Spaghetti Spaceships WIP 2024

Always looking for the cheapest, easiest, fastest ways to make convincing spaceships, last winter I experimented with a new technique, where I start with a piece of cereal packet.  The thin cardboard is cut to provide a symmetrical outline and solid foundation on which to glue various pasta shapes to bulk out the hulls.  Tiny (1-3mm long) regular shapes, also made from cereal packet, provided the final details.

I really liked how the sample ships turned out but I promptly forgot about them as I shifted on to other hobbies.

Cleaning up the hobby room and throwing things away, I came across these cereal packet spaceships and was about to pitch them in the garbage.  I'm supposed to be tidying and decluttering but I couldn't help thinking "why not just give them a couple of coats of spray paint, just to see".

I grabbed green because it was the closest thing to hand down in the basement.  The color turned out looking good and the paint pulls all the disparate components together into convincing (to my overactive imagination) illusions of massive spacecraft.

  Unfortunately I didn't get a "before" pic of the smaller ship, the design of which I prefer of the two.

I did a very aggressive drybrush, intentionally sloppy, just to pick out the edges.  I plan to use ink to make the edge-to-recess contrast even higher, then do some fine brush work to further pick out the edges with bone white.  All of this will then be covered with a thin coat of Russian Uniform Green via airbrush.

Then they'll still probably go in the trash.

Fate Core RPG Life-Path Character Generation (Using Cards)

Howdy.

Long time no blog. Well, I figure since we’re in the last three months of democracy, I might as well throw a couple of posts out there. Fiddling while Rome burns and all that…

One RPG I really like, at least conceptually, is Fate, specifically the Fate Core rules published in 2013. I’ve been fortunate enough to run a couple of games of Fate (or, as I like to call it: FATE) but it’s certainly a game that traditional RPGers bounce off of. I found that the more experience a player has in an old school system such as, say, AD&D 1st Edition, the harder it is for that player to grasp FATE’s key concepts like invoking/compelling Aspects.

Still, I dream about the day I get a fully invested RPG group to help me world-build like the example group in the Fate Core rulebook. Until that day, I’ll probably be doing a lot of solo world-building. One method I’ve come up with to support my solo efforts is using playing cards for a life-path style NPC generation method. FATE GMs: give it a try.

First, determine the skill list used in your setting. I try to keep the number at 18 skills, just like the default list in Fate Core, although I may rename, combine, and expand individual skills. I focus on the number 18 because 54, the number of cards in a standard Poker deck (including Jokers), evenly divides into 3 groups of 18. Using this fact, you can then take a cheap playing card deck and write one skill each on one card with a marker (or construct a virtual deck on the computer using MS Excel… that’s what I do). Repeating this twice more gives you 54 cards featuring three instances of each skill.

Next, determine the power level of your PCs. For the example below, I am using a “gritty noir” level where PCs get 15 skill points distributed among 8 skills. Supporting NPCs are considered (here at least) slightly less powerful than the PCs, so they start with 12 skill points, distributed among 6 skills. This gives the NPCs two skill columns rather than a skill pyramid.

Start generating an NPC by shuffling the deck and then drawing six cards. The eldest two (unique) cards indicate the two apex skills at +3, the next two cards the +2 skills, etc. Duplicates of a particular skill indicate a stunt involving that skill and generate additional draws until six unique cards are drawn. This method can obviously be stopped here and used as a super-quick random generation process.

The full life-path process uses this initial card draw to indicate the NPC’s “aspirational state” at the beginning of the life-path process, i.e. what they expected to be based on their origin, environment, social-standing etc. Note the scores and let the character’s early life background start to form in your head. For example, let’s say in a sci-fi setting you draw a +3 Piloting and +3 Contacts for the initial draw. Perhaps this NPC’s parent was a high-ranking officer in a space fleet, and the expectation is the NPC will attend the star academy and one day command her own ship. Life has other plans though…

Begin the life-path process by placing all six drawn cards in the same row. All skills are all now considered +1. Begin drawing from the deck discarding, face-up as a record, any card that features a new skill not among the initial six. Drawing a duplicate of one of the original six skills elevates that skill to a +2 and pauses the process temporarily. Looking at the discard pile, use the skills listed to come up with a quick narrative regarding some challenge the NPC had to face, and how using the relevant skill (the one just raised to +2) helped overcome the challenge (or not).

Continue the process, drawing and discarding until another skill is raised to +2 (or that first skill is raised to +3), making sure these subsequent discard piles remain separate as their own story records.

Once the NPC reaches a total of 9 skill points, again pause the process and review their story so far. You should have enough to form their High Concept Aspect, at least a rough draft.

Continue the process until reaching two columns of three skills each, one +3, +2, and +1 skill per column. Once the final card draw is complete, you should have enough story fragments contained in the discard piles to refine the High Concept and also decide the NPC’s Trouble Aspect.

Note that once you have the +3 and +2 skills assigned, the NPC cannot elevate the other skills any higher, resulting in duplicate draws of those skills being discarded. This is fine, as that indicates Stunts using those skills (I turn these cards sideways in the discard pile to remind myself).

Since this method generates new NPCs quickly, I’ll make 5-6 at a time and then create a “virtual seating order” with each NPC then interacting with the NPC to their immediate left in the seating order. Looking at each character’s High Concept and Trouble, plus the Setting Issues and Places, I can generally come up with a good relational Aspect between the two. This constitutes the NPC’s first adventure, Phase One of the Phase Trio (possibly the coolest concept from Fate Core).

That’s as far as I’ve gotten with the process for solo world-building. Going through the life-path process does really help give the characters some motivation.

I envision using this method with actual players. My idea would be to pre-generate, as above, two NPCs for every PC. Then, during Phase One of PC generation, I’d have each player randomly draw an NPC’s character sheet and include that NPC in the PC’s first adventure. Phase Two of PC generation would be “by-the-book”, with players swapping just between themselves to establish the PC-to-PC connections. Phase Three would then feature a random exchange of all character sheets, PC and NPC, making some PCs more connected to the PC group, while others have stronger bonds to the game world.

DIY Airbrush Booth (Under $50 US)

 I finally cleaned up my hobby space.  That effort deserves a blog post all its own, maybe later, but now that the room is actually usable again I'm eager to return to a number of projects.  Since most of these projects require painting, it was a perfect opportunity to revisit my airbrush setup.

I never took a picture of my old airbrush arrangement but it wouldn't be hard to recreate.  Basically I wedged a 20 inch box fan into the open window, and sprayed directly into an HVAC air filter suspended by the airflow against the fan.  Based on the spray residue captured on the filter, the system worked but was as awkward as it sounds.  I decided therefore to make an actual booth, trying to keep it cheap while achieving good containment and integral lighting.

A few years ago, the Missus was throwing out two perfectly good lampshades, which I saved from the trash since their shape screamed "spray booth".  The initial idea was that the two shades would be nested inside each other, with the inner shade acting as a spray shield and light diffuser for the outer shade, which would act as the air tunnel and light mount.

Searching online I found an eight inch diameter, 420 cubic foot per minute flow duct fan, wired for 110V AC, at one of the big box home improvement stores.  Since it wasn't in stock I had to have it shipped to the store; the small nine inch cube-shaped box it came in turned out to be the perfect interface for the square frustum lampshades.

I purchased a string of cuttable LED lights online, the type with self-adhesive backing.  I assumed these were far more flexible than they turned out to be.  While I originally envisioned nearly covering the inside of the outer shade with LED strip lights, I could not bend the strip aggressively enough and therefore only used less than two of 16 feet of lights.

A simple cardboard sleeve acts as the air duct directing the fan exhaust out the window.  The window interface is a large piece of sandwiched corrugated cardboard; the cardboard sits wedged by the upper window and provides a shelf to support the air duct weight.

The original lampshade material proved too opaque for the LED strips, even at full brightness, so I tore it away and replaced it with cling-wrap, Dexter-style.  Obviously the intent here is disposability and easy replacement of the spray shield once it gets too contaminated with paint.  The LEDs feature an integral dimmer switch so I can reduce the intensity if necessary.

I accomplished a smoke test and the booth performed wonderfully.  Even with the filter (cut from a HEPA filter) the fan provides plenty of air movement and should direct any atomized paint overspray away from me.  As the pictures show, the booth offers plenty of light.  The booth's 14 inch edges give a pretty roomy spray area sufficient for nearly anything I want to spray, even terrain.

[Here is where I tried to upload the smoke test video but, you know, it's Blogger.  Worthless]

Lame screen cap because Blogger sucks

Breaks into four pieces that fit under desk

Although the booth hasn't seen any real airbrush use yet, I'm happy and confident with the build.  It needs some refinement, sealing the window interface connections, for example.  Still, the price is especially nice.

I paid $28 US for the fan, and $17 US for the light strip, recycling every other component from either trash or my bits boxes.  So, $45 US for the booth which is about 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of the small table-top ones online.

Honestly, I should've eschewed the LED strip and made the cost even less.  I had forgotten the hundreds of 3V individual LEDs I have in a random drawer.  Wiring up ten of these to a 32V power adaptor would've been trivial and probably offered similar intensity light with a better area distribution.  Oh well, lessons learned.     

"There it is"..not sure why I'm pointing.  Nice light though.