R.I.P. Bob Dorough

Bob Dorough, who filled my Saturday mornings back in the 1970s with those wonderful Schoolhouse Rock songs, has died at the age of 94.  Man, he taught a lot of things to a lot of kids!

 

Earth Day

The Earth photographed by Voyage 1 on 14 February 1990

"That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. … There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world."
-Carl Sagan

Campaign map

While looking for a different file, I came across this map for a campaign that I never ran.  I had completely forgotten about it, but now I'm thinking that I may need to recycle this for my next DCC game.

Nerd Joke 2

Nerd Joke

Life (and death) in the DCC funnel

Here is a quick illustration that I did to explain the DCC funnel to my group. :-)

This pretty much sums up the sort of campaign that I would like to run

Miniatures Monday - Riding the Wastelands

I've managed to finish another car for Gaslands.  When I started this one, I felt as if it was going to be a bit of a cheat since the car already had somewhat of a post-apocalyptic feel to it, but after dismantling it, stripping it and repainting it, I feel like I put enough work into it for it not to feel as if I'd cheated.

Every car needs a bonnet skull!

The wastelands are a dirty place.

A side-by-side with an unmodified version.

Well, this may help me in my ongoing efforts to avoid further lead poisoning. :-)

Mirliton miniatures is doing a Kickstarter to reproduce some of the Grenadier classic gold box miniatures!  Yes, that is a look of surprise! ;-)

I finally gave Roll20 a try in an actual game last night...

I have to admit, Roll20 was really a good experience.  It won't replace actually getting around a table to play, but it felt much closer to actually being there than I expected it to.  I think using the 3d dice really helped a lot, and I loved being able to play ambient cave sounds from the jukebox.  The ability to draw on the maps is very helpful as well.   Sadly, Ranus the warrior and Fellipe the Mouse met their ends quite quickly to a trio of cannibalistic Thung.  Fortunately their sons Ranus jr. and Fellipe jr. fared much better and even managed to avenge the deaths of their fathers.

A rough night in the dungeon

It took me about ten minutes to figure out the right keys to use to move around in Orthanc, and less than one minute for this Level 1 Man to kill me...

There's a PS4 gathering dust across the hall, and this is what I'm playing...

Gaslands - The next to the last of the V8 Interceptors

A piece of history.

 I know that it's not the most interesting looking car for Gaslands, but I really wanted  a Ford Falcon XB in my stable of cars in honor of Mad Max, so I built this one.  Of course, it doesn't have a blower or extra fuel tanks, but maybe the next one will.  I lifted the wheels a bit as they seemed too low for what I was going for, and I'm pretty pleased with how the dust effect turned out.

The wastelands are a dusty place.

Glass in the rear window is for chumps.

Gaslands - Riding the Wastelands part 5: My first completed car

As often seems to be the case with me, the thing that I started last is the first to be completed.  The car that I accidentally stepped on and had to repair  is now painted and ready to roll.  I give you 5 views of my first Gaslands car, The Skull Crusher (not a very original name, I know).  It's got that Mad Max feel that I was going for.  Overall, I'm pretty happy with how the car turned out, and I think that it ended up even better than my pre-stepping on it concept.

There were a lot of holes to patch...

The Skull Ram!

Hand made large caliber bullet holes

Everyone needs a skull on their boot

Not bad for my first try

Gaslands - Riding the Wastelands part 4: Ready to paint

Well, I now have 3 cars primed and ready for painting, although I'll admit that the middle one feels like a bit of a cheat, even though I added the mini-gun and hood skull. :-)

Gaslands - Riding the Wastelands Part 3: Ready to paint and happy accidents (2 cars!)

So I've primed my first Gaslands car and dry-fitted it to make sure that everything is good prior to painting it.  I think that it looks pretty cool with a flamethrower on the hood and a giant turbo-bosted engine in the rear.  I think that it looks good, but it doesn't quite have the Mad max feel that I was hoping for.  Still, I'm looking forward to painting it. 

As for the more Mad Max feel, I got that on another car quite by mistake.  I had a plan for making a '69 Mustang into a car with giant speakers on it and a skull ram.  I was well on my way to realizing my vision of a death-metal racer when disaster struck (or so I thought).  I had stripped down the car and drilled out holes for all of the accessories.  Then I stepped on the car...  Quite by accident, but man was I bummed out.  The roof bent and one of the roof pillars snapped off.  I'd had this happen to my Hot Wheels cars a few times when I was a kid, and that was generally the end of them.  But this time I got to thinking.  Those dudes in the wastelands wouldn't just scrap their car when it got jacked up.  After the apocalypse, there aren't going to be factories building new cars, so they would have to fix what they had.  In that spirit, I started on a revised plan for the car, and this is what I ended up with.  First, I made new roof pillars.  Then I added patches over the big holes.  I added a few bullet holes in the passenger side door, and replaced all of the glass with wire mesh.  I even gave it the ram that I'd planned to use for the original design.  Strangely enough, I'm liking this car better than what I had originally planned!  I'm really looking forward to getting this one primed and painted, maybe even more than the first car.