Bamboo Biscotti

Note the lack of update.  This will give you some idea of how busy things are over here! When I'm not trying to find a moment to look over the PI stuff for Urban Renewal, taking notes for another side project involving the a Quarter-ton Reconnaissance Truck and velociraptors with shotguns, scribbling notes for the other swashbuckling project in the works for a Frisian Tomboy running amok in Edenstein, or generally muddling about with a Zhuh-Zhuh battlecruiser dubbed The Big Banana for its bright yellow paint job...I'm suffering the slings and arrows of springtime allergies because the trees are very happy, getting smacked with yet another nasty cold making the rounds of the office, or just plain being exhausted. In the meantime, Ed has presented me with a beta copy of his new supplement for Bottle of Rum.  And it rocks.  All I will tell you is that shore leave has now gotten a little more interesting!  I'm going to wait until this is officially published before ...

I mentioned earlier that there will be more than just a piratical tomboy running amok in Lemuria, yes?  A few data points in this general trend. One, not long after my birthday, Ed officially released the next version of 5010: New Beginnings, which is called Urban Renewal.  Along with Urban Renewal, he put together a supplement to handle private investigator gaming, Ed-style.  And if there's one thing Bish loved more than swashbuckling, it was a good bit of pulpy noir with strong sci-fi touches.  My copy is currently in the mail, winging its way to me, and when it arrives, I shall have to dedicate some time to cobbling something together. Two, Ed is hard at work on an expansion to And A Bottle Of Rum.  He himself warned me to be on the lookout for a few After Action Reports on the subject.  Guess what's now on my wish list? Two point one.  By Savvy and Steel is set in 1620 or thereabouts, and Bottle of Rum starts in 1660, so the other Frisian Tom...

I'm leveling up tomorrow, going from 42 to 43, and for various reasons haven't had the time to do another month in Aledys's exploits.  Next week, though! In the meantime, as my birthday present to myself, I added two more of Ed's games to my collection, one of which WILL be showing up.  I already had Larger Than Life and Adventures In The Lost Lands, and now I have Motor City BC to go with them!  Because nothing says furious pulp action like dinosaurs and Caddy convertibles!  So far I think my favorite thing in Motor City is the "Where's the Yum?" table, which comes into play when Mister T-Rex realizes that chomping on the outside of an M4A3 Sherman Tank doesn't taste very good. Motor City is, by the by, an excellent example of why I like Ed's work so much.  According to the author's notes, it came about because Ed posted an AAR about a T-Rex meeting a Sherman Tank and the author (John Cunningham by name) asked if that was really how thing...

An apologetic aside: last weekend in January was the Lunar New Year and the Superbowl, so as you can imagine I was a little preoccupied by real life events.  And the following weekend, I had designated Sunday as the day to get this project going.  Saturday night it snowed enough for my technical assistant to enjoy a little sledding down our driveway and one of the hills at the park.  Much fun...but it slowed things down a bit.  The weekend after that  sort of went to heck in a handbasket, as did the following weekend...so instead of doing this in one two-hour chunk, it's been done in bits and pieces as time and attention have permitted.  And has been just about a month in post-production because the best laid plans of Pandas and Papas are at best fraught with peril. Still, here we are at last.  Now on with the show! As established at the end of last turn, our happy band of freebooters is currently in Sector 6 on the Campaign Map which has a much hi...

The weekend being full of distractions and other things, I was forced to run this turn by myself using a bunch of pre-rolls that I got using an online die roller and about a zillion batches of 20 dice at a time.  My lil' Cub has a sad about not being able to help, but there's always March 1660. Needless to say my luck with the dice holds true, and our first roll as the Lily of Anjou  sets out to sea from the no-longer-quite-as-welcoming settlements of the Moros, comes up doubles to ensure that I will suffer a Random Event.  It could be worse because the '6' gives a result of Storms At Sea, which is only 'active' from June to November.  Saved by the calendar! Movement, alas, is from port to sea, and so I must remain in Area 3.  Since one can hardly increase Fame, Reputation, and one's fortune whilst mucking about aimlessly, I choose to have an Encounter this turn.  For this, we roll 2d6 and compare each to the Area Activity Level of 3 and...4,6.  No...

In which our heroine, Aleydis van de Zeldenthuis , washes up on the shores of Lemuria and sets about carving her own destiny with cutlass and pistol. Firstly, our lass is a Rep 5, 22 years old, Dutch, and aspires to the Privateer class (with perhaps future options on going Pirate if circumstances demand it).  She automatically gets the Brawler characteristic for being a Privateer, and gains Hawkeye and Fast to go with it.  As is customary, she starts on her own with 500 gold pieces and a few Items...ten, to be precise (defined as a telescope, a compass, a sextant, a curious medallion of unknown origin, a copy of her grandfather's rutter, an open letter of marque signed by the Stadtholder, an extra pistol, and enough change for three rounds of drinks.)  Thus and so, she is ready to embark upon her quest for fame and fortune! On the grand scale of things, somewhere England and Spain are at war.  There are no Random Events this turn.  Otherwise, we begin in sec...

After a good night's sleep on the thought, I'm going to move ahead with a few other projects here as well.  Steph liked a good bit of pulp action as well, so from time to time there will be Larger Than Life AARs to add. Not to mention that one of her long-running characters, a PI named Octavia Butler, would do well in New Hope City.  So there's room for 5150 New Beginnings as well. And while the only kind of undead I hate more than vampires (twinkly or otherwise) is zombies, she liked a good bit of impending zombie-pocalypse.  So FFO and the rest of ATZ it will be.  Plus it'll be fun to get some mileage out of that City Card Deck from the High Rise to Hell project.  Not to mention that Steph would really have loved the addition of vampires, werewolves, and spellslingers to the mix. This will still mostly be about a Frisian Tomboy running amok in Colonial Lemuria, but there'll be some other stuff mixed in from time to time. (Maybe I should tease Ed about...