Audrey’s Oubliette

Finally, we are looking for playtesters for the survival horror game Forsaken. If you are reading this blog more than likely you have come across me writing about the progress and play test games. This is another step forward towards getting the rules finalized. Rather exciting for me. But anyhow, if you want to see the site that has been put up with general information or you are interested in signing up to be a playtester check it out: www.13threalm.com/forsaken.

The PEL has finally been posted for Cold Wars. Kind of reminds me of signing up for college classes. You are unsure of your schedule until it has been finalized in print. Anyhow here is the time and info for each game of Forsaken I am running. So if you happen to find yourself at the Lancaster Hotel in Lancaster, PA on March 7th and 8th you can drop by and play in a game.

F-276 Forsaken: Virus Outbreak
SciFi; 2 PM; Length: 3 hrs; Location: Distlefink; Table: D-33;
Hosted by: Audrey Ewing; Scale: 28mm; Rules: Forsaken; No. of Players: 6.

All communications ceased from Providence city 24 hours ago. The police force and local guard have quarantined the city. Some sort of virus outbreak is causing the populace to go crazy and attack other people with cannibalistic hunger. But reports are conflicting and uncertain. Your unit is one of the scout teams sent into the city to assess the situation, rescue any survivors and report back. But something went wrong.. Your unit was attacked and your vehicle destroyed by something that wasn’t remotely human. Your last resort is to make it to the extraction point and wait for the helicopter. Rules Taught.

S-277 Forsaken: Werewolves And Vampires And Humans. Oh My!
Fantasy; 12 PM; Length: 3 hrs; Location: Distlefink; Table: D-33;
Hosted by: Audrey Ewing; Scale: 28mm; Rules: Forsaken; No. of Players: 6.

The Black Court of vampires have called an open hunt on the werewolves of Silver Fang for trespassing in their territory. The Silver Fangs are trying to stop a prophecy from coming true. But the Order of Undying Light have learned of all of this and seek to protect any innocent people from harm as well as stop both the vampires and werewolves. Come join in and watch the fur, fangs and flesh fly. Rules Taught.

Cold Wars seems like it is still as ways away. But I know I need to get my butt in gear so it does not catch me by surprise. I already submitted my two Forsaken games I am running that weekend for the convention. One is a zombie scenario the other is a scenario with vampires, werewolves and humans. Due to the dead line of the online PEL (Dec 14th 2007) I ended up submitting the vampire and werewolf game with only knowing that I wanted to run one and the general outline of what I wanted to do. So since that time I have fleshed the scenario out more and already created the characters for the 3 groups involved.

Chuck and I ran a play test of the werewolf and vampire scenario the other weekend and it went rather well. The werewolves were very tough, as I had planned for them to be. I hope to be play testing it again soon and plan on taking some pictures this time. The basic rules for Forsaken certainly feel like they have come together and are running smoothly. I have some writing revisions I need to sit down and do. Plus I need to start putting together the website with information for playtesters. I believe opening the rules up to a larger group of playtesters will certainly get things moving faster. Oh so much to do.

So I started working on Shellendrak manor and have a nice begining. The 1st floor of the manor has been glued onto gator foam. This floor has been the largest I have assembled yet. It was assembled out of 7 separate pieces. Using the low tack painters tape has helped out a ton on these multi-piece buildings. Instead of having to glue down 7 separate pieces individually I assemble all of them at one time using the painters tape and then spray mounted it to the gator foam all in one go. I also have finished the photoshop work on the 1st level walls for the outside and most of the inside. I am looking forward to see the first floor built.

Unfortunately the Shellendrak manor has now been put on hold. Cold Wars is coming up and I need to finish some other scenery, plus paint some figures for the two scenarios I will be running. Neither of which use the manor. Maybe the next convention. So for now it will be put aside for more important stuff. But it will be built.

So I have finally started on my next big build for a Forsaken demo game at Cold Wars. I have decide to build the World Works Games Shellendrak Manor. A nice piece of scenery that can be used for 20th century gaming on into the 21st. After a bit of photoshop work I have completed the base tile that shows the first floor of the manor and the surrounding landscape. The file size is 28.5″w x 28.5″h. I designed it to fit with my modern WWG stuff in case I want to combine them somehow.This terrain piece will be bulked out using foamcore like all my buildings.

Hopefully everything will fit together nicely but this is the largest piece I have built to date. I am also going to try and do a few new modifications like working doors. It will be nice if everything works as planned. I’ll post more pictures as construction progresses. 

So while writing the Forsaken rules I have had to make some decisions on the rulebook layout. I know the rules are going to be in black and white. I looked at a number of rulesets that are print in B&W to see how they did their examples. The two choices are illustrations or photos. I found that the photos can be difficult to make out even in the rule books by the bigger game companies printed on coated paper. I decide to go with illustrations. But even with that decision I needed to choose how I want the illustrations to look. For me it is easier to create them in illustrator over drawing them by hand and scanning them in. Plus they will look more polished over hand drawn images. Below are two test examples I created to see what looks nice and will still print legibly. I think they turned out pretty good and should work nicely in the rules. Now I just have to put together all the visual examples I need.

One thing I do like about creating your own game is coming up with graphics and such. Sometimes it can be tedious and a pain. But it sure is nice when you see it completed.

The examples below show you roughly what a character sheet in Forsaken will contain. I am not planing on releasing color cards. The rules will have a blank black and white version for people to photocopy. Though I may offer a blank color version as a pdf download for those that want to go the extra mile.

The cards are 2.5″ wide x 3.5″ high. They are designed to fit in a regular card protetive sleeve. That way you can mark on the sleeve with a dry erase marker without messing up the cards.

This is a brief overview of the demo game I ran of my survival horror rules at Southern Front last weekend. It does not cover all the details and action, but you should get the idea of what went down.

All communications ceased from Providence city 24 hours ago. The city’s police force and local guard have quarantined the city. Some sort of virus outbreak is causing the local populace to go crazy and attack other people with cannibalistic hunger. But reports are conflicting and uncertain.

Your unit was attacked and your vehicle destroyed by something that wasn’t remotely human. Your last resort is to make it to the emergency extraction point and wait for the helicopter. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some photos of what the Special-ops team was up against. Actually it was 25 zombies, 4 ravager zombies, 2 lashers, The Flayed One and Nemesis Hunter.

I want to take some pictures of all the zeds and ravagers. Plus I like how the Nemesis Hunter turned out and want to get some all around shots of him.

Not everything came at the special-ops team all at once. The Flayed One and Nemesis Hunter were actually in a different game each.

The zombies are primarily Cold War, with some Zombiesmith and Copplestone miniatures mized in. The ravager zombies are from West Wind. The lasher is from 13th Realm (not yet released). The Flayed One is a converted figure from Wizards of the Coast Dreamblade. The Nemesis Hunter is from Hasslefree.

Next up should be photos of the games themselves.

Here are photos of the team that was used in the two demo games I ran recently at Southern Front. Samson and Dexter (1 and 6) are Hasslefree miniatures and the other four are Foundry miniatures.