Sanders "Murphy" MacMurphy

Sanders "Murphy" MacMurphy was one of those kids that wanted to be a gangster. Just like Henry Hill from Goodfellas, he watched the members of the Draco syndicate and other organizations and dreamed of the power he could have.

When he was old enough, he joined up with the Draco Syndicate, and became and enforcer on the planet Mycra.

In Interstellar Exports Game 7 Murphy was captured by Dry and his Crew and forced to Pilot the S.S. Hornby at gun point as they fled the clearly Draco Syndicate controlled Mycra System.

Currently, Murphy is not sure of his current employment status. Although Dry offered him a job on board the ship, the threat of violence if he doesn't comply has made him nervous, and question his freedom.

One thing is for certain. After failing to retrieve the mysterious case from Dry (now revealed to potentially house the command codes for the Galactic Council's Fleet), he cannot go back to the Syndicate: they do not tolerate failure.

Written by: Andrew Gregory

The Maps of Interstellar Exports Part V

While Captain Dry got his ship the, S.S Hornby and its crew back on course (setting a heading towards system 0505), Jeff's robotic character Caesar had ended up in what was classified as an empty System.

Despite the lack of detail on the Galactic Council charts, Casear found the opposite to be true. In system 0506 there was an asteroid field, that a mysterious alien race called the Slugulons had converted into a secret fuel refinery: to power their covert exploration of the universe.

Elijah's New Character Krunt M'Quasood was stationed here, and being more curious than the average Slugulon decided to investigate Caesar's powerless ship. Their he met the robot in his android body and, towed his ship back to the shuttle bay on Asteroid A of the four asteroid complex.

The Slugulon station was carved from the interior of four different asteroids. Transport pads are used to get from asteroid to asteroid, though Krunt and Caesar found themselves having to repair these systems more than once.

Asteroid A contained a Habitat Module, a Hydroponics bay, Storage, A Cargo Bay, the Command Centre and a transporter room. However unknown to the Slugulons when they started their tunnels another intelligent species already lived here.

The Slugulons knew that other creatures lived inside Asteroids eating the algae (and each other) and breathing the air produced by a chemical reaction in the rocks. What didn't expect was that there was another intelligent species here that had villages of their own. The Light grey tunnels are those of the Slugulons, the Darker tunnels belong to a species that the Slugulons called Fuzzbears.

Asteroid B contained, a Transporter Room, the Main Reactor, an Engineering Station and a Cargo Bay. The Fuzzbears on Asteroid B have really made a mess of things. Dismantling parts of the station to use in their neolithic villages.

While Krunt had been in hibernation, the Fuzzbears had started using the Slugulon technological components. The used wires to make basics, panels for building walls, and other things from decorations to tools. The biggest problem was that they had managed to dismantled the main reactor, and chewed through so many chords, that Krunt and Caesar had to go to every asteroid to make repairs.

Asteroid C housed a Transporter room, a Back-up Habitat, A Hydroponics Bay, the Secondary Reactor, the Tertiary Reactor, three Cargo bays and a Fuzzbear village. Using components from here, they were able to stabilize the reactors, and repair the transporter rooms. With the station no longer in risk of exploding, it was time to refuel Caesar's ship the S.S Exodus.

They found Asteroid D in worse condition than the others, and that it had come under attack from Giant toothed blobs! normally the toothed blobs were at most 3ft in diameter, but these ones had grown to the upwards of 15ft!

Asteroid D contained a Transporter Room, an Active Mine, three refineries, Ore Storage, Mining Control a Cargo and a Fuzzbear village. Caesar and Krunt fought one of the giant Toothed Blobs outside of Mining control, which saw Caesar's new body was smashed beyond repair. After that Slugulon put him into his third body.

With the monster defeated, they refuelled the Exodus and left the station, heading towards the closest system to find more fuel: System 0505. Krunt did leave his station behind him, but luckily no more Slugulon Ships are due for another 11 weeks.

Check out next time when our party is finally reunited in system 0505!

Written by: Andrew Gregory

The Tides of Ragnarök

Continuing the development of JADE's "One-Off" campaigns, Dave has a proposed his game, The Tides of Ragnarök. In thiscampaign setting, we play as Vikings after the Gods have finished their war and the world has been flooded.

Dave provided us with this awesome teaser for this campaign, and he read it to us last week to get us more excited. You can click on it above to have clearer view.

The Tides of Ragnarök uses D&D 5 rules, with a sprinkling of inspiration the 2nd Edition Vikings Campaign Sourcebook, which has some great information for setting up your own Viking Campaign... If you are looking.

Since The Tides of Ragnarök is set in a less traditional D&D setting, we had to modify the character classes to fit scene. So you are limited to the following classes, which have been given different names:

1.Barbarian (Berserker)

2.Bard (Skald)

3.Fighter (Warrior)

4.Ranger (Woodsman)

5.Rogue (Thief)

6.Wizard (Runecaster)

You can of course only be human, since the other creatures in Viking mythology are usual hostile. Personally I am going to be a Woodsman, and I know that Elijah has chosen to be a Skald!

Dave has told us that we would begin our game in a small Knarr: An eight to ten man craft commonly used by the Vikings. Our quest is to remap the world and seek an honourable death in combat that we we may see the gates of Valhalla.

I look forward to exploring Dave's new campaign and overcoming the different trials we will face.

Written by: Andrew Gregory

Dungeon Grind Game 1

Since it can be pretty hard to get four people together for a whole day to play a tabletop RPG, at JADE we like have to have a few back up campaigns. These "One-Off's" fill the need for an RPG adventure without excluding some one from the main campaign adventure: currently Interstellar Exports.

We already had one of these One-Off games in my Ivershill Campaign, but we needed more to keep things interesting.

So, Elijah came up with an idea for a random dungeon crawl, that he dubbed the Dungeon Grind Campaign. Using D&D 3.5 we would create 5th level characters and then get thrown into a dungeon with no equipment and only the most basic of supplies.

The map for the first Dungeon Grind was created using this Map Generating d12. As well, any the traps we encountered was generator using the Trap Generating D12. He rolled the dice a few times to build a bit of a start for the dungeon, and then took the time to look up some monsters.

While he was doing that,Dave and i created our characters, he was playing a Monk named Sean Josef and I chose a Paladin named Sir Reginald Grinsby.

With our characters made he threw us straight us into the dungeon!

Except for no equipment.

We awoke in the centre of room with 4 ways out. We watched as a terrified human ran down the Easterly corridor only to be splattered apart by a trap of swinging mechanical axes.

In the corner sat a dwarf, eating the glowing blue mushrooms form the walls. He turned out to be quite mad and of no use, so the Paladin and Monk agreed to work together, and leave the dwarf behind, who didn't wish to join us any ways.

As the two explored the tunnels, they were battered by gas traps, fireball traps and quicksand traps. Not being thieves, dealing with these  traps was almost impossible, and the adventurers would often turn back, rather then risk injury or death at the mechanical weapons.

Having no weapons or gear meant that the Paladin was useless against many of the beasts. The monk with his Improved Unarmed Strikes was able to fight a bit, but mostly his assaults ended in him batter and injured, and unconscious more than once. In the end they fled from more than they faced but they did stand against several foes. The first was a Gray Ooze (which sent them running), the second a Phantom Fungus (That they we able to slay), the third a Violet Fungus (that the Paladin threw a Mimic into) and fourth and fifth were two Mimics.

Though they fought boldly, in the end they were taken down by a deceitful Mimic. It disguised itself as a closed door, and struck as the Paladin listened through the key hole. Caught off guard both he and the Monk fell to creature.

As a player I was genuinely surprised! I thought we had finally found a store room of some kind. So when it turned out to be a mimic I was too close to react! Should have known better.

It was an awesome and gruelling adventure and I look forward to running through it again in the future! Well done Elijah!

Written by: Andrew Gregory

The Cultists

I am usually a proponent of GM's sharing their intent and ideas with the group before hosting a campaign. This way everyone goes in knowing what their characters know as well as the ton for the upcoming game, and you get some good roleplay.

That being said, the unexpected is an important part of tabletop RPG's and every GM is allowed to have a few secrets to keep the game flowing and interesting.

So with that in mind, I present you the Cultists... Who I am not going to tell you all that much about.

These minis come from Khurasan Miniatures, in packs of five. I however only needed three.

Their gas masks, dark robes and sinister looking weapons certainly make them look evil. But you can't always judge a book by its cover.

Where and when we will encounter these strange fellows, I leave for the future to tell, but you will see them soon in an up coming Interstellar Exports Game.

Written by: Andrew Gregory

Ruffles

In Interstellar Exports Game 2 our beloved captain Dry purchased two animals. One was a vicious 6 legged lizard that he named Mr. Peaches and the other was a corgi that he named Ruffles. Well in Interstellar Exports Game 3 due to a mis-jump and a lack of supplies, they were forced to eat Mr. Peaches, but Ruffles on the other hand survives to this day.

Now as far as I know, they do not make 15mm Corgi miniatures, so this guard dog from 15mm Co (that I painted vaguely like a corgi) will have to do as a stand in for Ruffles.

We haven't seen Ruffles in many of our games lately. This is mostly because we didn't have a mini, and I will confess that myself and the party sort of forgot about him. But I am sure that he is wandering around the S.S. Hornby and perfectly fine!

In the upcoming Interstellar Exports Game 8, I am sure we will see Ruffles and his master Dry together, and adventuring the stars.

Written by: Andrew Gregory

Campaign Creator and the Open Source

My name is Rick Gregory and I've worked as a software developer for over 30 years, beginning with writing programs for CPM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M; DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS and later Windows. In the early 2000's I adopted the open source framework Qt which allows programs to be written in one environment and then easily deployed to Windows, Mac or Linux. My OS of choice is Linux.

My son Andrew asked me to write a few words on the subject of how the Campaign Creator program was made and how it makes a contribution to gaming. But I figured I would start by explaining what I do.

My company creates, using standardized components and modules that we had developed over the years, unique and custom programs for our clients. Because we used standardized components, we are able to deliver high quality programs at substantially less than one would have expected – a kind of Ikea of the software world.

When Andrew asked me to write a program for him to manage RPG campaigns, I was at first sceptical. I barely knew what a RPG was. But as we worked together, I found that the tricks, tools and techniques directly applied to my usual line of work. While the goal and domain of the program was something entirely new to me, as we got into it, it became clear that despite the vast differences in intent, the rules of the game hadn't changed.

And D&D has a lot of rules

The first thing that should be said is that Campaign Creator is licensed for use under the Gnu Public License (GPL). The GPL says, among other things, that while it is permissible to charge a fee for a program, the purchaser/user of the program is not only entitled to a functionary binary that can be executed, they are entitled to the program's source code. They are also allowed to create their own releases using this code and even redistribute as they see fit.  And so it is with the Creator. People interested in the code may request it from the our repository, just send us an email at jadegamingnews@gmail.com

The second thing to know is that from my perspective, Campaign Creator is about paths that allow dungeon masters to create content that describes their visions/rules and narratives for the fantasy worlds that they have created. We put into the Creator the ability for a user to be able to publish their campaign and share it; the text, the graphics, the videos, etc; with other Campaign Creator users. Thus you can export your campaign, send it to somebody else to use or add to. Our hope were was that the program would create a vibrant community of users. We even thought that there might be a market the the licensing of high quality graphics and content which could be licensed for use in the community.

We have many plans for the future including server access that will allow you to send Video, Audio, and Image files to players. You can then invite your friends to your campaign using Campaign Creators upcoming Game Mode. They can join in using RPG Player: a free character building program in development, and receive all of your files and cues.

We are currently in Beta Testing right now, and would like to hear what you think. You can get your free copy on the JADE store here:

 https://jade-gaming.myshopify.com/

Written by: Rick Gregory

The Xenomorph Queen

With our 15mm Xenomorphs ready to go for Interstellar Exports Game 8, JADE's Traveller Homage to Aliens is ready to go! But what homage to the classic Horror/Thriller/Action franchise would be complete without a Xenomorph Queen!?

This awesome 15mm scale Xenomorph Queen mini comes from Khurasan Miniatures and is part of their Space Demon Hive line. She stands about 28mm tall, making her an intimidating beast for our adventures who at just above half her size.

She should make the perfect boss for our Travellers to encounter after battling through hordes of 15mm Xenomorphs! Though perhaps not a welcome one.

With any luck, like Ripley before them, Dry, Krunt and Meatfoot will overcome the Queen and hordes of Xenomorphs, and fly away to safety!  Hopefully without any chest-bursters in tow.

Written by: Andrew Gregory

Xenomorphs

I already have a Xenomorph from 15mm co, but when I learned that Khurusan produces their own version in their 15mm Sci-Fi line, I had to get them! And needless to say they look incredible! Much better than the clunky 15mm Co version.

I love all of the poses they come in, and the different heads with and without the interior jaws. Makes for a good and different looking bunch.

Of course now that I have these aliens, I have to write them into my Traveller campaign: Interstellar Exports!

In Interstellar Exports Game 8 I intend for our intrepid adventurers to encounter these creatures, and battle for their lives. Think of it as an homage to Aliens.

Now, my aliens aren't going to be true Xenomorphs from the Alien Franchise, but they will still be deadly and vicious. In fact, it is why I also got the group their battlesuits. They will be needing them if they wish to survive the encounter.

Whether or not they will survive their confrontation with the aliens, or fall to their jaws remains to be seen! Check it out in Interstellar Exports Game 8 coming soon!

Written by: Andrew Gregory