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.

Iterations of D&D

I have written before about how I play 1st edition AD&D, but it's really a mash-up of Holmes Basic, B/X, 1st and 2nd edition AD&D right? I even started writing a B/X WW II game. The other day it occurred to me that I have never actually played Moldvay Basic or even read through the book completely. I have read sections of it. I have looked things up in it. Moldvay's Red Basic book wasn't one I had as a kid though and I went straight to AD&D away from "kiddie D&D" as quick as I could. I think I have done myself a disservice. I have been reading through the Moldvay Basic book, straight through, since the announcement of D&D's impending "5th" edition. I don't really know why I picked it up, I had been reading through my GURPS Imperial Rome supplement, because I had just written about some old Roman campaigns I had run back in the 1990s and my interest was piqued.

But the more I read the Moldvay rules the more I like the simple elegance of them. Holmes Basic was really just OD&D cleaned up and edited into something slightly easier to wrap your head around; honestly after rereading the Holmes Basic book I am shocked that I ever figured out how to play D&D as a kid. Moldvay is pretty clear and simple by comparison. Holmes Basic will always be my first love, but I have to admit that B/X was really a better product.

Which leads me to this next point- I really want to actually play some B/X D&D, or DM it, since that's more likely to realistically happen. I skipped B/X back in 1981 for the most part on my way to AD&D with it's myriad of options and just the prestige of the "Advanced" version of the game being the more grown up one to play. Sure, there was a little confusion at the time, I bought a Basic D&D boxed set in 1980; Holmes Basic as it turned out; I got the Expert boxed set the next year (because it took us up to level 14!), although I already owned the AD&D Monster Manual; the obvious progression we all thought at the time was that you went from Basic to Expert to Advanced, not that Advanced was a totally separate, but related and nearly 100% compatible game. That I just happened to get caught in a different, earlier edition of Basic before moving on to Expert was just one of those odd growing pains I had on the way to Advanced D&D.

I'd like to give B/X a shot on it's own, without being stuck in the shadow of either Holmes or AD&D.

Who's with me?

I also had a few thoughts on TSR's last iteration of D&D, the one published postmortem, 3e and the D20 system. I might have liked the changes they made to the system in general if they had made certain subsystems optional and up to the DM's judgment. I am thinking particularly of the Feats and Skills, which seem like the core of the D20 system, but they're not; D&D is. Feats and Skills are an add-on that I think you could rip out and make the game pretty cool. Simplifying the saving throws was a good idea. Simplifying the Ability scores was a good idea, and it goes back to older editions of D&D than any edition of AD&D. Ascending AC was actually a pretty good idea, no matter how much me and the rest of the Grognards hate it; we only hate it because it's different and we hate change.

Now, this isn't going to turn into a 3e love-fest here, there's still plenty of stuff I didn't like. I didn't like renaming healing potions potions of cure light wounds for instance, or hyperfast leveling or the loss of multi-classing or the art direction that it took; but a lot of that could be house-ruled by the DM (except for the crap art, you're just stuck with that), once you ditch the feats and skills. Feats and skills are what made the entire D20 system slow and bound to the battle board. As a DM if you want multi-classing back in your 3e game, just do it, the same way you used to in previous editions. Too fast leveling? Double the XP required to level and reduce the XP/encounter to 10% of what it's "supposed" to be.

Now, you are going to say "What about thieves? (or Rogues I guess, right?)", OK, some skills can stay in the game, reduce drastically the number of skill points/level and limit them to "Thief" type skills. This works for Bards too, just give them even fewer. Never let someone just make a Search or Spot check, I am just brainstorming here, maybe we should just eliminate all the 3e/D20 skills and put in AD&D Thief Skills in their place. I haven't really thought it through too much. My point is D&D is the DM's game, he should be able to hack it how he wants to fit his vision; I don't understand how or why the D20/3e system's codification of everything scared us all and handed over our good judgment to the rules lawyers.

Now, I will repeat my call for Wizards of the Coast to publish the next D&D under the TSR imprint, out of respect for the continuity for the game and it's creators; and because the only version of D&D that they were solely responsible for caused more division in the D&D playing community than any other edition ever published. Resurrect TSR, and bring back the older edition TSR stuff in at least a PDF format legally. You say D&D next is going to be compatible with all of the older editions anyway, right? So sell us all that older edition stuff we missed out on too! PDFs and print on demand services cost you nothing, they do make you profits though and they generate goodwill with the fan base that you have alienated.

Resolutions II: Oh Yeah, Those Too-

Image by Balsavor.deviantart.com used without permission.


KAG- I am a Quadrant Commander in the Klingon Assault Group. I really need to make an effort to get much more active again. I have kind of let things slide since Klingon and Star Trek fandom took a hit when the last series went off the air. I haven't suited up in full make-up and head-piece in years now, and it's time to spruce up my uniform to a more professional quality and look the part, then get out there and recruit. The next Star Trek movie is rumored to have a big Klingon presence, so we KAG Klingons need to be ready to capitalize on the imminent popularity of our favorite sci-fi species once again.

Read all the stuff I bought over the course of the last year. This is like one of those quests that I had to read everything I was supposed to read in college and didn't have time for, but at least all this is stuff I am interested in; I just bought so much I fell way behind. Most of the RPG books I have flipped though, but I have about twenty novels and probably ten history books to read in addition to 199 unique game books and supplements I just counted, and 7 board or card games that I have not played since buying, without leaving my computer desk, that I bought last year; some of which I did read, or had already read; but most of which remain merely skimmed through, and that doesn't count pdfs or stuff I put in other rooms of my house. Seriously, I need to read more stuff. Currently, it seems I mostly use it as research material for my blog, or my OA game, or my wife's possible Star Wars game.

I have 67 unique Legend of the Five Rings books (counting Clan War books and novels), 10 GURPS books, 13 D20 Star Wars books (for all 3 d20 versions) 11 D6 Star Wars books and 4 modules (mostly 1st edition), 10 Star Fleet Battles (and 3 Prime Directive) books, and those are just the things that I bought more than ten books for in the last year. So, I guess I am actually going to have to take at least one day per week off from reading blogs and blogging and just read the stuff I already have. Maybe I'll review it.

Mail Call 08 SEPT 2011

A GURPS WW2 extravaganza today, once again the pictures are from the EBay auctions.



I convinced myself this was research material for my, now largely back-burnered, B/X WW II project; but really I just like GURPS sourcebooks despite the fact that I really am not a big fan of the game system.



This gives us the specifics of the mighty British Empire.

Mail Call 05-04-2011

As always, pics from EBay-


2nd edition Twilight: 2000 was not my favorite iteration of the game, I vastly preferred the 1st edition despite it's flaws. 2nd edition fixed some things and introduced new flaws while subtly changing the flavor of the game in a bad way too, in my opinion, and I won't even get going on the 2.2 update! Anyway, this is the single supplement I always intended to pick up for the 2nd edition of the game and never got around to, it just kind of fell off the radar too quick- so when I saw it for $3.00 on EBay I figured I had to take a shot. Apparently I was the only one who felt that way, so huzzah for me!

These two GURPS historical books represent probably the last GURPS books I will ever buy, I now have, I think, every GURPS setting book that I could possibly be interested in using as a resource for other games. I have said it before and I will probably say it again, GURPS isn't my kind of game, but they make some great setting books.

Mail Yesterday and Today

Most of these came yesterday and I was too lazy to post the pictures, sorry. As always the pictures are from EBay until I get a better digital camera.

These guys are Lion Clan Samurai for Clan War. I got kind of addicted to Clan War minis when I started buying them for use in my Oriental Adventures/Ruins and Ronin mash-up campaign.


This book I have been meaning to buy for quite some time, like dating back into the 2nd edition AD&D era. I like the way the seller posed it with a wee dragon too.


Finding a complete box set of 1st edition Twilight:2000 for $.99 was awesome. It almost makes up for the fact that my original is still MIA.


This is the one that came today. I don't play GURPS. I just really like their setting books.