The State of The Great Khan Today

I am not going to lie, this has been an odd month. I started the month on fire with a renewed zeal for blogging, gaming and all the historical themes for old school D&D that I love. We entered our quarantine, which has sucked. I had a couple of recent deaths hit close to home, one was a kid that grew up in my tiny neighborhood, younger than me. The other a friend, and something of a mentor, older than me, but not what I'd call old. I am a little amused that my definition of “old” keeps changing as I age. In July I'll be 51, when I was a teenager 30 was old, now it seems like you need to be maybe 80, at a minimum, to qualify.

I am sliding into depression. I have had a tendency towards depression as long as I can remember. I am a Gen-Xer, so we're a little more open about talking about this sort of thing than say, the Greatest Generation, but not really much; Millennials and Zoomers are a lot more keen to share what we'd consider weaknesses. I take a little comfort in knowing that I am not alone, and it has touched the lives of great men like Winston Churchill (not really an opening for a debate on Churchill, he was a complex individual and a product of the British empire at it's height).

The short adventure design contest. There are six days left in the contest, and I assumed a general quarantine worldwide would make it a wee bit more popular. Maybe it's because I never announced prizes? Maybe because I failed to get sponsors like in contests past? I have received a single completed adventure and perhaps a dozen or so inquiries about the parameters of the contest itself. Several people have stated that they'd love to enter, “if they have the time”. I could extend the deadline, I could cancel right now, but I don't think either would help. I've extended the length of a contest in the past to allow more time for entries, and it didn't really work. Canceling seems like admitting failure.

The Klingon Assault Group, a Klingon centered costumed Star Trek fan club I have talked about before here on the blog, lost it's founder, John Halvorson (AKA Kris epetai-Kurkura) on March 26^th. He was also the founder of House Kurkura, of which I was a member. He was the friend and mentor I mentioned above, and the reason I had the KAG logo with the black line through it as my Facebook profile picture. Last Saturday I was selected from among the Kurkura to lead the House, the oldest in KAG. This has drawn a good deal of my attention for the last couple of weeks away from gaming and any other pursuits. I pray I am up to the task of leading them, and that I might honor John's legacy in doing so. He was a lion of a man, may he rest in peace.

As far as gaming goes, I am having a hard time moving online. My internet connection gets really spotty pretty much every evening, I am having trouble keeping Roll20 and Discord working at all. I am also having focus issues with running things on Roll20, and I pretty much hate using the maps there. I have tried playing in a couple of games since the pandemic started, to get my sea legs back, as it were; but the quality of my internet connection has prevented me from really participating. I cannot wait to get back to face-to-face gaming, and I really hope my group sticks together after this is over.

My overwhelming feeling about setting things up on Roll20 is that, if I am going to go to this much effort to set up the maps, why wouldn't I just make it a Neverwinter Nights module? I ran the Norseworld server for like 18 months before catastrophe struck there. I spent days creating new areas while the kids were in school and Mona was out of the house, the kids would playtest/stress test new stuff when it was ready, and when te bugs were worked out I'd add it to the server. The added bonus was everyone got to play there. I could run as DM or play a character. I didn't hate that.

Not seeing people has made me start to miss people I haven't seen for years along with the ones I still see regularly, old friends I fell out of contact with for one reason or another, people I used to game with especially.

Possibly related is that I have sought out the things I used to love, comfort TV and books, to pass my time. I am currently running through the classic 1978 Battlestar Galactica as my obsession du jour. I was pretty deep into it's fandom back in the 1990's. I wonder why it never got the cosplay fandom that Star Wars and Star Trek both got? I remember as a kid I thought those BSG uniforms were the coolest, and I really wanted to order the Colonial Warrior jacket out of Starlog when I spotted it.

No hate for the new Galactica, if that's your jam, mine will always be the original though. Man I loved that show! BSG taught us how to swear without swearing, with words like “Frak” and “Felgercarb”, which was useful when I was 9 years old. I built those models as a kid, and I was terrible at building models. I owned the Viper toy, and it fired it's missiles. I remember BSG being as big as Star Wars had been the year before, maybe bigger, because it was on every week with new episodes.

Let's not forget the absolutely epic score either -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n8sCDODxqQ

Rest In Peace Richard Hatch

So I’ve had a day to think about the passing of Richard Hatch. Like most men my age, when I was a kid I watched Battlestar Galactica and I loved it. My dad loved it too, so it was one of those few things we did together that we both enjoyed. Apollo and Starbuck were my heroes back then, probably moreso than Han and Luke or Kirk and Spock; partly because they were on every week with new episodes. In the days before VCRs being commonplace that was pretty important. I loved Battlestar Galactica so much that I subscribed to the Marvel Comic series. I learned to draw the ships and the cylons. I bought every magazine I could find that had articles about the show, I got the paperback sized Marvel graphic novel and the photonovel, I collected the trading cards. I begged my parents for the Viper toy for Christmas and they came through, I was the only kid I knew that got the viper. I bought the model kits, and I am bad at model building, always have been, but I spent a long time making them and they turned out OK. I even bought the crappy, sub par action figures.

Later on, in my teen years and into my early twenties I gamed Battlestar Galactica. A friend of mine bought the FASA BSG starfighter game, we played that fairly often. I adapted the AD&D rules set, with help from Boot Hill and Dawn Patrol, into a BSG RPG. Later on I did it again with GURPS. I never forgot BSG and I kept on loving it. I bought a bunch of the novelizations I’d missed when I was younger, they made decent source materials.

Close to 20 years after the brief run of Battlestar Galactica I found myself on the internet, a lot, before that was really a thing people did, and I discovered Battlestar Galactica fandom. I knew a few people that fondly remembered the show from 1978-79 before the internet, but when I sought out information back then I found that there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of devoted fans. People who loved the show like I did. I dove into BSG fandom with both feet and that is how I “met” Richard Hatch back in 1997 I think. I can’t remember how it came about, it was either through one of the BSG mailing lists I was on at the time, or on AOL, it doesn’t really matter I guess. I was a little suspicious that he was who he said he was at first, then a little starstruck I guess. I was trying to be cool, but it always made me feel something, honored maybe, perhaps excited, whenever he’d comment on something I wrote, or addressed me directly. We emailed back and forth a few times, after a while, and had one brief, awkward phone call. We lost contact, I broke the contact I guess, but it wouldn’t be long before he was back in the game and wouldn’t have had a lot of time for that kind of personal interaction.

He was a humble guy, really nice and he made a lot of jokes, often about himself. I got the impression that he was maybe a little shy, and wanted us fans to like him personally. We did. He seemed to love the show he worked on in 1978 as much as us hardcore fans did, it was endearing. He is the one TV star that I ever really had any interaction with. He was a good guy and I’ll miss him, despite not having really spent any time interacting with him since the late 1990’s.

I know he had a decent body of work as an actor, but to me he’ll always be remembered best for his role as Captain Apollo on the original Battlestar Galactica. Rest in peace.

Dawn Patrol and Old School Battlestar Galactica

But first, this picture I randomly ran across on another blog of some Scythians, among the oldest school Steppe Warriors out there; so it's a shout out to my old Guildies from AOL's version of Neverwinter Nights and Yurt dwelling folk everywhere.

Next, I ran across these pics on another blog.

Now I am not generally a huge fan of Sci-Fi cross-overs, but seeing the Cylon on the Enterprise bridge was pretty cool. The second one just reminded me of how I didn't get my Gold Cylon when I sent away for it. Which reminded me of how I was similarly screwed out of this-

What is it with me NOT getting Battlestar Galactica stuff when I was a kid? Was it Karma because I was the only kid I knew that got the Colonial Viper for Christmas that year? Everyone else got stuck with the lame almost viper toys, or, if they were lucky like two of my friends, got the Cylon Raider.

What were they thinking there? Kids will love having a ship never seen on the show? A Viper-esque thing on wheels will be great! Don't toy company execs actually ever have kids look at their proposed toys? Because the Viper and the Raider were the only ones they produced that were necessary. A shuttle might have been nice, or anything in the action figure scale. Action figures with detail and articulation at least as nice as Kenner's Star Wars figures would have made it a competitive line too, as it was I got all of mine as gifts; despite being a HUGE BSG fan (at 9 years old I was apparently their demographic), I knew their action figures were crap. Oddly enough, I have the Muffitt figure sitting on my desk- top shelf, center, under the light, on top of my Cesare Borgia tobacco tin full of old coins, behind a bunch of old school D&D miniatures, mostly Heritage and Ral Partha, some Grenadier or others.

Now I guess that it is apropos to this discussion, in a roundabout way, of BSG that my new copy of Dawn Patrol came in the mail today. Here are the pictures:

It is pretty nearly complete, I didn't count the counters, but the rest of the contents are there except for two maneuver cards used for tailing/being tailed. There are three complete sets of maneuver cards and one set missing two. My wife Mona actually volunteered to make some more sets using her skills with art and graphics programs and I can then print them out onto heavy paper and she'll cut the new decks out. There was also this odd box of counters that doesn't actually go to Dawn Patrol. I've been a Wargamer for three decades and I don't recognize these guys, anyone know what game they're from?

My wife took this picture with our digital camera, because I am impaired at photography, so I thank her for that

Anyway, over the years I have built and rebuilt BSG RPGs, and never got anyone to play with me, even my buddies like Lance who LOVES the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica. How Dawn Patrol fits in to all of this is that in a couple of incarnations of my BSG RPG, I pretty much used Dawn Patrol as a chassis for the fighter combat. Obviously, it needs some modification to make it a space fighter combat game, but, in theory, it works all right. I say in theory, because I never playtested it against anyone but myself. I don't exactly know when I started "designing" games, it seems like I must have been in high school, but that seems kind of late for a BSG project. Probably earlier, I was always stuck chasing the Questing Beast that is the perfect RPG as Big Darryl's Squire, so modifying rules was in my gaming blood from the time I was in junior high I guess.

I don't know how many iterations my BSG RPG went through. I do know that every time some hot new game system came along down the pike I had to see what it had that I could use, modify or be inspired by. I rewrote the WEG D6 Star Wars game into a BSG RPG, that was dead simple, all you really have to do is remove the Jedi and change some terminology. I had an entire GURPS version once, and I didn't even own any GURPS books at the time. Having access to your friends and mentors gaming libraries is a good thing. I am pretty sure I quit trying to put together an original series BSG RPG sometime in the mid 1990s; I am going to guess that I figured if it hadn't happened by then, it just wasn't going to happen. I know I quit before the D20 craze, otherwise I'd probably have driven myself nuts trying to make it happen again and have everyone in my D&D group be all lukewarm on the idea.

Teaser Dawn Patrol Report

I went and Played Dawn Patrol on Saturday, and I brought my son John and our friend Dalton from our D&D games too. Neither of them has ever had any wargaming experience at all. Big Darryl, Little Darryl and myself have played a lot of Dawn Patrol, but not for probably twenty plus years. We randomized the teams completely. The date was February 6th, 1917. It's almost midnight here though, so I am going to let the complete report be made tomorrow. Instead, I will give you a picture of a D&D style horse archer that I found while I was looking for a "Getting Back on the Horse" picture for my last blog post and thought was pretty cool, just not what I was looking for, and the ad for the cool Battlestar Galactica Colonial Warrior Flight Jacket that I wanted so bad when I was a kid, and a teenager and I still kind of really want.

AAR 29-05-11

Saturday's playtest of B/X WW2 didn't pan out as I had hoped; between the long weekend and us volunteering/giving blood at the Red Cross that morning it just didn't happen.

Sadly, Sunday didn't happen either, another victim of the Memorial Day weekend, which isn't to say I didn't get any gaming in at all; we just didn't get in a B/X WW2 playtest.



I got Lance W. to drop by and he brought the old FASA Battlestar Galactica starfighter combat game, which neither of us had played in ages. He had recently reread the rules so we played a one-on-one duel. He played the Cylon, I the Colonial. He took a the three laser, no torpedo variant Raider; I went with the standard Mk. II Viper from the series. We closed to range and I lined up on him with a decent shot and fired my 2 torpedoes and my 2 lasers and missed with everything. It turned into a twisty-turney dogfight after that and we nickle and dimed each other's ships a bit until he scored his customary "Cockpit Destroyed" result, ending our game. It was a good time though, so I don't complain.



Since that didn't take long, we decided to play one of our old stand by games- Up Front! He suggested we play the DiY 501 City Fight in 3 scenario, I was game. We rolled a d30 to see who picked first, he rolled a 30 and picked the Germans. I picked the Americans and we set to spending our 501 points to buy our "squads". Traditionally I am pretty unlucky at Up Front!, but today was Lance's day to have my unlucky breaks. We both set up in the fairly traditional 3 group formation. We both bought Strength 5 radios and double Snipers. He had LMGs in groups A and C, I had a BAR in my group A. I had a mortar in group C. He had a total of 16 men and I had 21. My best men were in my groups A and B, C was my burn off excess fire cards via mortar attacks early in the game and movement cards later group; it contained a number of men I probably wouldn't have considered taking except that the large number of them made them less attractive to move towards for his men.

The bad luck started for Lance with his first attack, my group A moved, his group A had enough fire power with their crewed LMG to fire at them, the first card he drew for resolution was a red 6, the LMG suffered a breakdown. When he tried to repair it on his next turn he drew another red 6 and the weapon was destroyed, pretty much ruining the firepower potential of his group A for the rest of the game.

After that Lady Luck loved me for the rest of the game. Every time he moved a group I had a stream or a marsh to discard and usually a Sniper and nothing else really to do anyway. Wire was a constant issue for him. Whenever I moved I would draw a building card to move into. My mortar group plan worked great. I kept drawing radio cards, and only had 2 out of 7 missions fail. My mortar never missed once. My only complaint is that my Snipers only ever pinned his men.

He never got a radio card, and after the first deck wouldn't have been able to use it if he had because the guy carrying the radio had routed. His one Sniper card he got I easily Sniper checked and killed. He popped smoke once only to see a breeze come along seconds later and blow it away. He was placing his men in open terrain so I wouldn't be able to put them into bad terrain after a while. The bad luck was really getting into his head.

I didn't play without mistakes either, his bad luck made me cocky, and I advanced my B group too close too his C group that still had a functioning LMG; and I voluntarily routed a guy to do so, and not into great terrain, just -2 buildings. To be fair they had all been pinned when I started the move, he got a rally all card, followed by a hero card; possibly his luckiest draws of the game.

Ultimately, the game ended when I had an attack that broke his squad. The score was 2 Americans KIA 3 Routed, 4 Germans KIA, 8 Routed. He held out a lot longer than his crappy luck would have led you to believe was possible and fought a lot harder, we were 1/2 way through the last deck at the end of the game. I had a good time and so did he, it was nice to see Lady Luck switch dance partners for a change though; much as I love this game, and I know I have the technical skill for it, I very often lose.