Tag: No One Lives Forever

Autographs, Collecting, Comic Books, Community Service, Conventions, Cosplay, No One Lives Forever, Star Trek

FanX 2023 After Action Report

Written by TardisCaptain September 26, 2023February 25, 2024

2023 marked the 10th Anniversary of FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention. I remember when I first heard about this event in 2013. It was announced that Jonathan Frakes would be the guest at a con to be held at a convention center in Sandy, Utah. I had just arrived at a friends house to talk Seventh Fleet business. We had never heard of the company that was putting together Salt Lake Comic Con (as it was called then). The event became so popular (I think the name and lots of advertising helped) that eventually the convention was moved to the Salt Palace (the largest convention center in Utah). In 2013 it ended up being the third largest comic book convention in North America.

So it’s no surprise that ten years later it’s still going strong. Since the Seventh Fleet is given the opportunity to perform our community service mission at the con, I was in attendance to help out. Here is my after action report.

One of the first things that is different this year (for me) is using the FanX app. It had some good thing and some areas that needed improvement. I was able to see a lot of the panels that were scheduled and I could even set up reminders. However the reminders were not very descriptive when popping up on my screen (it’s only in the small notification area at the top). The map was very generic which was bad in trying to find something. Probably the biggest thing that needed to be improved was looking up the panels themselves. In order to see just the panels, you had to select each individual panel room. Then it showed you the panels for that room on that day. It would be very helpful if we could get this information (just the panels) in a grid so I could see if there was a conflict between two panels that I’d like to go see. I could see the value in having the app and I used it several times to confirm times. But I feel that this still needs some improvement before it becomes something to brag about.

Usually at a pop and comic convention there is a LARGE number of guests. Sometimes it is overwhelming when it comes to budgeting money to pick up autographs. As it turns out, this was Christopher Lloyd’s last convention appearance so that made . Something that FanX has finally done is added the autograph prices to their website so I could decide a head of time who I could afford. But I do dislike that a lot of guests (or more honestly, their agents) think, “Hmm… comic con. I’ll jack my prices up by 20-30 dollars.” I’ve found myself getting less and less autographs each convention.

The main person I was really interested in seeing was Jen Taylor. She is best known as the voice actress who voiced Cortana from the Halo series of video games and TV shows. But the reason I wanted to meet her was due to her work as the voice of Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in Harms Way. This series is a cult video game that is in IP rights hell. No one knows exactly who owns the rights. So the game can’t be re-tooled for modern computers and added to GOG or Steam. Several years ago Jen Taylor had stated in an article that she didn’t know if there was still NOLF fans out there. I let her know that we were still present and really wished that the game could be re-made for new fans to discover. She was actually excited to hear that we were still out there.

I do have to thank my old roommate who had found this poster for me many, many years ago. He had found it in a gaming magazine and gifted it to me. This is the first time it’s been out of the frame I use in several years. Thank you Gibby.

One of the other guests that I met up with is Science Fiction author Dayton Ward. He has written several Star Trek novels and contributed to the Star Trek Adventures RPG Star Trek Comics and Star Trek magazines. I wanted to make sure that he felt welcomed to Utah. I picked up two books from him. His Star Trek Discovery novel Somewhere to Belong and the Star Trek Kirk Fu Manual (you know I had to add this to my resource library).

After picking up the Alien RPG at the 2022 FanX convention, I was wondering if I could find any RPG books this time around. Believe me, I looked to see if anything jumped out at me this year. A ton of dice vendors. I’d really like to know if they made the dice themselves or ordered it from a third party. There was an author selling a superhero RPG (which is a genre I’m not really interested in role-playing right now) and another author who had written his own 5E guidebook to a fantasy world he had a book series set in. This last one looked pretty, but I couldn’t justify the $50 for the full color version. I did bump into a local publisher who had their first Kickstarter out for the Ter’Ra’Mentia Role Playing Game. This was a fantasy game with a 2d12 system that sounded interesting. I was able to look through the beta-version of the book (about a third in size of the book that will contain player, GM and monster information) and it looked interesting. They are also using a local artist for all the art in the book (none of that AI generated crap). For that alone I’m giving this one some serious thought towards supporting.

One of the biggest surprises from the con came not from the con itself, but from a friend. Earlier in September comic book artist Sean Von Gorman was in Salt Lake to promote the newest IDW Star Trek comic, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds- The Scorpius Run. Sean was there to sign the Retailer Variant cover that was inspired by the cover of the first issue of Star Trek DC Comics issue 1. I was not able to attend the signing because of another engagement, but my friend had picked up a copy for me and gave it to me at the Seventh Fleet booth. I was very excited.

Speaking of the Seventh Fleet, we were performing our community service charter by raising funds for a special charity. Heroes4Causes is a publishing house creating superheroes that have the same affliction (such as pediatric brain cancer or cystic fibrosis) so that kids can see that they can still be heroes. One of the artists was present at our booth and was signing books and art for donations. To draw in the crowds, we had home-made stand up cutouts of the Star Trek: Lower Decks crew for people to take photos with. We had a lot of people who were wanting photos. There was even a crowd of other vendor chanting “Lower Decks! Lower Decks!” when we first brought in the characters.

Many thanks to Dan Farr, the staff and volunteers at FanX. You helped us perform our community service mission and we had a lot of fun in the process. I can’t wait to see what will happen in 2024 when the convention is held on September 26-28.

Here are some random photos from the convention.

Character Creation Challenge, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2023 Character Creation Challenge Day 10: The D6 System

Written by TardisCaptain January 10, 2023April 25, 2023

As a fan of Star Wars, I eagerly jumped into the West End Games D6 system for Star Wars The Roleplaying Game. As with most games based off of intellectual property, the contract ended and West End Games stopped selling their books. But they still had a perfectly good RPG system. So they released The D6 System which is the selection for my Day 10 entry into the Character Creation Challenge. I was able to pick up this book last year in an online auction.

The D6 System is a generic RPG that could be used for any setting or era. So I will be making another spy for UNITY named Paul Reynolds (code named: Cold Crown).

So on page 4 we find the character creation steps. The first real step is to distribute attribute dice between the character’s attributes. These are Coordination, Endurance, Reflexes, Strength, Knowledge, Perception, and Mechanical. When the GM is making their game, they could add or subtract any of these attributes (like magical or psychic, etc.). Since I don’t have a GM, I just kept the ones listed on the character creation template in the back of the book. The book recommends 21 dice to distribute. A die can be broken down into pips (Three +1s or a +1 and a +2) that can be part of the distribution. I wrote down my choices on the creation template. Next there was 7 dice of skills to select and allocate. I decided to take the skills that I thought a spy would need.

On our next step, we write down the character’s name and descriptions. I added these to the regular character sheet. Step 7 has us choosing advantages and disadvantages (which some GMs may see as optional). It is possible to gain or lose extra skill dice. I looked over the list and it was primarily disadvantages. After reading the options I decided that the character had Extraordinary Hearing (+2D) but Always Needed A Backup Plan (-2D) so it evened out. Next was any special abilities (which there wasn’t any since this was an espionage campaign). But I did use this time to note down the character’s fate points (1) and body points (20+ roll of my Endurance score, hey I get to roll something, which resulted in 33). There is a movement score on the sheet and notes about how to use that score in the GMs section, but I did not find out how to determine the character’s starting movement score.

And finally was the starting money and equipment. I determined that UNITY was providing everything he needed for his mission so I selected some standard spy equipment. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Just as I was getting ready to start this blog entry, I realized I had printed out the the character creation template and not the actual sheet. Luckily I was able to find it quickly and print one out.

For a generic system, there is a lot of blank spots listed for the gamemaster to fill in. There are alternate names for the attributes. I guess if the GM thought it would sound better for their game. This almost seemed like it was a book for someone who wanted to generate their own D6 system. This would include making templates for the types of characters the GM would allow. That would have helped.

I do remember the D6 system well from my early playing days. I could easily see myself playing one of these D6 systems in a campaign. I might even homebrew for it, but it’s pretty low on the list of systems that I’d adapt stuff for.

Some… um… interesting art that was selected for use in this book.

Additional Notes:

I had a poster on one of the message boards comment on my Fantasy Craft character. He agreed that the system was too crunchy as well. He had attempted to make a Spycraft character in 2022 and scrapped it because of how complex it was.

Coming Up Next:

XD20 2nd Edition

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, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2023 Character Creation Challenge Day 4: Tiny Spies

Written by TardisCaptain January 4, 2023April 25, 2023

Last year during a sale on DriveThruRPG I picked up a copy of Tiny Dungeon 2nd Edition just in time for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. So I used it and was pretty impressed with the system. Gallant Knight Games had released several “Tiny” RPG books covering different genres. When some of them went on sale last year, I picked them up as well allowing me to use another one for the 2023 challenge. So for day 4 I selected the espionage game, Tiny Spies.

The superspy creation rules start on page 16. The first to select the archetype of the character you are going to play. These are like character classes and consist of Agent (solo spy), Face (confidence man), Driver (vehicle expert), Hacker (tech expert) and Soldier (tough guy). Since I’m only creating one character instead of a team, I’m going to select Agent. This earns me 6 hit points and an additional trait (usually a character starts with three, but the agent is more well-rounded). Traits are specialties that your character is really good at. Being a superspy, I thought the character should have Agile Defense, Charismatic, Eidetic Memory and Perceptive. The next item to select is the weapons proficiency. Being someone who needs to blend in, I selected Light Ranged thinking he would be a marksman with a pistol that he could keep hidden under his jacket. There is a background trait that I need to select. This is the experience that the character learned before they became an agent. Out of the seven available, I selected Analyst. The character was good with putting two and two together which originally got him a job with a shipping company. This assisted him when he was recruited as an agent for UNITY. The last step was to select a Belief. This is a simple statement that is a core of your character. There were six examples listed and from those I selected “Someone Has To Do It.” I figured he had put some puzzle pieces together and realized that he had to help make sure that things didn’t get worse.

So that was all that was on the character creation steps. I came up with the name of Daniel Drake. Drake was a suave looking gentleman but very determined to accomplish his mission. The equipment section describes to the GM how they could handle the allocation of gear and vehicles to the agents. Since Drake is a member of UNITY, he would obtain his gear from the Santa and the Toymaker Division. I did write down a few sample items to help fill out the character sheet. I’m going to declare this character done.

Afterthoughts:

Just as Tiny Dunegeons was simplistic and rules light, Tiny Spies is the same. The system sounds pretty upfront and easy to learn. I’d love to run or participate in a couple of one-shots to see how the system really works out. Especially the interesting chase rules.

I could see myself homebrewing for this game.

Additional Notes:

I would like to thank everyone who has been linking back to my website. It’s not required, but very much appreciated. I’ve noticed a lot of participants no only on the message boards but on social media as well.

Please let me know if I’m missing a website on the Character Creation Challenge section of the website. If you are thinking of starting now, you can do so.

Coming Up Next:

Swashbuckling Adventures

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server.

Character Creation Challenge, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 7: Espionage!

Written by TardisCaptain January 7, 2022

Today’s entry is Espionage!: The Secret Agent Role Playing Game (1st edition). This was published in 1983 by Hero Games and is based off of the Champions super-hero RPG. While I’ve had a chance to play a few super-hero based RPGs, Champions had never been one of them. So this will be a new experience for me. I had picked up this game when I won an online auction that contained several different RPGs from the 80’s. Some of the other games will be used in future 2022 Character Creation Challenge entries.

In the 2021 #CharacterCreationChallenge I created characters for several different espionage based RPGs like Top Secret, James Bond, Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, Spycraft 2nd edition, and Top Secret: New World Order. I had tied all of those characters together in two methods. They were all inspired by characters seen in The World’s End movie and they were replacement agents for a depleted group known as UNITY from the video game series, No One Lives Forever. While I was thinking about making more new agents for UNITY, a read through of the character creation process dissuaded that idea. So I’m going to make a CIA agent since that is what the game is built around.

Devron Marcus was a college student trying to earn a degree in business management so he could follow in his father’s footsteps. Just before Marcus was planning to graduate, his father was killed in Europe in an armed robbery. During his personal investigation, Marcus uncovered evidence that his father had been targeted by East Germany’s Secret Police (the Stasi). A CIA agent, working on the case, took Marcus under his wing and assisted him in confirming the plot and allowing the CIA to respond. This lead to Marcus being recruited by the CIA after graduation. Officially Marcus works as a business salesman working in European markets for the company his father use to work for. Unofficially, he carries out assignments for the CIA.

The primary characteristics for an Espionage! character is Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Body Pips (think hit points), Intelligence, Ego, Presence and Comeliness. While the average person starts with 8 in all scores, the average character (being a little bit more heroic) starts with 10. Each new character starts with 50 Character Points to spend on stats and packages. You can gain additional points by lowering some stats or taking disadvantages. Different attributes had different costs (there’s a lot of math so far in this game) so I selected the stats that I felt a college graduate the age of 25 would have. From these you can generate Figured Characteristics which are Physical Defense, Energy Defense, Speed, Recovery, Endurance Pips and Stun Pips. Thanks to the power of math I come up with the base scores, which I can then improve with any Character Points if I so elect.

I added the skills/advantages/disadvantages from the two CIA packages that I took. I then used the remaining Character Points to add some additional skills that I thought that Agent Marcus should have. There is a section for equipment in the book, but no spots on the character sheet for it. So I skipped that part thinking it would happen in play.

So the breakdown of the system is roll 3d6 and try to get a number lower than a certain amount for a success. Getting that target number to roll under could be a little complicated depending upon the skill/stat level and other factors. It could be interesting to see in play. I wonder if there are any YouTube videos of the Espionage in an RPG session to watch? There are several other espionage RPGs I’d probably play first before this one, but I could have my mind changed. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

There was only one package in this edition to create characters, and that was for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I wonder if the 2nd edition of the game had more packages for characters to choose from if you wanted to play MI-6 or an independent agency (like UNITY). Hopefully someday I’ll get a chance to find out. I could tell this was a first edition of a game, it was a little hard to read in some sections. While I know I played at least one session of Fantasy Hero by the same company, I don’t recall any big desire to purchase or play releases from Hero Games.

There is some player notes in the back of the book that advised against turning the game into a shooting fest. I was actually glad to see this. In other spy-fi games I’ve been worried that the game would turn into a merc/shooting-fest. I’d be more interested in actual espionage action instead of run-and-gun style action when playing an espionage style game. Yes some shooting can happen, but if it happens too many times, you’re not much of a “secret” agent are you?

Additional Notes:

The number of new blogs found seem to be coming up in twos. I’ve added the latest two finds to the Character Creation Challenge page. I appreciate those that have linked back to my site. Thank you.

Coming Up Next:

Star Trek Adventures- Klingon

Archer, Character Creation Challenge, Comic Books, Conventions, Cosplay, Doctor Who, Dune, Fan Club, Horror, Horror Hosts, Humor, James Bond, Movies, MST3K, Music, No One Lives Forever, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Spy-Fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, TV Review, Video Game, Website

2021 is in the rear view, now onto 2022

Written by TardisCaptain December 31, 2021February 25, 2024

So another year has come and gone and I am glad. While 2021 was not as bad as the year that shall not be named, it wasn’t the easiest. There are still some challenges in this world that I really hope that our society can come together to get past. I’m still trying to focus on the positives of the past year.

==Role Playing Games==

2021 started out with the first #CharacterCreationChallenge. Amazingly enough I was able to knock out 31 characters in 31 days. I loved reading all of the different responses that the other participants and even made a few new friends along the way. I’m looking forward to the 2022 Character Creation Challenge.

There was also the #RPGaDAY2021 Challenge during the month of August. I really had a struggle with this one, but I was glad that I had participated in it.

I also had a chance to finally play an online Star Trek Adventures game. We have a second session in our “one-shot” planned very soon. The kewl thing is, the game was announced with less than a 24 hour start time. I was able to use my Star Trek Adventures entry in the Character Creation Challenge to quickly drop into the game. Playing on just Zoom is difficult, but doable.

I also had some friends get me into an online Starfinder game that lasted several months (with 1-2 sessions per month). It was interesting, but it really turned me off using Fantasy Grounds as an online platform. It’s an app instead of a browser based system and it is a resource hog like nothing else. Even the players with high end computers were having issues. Unfortunately real life caused the game to end after a few months. The Starfinder system is ok, but a bit crunchy to what I’m use to. The Pathfinder in space mentality didn’t really appeal to me either. I know I was gaming more for the company than I was for the system and universe.

I still want to get into a D&D 5th edition game or a regular Star Trek Adventure game. I’d also prefer to get back together with gaming in person, but with the way the variants are running wild, I’m not certain that will happen any time soon. I’m open to an online game if the schedules can be worked out (the same old problems).

There were several new additions to my role-playing game collection. Between purchases and donations from friends I’ve been able to add to my gaming shelf. I also took advantage of several PDF sales. Instead of listing them all here, I’m planning to save them for my Character Creation Challenge entries. I also added to my dice collection including a special die.

==Video Games==

I’m still playing my old standbys of No One Lives Forever and Tron 2.0. However thanks to a gift card for GameStop (actually ThinkGeek) I was able to pick up a few other video games that I’m looking forward to trying out. I’ve been playing Balder’s Gate and it’s been… interesting. I think I might be playing it wrong.

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order has been good so far, but I think my daughter is enjoying it more than I am.

==Movies==

Even though it came out the year before, I had the chance to see Wonder Woman 1984 and I enjoyed it. I wished I could have seen it in the theater. 2021 was also the 25th Anniversary of the Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie.

Through streaming I was able to enjoy Black Widow and Godzilla vs Kong (wish I could have seen this in the theater).

Finally getting back into the theater I was able to enjoy watching the latest James Bond movie. We finally saw the sci-fi epic Dune and loved watching the new Ghostbusters film. I still want to watch the latest Matrix movie, Spiderman movie and The King’s Man while they are in the theaters.

I’ve also watched a ton of cheesy sci-fi, fantasy and horror films on streaming services. Some were good, some were not so good.

==Television==

Creature Features held it’s 50th Anniversary. During the summer I had my photo aired on a segment of Svengoolie and my kid’s artwork promoted on Creature Features.

Netflix’s Army of the Dead was a good adventure. Amazon’s The Tomorrow War was interesting to watch. Ice Road was also interesting, but probably not a repeat watch. The Wheel of Time didn’t catch my attention at first, but slowly got a little better. I never read the books so I don’t know how it compares. I really enjoyed Foundation after I was worried how the books were going to translate to the screen. Invasion was an interesting concept, but starts out really slow. I’m glad I stuck with it. I need to finish Y: The Last Man and I’m really disappointed that we will only get one season of Cowboy Bebop.

Thank you What We Do In The Shadows, Archer and South Park for being funny. Crossed Swords was a challenge, but I was able to get into it. I’ve really enjoyed the animated Disenchantment series on Netflix. It was also good to see Animaniacs again.

On the Star Trek front, Star Trek: Prodigy has been interesting. I’ve also been enjoying Star Trek: Discovery as well. I really think that Star Trek: Lower Decks has knocked it out of the park. I am really looking forward to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I wish there was more Short Treks. Wil Wheaton’s after show “The Ready Room” has been very enjoyable and informative.

Disney+ brought us several good entries for 2021. The Muppet’s Haunted Mansion was really, really good. I really wish that they would give us more Muppets Now. WandaVision and Loki were really good from the Marvel entries. Falcon and the Winter Soldier was ok. I haven’t seen the Hawkeye series yet but plan to sit down and watch it. I really liked the What If!?! series. On the Star Wars side, The Mandalorian continued to be great. Visions was ok, but I wish I hadn’t binged it since it probably would have been better in smaller doses. The Bad Batch was also enjoyable. There has only been one episode of The Book of Boba Fett so I’ll be watching to see where this goes.

Because I missed a lot of Doctor Who episodes while I was studying for college, I spent part of the year catching up. Not only was I able to complete this task, I was able to watch the latest season as it aired. I’m looking forward to the New Years Day special.

2022 will finally get us the third season of The Orville and I’m really looking forward to the next season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

==Books and Comics==

I really enjoyed the Star Trek: Picard novel, Last Best Hope. There are several other books that I’ve been reading on my kindle and in dead tree format. I’ve been trying to read The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance as well but I haven’t completed them.

The War of the Bounty Hunters in the Star Wars comic series was good, but frustrating. I really wish that they had a better system to follow the flow of the story that spans across several publications. I felt like a few times I was re-treading over the same ground.

The Mirror Universe stories and Star Trek Year Five was really good from IDW Publishing. I’m looking forward to reading more of these stories.

Doctor Who, James Bond and The Orville was other comics I had been pulling from my local store.

==Cosplay and Conventions==

I was able to add the Admiral Picard uniform to my collection. I had a chance to wear this at FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention. It was the only con I attended in the year. Hopefully 2022 will be better convention wise. I’d love to get an Admiral Vance uniform from Star Trek: Discovery or a Monster Maroon from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. However those are long term goals.

==Live Events==

Thanks to 103.1 The Wave, we were able to take the family to Lagoon. With the vaccines helping out, we’ve been able to attend the Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance and the live Mystery Science Theater 3000: Time Bubble Tour. I’ve already got several concerts and events planned for 2022. The Beyond Van Gogh experience was probably the closest I’ll ever get to a holodeck experience. The Egyptian exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah was very enjoyable.

I was also interviewed on the radio for the Star Trek Day 2021. That was an interesting experience. But also not the first time I’ve been interviewed on the TV, Radio or even print.

Our Seventh Fleet and USS Ticonderoga meetings and events have been able to get back in person. This was a very good thing as we are a close knit Star Trek family. We’ve been able to grow and succeed because we get together and see each other’s smiling faces.

==Website==

I was able to get some photo albums online and I’ve added to them as I’ve found more photos. I’ve been able to keep to a regular schedule of several blog posts per week (counting the Star Trek Quotes listings). I should do more gaming articles and reviews of things I’ve watched/read/enjoyed. However, I still need to get some of the other sections of my website filled out. I’m a little upset with myself that I haven’t gotten more of the website completed. This will be a goal for 2022.

It’s good to have goals. I think I’m going to spend 2022 trying to achieve more of them.

Dungeons and Dragons, James Bond, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

The secret is out… on secret tunnels

Written by TardisCaptain December 11, 2021

I’m sure that no one will talk about this project outside of work.

So I love watching YouTube videos. Primarily because they can cover a wide variety of interesting subjects that you won’t usually find in regular educational (or semi-educational) channels. I’ve been able to find interesting looks at how common people lived and ate not only in medieval times, but in the 1920’s and 30’s (which make for interesting game fodder for gangster type role playing games). We all have a general idea how Mob leaders and the royalty lived by the various movies and glamorous stories. But informative videos talking about the other side of the coin for various eras can help when adding atmosphere to different RPGs in different eras.

YouTube has an interesting algorithm on suggesting other possible videos that may be of interest. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t (I won’t go into details but I wish that the YT apps on my TV had a way to give a “not interested” without having to go to the video itself).

One recent suggestion from YouTube was “Digging a Secret Tunnel” by a British content provider using the handle “colinfurze”. Apparently he’s been digging a secret tunnel that connects his house to his workshop and then to a backyard underground bunker for the past three years. Note: The video linked above is part six of the series, but it was the first one I had watched and inspired me to create this blog post. Also a warning, Colin comes across a little like a used car salesman in his enthusiasm. But don’t let that bug you, the video was quite interesting despite his almost game show host like quality.

The first reason that I clicked on the video was because I was one of the many young boys growing up who had the idea of making a secret tunnel in his basement as a means to covertly get out of the house. Luckily my parents never found out about me trying to cut through the walls in our home. And I didn’t get very far because the house was very well built. Colin’s video showed the amount of preparation and effort that was being put into the tunnel project. It was being built under his house, driveway and workshop before it made it to the bunker. You don’t want the ground sinking underneath those items. So it had to be re-enforced to hold the weight above them. They had to get the large amount of dirt and rocks hauled out through a 5×5 hatch that was built into the workshop. Colin claimed in the video that he is making the tunnel without the knowledge of his neighbors. Reading the comments was interesting (avoid the spambots) with posts from mining engineers and other interested parties.

The second thing that caught my attention wasn’t with the tunnel itself, but my thoughts that came up while watching the video. How many times have we seen a villain’s secret tunnel in an espionage movie? The image I used at the top of this blog came from the spy-fi video game “No One Lives Forever” and I remember seeing this scene thinking “who built this?” and “How did they keep it a secret?” As a gamer, I also thought about the various dungeons that our Dungeons and Dragons characters have crawled through. Quite a few times they were 10×10 tunnels underground occupied by various Orcs, Gelatinous Cubes and other dangerous creatures. While someone may have drawn the straight line on grid paper, in the game world someone would have had to dig it out, build supports and haul away the rock. Why was this built this way?

I eventually had a bunch of thoughts in my head that I knew I had to put it down as a blog post. I watched a really good video about creating a dungeon for D&D which went briefly into the whys and hows (and I learned quite a bit from the video). But it didn’t really get to the nitty gritty for me.

So why would a tunnel (secret or not) be built with the cost and effort involved? I think it comes down to several reasons. The first one that comes to mind is wealth. The tunnels are built as part of a mine trying to extract various ores and precious gems. While these may not be secret at the start (unless the digger wanted to keep others from getting to his prize) they could easily become forgotten. Just finding out which mine a highly prized gem used in an ancient crown came from could be the start of a quest all on it’s own. These mines could have been built by dwarves or other subterranean races. Mines were featured quite a bit in several westerns. Every once in a while the news reports about another soul lost while trying to explore a closed up mine or a murder victim being thrown down a mine shaft.

Another reason that a tunnel could be built is for transportation. Going over a mountain or across the English Channel represents a physical barrier. If you could tunnel under that barrier, you can make transportation much easier. Again, most of these would be known (at the start). However there have been smuggling tunnels built to avoid border patrols. The movie “The Great Escape” detailed the efforts of prisoners attempting to tunnel their way to freedom from a Nazi POW camp. This movie would also be inspirational about how to hide the tunnel and dispose of the debris needing to be dispersed all while trying to keep the tunnel from collapsing on them. When I visited the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in 2019, I learned about the railways and water tunnels and how they were built. They were built in a time before OSHA and safety guidelines. So corporations could hire workers to quickly dig, and if a worker was injured, they would hire the next guy to step up and replace them. This allowed them to build these tunnels quickly at the cost of human lives.

Housing and storage is another reason to build tunnels. I recall watching documentaries about World War II and how residents of some towns escaped into tunnels under the city to escape bombing raids. Repurposing tunnels from another use has allowed underground survival dwellings to be built. In Utah, the LDS Church stores massive amounts of genealogical records in an underground vault in the Wasatch mountains. In Norway, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault preserves over a million seed samples underground in a former coal mine. Both locations could make for interesting modern day missions in an RPG. On the fantasy side, how many times have we heard about massive underground cities used by the Dwarves and the Drow. Tunnels would connect them all to each other and to the surface.

The last reason may sound weird, but I think is valid. Tunnels could be built for a sense of vanity. A cult, probably using cultists or slaves to dig, could build secret tunnels in order to hide their temples of worship. The image that I used above is a tunnel under a Swiss Alp chalet as seen in the video game No One Lives Forever. In the second video game of this series a very interesting quote came up. “Why do you think we have our headquarters in underground caverns? It’d be a lot cheaper and more convenient to lease an office building, but then you get potential clients who don’t think you’re evil enough for the really high profile operations.” If you look at movies like the various James Bond entries, the Flint and the Matt Helm movies all the way up to the Austin Powers series, they all made the secret underground lair look cool.

So Game Masters, think about the tunnels that you use in your games. Sure they are easy to draw on graph paper, but how did they get there? What was the cost to build these tunnels? How did they become secret? A king killing the slaves that built the secret tunnels may become the avenging undead monsters encountered by the players. A missing handyman may lead to the clue that the agents are needing to find the bad guy’s underground lair. Those lines on the map may look cool, but they hide much more than the treasure the adventurers are trying to find. They hide a possible story.

(looking at the wall on the side of my office) “I wonder if the wife would notice if I put in a secret tunnel?”

Humor, MST3K, My Creations, No One Lives Forever, Quotes, The Orville, Video Game

Making Memes

Written by TardisCaptain March 14, 2021April 2, 2022

So I’m not the best at making memes, but here are some that I have created in the past. Eventually I’ll have them all uploaded to the humor section of my website. But until then I’ll post some every once in a while as a blog post.

I don’t recall where I found the picture of the man in the frog suit. But I knew it had to be used in a meme. This is the image I get of some people when they go off on conspiracy theories.

I made this in response to all of those “The last TV show you watched is who is rescuing you” memes. They got old after a while so I wanted to parody it.

I’ve always been a fan of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (MXC) since it first came out. It reminded me of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and my own dark humor sometimes. I noticed there was never a “Right You Are Ken!” meme out there so I made one of my own.

While I was working on entries for the No One Lives Forever fan wiki, I saw this scene and knew that I had to make a facepalm meme for it.

Not all memes are visual jokes. This quote from Dr. Claire Finn from the third episode of The Orville is what sold me on watching this series on a weekly basis. I’m looking forward to a third season when it is finally released.

So this is my first batch that I’ve decided to release. As I mentioned above I’ll be posting more as the mood strikes and eventually they will have their own section on the site. I hope these brought a smile to your face.

Character Creation Challenge, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

Character Creation Challenge Day 23: Top Secret: New World Order

Written by TardisCaptain January 23, 2021March 29, 2022

When I original came up with the concept of the Character Creation Challenge, I had intended to do a character write up for the Top Secret S.I. role playing game. However as I searched and searched through the boxes in my garage, I could not find the game. I had purchased many of the game supplements when they originally came out and I’m really hoping that they are still in an unopened box somewhere. However I was lucky enough to discover that the PDF version of Top Secret: New World Order role playing game was free on DriveThruRPG. At the time of this blog post, it is still free to order so I figured that it would be a good way to learn this new game from the original Top Secret designer, Merle “The Administrator” Rasmussen.

This will be the last espionage game that I will be using in the 2021 challenge. And for this entry I will be creating the character of Peter Page, another new operative to help refill the depleted ranks of UNITY. He joins agents Gary King, Andrew Knightley, Steven Prince and Oliver Chamberlain in the active field. If those names sound familiar, they are the names of the main characters from Simon Pegg’s 2013 comedy movie “The World’s End” which was the last movie in the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy.

The game uses five different types of dice. d4 (Weak), d6 (Average), d8 (Healthy), d10 (Robust) and d12 (Paragon). Sometimes the player may be instructed to “step up” or “step down” the dice depending upon the situation they players find themselves in. It also utilizes a type of exploding dice called Burst & Blowback. The burst is the highest roll of the die, and you get to roll again and add all the rolls to get the total. A blowback is rolling a natural 1 and it may or may not lead to bad results.

Characters have the following attributes. Nerve, Suave, Pulse, Intellect and Reflex. You roll percentile dice and consult a chart. Agent Page ended up with Nerve- d10, Suave- d12, Pulse- d10, Intellect- d6 and Reflex- d6.

For a random background I rolled Actor. That almost makes sense with the high nerve and suave. There is an optional rule to have an impairment selected or randomly assigned to the character. If you do this, your character also gains an additional specialized skill. I let the dice roll and Agent Page has Vertigo. Next comes languages. Again random roll stated that he knows three other languages besides his native English. These came up as Burmese, Chinese-Canton and Arabic.

The Tradecraft skills are the same as some of the attributes other than one that is the “weak area” of the agent’s training. I chose Tech as his weak area so his final Tradecraft is Human Intelligence (HUMINT) d12, Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) d6, Technical Operations (TECH) d4 and Combat d6. It appears for a skill check you will roll your attribute die + tradecraft die + asset bonuses to obtain a result that must match or exceed a certain target number. Other situations such as combat or perception will follow similar patterns. There are specialized skills your character can also obtain which will result in higher die rolls when your specialized skill matches the task. These can be improved with character advancement. I selected the specialized skills that a master-of-disguise would need to help the team.

Starting characters can purchase equipment for $3,000. There was a lot of really interesting gadgets. It referred to real life costs, which would help in a modern game. Since these characters are based in the 1960’s, I guesstimated what my character would have. Specifically a disguise kit. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I like how the character sheet looks like it is being read out of a folder. I also like how the attributes have grid-lines that connect it to the tradecraft that is being used. Very good design.

This was my first deep dive into the game rules. I’m really curious on how this comes out in play. I could see myself using these rules and probably homebrewing some stuff for this game.

Additional Notes:

No new additions to the link of participants in a while. But there has been a steady stream of new characters coming out on the blogs and on the social media hashtag of #CharacterCreationChallenge. Keep it up.

Coming Up Next:

Doctor Who Roleplaying Game by Cubicle 7

Character Creation Challenge, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

Character Creation Challenge Day 20: Spycraft

Written by TardisCaptain January 20, 2021March 14, 2021

I own both version 1.0 and 2.0 of the Spycraft Roleplaying Game. I even remember going to a friends house and playing in a massive session. It may have been a Living Spycraft game or it may have been part of the Game Control (GC is the Game Master) created world. I remember we had to make a raid on a stronghouse and we spent most of the game planning our way to infiltrate and obtain the goal before we had to shoot our way out.

Being a big James Bond fan I had always been interested in espionage RPGs. This fandom was expanded by the video game series No One Lives Forever. Someday I’m going to create a sourcebook for the NOLF characters and events and I’ve always thought that Spycraft would be the system I would use for it. NOLF is where UNITY originated from that is need of new agents. Agents I am creating with this Character Creation Challenge. Today we are creating Oliver Chamberlain, who’s name I pulled from [REDACTED]. So far no one has guessed where I’m pulling these names from.

Spycraft v2.0 is a modified D20 system. The publisher added a few spins to the game to make it fit into the world of super spies and blazing guns. The first step is to create the concept. Originally I was going to make Chamberlain a Hacker since that is one of the classes in Spycraft, but then it hit me, in 1968 they didn’t really have hackers like those listed in the book. So I changed the concept to Intruder. Basically an infiltration expert that is also good at getting equipment by any means necessary.

As a D20 system, it has the standard attributes. STR, DEX, CON INT, WIS and CHA. However you don’t roll the 3d6 to generate the scores. Like the EverQuest RPG, you start out with a base score of 8 and then you have so many points to increase the attributes you want to use. For Spycraft you have 36 points and a chart with a rising score cost (slightly different than the EQRPG) Chamberlain needed a good DEX and WIS score so I concentrated there. Next you selected your Origin which consisted of Talents and Specialties. These would almost make up a background history to build upon, but they would also adjust your ability scores amongst other things. Chamberlain is an Orphaned Criminal. After adjusting the stats he ended up with the following. STR: 10, DEX: 17, CON: 11, INT: 10, WIS: 15, CHA: 10.

I wrote down the information for the Intruder class. The skills were very detailed with sub-skills that are automatically gained underneath and result caps. It was all very crunchy. But I selected the skills I thought that an Intruder would need to be successful. I also selected Burglar for his level 1 feat. I noticed that the feats are just as detailed as the skills are. Very crunchy, which isn’t a bad thing for detailed play. Next you selected interests (hobbies basically) which may add bonuses to certain checks if the GC agrees. Now we are up to step 7 which his selecting a sub-plot. Chamberlain has a nemesis (which I won’t create now) that may pop up every once in a while.

Next step is filling in the missing blanks like Vitality Points (i.e. hit points) and the like. I’m glad that the RAW has the 1st level characters starting out at max VP. I filled in the rest of the items as instructed. Then we got to the gearing up. Again the game had a lot of details here. If I was just starting a campaign, I’d ask the GC for a few items appropriate for my class (lock picks, rope) a weapon (pistol with a silencer) and a motorcycle and I called it good. I’m sure the excess detail will make sense if I was actually playing, but for this challenge, I’m done. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I love it when a RPG book contains a quick guide for character creation in one location so you can see all of the steps at once. The Spycraft 2.0 book did this very well with some sections color coded. However even with this helpful section, there were still sections that I would have relied on a GC to answer any questions. I know that there are sections of the sheet that are blanks.

Overall though I could see myself playing this system like I had before. I think the GC at the time was someone connected with the publisher of the game so he explained it very easily. Plus, as I mentioned above, we did more role-playing than dice rolling. But as I was assembling this character and reading the rules, my mind started homebrewing stats for agents I had seen in video games and other media.

Additional Notes:

I’ve noticed that Twitter’s hashtag search is much more efficent and user-friendly than Facebook’s. I haven’t come across any new blogs or message boards yet. But I am very impressed with some of the blog entries. While I’m reading them, I feel like I’m sitting down at the table with the writer as they explain the character. Plus I’m seeing some very interesting insights on some of the different games out there. Keep it up.

Coming Up Next:

The Prime Directive D20 RPG

Character Creation Challenge, James Bond, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

Character Creation Challenge Day 16: James Bond 007

Written by TardisCaptain January 16, 2021March 29, 2022

I have been a huge fan of the James Bond franchise ever since I saw my first movie in the 80’s. Besides the movies I’ve read the books and the comics. Roger Moore was the first Bond I saw in the theater, but I love all of the actors who have played the part. So when Victory Games released the James Bond 007: Role Playing In Her Majesty’s Secret Service Basic Game, I as immediately interested. Unfortunately I never found a group to play with when this game was widely available. So in order to get a taste of the game, I decided to use this game as one of my entries for the Character Creation Challenge. While the original game is no longer being printed, Expeditious Retreat Press did release a retro-clone game called Classified.

As I did with Top Secret and Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, the character that will be created for the James Bond 007 RPG will be another new UNITY field agent. This is to replace the depleted ranks in UNITY after the events of the video game series No One Lives Forever. And in keeping with the common source for names, today I will be creating Steven Prince (has anyone guessed the movie I’m taking the names from?)

Agents in the James Bond RPG have Characteristics (primary attributes) with scores ranging from 1-15. At a minimum, agents need a score in 5 for each category. The five Characteristics are Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Willpower (WIL), Perception (PER) and Intelligence (INT). Characters are created by Generation Points. The higher the rank of the character (Rookie, Agent or “00”) the more Generation Points are needed at the time of creation. As Agent Prince is a new agent, I will be going with the Rookie rank with 3,000 GP. One of the first things that the RAW has you spending your points on is your character’s height and weight. The more common the size, the higher the GP, but you also start out with less Fame Points. Fame Points is the likelihood that someone may have heard of your character (or did some digging on your character’s background and history). As much as I didn’t want to spend too much on just the Height, I didn’t feel like the character would be greatly known. So I ended up going with a height 6’2” which cost me 120 GP and earned 10 FP. For the weight I spent 160 GP for a weight of 200 and 5 more Fame Points. For Appearance, I selected Attractive (I wanted the agent to look good, but not too good) for a cost of 120 GP and 20 more Fame Points.

Now we can finally start spending Generation Points on the Characteristics. I wanted Agent Prince to be a driver. So I spent the points and selected the following stats. STR: 7, DEX: 11, WIL: 7, PER: 10, INT: 6. After determining these, they also gave the results to some secondary characteristics which I then wrote down on the character sheet.

Agent Prince was a person who grew up getting in trouble with the law before he turned straight, so he was aware of how the law worked and forensics. His cover story is that he is a race car driver. I selected the appropriate Fields of Experience and Skills and calculated their statistics. For his primary weapon, I selected the HK VP-70 and wrote down the stats. Here is the charcter sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Usually the characteristics of appearance, weight an height come at the end of a character creation process. It was interesting seeing it at the start. But in the world of James Bond you’ve got a lot of attractive people running around saving the world. So it makes a little bit of sense that you would want to get that out of the way before all of the GP was spent.

I think that if this was a regular game I could create characters more easily. But the walk through for character creation was mostly straight forward.

Additional Notes:

Thanks to a Facebook post in one of the many gaming groups, I’ve found another participant in the Character Creation Challenge. I have added a link to the blog on the CCC page.

Coming Up Next:

The Last Unicorn Games entry into the Star Trek universe.