"French and Indian Weirdness?" Topic

We are going to be doing some "imagi-nations" gaming set during the F&IW but with some twists. The Indians are going to get minor Shamanistic magic. The Masons control magic based on math.

Female soldiers will not be unheard of. Crazy firearm design will be brought closer to the forefront. I think we will stick to most cannons remaining in naval carriages though. Clockwork gadgets will somewhat common.

The yet unnamed Northern expanse will be loosely settled by Cossacks….some friendly…others influenced by darker forces. Loup Garou and undead will stalk the byways at night. Ithaqua may travel the frozen wastes. Wendigos shadow lone travelers in snowy passes.

The English and French will still be battling over the expanse. Other countries may enter into the strife.

We are trying to keep the odd parts from becoming overwhelming. Most of the fantastic beasties will still fall to shot. I was also toying with Tir-na-nog rejects trying to integrate with mankind. Perhaps Elven scouts…and later down the road half-Elves. They would have a nose for mystical places and creatures and would not be bad to have along as scouts. I could use some of the Flintloque figs for this.

Warmachine has some useful figs as well. I can finally use my Corgi Golden Compass coach too! It will carry dignitaries and a small compliment of "pistol mages".

Mcristo has some great ideas here:

link

A bit more over the top than I want to go…but handy :) We will be using home-grown rules for large skirmishes of roughly 3-4 units per side. I am considering "Among the Warparties" for side adventures during our campaign.

Any ideas you would like to add would be welcome.

Don't forget Mister Franklin's experiments in Natural Philosophy, with phlogiston and Leyden jars.

Forgot to mention…I built a Feldmechanik out of the "ice tube" ice trays which I intended for monster hunts and the like. I'll probably lay out a table crossed by a twine grid and fill these with trees. I'll make a random encounter deck for every few tiles where they don't find the monster. Assuming they come across a wrecked cabin or such, I'll pull the trees of that grid square and put the scenery down. It should heighten the supsense and exploration experience.

Thanks for the ideas John…perhaps equipping grenadiers with phlogiston bombs that choke those caught in the radius? I could do a primative form of telegraph using Leyden jars as periodic boosters along the cable. Perhaps certain beasites don't like the field emitted by the jars? They would be handy to have around camp.

Running the cable would certainly lend itself to neat scnearios.

Does anyone make undead woodland Indians?

"Does anyone make undead woodland Indians?"

Oh no, not more Zeds … :-)

"Does anyone make undead woodland Indians?"

Just paint 'em white (or some sickly puce colour)!

True! There you go using logic again…

Dont forget the great white buffalo!

"Oh no, not more Zeds … :-)"

It's got to be werewolves:

link

Allen

Here's a link to a BatRep of a zombie encounter during the F&IW from TwoHourWargames. Seems to go right along with what you're doing.

PDF link

Sleepy Hollow tuned full-time and with exciting extras!
Extremely promising: hope you'll post somewhere a campaign journal with a lot of pics! Do you have a blog? If not, your project for sure deserves one.

A zombie game in tricorns in the Imagi-Nation of Saint-Maurice:
link
link

Thanks for your favorable comments (blushing).
Jean-Louis

@Paul…now that you mention it I recall reading it when it was posted. Thanks for brining it up. Will go over it again.

@Jean-Louis….if the project gets off the ground I will certainly need to catalog it somewhere. I will post info to TMP if so.

You could adapt DEADLANDS/GREAT RAIL WARS to an earlier century, readily enough.

Hey Stranger! We've got a set of rules by Dan Fox…and he's willing to run the games for us. If you would like to participate when you are in town…let me know.

@Jean-Louis

Thanks for pioneering the topic :) I like how zombies are a lot more scary when you are on foot with black powder weapons. Your pics also have encouraged me to get to work with my Hirst blocks.

@ cloudcaptain: Good to know we will be allowed to follow your campaign on the web, when time comes. Blogs and yahoo groups boths have their pro and con, but a blog imho if easier to browse, and pics and text of a battle report can be posted together…

Elves… 200% personal of course, but I'm less reluctant toward werewolves (people *did* believe in them in 'our' 18th C.) and even zombis than to 'tolkienesque' non-human races, more 'tagged' "fantasy". Then Elves at least can pass for humans, on a gaming table (long ago a friend of mine had a semi-medieval army for our 'Hyborian' campaign mainly of Ral Partha elves), and a few even look '18th C.': Foundrt picture and -more appropriate for a wargame campaign, some Alternative Armies ones: Dark Elves : link and *specially* the Dark Elves Light Infantry: link link
and among the High Elves of Armorica: the irregulars of the Witchlands: link
link
and perhaps the Militia: link
Among their 'High Fantasy' elves the assassins don't look too 'medieval' link and of course the dismounted dragoons are quite fine (as ex part of the defunct 'Napoleonic' "Crystal Elves" range), but unfortunately their bows don't look propitious to conversion:
link
Most are probably too 'regular'-looking for your purpose, anyway.
Hope I'll not be to blame for the introduction of rabbitmen or ratmen in your 'alternate' FIW!
Cheers,
Jean-Louis

PS: could the (in)famous Zardoz minis pass for Elven scouts (weapons need some conversion to look less 'modern')?
link
link
link
link
(: {well, half only, actually: who knows?}

A thriving Chinese community on the west coast.
The Age Of Unreason series of books has lots to offer.
Perhaps Greenland could be like Naggaroth from Warhammer or there could be a lot of Norse communities thet noone knew about.
That's a nice idea about the Cossacks either pro Tsar or anti,
fleeing to the Canadian plains to maintain thier freedom.

My Partha Thumper army is too odd for anything other than very light hearted gaming :) I was thinking of having elvesas an NPC race with a hireable half-elven scout character up recruitment. The key here is to be subtle and not overwhelm the F&IW historical overtones too much.

@The Gray Ghost

I will take a look at those books…they sound like good brain candy.

The anti-tsarists could be backed by an ancient malignant force…which would let me break out my horror wars figs. Certain settlers and soldiers could have gone over to that side. I have the undead Cossacks from Alternative Armies as well. I can see a scenario with Indians and their French allies (perhaps some preists) battling a necromancer and dark Cossacks over the control of burial mounds.

Movies I need to go back and steal ideas from:

Brotherhood of the Wolf
Ravenous
Killing Box

The concepts there should be useful even though the time period is off for a few.

@The Gray Ghost
I will take a look at those books…they sound like good brain candy.

Book one, Newton's Cannon, is and it has lots of usefull devices after that the story kinda goes downhill.

Roger that.

Feux Follets. They can't harm you, but they'll keep on pestering you until you convince them to pass through the eye of a needle…

Try these books based in the 18th C.
GP Taylor
Wormwood
Shadowmancer
Tersias for a Christian take on fantasy
DM Cornish
Foundling
Lamplighter gives you an entire 18th Centurish world to play with.
Joseph DeLaney
The Last Apprentice, about a witch hunter.
Neil Gaiman
Stardust
Marie Rutkoski
The Cabinet of Wonder, a Renn book but feels more like 18th C.
and Diana Gabaldons slightly homoerotic Lord John and the Hand of Devils.

I've read Stardust…and almost picked up Lamplighter a few days ago. Thanks for the heads up. Will have to go back and nab the first book.

Feux Follets could explain a missing patrol and actions thereafter to drive the spirits from the bog.

Oh dear…

Phlogiston would have to be lighter than air; it probably wouldn't be persistent enough to suffocate, but it could prevent gunpowder from combusting for a limited amount of time.

Phlogiston indeed would have negative mass--phlogiston balloons could reach the supralunary aethers.

Wargames campaign journal on the web : Blog or Discussion Group?

(totally unsollicited and 200% subjective comments)

Remember that what you post on the web may be for more than ‘immediate consumption'. People who read your messages when you posted them may wish to come back to them years later. Newcomers to the wargaming era or to the hobby may be interested by information and illustrations you posted year ago.

Forums / Discussion Groups are exactly that: discussion boards. Great for *real time exchanges*, but very unfriendly when it come to illustrate a message or search for old posts. Photos (with minimal, almost useless captions) and text are kept separated, so navigating between them to read a battle report or a modelling tutorial is a but in the pain (the same when pics are stored outside a blog, in a gallery such as Photobucket). The search engine (if any) for archived messages is extremely poor. Thus Discussion Groups are good for light chat and exchange of information of limited interest / soon to be obsolete, but totally inadequate for anything of more long-lasting value –such as eye-candy pics, painting tutorials, after action reports, campaign journals…

On the opposite blogs allow to insert illlustrations in the text, and while most are not ‘searchable' a very handy tool is provided by the *labels*, which allow to sort out and isolate posts dealing with a given topic (rather like the Excel 'filter' utility). Extremely reader-friendly, specially when the blog is devoted to several hobbies / wargaming eras or even merely combines different approaches (‘novelization' of characters' adventures, battle reports and terrain pieces modelling, for instance). I wish they were more frequently used on not a few blogs I regularly follow…

Actually not a few fellow ‘alternate' Lace Wars players started posting pics, battle reports and drafts of a campaign journal on a Yahoo Group, but soon turned to launch their own blog (Saint-Maurice kingdomofstmaurice.blogspot.com ) or even blogs (the Euratia campaign theolddessauer.blogspot.com link )

Indeed Discussion Groups and blog correspond to different aims / requirements, and may be complementary. Taking as example the ‘Great Pangean Campaign', the devoted forum link is great for the light chat and exchange of hundred of messages in *preparation* of the campaign: they would be an encumbrance on a blog, even if most were posted as threads of comments rather than ‘true' messages; this will remain true for ‘off record' chat and comments during the campaign. But it is to be hoped that, for the *publication* of the campaign journal a blog will be launched for our edification, inspiration and enjoyement.

A relevant thread here
TMP link some 15 month ago

Thanks for the find Jean-Louis. Sometimes if you search TMP with special characters like & it blows up the script…such is to be expected with databases and the like.

Here's a good Brain Candy trilogy
Lloyd Alexander's Westmark books
Westmark, The Kestrel and The Begger Queen.
I also like Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night although the story is somewhat befuddling, there's a good 18th Century word

How about a variation on "The Lost World" with musket-armed troops encountering dinosaurs in the Carolina back-country. Something for "Bloody Ban" and his legion to get stuck into.

Well, I just bought 22 Old Glory cossacks off ebay, yet another line to work on.

Also check out the Ravenloft rpg books some of that is set in an 18th century setting.

Cool! Glad I could be a bad influence on ya :)

Great minds think (almost) alike:
TMP link
link
link (French)….