Steam Stocker

I have walked in the darkness for years, recording the evil that calls this world home. I do this not to extend my life but to keep safe those that read what I write.

From the personal diary of Dr. Royhall

Steam Stocker  

I encountered the steam stocker in a dark alley that branched off Prastgatan street, in southern part of Stockholm. I came to this place after hearing of reports of wounds on victims that where caused by sharp claws and intense head. I had a good idea that a Steam Stocker was attacking victims in this part of city. At one time Steam Stockers were common in the great cities of Europe, during the 1820s, when scientist were experimenting with ways of generate steam using less coal. They found away but it was unstable and dangouse and caused massive exposition in ships. The unfortunate souls that survived the the blast were changed into Steam Stockers.

Steam Stocker,

Body: 3
Strength: 4
Awareness: 2
Reflex: 3
Intelligence:0
Charisma:0
 * The smell of cheap coal burning clings to the creatures skin*

Basic Attack: Claws 3 points of Damage

Additional Attacks.
Oppressive Heat: An intense heat  radiates off the creatures skin, causing anything alive that is close to stream stocker to step back. If oppressive heat attack succeeds than the target automatically fails the next initiate roll.

Burning Touch: If the creature is able to grab the target and hold on, than the target takes damage from the intense of the Steam Stocker.  Grappling rules need to be taken into account for this attack. Damage: 3 per combat round.

Melted Handle...

Monster Sunday

A few years ago I started drawing a monster every sunday, when everyone in the house started to slow down in the evening. The drawing above is one of my favorites, a human that has been reanimated by an engine powered by a foul energy source. The smoke stack on its left shoulder emits an oily smoke that stains anything that comes in contact with it.

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D&D Next

D&D Next

Growing up I never played D&D, but I did look over the Red Box plenty of times. The way the game was marketed was just confusing, with advanced, normal and so on. A few years ago I had some gift money from my sister inlaw so I picked up Dungeons & Dragons Essentials, Heroes of the Fallen Lands. When I bought the book I was hoping for an inspiring story that would push me into a world I had never explored, cold pea soup was more exciting.

A few years later I learned about D&D next was having an open play test, which sounded interesting. I signed up for the play test and the first packet was ok. With the second packet  I made my first character a fighter named Ravenscream. My very first character took some time to figure out what was going on and for some reason determining my hit points was a frustrating experience. A while later I made my second character Stonewell, a Cleric. I was worried that character generation would be very involved, but once I understood how it worked it was fast and enjoyable.

In the next few weeks I'm hoping to get these two characters in a few fights and see how time consuming the combat is.

I want to play him

Knight

And storm this

Prison of the Chatelet

We will See

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Pre 1900 War Games

War games have always intrigued me, with their rules in which units move and interact with each other on a board. Growing up the most common war game played was Warhammer. I never had the money nor the time to play the game, but did enjoy reading through friends copies of the rule book. It got me thinking what were some of the earliest books that discussed rules for playing these types of war games. Google book has a amazing breath of subjects and I was able to find a book from 1880 called Strategos, which was well referenced. From those references I was able to locate two additional war gaming books.

Title: Strategos

Date: 1880

Author: Charles Adiel and Lewis Totten

Title:Tactical War Game

Date:1875

Author:General v. Verdy Du Vernois

Translated: J.R. MaCDonell

Date:1884

The Book of the War-Game, is unlike the other books where they only mention the use of dice to determine the out come of a collision between two players. For this book they have a number of tables and use dice to determine the number of men lost per collision. 

Title: Rules For the conduct of the War-Game

Author: War office

Date: 1884

Thanks
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References concerning the education of officers, Mid 1800s

Years ago I was walking around the Tower of London and one of the information stations talked about the importance of the men protecting the walls that surrounded the tower. One of the sentences got me thinking, it stated that the tower was only as strong as the men and leaders defending it. Further thought on the subject, the education of the officer core is critical to the outcome of any type of military engagement.

I started to search for references concerning the education of officers during the Napoleonic Wars. I was only able to locate a number of references on Google Books to instructions and regulations for officers during the mid 1800s. The number of books available concerning the education of officers increases for the later part of the century.

Title: The Queen's Regulations and Orders for the Army: ...

  Author: Great Britain. War Office

  Published: 1844

 Title: Royal warrant and regulations regarding army services: and ...

  Author: Army

  Published: 1848

   Title: Instructions for officers and non-commissioned officers of cavalry, on outpos...

Author: Arentschildt (von.)

  Published: 1854

Title: Regulations for the dress of general, staff, and regimental ...

  Author: 

  Published: 1859

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My Red Crayons

Red Crayons

Growing up in west I played a number of games on paper at school, this was before video games. These paper games would have military themes where the players would draw their armies on opposite sides of the paper. Then you would put your pencil on the unit that was shooting and press hard. The pencil would slide out from under your hand leaving a line in a random forward direction. 

You would then take a ruler and follow that line to the edge of the paper. If the line you where drawing from the pencil mark intersected the other players unit before the edge of the paper then that unit was destroyed. The goal was to destroy the other person's army first. You would use a red crayon to cross out the destroyed unit. Playing these games you always needed a lot of red crayons.

As I grew up my games became more complex but the idea was still the same, destroy the other person’s army first. The games I played were the first edition of Shadow run, Battletech to name a few. By the end of high school I was starting to design my own games with a very good friend. Since those early years I have continued to design role playing games, build worlds and write rules. This blog is to share my ideas and some of my current projects. 

Thanks

Melted Handle...