Void 1.1 and From the Leadpile!

Hi!

Well its been a busy week here with me finally tracking down somewhere to live and getting to the interview stage for another job but such jabberings are for another time! I've spent the last weeks commute reading through the rather decent Void 1.1 game books.

Void was produced initially by i-Kore until they went bust before being picked up by Urban Mammoth and Scotia Grendel and has gone through a bewildering number of rulesets, settings and visual styles but my favorite has always been the stuff that was produced in the i-Kore days.

Viridian Strike Commandos versus Junker Convict Legionnaires 

The game is set in a future where Humanity developed in a binary star system on a world called Viridia. Due to rampant industrialisation, the planets icecaps melted and flooded the planet forcing its inhabitants to tack to arc like biodomes to survive. After the floodwaters receded, the survivors were forced to come to terms with the ruins of their civilisation and re-evaluate how to live.

With the use of genetic engineering they managed to return the planet to a habitable level and became a rather interesting combination of Eco types run by megacorporations instead of governments. In the following centuries they inhabited the harsh desert of Ironglass which saw the rise of the Junkers, descendants of convicts forced to work in the marginal atmosphere and the Syntha of Prime, scientists bent on combining man and machine to improve humanity.

 Yes the Viridians have dinosaur tanks!

Following numerous rebellions which saw the independence of first Prime and then Ironglass, the tripartite alliance was formed and VASA was brought into being (a bit like an interstellar UN and police force) and humanity began exploring the stars until eventually coming across the utterly alien Korolon.

The rulebooks and forcebooks are all available as a free download from Scotia Grendel and I would highly recommend folks take a peek as theres lots of interesting stuff to read and borrow for other game systems!

On its release, Void created a bit of a ripple in the games industry as it had a markedly more high tech, light and almost anime feeling to it, especially when compared to the likes of GW and with Stuart Beel's distinctive artwork:

 VASA Archangels, girls with swimsuits, wings and guns!

Interestingly the look has darkened in the years since as can be seen from these illustrations:

Gone is the anime, here's a more grim and Soviet styled VASA which appeared from nowhere especially when considering the background!

Likewise, Viridia turned into something more akin to space Nazis! The artwork and figures became more technically advanced but it lost quite a bit of the space age fun of the original. I must admit I never warmed to it as it looked like they had looked at some of the big computer games and crossed it with GW and discarded a huge chunk of background to justify it.

So why am I looking at it now, you may ask? Well in the spirit of Budgethammer, I want to integrate the setting and forces into games in the future and really like the inhabitants of this futuristic setting. The books are quite well written and include lots of bits of fluff that could make for a good campaign or one off game and the figures themselves are still readily available for a very reasonable price!

Interestingly, the box set is still available for a very reasonable price and has a ton of plastic figures in it which would make for good additions to imperial guard and space marines too!

I think I need to spend some time developing some sort of hybrid setting that will allow me to use whatever stuff I like from each setting and create my own too but that will have to wait until after I've moved house!

In the meantime I have painted another figure from my pile of miniatures!

Bring Me Skincare Products!

He's originally from the old Darkworld game and is in actual fact made out of plastic and isn't the best figure in the world, his robes are a bit blobby, his jewels are poorly defined and he has a freakily blobby right hand but he looks ok as either a mutant leader for Sci-fi games or an evil baddie for fantasy.

I must admit if I was to paint him again, I'd paint the hood gold or some such rather than green as its difficult to differentiate between his head and the weird snake crown. Also I would hack off his blobby hand and replace it with a more suitable one! Hopefully my next paint job will be a bit more fun to do too!

All the best!