might be so successful in their attacks: communications is simply a nightmare between Caprcia/Picon command elements and Scorpia, Sagittaron, Libran, Arelon, and Canceron…
Reminds me of the heads-up augmented reality from Ghost in the Shell, but with a less cool interface.
The neo-Luddites will whine about how this will intrude too much into our lives, or create ennui or alienate us from ourselves, or the usual whinefest about the dangers of technology. I love the idea.
This time I went pulp with a version of an old Hollow Earth Expedition character, Gorilla Ace!
GORRILA ACE! (aka Rowland Cabot)
Affiliations: Solo d6, Buddy d10, Team d8
Distinctions: Barnstormer, Freak of Science!, It’s a Talking Gorilla!
POWER SETS: Man Turned Gorilla! Enhanced Reflexes d8, Enhanced Strength d8, Enhanced Senses d8, Enhanced Durability d8; SFX, Berserk: Borrow a doom pool die for an action, return it with a step up afterward; SFX, Second Wind: Move physical stress to doom pool for a +1 step on a die during an action; Limit, Science Gone Wrong!: 1pp when affected by Nazi science or tech.
Milestones: A Talking Gorilla! 1XP when he surprises crowds with his intelligence, 3XP when he uses a power stunt to save a person, 10XP when he sacrifices himself to save others.
Damn These Nazis! 1XP when he becomes involved in any adventure fighting other Nazi science experiments gone wrong, 3XP when he goes berserk on Nazis, 10XP when he stops a major Nazi superscience plot, or turns his back on aiding in stopping the same.
Rowland Cabot was a WWI pilot from Yorkshire who had been a barnstormer for the last decade and a half when he stumbled into a Nazi plot to create strange hybrids of man and beast. While in the middle of battling the bad guys, he was accidentally infected with Gorilla Serum, turning him into a Gorilla-Man.
And here’s my take on a similarly flavored character, Atomic Robo (read the comic…right now!)
ATOMIC ROBO
Affiliation: Solo d10, Buddy d6, Team d8
Distinctions: Born of Science!, Curious, Stubborn
POWER SETS:
Tesla’s Robot Man: Superhuman Strength d10, Superhuman Durability d10, Superhuman Stamina d10, Enhanced Senses d8; SFX, Second Wind: Can shift physical stress to the doom pool in exchange for a +1 step on an action; Limit: Cannot heal physical trauma. Must be repaired by another character/NPC.
Gadgets Galore: Weapon d8, Enhanced Durability (Armor vest) d8; SFX, Pockets: 1PP to gain a d6 asset; SFX, Totemic Weapon: Gains d6 to pool when using his Webley MK VI .455 or his new Chiappa Rhino .357 revolvers; Limit, Gear
Milestones: Tesladyne & the Action Scientists: 1XP when he uses Tesladyne assets or the Action Scientists in a mission, 3XP when he uses an asset or complication involving Tesladyne, 10XP when his actions improve or harm the reputation of Tesladyne, or lead to the injury/death of a colleague.
Weird Science! 1XP whenever confronted with a mystery involving weird science, 3XP when he uses science or tech-based stunt to thwart bad guys, 10XP when he solves a mystery involving weird science, or is bested by his opponent using the same.
Okay — I’m of two minds on this one. I love the look of the film straight off. I like the casting I’m seeing, as I like Kate Beckinsale and think Colin Farrell’s usually underrated and underused in the action movies he’s in. Just from the trailer, Farrell comes off much more the everyman who happens to be a super-spy than Arnie. Beckinsale’s hotter than Sharon Stone ever was. I like they lost the Mars and ancient air manufacturing crap in favor of something closer to the political thriller with the usual who the hell am I? stuff Dick wrote. I was less than impressed with the way they shot the reveal that he’s some kind of bad ass…
Don’t believe Farrel can act, and well? Four films: Phone Booth, Ondine, Tigerland, and In Bruges. I’d add the Fright Night remake, as well, as an honorable mention.
These bloody statist never learn, do they? Between the power mad legislators and “well-meaning” activists, we’re always onthe edge of a good ol’ fashioned authoritarian regime. This time the culprit is HB2549, now on Governor Brewer’s desk. It was ostensibly created to stop cyber-bullying and online stalking, but of course, the lawmakers had to go a touch further than that, making it a crime to use “any electronic or digital device” to send “obscene, lewd or profane language” or suggest such acts with the intent to “terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend.”
NBC reports: ” ‘…H.B. 2549 “would apply to the Internet as a whole, thus criminalizing all manner of writing, cartoons, and other protected material the state finds offensive or annoying,’ Media Coalition says on its website…”
So pretty much anything. And because of the interstate/national nature of the internet, I’m sure these self-important tits in Arizona will try going after folks outside their jurisdiction for pretty much anything. Call or write Jan Brewer if you want this nonsense stopped.
If it passes, this might help you pussies offended by everything:
Most of my early campaigns were a combination of what the other GMs like to call “sandbox” or were episodic. The old Dungeons & Dragons games were a dungeon or monster kill of the week — fun, but not narratively pleasing, and there was little reason or room for character growth. The characters were avatars for the players “being awesome.” Each game episode was discrete, with little connection to the next, save the characters involved, and often GM duties were swapped. Toward the end of the last D&D campaign of our high school period, I experimented with an actual story arc involving the stereotypical, Tolkeinesque fight to stop the evil baddie from destroying the world. It went well and is the only bit of the D&D gaming we did that I and the other players from the period remember because there were consequences to our actions, the characters changed (some died), and there was an actual plot to follow.
But that plot was improvised. It grew organically out of a bunch of episodes that were very loosely connected. The story arc wasn’t so much planned as I simply set down an ending — we would fight the evil god-thing (the name of which I forget, but let’s face it, it’s the devil/Sauron/Walking Dude/whateveryoucallit) and either win and become the new masters of the world or cork it spectacularly.
The nice thing about an improvisational approach to campaign design is that it allows for a lot of changes on the fly. You don’t have every detail planned out, and loosing a player for a week or two because of a car accident, or because they have a new job, isn’t as much of a blow as something more structured. the character development is a lot more freeform, instead of having specific incidents you’ve planned to lay on them to see what the players do and how they craft changes (if any) in their hero(ine.)
The downside is you’ve got a lot of tap-dancing to do. NPCs that aren’t fleshed out at all can catch the player’s imaginations. Now that barkeep that has no name needs one. And a backstory — if not then, soon since the players insist on using the guy as an intel source. You need to be ready to explain on the fly the politics of a town or region that you thought wouldn’t matter, as they were simply supposed to go kill the monster and steal the treasure (and find a clue for the next episode, perhaps) at a dungeon or what have you.
This is even more challenging for settings where you might need a bit more knowledge — say a Victorian period campaign in London. Hopefully you boned up on the city in the period, because in a sandboxed/improvisational campaign, the characters are going to wander off an force you to try and stay ahead of them.
I like the “sandbox” as a means to give the characters more flexibility in their actions, but I’ve found a lot of players wind up not taking the bait for missions you might have in mind and wander off to do not much but get in barfights. For me, creating a setting gives the GM more ability to create richer adventures, and have a few fall-back side missions to distract the characters from killing off your cool villain too quickly, or as a means to nudge them toward the big mission you have laid out.
A lot of my early gaming was episodic, as mentioned before: comic book games, spy games where the adventures could be described as “movies” or serials where, once again, the only connection was the characters. The story arcs evolved, if they were there at all. this changed when I decided to run a sci-fi campaign during my time at the Defense Language Institute that was one part Babylon 5, on part Varley’s Titan series. (If you haven’t read the latter, stop everything you’re doing and do so — it’s some of the most inventive and screwy worldbuilding in sci-fi.) There was to be a specific beginning, middle and end, and I had a timeline: 16 months to roll the whole thing before we were off to our next duty assignment.
There were what the TV types call “push episodes” that moved the story along, and others that were there for filler or to let the characters wander off and do a bit of exploring in the world created. It was fun and I managed to pull it off with a few weeks to spare. Everyone had a blast, including me. What I discovered is that having a much tighter plan for the story arc is much more fulfilling for the GM and the players, but it is — by definition — ore restrictive. You do’t have to railroad the characters, necessarily, but the nature of the narrative should propel them — generally — in the direction you want.
Ever since that campaign, I’ve become a planner. There’s usually a story arc and a string of push episodes that are interspersed with side missions and a bit of sandboxing to keep things interesting, but I have a much tighter eye on the prize: telling a story with the help of the players.
My espionage campaigns are the easiest to make this happen: you get orders from the powers-that-be that set you on your way. They define the parameters of success, what you can and can’t do legally, and the potential consequences for failure. There’s still plenty of room for the characters to decide how to make this happen, and they can go off the reservation to follow leads that crop up, leading to missions that are player, rather than GM-generated. Having a chain of command or hierarchy that the characters serve is one of the easiest (and less intrusively railroading) ways to get them to take on a mission and follow a plot without you smacking them over the head with the story plan. They’re just doing their jobs.
I used this technique on my next camapign, a straight Babylon 5 game, that also had the added difficulty that I wanted to hew to the show canon, but not have the characters directly involved in the show’s events. When using licensed material (pre created worlds with metaplots not necessarily connected to your players) this is the big trick. For the B5 game, I made them another front in the Shadow War, only vaguely connected to the space station and the show characters. It worked and was fun, and I managed to roll the campaign up in two years successfully — even though we lost a few of the players toward the end. I followed the same method for a Star Trek campaign, setting it between series to allow for a connection to them, but giving the characters room to be the heroes.
The toughest of these licensed universes to work in so far is Battlestar Galactica. There’s a pretty solid metaplot you should have going on if you are using the universe: the Cylons destroy the colonies…now what? In the first iteration of the game, I did the “second fleet” game — the players were on another vessel that survived the holocaust and were attempting to rescue folks from the colonies before they lit out for greener pastures. It roughly followed the show, with events showing up in the background, but they never found Galactica or Pegasus and were eventually going to set up in another tar system remarkably like the colonies, with multiple habitable worlds, so the grand story could begin again. (They were working off another “prophecy”, to stick with the semi-mythic feel of the first few seasons.) This go ’round, I’m doing a lot more before the attack, creating a more Cold War feel — the Cylons are still out there, the higher-ups know but are keeping the population in the dark for stability sake, and eventually, the character might or might not turn the attacks. Another option is they are the big heros, leading a rag-tag fleet.
As you can see, I have a general plan for the campaign, but at this time, it’s more improvisational, to allow the characters to really be the heroes. I’m using the “all of this has happened before” idea to allow them to be the Adamas and Apollos of this iteration of the story, but if they don’t stop the Cylons, there will be a general arc like the show: find Earth, save mankind.
I’ve found that the secret to a successful campaign is a balance between planning — not just the adventure plot at hand, but having a few NPCs in the back pocket for quick use, and a knowledge of your setting, even if it’s just broad strokes. No matter how well you plan, however, the players are going to go off script or will get distracted by a background NPC or a “clue” they thought they saw that was just some descriptive fluff for you. That’s when you need to be ready to bang together a quick caricature of an NPC, expand on the look of a building or the setting their in, or prepare to create a whole red herring or real clue trail for them to follow when they see the gaming equivalent of “SQUIRREL!”
Last week was supposed to be the start of the next “volume” of our pulp game, taking place in 1937 New york, Philadelphia, and possibly Washington DC, but a last minute cancellation left me hanging so I ran a Battlestar Galactica episode.
Episode 107 was titled Agent Provocateur: The ship is at Scorpia Yards for repairs after the terrorist attack on her, using a freighter jumping out while in the flight pod as a weapon. The MARDET commander/intelligence officer is going over mission logs from before her taking her position and finds that one of the missing members of a deep-range observation post (from the first epsode) was one of the diggers on the Sagittaron archeological find in a later episode…does he know what happened to everyone? Were they taken by the Cylons, and if so, what danger does he pose?
The commander passes the information up the chain of command, but also informally sends it to his father, the president’s security advisor. Suddenly, he gets tasked with bringing in the man — who was posing as an archeologist from the University of Leonis, but who was actually a Canceron astronomer than worked for the Defense Department — and finding out what he knows.
They arrive on Leonis and Luminere was portrayed as a “city of lights”: elegant, “old world” feeling, and an ancient cultural center. Think a very, very high tech Paris or Rome. They are working with the Colonial Fleet Security Bureau, and their liaison is a baron in old Leonine aristocracy (he family fled to Virgon after they were struck from the civil list.) They find the guy’s apartment, were attacked by his security bot which didn’t call the police, but a cell number they’ve tracked to a woman from Caprica who also seems to have spoofed the credit card numbers of a rich Luminere citizen. They figure out from credit card and phone records that the two are in Hedon — sort of the Monaco of the Colonies.
They are on route to find the two.
The good: the episode brings back an NPC I always liked from our first campaign. One of the players was ecstatic to see her, but they were both happy to see connection in this “reboot” of the old campaign. Another PC turned NPC for this episode was the Colonial Security Services man (originally a character of the commander’s player.) Fan service at its best.
Each episode has been attempting to show more of the colonies and their unique flavor. I’m trying to build a realistic feel for the setting so that when the Cylons show up, there’s a real sense of danger and loss.
The bad: I didn’t have all the player so there was a lot of tap dancing around some of the PC’s roles in the episode. Also, it wasn’t as well planned as I like for investigation-type adventures, so while it’s allowing for more improvisation, it’s also (to me) feeling a bit kludged together.
The Chiappa Rhino is a clever new revolver from the designer of the Mateba revolver. Chambered in .357 magnum, the revolver fires from the six-o’clock position (the bottom chamber of the cylinder) rather than the usual 12-o’clock position. This drops the bore axis dramatically and reduces recoil to almost nothing. Firing full 125 grain hot loads feels like firing a typical .38 snubnose. The sides of the cylinder are also flattened, giving it a hexagonal profile and making the weapon more concealable. It can be had in 2″, 4″, and 6″ barrels. There is a chromed-version called the White Rhino.
The Black Campbell 