First up, Crypto. I am fascinated by cryptography and have for some time now been looking for a way to integrate it into a roleplaying campaign. The biggest problem with the way cryptography is traditionally handled in gaming is that it’s glossed over with a few dice rolls, after which the character either understands the message right, understands it wrong, or has no idea what it means. What if you want have your players more involved in deciphering the message. Well you could give them the sheet of cipher-text and hope they know some cryptanalysis techniques, or you could give them a Ceaser cipher and watch them break it with ease (especially if they have computers with them), but neither of those have any relation to the character’s actual skill in cryptography so you’ve removed all incentive for players to spend anything getting or upgrading those skills.

What we really need is some sort of system that is based on the characters’ skill but still has some involvement of the players solving the puzzle, and since I’m posting this I’ve obviously got a suggestion for use which I’m calling Cryto Cards.

The idea of Crypto Cards is that all coded messages the players find will be given to them in English but instead of the Latin alphabet a constructed alphabet (probably of at least 100 characters) will be used to write the handout. This means that when the players first find or receive the message it will appear totally alien and unreadable to them. Now the GM will of course have a translation key for the alphabet (having likely been the one who created it) and from this key they will create a set of Crypto Cards. Each of these cards will contain the English translation of one character from the constructed language, for example the character depicted by ‘#’ means ‘th’ in English.

Everytime a character gets a new coded message they will make a skill roll against whatever deciphering skill they would use, this roll should be modified by a penalty based on the GM assigned complexity of the overall code and a bonus based on the information content of the messaged being worked on (a repetitive standardized message will give better clues for decoding). Based on the success of the roll the player will receive a number of random Crypto Cards for characters in the message, ie the player scored 3 over the target number for the skill test and recieves 3 Crypto Cards.

Armed with the Crypto Cards and the raw coded message the player(s) then can work on their own to decode the message. Depending on how you are running the campaign the players may need to find more messages or make more decryption tests on the same message till they have all of the Crypto Cards or enough that they can solve the message on their own. This give the players some involvement in decrypting the messages but characters with higher decryption skills to be of more use in the task. Of course this system is of no use if your players have no interest in cryptography or working out puzzles themselves, but that’s your job as GM to judge that.

As an option to increase complexity of the system you could add False and Complex Crypto Cards. False cards would look identical to regular cards but have a incorrect translation on them (‘#’ means ‘ch’, when it actually means ‘th’) and would be received by players when their character makes a major failure on their decrypting roll, to simulate false leads in decoding the message. Complex cards would contain more information than normal cards; either several translated characters, or translations of the most complex characters, or root forms used to create certain sets of characters, or even a complete sentance translated. Players would recieve Complex cards if their characters had a major success of their skill roll, to represent a major breakthrough in decoding.

If you want to know the convoluted thought process that lead to the idea of Crypto Cards you can read below. Or you can just go off and try them in your game and see how it goes, that was I plan to do in an up coming campaign I am currently developing, but more on that in a future post.

Like most ideas (or at least mine) this one came from a bizarre connection of ideas, in this case it was the Voynich manuscript, Japanese, and Nordic runes.

It all started by wondering if someone could create a work as cryptic as the Voynich manuscript by just writing in English but using a constructed alphabet instead of the standard Latin character set. A standard monoalphabetic replacement with just 26 characters would not be enough of course so what if one did something like written Japanese does where characters can represent consonant-vowel parings (ha, me, so, …), then you’ve now got an alphabet with over 150 characters. If you then expanded it out to include common English consonant-consonant and vowel-vowel pairings (ea, ie, ch, gh, …) and some three letter groupings (ght, tch, eat, …) you would probably be well over 200 characters in the alphabet. To increase the complexity even further you could have seperate characters for capitalized letters (T vs t, Ha vs ha, …) and have no commonality between grouped letters and their root letters (th has no common form to t or h or Th), this would probably allow you to easily approach 500 visually unique characters in your alphabet.

Now while this is a fascinating idea is doesn’t have a whole lot of practical use for anything other than confusing cryptographers and archaeologists of the future, so I just had is kicking around in the back of my head for a while till something else triggered it. The trigger to move the idea of a constructed alphabet on actually came from a small blurb at the bottom of a Wikipedia article. While reading an entry on Nordic runes I came across mention of use of the runic language in fantasy literature as a representation of the Dwarven language, this got me thinking that I could use my idea of a constructed alphabet in gaming somehow.

Now the next step in this chain of ideas gets a little fuzzy, but I think it had something to do with the constructed alphabet actually being used to write English text and the idea of handing players messages written in the alphabet, but somehow this lead to a jump to the idea of Crypto Cards.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any gaming so I decided this weekend to play a solo battle of Future War Commander (FWC). Two of the great things about FWC are that you can play against yourself and each side has just as good a chance of winning even though they know what the enemy is doing, and that you can match up armies that would have no chance of ever meeting in any other system. So for this battle the combatants are:

Mark VI OGRE "Agamemnon"

As the attacker, an OGRE Mark VI from Steve Jackson games, which has been christened “Agamemnon” for this it’s debut battle. Defending against it are a tank company in 3 squads, a mechanized infantry force and an anti-tank gun battery of Imperial Guard from Games Workshop.

The brave Imperial Guard defenders

The scenario being played is a Hit and Run, with the OGRE trying to do as much damage to the defenders and then flee the battle field if possible. The battle is limited to 8 turns and the Guard may only deploy a portion of their force until they have detected or been fired upon by the OGRE.

The Board:

I was unable to find most of my terrain for some reason so I set up the board with rolling hills surrounding a city straddling a major river crossing the board, and a heavily fortified military outpost in one corner. The outpost side of the river was the Guard deployment area and the OGRE would deploy on the opposite side of the river.

Deployment:

The Guard CO and the anti-tank guns deploy in position around the outpost to cover the Guard side of the river.

The mechanized infantry unit deploy in line ahead in the center of the board to advance directly on the city and the bridge.

The OGRE sets it’s deployment point off-centre of the board and out of site of all points across the river.

The remaining Guard units start off board in reserve waiting for the enemy to be spotted. Everyone else is deployed and ready for the battle to begin.

Turn 1:

The OGRE was deployed using mobile deployment so it’s first command roll is to make sure it deploys successful. It does but fails it second command roll to carry out any additional advance. The Guard fail their roll to detect the OGRE but the APCs make their first command roll to advance towards the bridge.

The Guard APCs advance on the bridge

Turn 2:

The OGRE makes two successful moves towards the city. However it’s attempt at a move and fire against the APCs results in a blunder and it comes close to trying to smash it’s way through the city to reach it’s target.

Agamemnon trys to smash it's way through

The Guard once again fails to detect the OGRE, so the APCs advance across the bridge but fail on their attempt to deploy their infantry loads.

The Guard cross the river

Turn 3:

The battle truly begins. The OGRE carries out a move and fire action to get it into the open and attacked the APCs.

Agamemnon engages the Guard

It fires it main guns into the lead APC, damaging and suppressing it. The OGRE fires again, it’s main batteries destroy the second APC and it’s missile batteries fire a barrage a point-blank range and just miss damaging itself. The barrage just destroys the remaining two APCs and damaging the infantry HQ.

The Guard APCs are wiped out

The OGRE then pushes forward onto the bridge shoving the debris of the APCs out of it’s way.

Agamemnon plows through the remains

The Guard reserves begin to arrive. The 1st tank squad arrives then scores a command bonus and makes a double move under cover towards the city. The 2nd squad arrives but fails to advance as the 3rd squad fails to arrive to the battle for this turn.

The Guard tanks begin to arrive

The Guard CO tries to order the anti-tank guns to fire on the OGRE as it crosses the bridge but they fail to attack.

The Guard guns can't see Agamemnon through the smoke

The Guard are at breakpoint 6/12 for losing all their infantry.

Turn 4:

The OGRE moves through the city firing as it goes. It’s main guns fire into the flank of the 1st squad, barely damaging one tank but suppressing it.

Agamemnon engages the 1st squad

As it advances the OGRE also launches a missile barrage towards the 2nd squad. The barrage lands short but manages to hit and damage two tanks and both the 2nd and 3rd squad HQs, suppressing one tank and the 2nd squad HQ.

Missiles rain upon the newly arrived tanks

The OGRE fails to launch a second attack. The Guard retaliate. The unsuppressed tanks of 1st squad move into the OGRE’s path firing as they go, but most of their rounds bounce off of the OGRE’s heavy armour. The 1st squad fires again but again still barely scratch the OGRE’s mighty hide, the gunners panic and refuse to follow their leader’s orders to fire again. The HQ who lead the now destroyed APCs manages to rally the unsuppressed members of the 2nd squad to advance but they refuse to get too close to the mighty cybertank.

The Guard tanks advance on the beast

The 3rd tank squad finally arrives but refused to advance towards the enemy. The Guard CO orders the anti-tank guns to fire upon the OGRE, this time they comply but like the tanks they barely scratch it. They fire again and this time penetrate the OGRE’s outer armour (shields down effect) but they fail to fire a third barrage to capitalise on their success.

Turn 5:

The OGRE slides armoured panels into place to protect it’s damaged areas (shields restored) and takes an initiative fire against the 1st tank squad, hitting and suppressing one tank. It fires again, it’s main guns hitting and damaging the same tank from the 1st squad. The missile barrage is launched at the newly arrived 3rd squad catching all of the 3rd and the stalled elements of the 2nd in the blast. However only minor damage is caused and two tanks of the 3rd are suppresed. And the OGRE fails to launch a second set of attacks.

More fire rains upon the arriving tanks

The Guard 1st squad open fires hammering the OGREs outer armour, but the crews are too busy cheering to fire a second time. The APC HQ orders it’s ad-hoc unit forward firing as they go, they manage to penetrate the outer armour (shields down again). The ad-hoc unit halts in line with the 1st squad and fires again, damaging the OGRE and suppressing it. Again the cheering causes a unit to capitalise on their success, and a combination of cheering and sustained artillery cause the stalled elements of the 2nd and 3rd squads to miss their orders to advance. The CO orders the anti-tank battery to open fire again, damaging the OGRE and causing it to fall back along the bridge out of sight of their guns.

Massed fire drives the damaged Agamemnon back to cover

Turn 6:

The OGRE is suppressed and only manages to bring it’s automated repair systems online to bring itself back to battle ready state. Combined elements of the 1st and 2nd tank squads advance while firing in an attempt to bottle up the OGRE. The OGRE retaliates with opportunity fire from all guns, once again dropping artillery rounds just off it’s own fenders. When the smoke clears from the 2-sided exchange the Guard have lost two tanks, three are damaged with two of those being suppressed.

Guard tanks are hammered trying to bottle up Agamemnon

The combined 1st/2nd group is distrupted and fails to act again, and the combined 2nd/3rd elements remained stalled at their own table edge again. The anti-tank battery still have no target to fire upon. The Guard breakpoint is at 8/12.

Turn 7:

The dice rebel. The OGRE fails it’s command roll and fails to act, followed by the combined 1st/2nd squads failing to act as well. The stalled 2nd/3rd units finally advance but refuse to move forward to support their friends.

The remaining tanks advance (finally)

Turn 8:

The OGRE again fires at the combined 1st/2nd elements this time adjusting it’s missile fire to land over the target. It manages to destroy one tank and suppress another, miraculously the last tank avoids taking any damage at all.

Agamemnon continues to hammer the Guard tanks

The OGRE fails to attacks again. It a sign of their impending defeat all the Guard units fail to act on their command orders this turn. The Guard are at breakpoint 9/12.

Final Analysis:

Neither side managed to break their opponent but the OGRE did manage to destroy a third of the Guard force while barely taking any damage itself, so in this case the victory goes to Agamemnon, hopefully a good sign for it’s future battles. I was quite impressed with the OGRE’s performance in battle, I’ve tried some Imperial titans in FWC but they had bad luck on their outings and didn’t last very long. I found Imperial tanks to be surprisingly resilient to the OGRE’s fire but unless they were fired on mass they were not very effective at damaging it. As I’d seen it a previous battle massed fire from the anti-tank guns are capable of crushing nearly any opponent, only problem with them is they don’t really move around effectively.

Towards the end of the battle it seemed like the dice were against me so I went back to look at my rolling stats. There were 25 command successes with one bonus, and 23 failures with one blunder. Since most of my targets were 8-9 on 2D6 it looks like the dice were staying pretty even.

Overall a good battle and I look forward to playing with OGREs again, especially since I have 8 others to use.

Nerf Arsenal

The two Longshots I had before (bought the painted one that way) but the rest are new. Now I need to sit down and start modding and painting them. Then to find a space big enough to shot them at people.

I was impressed with what I recivied, to say the least. The rules were clear and consice, and were also simple to play but still gave lots of detail for individual units and lots of openings for tactics. Aeronef is a game of manuvering and broadsides, not the bigger hammer techniques that some sci-fi systems are prone too. The miniatures from Brigade are what impressed me the most. I’ve never had units in such a small scale (1/1200th) but these were simply amazing. The castings were crispy and really detailed, right down to believable portholes and wood decking on the ships, and there was much less trimming and cleaning required on them than I expected. If fact I was so impressed by the miniatures that when Brigade later had a sale on everything they make, I bought more, a lot more, an almost stupid amount more.

It’s taken me a while and I’ve only just now got the last of the Aeronefs assembled, but once I put them together to take pictures of the fleets I realized how truly massive and impressive these forces are.

The mighty British fleet patrols the Channel

The Brits are an impressive fleet with their array of escorts backed up by destroyers and light crusiers. At it’s core is a pair of battlecrusiers and a trio of battleships and the latest in flat-decked carriers.

The German fleet prepares for war

Opposing them are the Germans who will cause the skies to roll with the thunder of their mighty guns. Though they have near as many escorts as the British they lack the mid-sized vessels, but make up for this with heavy battleships and dreadnoughts. They may only have a captured French carrier for fighter support but they make up for it with the heavier triplane fighters.

I do also have merchant convoy for scenario play and a third fleet that will become a very special themed force, but more on them when they are painted. Which is the next step for the German and British fleets, the epic task of painting and basing all of them, maybe I’ll assmble all of my ironclads first though.

The content here is mostly going to be gaming. I spend a lot of my time role-playing, war-gaming and advanced board gaming and I need somewhere to post the masses of information this hobby generates. You’re going to see posts of scenarios, custom rules, campaign diaries, battle reports, and miniature modelling and painting here. The role-playing themes will be heavily weighted towards cyber style campaigns, with a focus mainly on cyberpunk and cyber-espionage worlds, but there may be some posts on hard sci-fi or steampunk gaming. The war-gaming themes are going to be mainly sci-fi and VSF but will cover everything from platoon level skirmishes in 28mm, to army and fleet battles in 6mm and 2mm, to galaxy scale empire campaigns.

It possible that there may be some non-gaming topics cropping up here and there as well. I will likely post progress updates on some car rebuild projects I am working on and may occasionally post some computer stuff I’ve done as well.

So here’s to the future of this site, may it not end with this post (as some of the other attempts have).