Another new link...

... to a random scenario generator.

This is a great generator for 'Weird World War II' scenarios, but with very little work could be for Cthulhu as well. It's part of the 'Operation: Fallen Reich' site - tagline 'Can Evil Be Stopped In Time For Tea?' which I think is one of the best taglines ever.

I don't play the game so some of the terminology is a bit obscure (I think 'Fallen' are Nazi Black Magicians but I could be wrong about that) but one of the random story generations I just span is: Location - a mental institution; Basic Plot - a child posseses special powers and needs to be baptised; Sub-Plot - the location has bad energy which helps Fallen; Main Villains - a secret society influenced by Fallen. That without too much work could be useful for a lot of games...

The site also includes a brief listing and descriptions of wars from 1920-1940 that British Chaps might be involved in - also useful for fleshing out character backgrounds in Cthulhu/Pulp/Gangster/Very British Civil War games. One of the designers described the game as 'The X-Files sett in WWII with Mulder and Scully replaced by Jeeves and Wooster' - and what's not to love about that?

New links

I've added some new links: one to TerraGenesis, in my opinion the best terrain-making site on the web; one to Seventh Sanctum a fantastic random-results generator for everything from names for Gundam robots to titles of books about dragon biology, from plots for B-Movies to names of sci-fi substances... there's so much to just wander through, it really is incredible; and also, a link to a relatively new sci-fi vehicle building forum called Universal Engineering, which though it's small at the moment I think has a lot of potential (and I'm interested in building sci-fi vehicles so there).

Enjoy...

Great new Random Name Generator...

... that one of the thoroughly lovely chaps at the Lead Adventurer's Forum posted, it's a Pulp story-name generator but it produces some great results, included in the 'Invasion of the Squirrels from Jupiter' stuff. I was particularly struck by 'Finlay's Eldritch Rockets', and now feel that I should build some, or write something about them at the very least.

It really is a very good story-name generator, I've added it to the links to the left.

Another one it produced was 'The Thieves that Misplaced Tomorrow' - and I have to go, I feel a scenario coming on...

Well that's the summer more or less over...

I say, it's getting beyond a joke. No sooner had I complained that May was gone and I hadn't done anything, some sinister (and probably foreign) fiend made off with June, July and half of August too! Dashed bally rotters, that's what they are.

My Dwarves in the Service of the Queen-Empress are still languishing in their box... err... barracks, my King of Ruritania is still only half-painted, and I am very behind with my frankly not-very exacting schedule of getting units ready! I'd hoped to get a bit of VSF gaming in over summer but alas, it has not yet happened.

I have been playing some 40k and painting fantasy Orcs and making terrain though so I've been doing some gaming stuff... too easily distracted I suppose. Well, the Atlantis campaign over at Lead Adventurers is getting back on track, let's see if that can keep me focussed on VSF. Onward and upward!

Blimey where has May gone?

Assignments and exams have kept me very busy this last month - the last thing I had to report was my Dwarves in Pith Helmets arriving. Well, I've not even got them out of the box yet (OK I have, but I put them back in again).

Normal service will be resumed when I am no longer a Prisoner of the Fiends of the Ivory Tower. Or at least, when they let me out for summer.

The Short Red Line

My long-awaited Victorian Dwarves (from Old Glory's 'Dwarf Britannia' range) arrived today - eight rifle-troopers, a sergeant, and an officer. They're destined to be part of my current British forces on Atlantis, in this case a regiment of colonials. The plan is to add some Orcs in red coats and Pith-helmets when they become available from... I've forgotten. Anyway, the Orcs and the Dwarves will be 'combined' in one rifle brigade... and the 'Combined Atlantean Rifle Brigade' will see the light of day (even if it's a bit squinty and bad-tempered about it).

The Dwarves, being short, will be the 'Low'-CARBs; the Orcs are taller. Doesn't matter to the Tommy Lobsters, they think all Atlanteans are Morlocks anyway, which is nearly as bad as being French.

Also the other day a Cthulhoid entity with a squiddy-type head arrived through the post. D'Kuhl the Bathalian is almost certainly not part of the British forces, though he may be a diplomatic advisor or even ambassador of the tentacle-faced fishy-people, who knows? Though he might object to the words of 'Rule Britannia' at some event, causing a diplomatic incident. 'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves...' 'Schhhhlllurp, I think, squelch flop, that you mean "Dread Lord Cthulhu rules the waves" suck bubble pop squelch' before eating several of the guests. Something like that anyway.

Pictures will be posted presently.

Ruritanian symbolism

So here's the thing. I bought 'Aetheric Mechanics' by Warren Ellis, and tried to glean some info about Ruritania from it, specifically iconography. In it, the insignia of the Ruritanian aircraft and giant war machines seem to be:
1 - a dark (maybe black) St Olaf's Cross;
2 - a 'flag' divided vertically, with the right-hand half further divided horizontally; the two right-hand quaters appear dark, but not as dark as the very thin lines that divide these sections, so I'm assuming the dividing lines are black and the right-hand sections are green and red; in the left-hand half, on a light background, there is the outline of what looks like a dragon eating a person, surmounted by 3 'ball' shapes and a crown - all are in light colours, so I'mm assuming gold on white.

This one may get a picture at some point, but it's pretty odd anyway.