Once upon a time I had seemingly unlimited time, funds, and energy
to dash off to regional conventions with my car packed to the gills
with gaming toys to share with fans. My situation has changed over
the years. As a father and husband I don’t have as much time or
energy in my middle-age years. Conventions aren’t as generous
toward “guests” (and gaming “guests” in particular), putting
more of the financial burden on them to pay their way (especially
hotel costs, arguably the biggest expense attending a regional con).
I don’t have as much spare cash for gaming pursuits, let alone road
trips to conventions with significant financial expenses incurred by
a hotel stay, meals, and gas for the car. But I still have the urge –
and often fight it – to commit myself to conventions, bring all my
gaming toys, and run entire weekends of fun games for appreciative
fans.
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| Valley of the Ape "set pieces." |
It doesn’t help when I head into the basement and gaze longingly
at the neglected tables for wargaming, painting, and crafting
terrain. A lifetime of toys from various adventure gaming hobby
pursuits are stashed in, around, and under those surfaces, all
yearning for some play time. Some I’ve brought out to play with
younger folks; my nephew helped playtest the still-in-development
Panzer Kids rules on the desert terrain with World War II
tanks. The Little Guy helped me create the
kid-friendly Valley of the Ape wargame with the custom jungle terrain we bought and
assembled. But these remain isolated if highly enjoyable incidents. I
have an urge to share my toys with more people.
I have four ample sets of toys for particular games I’ve
assembled over the years:
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| Running a Star Wars game in Mos Eisley. |
Mos Eisley Starport: When I was working for West End Games
and doing frequent convention and store demos for
The Star Wars
Roleplaying Game (
D6 version) I built several set pieces,
as I call them, to arrange into game dioramas to use with painted
Star Wars miniatures. The most impressive was a diorama of
downtown Mos Eisley based on Jennell Jaquays’ fantastic map from
Tatooine Manhunt, including the cantina and a nearby docking
bay. My brother built a customized wooden box to house the entire
diorama (about three by six feet when open); a combination of painted
metal miniatures and Galoob MicroMachine figures populated the Mos
Eisley streets, and appropriately scaled models of a YT-1300
freighter,
Lambda-class shuttle, X-wing fighter, and other
vehicles could dock in the landing bay. My handy brother also made a
scale diorama of the cantina itself (in its own, smaller box) based
on the
Tatooine Manhunt map. I later crafted other set pieces,
including piles of rubbish simulating a starship junkyard and a
bunker, barracks huts, and speeder hangar tent for an Imperial scout
post. I created two scenarios in which players moved from one diorama
to the other, though I sold these in later years. I’ll admit the
Mos Eisley diorama could use some work, repairs to buildings,
flocking, and other details as well as improvements to the moisture
vaporators (built from leftover plastic model sprues), doors, and a
few other artful touches. I still have many of the miniatures (and
yes, Jawas galore). And, despite several subsequent iterations of the
roleplaying game by different companies using different game systems,
I still enjoy running
D6 Star Wars Roleplaying Game
adventures...and gamers, new and nostalgic, still enjoy playing them.
The Charioteer’s Tomb: Back when I was
developing the
Pulp Egypt setting sourcebook I prepared a
scenario to showcase the kind of adventure gamers could expect in
that genre. While the sourcebook eventually used the
generic Any-System Key I developed, I ran (and still run) scenarios
for it using the familiar
D6 System outlined in
D6
Adventure. To attract gamers to the table – and provide some
visual appeal for my dealers table – I build an Egyptian tomb
complex. It consisted of several chambers: an entry at the bottom of
the tomb shaft, several corridors, a central hall, treasury, and the
tomb itself. Each chamber could fit onto others using similarly sized
doorways, laid out as specified in the scenario map or rearranged in
other configurations. Besides 25mm minis for the intrepid
archaeological team exploring the tomb, I used a host of other minis
and terrain pieces to visually enhance the tombs (and the action):
large statues of Anubis guarding one of the doorways, treasure, the
sarcophagus, a giant scorpion and cobra, and some wonderful one-inch
square minis of swarming scarab beetles (much like those seen in
The
Mummy). The adventure itself didn’t include much tactical
maneuvering around the tomb, but it looked fun and drew people to the
gaming table. Granted, I still really should finish the tomb’s
surface entrance and make more horseman miniatures (and get a real
truck mini) for the chase scene on the road back to Cairo, but the
tomb really remains the scenario’s focal point. I still have most
of the pieces and minis, so it’s easy to pull out and run, though
it all fits in a rather large plastic tub.
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British tanks cooking up on the
Panzer Kids table. |
Panzer Kids: I’ve been developing a basic
World War II tank combat game for kids for a few years now, though I
need to find the time to pull together my text, playtest notes, and
other materials into an actual rules booklet. (You can read about
development issues with
Panzer Kids in
“Playtesting A Kids’ Wargame” and
“Designing Tank Stat Cards.”) But through
playtesting the different systems and optional rules I’ve amassed a
number of terrain pieces and miniatures for a number of different
scenarios: desert cliffs, oases, minefields, ammunition and fuel
depots, tanks and artillery for both Allied and Axis forces. I’ve
even branched off and dabbled in the European Theater of Operations
(as described in
“Making Use of What We Have”), which used some
existing or easily modified terrain. Most of my materials are in
15mm; lots of
Flames of War miniatures as well as pre-painted
plastic
Axis & Allies miniatures. Although I have a decent
number of 6mm tanks, I’d love to field a host of tanks at this
scale to replay an interesting tank skirmish I read about once, where
some American M-3 Stuart tanks in Algeria during Operation Torch
headed into the desert to intercept a group of French R-35 tanks
loyal to Vichy France. Sure, I have enough tanks and terrain to run
several engaging, large battles, but I’d love to prepare a force
(at the affordable and more easily painted 6mm scale) for a specific
historic skirmish between two rather unlikely opponents. Most of the
components for this game occupy various plastic tubs and smaller
cases for transport, but if I sorted things out more efficiently I
could probably pack it all into one large plastic tub.
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The Little Guy playtesting
Valley of the Ape. |
Valley of the Ape: Recent readers might have
followed my
design and playtest reports on my latest endeavor, rules
for kids to play a jungle exploration, capture-the-giant-ape game. To
playtest this I gathered and created an entire table full of jungle
terrain, 54mm figures, a lost temple, and, of course, the giant ape
himself. While not as elaborate as some other jungle-themed miniature
wargame set-ups I’ve seen (including the one that inspired me),
it’s still enough to gather
a modest crowd of interested kids and grown-ups at conventions. More than any other terrain and figures,
those for
Valley of the Ape remain durable and easy to pack,
having been chosen to endure the rough handling of kids new to the
adventure gaming hobby. I’ve managed to pack all the component into
one plastic tub, so it makes for a nice, ready-to-go convention kit.
I’ve talked about
“showcase games” before. I love the visual
spectacle some games create and really enjoy when I can offer that
excitement with others by sharing my own game-related toys. Miniature
wargaming conventions excel at vast tables sporting elaborate terrain
and hordes of finely painted minis, not simply static dioramas of
famous (or speculative) battles, but fully playable games. Even the
sight of a single miniature wargame set-up in a board or roleplaying
game hall creates a positive impression and enticing attraction.
Roleplaying games and even board games benefit from this same spirit
of spectacle. Some roleplaying gamers indulge in elaborate layouts,
dungeon corridors, or wilderness terrain for their home games and
sometimes convention games. Occasionally one finds giant-sized
versions of board games at cons, such as
Settlers of Catan
sets and oversized pieces of
King of Tokyo. Occasionally
gamers port “battle games” like
Memoir ’44 and
Command
& Colors Napoleonics – which rely on boards, cards, dice,
and small, unpainted plastic minis – to larger tabletop set-ups
like traditional miniature wargames using terrain and larger painted
minis.
Sure, I could bring some boxed board games I love, or my X-wing
minis to share, or any of a number of roleplaying games enhanced only
by paper handouts. Sometimes I have to settle for the bare minimum
depending on the time or travel arrangements. But, like many gamers,
I have such wonderful toys it’s only natural I want to share them.
I hope in the near future I can find more time, energy, and finances
to become more involved in regional conventions so I can pack up the
car with toys to share with other gaming enthusiasts in Schweig’s
Gaming Roadshow.
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