The Chronicles of Ceteri: Ep8 – Bloodsport

July 26, 2017July 26, 2017 gamingballistic

What happened before

After the bowling alley massacre, we effectively flee the scene of the fight. We’re picked up very quickly by someone we identify as a sidhe, and a powerful one at that. We try and find a place that might be tactically defensible, and take the pursuit out of town to an abandoned church, which is surrounded on three sides by running water. We then realize that the sidhe really isn’t going to be hindered by this, and that we’ve basically boxed ourselves in. This is reinforced when tons and tons of sluagh start arriving, in anticipation of the carnage to come. We bargain with them, trying to make them at least neutral, and while making deals with fae is never good, we buy ourselves time time. Five years, in fact . . . but that might not work out as we thought. The sluagh mistress, in order to secure her future interests, “helps” us escape – taking us to the fae lands of Underhill. We journey down the King’s road, and eventually meet the king, and of course also the father of the sidhe we killed in the bowling alley. Some major bard-song later, we manage to escape back to the real world – but not before agreeing to meet the champions of the sidhe in combat to settle the matter once and for all.

Oh, and also Timothy got completely vamped by a ridiculously hot faerie lady, who started the conversation saying nice things about Timothy’s car, and ended up giving him the ride of his life . . . and whenever faeries do that sort of thing . . . bad things happen later. Changelings? Yeah, don’t want to be the baby-daddy of that kind of union, but we’re pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen.

Never mess with fae. Never make deals with fae. Never travel through fae lands. And definitely do not have sex with fae. We managed to do all four.

Continue reading “The Chronicles of Ceteri: Ep8 – Bloodsport” →

Ceteri Campaign: Double Session Report (E6 and E7)

July 25, 2017 gamingballistic

What happened before

Kamali wakes up from his seizure, and the group is attacked by zombies. Lots of zombies. Our NPC Carl finds deep reserves of courage, and just will not die. The rest of us acquit ourselves very well, but take severe wounds in the process. We are forced to amputate Gabriel’s leg as the fight ends. That ends Episode 4.

Episode 6 featured a massive combat between us and some very irritated fae in a bowling alley. Ep 7 was all impulsive, panicked aftermath.

Let’s see how it all went down. Continue reading “Ceteri Campaign: Double Session Report (E6 and E7)” →

GURPSDay Summary Jul 14 – Jul 23, 2017

July 23, 2017 gamingballistic

Thursday is GURPSDay, but today is Sunday . . . I was up in Hackensack, MN for a week, the Land that Bandwidth Forgot. So now that I’m back, we’ll have a pair of GURPSDay posts with a scale-armor motif, in that this coming Thursday will cover from July 21-27 as usual. So without further ado:

Welcome to the second year of GURPSDay, and here’s the pull for this week.

We’re currently drawing content from 89 blogs. Only 11 more to go until we’re pulling from 100! But we’ll need your help.

How? Two action items: post more, recruit more. It’s really that simple. More posters is more posts, and more interest in GURPS.

Below you can find the blog activity for the last week. There’s a whole lotta awesome GURPS going on. Read all the posts.

Not every blog posts about GURPS every week, but some are ridiculously prolific! The list is randomized, so different bloggers will be highlighted at the top of the post each week.

As always, if you’re interested in having your blog consolidated here, navigate over to The Instructions Page and drop me a line. Take special note of the RSS Settings Fix if you’re on WordPress.
Continue reading “GURPSDay Summary Jul 14 – Jul 23, 2017” →

Ultra-Tech Rifle: From the ground up

July 21, 2017July 21, 2017 gamingballistic

Over the past, in various GunDay posts, I’ve taken a look at the various Ultra-Tech weapons with a mind to both determining the feasibility of the weapons, and also checking their performance.

One of the more interesting posts, to me at least, was a ground-up redesign of a service pistol. The “ideal” pistol seemed to fire a 5.9mm projectile of unique engineered construction, which basically fired an advanced projectile that combined the AP capabilities of a tungsten tip along with a base that the tip gets pushed in to, which expands like the petals of the Ranger SXT modern-day JHP in order to enlarge the wound channel of the projectile to greater than 10mm, the threshold for pi+.

That gave us a projectile that wound up doing 2d (2) pi+, which wounds like a .45ACP and penetrates like a carbine, with a 20-round capacity that disappeared into a standard pistol grip.

Along the way, I also took a look at the Liquid Propellant (LP), Electrothermal-Chemical (ETC), and Electrothermal-Kinetic versions of various rifles, and found out (honestly, to my surprise) that all three were feasible with the right assumptions.

This particular article will take from all of those technologies in order to come up with a competitive TL9 rifle that’s an actual upgrade over TL8, and puts the right amount of power into the hands of the standard infantryman. Continue reading “Ultra-Tech Rifle: From the ground up” →

Viking Shield Fighting in GURPS

July 13, 2017July 14, 2017 gamingballistic

Yesterday I wrote about the construction and use of Viking shields: a roughly 30-36″ diameter shield (call it a medium shield) of very, very light construction (6-8 lbs), low face thickness (7-9mm at the thickest, including the up to 1mm of hide and glue covering, and maybe 2mm wood at the edge, with another 2mm or so of edge wrapping and facing on the edge), and sporting a buckler grip.

The shields as we use them are used very aggressively, and are considered the primary weapon. They are held out from the body with the shield arm at maybe half-extension, maybe a 45-degree bend at the elbow, and of course the shield extends half it’s diameter beyond that.

This means that with a “cooperative” opponent, meaning one whom is using similar kit in a similar fashion, one can and does probe at Reach 2. The configuration is basically warrior (hex 0), shield (halfway into Hex 1), other guy’s shield (the other half of hex 1), foe (hex 2). The “feeling” drills require this sort of shield contact.

Shield (Buckler)

Note that the grip of the Viking shield is a buckler grip, with no strap or guige. The grip is frequently narrow enough that you can hold a spare weapon (such as an axe-haft or javelin)

Fight Defensively

One of the big things we’re trying to emphasize in how we are approaching combat is “fight to live.” While sport training tends to emphasize “first to hit” and aggressive priority on attacking in order to promote exciting behavior, winning the contest, etc, it doesn’t really take into account that if you also get spitted on a blade, that’s not so good.

Yes, that’s an overstatement. But look at how many double-kills (or double-wounds) you get in a lot of tournament fighting, and you’ll see what I’m getting at here.

In any case, the principle of the very light infantry fighting that we’re modeling here will be “fight to live.” Continue reading “Viking Shield Fighting in GURPS” →

GURPSDay Summary Jul 7 – Jul 13, 2017

July 13, 2017July 14, 2017 gamingballistic

Thursday is GURPSDay, I’m back. Here’s an actual “before 9am” post, and I even wrote something this week, with a more GURPSy shield post that is in my head for today.

Welcome to the second year of GURPSDay, and here’s the pull for this week.

We’re currently drawing content from 89 blogs. Only 11 more to go until we’re pulling from 100! But we’ll need your help.

How? Two action items: post more, recruit more. It’s really that simple. More posters is more posts, and more interest in GURPS.

Below you can find the blog activity for the last week. There’s a whole lotta awesome GURPS going on. Read all the posts.

Not every blog posts about GURPS every week, but some are ridiculously prolific! The list is randomized, so different bloggers will be highlighted at the top of the post each week.

GURPSDay Summary Jun 30 – Jul 6, 2017

July 6, 2017July 7, 2017 gamingballistic

Thursday is GURPSDay, and I’m starting to get back on my game, but still not there yet.

Welcome to the second year of GURPSDay, and here’s the pull for this week.

We’re currently drawing content from 89 blogs – we picked up two more. Only 11 more to go until we’re pulling from 100! But we’ll need your help.

How? Two action items: post more, recruit more. It’s really that simple. More posters is more posts, and more interest in GURPS.

Below you can find the blog activity for the last week. There’s a whole lotta awesome GURPS going on. Read all the posts.

Not every blog posts about GURPS every week, but some are ridiculously prolific! The list is randomized, so different bloggers will be highlighted at the top of the post each week.

GURPSDay Summary Jun 23 – Jun 29, 2017

June 29, 2017June 29, 2017 gamingballistic

Thursday is GURPSDay, and I’ll admit it – jet lag and a weird week had it sneak up on me this week. So only one run of the script.

Welcome to the second year of GURPSDay, and here’s the pull for this week.

We’re currently drawing content from 89 blogs – we picked up two more. Only 11 more to go until we’re pulling from 100! But we’ll need your help.

How? Two action items: post more, recruit more. It’s really that simple. More posters is more posts, and more interest in GURPS.

Below you can find the blog activity for the last week. There’s a whole lotta awesome GURPS going on. Read all the posts.

Not every blog posts about GURPS every week, but some are ridiculously prolific! The list is randomized, so different bloggers will be highlighted at the top of the post each week.

GURPSDay Summary Jun 16 – Jun 24, 2017

June 24, 2017 gamingballistic

Thursday is GURPSDay, but it’s Saturday, because I ran into some script errors while at the same time being slammed trying to successfully close out all items from my Real Job (for now!) trip to Thailand. So we’re picking up a few extra days this week.

Welcome to the second year of GURPSDay, and here’s the pull for this week.

We’re currently drawing content from 89 blogs – we picked up two more. Only 11 more to go until we’re pulling from 100! But we’ll need your help.

How? Two action items: post more, recruit more. It’s really that simple. More posters is more posts, and more interest in GURPS.

Below you can find the blog activity for the last week. There’s a whole lotta awesome GURPS going on. Read all 44 posts.

Not every blog posts about GURPS every week, but some are ridiculously prolific! The list is randomized, so different bloggers will be highlighted at the top of the post each week.

GURPSDay Summary Jun 9 – Jun 15, 2017

June 15, 2017 gamingballistic

Thursday is GURPSDay, and may Thor make your games a bit more exiting today! This post is coming ping-pong from Minnesota to Thailand, as I’m away on business, and my lovely wife has run my script for me today.

Welcome to the second year of GURPSDay, and here’s the pull for this week.

We’re currently drawing content from 87 blogs, which ain’t bad. Only 13 more to go until we’re pulling from 100! But we’ll need your help.

How? Two action items: post more, recruit more. It’s really that simple. More posters is more posts, and more interest in GURPS.

Below you can find the blog activity for the last week. There’s a whole lotta awesome GURPS going on. Read all 33 posts as of 1030pm.

Not every blog posts about GURPS every week, but some are ridiculously prolific! The list is randomized, so different bloggers will be highlighted at the top of the post each week.