FB6 Came Tumbling After

by on February 6, 2014 at 10:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After the desert adventure, Patch and I decided it was time to get back to Festung Budapest. The sixth scenario features a Hungarian countertack up the hill on the SW map. Since I attacked up the hill last time, I took the defending Russians and set up what I called the ‘wet paper bag defense’.

The Russians get 9.5 squads plus a 57mm AT Gun to defend a fairly long front line, with a couple machine guns, a light MTR and a DC thrown in. The Hungarians get 6 first line squads, with another 12 conscript squads entering the first turn with three German JagdPanzer IVs in support, with a goal of getting two GO squads to level 5 hexes in 6.5 turns. Coming up with a Russian defense that had decent coverage was a challenge, but the Axis have bigger problems. Not only do their reinforcements have further to go at a lower speed (thanks to the reduced movement of inexperienced personnel), but the leadership situation is bad (one 7-0 leader for the entire set of twelve squads, and two more for the starting six), and the AFVs are automatically recalled at the start of turn 5. There is ground snow to slow down the advance up the hill, and Axis forces are at Ammunition Shortage level 4 (by far the worst we’ve seen).

Patch noted that the record, while a bit thin, was heavily in the Russian’s favor, so I gave him the Axis balance, which lets one of the AFVs set up with the initial force, instead of entering on turn 1. The main force set up on columns HH and LL, with two squads and the JgPz in between, and the reinforcements scattered from EE to MM with the two remaining AFVs entering on the main roads.

Patch, not liking the options for crossing the street, opened up with a 8 +1 attack from the LL23 stack, and my 458+DC squad barely passed the resulting 1MC. The on-board PzIV moved into II25, locking down my main defensive stack in the area after the squad failed a PAATC to try to Street Fight it (given that it has sN9, that may have been a good thing…).

Rather than stick around for a CC with a couple squads and a leader, or just the sN, my 458 self-broke and routed away, carrying the 8-1 with them.

FB6 1A
Full map, Axis Turn 1. North is to the left.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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The Fourth Part of the World

by on January 22, 2014 at 6:59 pm
Posted In: Books, History

In 1507, new world maps were something of a booming business. The Portuguese had been discovering more about Africa for decades, the Spanish had recently found a number of islands, and a larger landmass across the Atlantic, and the English had found a long shoreline to the west of Greenland.

Since Asia was mostly known to be a northerly continent, that last was still presumed to be part of Asia, but the Spanish mainland, in the tropics, was starting to look like something else again. In 1507 a new map was published, designed to put together all the pieces of the world, as they were becoming known. It was a large map, meant to be mounted and used as huge wall map, and it marked the southern landmass “America”, after Amerigo Vespucci, who was known to have visited the landmass a year before Columbus did on his third voyage by a letter written by him that was being reprinted across Europe.

The map, made to be used, largely disappeared, and it was only in the nineteenth century that its existence as the first use of the word “America” for the New World was discovered. Toby Lester’s book is about this map—and everything else that led to it. This begins with medieval mappaemundi, and works its way through Marco Polo, the Italian and German humanists, and the dawn of the Age of Exploration.

It’s a very entertaining and informative book all the way, and gives a good overview of the careers of Columbus and Vespucchi, and explains the letter that has caused much gnashing of teeth over the centuries, and kept Columbus from being a major cartographical feature, even if it did not keep him out of the history books.

It is most likely not written by Vespucci at all. It takes pieces of two of his letters, some details from one of Columbus’ reports, adds sex and cannibals, and did a brisk business for local printing presses across the continent. It’s kind of a early-sixteenth century equivalent to the DaVinci Code.

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The Advanced Set

by on January 5, 2014 at 12:32 pm
Posted In: GURPS

One of the first major supplemental releases for GURPS 4th Ed was GURPS Powers. The introduction for the book states that it is a ‘how to’ guide, and can be considered to be Basic Set: Powers. I disagree with this sentiment; it’s really GURPS Advanced Set.

I first came to this conclusion before getting the book. I noticed while cruising around the SJG forums that any ‘how do I do this’ question that didn’t have a fairly straightforward answer invariably ended up referring to Powers, if only in passing. In general, it is meant to be a pure tool kit replacement for Psionics and Supers from the 3rd Ed line, with wider applicability. Since that time, there have been some ‘worked example’ products based on the principles in Powers, most notably Psionic Powers.

GURPS 4th Ed can boil down to a very simple game, but is very much a system where the more effort you put in, the more you get out of it. This is the core of GURPS Powers. The central concept of the book is providing a logical framework to plug ‘powers’ into. In this case, ‘powers’ are abilities (which may be represented by several different advantages) that stem from some special power source (magic, chi, etc).

Instead of just letting a character take a number of different abilities, and tie them together with ‘special effects’ (if that), Powers proposes a structure that explicitly ties them together as a package. This then allows the introduction of concepts like shutting down the entire package with an ‘anti’ power, or defenses that only work against another type of power (like a fire power melting ice attacks), allowing complicated interactions between abilities to be defined ahead of time instead of ignored (because there’s nothing in the mechanics to support it), or done purely on ad hoc basis.

With some time spent working things out (or even revising powers later, and adjusting point totals when good ideas come up), it seems to me that GURPS can now do better genre-emulation of superheroes than Champions in character creation. (At least Champions 4th, I don’t know if the later editions have added anything to help guide the interplay of powers/special effects.) And this is even better for universes with a more limited set of wide-ranging powers (say, The Last Airbender universe).

There is, of course, a cost. To do this properly, the GM needs to spend the time and effort to define the ‘sources’ and ‘foci’ of the powers in the game, and quite likely, the overall structure of the abilities in the powers. This is extra time, effort, and math. But, after putting in the effort, you have much better support for all the interactions.

Some 60+ pages are spent on advanced discussion of existing advantages and modifiers in the context of powers, and a couple of new, potentially very abuseable advantages are introduced. (The existing ones also get some interesting extensions, such as the version of injury tolerance that replicates the type of zombie that keeps going after being dismembered, including outlining the abilities of the various separated body parts.)

Other parts of this book include a wide range of pre-worked-out examples. This ranges from the modifiers that many powers would use (and since these often make them less useful by defining situations where they won’t work, they are usually modest cost breaks), the types of abilities many popular power types should have associated with them, to detailed abilities built out of the base advantages and disadvantages of GURPS to better suit things often seen in fiction. And then there is the usual very well done discussion of how to handle things in a campaign (including a rundown of abilities that can interfere with, or short-circuit, an adventure, and how to prevent it becoming a major problem). And there is a chapter of optional rules for use with powers, such as the possibility of a power being crippled (say, by over-use). And a chapter discussing the nature of genres that typically have powers as a major focus (from mythic fantasy to superheroes).

Overall, this is a ‘crunch’ book, mostly useful for GURPS 4th Ed, and a very well done one at that. But… I can’t help thinking that the power structure ideas here could be taken and adapted to other general point-based systems. It would take even more work, but this may be nearly unique as a crunch book that could actually serve more than one system.

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2013 in Review

by on January 1, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Life, MMO

Well, happy New Year to all reading this. 2013 was a pretty good year overall. Nothing major went wrong, no new equipment failures (though I was scared for my desktop machine for a while, like I mentioned in the last blog), and my debt is down even after paying for an expensive new machine.

Azuna is working out fine, after about three weeks. Windows 8.1 works pretty well as a touch-centric OS, but I just don’t see its interface as being viable on a desktop. Needless to say, Horo is sticking with Windows 7 (which has the best looking UI I’ve seen). At two pounds, it’s a bit heavy as an eReader, but it does work as one. We had the gang over last Saturday and played a couple turns of Virgin Queen, and I used Azuna to have a PDF of the current rules open, and the ability to search for terms came in handy at least twice.

Mostly, I’ve been taking it to work, and set it up as my podcast listening machine. Normally, I have to schedule everything out so that I don’t start a podcast that I can’t finish before I go home and turn the machine off. Now, it’s all on Azuna, and I could continue on the train. (I haven’t actually done that yet, though I did finish listening to one at home.) The first day, Azuna ran out of power around noon from running the WiFi continuously, but other than that has managed to get through a day without being plugged in. It did need to be plugged in during VQ, and I’m not really sure what I did that drained it so much faster. I’ve tested Europa Universalis IV (my newest non-MMO game), and it loads noticeably faster on Azuna than on Horo, but it really needs a mouse to play without frustration.

Speaking of podcasts, I had pretty much run out of things to listen to around March and decided to subscribe to a few new things, and re-listen to a couple of the better podcasts (notably Three Moves Ahead, and The History of Rome). Along with discovering more new good history podcasts along the way, this has taken a lot longer than I thought, and my listening is now in mid-May, with some… 500 episodes to go. It’s a good thing I don’t listen to current events.

As usual, I’ve had the last week plus off. I haven’t gotten as much as I would like done, as Neverwinter scuttled a fair amount of free time with a winter event that offered a nice reward: a green-quality healing companion (which I’ve been needing), but it was very labor-intensive to get the reward. I finally did it for my main character yesterday (the event has another week to go, but I realized I wasn’t going to have the time to spend after going back to work), but haven’t had any chance to go adventuring on my other two characters past the first day off.

They also released a little mini-game for the web portal of Neverwinter a couple weeks ago (Adventures on the Sword Coast). Your various companions form a party and go through a small dungeon or other hostile area, defeating encounters as they go. It’s actually a fairly clever simple dice game. Something to do while managing the crafting on the web portal.

The main event has been trying out Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. There was actually a sale just before Christmas, so me and Smudge got it for the price of the one-month subscription that comes with the game.

First: it’s pretty. Not only is the world pretty, but the modeling is well done. A few years ago, Smudge pondered doing a blog featuring all the technical glitches with modeling and and animation that she spots in the MMOs she plays. I wish she’d done it, it’s the type of technical criticism the industry desperately needs. WoW could have kept her going with weekly posts easily, Neverwinter is probably worse (but has fewer things overall to have problems), and SW:TOR is only somewhat better than WoW (as I recall), but Square knows its design and animation, so there’s very little to pick out here. On the other hand, there’s only voice acting on occasion (and oddly, you’ll get three lines, and then the rest of the scene is silent), and the questing is straight ‘take the quest’ without the conversation options of most recent MMOs.

Game-wise… it is laid back. It’s a much calmer and slower MMO than we’ve gotten used to, and shows a lot of its FF roots. Took a little bit to gel with the combat system, but now that I know what to expect, it’s not bad (we’ll have to wait on whether it’s good for higher level, I think). The multiclassing is interesting (especially as all the crafting and gathering are their own classes. The first few hours are spent in the main city without any combat going on, but it’s opening out into the standard combat-quest heavy MMO. Smudge is loving the crafting system, while I’m less enamored of it (I do actually kind of like the long-term management model of SWTOR and Neverwinter; now if only they didn’t kill them with other major problems). I’m not sure if we’ll be subscribing yet, but we’ve got another couple weeks to figure it out. I have discontinued my SWTOR subscription for the moment, and money is mostly going to Neverwinter at the moment (and we really need to get back to the campaigns there; darn winter festival).

Christmas itself was fairly good. I spent more on presents than I really wanted to, but it was all worth it. I didn’t get much myself. Some money, a neat shirt, things like that. Except Smudge, who wanted to get me some Kindle eBooks to encourage me to use Azuna, and made a great card to go with them after fighting with the Amazon website for a couple hours.

My game purchases were a bit slow this year, with nothing at all until March. I did, for the first time, pre-order a computer game this year (Europa Universalis IV, which was worth it). My board game purchases are slowing down to a mere trickle, though I am playing around with the concept of updating my older ASL materials to the current versions (which do look better), but that’s an expensive project. As it is, I expect to be purchasing some RPG materials on PDF, now that I have a portable platform for it.

Looking at the blog again, I had 58 posts with forty-seven tagged as gaming, nineteen review, eighteen ASL, nine books, eight history, seven Paradox, six C&C Ancients, four D&D, Forgotten Realms, three Europa Universalis, Space Empires, two life, Hearts of Iron, and one each horo, azuna, Crusader Kings, GTS, Victoria, SFB, FtG, CoR, Clash of Giants, Pursuit of Glory, NQoS, Circus Maximus, Red Empire, Flying Colors, Dominant Species.

The beginning of the year was dominated by the end of the series of old ASL games getting posted. The number of posts is down for the year, but without the weekly ASL series, that’s not a surprise. I can probably expect to drop closer to 50 next year. But the real interesting part is the ‘review’ section. It is only up a few from last year, but the number of books is down (I read fewer Osprey books last year), and I’ve started reviewing games again. Finally getting the Paradox series going is very good, though they all end up longer than I initially intend. But it’s a detailed look at how the games work, so they’re going to be long. I need to get back to EU: Rome.

I’m still ‘Reading My Way Through History’. I’m stalled at present by some books on earlier periods (this happens more and more often for some reason…). Currently, I’m reading The Fourth Part of the World, a very good book on the Waldseemüler map of 1517 and a number of related subjects. But my ‘current date’ has moved up from 1500 to 1600, so it’s still real progress.

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A Week Without Wargames and a New Computer

by on December 14, 2013 at 12:36 pm
Posted In: Life

Okay, time to update people on a few things:

Last week (from 11/28-12/7) was my annual trip down to see my parents. Usually, a few blog posts come out of that, as I play some wargames with my dad, and write up session reports about them.

Well, for what I think is the second time in the years I’ve been doing this, we never got around to it. Which is a pity, since I was hoping to try out the GCACW series with my dad and the copy of Stonewall in the Valley that Mark got me a while ago. But, no.

I did actually play some wargames. My usual round with Patch continued, and we finished off “Blazin’ Chariots” and started “Came Tumbling After” for ASL, and got in a couple games of “Sepeia 494 BC” for CC:A in between. I had also agreed to start a PBeM game of scenario 5, “In Sight of the Volga” from Beyond Valor, and got that off to a good start during the week.

Most of the time, I played computer games. I floated between several things, starting with EU: Rome (which I need to get back to, as that’s my next Paradox review). I’ve had a game going for a while; and keep running out of available manpower way too easily. I’ve started outlining the review, but have a long ways to go.

Installed and fiddled around with Hearts of Iron III (the next review, need to start studying up). The tech-tree oddities of the first game are back, not a great sign, though there’s also interesting things going on there. Having trouble with assigning carrier air groups to carriers so the UI shows it correctly everywhere; another reversion to problems of the first game.

Fiddled around with Crusader Kings II, mostly because my dad showed some interest. Started a game as William before the Christmas 1066 date he officially crowned himself, but after the main campaign after Hastings. Found the game already had given him the title. Over a decade, I’ve gotten older, beaten down a few rebellions, got Maine taken off me by Robert ‘the Old’ of France, swooped down after France had a bunch of troubles and asserted Matilda’s (weak) claim to the throne of France. So, now England is ruled by William, and France by his wife Matilda. Pity it can’t last….

My dad was also talking about space 4X games, and I told him about Sword of the Stars. Pointed him at my review, and started playing it myself to demonstrate it. Played the Humans in one game, and couldn’t get anywhere. Any time I thought I had things under control, another disaster (AI player or random event) would wipe out a colony. I think I’m winning against my main enemy, but ran out of patience. The second game, I took the Morrigi in a more spread-out map. Man, they’re given a large number of free technologies. It’s gone much better. Took over my local area, and proceeded to the core. I’ve gotten into a three-way alliance, taken care of a major swarmer infestation, and am the biggest thing going, slowly trimming back the Hivers in second place. I’m still poking my way at this game, even though I really need to get back to EU:R.

The usual things were done as well: Saw my Aunt Ruth a couple times (seems to be doing okay). I sorted out my dad’s printer problems, and gave him an early Christmas present by upgrading his RAM (only had 1GB, which is barely sufficient in a Win 7 machine). Visited a ‘remaindered’ bookstore, and picked up a couple things: The Fourth Part of the World, and Bitter Victory (my dad also gave me a spare copy of the apropos Stonewall in the Valley). And I visited Mike & Elaina (and Rowan!) the following weekend. Not a lot to say there, they’re doing about as well as can be expected when the central heat goes out just before a really nasty early cold snap. Managed to geek out with Mike a couple times, as well as the usual talking with Elaina, and being shown Rowan’s latest toys.

On the way home on Sunday, I got a bit lost (missed an extra turn, and had breakfast where I was supposed to turn, so in the end, I took all four roads from that intersection), and took a couple dips way too fast. The rental car was fine (couldn’t see any damage), but in the trunk my hard suitcase clobbered my computer.

The case was visibly bent. It bulged to one side at the front. I had the entire trip home to wonder what electronics were wrecked, and whether my hard drives had survived.

I had Monday off as it was. I planned to take the day easy, get a couple things done, but now I had something much more important to do. I started shopping around; I needed a new case, and while I had a spare available, I was thinking about getting one that would come with a better power supply than my current one. While I was debating the possibilities of what to get if the worst had happened, Smudge pointed out that I could just get a Surface Pro. I had been planning to get a Kindle Fire HDX to be an eReader that can handle large-format documents and other tasks, and that would cost no more than that plus the base components of a new system (motherboard, processor, RAM). We stopped by the Microsoft store, and had a very nice long talk about MMOs in general, and the ability of a Surface to run them in particular (he didn’t really know in general, but had some things to share).

I ended up emptying the spare case of all previous components and step-by-step transferring Horo over to it. Amazingly, everything was fine. Horo is in a smaller, sturdier case now, and is just fine.

However, I still ended up letting Smudge talk me into getting a Surface Pro 2 instead of a Kindle Fire HDX. I went back to the Microsoft Store that evening and spent a lot of money. They got a free up-sell by being out of the base model.

Most of a week later, I’m still getting used to Windows 8.1, but I’m getting there. The machine is very snappy, and I’ve been taking  it to work. Haven’t done a lot on it. Part of the goal is to use as an eReader, but it is a bit heavy for that (and I’m still in the middle of several physical books, so I haven’t really done that much yet. The hard keyboard works pretty well, though the thing occasionally seems to read intent to click on a bare breath of touch, and the rest of the time needs pretty deliberate touch. I’ve switched my podcast listening over to it, so I don’t have to time everything out so much, and can continue an episode on the train (and listened to a couple while writing this). I’ve installed EU:R, and it seems to run quite well; the sound from the built-in speakers is surprisingly good.

So, meet my first mobile machine, Azuna:

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