It took a long time, and as the designer I’m still not 100% happy with what I have… but… it is a final released version of my game, what started as an untitled scribbled sheet of notes, becoming ‘B.A.N.G’ and then retitled to ‘Tigger Happy’ and finally the true form titled: In-Action.
Even if I’m not pleased with the version I released, it is a release, and that’s something, we all have to put the brush down and take a look at the picture sometime, this is my time. It’s not perfect, but what is?
It’s playable, and it has in it the core idea’s that I so long ago penned hurriedly into existence. I may now consider that ‘Tigger Happy’ what I see to be the fully fleshed version of the game might also get to see the light of day.
If you are a table top gaming enthusiast, if you are curious just what I consider to be a game I wanted to play, why not buy a copy, I’ve priced it to shift at just £3, which in honesty wont even cover to cost of running the page you are now reading…
So, once again I find myself floundering in a world of half-baked ideas, half-written home-rules and a glut of anxiety over my ability to actually do something with my ‘passion’. That is to say, I really enjoy Tabletop gaming, I really enjoy tweaking about with rules, but the world is big and scary and I never seem to really get to the end of any thread I begin to follow.
Such is my current predicament. I’ve been working on my pirate-themed tabletop board game/role-playing game under the working title ‘Castaway’ for about 3 maybe 4 years… It’s been through about 5 major revisions and was just starting to feel right… But then while enjoying a board gaming evening with some chums, one recommended we play a game he’d been recently enjoying; To my surprise, this game, with which I had no prior knowledge, was nearly, in every discernible way, exactly like the game I had been thinking up.
The game box that never will come to exist
And so, that project is now all but thrown to the bin as apparently someone – Other than me… Had already made the game I was dreaming up. So shockingly close were the mechanics I genuinely have to wonder If my ideas were somehow stolen. It is uncannily similar.
Instead of outright binning the work though, I shall amalgamate it into the work I’d long since passed over on my 5HIT roleplaying system. And now, I am determined to self-publish 5HIT as a digital good (maybe even as an NFT with some kind of after-sales benefit for those that have a valid NFT…) Whatever happens, I am going to have a game with my name on it, for sale… somewhere, and if just one person buys a copy, I’ll consider it a total win.
While suffering my great existential executive disfunction and drifting awkwardly between about 4 various hobbies, I have out of some erratic part of my brain, spawned a new project, a new game style for me to look into; Deck Builders. I have had a bit of a love-hate relationship with several Deck Builder games recently. Dominion is fun, but honestly, the ‘meta’ of the game makes me dizzy, there’s too much going on for me to enjoy it. Star Realms has some good stuff, but I find the game unbalanced. Shards of Infinity improves on Star Realms a little, but playing the basic set gets very samey samey.
So, I thought, can I do better? I want Dominion, but a little lighter… And so, that’s what I’m doing, along with the other hobbies I’m floating between, I now have this new tinker toy – So far, I have a theme, a working title, and some core mechanics all scrawled into meaningless unintelligible notes. It’s going quite well. I shall add “F**k This Place” to my projects page, and update the status of Castaway.
In some happy, unrelated news: One of my 3d models has had a slow amount but tricklingly continued sales. nearly enough that I started another 3d model. If something out of the many hundreds of things I do each day might bring a little money to me for my effort I need to grab a hold of that. So, here’s to me, almost being a person that makes money from what they do.
Some time ago, I saw a post on Reddit about someone looking for a model for a particular mech, which, at the time they’d posted, had no easily findable or official model. I stupidly volunteered to make one…
In the time from I started work on a model which took me an estimated 50 hours of time in Blender to finalise (and not even to an A+ standard, but finished nonetheless..) An official model was released, and several people had posted in the thread where they had seen the model available.
Well, even though I finished a now redundant project, I’m happy with the outcome and uploaded it for people to have for free. The link below to CGTrader will take you to the model download page:
I’ve had to spend time learning a lot of features I’d never previously used in Blender, I had to restart twice due to errors I’d made which were inescapable due to my workflow (lesson to be learned there…)
But the model is finished, and I’m happy enough with the result, there are one or two minor irksome things – but I’m all out of fucks to give, it’s taken long enough now…
If anyone would care to support me for the time and effort I spent on this project, I’m accepting donations, please find several options below;
Plenty of options if you want to donate, I really do appreciate it if you can give me anything, time and skill are my only resources, but I can’t pay my bills in seconds or neural activity… so money is helpful.
A lot of my time over the last few months has been spent using Blender to model Battletech mechs, usually at a whim based on some random Reddit post about a ‘mech. It’s been slow going, but I’ve expanded my Blender capabilities from “total amateur” to “a little competent”. I’m no longer pushing simple primitives about, I’m using modifiers and nodes and all sorts of good stuff.
It came in handy when my wife, tasked with getting a grant for the NHS trust she currently helps at, needed a ‘render’ of a room that was [part of the proposal for the grant. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but she’d been having trouble for weeks getting the grant moving, I put my little render together and the grant was awarded within the next 24 hours! I hope my effort was instrumental, my work might at least be somewhat instrumental in advancing a greater benefit of the local NHS services!
I’d love to show it off here, but I’m not sure I have the authority to do so as it’s now the property of the NHS per-sé. But what I can post Is the ‘mech that’s been about 35 hours in the making, not quite 100% complete, totally untextured, but good enough for a quick screen capture.
I’ve been playing in a friends Vampire The Masquerade role-playing game, ongoing now for nearly a year, with a few breaks but it’s been quite a different experience from my usual go-to gaming in D&D, Set in an alternate history Steampunk London, my Character ‘Benzoheth Gioffre’ A sociopathic capitalist of the Giovanni clan, workhouse master, preying upon the unwanted that London would churn and throw aside has set about a path of self-aggrandizing dominance in London, already partly responsible for the diablerie of one ‘Jack The Ripper’ and now ingratiating himself to the Primogene of the Malkavian clan for his own benefit, sadly having stomped on the toes of the Nosferatu and the Tremere. It’s proving to be an in-depth story, with political intrigue and Victoriana-Vampiric goodness for all.
Aside from indulging in my computer gaming and roleplaying, I’ve not really been stretching my creative muscles with my games development. I have due to some problems faced with licencing, been reworking one of my games from scratch (project title Board Gamer Lands), and now I’m creating a pirate exploration and adventure TTRPG style game.
And, because I keep telling myself I WILL publish a game finally and in full, I’ve been looking back at one of the very first games I ever made. Perhaps by the end of the year I shall release my tactical skirmish game rules, currently under the project name Trigger Happy – But I need to get a different name for it, while I confess a great selection of my tabletop gaming has been wargame focused, and I understand that wargaming is a pastime and hobby for millions, I think the name is somewhat gratuitous and glorifies confrontation too much.
For the month of January, I’ve been focused on playing games more than development, but I’ve spent a lot of time finishing putting together two home-brew variant games of GURPS.
The Worlds Playground
One game focused in the prohibition era of 1920 America, centred in the locale of Atlantic City, the game style focuses on resource management and collaborative player interaction. To this end, along with a lot of GURPS focused home-ruling I’d developed a character sheet specifically for the theme and detail of the game, an example of which can be seen below. (click the image to zoom)
For this game I went to great lengths creating a huge play map from historical maps I could find and some photo editing magic I came up with one of my most precious creations to date, a poster sized print of Atlantic City circa 1924… with a few artistic liberties taken for the same of the game-world. While I’m not prepared to share a high-resolution image of my work here I’ll share this much lower quality version, believe me, this thing shocked everyone that has seen it in person. Very proud of this!
To somewhat protect my effort and work on this, the map is resized here to less than a quarter of the actual size and quality of the final piece I’ve had printed!
Origami Unicorns
Another game I’d done similar home-brew development for was a game set in a Cyberpunk/Shadowrun world for a Roleplay game with a little mystery and adventure, along with a scenario I’ve written myself featuring plot-twists and visions of a dystopian future-hell with some frenetic action thrown in to keep players on their toes!
Again, along with a lot of home-brew GURPS focused rules I’d come up with to fit the game, I spent time developing a custom character sheet specific to the game needs for the players. Once more, an example of the sheet is shown below.
Free “D”
Along side these not too diminutive efforts, I’ve spent a copious amount of time 3D modelling a lot of assets for Tabletop Simulator. Most specifically my efforts have been aimed at assets for Battletech. Nearly two weeks of February have been sucked away by an intensive Blender-Render session. I’ve even been giving some mild tutoring to a couple of friends that had decided to help me get some things done.
The greatest project I’d completed in my Blender efforts was a scaled map of Antietam, with the ground broken into 30 meter scaled hexes and 5 meter height details.
To somewhat protect my effort and work on this, the map is resized here to less than a quarter of the actual size and quality of the final piece I’ve had printed!
