Two Ticks to Midnight

Explaining a screen shot I included in yesterday’s post:

A few months and sessions ago, I decided to steal a page from Powered by the Apocalypse mechanics. With the Challenge Tracker module for Forge, I’ve added PbtA-style progress clocks to some of the party’s major infrastructure projects in Ponikla:

Every 10 shifts of work from a project leader (i.e., a PC with some general competence in the appropriate skill or the Logistician specialty) generates one skill check. Each success fills one segment of the outer (green) ring. Each 1, however, whether natural or pushed, fills one segment of the inner (red) ring, representing breakage, wasted materials, and other problems.

When the outer ring fills, the project is complete. When the inner ring fills, the project fails and must be restarted from scratch.

Generally, inner segments are equal to 1/2 the number of outer segments. I determine the number of outer segments by GM fiat and discussion with the table, as warranted.

Downtime (14-18 October 2000)

The team heals. Some moreso than others.

Minka seethes and worries. Red is adamant that she cannot ride until her crushed foot is fully healed. There’s no way to know how the things in her blood will reassemble the bones if she keeps abusing them. But her need to get back on Wiegel, to prove to herself that he’s still her horse, is gnawing at her.

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Farmville

I recently received a reader question regarding the systems I use in Kaserne on the Borderlands for tracking the agricultural and infrastructure projects that the Ponikla PCs are undertaking. I was about to write something, but the topic sounded like something I might have written already. A bit of sniffing around my own internet backtrail led me to a three-year-old post on Kato’s forum. In the interest of having a backup, I’ve replicated the original post here.

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Twilight: 2000 4e Conversion: VBL

This image recently appeared in /r/TankPorn and was immediately reposted to /r/Twilight2000 for reasons that should be obvious:

Naturally, someone requested VBL stats. Let’s give it a shot. WordPress compresses the screen shots of my tables; click each one to enlarge it in a new tab.

The MILAN doesn’t appear to be statted in the 4e core rules, despite being listed in the Marder’s stat block, so here’s a quick conversion:

AFAIK, we don’t have official rules for reactive armor, so the IIT’s tandem-charge warhead gets extra armor penetration as a kludge.

The AA-52 is a GPMG whose stats should be equivalent to those published for the FN MAG / M240B / KSP 58B. It was originally chambered in 7.5x54mm, but my cursory research suggests the French military had converted to the NATO standard 7.62x51mm by the time the Twilight War rolled around.

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MICE/RC

Agents, how do we get the information we want from the sources who have access to it?

Classic intelligence theory references MICE – Money, Intelligence, Conscience, and Ego. A while ago, I recorded this variant in my Spycraft notes:

Material – we have a tangible thing they want (money, coke, hookers).

Ideology – their beliefs are congruent with ours and they want to help us.

Compromise – we find an existing fear (i.e., a secret whose exposure is feared) and leverage it.

Ego – we reinforce (or challenge) their self-worth.

Revenge – we facilitate their need to get back at someone who wronged them.

Coercion – we create a new fear (make them afraid of us, usually) and leverage it.

Not Really an Annual Report III

Three years, and I’m still sort of here.

For various reasons, my personal accounting of years begins in October, not January, but the turning of the calendar seems to be a more commonly-accepted time for annual recaps (and I did actually spin up this thing in January 2023, so it fits in this case).

2023 was a year of heavy posting (due in part to New Toy Syndrome), with 126 entries. I slowed down heavily in 2024, with only 51 posts, and none during football season (while I give no shits about football, my day job means it cuts into my fall gaming time quite heavily). 2025 has been slightly better for content, with 106 posts – though that’s a bit artificially inflated due to my participation in Character Creation Challenge 2025.

Competing demands, low energy levels, and the scheduling complexities of gaming in middle age have kept me from getting in more than a handful of Kaserne on the Borderlands sessions last year. I did start Somewhere West of Light as a side campaign, though I’ve done a lousy job of keeping up with session logs. I also attempted to start a Discord chat-based Shadowrun 3e campaign for my wife and her Tumblr bestie, but that does not seem to have gotten any traction. As a player, my gaming was limited to a handful of D&D 5e sessions with NLP and the one-shots I was able to get at RiverCityCon and CharCon.

As I’ve remarked before, one of the main sources of content here has been a 30-year backlog of various gaming-related things that I’ve posted elsenet or never actually released for public consumption before. With the exception of a handful of pieces that I’m saving for specific times or occurrences, that well is now dry. Going forward, almost everything here will be new content.

I did turn on commenting a few months ago, mainly to enable my players to provide their perspectives on session writeups. If the spam moderation requirements become too onerous, I’ll flip the switch again.