Terra Incognita: The NAGS Society Website

Terra Incognita is a roleplaying games of exploration, intrigue, and mystery, featuring adventurer-scholars whose exploits span the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. Armed with extensive training, unpredictable technology, and unimpeachable discretion, NAGS Society Members travel to the Four Corners of the globe — exploring unknown lands, investigating mysteries, and uncovering ancient knowledge.

Terra Incognita features a customized version of Steffan O’Sullivan’s innovative Fudge system from Grey Ghost Press. You can learn more about Fudge and even download the system for free.

Long time NAGS Society associate Warren Shultzaberger reached his point of tolerance in awaiting the long-promised photos of my Matakishi cork building project. Warren asked, and therefore, shall receive.

A few provisos, ipsos facto, notas bene, &c.: As with nearly all of my projects, nothing is complete. This one is in the early stages, so the buildings are primed or still raw cork. Nothing is painted (sigh).

I’m a novice digital photographer, so the pictures aren’t great. I tried to get enough so you could get a sense of the buildings. I have a cheap tripod, which I discovered upon editing the pictures that they all have a distinct list to the right. Please know that I build on strong foundations and this is not the Pulp City of Pisa.

There is a second folder of my slightly-further-along 15mm pulp city project, which was built not with cork, but with cast plastic and bits of mounting board, foam core, &c. I’ll have more pictures of the rest of the buildings as well as more information on how I constructed them.

Here’s a bit of inspiration for those (like myself) hard at work on a constructing a pulp city. The blog Savage Boldfist offers some photos of a wonderful pulp metropolis.

Hank Harwell, the intrepid soul behind the Pulp Project 1557 recently emailed about his current project— the Eerie Exploits Of Ranger Company X, which “brings together the Texas Rangers and the X-Files AND spans the history of the organization from the beginnings of the Republic through Statehood and into the modern era.” Here’s the website for the play by post game if you’d like to learn more.

A bit more on the Matakishi building project. Aside from the cork, I also wanted a few other items Matakishi used to detail his buildings. First up, stone for the front edges of the buildings. These were “OO [scale] Self Adhesive Paving” from Metcalfe Models & Toys. I scoured the Walthers site and couldn’t find them, so I decided to bite the bullet and order from the UK. I was pleasantly surprised when they made it from North Yorkshire to North Carolina in little more than a week. I have found that it’s better to glue them on than rely on their self-adhesive, as a few have come off after priming the buildings.

The second item I wanted was those cool wooden cornice pieces from Litko. This proved to be a bit more frustrating because Litko (as they wrote in an email, and they tell you when you order as well) takes four weeks to produce custom pieces, which these cornices are, apparently. Perhaps they made some extra when they made mine, so the next folks will get them quicker? Then, frustration upon frustration, they were sent on Wednesday from Indiana and arrived in North Carolina on Monday. I guess the internet has ruined me with regards to patience. But, I got the cornices and they look great. Another option I will try is to buy some cove molding at Home Depot and cut off little slices of that. It wouldn’t be quite as fancy as the Litko bits, but easier and quicker to put one’s hands on.

Anyone who enjoys making terrain for roleplaying and wargames is no doubt familiar with the cork buildings designed and created by Paul “Matakishi” Ward. Ever since I first saw his tutorial, I’ve longed to recreate Paul’s buildings myself. (I did, in fact, have a go in 15mm, which I’ll discuss in a future Dispatch.) I’ve got a bunch of 28mm figures who have languished in an unpainted state for an embarrassingly long time.

One of the problems we in the States face is that cork tiles are not as readily available. The bulletin board cork you can get at WalMart and office supply stores is not at all the thing. What one needs is cork floor tiles.

The one I got was from Lumber Liquidators: “4mm x 300mm x 600mm Lisbon Cork Sunset Glue Down Cork Flooring,” which was a little over $30 for 1 box of 10 tiles, if I remember correctly. The tiles have a thin coat of water based polyurethane on one side (Paul specifies “unfinished” tiles) but the finish doesn’t seem to cause problems, and it took spray primer just fine.

I use a utility knife (box cutter) to cut it, rather than the Exacto knife I generally use with foamcore. It usually takes two passes of the knife (the same as it does for me with foamcore) and one thing I discovered during those interminable sessions cutting windows is that one doesn’t always have to cut completely through the cork. I can’t see my window cuts on the back side at all, and yet they pop out neatly and cleanly. One benefit of cork over foamcore is that you don’t have to do anything with exposed edges. You can’t do those neat rabbeted edges, however, so you have exposed butt joints (if I can say that on a family website).

I plan to take some pictures in the very near future. At this point, I haven’t been particularly creative — my buildings look just like Paul’s. I also did a version of the Ethan’s Eatz sushi restaurant.

I’ll Dispatch periodically, hopefully accompanied by photographs. At any rate, I can vouch for the cork flooring available from Lumber Liquidators.

Continuing in this Burroughsian theme, Adamant Entertainment has brought out a Savage Worlds version of their Mars roleplaying game:

I’ve also been reading Rattrap Productions’ Fantastic Worlds miniatures game, particularly the recent Planet X supplement, which is probably more Flash Gordon than John Carter, but still good stuff.

Back to Adamant, they’ve also collected all of their “Imperial Age” Victorian/steampunk d20 material into one nearly 700 page printed monster, the Imperial Age Omnibus, which I may have to get for completeness sake.

Folks may recall that Edgar Rice Burroughs is a recently-acquired taste for me, so I just finished reading one of his early works for the first time: The Lost Continent (originally published in a magazine as “Beyond Thirty”). It’s science fiction (set in 2137) and so right out of the Terra Incognita timeline, but was published in 1916 and the point of divergence is the Great War, and so it fits the Victorian/Edwardian science fiction mold. You can get a copy from Amazon.com, read it online, or look for one of these “Commemorative Editions” which restores the title and includes an introduction by David Brin. The book moves at a good clip (and it’s short—I read it in one go) and so it’s perfect for development into a gaming setting. One possible source of inspiration might be Marcus Rowland’s Forgotten Futures V: Goodbye Piccadilly…. At any rate, a cracking good read.

Spirit of the Game, the fine folks behind the Warhammer Ahoy website, also have a site devoted to their imaginings of Victorian London, End of Empire. The Ministry of International Intrigue (MI!) must be colleagues of the NAGS Society. The adventure write-ups are great and they'll apparently sell one a copy of the rules they've written. Particularly inspirational to me, however, are the fantastic scratch-built buildings (complete with interiors) and the map of their fictional corner of London.

If you would like to discuss Terra Incognita (or any other Fudge-related issues) try:

Fudge Retailers

Try the Fudge Retailers page to uncover where you can purchase your copy.

Adventures in Jimland

Adventures in Jimland, Jim Wright’s exciting game of adventure and exploration in darkest Jimland, is again available. Have a look at this fun miniatures game and read the Reports for scores of adventure ideas. The NAGS Society even gets a nod.