The Black Fan. Classic Call of Cthulhu Shanghai Style.

Got the Bank Holiday off with a bang today with a Call of Cthulhu all dayer.  Messrs Bryant & Johnston made the trip to HGA Towers to become their alter egos Henry Proctor & Gabriel Esterhazy of The Shanghai Municipal Police.
Previously these pillars of the community had been involved in the desperate business of "The Box that Sings" an affair that had left Esterhazy temporarily institutionalized and both of them in bad odour with their superiors. Luckily for them a nameless benefactor had used his influence to involve them in the search for a missing bookseller which was to ultimately lead to an upturn in their prospects.
Here are the duo in more detail.

After some confusion at the scene of the crime mainly caused by excessive thinking the wheat was quietly separated from the chaff and the net drew tighter around the perpetrators. A visit to a warehouse owned by The 21 Dollar Mob uncovered further clues to the victims whereabouts, the extraction of which were facilitated by a combination of Esterhazy's violent conduct & Proctor's poor marksmanship. After a brief return to Police Headquarters the by now tired and pissed off duo dropped all pretense of subtlety and stormed into a specialist brothel/ cult centre with all guns blazing and in a stupendous display of marksmanship and pure dumb luck dispatched every cultist in sight, dispelled the magic of The Black Fan & killed The Handmaiden of the Bloated Woman and rescued the kidnapped bookseller. Unfortunately the leader of the cult escaped by bending the fabric of time and space around him but he was denied further  access to The Seven Cryptic Books of H'san by dint of his hurried exit.

All in all a great day was had by everyone, the fact that a whole day passed so quickly being a fair indicator. From my point of view gamesmastering again set me to rights on a few points:
1. If I'm going to get back into old school or for that matter any other kind of roleplaying its going to be
a.) Based on investigation / deduction because thats what my player base enjoy (and so do I).
b.) Its going to be a lot of work for me.
2. Because its going to be a lot of work for me it will have to be occasional  day long sessions rather than frequent i.e weekly or fortnightly evening sessions. Given the nature of 1a & b this is probably a more coherent format.
3. A quick straw poll on the possibility of running a pure old school D&D campaign produced a negative result, but that blow was softened somewhat by the acknowledgement that a one off all-dayer complete with scenery and miniatures and the possibility of in game character advancement would be considered in a more positive fashion. On reflection and considering time constraints etc this is probably  a good result all round, frankly anything else would be prone to just peter out. Better perhaps to go for less frequent but more spectacular efforts, that at least is how it feels at this moment in time.

As it stands those are my thoughts, who knows a good nights sleep may cause a re-think but personally I always feel that first impressions count.

More Gelatinous Madness.

This has now officially become an obsession, the quest to create the perfect Gelatinous Cube. Here is the latest effort:

As you can see this Mark II cube is somewhat larger than his Mark I brethren, hence the use of a Dwarven Forge corridor to house him. I'm getting there quietly I think; this version is nearer to the 10x10x10' cube described in the Moldvay Basic D&D rulebook and the sheer size gives it some impact  compared with my earlier ice cube efforts. I'm still not happy with the finish though, the current batch of clear resin doesn't seem to de-gas as well as it might leading to the slightly 'fizzy' look; also this disguises somewhat the old helmet and coins held within, which again have settled to close to the surfaces to look right.
Hopefully Mark III will be better, back to the drawing board!

Skeletal Swivel Gunners.

Here are a couple of vignettes I did a few years back for a Zombie Pirates of the Black Coast Army. I never completed enough figures for the project to make it to the gaming table and besides my interest in all things GW was on the wane by this point in time. However I think these boys deserve another crack of the whip so they may yet get incorporated in the Retro Dungeon project.

These were constructed from the plastic empire boxed set &plastic skeletons boxed sets from circa mid/late nineties with gun barrels sourced fro my spares box, they started life as brass and timber ships guns but the provenance is lost in the mists of time.

A Short Gelatinous Cube Tutorial.

Having been frankly appalled at how much a decent gelatinous cube costs if bought commercially I decided to have a go myself:
1. Raid the girlfriends kitchen ware collection for a glass ice cube:

Or you could purchase one from a cookery shop, florists etc for a couple of quid.

2. Make a mould from two part silicon rubber, I bought mine from TOMPS here in the U.K. they have a very extensive and useful online shop. The cube was hot glued onto the base of a plastic business card box but any watertight container would do. I do stress watertight though, two part silicon rubber will find even the tinniest hole and escape leaving a horrible blue mess.
This will now require 24 hours in a warm place to cure. You should be left with something like this:

The glass ice cube can now be removed from the mould box ( hot glue remember, the glass peels away from it easily) and returned to the correct drawer in the kitchen.

3. Mix up an appropriate amount of clear florists resin, this I also bought from TOMPS and pour into the mould. Again leave for 24 hours in a warm place to cure. It is advisable to put a cover over the top to stop dust and small insects getting in, though the latter could be quite cool.
You can also at this stage add any debris into the cube, bones, coins weapons etc, but beware anything too heavy will sink to the bottom very quickly and will look a little odd in the finished product.

Below are some of the finished Cubes fashioned by yours truly.

The top cube has had a small amount of gold glitter added to simulate coins, the glitter elements are actually round which adds to the effect. The lower cube has had a few offcuts of plastic skeleton added.

This is a somewhat fresher victim, again an amalgum of plastic skeleton bits, unfortunately ha floated to the top of the resin during curing and has broken through the surface. This illustrates in reverse what happens when you put heavy stuff in the resin.

If anyones interested I'm quite happy to knock a cubes out for a small consideration plus postage. Just let me know.

Regards HGA.

More Pulp Figures & Some Not Very Retro GW Plastics.

As an appendix to the last post here are a few more miniatures from my RPG related collection.
First up the nefarious Cult of the Black Fan & some ne'er do wells from the back streets of Shanghai.

All of these are Pulp Figures from the talented hands of Bob Murch.

Moving on to the Grim & Dark world of The Empire, a few plastic figures from G.W. These were created from left overs in the spares box so I can't remember which sets they are from.

The scenery comes all the way from Croatia courtesy of Tabletop World, admittedly its expensive but it is very good.

The On-going Dilemma.

Still trying to decide in which direction to take the retro RPG project, although I have nailed it down to two candidates both of which I have material for.
1. Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing.
Back in the day this was very much on the radar for me but with my usual good timing I started polytechnic the same year my roleplaying friends at home took this up. I have over the last couple of years picked up some bits and pieces for it quite cheaply on Ebay and it does look worth a shot.

The investigative aspect is a big attraction here, my current ( I hesitate to use the word regular) role playing group have played Call of Cthulhu on and off for a long time and seem keen on this style of adventure so thats a major plus point and I personally really like the renaissance feel to the setting.

Not sure about the cross dressing goblins though.

2. Call of Cthulhu. This is a favourite of mine, despite only starting to GM it in any quantity in the last decade. The seeds of a possible campaign have been sown by last years Shanghai game and the players are still alive in a real and figurative sense so thats a real goer, the only problem is finding the time and imagination to follow up what was a decent scenario. That part of my aging brain seems to have atrophied in the last few years and I can't fall back on any of the published stuff I own because frankly most of it is rubbish.

A Quick Showcase on some Pulp Figures.

This is a long overdue showcase of the excellent work done by Mr. Bob Murch of Pulp Figures. The ne,er do wells photographed above performed admirably as bit parts in my Call of Cthulhu games a few years back.