Tag: Collecting

Character Creation Challenge, Collecting, Conventions, Dungeons and Dragons, Friends, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

SaltCON-End of Summer 2026 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain September 7, 2026September 7, 2026

The last SaltCON for 2026 is now in the books and boy was it a good one. And I’m not just saying that because I know the fine people who run it. I’m saying it because I had fun. I got a few hugs. I was able to catch up with a few friends and make some new ones. So yea, this convention did exactly what I needed it to do.

As you may remember from my SaltCON 2026 Summer After Action Report, attendance had been down for that event due to our bad economy. Well I can tell you that the three-day passes and Saturday passes for the September event did sell out. This may have been a combination of things. The organizers had done some advertising that may have helped. Summer is a very busy time in Utah and also the last con of the year is the smallest. In the past, single-day passes for all three days would have been sold out. So I’m hoping that things are on the rebound, but I know there’s a way to go. I was able to have two of my three games “fire” this time around so I was very grateful for that.

Speaking of the games that I ran, the one that didn’t fire was Basic Fantasy on Friday. But I still had an enjoyable time. One of the things that I like about SaltCON is that they use the Table Top Events convention management website that allows for attendees to purchase their tickets and reserve their seats at different games. You can even download the .ica files and import them into your favorite calendar system which provides me with a 10 minute reminder when I have a game coming up. Because of this I knew that I had one player who had registered for the Basic Fantasy game and I was hoping that more would sign up at the con. Unfortunately it was only this one gentleman. So we had a discussion about the advantages and history of Basic Fantasy. That’s when I discovered that he had driven all the way up from Las Vegas to play this game. He had even purchased a hardbound copy of the book. I mentioned that perhaps the title of the adventure, “Guildmaster Quest Part II” may have led to some confusion. The adventure was a continuation for a Basic Fantasy one-shot that I had run at an earlier SaltCON. But if anyone looked at the schedule of events, they didn’t see a Part I. So it’s possible that participants may think that they may be missing something by not playing the first part. I should have also communicated that playing in the earlier adventure was not required and a “previously on…” recap would have been provided. I even had a Part III and Part IV planned. So I’ll put those on the back burner for now and come up with a brand new adventure for SaltCON-Spring 2027. The gentleman from Las Vegas wondered if my adventure had been published through the very strong Basic Fantasy community and had downloaded all of the free adventures that were available. I do need to get off my duff and get my notes polished up for submission. One last enjoyable note about my conversation with this Las Vegas fan, he had been playing since the 70’s. He loved old-school systems and even played D&D with his wife up at Wizards of the Coast headquarters in Seattle before the company had been purchased by Hasbro. We ended up exchanging contact information to keep in touch and he promised to drive back up for a future Basic Fantasy game. This gave me encouragement to continue this line of games.

The Saturday game that I signed up to run was Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition which I had already run my regular players through as part of a test run. While no one reserved spots prior to the con, I had three in-person-sign ups on Friday and two more added on Saturday. So there was more than enough to run the session that I had planned. I can now publicly state that this adventure was my own STA adaptation of the FASA Star Trek Roleplaying Game module, The Vanished. I had changed the title for the convention and my personal campaign to avoid any spoilers. According to the notes in the FASA book, this adventure was actually used as a RPG convention tournament module at the 1983 “Love of Trek” Star Trek Convention in Omaha, Nebraska. The module even included play reports from that convention. It was very interesting to see how the two groups I ran this through the adventure differed from those fans in the early 80s. The party was able to discover the big secret and recover the missing crew within the four hours allotted for the time (we ended right on the dot). The pre-generated characters came from the Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition Starter Set. I liked how they were presented in the printable format plus some fans had made name tents with a character name on the front and the stats on the back. One player enjoyed this game so much that he sought me out after the adventure to thank me for running this. Yes, I will be polishing up my adaptation notes and presenting them on this blog later.

My Sunday game had all six slots filled online before the convention started. The Geek Wife was also able to join me for this game of Mutant Crawl Classics. Once again, I changed the title of the game to avoid spoilers, but I used The Museum at the End of Time as presented in the DCC Free RPG Day 2016 publication. This is a zero-level funnel and I had dropped a stack of pre-generated characters on the table for players to use. These were teenagers going on their trials to become adults by trying to find technology of the ancients that would benefit the Tribe of the Cog. This was my first time GMing one of the Crawl Classic games and it didn’t go too bad. I wish than I could have done a test run for it prior to the con, but sometimes you’ve just got to jump into the deep end and swim. I really like the Crawl Classics system. I didn’t kill as many zero-level characters that I probably could have, but these players were also very well organized. The party only got about 1/3rd of the way through the museum before they had an opportunity to exit with their newfound technology and they left. I’m not certain if this was because it was one of the last games at the con or if the players thought they had found enough ancient tech to satisfy the tribe leaders. But the players told me they had fun when we wrapped up so I’m a happy GM.

I was able to get to all of my scheduled games that I had signed up for. I really liked Shadowrun Anarchy and how simple the rules were. The GM runs SA 5e for his regular campaign and said it was a little bit more crunchy. But if I was to run a game, I think I’d stick with SA as too much crunch isn’t really my style right now. We had to go rescue a local community doctor who was being hunted by a corporate high-response strike team. Turns out the doc had treated a shadowrunner who had accidentally downloaded an experimental AI from a script-kiddie who somehow got into a corporate mainframe. It was a simple adventure that introduced the world to the players and was very well done. When I was giving con updates on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server, one of the writers for Shadowrun Anarchy responded. I wasn’t aware that this person had worked on this book. I had to run over and grab my dead-tree version to check the credits when he had piped up. So that gave me a thrill.

The SCP playtest was based off of the shared-writing universe called The SCP Foundation. Think X-Files meets Cthulhu meets Warehouse 13 meets Supernatural that’s been running since 2007. My youngest Geekling is a big fan of this universe and has even cosplayed for it at Halloween and conventions. So when I texted my youngest Geekling, they got really excited. When I got home I had to give them a complete run down of the adventure. We were an investigation team that traveled to Denver to check up on a weird warehouse that was gathering a mass audience by some displays in the windows. Long story short, I got to blow up the warehouse before we could contain the “Evil Industrial Cooking Oven” hidden inside. It sounds strange, but it was a lot of fun. I was able to give some feedback on the system used for the game directly to the designer.

On Saturday morning I got to play Dungeon Crawl Classics game titled Emirikol Was Framed. For those of you who don’t know the character, Emirikol was the chaotic wizard whose image was in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. We got to fight flying monkeys, use mighty deeds and weird spells (each spell in DCC has a chart that you roll against when the spell is cast with varied results) and defeat not one, but two evil wizards plaguing the city. We were playing fourth-level characters and I only wished that the character would have had more equipment on them. Holding only a melee weapon while the flying targets buzzed above you took some creative thinking. But the players at the table had fun.

I was the only player that showed up for the steampunk/western/horror game Through the Breach on Saturday. It was played with a deck of playing cards and had an interesting system. The GM’s brother played at the table as well so that we could have a session. The two brothers reminded me of another pair of geeky brothers that I know. When I was discussing the game with another convention attendee, he told me that Through the Breach had a huge following in Montana for some reason and also had a big miniatures collection line. I don’t know if this is a game that I’d buy at full price, but I did enjoy the opportunity to learn about a new system.

A system that used a deck or two of 52 playing cards also popped up in the Sunday game I played called Starship Infernum. The second player who registered didn’t show up, so I ended up taking three characters and letting the GM walk me through the system. I was also able to ask many questions as I went through the book. This game could easily be used as a convention one-shot or a pick-me-up game if all of your regular players can’t show up for a game night.

As you can see from the photo above, I came home with some interesting loot from the convention. The t-shirt was gorgeous and I had to give a compliment to one of the con-runners. This year’s theme was pirates, but the shirts for Spring and Summer were really busy. I remember wearing the spring shirt and having someone look at it confused as to what it was because of how busy it was in the graphic. The end-of-summer shirt had a very simple logo and quickly made sense. I can’t wait for the right time to wear it. The free game was something called Battlebones and was the only free game that I hadn’t already picked up from previous SaltCONs. A board game that I did buy in the swap meet was Robo Rally. I remember playing this game about 15 years ago with some friends in the local Star Trek club and it was very enjoyable. But every time we had found a copy, even used, it was outside of our price range. Well this one was at a very decent price so I snapped it up as my first purchase of the con. Also in the game swap was the Cy_Borg core rulebook. This is Mork Borg for cyberpunk. And since I had been wanting to try some of the Borg games (Mork for Fantasy or Pirate Borg) I picked this up. For my Thank You gift I found a sci-fi RPG rulebook for Untamed Worlds from Osprey Games. In this universe Humanity has reached the stars, but the bulk of them stay in the core worlds while they send out genetically modified animals to search the uncharted sections of the galaxy. I’ll use both of these books in the 2027 Character Creation Challenge.

Wow, this after-action report turned out to be a long one. But that’s probably because I had a ton of fun at SaltCON End-of-Summer. If you are looking for a good gaming convention, please check out SaltCON. There are a ton of board games, card games, roleplaying games and more. The next two conventions at the Davis Conference Center in Layton, Utah are March 11-14 and June 11-13.

And before I forget, many thanks to the convention organizers and volunteers for putting this together. You guys are the best.

Do you have any questions about the convention weekend? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Conventions, Dungeons and Dragons, Pirates, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

SaltCON-Summer 2026 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain June 8, 2026June 8, 2026

So just a heads up, while there might be some negative things in this after-action report, none of them are due to the many volunteers at SaltCON. The many volunteers and coordinators at the event were beholden to the same issues that affected the con as a whole, and they did an excellent job under the circumstances.

Bottom line up front (BLUF): Attendance was down at this particular event due to the economy.

When I talked with several coordinators, they mentioned that they had seen the same pattern previously over the past seventeen years. When money gets tight, the attendance drops as people try to trim the budget. How this affected me and some of the other volunteer gamemasters is that some scheduled events didn’t “fire”. This is the metric that the convention uses to state that the game started on time with players. All three of my scheduled games did not “fire” which disappointed me. With the lower attendance, the players flocked to the games that had other attendees signed up so that they could get a full experience (kind of hard to play in a game with only 1-2 players). At first I wondered if I had picked the wrong games or time-slots, but I saw that other GMs had the same issues that I had. So while talking with the RPG coordinators, they encouraged me to continue to volunteer as they appreciated my efforts. So yes, I’ll be signing up to run some games at SaltCON-End of Summer in September. Hopefully the economy will not be as skitterish as it is now (crosses-fingers).

There, now that the elephant in the room is out of the way, I can tell you what I enjoyed this weekend. First, the hugs. Thank you to those who provided or accepted them. I had a chance to see a few friends that I see regularly and a few that I hadn’t seen in a while. A convention is also a chance to network with other geeky people. I had a chance to meet the organizer for ICON, a gaming convention that happens in eastern Idaho three times a year (once in Pocatello and twice in Idaho Falls). I’m giving some thought to possibly volunteering to GM some RPG one-shots at this event in the future. But there is more logistics that will have to be put into place before I can commit to it.

The game swap room was moved to a larger location which was very nice. Usually it’s stuck in a narrow room where the attendees are shoulder-to-shoulder as they try to look over the selections. I liked the additional room much more and I hope that we can keep this at the new location. I’d like to thank those who brought in roleplaying books. I was able to pick up the Creature Codex and the Tome of Beasts at a decent price. From the photo above you can also see that the free boardgame was something called Tiffin (which I honestly picked up because it was the smallest game to grab). As my thank you gift for GMing at the con, I picked up a $20 gift certificate to The Queen’s Realm. The convention t-shirt is blue with a pirate crab and a pirate parrot playing cards with the caption “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” My geek wife liked mine so much that she asked me to pick her up one as well.

An interesting twist this year is that a collectable card event was happening in the same convention center on Saturday. I walked through it since it was free. But I didn’t pick up anything since it was mostly Pokemon and sports cards. A nice thing about having that part of the convention center open was the better food options were available within. I wonder if this event will happen again at the same time next summer?

Mini-posters the convention used to advertise my games.

As for the games that I played, Everyday Heroes was a time-travel adventure where we had to prevent Professor Moriarty from messing with time by preventing the Titanic from not being sunk. We were only able to get through one scenario since we had to create characters from scratch. But I was a pirate from the 1800’s which helped with the naval theme. Since one of my games didn’t ‘fire’, I ended up jumping into my first ever HeroQuest game, which was interesting. It was a cross between an RPG and a board game. The Savage Worlds one-shot was also fun. Apparently it was for a sci-fi setting that had just been released called the Han Cluster. It was ‘technology is magic’ based and was an interesting challenge. I had forgotten that I had already played Savage Worlds previously (and it was from the same GM). But it was good to be reminded about the system. Lorecraft 5e was very different. It was a homebrewed game that took Fifth Edition and added some additional items to it. Which explains why I wasn’t able to find anything for it online. But the GM/designer put a lot of work into it. The character sheet alone was a laminated folder with character and equipment card slots. You would write on any side with a dry-erase marker and included a booklet for additional abilities and equipment slots (see photos below since he let all players keep their characters for possible future gaming sessions). He had an interesting lazy-susan grid-playing field where he could put on our figures and terrain (all held with magnets). He could spin the playing field around to move characters or point things out. What I really appreciated with this GM was the way he handled two young RPGers (possibly 14 years old) at the table who attended all seven of his events that were all linked together. They were really getting into the system and their characters. When he cornered me after the session I played in he really wanted to ask me some feedback questions about his works. I let him know the encouraging things that I saw in the game. I didn’t really see any improvements he needed to make, but perhaps I could have noticed something if I had played in other sessions.

The back of the Lorecraft 5e character folder.

The front facing the other players and GM.

Again, if you are looking for a good gaming convention, please check out SaltCON. There are a ton of board games, card games, roleplaying games and more. The next two conventions at the Davis Conference Center in Layton, Utah are September 4-6 and March 11-14. I thinking of making a homebrew game for the Spring 2027 event.

Collecting, Comic Books, Conventions, Doctor Who, Star Trek

Ogden-Con 2026 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain April 7, 2026

The USS Ticonderoga had a booth this year at Ogden-Con.

April 4th was the date for the 2026 Ogden-Con. I’ve blogged about this naturally growing convention for the past two years (here are my reports from 2024 and 2025). This year the convention was moved to the Ogden Union Station downtown. It was right next to the UTA Frontrunner stop and was a great place for a small convention. I hope that it can stay here for a few years as it continues to naturally grow. It also has several museums in it for trains, cars and guns (admission was extra for these items).

As you can see from the photo above, the USS Ticonderoga had a booth this year. On display was our Borg Alcove and TOS Transporter Console. This is the first time these items have been out in quite some time. It was good to see them back in action. Several attendees had their photos taken with them. The local Warhammer group was also in attendance as well as several local authors. Two of them that I knew personally.

A peak into the car museum at the Union Station.

The convention organizer was really pleased with the move. They had over 400 adults in attendance. They didn’t have a count on the kids as those 10 and under were free. They had also sold out all of the vendor tables. I know when I was talking with one friend at the con, she had found some toys that she hadn’t seen since she was very young. And they were still in the packages. We also had a chance to sample the food trucks that were in the parking lot. There were some growing pains with the new location, but I can see where this convention can only get better. It was more relaxed and more focused on comics.

My only purchases at Ogden-Con this year.

Because I was running a booth, I didn’t get a chance to go through too many $1 comic boxes. But I did find two Doctor Who comics. Just before I sat down to type up this report, I read both of these issues and enjoyed them.

So, many thanks to Rudy Entertainment and the volunteers at the event. I can only see better things for this convention in the future. It was also nice not to be packed into a mega-event when trying to geek out. I had a chance to talk with several possible Ticonderoga recruits including one who’s father grew up with Ray Bradbury. There were some interesting stories there. See you guys next year.

Have you recently attended a smaller convention? What is the best way to let you know of local events. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

Collecting, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Spy-Fi, Westerns

Modern Necessities a Kickstarter Reward

Written by TardisCaptain December 6, 2025December 6, 2025

Continuing my catch up process, here is my report on the Kickstarter rewards that I have received for backing the Modern Necessities campaign by The Scrying Dutchman (that is the name used in the credits of the book). This set of books takes the B/X style rules from the Old-School Essentials books by Nerotic Gnome and provides different options for modern style games. This includes current times (with the Modern Necessities Professional Edition book), western times (with the Single Action book) and futuristic times (with the Cutting Edge book) that were included as part of the stretch goals. These three books are not stand-alone games, so they would need to be used with Old-School Essentials or another B/X set of rules. The level I backed included the PDFs as well as POD versions from DriveThruRPG. So far, I’ve been pleased with my POD purchases from DTRPG. You can read about my comparisons on this blog post.

The primary book is Modern Necessities Professional Edition. The two add-on books would need this book first. The ISBN for this softbound book is 2-370021-833733 and has 170 pages. While the cover has some color on it, all of the artwork is black and white. The cover was drawn by Noeland Collins with interior art provided by Galen Pejeau, Jonathan Torres, Carlos Castilho, Adam Black, Earl Geier, Jeshields and The Wonkee. The last two were listed that way in the credits.

The chapters covered in this book are Gameplay (primarily the use of modern firearms and a couple of optional skills system that can be used in OSR style games). New Classes (such as Crook, Detective, Face, Heavy Gunner, Hired Killer, Martial Artist, Medic, Ninja, Psychonaut (drug powered users of magic or mental powers), Sapper, Scout, Secret Agent, Sniper, Soldier, Survivalist, Tech Expert, Treasure Hunter (think Laura Croft), Vigilante (think Punisher) and Wheelman. Racial Traits used in modern based games (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half-Orc and Human). Chapter five covers all of the different weapons both modern and racial (such as the differences between a dwarven or elfin gun).

The next two chapters covers different types of armor and equipment. Magical items comes up in the next chapter (magically enhanced gun anyone?). Chapter nine tells us about the vehicles used within Modern Necessities.

Chapter ten takes us into a new section of the book, Technomancy. The use of magic with technology. I love the spell Crypto that converts physical monetary items into cryptocurrency. When you try to convert it back again, there’s a chance that the money/treasure returns at a lower value. In a similar vein, chapter 11 covers Psionics.

Chapters 12 and 13 provide information on NPCs and Hired Help. Kind of like a monster manual and lists of hirelings for modern times. There are some common types here (street punks, security guards, grey aliens, etc.) and some may be supernatural or alien in origin. I remember seeing a similar listing in the White Lies RPG and thinking how helpful it was. One of the opponents is obviously the Terminator with the serial numbers filed off.

The Extra Rules chapter is like a GMs section with information on how to make the game more cinematic. There are other rules that make the game unique if the GM wishes to add them. This is then followed by the Loot Tables in the next chapter. Different items that can be dropped by civilians, criminals, law enforcement, etc. The sixteenth chapter provides some different plot hooks with the last chapter presenting an introductory adventure for the GM to use.

Some of the examples of artwork used in Modern Necessities.

By contrast the two additional books, Cutting Edge and Single Action, have a smaller page count, 75 pages and 47 pages respectively. The ISBN for Cutting Edge is 2-370022-615949 and 2-370022-616014 for Single Action. Cutting Edge expands the Modern Necessities with information for cyberpunk and space opera games. This includes more technomancy spells, cybernetic implants, mechs, beam weapons and more. Some of the NPCs and Opponents include those inspired by Aliens, Predator, Blade Runner and more. Single Action allows the GM to run a western themed campaign with or without magic. Both books contain new character classes (six new for Cutting Edge and seven new for Single Action) and equipment.

Overall I got excited looking over these books. This is something that I could have homebrewed myself and seeing the ideas already in print give me energy as per my favorite Ray Bradbury quote. I inquired about a character sheet for Modern Necessities as I want to use this game in the upcoming Character Creation Challenge. The Scrying Dutchman responded that he was only planning to use the Old-School Essentials sheet, but he seemed open to the idea of generating a specific sheet for this game. While I love the art in the books, I was a little confused by one thing. It shows the different fantasy races in modern equipment and garb, but one race in particular was used in different pieces of art. The devil-looking Tieflings. Yet there were not gaming information for this race in Modern Necessities or the Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player’s Tomb. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that difficult to port the races over, especially after the players see the artwork showing goblin, tiefling and draconian characters in the book. After reading the Skill Throw System and the 2d6 Skill System, I wonder how these would play at the table. Overall I’m very happy backing this project because I started thinking about how I could use the information in a game. I don’t know if I could pull this off as a one-shot for SaltCON or try to put together a campaign. I guess it would have to depend upon finding players to sit at the table and when I get the last stretch goal reward of Bunker on the Borderlands which has an adventure in it. But these books made me want to write and homebrew for roleplaying games.

Do you have any questions about Modern Necessities or the two companion books? Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Collecting, Role Playing Games

National Dice Day 2025

Written by TardisCaptain December 4, 2025December 3, 2025

As I’ve posted before, December 4th is National Dice Day. I was wondering what I was going to post about for this year. In the past I had reviewed various dice products or showed off some of my collection, but I wanted to do something different. The original idea fell through (mostly because the artists working on it hadn’t completed it yet, so hopefully a future blog post) but while talking with a friend inspiration struck.

Today I’m going to talk about something that every gamer should have for their dice. Dice Bags. The old joke is that gamers would have Crown Royal bags to use to hold their dice. But I was never much of a drinker. So for the longest time I was trying to find a good dice bag. Sometimes you can find them for sale at conventions. I’ve also seen some unique ones where they store some dice but also roll out to be a place where you can roll the dice. I haven’t picked up one of those yet, but I have picked up a few others. My main dice bag (pictured above) is a hand made leather bag that is very sturdy. It would have to be to travel around in my Convention Backpack. I don’t recall who made it, or how much I spent on it, but I know it’s served me very faithfully for years. It holds a TON of dice to the point where I have to get some snack bags to separate out some of the different dice sets. This makes it easier to grab when I’m sitting down at the table.

Side view of the dice holder with locking battleaxe.

Top down view showing the interior and lid with battleaxe key to the side.

Earlier this year at a farmers market I found some local makers who were selling roleplaying game gadgets to use at the table. One that caught my eye that I picked up for the Geek Wife was this purple die holder that had a rotating lid that locked down with a “battleaxe key”. She was quite impressed when we gave it to her for Mother’s Day.

And speaking of local makers, I have two other dice bags from a friend who is also on my Discord. Sarah uses her skills at crocheting to make dice bags for sale. I had purchased one to go with a past Secret Satan gift that I had sent off. The receiver wanted something local so I had purchased one of Sarah’s from The Queen’s Realm where she had them on consignment. I then went back and purchased another one to hold some poker chips that I’ve used for various games such as Star Trek Adventures and others. She is still selling a bunch of them and I offered to show them here in this blog post. If you are interested in picking one up, she uses the handle of Arsenic_Angel on the TardisCaptain dot com Discord server under the #-promote-yourself channel.

As you can see, they come in different sizes and colors. Some have metal holders to close up the drawstrings. Yes that is a pokeyball for Pokemon fans. The one I’ve been using for my poker chips has held up quite nicely.

So happy Dice Day everyone. I hope that the dice fall in your favor for your next gaming session.

Do you have any questions about these dice bags? Do you have a unique dice bag that you’d like to share? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Collecting, Role Playing Games

Underhaven Kickstarter Reward

Written by TardisCaptain November 23, 2025November 23, 2025

The cover to Underhaven with the weathering as part of the art.

Here is another catch up article for you. This is my Kickstarter reward post about the Underhaven OSR Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying Game that I had backed earlier this year. Again, after my disastrous kickstarter lesson from the Cowboy Bebop disaster, I made sure I understood what RPG system would be used before pulling the trigger. For Underhaven they are using an OSR inspired system called TN13. It uses the standard character attributes seen in the original D20 D&D games (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS and CHA) and to resolve the most common checks, the player rolls a D20 and the action die associated with the attribute (D4 to D10) and any other bonuses with a target number of 13 to meet or beat. This target number may be lowered or raised depending upon the difficulty of the task. For any opposed challenges, the target number would be determined by the actions or stats of the opponent. Since the Kickstarter website had the system listed, I felt comfortable backing the project. Especially since the reward prices were reasonable as well. There have been a few Kickstarter campaigns where the reward prices were higher than what I wanted to part with.

The game world set up for Underhaven is all underground (hence the name). The surface world was subject to a disastrous war between two fey courts centuries ago leaving it covered in darkness, ice and completely uninhabitable. The various surface races were driven underground in an attempt to keep their societies alive, only to discover that the realms below contained additional dangers the deeper they went.

The rewards for backing this campaign was produced and delivered by DriveThruRPG. I had backed the level where I would receive a physical softback book and the PDF of the rules. The book was produced by Shadow Drifter Games and was written by Mike Brodu and Daymon Mills without AI. The cover contains color art and the interior illustrations are in black and white. I was also impressed that extra funds raised from the Kickstarter were distributed to the artists who contributed to the project. There are 196 pages in the book and it has an ISBN number of 2-370022-177621.

The back cover with some details of the game.

A sample of the internal text displayed within the book.

Some of the black and white internal art.

Overall I’m very happy with my backing of this Kickstarter project. I found the information contained within the book inspiring and well laid out. I wish there had been more on some of the monsters and how they had adapted to the new life underground. But the world has more of a sandbox feel instead of a “forced into this world” feel that I had felt in other games trying to differentiate from the glut of OSR fantasy RPGs. The system has an OSR feel with enough of a difference to make it something that works. I’m still exploring the different magic system, but I like the TN13 numbers and how it is used with common actions that characters would use in the game (perception, dodging, resisting magical attacks, etc.) I will be using this game in the 2026 Character Creation Challenge and I could easily see myself running a one-shot at an upcoming SaltCON.

Do you have any questions about Underhaven? Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Collecting, Role Playing Games

New RPG Miniatures For My Collection

Written by TardisCaptain November 15, 2025November 15, 2025

For my Day 27 entry of the 2024 RPGaDAY challenge I talked about how few RPG miniatures that I owned. In that blog post I mentioned that I wanted to obtain more miniatures for gaming use, but I didn’t want to spend too much on it. At the game swap at SaltCON, I had seen a few packs available, but again the price was just a little bit more than what I wanted to spend. I had been looking for miniatures (or smaller toy figures) at different thrift stores and continuing my bargain hunting. Well thanks to my friend Ross, I finally had a chance to get a start on a collection that I’ll be able to use in different RPG sessions.

Ross is one of my friends who has hopped on the 3D printing craze. There are opportunities now to print gaming miniatures and cosplay props that we never had access to before. A large number of artists are designing STL files that can be downloaded and used on various 3D printers using spools of plastic. Last spring while visiting him he showed me a bunch of fantasy RPG miniatures that he had printed out. I had inquired about printing some up for me and his response was, ‘buy a spool and I’ll use it for your miniatures.’ A spool (at the time) was only $18 and for that, he printed out 153 miniatures of different sizes. That’s eight and a half cents for each one.

So now, when I find some bargains for smaller sets at SaltCON or other locations, I’ll probably be more inclined to pull the trigger because I can now add to the set. I’ve already shown them to a few gaming friends and one inquired if I wanted to paint these. I don’t really have the paints or brushes to do so, plus I’m not a patient person at this. That was one of the reasons I never kept up with building models. So while someday I may. But for now, I’m over the moon at just having some figures now that I can drop down in the middle of the map on the game table.

I took some photos of the miniatures that Ross put into the plastic tub for me. He had them separated into different groups which is how I photographed them here.

Barbarian warriors which may or may not be friendly.

Turtle warriors (I don’t know if they are teenagers) and rats.

I can use these for warriors, guardsman or militia.

This is a lively bunch of skeleton warriors.

A giant slug, adult and baby owlbears, spiders of different sizes and a rust monster.

Different minotaurs that I can throw at the party.

A Beholder, Gelatinous Cube (which is hollow to put over a figure) and rising tentacles.

More monsters to terrorize my players with.

The largest piece, a fully grown dragon.

All of the miniatures except for the dragon fit into a plastic tub that Ross picked up at the dollar store. He brought me the miniatures to a meeting we recently held at a nearby library. When I was leaving I was carrying out the tub with the dragon on top and passed a father and son who were walking in. I heard the boy, who I believe was about ten years old, whisper under his breath “Oh wow a dragon” as he saw what I was carrying. If the father hadn’t been in a hurry, I might have stopped them to talk.

So thank you Ross for taking the time to do this. He was even sending me sped-up videos of the figures being printed so I could see how it looked. Also a shout out to all of the amazing artists who put together these files and released them to the internet. Your efforts are appreciated.

Now I really need to get a campaign going. Who wants to be my victims…. err…. players?

Have you had any experience with 3D printing or 3D printed miniatures? Any tips on painting them if I ever get the chance to actually sit down and paint them? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Collecting, Community Service, Conventions, Fan Club, Star Trek

FanX 2025 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain September 28, 2025September 28, 2025

View Preview

So the latest FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention is in the books and it was a good one. It continues to be one of the largest attended comic conventions in North America. I know that I was meeting people from Chicago, Oregon, St. Louis, Texas and beyond.

This year my Star Trek fan club, Starfleet Command’s Seventh Fleet, continued our community service focus by supporting an anti-bullying organization called R.E.A.C.H. (Raising Education Through Arts Characters and Heroes). I was really impressed with the level of work they had done. Our booth wasn’t on the vendor floor. Instead we were in the main hallway just outside of the Starship Frontier Artemis Bridge Simulator room. We were combined to help save space on the vendor floor as changes are being made to the Salt Palace (more on that later). I also got to dress up as a Borg intruder and assimilate the Captain of the crew before they could stop me. I don’t have any pictures of that but I may be getting a video soon.

We had a chance to meet a lot of people. I’m hopeful that some will join us as members of our Star Trek family. I also had a chance to network with a couple of club leaders for future endeavors.

As for loot, well I didn’t pick up a lot this year. A friend printed up a photo of actor Jerry O’Connell with his Commander Ransom character from Star Trek: Lower Decks. It was my intention to pick up his autograph at FanX, but his flight was delayed and I wasn’t able to make it over to his booth afterwards.

I was able to meet up with actor Doug Jones who played Saru on Star Trek: Discovery and obtain his autograph. Talk about someone who made you feel special. Everyone who he met at his booth got as much time as they needed with him. So we didn’t mind taking longer in the line because we all knew we were going to get the same amount of attention. If you got a selfie with him, he did three poses with you. And when he was done he gave you a big hug. I told him about my encounter getting Jason Isaacs’ autograph on the same photo. And when I gave Doug my favorite quote that Saru had given, he finished it just as I started it. It amazed me that he recalled it after all these years.

“Before we can care for others, we must care for ourselves.” Saru- New Eden, Stardate: 1027.32

I was gifted a convention t-shirt from a friend who discovered that I never had a FanX shirt before. However, just after taking this photo, I offered it to my geek wife who quickly snatched it up since it had her two favorite colors on it.

I did bump into a gentleman advertising his game galled Delve in Your Pocket by Otherwise, Games. It was a solo RPG that you could keep in your pocket and pull out when needed. It had a dice system that was contained within the text. I’ll have to see if I can complete it. There were a lot of RPG shirts and fans there. I did talk with a few GM groups about coming up to SaltCON. Hopefully we will see some of them there.

I really tried to find other things to buy at the con. At past FanX events, I had found several RPG items to pick up. But for some reason this year was lacking. I will say that the staff was wonderful as well as the added security the event had. I took the time to shake the hand of one Salt Lake police officer who was patrolling the building and thanked him for being there. There were also a lot of police dogs as well.

I am sad about one thing, I had a great time staying at the Plaza Hotel that was right across the street. The convention rate was amazing compared to the other hotels. However this is the last year the hotel will be in operations as it is getting torn down to make way for a parking garage. There is a lot of construction going on downtown for the new entertainment district and the upcoming winter olympics in 2034. This also led to a lot of people wondering about the future of FanX since the Salt Palace will be going under some massive changes over the next few years. At the end of the con, the organizers did announce that the 2026 dates will be September 24-26. So we know there will be a FanX next year. So next year the Seventh Fleet will be returning (and I think we will be back on the vendor floor) with another charity booth. Many thanks to Dan Farr, the staff and the army of volunteers who helped out with this convention.

Did you go to FanX or another nearby convention? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Character Creation Challenge, Collecting, Conventions, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

SaltCON-End of Summer 2025 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain September 3, 2025December 1, 2025

When I was thinking about my after-action reports, I almost combined this one with my RPGaDAY 2025 after-action report. However, I realized that they should remain separate as they were both unique events.

SaltCON End-of-Summer 2025 has completed thanks to the many efforts of the volunteers and staff. Having run conventions in the past, I must tip my hat to them. I was talking with one of the volunteers on Sunday and I could tell they were exhausted. They were happy with how the event went, but very tired. I myself had a blast and I had a lot of opportunities to talk with different gaming friends and throw some dice. I also had the opportunity to use the First Aid Kit that I keep in my Convention Backpack. Nothing serious, but I was glad that I was prepared.

I played the following games:

MechWarrior: Destiny was a lot of fun. It was a rules light system and the scenario was pretty straight forward. Get in my mech, go shoot some pirates that had taken over a corporate base (we were hired because we were the closest). I was pretty impressed with how easy this ran. The tactical combat with the mechs was built more for roleplay, but still utilized a hex map. From what I understood, there are more crunchier versions if you just want to beat up other giant mechs. I had a chance to look at the rule-book while we were sitting at the table and if I can find it for a good price, I’ll be very tempted to pick it up.

Dungeon Crawl Classics was a little different from the last time I played it. Instead of being a funnel, we had established level-3 characters. This was being run by a first-time-at-a-convention GM and we all gave him some positive feedback when the session was over. While I didn’t play a magic-user in this one-shot, I did get to see the magic system in action and it looks funky. The randomness and danger from messing around with magic can be appealing for some gamers, but may push others off. When the adventure was over, my fighter character ended up with the MacGuffin we were after known as ‘The Balance Blade.’

I had some fun with Daggerheart and I was able to get my feet wet with it. I liked some things. The hope and fear dice mechanic was interesting and didn’t really turn me off like I thought it would. We had plenty of roleplaying opportunities in the system. The only thing I really didn’t like was the initiative system. If you succeeded with hope, then your side could keep the initiative, but there was no order to go in so someone could go several times (or pass off between the two). It was only when you succeeded (or failed) with fear did imitative move to the opposing side. Like Mechawarrior above, I was able to look through the rule-book at the table. I’ll pick this up if I can get it on a sale, but I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to get it. I also wouldn’t turn down an invite to a game if presented. There is a metric-butt load of fantasy RPGs out there and so I’m not in a rush to play or homebrew for most of them.

My Sunday morning game of Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Prpogramme lived up to the hype. The GM was running it for the first time after picking up the book and our marry troupe was sent by God to spank the Pope because he had been a naughty boy. Now that I’ve had a chance to see the system at the table, I can also say this works for the source material. I could see this system being used for Blackadder as well. One interesting note, the GM didn’t provide pre-generated characters so we had to roll up some before starting the game. Instead of making a new one, he let me play Sir Richard Hammond that I had created in a past Character Creation Challenge. Because I had the unusual dice from the Kickstarter Reward, I had lots of request to use them. But only I used the Coconut Dice Rollers.

I had players for all three of the games that I ran over the weekend:

Basic Fantasy went off better than I expected since this was a home-made adventure. The characters were able to find the missing Guildmaster and complete his quest. I want to polish up the adventure and run it one more time before I submit it to the Basic Fantasy community for possible publication.

This was the most unusual time that I’ve ever run Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition (or any STA game). Because it was a Klingon based scenario where the squad was sent to infiltrate a Dominion outpost during the Dominion War, there was a lot of combat. I GMed more combat in this one-shot more than any of my other STA one-shots combined. I will need to go back and re-read some of the combat rules and probably ask a few questions on the Modiphius discord server. But the characters survived and completed the objective.

I really wish that I had a physical copy of the Space: 1999 Quickstart Rules as I was running the scenario from it. I didn’t want to print out too much from the book as it was graphic heavy (and would have eaten up a lot of the ink in my printer). So I was using the PDF on my tablet which meant a lot of scrolling. Most of the players were familiar with Star Trek Adventures, so I was able to read off some of the slight differences in the rules out loud. And they made sense. Two of the things that I really liked in the rules I plan to adapt to my STA games. When I reported on the Modiphius discord server the results of one of the characters using a photo of his family to calm down a panicked crew member, the writer of the game gave me a thumbs up. The team had lots of fun and one participant played the Space: 1999 opening and closing themes at the appropriate moments in the game. I even got an email from one of the players a few days later telling me how much fun he had at the table.

While I was running Space: 1999, I had someone come up to the table and ask if I’d be willing to run games as a paid GM. I signed up for more information, but I’m kinda-sorta hesitant about making a hobby into a paid thing. I’m sure I’d have fun, but I’d hate to take something fun and turn it into work. I may have to investigate this more.

One of the big reasons to attend a gaming convention is to make connections. Talking with one GM he mentioned that he only ran games that were in print for purchase. He was worried that a player would want a copy of a game after his session. I understood this as I overheard two of my STA players at the Summer SaltCON say they wanted to pick up the 2nd edition core rule-book after playing. Both myself and another player encouraged him to run any game that he wanted to play. Part of the reason to play at a con is to play those games you don’t get a chance to play elsewhere. At past SaltCONs I’ve had a chance to play older out-of-print games like James Bond, Ghostbusters and Red Dwarf. I didn’t get a chance to play, but I passed a table where they were playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition.

A merchant that sells roleplaying books would be smart to find out what games are being ran at SaltCON and sell them at a vendor’s table. I know there has been a few times that I was tempted to pick up a game right after finishing a game. Had Mechawarrior: Destiny been within reach, I would have been seriously tempted to buy it.

Speaking of loot from the con. You can see what I picked up at the convention in the photo above. The Fallout Starter Set was in the game swap (still sealed and a very good price). The convention usually gives away a freebie game to attendees and this time around it was a card game called Flip 7. The family looked interested in trying it out. As a thank you gift for GMing, I was gifted the core rule-book for a game I didn’t know existed. It was called Rivers of London by Chaosium and was based off of a series of novels called, you guessed it, Rivers of London. It reminded me of The Dresden Files but with police officers investigating wizards and magic crimes. And the convention t-shirt had a robot playing a game on a red background.

Overall I had a ton of fun. I can see where the organizers are putting their heart and soul into a gaming convention like this one. The next SaltCON is the big one in the spring and will be held at the same Davis Convention Center on March 12-14. I’ve been trying to recruit some friends to come and GM at the convention because I think they would have fun as well.

Anime, Character Creation Challenge, Collecting, Conventions, Pirates, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

SaltCON-Summer 2025 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain June 10, 2025June 9, 2025

I’m writing this the day after SaltCON-Summer 2025. Let’s just say I’m really happy that I was smart enough to take the Monday after the convention off. It gave me a chance to not only unwind from the very busy weekend, but get somethings done that I usually do on Saturday or Sunday to prep for my next week. I’m also very happy for the time I spent at the convention. Thank you to those who gave me hugs. I hope you realize how much this is helping me keep my spirits up. I also had one of my readers come up and tell me that he enjoyed my blog posts. Thank you. I know that recent posts have been rare, but I’m going to keep going. I do have plans to participate in the upcoming RPGaDAY 2025 activity this August. I also still owe you guys different reviews and first-looks at some of the KickStarter rewards that I’ve received.

As you can see from the loot photo above, I was able to pick up a few items. SaltCON has always had a good t-shirt design for each event. This year seems to be following the cyberpunk genre. I had some money to pick up both the current con shirt, but the spring shirt as well that I missed out on a few months ago. One of the nice things that SaltCON does is sell the older con shirts at a discount. When I picked up my badge, I was notified that I was one of the random winners of the game giveaway. Out of the two possible options, Chicken Time Warp sounded like fun. And since it was the size of a deck of cards, it wouldn’t take up too much room in my convention backpack. There was a dealer that had a sale on geeky pins, I picked up some that said “Dungeon Master”, “I’m not procrastinating, I’m doing side quests”, “Sarcasm +5” and “I don’t have any ducks in a row. I have squirrels and they are at a rave.” I also received a couple of thank you prizes for running games that included the RPG Attack from Space (medieval knights vs. invading aliens from outer space) and a mug that says “DnD Diplomacy, ~~Persuasion~~, ~~Deception~~, ~~Intimidation~~, FIREBALL.” I’ll be using the mug for my end-of-day sleepytime tea and I’ll be using Attack from Space as one of my entries in the 2026 Character Creation Challenge.

Posters made by the con to advertise my games.

I was scheduled to run three games at SaltCON-Summer 2025. I’m not sure if it was karma for dropping out of some games at the spring event, or if I simply waited too long to submit my events and got stuck with bad time slots—but unfortunately, no one showed up for my Basic Fantasy and Teenagers from Outerspace sessions. I did get a chance to run the TfOS game at The Queen’s Realm a few weeks ago (in preparation for the con) but I also put a lot of effort into the home-brewed Basic Fantasy adventure. So I may make another attempt with one or both games at a future convention.

The Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition game. Let’s just say that the players and I were laughing and having a very good time with the scenario. Probably one of the best one-shots that I’ve ran in quite some time. We even ended up with a “There I was…” type of story out of it. Long story short, the players were disguised on a planet with a pre-warp civilization. The Prime Directive was in full effect, but the players had found themselves in a dangerous situation where the villagers were chasing some of them. One player hid in a merchant’s shop and wanted to use his back door. The merchant, wanting to make a sale, said that he was willing to allow paying customers slip out the back door. The character had not thought to bring any of the local currency with them when they went into the village, so he accepted the offer to trade his hat, for one of the agrarian level hand tools. The moment he had made the exchange, I spent a level of threat and reminded him that the hat had been replicated with his advanced technology. While it was an imitation of the local headgear the natives wore, it wasn’t the same material. There was another PC in the store with him so he couldn’t just say he had lost it. This put the player in a panic and we ended up spending an extra amount of time over this one plot point and the hand-wringing it brought about. Was this a violation of the Prime Directive like Dr. McCoy leaving his communicator behind on Sigma Iotia II? When they rejoined the Commander leading the expedition, I did give him a chance to notice the missing headgear, which he did which lead to further awkward. When the game was over and I asked for feedback from the players, one of the first-time players said he was glad that I had used the threat in-game currency (which I had on several different times) to spice up the scenario. Some of these I only came up with on the fly during the course of play. Another first-time player stated he now needed to go out and pick up the core rulebook because of how much fun he had. Had there been a merchant at the con selling books for the games being run, they would have made a sale. Jim J, if you or any of your team are reading this, just know that the first time players picked up the system very easily and had a great time around the table playing your game.

Some of the characters I played this weekend.

For the first time ever, all of the games that I participated in as a player was completely new to me. Usually I just try to get one or two in so I can try out different systems. Two of the games were played with the actual designers who had attended to show off their works.

Shadowdark: This was an interesting game since we were playing zero-level characters in a funnel similar to the kind I experienced in Dungeon Crawl Classics. Every single one of my randomly pulled characters only had one hit point, so I went through a stack of them trying to get out. What made this D20 clone interesting is that none of the PC races had any type of infravision or dark vision. So if our light source went out, we were at a disadvantage. The timer would run in real time and to demonstrate this, an hourglass was placed on the table that would match one hour. This made for a very interesting scenario that I’m glad that I tried out. I wouldn’t turn down a Shadowdark session if an invite was extended and I’m interested in seeing the character creation rules.

Pirate Borg: Another game that I’ve been hearing a lot about and that I’m hoping I can pick up for a future Character Creation Challenge. Ran by the same GM who ran the Shadowdark game earlier. The character was higher than level 0, and thus a little bit more hardier. All of the players got into the pirate theme of the game (one even kept talking with a Jersey accent the entire time) which added to the enjoyment. One of the players ended up getting killed at the very last second of the game which showed me how weird this game could be. Again, I wouldn’t turn down a chance to play it again.

Untold: This is a fantasy game that uses D12s. A LOT of D12s. It kind of reminded me of the 2d20 system where you have target numbers based off of skills and attributes, but you had to roll over the target number. Which wasn’t easy to do sometimes. I played a barbarian so I didn’t get a chance to try the unusual magic system, but it wasn’t Vancian. It was interesting to try the game and a lot of players got into their characters. This was one of the creator run sessions.

EverReach: This is a science fiction/cyberpunkish game with the designer of the game. The system was pretty easy to follow along as it only used D6s with the ability to swap out one of the D6s rolled (by the player or GM). We played an independent crew that was hired by a corporation to perform a smash and grab. As the players, we spent the bulk of the session planning out the heist and bouncing ideas off of each other. How were we going to get past the defenses and neutralize the third-party gang hired to protect the server we were after? How were we going to extract ourselves? Because we did a bunch of planning (something I had experienced in a past Spycraft game) there wasn’t a lot of rolling until the very end. So I got a little taste of it. But I’m going to be doing a deeper dig on this game as a review in a future blog post.

The Expanse: So I had only seen the pilot episode of this hard sci-fi TV series, but it turns out the game is based off of the books (it’s a rights thing). So there was still a lot of explaining to the newbies at the table like myself. There were different factions controlling different parts of the Sol System and there was no FTL in this universe. The main reason I wanted to play this game is to try the Age System that comes up in Fantasy Age and Modern Age. The dice roll mechanics was easy to get down, but there were pages and pages of stunts that each character could pull from when they ended up with special Stunt Points. So we were continuously looking through these pages to see what fit the situation we currently found ourselves in. In the end, we completed the mission in style due to these stunt points, but I’m going to have to go back and take a deeper dive into the Age books that I own to see if I’d want to do anything further with this system. Something I don’t know if I would have noticed without getting my hands dirty with it.

So in conclusion, I had a ton of fun (again) at SaltCON. Yes, the summer event is smaller than the spring one. But there were a couple of temping RPG pickups at the swap meet and game exchange. If there is a regular RPG book seller who’s looking for a market, this convention could easily make you a lot of sales especially if you had the books for the games being run at the con. As I was writing this blog post, one of the con-organizers posted on FaceBook that this had been the highest attended SaltCON-Summer ever. Once again, a big shout-out should go to the other attendees, volunteers and organizers for putting this together. As someone who has retired from the con-chair business, I know how much effort is put into these events. It was noticed and appreciated.

SaltCON-End of Summer is coming up on August 28-31 at the Davis Convention Center in Layton, Utah. Currently I’m planning to attend and run some RPG one-shots. Let me know if you plan to go so I can meet up with you.