Vampifan's Views 01 - Plans for 2018.

I thought I'd outline some of my plans for this blog for 2018. There are at least five books and supplements that are coming out for the What's Old Is New systems this year that I'm very interested in. First up will be Xenomorphs: The Fall of Somerset Landing supplement for the N.E.W. sci-fi RPG. This is a campaign setting loosely based on the Aliens film franchise and was recently offered as a Kickstarter. Also, in the package, was version 1.2 of the N.E.W. rulebook, with an exclusive new front cover showing one of the Xenomorphs. I already have PDF versions of both books for backing the Kickstarter and I can say that both books are excellent. How does version 1.2 of N.E.W. differ from version 1.1, which is what I've been using up till now? There are lots of additional rules and rule changes, made due to feedback from existing players. The page count has increased considerably, making the book even better value for money than ever. In short, it has taken a great game and made it better. I approve of all of the changes.

Sticking with N.E.W. there is supplement in the works that concentrates on the Venetian race, called The Holds of Vendalyr. This will accompany the race-related supplement, The Moons of Boria for the Borian race. I am particularly interested in this supplement because one of the crew members of The Ace of Spades, Danica, is a Venetian. It'll be useful to have more information about her race.
In addition, there are two new rulebooks coming out that I'm very, very excited about. First, is the N.O.W. rulebook, which covers gaming in the modern day setting. I can think of a few campaigns I'd like to play using rules for the contemporary period, including a post-apocalypse zombie campaign.

But of all of the books coming out, the one that has me the most excited is Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000 AD. It was the announcement of this set of rules that first got me interested in the WOIN games. Rather teasingly, EN Publishing have been previewing parts of this rulebook these past couple of months and all they have done is whetted my appetite for the rulebook. The sooner it is released, the happier I'll be, I will definitely be running a Judge Dredd campaign on this blog.

The Ace of Spades Campaign will continue and the next scenario should be ready to post soon. Most of it is already prepared but I need to paint half a dozen security robots first. I am working on them now and as soon as I finish them, I'll begin posting the scenario, which is called Alien Base. It is an exploration and rescue mission based on old Space Opera scenario published in 1981. The crew of The Ace of Spades are independent explorers, so this is exactly the sort of mission that they would take. In this scenario. I'll be focussing on just five of the crew - Storm, Danica, Judith, Lynda and Rebecca. Apart from Danica, they didn't see much "screen time" in the first scenario. One of the things that I had to do for this scenario was to sculpt and convert some new figures. It has been a very long time since I sculpted any figures but I found I still hadn't lost my touch. I'm very pleased with what I produced.
I also have loads more figures that I want to show you. I do own a vast collection of 28mm scale figures which I've amassed these past forty years and so far, I've only shown a fraction of them. I'll continue my figure reviews over the next few posts until I'm ready to start the next chapter of my The Ace of Spades Campaign.