RPG Blog Carnival: Terrain, Seasons, Weather (oh my)

And so the RPG Blog Carnival rolls into town once more, this month's topic is "Terrain, Seasons, Weather" - and how you use them in your games.

Inspired by a post I read about the impact of describing the sky in our GM narratives, and an interesting comment on my last month's carnival submission regarding the narrative and mechanical effects of terrain types, I'm interested in how people use terrain, weather, and the changing seasons in their games - narratively and mechanically.

To participate, simply write a blog post connected to the prompt and post a link to it in the comments of this post, for example:

• How you use weather and terrain in wilderness travel?
• Games where the seasons are important to gameplay?
• How you use the changing of the seasons, and the festivals that mark their turning?
• Do you use something interesting like hex flowers to generate changes to the weather?
• Reviews of relevant resources?
• Anything else related to the topic!

At the end of the month I'll do a wrap-up of all the submissions and the carnival will move on to somewhere else.

On that note: the RPG Blog Carnival has been running since 2008 but now it needs more hosts for 2023 - if you'd like to host please check out more info on the carnival and fill in the sign-up form here.

What's been a'happening in the Polyhedral Tower...

It's been a while - insanely busy at work, I'm afraid - but although I've been too busy to post, I've not been too busy to game!  See photographic evidence below:

Our group's been working on our own near-future / SF skirmish rules, although some of the factions are expanding way beyond "skirmish" size!  Pretty cool-ly, the rules still hold for larger forces too... hopefully we'll post a beta soonish ... if anyone's interested in playing.

Getting into 15mm gaming...

Image (cc) Kaptain Kobold via FlickrIt's been a while... sorry!

I have been busy - after trying out a few free SF wargames rules, our group is working on our own 15mm near-future skirmish rules, so we can use modern and sci-fi minis.  Which means I finally get to make some terrain!

Current projects:

• 15mm modular city table
• 15mm Hordes of the Things fantasy scenery & armies

Updates will be posted as they come, Peter Pig pirate minis and samurai have already been purchased, along with Dixon Minis ninjas for my Ninjago-obsessed son...

Hopefully we'll all be getting some 15mm SF minis from Ground Zero Games when the shop's back online too.  Keep 'em peeled!

15mm Infinity: The concept

It's an idea I've had in my head for ages now, having played Infinity and liked it - but not having the cash to buy the (frankly beautiful) minis or the time to convert and paint them in a manner that would do them justice:

15mm scale Infinity!

OK... why?  Because I've been looking for a decent skirmish game for ages, and I like the way Infinity plays - and I could get much more mileage from, for example, Ground Zero's 15mm StarGrunt SF range as far as troop minis go.  Plus there's little need to convert for the right standard/support/heavy weapon types as they've a pretty comprehensive range, whereas the Infinity minis - at least when I first got the beta rules - were pretty limited.

15mm Infinity, and space warfare!

Just a quick projects update:

First, I'm still planning on going ahead with 15mm scale Infinity for sci-fi skirmish goodness. I'll probably be getting some minis from Ground Zero Games, as I'm UK based, so it's just a case of working out what to use for what!

The only 15mm terrain we've got is for WW2, so I'll have to get building; I'm currently thinking of something between Matakishi's amazing SF city, and this awesome modular Necromunda table - check out the concept for a better idea of what's going on!


I'd also like to play some space combat games. Full Thrust is good fun (and free) but clunky, so we may end up buying the Firestorm: Armada rules and using FT ships 'cos I think the NSL ones are about as cool as it gets...