The Black Campbell

New PSR bar end mirrors, and levers by Dime City Cycles. Next, pinstriping the fender to match flyscreen:

Dad tested, Sofia approved…

Here’s a new house rule for BSG:

Player characters can use Plot Points to aid a group, unit, or NPC under their command. The PC may either create a pool for use by those NPCs prior to the action sequence beginning (ex. CPT Muir decides to create a 4PP pool for his vipers during an upcoming battle) or, they must be able to communicate with the NPC to use plot point during an action sequence (ex. Muir has comms with a viper that is about to start a strafing run on a Cylon position. He can aid the roll of the NPC with his own plot points.)

W00t!, as the kids say: Looks like my gaming group has managed to get itself into the Atomic Robo RPG playtest.

SCIENCE!

Oh, and just in case you haven’t had a chance to read any of these excellent pulp comics, here’s the first volume, second volume, third volume, fourth volume, fifth volume at Amazon.com. You can also get them through Comixology on the iPad (and I’m assuming other e-reader doodads.)

And no — I’m not being paid for recommending the books. They’re just that good.

Last night’s Battlestar Galactica RPG game was fantastic. It was one of those nights where all the plyaers were on it, all the characters got to not only do story-specific tasks but were able to have role playing/character development moments that were fun for all. As a GM, I was heartened by the fact that a half-assed plan and a vague idea of where the overall campaign is going combined with some inspired mental tap-dancing to create a spooky and intellectually engaging plot.

Having completed their murder mystery, it’s time for Aegis and her task force to set up for the Armistice Line to set up a forward operating base for their forays over the line into Cylon space. We opened with the master chief leading a bunch of the wrenches down to fix a problem with the magcats in the launch bay. There were comic moments where they are completely thwarted by a single, stubborn bolt holding the access panel closed. The new player/character got to experience the mundanities of service life — 0500 PT, communal showers in the general heads, breakfast on the fly as new NCO she gets the crap supervisor jobs. The CAG has to get the plan of action for their jump to the Polyxena system right.

The commander get s a gift from the chief engineer and master chief — a scanning electron microsope the engineer managed to appropriate from her last assignment at Scorpia Yards. Now they can identify Cylon tissue by the silica fiber optics and molecular machines’ signatures. Additionally, the master chief stole the material for a state-of-the-art holotank for their war room. Think Surface, but in 3-D. Of course, everyone’s first thought…we can get the 3D Pyramid games on this!

They jump to Polyxena, site of their first mission, wher they had been very cursory on their search before bugging out. the observation post is still abandoned, and the ancient tylium mine facility that had been discovered by the miners on the moon, and which the post had been conducting archeological research on, is still accessible.

While damage control teams get the observation post back online, a DC team under the ship’s CAG, Dr. Gio Mellor — an archeologist from the Sagitaron dig (search the site for the appropriate AAR), and the intelligence NCO head into the dig site. They get further than the crew did last time and discover several things in the dark, minute ammonium atmosphere of the old mine:

1) The doors to the mine were blown open by a shaped charge. 2) There is evidence of a fight. Shell casings from two different kinds of rifle — small caliber (.27 cal they later learn) and a mid-caliber (.335 cal.)…nothing they know of in use today. The dispersion of the shells suggest small caliber was used by the facility defenders. 3) Computers with keyboards in an unknown script. Some paper notes that have survive the ages, as well, with the same script. 4) All of the furniture, clothing, etc. is slightly larger than one would expect for humans, but is still recognizably human. 5) Coins with the symbol of Zeus on them… ( ♃ ) 5) They find musical instruments, personal items, and other humanizing trinkets in the labyrinthine living area. 6) The mine was extensive and equipment easily on par with current technology.

Lastly, they find a last stand with a line of armed remains protecting a group of unarmed remains. Most are skeletal, now, but a few were in space suits and are mostly intact. They look human.

The night ended with no answers, and they were shipping the bodies up to the ship for autopsy and analysis.

For the new player, I’ve been trying to come up with a good character to throw in with the testosterone-heavy Hannibal Drake (Steve McQueen, ferchris’sake) and Jack MacMahon team. We’ve already had a version of Jezebel Jade from Johnny Quest as an NPC (heavily tweaked), and I wanted a good anti-hero to play off of the similarly mercenary Drake, and the dog-loyal and white-hat MacMahon.

One of the choices that went over well just off of the visual was a version of Valkyrie from the old (and the not-as-old ’80s revival of Airboy.) Here’s the thumbnail of our campaign’s version of the classic HIllman character:

Born in summer of 1910, Liselotte von Schellendorf is a relative to the famed German general of the 19th Century, Paul Bonsart von Shellendorf and also composer Fritz Bronsard von Schellendorf. Her father was a nephew to the general and was a colonel during the Great War, where he lost his arm on the Western Front. Both of her older brothers are dead, one in combat in 1918 on the Eastern Front, and the other from influenza in 1920. Her father turned to his daughter as a surrogate for his boys, teaching her to ride, shoot, and fence, and raising her to be not just a fine example of German femininity, but a modern woman.

She was educated at excellent bording schools in Switzerland and Bavaria, and in 1927, had her first airplane ride at a fair. She was hooked. After a year of needling her father, she took flying lessons and in 1928 received her pilot’s license. She was active as a young lady in the German flying community and is friends with aviation war heroes. It was here she came to the attention of Herman Goering. When the Nazis took power in 1933, Goering had the notion of creating a public relations splash with a military unit made up of Nazi women — die Luftjugenfrauen, or “the Air Maidens.” Heading up the group as a captain (hauptmann) was Liselotte, codenamed Valkyrie.

The Air Maidens have been a travelling sideshow, but along the way have developed a reputation with the Luftwaffe for being exception aviatrices. In an exhibition show, the Maidens flew circles around some of the best German men in the service. From 1935-36, they were given less attention and support, as Hitler found the notion of women treading in the masculine forum of combat unseemly. Nevertheless, Valkyrie was able to get Junkers and Arado to allow them to test pilot the latest German warplanes, using Pancho Barnes’ example as a means to impress buyers with their ease of use. When the Spanish Civil War (where she will be introduced) broke out, Valkyrie lobbied for her Maidens to join the Condor Legion’s Versuchsjagdgruppe 88 air assets, and managed to get Goering to agree.

VALKYRIE (aka Liselotte von Schellendorf)

German female, age 26. 5’5″, 130 lbs. Black hair, blue eyes   Archetype: Adventuress/Soldier   Motivation: Fame

ATTRIBUTES: Body 2   Dexterity 3   Strength 2   Charisma 4   Intelligence 2   Willpower 4

SECONDARY ATTRIBUTES: Size 0   Move 5   Perception 6   Initiative 5   Defense 7*   Stun 2   Health 6   Style 5

RESOURCES & TRAITS: Attractive, Iron Will; Finesse Attack (Melee)**, Focused Defense*, Evasive Action (+2 DEF to vehicle); Artifact 2***, Followers 2 (Air Maidens), Rank 1, Status 1 (+2 social tests in Germany & aviation circles; +1 elsewhere)

WEAKNESSES: Danger Magnet, Condescending, Intolerant (You can guess the groups), Overconfident

SKILLS: Acrobatics 1/4, Animal Handling 1/5, Athletics 2/4, Brawl 1/3, Bureaucracy 2/4, Con 1/5, Diplomacy 1/5, Drive 2/5, Firearms 1/4, Gunnery 1/3, Intimidation 1/5, Linguistics 2/5, Melee 2/5**, Pilot (Air) 3/6, Ride 2/5, Stealth 1/4, Streetwise 1/5, Survival 1/3, Warfare 1/3

LANGUAGES: German (native); English, French, Spanish

WEAPON: Luger P07 9mm or Star B 9mm; Rapier or Sabre, Riding Crop

VEHICLE*** (All the Air Maidens are flying these):

Heinkel HE112 fighter V6

Size 2   Def 6   Str 6   Spd 300   Han +2   Crew 1

2 × 7.92 mm MG17: Dam 3L   Rng 250′   Cap: 500   Rate A   Spd A

I was looking for a new notebook to do some character and adventure spitballing — I still tend to do my initial ideas on paper, because I can draw relation diagrams, etc. easier with pen and paper than using a computer. This one had been purchased while i was still working as an intelligence analyst, and had some of the historical incidents that I was working on as examples of how we could model rubrics to look for success/failure points in a plan. I could also see the notes for personal stuff — how I was paying down debt, getting the household budget in order. There was a folder with all my final paperwork and lay off letter of recommendation from my boss (tepid, at best.)

Then there were the gaming notes — the various iterations of characters that would not be used for games that would not come off. These would surface again and again, steadily maturing into the characters now being used in the various campaigns. It was an fascinating look into how my mind was working at the time. Each page was cluttered with ideas for various game campaigns, sometimes on the same page. Characters written and rewritten, sometimes for different games than originally intended. Notes on games that were running at the time. House rules cobbled together on the fly (one set of which should hit the blog soon…)

And all through these notes, the long lists of job searches, check-marked for those applied to, Xs for those i was not qualified for for whatever reason, underlined if they called for an interview (almost none of these.) More household finance stuff — what I could get for selling things, numbers to call for the TA position paperwork that went “missing”, notes for my comprehensive exams. How much my wife at the time could expect from life insurance pay outs and notes on locations to stage a spectacular motorcycle crash.

There was increasing desperation in the notes, but the game creation was occasionally inspired! This was the period of the superb Gorilla Ace! setting. The excellent Battlestar Galactica campaign I didn’t want to end, but which would after my divorce. Ideas for mashing Jovian Chronicles with Transhuman Space, resurrecting my old Space: 1889 campaign with the Ubiquity rules (Hollow Earth Expedition) — similar to the Leagues of Adventure game recently out. A new Star Trek campaign set in the old show period, but a new universe (before the release of the Abrams film.)

It was obvious, looking back, that I was desperate to find a job, save my family finances, and my mind was so addled by the pressures of these things, comprehensive exams, freelance writing jobs, and general unhappiness, that my mind could not alight anywhere with certainty. But this was where the core ideas for the current Hannibal Drake Hollow Earth Expedition,  Galactica, and the now on-the-backburner Supernatural campaigns got their start.

Then came the break in 2010. After a trip home to Scotland, I decided to fix my life. The notes become more orderly. Characters and plot ideas are mostly grouped together. There’s none of the frenetic quality of the early section of the notebook. Characters still get written and rewritten; they drifted from one player they were initially designed for to other players, sometimes new. Sometimes these changes made the characters better, as they turn out to be a better fit for the player; sometimes not. (Often the players let me design for them to create more cohesive characters for the campaigns [with their input, of course.]) Campaign notes get more pointed, more coherent, and I could see where the bones of the current, very good, BSG game were coming together. There were notes for new player contacts, a few that didn’t pan out, one that was excellent but is sadly looking to be headed for the past, and another that we are determined to find a way to keep, even though he’s GTT.

Cracking open the notebook gave me a look into my own thought processes — however glancingly — over the period of  2008-2011. It gave me some insight into my thought processes regarding campaign design: the intent of the games from a storytelling standpoint, the metaphors I wanted to use, the character types I wanted to see the players engage, and other ideas used and otherwise. Crack open those old notes every once and a while…you might rediscover something useful.

Monday we finished a short filler episode we started since the player of the ship commander was out at GenCon last week. The mission focused on a new PC, a Tauron marine staff sergeant who had been working as Colonial Fleet Special Investigations Division, Artemesia Largo.

She’s in the middle of getting introduced to her intelligence crew (she’s the intelligence NCOIC), and the other characters are going about their business. The ship’s command master chief, Ajax Giadis, comes across the chief engineer getting together a work gang to find a missing member of their team. Deckhand Reslou was posted to check and replace damaged life support sensors, requiring her to work behind the bulkheads in the tight, dark workspaces. It’s a lot of girders and the occasional catwalk, but it’s a hazardous place. A lot of the young kids don’t use their safety harnesses because it takes too long to clip on and off; people falling several levels is not unheard of.

The chief spots the FNG, Largo, and “hey-you”s her into aiding in the search. They find her body after half an hour of climbing around in the guts of the ship. (Of course, they find her; they’re in the credits!) She has been beaten sharply on the back of the head with a c-spanner, and fell several levels. She had then been dragged and deposited in an overhead air vent over a general storage locker. She is taken for forensics to the infirmary while the deck gang — the only people in the area — are held for questioning. The commander, in temporary NPC mode, assigns the CAG (a PC) to oversee the investigation, as he has uncanny instincts and they are in orbit around Picon with other ships and they aren’t running CAP.

The rest of the adventure is classic murder investigation. They don’t immediately interrogate  the 11 other members of the work gang. MAJ Muir, the CAG, is also ship’s chaplain and he chooses an unorthodox approach of doing “grief counseling” to get an initial read on the people. Only six have the right foot size for the boot marks in the oil and crud at the murder scene, only one transferred with the girl (she was only aboard for a week) from Scorpia’s Argenutm Bay Military Reservation. None are covered in blood (head wounds bleed copiously) and the perpetrator had obviously carried the murdered girl to her resting place. Two are Tauron and their tattoos suggest top her Ha’la’tha involvement, one is a massive “East German female weightlifter” type welder from Caprica, and the other is a bitchy Virgonian. Largo gets locked onto Deckhand Heraklea — a name taken by a lot of the Heraclitus regime after they were deposed following the Cylon War. Muir uses his Intuition to ask “is it Armov?” (the other Tauron.) The answer is yes…now they need proof.

The master chief heads up the search for the missing work jumpsuit that the murderer must have ditched in a relatively small distance from crime scene to their billets. They also turn over the victim and suspects’ lockers and foot lockers. In the victim’s footlocker, they find evidence that someone had taped a large amount of canaba inside for transit up to the ship. Drug smuggling — but was she a willing mule or no? They find the blood-soaked workvest in an access hatch behind one of the toilets in a general head not far from the scene, along with the c-spanner. The work clothes are Armov’s

With the evidence in hand, they go to arrest Armov — portrayed as a creepy, coiled spring sort of bad guy (think classic Russian mobster) — but he twigs they’re onto him, takes one of the other work gang hostage and tries to get to the launch bays, demanding a raptor. The characters give chase, bullets fly, and they manage to surround him. Largo puts a bullet through him, clearing the hostage, and Muir puts him down with a tight double tap.

Eventually, they find out from his Tauron buddy Heraklea that she was used unwittingly as a mule, but she discovered and flushed the canaba. Armov killed her for it.

Here’s a snap I took with my HTC One V a few nights back while out for a ride in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill. I stopped for a drink at il Vicino, a swanky pizzeria, and decided to get creative-like…

Here’s my new Thruxton, Trixie, looking sexy:

I find it nicely atmospheric, as with these…same time, same place:

Back to gaming-related stuff tomorrow night or Tuesday morning — I should have an after action report for our Battlestar Galactica game covering a murder mystery about the group’s ship.

That  almost sounded dirty, didn’t it? I took Trixie, the new Triumph Thruxton (named for Speed Racer’s girlfriend) in to get her fender taken off and replaced with an under the seat cat’s eye LED tail light. The turn signals were moved, as well, and mounted on the shocks — they, and the turn signals up front, are British Custom’s brused chrome bullet lights. Next, the mirrors are going in favor of smaller bar end mirrors. The napoleons she’s got now are just to clunky. After that, the fender is going to get the triple stripe on the rest of the bike to complete the look.

Here’s she is:

UPDATE: Ooo… I found the style of mirror I was looking for, and adjustable levers from Dime City Cycles for cheaper than I could buy either a set of levers or mirrors from the local joints. I jut might have Trixie finished sooner than I thought…