Feb/100
Days of Glory
Pete English, a good friend of Victory Points has given us a preview of his new supplement to "Check Your Six!" aka "CY6". This supplement takes us to the early days of WWII when the French faced the German in the sky. I got a chance to play a couple of the scenarios and while you may think they would all be cake walks for the Germans and impossible for the French - nothing could be further from the truth. These are historically accurate scenarios that for our gaming group were real nail biters. Here is the info blurb we got concerning this new supplement:
DAYS OF GLORY is a scenario and campaign book for the popular CHECK YOUR 6! Air Combat and Campaign Rules. The book provides three campaigns and 25 scenarios under one cover. The first campaign of 9 scenarios follows the beginning of the German air campaign over Belgium and France from 10-23 May 1940. The second campaign, recreates the intense combat above Dunkirk from 27 May to 1 June 1940 with 9 scenarios. The final 7 scenarios focus on the German drive to Paris from 3 June during “Operation Paula”, the attack on French airfields defending the City of Lights, and the last forlorn attacks by French squadrons up to 25 June 1940. The book also features some of WWII’s legendary aces including Helmut Wick, A.G. “Sailor” Malan, Robert Williame, Werner Mölders, Ian “Hack” Russell and Rene Pornier-Layrargues.
HISTORICAL RESEARCH: This book includes several introduction sections containing campaign historical background, organizations, formations and tactics of the French, German and British air forces, plus a bibliography for further reading.
AIRCRAFT STATISTICS and CAMPAIGN INFORMATION: This book contains aircraft statistics for 15 French, British and German aircraft in CHECK YOUR 6! format for use in the scenarios. The book also contains detailed notes and rare pictures of the various aircraft featured in the campaign.
CHECK YOUR 6! CAMPAIGN SYSTEM: This book includes a CHECK YOUR 6! campaign that allows the scenarios to be played individually, linked to form three mini-campaigns, or combined as one grand campaign.
Feb/100
Broken Earth Campaign Ready to Roll
At HeroCentral.net I have the Broken Earth campaign information finally all loaded. Players can read the world history and jump into creating characters right away. I'm rather excited about this. This weekend I will kick off the campaign and we will have our first run of it.
I had some trouble getting the material up. I did a cut and paste from Word 2010 Beta. In the underlaying HTML there was some formatting that was not understood by HeroCentral which rejected it. However by going into Source Mode I was able to get the raw html and then in EditPlus remove the offending tags. In this case they were <o:p> tags which I have no idea what they do. I could google it I am sure but why...
It looks fine. Even my table formatting looks reasonably intact with little effort needed to fix it. I am really happy so far. Hopefully the players will be happy too.
Feb/100
The Raven
Here is the 5th edition Hero System write up for the RAVEN APC the characters get in The Broken Earth campaign. More to come when I get this updated to 6th edition and spec. out the main gun.
Feb/100
The Broken Earth Campaign
I am starting a new Hero System 6th Edition campaigned called The Broken Earth. It takes place 4 centuries from now on Earth after the planet has been wiped out by an interstellar attempt at takeover. The players are a team of scientists, technicians, leaders and explorers who were frozen prior to the doomsday event and revived with a mission to rescue what is left of humanity.
The Team (Alpha-3) will have an armored personnel carrier, links back to vault 0126 and plenty of high tech gear. Still they will need their wits to survive the wasteland. It just so happens that the ever vigilant overlord computer will be a sort of invisible NPC there. This well intentioned dictator will offer as much of a challenge as any danger the wasteland holds for Alpha-3.
Right now I have 5 players at Hero Central, 4 of whom have created characters. I am hoping to get the 5th to finish his. I can accept up to 8 characters in this run and if it works well I might attempt running multiple teams at the same time.
The story borrows from a lot of my favorite post-apocalyptic and sci-fi favorites. Aliens, The Long Afternoon of Earth, Mad Max, etc. I also borrow elements from The Morrow Project and Paranoia. There are many sources of information I have used. As the campaign materials are finalized I will put them up on this site for easy access.
Many thanks to Dan Simon for creating Hero Central and giving free access to this valuable PBEM RPG support system!
Sep/091
Victory Points almost open for business
I've been busy getting things ready for the new website. Right now the only thing that isn't ready to go are the Forums. I am using Disqus to moderate the comments and I am hopeful they will eventually add forums. I would hate to have members work with two different membership systems. It is too much work to "invent my own" so I am dependent upon a third party solution. I've also been working to weed out spammers who seem to really love attacking Word Press sites.
I've already started to put content up. I need an RPG editor. I'd like to have other secondary editors as well. I've taken the mantle of Wargames Editor since that is 90% of my gaming anyway. If anyone is interested in being an editor (which consists of blogging, completing gaming projects and documenting them in photos and essays) then contact me here.
Lately my interests have swung to WH40K, HOTT, DBA for primary play and various boardgames for intermittent play. I have at least two boardgames I've gotten this year that I would LOVE to play if I can find opponents.
Once Victory Points is up this site will become inactive. It will be redundant. You can sign up for the Victory Points RSS feed instead!
So far things are progressing nicely on the site. Let me know what you think. Thanks!
Pete
Sep/090
Games Workshop / Tau pages added
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| From Tau |
I am starting to fill out the site with the projects I have completed or am presently working on. The Tau army is my first foray back into 40K in a long time. I plan on adding lots of other things under the Games Workshop banner such as my love of Legends of the Old West. I am also getting Space Hulk this weekend so watch for that.
My dream is to get all of my projects cleaned up, photographed, written up and shared with you in the gaming community. I've had a lot of fun over the last 19 years of wargaming and while I have a lot of projects that never saw completion I do have many more that did. This site is also inspiring me to complete half-done past projects. It is amazing how many out of print miniatures I've found in my collection. Some have been sold on EBay to pay for this site. Others await new life. For example my original 1980's Fimir from Games Workshop will end up in a HOTT army!
We still haven't announced the Grand Opening of Victory Points yet so if you have come here via a google search - welcome! The site is underconstruction but I am aiming for an October 2009 grand opening!
If you want to see my prior work check out my old blog.
Aug/090
More reactions to Hero System book 1
I've read further, and it turns out I was 1 page from where Steve describes the major differences between 5th and 6th. Honestly, I expected more changes, but it looks like some changes negated the need for other changes. There are fundamental changes - to be sure. A standard Hero is built upon 400 points now. This does not mean they are more powerful, but that the things are a bit more expensive in 6th edition.
This book does a HELL of a lot better job at describing character creation than the 5th edition book. I am enjoying reading it and I think new players to the system will have a leg up on the Grognards. The description of the guidlines for creating characters exists in both 5th and 6th but I think the version in 6th is better written. It gets more to the point about how to develop your concept before delving too deeply into the mechanics.
Package Deals have been replaced by Templates. Compared to the 5th Edition these seem a bit watered down with a suggested maximum of 15 character points. Eh? Some 5th edition package deals were North of 50 character points! Funny how on the next page (6E1 p.37) the two examples given show 17 and 27 character points each! Now they also come with complications (the new Disadvantages) and these are within 2-3 points of the benefits given.
More to come as I plow through the books!
Pete
Aug/090
Hero System 6th Edition is available now!
Anyone who knows me knows I am a fan of the Hero System. Started in the early 80's as Champions, this role playing system has evolved into a powerful game that handles more than just superheroes. While there was a decade where I didn't play it at all, when the 5th edition came out in 2003 I picked it right back up. Now in August of 2009 the 6th edition is here. I am currently reading the PDFs and waiting for my printed copies. I also have the newly updated Hero Designer software (one of my favorite software packages for character design.)
I haven't finished reading it yet but I still wanted to let everyone know it is out there and available to purchase and download. The books are on a slow boat from China. So here are my first impressions:
- Improved Layout: While very similar to 5th Edition the use of color and more consistent artwork is a huge improvement.
- Crystal Clear Prose: Steve Long is an excellent writer. So far I like what I am reading. He gets to the point and uses his skillful writing to carefully explain the system. I am forced to read all of it because there have been some fundamental changes and so far I've enjoyed what I've seen.
- Streamlined: It appears so far that a lot has been done to streamline the system. I'll do a full write up on this when I've finished reading V1 and then again on V2.
- What I haven't seen is a page on "You've been playing for years, here is what's changed." I've been keeping up with the discussion boards on Hero Games but I'd still like to see it in the book. Perhaps I just haven't reached that point yet.
I'm planning on running a one off game with the system as soon as I've read both books and had time to create a couple of characters. My partner in crime here, Vincent, will be involved so I'm sure we'll both be able to give separate accounts of how the game works. I plan on doing your very basic 4-color Supers scenario with a mix of fighting, rescuing and disaster aversion! All to be reported here!
Pete
Jul/090
Welcome to Victory Points!
Welcome! We are currently building out this site to serve the gaming community. Pete and Vince are avid gamers and have always wanted a site for showcasing their talents and the talents of others. In particular the aim of this site will be to provide projects end to end. It may take us some time to get rolling so please subscribe to the RSS feed so you can follow our progress!
Jul/090
Back from Historicon – see the video
I am back from Historicon but I won't blog much until I've caught up with real life. I've been really busy the last 2 weeks and I've fallen behind on a lot of stuff I need to get done. However, in lieu of reading me yakity-yak about it check out the news coverage! All in all it was great. I gave a lecture that was well attended and had some great questions thrown my way. I got interviewed twice, once for an Oral History project and once for the Weider History Group's podcast. When I can finally figure out where they keep their podcasts I'll post here - there are at least two that they did that weekend I want to hear and from my discussions with Dana Lombardy there are many more I will be interested in. Check out Greathistory.com, armchairgeneral.com and historynet.com for more information.
