[Misc] Route 66, Cat Issues, Art Block, etc.
Art Block:
I still have trouble motivating myself to do so much as sketch anything, though a major complication is all the traveling. I invested in a smaller Wacom "Art Pad" that is easier to take with me, as it can tuck into the laptop bag (vs. requiring its own oversized bag as a carry-on), but so far I've done little with it save for some touch-up work on diagrams for work. No real "art art." One of the facilitators has requested a picture of a car of a particular model for a thank-you card, so I'll have to snap out of it and work on that one of these evenings. (Not enough time during the daytime, while traveling or in project.)
Cat Issues:
The cat is still in a sad state. A sad, VERY EXPENSIVE state. Gwendel has to keep taking the cat in for appointments (and each visit costs $$$). The operation removed a big patch of the cat's skin over one ear, which is a frightful thing to see. Right now, the cat has TWO "cones of shame" -- one that is strapped on in such a way that we simply cannot remove it (not in any way that we could put it back on, anyway), and which is smooth enough on the inside that it doesn't scour the ear the way the previous one did with its adjustment holes whenever the cat shakes it around. The second, bigger one goes on to essentially act as a second line of defense, though it has to be removed for the cat to eat. (We've discovered that the cat, in fact, CAN manage to eat up a few morsels even with this on, when sufficiently motivated -- i.e., when we've been told NOT to feed the cat, and somehow the cat finds a few lost pieces behind the furniture on the dining room floor and manages to vacuum them up -- but most of the time requires assistance.)
Gwendel has shot down all of my proposals for names so far, despite insisting that I need to name the cat, since it's "my" cat. I'm still partial to "Trip," though Gwendel thinks it's a cruel name. "Ninja" is too silly. She has proposed "Loki," because the cat causes so much trouble. I don't see it as any particular malevolence on the cat's part, but ... eh, whatever. I'm not going to object, so I guess that will be that.
RPG Stuff:
Although I slapped a bit of paint onto some of the new Warhammer Quest minis for Digital_Rampage, all the travel (and then all the cat issues to deal with once home) pretty much precluded much time spent doing detail work. He ended up taking the figures back in their woefully unfinished state for an upcoming convention, though at least I got them assembled and I used two pluck-foam APC boxes for transportation (with some room for further expansion, as apparently there are already add-ons for new alternate hero characters).
CT has been enthusiastic about Fallout (the only one in the group, sadly, who seems to be) and I've fixed up a few Fallout-themed minis for him, and painted up some old Armorcast ruined walls he's had since the 1990s. He's planning on running his own Fallout-themed game using the Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars rules, since so much of it will easily apply for Fallout with a few changes in "trappings." I'm sticking to Savage Worlds, though I have a bit of work to do. The "Savage Fallout" rules that I used as a guideline for my one-shots for Necronomicon are fine and all, but there are a lot of things I find questionable for all the Edges, Hindrances, and race packages for character creation and advancement. It's one thing when I'm writing up pre-gens for all the PCs, since those character creation/advancement rules would be moot after I apply my own "editing" in character creation choices, but for an actual campaign it would be a headache if I hand the players some custom rules and then keep prohibiting this or that choice.
Therefore, I've been writing up my own guide. The previous writer clearly knew his stuff with the Fallout setting, but a lot of the design choices led to some really weird balancing issues. For example, some choices would let you start off with a lot of bonus skills or greater starting attributes, but then you "pay" for them by advancing at a slower rate than everyone else, or being charged more for attribute increases, etc. I'm not really keen on that, as it's really the hardest sort of thing to "balance." For a one-shot, it would be a no-brainer choice: You get your goodies, and since it's a one-shot, you'll never be around to "pay" for it later. For a long-running campaign, the longer it runs, the worse the deal gets, because that one-time benefit never pays off more, and the penalty is indefinite. It's like getting a loan on a house, except that you make a deal to give fixed payments for it FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. It's the sort of setup that I can't help but imagine breeding some resentment. And then, there are the character choices such as being a "Glowing One," and the drawback is that everyone traveling with you gets daily doses of radiation poisoning (while you are personally immune). Gee, a Hindrance that everyone ELSE in your party has to pay for. How could this possibly adversely affect PC party cohesion?
Adventure-wise, I've been internet-hunting when time permits, and taking notes. I couldn't help but notice that the "Long 15" that figures into Fallout: New Vegas happens to cross with the historic Route 66 for a distance -- and if there's anything that might exemplify Americana of the yesterwhen of 1950s-1960s or so aesthetics, Route 66 would figure in. Therefore, I've been reorganizing the encounter ideas I have into three "phases" for the campaign.
Phase 1, I'm calling "The Long 15." The Nuka-Cola truck appears to be on a recurring route between the Angels' Boneyard (former Los Angeles) in the NCR, and New Vegas, using former I-15 as its route. As the PCs have hopped on board, one of the PCs (whoever has the Repair skill) has been fixing the truck up a bit, to get some of its onboard creature comforts in working order, and in the process managed to get some of its old systems operating again -- including its onboard transponder. This results in a number of encounters when the truck hits the old I-15 superhighway (or remnants thereof) and long-dormant automated systems along the highway respond to the truck's presence. Though I plan on having a few locations along the way, the "centerpiece" will be a big running Mad-Max style road battle with retrofuturistic weirdness (such as an auto-carwash that operates while the vehicle is still barreling down the highway, to the chagrin of anyone duking it out on top of the trailers/cars caught up in the sudsy mess).
I plan on throwing in various in-jokes inspired by Route 66 historic locations, and not-so-historic -- one being Snuckey's, from Sam & Max. :)
Phase 2 -- Route 66! The truck gets a signal and heads off for Chicago. This will take it through Legion territory, sadly NOT through any New Vegas locations (it's a near miss), and through the midwest. Some areas have been established in Fallout Tactics, but most I'm going to have to make up a Fallout spin.
Phase 3 -- Mimsyland! The truck heads off for Florida. So far, I only have a bunch of encounters figured out for Florida (mutant gators, theme parks, tourist traps, Cape Canaveral), though I'm thinking of throwing in a bit of the remnant "Red Menace" (Soviets) on the way so I can use some of my "Red Block" AT-43 minis, and I have some crazy ideas for Gary, Indiana, based on a location in Fallout 3. I think of this as the showcase destination, and it could well be that I really should just START a campaign here. However, once things get to the "Mimsyverse," I get the sense that things are likely to get a lot more sandboxy, and the PCs would be more reluctant to hopping onto a railroad express (the Nuka-Cola truck) for further, episodic adventures. Hence, I'm probably better off throwing in the "throwaway" episodic encounters EARLY in the campaign, whereas the Mimsyverse will be the mega-dungeon (with social interaction aspects, what with the various factions), and Cape Canaveral will be the bonus round if the players aren't completely sick of weird retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic shenanigans by then.
A big challenge is going to be on how to balance the "theater of the mind" and proxy and crafty aspects of this. I'd love to make some Fallout-ish scenery, but I can't afford the time and effort to make custom props and scenery for each and every encounter on the way -- especially when many of these things will only show up *ONCE*, and it's a quirky enough setting that I'm unlikely to find much use in the same props again for a long time (with the possible exception of recycling for one-shot Necronomicon scenarios, but that only amounts to 3-4 scenarios per year that way).
I'll likely post some more Fallout brainstorming. I hope I can eventually polish it up to such a state that it might serve as some plot hook ideas for some other GM hoping to run a Fallout-themed campaign, though I can't very well publish a "fan book." (At the very least, I still haven't gotten the FTP and file space situation on greywolf.critter.net sorted out. Somehow after the site got recovered from archive, all the material that had been under quota before became OVER quota once restored, and even when I've chopped out major stuff like the World of Warcraft fan book, it's still over-quota. About the only way I'd be able to get under-quota again would be if I started hacking out major stuff such as all the Ironclaw "standee" illustrations -- unless there are some sort of hidden files that are padding things out, and I wouldn't know how to get at those.)