Last Week's Games: Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Injustice 2

This week I was delighted to return to the Black Country Roleplaying Society. I had to stop going for a while due to childcare issues, but currently neither Kirsty nor I are going to work in the usual sense so it’s not the issue it very often can be. The lockdown situation has caused a lot of restrictions on a great many aspects of life, but ironically in this case it’s freed me up a little.

This is what my character
will look like eventually...
or something like it.

So, it was a pleasure to be welcomed back, and I joined a Dungeons and Dragons game with the Odyssey of the Dragonlords setting. While the published player’s guide is quite insistent that it’s not based in Ancient Greece, that’s clearly where it’s drawn some of its inspiration. I created a female human ranger called Halia with the intention of making her into an Amazon later down the line; this happens at level three. At character creation, I like to roll up random personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws from the Player’s Handbook, and also the background information from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything – this creates some instant background for the character which is surprisingly easy to tie into a motivation for becoming an adventurer. In this case, Halia was raised in a conclave, but at some point, was wrongly accused by an adventurer of a smuggling and assault, and did a year’s time before escaping with the assistance of another adventurer. This means she is wanted in one of the key cities of the game. Also, since I put charisma as her dump stat (currently at 9) I decided that during her incarceration she was badly burned on the side of her face and now has burn scars that she hides with her hair when she isn’t fighting. She’s also quiet, withdrawn and overeats (I rolled up a surprisingly high weight for her) so there’s some personal issues there, which I’m hoping will be addressed and maybe even resolved during the campaign. As for the adventure itself, it took a while to get going, but we ended up hunting a giant boar which had the potential to wipe any one of the party members if it managed to connect an attack. Unfortunately, it suffers from a problem that 5^th edition very often runs in to – action economy. As it’s only one giant boss monster against five characters, chances are we’ll drop it before it has a chance to do any significant damage, which we did at very little harm to us since when it managed to connect an attack, our Dungeon Master rolled spectacularly low on his damage roll. But we levelled up to second level, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.

These provided more of a threat than the boss...

I ran into the same problem when I ran Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords over the weekend. We’re in the fifth chapter out of six, and the dungeons in the adventure should be terrifying my players, but as they’re almost all hysterically overpowered, very little is presenting a challenge for them anymore. Yesterday, they fought what was supposed to be the hardest boss in the dungeon, but because of a combination fire snakes and some disgusting fighter feats, they dropped the boss in two turns and wrapped up the entire combat in three. I speak no exaggeration when I say the party have done more damage to themselves than I ever have!

In video games, I had a go with Injustice 2 on the PS4. It’s a fighting game featuring some DC Superheroes, a couple of Netherrealm’s characters, and whatever other major properties they license. I played the original game on the Xbox 360 and I really liked it; this version has more mechanics and strategies added – not necessarily a good thing for me because I’m awful at it – but I did note one of the most crucial improvements I’ve ever seen in a fighting game: The tutorial and training modes offer the option to view a training video to give a much better idea of what those moves and combos are supposed to look like, and give a better idea of the required timing! They require very fast presses though – I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get there.

Last Week's Games: Cluckles' Adventure, Spiderman, and making DnD characters.

After getting nearly half way through the year and only beating one game, suddenly I find I’ve beaten two games in one week!

Chickens can stick to walls, who knew?

The first was Cluckles’ Adventure, which I beat early on in the week with all the stars and wrote a review for it later in the week. You can read it here! I’ve talked about Cluckles often enough in the blog, but I have a few additional points I’d like to make here First, I think it’s absolutely brilliant that the game is simple enough that anyone can pick it up and play. It’s not a hard core game, far from it, but it’s also not a cow clicker that relies on micro-transactions. Gamers can play the game, partners can play the game, children can play the game, parents can play the game – there aren’t enough games like this these days, and it’s great that not only does Cluckles’ Adventure have the potential to engage a wider audience than core gamers, but does it with a refreshingly simple idea.

That being said, I was hoping to get all the achievement tokens for this game and was a little disappointed when I didn’t get the achievement for collecting all the stars, which is the last one. I left this out of the review as it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of playing the game, but apparently I’m not the only one whose achievements have bugged out so, if you’re in to that sort of thing, keep it in mind.

(Incidentally, I only usually think about achievements if I’ve got a hope of getting them all. If some of them are tied up in multiplayer I’m probably not going to worry too much about it!)

I did most of the last half of the game in this suit.

The second was Spiderman on the PS4. As some of you who have been following my blog for a while will know, I’ve had a lot of fun with this game, and while it’s ended at the right time and not outstayed its welcome, I was very pleased to have reached the end of it. I’ve written the review for this one as well; I shall check it over in the next few days and hopefully have it out on Friday. There’s more to do in the game – I can replay the game in New Game + mode and aim to beat it on Ultimate Difficultly, and then there’s the DLC as well – but for now I’m happy to put Spiderman to bed and play another game.

Also when I’ve had some time in the week I created a new Dungeons and Dragons 5e character: Patrin of the Great Church of Torm. This is a Dragonborn Tempest Cleric. Am I going to use him in a game? I hope to be able to at some point but there aren’t many games around at the moment and I doubt I’d have time to play them even if they are!

He probably looks like this.

I’m mentioning it because I’ve got a way of building characters that makes the process in itself quite fun: I roll randomly for the Character Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. I’ve also been using the tables in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything that you can use to randomly determine some specifics of your background, i.e. your parents and your reasons for taking up your career or class. Rolling for these characteristics can often lead to stiff little sentences on your character sheet, but what I like to do is treat them as raw data, from which I can process a story that makes sense.

I don’t usually bother with this when I’m creating a character for 5e, simply because the bulk of my experience in playing it has come from the Black Country Roleplaying Society, and things like traits, bonds and flaws tend to come out during the course of the game which you’re only usually in for about eight weeks anyway. But what I’ve got with Patrin is a character whose background I’ve created before the fact, and can implement as much or little of it as required into the game, with only a minor tweak for settings if necessary.

I’m not expecting a huge amount of free time next week, so we’ll see what happens.

Last Week's Games: Far Cry 2, Orcs and Elves, Dungeons and Dragons

Happy New Year, people! I make the usual resolutions every year – eat more healthily, practice my music more, write more songs etc – and I very rarely see them through to the end. However, as this blog series is doing reasonably well (roughly 100 views every week, which isn’t much but it is consistent!) I thought I’d try a new resolution in to it for 2018, and that is: Play a new game every week.

This might sound expensive, but I’ve also got a massive backlog of games, many of which I’ve owned for years and never played. I’m missing out on quite a bit in my collection of games without having to buy necessarily buy any more of them! So I’ll try to find time to play a new one every week. It will be tough, not least because many of them are long-form games that need weeks or even months of play to beat, but I’m up for the challenge and I’ll give it a go!

Funnily enough, sniping's not really
my thing any more...

For the Christmas Holiday week I’ve mostly been playing Far Cry 2. As I mentioned last week, this is a game I’ve owned for years and I’ve got really now! Maybe I’m enjoying games at a different level these days. For example, I like the fact that the separate missions take roughly 20-40 minutes to beat; you can do them in small chunks and feel like you’re making progress. I’ve become somewhat obsessed with hunting for the diamonds. I like the shooting, and the certain sense of vulnerability you get from not quite being able to see due to the haze. I’m enjoying the Buddy system as well, where they give you alternative ways to complete missions, give you more missions and rescue you if you get hurt. Indeed, I was actually quite sad when Josip, one of the buddies who’d been with me most of the game, died because he’d got in to trouble and was too badly injured by the time I’d got to him to help. I find the campaign is moving very slowly, as there’s a lot of faffing about with side missions – but as there’s almost always a valuable reward for these, it doesn’t feel like filler. Open world games have arguably lost their way over the last few years, as there was only so far this could go without becoming bloated, but Far Cry 2 managed to create a compelling world with just enough to do that it keeps me coming back. Whether it’s enough for me to see the game through to the end is a bit of a, er, Far Cry, especially since I’m back at work tomorrow and won’t have as much time for games like this, but we’ll see how we get on. I’d like to see it through to the end after all this time.

The wand talks to you. Yeah,

I also got Orcs and Elves for the Nintendo DS for Christmas and I’ve been playing that when I’ve got a spare few minutes. This is a roleplaying game somewhere between Legend of Grimrock and Fatal Labyrinth; you play as the son of an Elf adventurer and you’re on a quest to find out what happened to the Dwarven King. It’s a roleplaying experience with, from what I can tell, all the fat chewed off: There’s no assigning points to level up, or min-maxing stats, or customisation that I can see. It’s all about dungeon bashing, and collecting loot. And I’m fine with that; it’s a simple enough experience and one that I think works very well on the DS. I’ve not played many games that meld pick-up-and-play with a compelling plot and good gameplay mechanics so well!



I might talk about the orange cover
if it's a slow week...

Finally, I’ve volunteered to run a Dungeons and Dragons game at the Black Country Roleplaying Society. I’ll be running Palace of the Silver Princess, a 1^st edition module converted in to 5^th edition for the purpose. This is a bit of a risky move for me given that I don’t have a lot of time to prepare and run sessions these days, but it’s a simple-enough adventure and I’m hoping to do a lot of the legwork in the run up to Thursday when I run the first session.

Finally Finished my Khorne Bezerker Army...

One of the ways I manage to keep myself engaged with hobby games after well over half my lifetime is the variety of models that I get to paint. I rarely stick with one army or faction, preferring to flit between one system, or army, and another. That way, I get a different challenge each time I paint; I get to paint different models, different scales, and different colours. It keeps me interested, but it also means that I rarely have a so-called ‘full-sized’ army.

This is something of an abstract concept, so for those of you who don’t know: Each game has a ‘standard’ size, usually measured in points or the system’s equivalent. With Warhammer 40K, that’s usually 1500 points. With Warhammer, it’s 2000, though that has changed with the advent of Age of Sigmar, not sure what the standard size is here. With Lord of the Rings, it’s something like 700 points, and with Batman Miniatures Game I think it’s 300.

The Red Fury, in its full glory.

So it’s no surprise to anybody who knows my approach to hobby gaming that even though I’m well into my 17^th year of doing it, I’ve only managed to create a full-sized army 3 times.

This is the third: The Red Fury.

An army of Khorne Bezerkers, why not? I came up with the idea for the army around halfway through 2011, when I wanted to build up a force to take to every Games Workshop in the country and play a game with it. I intended to build it up a lot more quickly than I did, and it really was my first army where I’d planned it out from the start; I knew where I was going with it, what models I wanted, and what strategies I wanted the army to achieve. Here’s the army list:

	Components	Points	Total Points	Total Army
HQ	Chaos Lord	65	130	1496
	Aura of Dark Glory	15
	Axe of Blind Fury	35
	Veterans of the Long War	5
	Mark of Khorne	10
Troops	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Khorne Bezerkers (8)	162	284
	Chainaxe (4)	12
	Gift of Mutation	10
	Veterans of the Long War	8
	Icon of Wrath	15
	Power Weapon	15
	Plasma Pistol	15
	Chaos Rhino	35
	Havoc Launcher	12
Heavy Support	Chaos Defiler	195	200
	Havoc Launcher	5
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15
	Chaos Vindicator	120	157
	Siege Shield	10
	Havoc Launcher	12
	Daemonic Possession	15

 

The heavy vehicles pound the enemy from a distance...

So the concept was simple: Pound the opponent from a distance with three 5-inch blast templates per turn, and destroy whatever was left in close combat afterwards. The Rhinos add to the firepower with their Havoc Launchers, and the Daemonic Possession on the tanks protected them from being stun-locked out of combat.

Unfortunately, I designed the army while 5^th Edition 40K was still in full swing, and while upgrades to the Bezerkers sorted out the discrepancy in points, I still completed it four years and two editions after the fact. It’s got no way of dealing with Fliers, for example, and since most armies these days have at least some form of flier it can cause problems. With the introduction of Hull Points in 6^th edition, tanks became much easier to destroy. And of course the idea of relying on blast templates and close combat weapons is something of a departure from the fact that the most damage I ever do to anything in 40K is with small-arms fire.

While the Bezerkers wait to eviscerate anything that gets too close.

Nonetheless, the Defilers and Vindicators do their jobs well as destruction machines and are absolute magnets for bullets. Oddly for an army that relies on close combat, I play a defensive game and allow the opponent to take the fight to me. I enjoy hiding my Bezerkers in ruins, out of line of sight. This forces my opponents to approach me if they want to win, because if they don’t, I can use the tanks to blast them from a distance.

This isn’t a strong army, by any stretch of the imagination. A hardcore tournament player would take me to pieces in moments. But it does what it does well enough, and hopefully proves a beyond-beginner level of challenge for most people. If Chaos are getting a new codex for 7^th edition, I’ll be interested to see what changes it will bring and how it will affect the dynamic of an army like this. Until then, I’ll try and get some games in, and see what happens when an unstoppable force whoops an immovable object’s ass.

Lead by this beast of a warrior (Games Day 2009 model)

You may also notice a difference in the painting of some of the models; this is again due to the changing editions of the paints. The Bezerkers started off being painted Mechrite Red, but by the time I got around to painting the last squad, two of the Rhinos and the two Vindicators, that colour had been replaced by Mephiston Red which is a little brighter. I was a bit miffed about that, but I wanted to see this army through to the end so I tried not to worry about it too much.