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See my reply in your thread PLAY BY MAIL FORUM GRAND STRATEGY GAME (A SORT OF TRIPLEA)

Yes, for my sins...



I would do if... 1) there were decent museums in Finland. 2) they were open.


Please, no, not the Winter War! It's like the British with the 1966 Football World Cup!
Seriously, when I first came to Finland, I use to do historical re-enacting. I decided to get into Finnish history. Basically, it seemed from what was easily available and presented well, Finland did not exist before the end of November 1939 and that they totally annihilated the Soviet Union with nothing but a couple of rusty Mosin–Nagant rifles and bottles of Koskenkorva with lit cloths in the necks...

The Finns really do not seem to be that interested in history. Back in the early 2000s, I read an article by a guy who worked for a local community called Siikajoki. It was about the first proper Finnish victory of the 1808-09 Suomen Sota, when Russia took Finland from Sweden.

Battle of Siikajoki, 18 April 1808

Since it was coming up to the 200^th anniversary of the battle, I thought it would be cool to arrange a re-enactment. OK, it was several years away, but these things take time.

So, I was in contact with a group in Oravainen, who re-create the Österbottens Regiment from that period and they had contacts with a regiment in Russia. That covered the actors/combatants. I wrote to the Siikajoki community explaining the idea and how they could get money from both Finland and EU for cultural events and so on. Basically, they would be handed an event on a plate and they would not have to do much work at all. Not only would it be commemorating a major point in Finnish history, but at the time, the community was trying to get people to move and live there - they were selling plots of land,ready to build houses on, for one Euro and son.

The response? Nothing. No reply, not even a "Thanks, but no thanks.". I found an email address for someone who dealt with community affairs and sent both an email and a regular printed good old-fashioned letter. Still nothing back. That was around 2003-2004.

Fast-forward to late 2008 and in the newspapers, there were articles about how that year was an anniversary of a milestone in Finnish history and how nothing had been done. A couple of people who knew me, drew my attention to these and said "Hey Rob, didn't you ...?")
I was just "Meh!"

R'lyeh?

I wouldn't go for daily, as either GM or player, I don't have time. Weekly would be the thing. The idea being, that when you're a CinC of an army/armies or fleet/fleets, you can't be on-site at every event, so you have to sit at your command post, receive messages and give orders. If it were a meieval/fantasy type campaign, messages would be send manually, or if it were a SciFi space setting, then it still takes a week to make a jump.

For a live RPG, I think an hour per session is maximum, as we're all on different time zones, so while everyone might have a couple of hours to spare, they probably won't be at the same time.

So far, the PBM campaign has leapfrogged into the lead.

Did you do those yourself? Where can I get them?

I need Evil Knights on Horseback as well - it seems I made a boo-boo. Today, I printed up some labels for the bases of the figures. It turns out that both the Knight of the Realm and Dark Knights are cavalry! AAAAaaaaaaaaaaagh!

For the good guys, I have mounted Knights Templar, from mesper, but need bad dudes on horses as well.

You mean like a bird's nest? I just did a quick and dirty one - found an image of some straw, copy/pasted a few times at various angles in GIMP.

As is, it comes out at about 15 mm diameter at the base. I made the base 16 mm to allow for wibbly-wobblyness and trimming.


It is slightly wider at the top than the bottom.

Basic Rules

120 pages!

This is why they came up with Tunnels &Trolls - The full rule book is 99 pages, but this "light" version PDF is 16 pages: 6 pages of rules, 10 pages for a solo adventure and hook for a moderated game.

I can go for that. But, I only have the red & blue Basic books. Is this the one you are talking about: Basic Rules for Dungeons & Dragons?

To keep things simple to start with, for the live RPG session, I would suggest 5^th edition Tunnels and Trolls. Flying Buffalo offer a free "light" version of the rules to download.

The PBM style game would be based on Traveller High Guard/Trillion Credit Squadron for certain in game mechanics.

Unless anyone else has other suggestions.

OK, I get your point

Remember in this game we call life
That no one said it's fair

Nah! It wouldn't hurt the more anglo-centric of us to spend a bit of effort and time to get them translated ourselves!

Maybe there's a mini-challenge there: Translate Shep's cards into English. It will take a bit more that just type the text into Google translate, as even though it is usable, it still gets a lot wrong.

Thanks


For grouped figures, I used to use rectangular bases, But, as each base represents a regiment, having a thin strip with just a few figures looked a too small to my eye. When I decided to use a 40 mm frontage, again, a single line of figures looked a bit sparse. So, by making a 40 mm square, I could get a few more figures on and spread them out, so that they looked bulkier. Even though each regiment has its own strength rating, I still use a rough number of figures to show relative strength - So humanoid type characters, such as men have a few more figures than the orcs, bigger we usually make orcs a big bigger and tougher than humans.

It was an experience, but for this scale, it suits my eye for now.

Here's an idea.

Several players, say three to five.

Each player is the Commander in Chief of a space fleet.

Fleet construction is using the TRAVELLER HIGH GUARD rules.

Budget and Tech Level determined by home planet - to be refined if the game goes ahead.

Time is effectively real time - In Traveller, faster than light (FTL) jumps take two weeks.

Mod One: Communication between CinC and fleet takes only a day or two, as opposed to waiting two weeks for a Scout or other ship carrying messages.

Mod Two: Combat will be dealt with abstractly, as the CinCs would not be there to direct their ships.

Each player would be given an objective and then the resources to plan and execute it.

How long the game will last depends on the play. It could end with the completion of an objective, or it could effectively evolve into a longer running campaign.

That sort of thing.

Anyone interested?

Well... using freely available rules and depending on the genre that people would prefer, I would be quite happy to try and run a Play by "Email" game. The idea would be to use a messaging service or chatroom or something for the players to talk to each other and the GM. Because folk are scattered to the four corners of the globe, it would be a slow play, as time zones tend to get in the way, that's how it used to go in ye olde days of yore before the interwebs was even used by MIT students to buy and sell pot.

If enough folk are interested (like, three or more) then I'll start a new thread on this for some planning and pitch some ideas.