Creating a Caravan Guard for Talomir Tales

 

I've decided to create a caravan guard character for Talomir Tales Caravanserai, which I can no longer find the link for so we're going into the realm of discontinued rules until they show up in the Rebel Minis archive of Two Hour Wargames. I envision him as a late teens mercenary trying to prove himself. Since he's not a veteran in combat, like a soldier would be, his class will be warrior. As usual, I will be using the GameMaster's Apprentice Fantasy deck for character creation.

Starport Scum Characters

 

I've had Starport Scum for many years now and always wanted to give it a go. Finally, after digging around my 15mm sci-fi stuff, I was inspired to create some characters to hopefully play out some games or even a campaign. We'll see how it goes!

In the rules there is a section for creating characters. Either you can build your own characters with "tags" or you can have them randomly generated for you. I decided to just look at the figure and see what comes to mind, as the rules encourage you to do. I will give the heroes 3 traits, 2 positive and 1 to fit the figure's personality and then an extra pilot trait. Random names are provided by the GameMaster's Apprentice Sci Fi deck.

I almost forgot, each hero gets to roll on the "sample loot table" and for every three characters in a group, we roll on the gun table.

Adventure Log Drvar: Month 1, Week 1 All Things Zombie Evolution

Rules Used

Welcome again to another adventure log. Like my fantasy version, I will be keeping track of characters and doing the light bookkeeping required for this game. Sometimes I might get into detail and sometimes not.

I decided to make an area map of my hometown, Otis Orchards, and its outlying areas to adventure in. Most of it takes place in extreme Eastern Washington except for Coeur d'Alene (cor-duh-lane), Idaho. Also, Spokane is pronounced spo-can, just to clarify. Both cities are named after Native American tribes.

For the first month I'll be using the "First 30 days," which consists of three separate encounters. It's kind of like a tutorial and all the work is done for you. In the first month you can't choose to recruit anyone. You can have a gun but I'm choosing to go unarmed. This will be in area map 1, Otis Orchards. Let's do it!

Area Map

Making a Horror Character with GameMaster's Apprentice

 

I'm going to be starting up a new campaign with All Things Zombie - Evolution (ATZE) published by Two Hour Wargames. I did a very short campaign here with three encounters of my choosing. This time, I'm going to start from day 1 of the zombie outbreak and go from there.

Let's build a horror character!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 6 Quest Finale

 

Rules Used

So far it has been a heck of a journey. A lot of battles and a lot of blogging on the quest for the Eternal Father statue. So let us conclude with Shen and Phineas' adventure!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 5 Homeward Bound

Rules Used

We are almost home! This is the last wandering encounter of this quest. Whew, been quite a ride. I will be using this to resolve PEF's: 1-3 Capalan League, 4-5 Goblins, and 6 trolls. I figure the goblins are hot on the trail after killing their chief or king or whatever goblins call their commander in chief for their given tribe (and boy did they get revenge, as you will see soon). There will be five PEF's in this encounter. The dice gods really don't want me to get to the finish line, I guess! The encounter is taking place in the dark.

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 4 The Long Road Home

Rules Used

What did I think about the dungeon delving table? Overall, I thought it was pretty slick. It doesn't take up any space and, since you're not going back through the dungeon, you don't need tiles, cards, or sketching it out. Not that tiles and cards are a bad thing, I just didn't have room playing on my coffee table right now and it speeds things up. Less components equals less set up time. It is truly random so you could have a long dungeon or you could encounter the big bad and his treasure room on the first roll. Both of the dice can be modified with a +1 to get you going through the dungeon faster though.

On with the next encounter, wandering!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 3 Into the Dungeon Bowels!

 

Rules Used

Before we get started, I'd like to talk about a couple of things.

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 2

Rules Used

 

Having a healer is great and all but he is of the Red Sun alignment (the "good guys"), which opens me up to attacks from the Black Moon alignment (the "bad guys") and more negative interaction results. This is not necessarily bad but, I'm committed to the side of good now and can't recruit Black Moon NPCs, such as goblins and orcs...Sad indeed!

Also, I've never had a healer in the group so I will go into detail if I need to heal a character and take a step-by-step approach. With that said, let's get started on the second wandering encounter for this quest!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 1

 

Rules Used

A quick note: Not that I need to explain things in a solo game (other than to myself?), I've decided to keep the Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money model for Involuntary encounters. Why? There is a 1-3 chance of a something bad happening, 1 chance at a job, and 2 chances of nothing happening. As written in Caravanserai, your chance of something bad happening at the beginning of the month is 100%. Now, in a post-apocalyptic setting I can see that being the case. It is, indeed, a harsh environment where every day you are fighting for your life.

In a fantasy world, however, I really don't see someone being attacked every month while going about their humdrum lives in between encounters. Sometimes, sure, you're going to be raided by goblins but not always. So with that said, I'm going with the SLGM involuntary encounter table. As I said before, the great thing about Two Hour Wargames is, you can pick and choose from other rule sets. Besides, Talomir Tales Distant Shores doesn't even have involuntary encounters so it's a nice in between.

On with the adventures!

Making a Fantasy Character with GameMaster's Apprentice: Shen

 

Shen

Characters, you can't really play an RPG game without them. I primarily play simple solo games and I like simple characters but I do like a little back story. What's their motivation? What's their back story? What's their personality like? Do they like hot dogs?

I came across this post over on the Two Hour Wargames forums by davidlhsl and, on a whim, bought the GameMaster's Apprentice decks as he highly recommended it. I like card drawing and thought this would be a good fit for my character creation. No rolling dice and no flipping pages in a book, sweet!

Each card has a TON of information on it, as seen here:

This is the fantasy version but each card set has genre specific info on it.

For my uses, I primarily look at names, random events, sensory snippets, belongings, catalyst, location, and the virtue/vice. The difficulty and likely odds could be good. Does Shen like hot dogs? "No!"

Read on if interested...

Adventure Log: Shen Month 2 (continued)

 

Rules Used

Rather than go looking for employment, I decided an Explore encounter would be a decent choice. I am using CrinkleChips' little explore creature table found here in the THW forums. It's a great little tool! Maybe we'll meet some new friends? Or enemies! Or NPCs that just ignore us, which is probably going to happen...Oh it will happen.

Adventure Log: Shen Month 2

Rules Used

 Our heroes:

Shen Rep 5 AC 2 Thief Star (Smooth, Clumsy)

Phineas Rep 3 AC 2 Grunt Soldier (Hard as Nails)

Let's get this going right off the bat, roll for involuntary encounter, confrontation. Sounds juicy! Yes, the artwork is updated from last time. 😎

Adventure Log: Talomir Tales Shen Month 1 (continued)

 

Rules Used

Shen Rep 5 AC 2 Thief Star (Smooth, Clumsy)

Last night's log started off Shen's adventuring career and ended with him accepting a job to escort a merchant. Escorts are tough business but, I feel confident that Shen can overcome it and gain some coin. Maybe he'll even meet some allies, who knows? We will see! I forgot to mention that Shen is in the nation of Capalan League.

Adventure Log: Talomir Tales Shen Month 1

 

Rules Used

Shen Rep 5 AC 2 Thief Star

Shen is a Rep 5, Pep 5, and Sav 4 thief. Class attribute is clever. His chosen attribute is smooth. His random attribute is clumsy. Just my luck, a clumsy thief! I will rule that finding and disarming traps is a physical challenge but finding secret rooms is more of being keenly aware, so more of a mental challenge. Thankfully, clever lets me roll 3D6 and choose the best result on challenges.

Personal preferences for my games:

I start my adventuring with an involuntary encounter. While not actually in the Talomir Tales Distant Shores rule book, it is from the 5150 Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money.  1-4 something happens and 5-6, nothing.

Regarding magical items, only rep 5 or higher (also a big bad of any rep) can have a magical item. I will roll when the PEF is resolved to see if it is equipped with it. I assume they know what they have.

Read on for his first adventures!