Happy New Year!

Some days ago, I left a comment on a wargaming blog, something like "Wonderful army. Also, I like your terrain, the plastic plants. Happy New Year! Karl" The comment was published and to my surprise removed a day later.

I tend to brood over things. Did I say anything inappropriate? Was the comment removed accidentally? Did the owner of the other blog look at Herr Zinnlings Arbeitszimmer and say: „I don’t want to have anything to do with that piece of shit blog.“ Did he think my comment about the plastic plants wasn’t honest? (I assure you, I love miniature plastic plants.) Did he think I’m a spam bot? Is it considered bad luck in the UK to say Happy New Year on the last day of the year?

I don’t know.

By the way, I’m always happy about comments on my blog and got some interesting, detailed, helpful, funny, inspiring, wonderful responses from you so far. Thanks a lot!

(Ok. I also get comments like „You might be eligible to get a free $1000 Amazon gift card.“)

When I was in Sioux City, Iowa as an exchange student, the most awkward situation for me was to go to the school’s restaurant for the first week. People already knew each other and were sitting at the tables with their friends, of course. I was new to the school, from another country and my English was bad. Also, when I was 16, I was very shy. Ending up at a large table to have lunch all by myself, I found quite horrible at that time.

Well, sometimes trying to communicate with other people about games through the internet, people that tend to be organised in groups, reminds me of my first week at the Bishop Heelan Catholic High School.

Whatever. It’s 2017 and I’m not 16 anymore.

Happy New Year!

Karl

Enchanted Weapon

EXT. BEACH OF WALTROP - EARLY MORNING

Foibos and Grigoris, a man in a red coat, discuss an enchanted weapon.

GRIGORIS

I was sent from Sparta to be your mentor, to enable you to fight the creatures that live in the forest of this island.

FOIBOS

I’m glad you are here, Grigoris.

GRIGORIS

Considering your feeble physical statue and your general lack of training, I give you this sword. It is blessed by Ares, the god of war.

FOIBOS

Thank you.

GRIGORIS

It’s a powerful weapon and it comes with great responsibility, but you need to know that its powers will not work all the time.

FOIBOS

What do you mean?

GRIGORIS

Let’s cut time into centuries, centuries into decades, decades into years, years into months and months into weeks.

FOIBOS

Yes?

GRIGORIS

Let’s say the week has seven days and you go to war six days and rest one day. You need to know that your weapon will only work once a week, but you don’t know which day this will be.

FOIBOS

I don’t understand. Seven days? What are you talking about?

GRIGORIS

 I'm just talking about probabilities, Foibos. You need to know something else. Since it would be unfair to your opponent if you have the sword of Ares and he doesn’t, we will line up all of your men before battle and count them. Every 24th man will stay in the camp. 

FOIBOS

What? That’s not fair. I need all my men. Why would you give me such a weapon? And why do we need to be fair to Orcs?

GRIGORIS

We are Greeks and we will act like Greeks.

FOIBOS
That sucks.

GRIGORIS
Yes. I know.

(The miniatures on the picture were painted by Steve Dean and Andrew Taylor and as a commission.)

Orc Head for a Hand Puppet

I spent a rainy Sunday afternoon in October making hand puppets with the children and took the opportunity to make an orc head.

It looks a bit like my grandfather from my mother's side and still needs to be painted.

Anybody know if Humbrol enamel paint and gloss varnish work well on paper mache?

Happy Halloween!

Karl

Tupi + Giant Insects vs Orcs / HotT Battle Report

After a three-month summer break, in which I spent most of the time cleaning up my parents' house and taking my children to swimming lessons, Krüger and I had a game of Hordes of the Things on Friday (The Waltrop Campaign / Day 11).

He played the orcs who live on the northeastern coast of Waltrop.

Warband General, 5 Warbands, 1 Hero, 3 Riders, 1 Shooter

Krüger was the defender and placed a hill in the centre of the table and two tropical forests right next to it on each side. This is something he had wanted to do for a long time and it looked kind of silly.

He deployed his hero and an element of riders on his right flank, two elements of riders on his left flank, all of his orc warbands and a shooter in front of the hill.

I played the inhabitants of the jungle.

Behemoth General (a very big insect), 5 Shooters (Tupi Indians), 4 Beasts (Fiendish Giant Praying Mantis), 2 Water Lurkers

As seen from my side of the table, my army was deployed like this:

Beasts / Beasts / Shooters / Shooters / Behemoth (General) / Shooters / Shooters / Shooters / Beasts / Beasts

So this is what happened:

Krüger’s hero destroyed one of my beasts.

My behemoth general made it to the top of the hill and destroyed two orc warbands.

Two Orc riders destroyed one of my beasts.

My behemoth was pushed back into the forest and destroyed another element of beasts in its path.

(We had some doubt if the rules actually work this way.)

My last surviving beast destroyed Krüger’s shooters.

Three Tupi shooters combined their forces and shot down two orc warbands.

Krüger’s warband general chased my general through the woods and finally destroyed it with the help of some side and rear support.

Krüger’s hero destroyed one of my shooters.

The orcs won and now occupy hexagon 11 on our campaign map.

Six-year-old Hendrik watched us prepare the game and drew his version of the campaign map. He thinks it looks much better than our map. I think he might be right.

My Entry for the First Round of the Thought Eater Essay Contest

I like talking to a friend, my son calls Kügel, because he can’t pronounce his name well. He is a long-term philosophy student, gamer and avid reader of cheap fantasy novels. Today I talk to Kügel about “Evocation vs Imitation vs Emulation in adapting literary source material to RPGs“, my topic for the first round of the Thought Eater essay contest.

We have some difficulties defining the three terms, maybe because English isn’t our native language, maybe because we are not that smart. “To emulate“ seems to have two meanings.

1. imitate with effort to equal or surpass

If this essay is supposed to find out which of the three forms of adaptation is the best, emulation automatically beats imitation. Per definitionem, says Kügel.

2. The other meaning of “emulate“ is more interesting. A program can be emulated on a computer, it wasn’t originally written for. What the original program and the new program do looks very similar to the user, but the programs are actually different. Emulation in this sense works best when a text is adapted from one system to a similar system. The fairy tale “Hänsel und Gretel“ can be translated from German to English, for example. German and English are both languages. But can the story be emulated as a film? Or as an RPG?

At first, we understand the difference between evocation and imitation, but talking about it for a while, we get lost. To imitate means to copy superficial elements, all the details of a text. To evoke means to create a similar atmosphere, to write in a similar style, to copy essential elements only, like the more important parts of the plot or the structure.

“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre“ is a clever adaptation of “Hänsel und Gretel“. You have a group of young people getting lost in the wilderness. You don’t have two children abandoned by their parents. You have cannibalism, but no witch. You have an isolated house, but it’s not decorated with ginger bread. Both stories create a scary atmosphere.

Thinking a bit more about evocation, imitation and emulation, the lines get more blurry. Most texts which “evoke“ other texts also copy some superficial elements and emulation just seems to be a more accurate or better form of imitation, depending on how you define it. Kügel says the topic is unclear, because the terms we deal with are too similar. “And what is literary source material anyway?“, he adds. “The plot? The characters? The style of writing? The world the story creates?“

I propose to work with this: Playing an RPG, you can refer to a text in different ways. One extreme way is trying to imitate as many elements of the text as closely as possible. MERP springs to my mind. The other extreme way is to refer loosely to the text, in an abstract way, and only copy elements you find essential. “A Red & Pleasant Land“ does this. You could call both forms of adaptation “imitation“, the first one “emulation“, the second one “evocation“.

Kügel says: “Your essay will be disqualified. Let’s think about this in a different way. Try to be original. What works best for a GM?“ Kügel doesn’t like to work if he can avoid it. He says: “Which way needs less preparation?“

Well, if you are good at seeing the structure of a text, picking up elements that interest you, changing them, combining them with other elements and filling the gaps, a concept like “evocation“ works for you. If you are good at memorizing lots of information and reproducing it, a concept like “emulation“ works for you.

Kügel says: “Remember. ‘Opinions differ round-up‘, and ‘Well it’s a balance‘-style essays will be disqualified.“

Ok. Here’s another, more personal way to look at it. As an experiment, I wouldn’t mind adapting “Hänsel und Gretel“ as an RPG and stick to the original as closely as possible. Of course, the first thing that would get lost in the process is the plot of the fairy tale and with the plot a lot of other elements would transform. Being an improvisational effort of a group of people, RPGs open up texts anyway. Because of this, one could argue, when adapting a text, a concept like “evocation“ works best with Role Playing Games. It gives enough space to improvise.

But there is something else. I usually don’t feel too comfortable with people who stick to all the details of a given game world and obsess about it. I live in Germany, a country populated by square headed people.

“You said, we were playing ‘Hänsel und Gretel‘, so why did we encounter a wolf on the way through the forest? This is not ‘Little Red Riding Hood‘, is it?“

“It was just a wolf, an animal. It didn’t say anything. It ran away.“

“Why do we keep finding little bones and wooden objects where we left the breadcrumbs? Where is the gingerbread house? And why did Hänsel just disappear? That wasn’t supposed to happen. Where is the witch? I don’t like this.“

Hamburg Tactica 2016 / Part Three

Here are my impressions about the Tactica 2016. Please check out the first and the second part of my text about the excellent wargaming convention in Hamburg as well.

On Sunday we had one more game, starting at 2 PM. In the morning I went around taking pictures. While I took a picture of a model of an arcane port, a young man started to talk to me. "Is this a 35 mm camera? A Leica?" "Yes", I said. "That’s cool." Jörg, who was standing next to me, said: "Yes. But it’s not a Leica M4. The M4 is really valuable. This one isn’t." I said: "It’s my father’s old camera. It’s valuable to me. My father died a long time ago. He loved to take pictures with this camera." The young man said: "It’s cool that you take pictures with your old 35 mm camera." "You could get one on Ebay. It’s not expensive.", I said. "The M4 is really expensive.", Jörg said. The young man said: "I wouldn’t know what to do with it." "It’s not difficult. Just try it.", I said. "No thanks. That’s a hobby on its own."

Krüger and I went to the Foundry booth. I bought the "Foundry Miniatures Compendium". Krüger bought eight warrior women from their Darkest Africa range to use in our Waltrop campaign.

In the afternoon we played a game presented by the German club THS. "Skirmish at Disuq - Egypt 1801." The scenario was designed by the fantasy author and wargamer Bernhard Hennen, using a variant of the ruleset Lion Rampant, published in the April issue of Wargames Illustrated. This is the introduction to the scenario, in Bernhard Hennen’s words:

"It’s spring of 1801. Napoleon has left Egypt a long time ago. British troops have landed successfully and are marching on Cairo.

First skirmishes are taking place near Rahmanieh on the left bank of the Nile between the British expeditionary force, supported by Ottoman troops. In a coup-de-main the French occupy the small town of Disuq on the opposite river bank. The British react swiftly and strongly. With a tenfold superiority they attack the French. But what is the real objective of this fight off the main battle site? This skirmish scenario will give an adventurous answer."

Our game master Sunday afternoon was Stefan. Jörg played the British, Teemu from Finland played their Ottoman allies, Krüger played the French soldiers defending the town of Disqus and I played some French treasure hunters. The table was very beautiful, the atmosphere of the game playful and relaxed. Thanks, THS. There is a post with more pictures on the blog Monty’s Caravan. Check it out!

In the train, on our way back to Berlin, Krüger and I talked about fantasy literature and how the internet changes how it is published. After 30 minutes a woman said to Krüger: "Shut up! You bother me. You talk like children."

Well, this, of course, leads to the question what is an adult which I might discuss in another blog post.

74,54 m² / One Page Dungeon Contest

This is my entry for the ONE PAGE DUNGEON CONTEST 2016.

1 To enter this dungeon you need to open a heavy wooden door guarded with two locks and a chain, either forcefully or using your mad lock-picking skills. There are a lot of shoes on the floor. Don’t trip. Coats and bags hang on the walls. It’s a mess. You see a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine.

2 A room cramped with pots, dishes, spices, rice and noodles, flour and tea. There is an oven, a large blue fridge and an old table with five chairs. The fridge is filled with milk, cheese and eggs, carrots, zucchinis and apples.

3 A very small bathroom with a bathtub and a shower. According to Phil Barker the Sumerians believed that Mukil-resh-lemutti, winged demons with the head of a lion, preyed on humans in washrooms, hiding in the latrine. The demons of headaches. Here you will only encounter some silverfish, fleeing to holes in the wall.

4 There are three small beds in this room. Cupboards and colorful boxes are filled with clothes and toys, part of the stuff made its way to the floor. A large pink plush dog with purple stars on its paws looks at you with googly eyes.

5 A large bed, an old fashioned closet, a clothes horse, more toys. Newspapers pile up on a piano.

You are attacked by a man wearing a green T-shirt and orange boxer shorts. He woke up by the noise you made breaking into his house and uses a Japanese kitchen knife and the lid of a pot to defend himself.

6 Two desks, several shelves, framed pictures of a Greek port, a lot of books, board games, CDs, envelopes and cartons, a wet towel hanging over a conga, a red locker filled with 263 painted and 321 unpainted miniatures, a Commodore video monitor (model 1701), photography equipment, an orchid, a plywood double bass and several computers.

7 There is a creature hiding in this room, smoking an electric cigarette. "Well. The One Page Dungeon Contest? What is this all about?", it says. "I like the idea of the man with the kitchen knife. But that’s the only original, entertaining idea I find here. How about including some classic D&D monsters? Like an owl bear, a carrion crawler or a thought eater?  What is this anyway? An instruction to break into a house? Well. Go back to room 6 and steal some things or to room 2 if you are out of food. And stop bothering me."