Archive for the ‘SFSFW’ Category

Issue 58 of Ragnarok (the journal of the SFSFW) landed through my post box today including my article for Wessex Games’ Strange Tydes The Bare Belly Coast. Immediately spotted an editing error I’d made where I’d truncated a sentence…

“The alliance with the Orcs eventually saw it added it to their empire as a protectorate in the la”

Should read…

“The alliance with the Orcs eventually saw it added it to their empire as a protectorate in the largest empire in the Land.”

The Ottle Empire heading should appear above the table with their Navy list.

For legibility here is a larger version of the map that accompanies the article (click to enlarge)…

Ragnarok Issue 58 is at the printers according to the SFSFW blog so my Bare Belly Coast article for Wessex Games’ Strange Tydes will soon be available in lovely print form. Time to finish off the Strange Grogge companion article.

Just sent off an article for Ragnarok a group of desert countries for Wessex Games’ Strange Tydes.  Along with details of each nations navy there are also new ship options including Lateen Rigging, naptha projectors and early cannons.

The last bit of work tonight was to draw a map to go with the article.  I modelled it as a terrain in Vue and rendered it from a high angle.  I took the render into Expression and used it as the basis for the map…

Ragnarok Issue 57 (The Magazine of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargaming) landed through my letter box today.  My article for BTRC’s SLAG! appears along with a variety of fantasy and science fiction wargaming goodness.

Fall of the Goblin Empire (FoGE) is my entry for the SFSFW’s fantasy wargaming competition.  A game of goblins and their varigated, varied and highly unreliable flying machines. Here are a couple of the opening paragraphs that set the scene for a game of goblins going up-tiddle-ee-up coming down-tiddle-ee-down-down…

Ask anyone and they will tell you Goblins are mad, bad braggers, they have an anger in their eyes and can’t hold their drink. What most won’t tell you is they’ve good reason. When chroniclers write out the ages of the world somehow the age of
goblins gets misplaced. Yet there was a time (as any drunk goblin will tell you at length) when the little green folk ruled all the world and everyone in it for over a thousand years. Of course no one pays any attention because who believes a drunk goblin?

Yet it did exist for a thousand years. Eventually, as happens to all empires, the great goblin empire lost its grasp on the land.  In its last days the goblins retreated to the floating isles protecting their most valuable asset: the magical metal goblinic
famed for its ability to lift many times its own weight off the ground. They were fortunate that the islands also produced some iron, flax cloth, vast mounds of guano and some natural gasses. There they fell back into ancient tribal feuds and so the
goblin empire fell. Soon after that they turned to the bottle.

I’ve been looking for an idea for a new article to send in for the SFSFW’s Ragnarok and I think I may just have found it a mashup of Steampunk and the short lived 80′s TV show Street Hawk…

This is the Honourable Jesse Macintosh, a former penny-farthing policeman, whose reputation was perilously injured whilst performing his lawful duties.  Now a Scotland Yard trouble shooter, he’s been recruited for an exceedingly secret government mission to ride Street Hawker – an all-cobbled surfaces attack bicycle designed to fight urbane criminality, capable of incredible speeds up to thirty miles an hour… immense firepower… and a really loud speaking horn. Only one man, Her Imperial Majesty The Queen-Empress Victoria’s confidant, Lord Axminster (the prominant inventor, industrialist and engineer Norman Tuttle-Herringbone-Smyth), knows the Honourable Jesse Macintosh’s true identity. The Man… The Machine… Street Hawker.

Miniatures shouldn’t be a problem with Eureka’s Pax Limpopo range including a variety of eminently suitable figures.  I’ve not settled on a rule set yet suggestions in the comments would be greatly appreciated.

Tonight I’ve added a page to my web site about Wessex Games’ Aeronef - at the moment it is an article I wrote for Ragnarok War Kites and Flying Batteries.

Sent a short article for BTRC’s Slag off to Nick at Ragnarok earlier including three new systems and four ships designed to use them. All of them are built around a theme of creating ships that enhance the survivability of other ships through defence or distracting the enemy.

The latest issues of Ragnarok (The Magazine of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargaming) arrived by post today. An interesting mix of articles including Daleks, Zombies, SF Armoured warfare, Fantasy Naval and Luna Exploration alongside the regular rules and miniature reviews.

My article, The Panzerfauste Song Book, takes up more pages than I thought it would. If I’d realised how long it is I’d have split it in two!

The SFSFW’s been busy on the WWW today launching the SFSFW blog and SFSFW twitter to go along with the existing SFSFW web site and SFSFW Facebook page.

Here, by popular demand, is a bigger version of the picture that is on the cover of Rag issue 52. I’m a bit embarrassed by it because it was a test that was thrown together in about 20 minutes using Poser 7 and Vue 6 Infinite (although this one could have been made is Vue 6 Easel just as easily). It uses a few models from Daz including Steam-Mech and Michael 3 (with a few morphs to shape his head who is wearing the 19th Century Suit Pack. Since I was expecting it to be used as an interior illustration in black and white I only used simple solid coloured textures on Michael and his clothes instead of more detailed texture maps.