Heroes of Rura-Tonga (8)

Things are moving behind the scenes. Even if I’m prepping for fighting Mythos in my Delta Green game or taking spice for some visions of the future in my next Dune game or even looking at neon-soaked streets of Los Angeles 2037, my mind always has a little corner of Pulp inside. So when I’ve got the time I’ve always come back to my now long-prepping Heroes of Rura-Tonga campaign.

One of my biggest ventures during this long process was creating cool NPCs. Because they will be as important as scenarios for my Wife’s alone pulp hero. Also, I wanted to up the game since my last great Pulp Campaign – Pulp Egypt (also by Peter Schweighofer). So I’ve used investigator passports from the Drive-thru, some Google, and Ms Paint Foo, and created those beauties. So here they are. Residents and guests of Rura-Tonga in  no particular order: 

My Youngling leaves fingerprints everywhere! 

Another point in prepping this campaign is now done. Up to the next one - Villains!

Heroes of Rura-Tonga (7)

It seems that I'm back with preparing for the Heroes of Rura-Tonga campaign. After the delightful Armoured Angels scenario, we are taking the life of my wife's character three years into the future, to the year 1938, when joint forces of the Intelligence agencies of the USA, England, and Australia are sending him into Rura-Tonga, near the Japanese Mandat territory. But even the journey cannot be just a simple cruise or flight for this gentleman. I'm using heavy-pulpiefied Robinson Gruesome from the Monophobia scenario book. If You never  I've got a map and even choose another great enemy. For this heavily experienced PC, I'm thinking about Star Spawn of Cthulhu as the main bad guy. We will see!

Below is a map of the house in which Mike will be living during his tenure on Rura-Tonga. I've taken it from one of the old solo scenarios from the Indiana Jones Adventures book. 

Book Nook

I was fascinated for some time now with the idea of a book nook. At last idea of one cleared in my head. I took Rolls Royce Armoured Car I use as a prop in the Armoured Angels (best adventure in that collection) scenario from Fearful Passages and ask my wife to create an entrance to an ancient temple. So after a couple of hours, we've got the box, the stone wall with the entrance to the temple. Also, I find a nice miniature of some Archeologist and paint it. Also got some form of moss to enrich the overall scenery and little led tea lights for ambient light. 

Building the wall.

Lights and moss.

Armored car, only one wall completed and another miniature for tests.

Gluing everything together.

Top-down view.

Above You can see different kinds of color palettes I can create with LED tealights.

RPG Update (22)

Warning! This blogpost includes spoilers for the Horror on the Orient Express campaign!

My last entry about the Horror on the Orient Express campaign I run for some time now was one month ago exactly - on the 7th of February. After this time I can say, that I was so wrong! But let me explain.  I said that the Trieste chapter was one of the most enjoyable parts of this campaign. Well, the Zagreb and Belgrade chapters were even more fun and scary at the same time. First on its heavy dreamlands style with Ligottis touch. And at the same time, I've received Thomas Liggoti's book, the first print in Poland "Songs of the dead dreamer" with the story on which this chapter was based on. 

So it went well. The great atmosphere from the beginning and increasing pace during the climax of this adventure were very pleasing. One of my players lose his scull in Zagreb, but we play in Pulp mode, so he lost lots of Sanity points, but he is traveling further. 

Then, after a short train trip, my players landed in Belgrade. From my perspective, the city part of this chapter was not so exciting. But after players went to the bazaar and buy the whole coffin (for Simulacrum) of Rakia, well that evening was... Interesting. After that came Orasak with Granny and her house. It was one of the most enjoyable parts of this campaign to date. I know, I know, I'm repeating myself. But what can I do? It is true! So now I'm prepping for Sophia's chapter. It will be wild!

RPG Update (21)

 After finishing Conspiracy X adventure "Convoy", we started creating characters for the Polish RPG system "Dzikie Pola". It is set in XVI century Poland, so it is heavy on my country's history. Next week we will have our first adventure. In the meantime, the second group is enjoying the lavish splendor of the Orient Express and the horrors of also. So as You can see we are going strong with that campaign. But about that in the next post. For now, I'm watching saber duels, thinking about plots for the game.

RPG Update (20)

Ah! The last two Sundays we ended with Horror on the Orient Express sessions. This time our group went to Trieste. What an adventure! What a city, what an atmosphere and what excitement! We used for the first time the Medium skill of one of our Player Characters here, to make contact with one of the plot points (no spoilers). So we eventually almost recreated a seance! Then we move up with the story. The abandoned villa, the caves... The shrieking Bora wind! I know, I know, too many exclamation marks. But it was one of the most enjoyable parts of this campaign to date. Cannot wait to run another chapter! 

RPG Update (12)

Since my last post, We played many games. But unfortunately, I've got new work hours and they are killing my desire to write something here. Today is the first day with relatively more free time.  So I've jumped back to this space.

First of all, we played in 5 sessions of Our Cyberpunk corner of the Earth - Bielitz City 2020. This is Our most successful campaign. We've got always a minimum of 3 players. But mostly 4 or even 5. The story is my own and its pacing is slow but steady.  Cannot wait for the
next session!

Since the last post, we played in 2 sessions of Horror on the Orient Express. Players in this pulp campaign just exit dreaming Lozanne and now are going to board the train. Next stop Mediolan! Cannot wait to play the next session also. Almost 20 years ago this was the last stop for the earlier group. 

For Hell-o-ween, as we called it, we played in Viewscream RPG. This time with 6 players, but one of them was a ghost. The scenario was for five players but we modified it a little bit. It was spooky to the end, but all the players were happy after the session.

Depending on when the lockdown occurs in my country we will see what happens next. Stay safe, stay strong everybody!

Heroes of Rura-Tonga (6)

Last week we were changing flats. So there was pure chaos for more than a week. To this day I cannot find some stuff. But the Rura-Tonga box is safe and sound. With not much time on my hand, I decided to create something little but fun and useful. Let me say some backstory for this particular piece of handouts.
During our very first Pulp Egypt game sole PC in the mids of battle with two alive statues, reminded himself that he knows two spells. One simple Voor Sign, but the other named Create the Barrier of Naach-Tith was a powerful defensive spell, that saved him and others around him, many times. This was one of the things that Mike learned while fighting with minions of Nyarlathotep. I've run Masks with Pulp Cthulhu mechanics so I decided that PC can and will probably learn some spells. So in that first tomb, we stop the action and started looking for these two spells in The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic and in Call of Cthulhu Rulebook and in my old edition of Masks of Nyarlathotep. So this time I said nevermore! I took the spells from the book and printed them o one side and on the other, I created a quasi-old page that can contain the text of the spell. So it will be in possession of my wife's character. Every time she will use one of them, she just takes it and read it. Consequently, with other spells I will do the same. A simple method for not leaf through rulebooks during a game. How do You like it?

Frontpage with quasi original pictograms.

Second page with the real mechanics of things.

Heroes of Rura-Tonga (5)

After last week's big maps insanity, this time using so much free time (for making old paper), little MSPaint foo I created the little maps. Those of interior places from adventures. With these maps, I only changed names from English to Polish for ease of reference. I must say before I show You anything (I didn't do this last time - sorry) - these maps may contain spoilers, so if You know, that You will play in one of the scenarios from the Rura-Tonga line, do not look at them, because they can tell some adventure hints.


For all the others interesting in my little handicraft:

Here is all the content I create for this campaign (for now)

:

Heroes of Rura-Tonga (4)

With all this social distancing around us, some of my plans go to hell. One of them was printing big maps for upcoming Heroes of Rura-Tonga pulp campaign. But being lockdown in my home gives me too much time and too much opportunities to delve into some handcrafting handouts. First of all, I've created the cover for Heroes box:

Nothing fancy, but it will separate it from other boxes. Then I started to think about maps. In Sourcebook and additional adventures got them nice and clean. But for my game, I want something different. More maps style with grid and worn down look. So I use my MSPaintFoo to create these maps. Of course, I created an old paper with tea and coffee, then printed on it. So with no furder ado:

The box is getting somewhat crowded.

Map of Rura-Tonga.

Another map

and another map

and another...

So I think that James "Sparky" Jones will have cartography skills. Or maybe somebody else from the crew or from town? Maybe You can tell me? And maybe someone will know how to make it even more realistic? Till next time!

Heroes of Rura-Tonga (3)

In the last post about Heroes of Rura-Tonga, I give You a glimpse into something new. Today is the day, that I will raise the curtain for this little side project. Last time I show You my model for the Armored Angels scenario.  This was the perfect connection between my old passion and new (realistically not so new - almost 25 years(!)). I've decided to do this once more. In the sourcebook captain, Collin Sharp is the owner of Grumman G-21 which he christened the Flying Fish. This is a great and beautiful plane. But the plastic model kit for this plane (or for the PBY Catalina also) is out of my reach at the moment. So I need to improvise. I found an old model for Polish bomber PZL 37 Moose. It was so cheap that I have to take such an opportunity.

Of course, it wasn't a plane design for landing on water. There was a project for that, but the start of WWII end this endeavor.  So I've created something new. Only for this campaign. Using an old model kit, two toothbrushes and a lot of imagination and glue. Then I primed it...

...and give it to my wife for painting. I show her a couple of DC3 pictures from that time period. She starts her own little experiments. One of them:

Another:

But after much consideration, she decided to make it all in one color. I've created transfers and here is our final version. We called it Flying Moose! 

It is so big that it was hard to put this plane into our lightbox. But if You look closely we even got a little moose on the sides of the hull.
PZL 37 had 3 machineguns so there will be an opportunity for PC and NPCs to shoot some Zero! This will be a nice memoir for our adventures in and around Rura-Tonga. This is all I can show You for now. But new ideas are in motion...