DnD Next: Is it any good? Part 3

Ado guys.

As we trek through the abandoned temple, two new rules came up this week that I wanted to tell you about:

Disengage

This is one of those situations where you have a new rule that's kind of a re-working of an old one, and it confused a lot of my players so I think it is worth mentioning. It basically concerns how you move out of combat without provoking an attack of opportunity. However, in order to explain the confusion, it is necessary to explain how combat worked in previous editions, and how it works now:

In Pathfinder and DnD 4th, you could usually take three actions: A Standard action, a Move action and a Swift/Minor action. Disengaging from combat - usually called a five-foot-step - was a Move action and could be done before or after your standard action, e.g. making an attack.

In this new edition of DnD, it doesn't work in quite the same way. You get a Move, and an Action. Move is just that - you move up to your maximum distance with all relevant regards for terrain, spell effects that affect movement etc. An Action is something you do in combat, which can either be an attack or some other action - like Disengage. So if you want to Disengage from your opponent, you have to do it instead of an attack.

The way the rule works is this: You move up to half your movement. If this takes you out of the reach of your opponent, they don't make an attack of opportunity against you.

Thinking about it, if you do this instead of making an attack but NOT instead of your move, that could potentially grant you 45ft (usually 9 squares) of uninterrupted movement. So, the rule is still useful, but its potential applications are different from the previous editions, where you would only be allowed to move 5ft. You might use it to beat a hasty retreat, or to reposition yourself at the other side of the battle.

That being said, I think I'm going to have to see it used more often before I can pass judgement on whether this rule is any good. It's certainly different from what I have been used to in the past!

Death

This came up a couple of times during the game last week and I actually got it wrong. Here's how:

In any RGP, falling to 0 hit points rarely kills you straight away. More likely you'll fall unconscious, and there's usually at least one mechanism in place to determine how much damage you can take before you actually die, and what you can do to prevent it. In the new edition of DnD, if you fall to 0 hit points, you fall unconscious, but any remaining damage still applies. If this takes you over your maximum hit points, you die. Which is fair enough, because lets be honest, any blow that can do that kind of damage to you would be pretty fierce! Otherwise, you just lie there until you either bleed out or stabilize - and this is the bit I got wrong, because I forgot to do it:

Each turn that you are at 0 hit points, you have to make a DC10 Constitution Saving Throw. If you pass 3 of them, you stabilize and are still alive. If you fail 3, you die. If you roll a Natural 20, you regain 1 hit point. If you roll a natural 1, you count as having failed 2 saving throws. I completely forgot to get my players to do this when they fell unconscious last session.

As it turned out it was unlikely to have made a difference either way, as in both situations the cleric got to them within one turn and cast Spare the Dying on them, which is a great little spell that revives an unconscious PC with one hit point. As he can do it as a cantrip (i.e. as many times as he likes,) then as long as he stays out of trouble, he can help the party if he needs to. And incidentally, I certainly like the idea of doing this as a spell, rather than relying on capricious dice rolls. I remember in 4th edition having to do it as a Heal check, and that could be the victim of some very poor rolling - though I never allowed that to result in character death if the players were doing the right things.

So that's what came up this week. Next week we're hoping to level up so we might be looking at some new powers and rules, let's see what happens there...

D&D Next: Is it any good? Part 2

Hi there.

A bit late with the blog this week, sorry about that, but I'm here now and I've got one or two new rules to discuss that came up in last week's session. But before we do that, here's a few contextual qualifications:

• This week we actually had 7 people playing. If you've read the adventure then you know that there are only 6 pre-gen characters, and might be wondering how I've managed it: I let the 7th player have the NPC with strict instructions on how that NPC was supposed to be run. I did that because of the context of the club: It's a social club and there are around 30 of us; the 7th player hadn't got a game for this rotation and between having an NPC and not playing, he was grateful for the opportunity to get involved!
• We're up to the 'Dungeon Crawl' part of the adventure so a lot of the new rules I'm going to discuss relates to what happens in combat.
• I tend to contrast the rules to Pathfinder and 4e because those are the systems that I am a) most used to and b) consider the most relevant to the discussion, Pathfinder being DnD's closest rival and 4e being the system that 5e is replacing.

So here's the first new rule for this week:

Critical Hits

Of course, this is nothing new. Pretty much every game system I have played so far has used some form of Critical Hit system, or at least a better than average result if a certain set of conditions are met (usually to do with the dice.)

This one functions well enough: You get a critical hit if you roll an unmodified, or 'natural' 20 on a D20. You then add one more of the same kind of dice you would normally roll when rolling for damage, add the numbers together and the result is the amount of damage you do. For example, if you were attacking with a short sword, you would normally roll 1D6 for damage. If you get a critical hit, you roll 2D6 and add them together.

Is this a good system? In principle, yes it is. Taking the 'bell curve' mechanics of dice into consideration, the average score on any number of dice other that 1 (provided you're rolling the same kind of dice) is this: n*s/2+n-1, where 'n' is the number of dice you're rolling and 's' is the number of sides of the dice. This means that you can expect to roll a slightly higher number on two of the same kind of dice than the maximum possible score on one of that kind of dice.

Or, taking the super-nerdyness out of it, it basically means that at Level 1 you can expect to do a little bit more damage off a critical hit than you would have done if you'd rolled the highest possible score off a regular hit. Which works well enough for me.

It's certainly a lot more straightforward than Pathfinder's system of critical hits, which is comprehensive to the point of being convoluted. To be fair, it has to be; there is a huge range of weapons involved with this game and it needed a system that could accommodate the nuances of all of them. But it's still a long-winded process. For a start, some of the weapons have a 'critical threat range,' meaning that some of them will score a critical hit on a roll of 19, and if I remember rightly I think one of them will even do this on a roll of 18. You write this down on your character sheet, but you've still got to remember to do it. And then there's the 'threat' system. Because you see, rolling a critical hit is not enough. Rolling a natural 20 or whatever you need only threatens a critical hit; you still need to confirm it by rolling to hit again. Thankfully, if you miss, you've still hit, just not with a critical.

This makes critical hits very hard to get off in Pathfinder, because you've effectively got to roll to hit twice. I understand why this needs to happen though: the effect of the critical hit is that the damage doubles, and sometimes even trebles depending on the weapon. Given the range of hit points you usually have to work with in Pathfinder, and the damage potential of some of the weapons and especially magic weapons, this should not happen lightly. But it still makes for a complicated procedure.

On the other hand, DnD 4th goes perhaps a little too far the other way. With that system, if you get a critical hit, you automatically do the maximum possible amount of damage. This might not seem like much, but combine this with some of the powers and you've got a potentially horrific amount of damage that can be applied. It has to happen this way because of the range of hit points that monsters etc tend to have in 4th; in order for critical hits to mean anything you have to be reasonably certain of a large amount of damage if they hit. But it does take some of the fun out of rolling the dice to see what happens when you score a critical hit. It works for the system, but nothing more.

So what we have here with Next is a nice kind of middle ground that works well enough at lower levels and I'm assuming will scale up well with upper levels of play, Or at least it would work well if the players hadn't rolled appallingly badly for damage both times it came up during the game.

Movement

Movement could cover all sorts of things really but there was one particular part of the process that caught our eye during the game: You can move both before and after your attack.

This is a rule that took me somewhat by surprise as it dispenses with the usual combination of Standard Action/Move Action/Minor Action or however they're articulated in the various games. Instead of that, you are allowed to move a certain distance and, as long as you don't go over it, it doesn't matter when in the turn you do it. You can do it before your action, after your action or even both. This effectively means that you can move, attack and then move again.

I didn't expect this to be deployed all that much because to do this would provoke an attack of opportunity, but we actually found it surprisingly useful for repositioning yourself if you manage to kill whatever you were attacking. Now that we're aware of this I expect to see it used a lot more!

Flanking (or lack thereof)

This seems an odd thing not to put in the game given how long we've all spent working it out before, but there is currently no provision in the rules for flanking. I expected this to be a part of the advantage system mentioned last week, but I have yet to find a rule that says so.

This is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it takes a lot out of the clever flanking tactics used in previous editions. On the other hand, we're not slowing the game down to a crawl as we try to work out whether our position gives rise to flanking or not. It's a peculiar change but one that I would welcome, since all it would usually do is give you a +2 bonus to hit. Rogues still have their sneak attack, but this applies when attacking any enemy adjacent to an ally, and when you have advantage.

The only way flanking would come in to it that I can see is by what the game is calling situational modifiers at the DM's discretion, where the DM might decide you have a better or worse chance to hit due to a situation beyond the player's control. But this applies to things like applying cover, and it never mentions flanking.

We will see where this takes us!

D&D Next: Is it any good? Part 1

It's been a while since I've had anything to say on the subject of gaming, hence the lack of posts in the last few months, but I'm currently running a game of Dungeons and Dragons at the Roleplaying club in Blackheath, and we're using the new rules set whose title flows between "Next" and "5th Edition." What I'm going to do here is give a commentary on the rules I have experienced and whether or not I think they're any good. I'll try to be as balanced as I possibly can.

A few things to keep in mind from this session:

• We had fewer than the expected number of players because of some confusion over when the game was supposed to start, so we were running with 3 people rather than 6.
• The rules we were working to are currently in closed Beta. I should imagine that the rules are pretty much as they're going to be in the final edit; currently they (Wizards of the Coast) are working through stat blocks of monsters etc to make sure everything is balanced. Or at least, as balanced as it ever gets in DnD.
• Currently the rules make no provision for character generation. It is important to recognise this, particularly in the section that relates to ability checks, as some of the characters have Class Features that affect the ability checks and I have no idea how these are going to work when generating characters.

So without further ado, here is the first thing I want to comment on:

The Advantage System.

I like this. This is a system that innovates rather than iterates, by which I mean it brings something new to the game rather than tweaks a rule from the previous edition of the game.

The way it works is easy enough: Sometimes, the rules say that you have an advantage, or a disadvantage. Either way, you roll 2D20 rather than the usual 1D20. If you have an advantage, the higher of the two dice is used, if you have a disadvantage, the lower dice is used.

This is something I've been aware of for some time due to some naughty videos on YouTube posted during the early stages of the open Beta (you weren't supposed to put anything about the new content of the game on social media,) but what I didn't appreciate at the time was just how many situations this would affect. Hidden attacks, Aiding another, Dodge, Unseen Opponents all give rise to use of the advantage system, and that's just the core combat rules; I haven't even started on Spell effects yet!

But what's great is that this is a catch-all system that almost completely replaces adding or subtracting to your D20s when you make attack rolls or ability checks. That doesn't mean you don't do it any more - your D20 roll is still modified by the relevant ability modifier - but apart from a very small number of occasions that appear to be at the Dungeon Master's discretion, that's about it. How many times have you played previous editions, or Pathfinder, and found yourself saying something like: "OK, I got 12 on the D20, plus 3 for my Strength, plus 1 for the magic weapon, minus 2 'cause he's in cover, but plus 2 because he's my preferred enemy..." And when you get your final figure, the DM tells you you've missed anyway? With the advantage system, you either have an advantage (or disadvantage!) or you don't, and the only other thing that modifies the number on the dice is your attribute modifier. It's quicker, cleaner, and saves a lot of less-than-necessary hassle, so I'm pleased with this change to the rules.

The one situation in combat that isn't covered by this new advantage system is cover. I think this is because there is no way they were going to make it work across different levels of cover. The cover system now adds to the target creature's Armour Class and any saving throws based on Dexterity, depending on how much cover the creature is in. I won't go in to too much detail about this since it didn't come up in the game, but again I'm glad to see that this affects the target creature rather than the attacker, as this reduces the amount of adding/subtracting they have to do during the attack roll.

Ability Checks

This came up a few times during the game. It seems to have completely replaced the skill system from previous editions. From what I can see, what was previously covered by skills is now a list of things you might do based on your abilities. For example, where Climb was previously a skill, now it is a Strength test. Where Sneak was previously a skill, now it is a test on Dexterity, and so on. They still exist in name, but together with abilities, rather than separately as skills.

This is somewhat similar to 4th edition in that all characters can at least attempt all skills, and don't have to be trained in them in order to do so. However it has almost completely dispensed with training skills (where a character would, at the start of the game, be better at certain skills depending on his class,) or putting ranks in to skills (where a higher modifier would be added to the skill during the level-up process.)

Do I like this? Well it's hard to say at this point. I'm pleased with the fact that they're no longer pretending Skill Checks are anything more than a test on the appropriate attribute, as they did in 4th edition. It saves a lot of tedious mucking about with levelling up, as the only time it now makes a difference is if the attribute itself increases to the point where the modifier also increases. Skills increasing with your level was pretty much pointless anyway because all it meant was that the DM would increase the difficulty of the skill checks, just to keep them challenging.

For Pathfinder players, the fact that you're no longer putting ranks in to skills may be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand it's not shutting you out of the game if it requires a check for a skill you either don't have, or don't have enough ranks in it to have much of a chance of succeeding. On the other hand, there's less scope for individual character customisation. For example, you may want your Rogue to be good at picking pockets, so you'd give him a higher DEX score when rolling up your character, but in reality he'd be no better at picking pockets than a Wizard who happened to put the same score into DEX. This particular example is fixed with class features at higher levels, but the point remains across the board - if you're good at a particular skill, chances are someone else in your party is every bit as good, if not better.

At least, that's my theory, because to be perfectly honest I never played either DnD 4th or Pathfinder at a high enough level to see how the skills affect the dynamic of the game at upper levels. Personally, I like this new system. It didn't affect the game at level 1 because currently all the players are doing that's different is looking at a different bit of the character sheet for the same information. But I think it will be significantly better than Pathfinder, because it will stop or at least reduce situations where the adventure is de-railed because it required a skill check in order to proceed and the one character who had the relevant skill messed up the roll; now all the characters can have a go and be in with a reasonable chance of success. It is just about better than DnD 4th because the only time you were ever really in control of what skills you had was during character creation when you added an extra 5 to four or five different skills, which would mean less and less in upper levels of play because the rest of your skills increased as you levelled up.

Exploration

This is something I wasn't so fond of. This is the first time I've come across a set of core rules that gives a specific section to exploration. It basically tells you how to move, hide and look for things outside of combat, which is fine, as it promotes the idea that yes, you are supposed to be doing these things.

In previous editions, most of this was actually covered by the adventures themselves, by saying what was in a particular area if the players happened to search it. In 4th edition, they also had Skill Challenges, which was a system by which you were supposed to make skill checks and get a certain number of successes before a certain number of failures. This could be used for exploration. In my opinion it felt a bit clumsy to use, as it was hard to balance the significance of success with an appropriate penalty for failure. However, it did at least get all the characters involved in the exploration process, and was clear about what was needed for success.

In the adventure I was running, the characters had to explore to find an ancient temple where a Dragon was currently residing. The problem was this: at no point during the adventure or the rules did it give any indication of how this exploration was supposed to play out. I knew, for example, that I was supposed to roll a D20 for every hour they explored and spring a random encounter on them if a certain range of numbers came up, but I had no idea what they were supposed to be doing in the hours they spent exploring. In the end, the players told me they were following an NPC who was acting as a guide, and I gauged the speed they were moving with the time they ought to have taken to find what the guide was leading them to, which made matters a lot more straightforward - if they hadn't have done this, how was I supposed to run the exploration?

This might have more to do with the way the adventure was written than the rules, and it may be addressed in a Dungeon Master's Guide. But that is the only thing I'm not happy with at this point - we needed a better set of rules for wilderness exploration.

So, that's the new rules as it has affected us so far. What do you guys think?

Roleplaying Games: Which Edition? Which Game?

It's a little bit funny that for all the things I really ought to be doing today, I choose at 11.55am to do the thing that's probably the least useful to me out of all of them and write a blog. Probably me at my most typical, if I'm perfectly honest.

It's so hard to get a game in; who cares what edition it is when you do?

OK this somewhat follows on from the Bitter Veterans post I made last week, and was inspired by a YouTube video from a Youtuber I've been following called Andrew, AKA DawnForgedCast. He's done a lot of really interesting posts about Dungeons and Dragons style roleplaying games over the past year and it's always a pleasure to watch. This particular time he was talking about the question of what edition of what game you're supposed to be playing, given the hostility some gamers have towards editions of the game other than the one they actually play.

Here's the video: http://youtu.be/zKcYXMJ8tVs

But if you can't be bothered to click the link, here are his main points, paraphrased according to my interpretation of them. His comments refer to North America rather than the rest of the world, but apart from the religious fanatics which doesn't appear to happen on the same level, I can't imagine the situation is that much different here in the UK, obviously relative to the size of the countries:

• There is a lot of divide and hostility towards different games, and different editions of games. Many people will settle on one game or one edition and refuse to play or even try any others.
• Out of all the people in America, only a very small percantage of them - some 2 million people - actually play tabletop roleplaying games. (He's gone on sales figures here so the number of people who actually play might have been a bit higher than he suggests, but not much.)
• Out of those 2 million people, 1 third of them play Pathfinder, 1 third play Dungeons and Dragons and 1 third play other games, e.g. Shadowrun.
• Out of the third that play Dungeons and Dragons, about half of them stick to 4th edition and the others stick to other editions.
• Given that Andrew plays Pathfinder, this gives him approximately 650,000 people in America to play with.
• He then goes on to explain that given his own limitations, the number of people he could actually play with are quite small.
• Given all this, why are the very small number of people who actually play games like this spending so much time and energy arguing over what to play, or what edition of the game to play? Surely it's hard enough to get a game together in the first place without it falling apart over disagreements to editions...
• As an afterthought, he then adds that about 30-40% of the people who don't play are actually against such games exisiting at all for religious reasons. So when more people are against it than actually play, why are the people who do play bickering about edtions etc?

By Andrew's own admission the actual data is innaccurate and could have been a little better researched, but he was doing this to make a point, not give an accurate view on the gaming world today.

Which is good, because I think he actually makes a really good point there. I don't find it easy to get a game of Dungeons and Dragons or anything like that going, and a lot of it is to do with conceptions of what game I should and shouldn't be playing.

So, to turn this in to my point, here's a list of preferences that I would like to see when I'm playing Role Playing Games:

• I'd like it to either be Pathfinder or D&D 4th.
• I'd like the players to be in Dudley or the surrounding areas.
• I don't want to play with anybody under the age of 18
• I'd like to have a full compliment of players (4 or 5 people.) I'd also like some continuity - mid/long term adventures and campaigns.
• I can't usually make Thursday Nights, and I can't do weekends either.

If I stick rigidly to this, then out of the very small percentage of people who play in the UK, I've written off:

• Everybody who doesn't play D&D 4th or Pathfinder,
• Everybody who doesn't live in Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton, Walsall or West Birmingham,
• Everybody under the age of 18
• Small/solo adventures.
• 4 out of the 7 days in the week.

Now there are reasons for all of these limitations I've imposed upon myself:

• I have the rules for Pathfinder and D&D 4th, and they are still being supported by their respective designers and publishers. I'm not all that willing to spend even more money than I already have on another game that I've only got a small chance of ever being able to play!
• I do a lot of miles in my car already and it's not exactly eco friendly. That and journeys take time that I don't necessarily have. I don't think I should have to trave for miles and miles to get an experience that I ought to be able to get far more locally.
• Because I teach guitar for Dudley Performing Arts, I have to be very careful about social contact with people under the age of 18. I'd have to be absolutely crystal clear about who they are, how they know me, whether their parents know where they are and what they're doing, do they have consent etc. It sounds brutal, but the fact is that even the most innocent of intentions can turn into an allegation if interpreted incorrectly, and if that happens, it will come up on any future CRB check even if it is disproved. Which would pretty much destroy any hope I've got of getting a job.
• Not being funny but part of the reason the games are so good is when you use the combined abilities of the group to achieve something that can't be done alone. Plus when you're trying to come up with solo adventures you're severely restricted to what you can put in there in terms of challenges; anything but the most basic monsters and traps will result in TPK (Total Party Kill) before the adventure's even got started, so I'd prefer more players rather than less.
• Thursdays I go to Black Country Role Playing Society in Blackheath, and every other weekend I see my girlfriend, who isn't interested in Roleplaying and also lives 90 miles away so it's very impractical to get anything going on a weekend.

However, the practical upshot of all this is that after nearly a year of trying to organise a game, all I've managed to do for any length of time is have Dave around for a solo adventure; we've both run games for each other. Not that we haven't tried to get a larger group together, but:

• Most of my friends would rather eat broken glass coated with cyanide than get involved with wargaming/roleplaying, (seriously, I'm embarrased even to ask them,)
• The majority of people I know who do play tabletop RPGs are either dead against D&D 4th, meet on days I can't do, or both,
• Out of the two exceptions to this, one came for a little while and then flaked out after a couple of weeks due to other commitments,
• The other is Dave.

Dave's been trying to get some people involved in it as well, and he knows enough people to do it but they all manage to come up with reasons why they can't make it that night or whatever.

Now, I mentionted BCRPS that I've been going to for about a year and a half now. This is basically ways I've got of making it happen, and in fact was the first roleplaying group I got involved with. They're not shy of new members, but because it's a group of 20-30 people, they do have to organise it accordingly to make sure everybody can play. The games run on an 8-week rotational basis and different games with different players/settings/GMs are organised each rotation, so that people are not stuck indefinitely in 1 game. It's a good way of getting games in that you're not used to. So far I've tried Pathfinder, Leagues of Adventure (based on Ubiquity,) Traveller, Star Wars, Shadowrun, Savage Worlds and Call of Cuthulu. Some I've enjoyed more than others but I've never not enjoyed it. However it does mean that it's almost impossible to get any kind of continuity with the games or play at higher levels than 1 to about 3; they're all either seperate adventures or if they are part of a campaign, it's not easy to get the campaign going beyond the first adventure because even if you do run it later, most of your players will be comitted to other games by then.

Well, that's just the way it works with those guys, and between that and not playing, I know which I would rather have. So simply by getting rid of 2 of those limitations I mentioned earlier (the choice of games and the continuity) I can ensure that I'll usually play at least something every week. And since most people I know think this sort of thing is a complete waste of time anyway, or if they don't they certainly have no interest in being involved with it, that's got to count for something.

Now I understand that certain games may be better for some demographics than others. If you've been roleplaying for a while then I get why you'd probably like Pathfinder or Cuthulu better than the current edition of D&D, and that's fine. I wouldn't necessarily unleash a complete beginner on either game, and in fact I'm in the early stages of coming up with some D&D adventures that beginners can play and enjoy without getting bogged down by too many rules, another blog for another time. But people who say things like 'I only play 3.5,' or 'D&D 4th is crap,' are only further dividing what is a very small hobby. From what I've seen of the various different games, a lot of the enjoyment comes from your approach to it as players/Game Masters anyway.

This applies to Wargaming as well by the way - I've been with Games Workshop for 13 years but I would be open to trying something a little bit different in the right spirit.

So - you know who you are - try something a bit different! Try and enjoy it instead of looking for reasons why you won't. You might be surprised.

31/1/2012: Aye, Dark Overlord

Hi,

So this is part of a project I'm involved with for work. This one is actually going up around one or two other blog sites that Coady Consultants use, but I thought I'd put it here anyway because it's actually quite good to see how I'm turning a very entertaining hobby in to something I can use in a professional environment. So, what we have is an introduction from John, the Head Consultant, Company Director and also my Dad, and then I'll make a few comments about what I've seen while playing the game:

John:

Our work is all about relationships, productive ones between us and our customers that often present us with an opportunity to try something that is hopefully different and memorable: we hope!

The Director of an innovatory and outward facing team from one of our major clients-a local university-was involved in a feedback exercise related to Conflict Styles. The activity was originally used with the University’s mediators and Dignity at Work Advisers. As our conversation developed the possibility of an extended Team Development Day was discussed and we are due to deliver towards the end of February 2012.

We tend to work along the (to me at any rate) pretty obvious lines that we learn better when we’re having some fun and even though it’s taken some knocks of late, the application of multiple intelligences still holds up for me. There’s a superb piece on TED and YouTube by Sir Kenneth Robinson called “Shifting the Paradigm” in which he present a cogent and enjoyable argument that we’ve tested the joy out of learning: it reminds me that there’s a range of approaches that are valid, have value beyond the event and help us to understand a little more about each other and ourselves.

So, at our next Team development Day, we are going to use a fantasy role play game that requires participants to think on their feet and shift blame: some might argue that this is and has been the primary survival tool for a successful career! Machiavelli would have “got it” straight away.
 

We’ve employed an enthusiastic game player/developer with a view to expanding the approaches we use to Team Days and other areas of our work: watch this space! So it’s now over to my elder son, Matt to talk about the specifics.

Matt: 31/1/2012: Aye, Dark Overlord at the University

This came about as an introductory session to a portion of a development day that Coady Consultants are organising at the University. My part of the day involves running this activity for the team after the lunch break, and we are having four ‘observers’ to comment on the behaviour of their colleagues during the game and to what extent they show the various skills and attitudes that would be conducive to having a good game, and also for getting on effectively in the workplace.

I’ve covered how the game works before in my gaming blog; this and the whole story for how this came about will be in a future blog about the event itself. However, for the purposes of this piece, I would like to discuss a couple of things I’ve observed as I’ve played the game.

The game works incredibly differently between different demographics. The players still have to do the same things to win (or at least, to avoid losing,) but the style of play varies hugely. I’ve noticed the following things about the people I’ve played it with:

The Family

Playing Aye, Dark Overlord! with my family was absolutely hysterical. We played it on Christmas Day in the evening and it was great fun watching everyone being the Dark Overlord; we were really playing up to the role and it was great to see how differently we all did it. Seeing my brother lost for words is a very rare occurrence and I will savour the moment for many years to come. And given the fact that there is generally – across a great many people – a certain prejudice towards the themed games I tend to play, it was great to see one that the family could pick up reasonably quickly and have a play. Great stuff.

The Club

I took it down to the Black Country Roleplaying Society where I go every Thursday, to see how the game played in its own demographic. The guys with whom I played it were all what we might consider seasoned gamers; they know how card games work and they play to win. They had the right idea, but it seemed to be less about having a laugh with it and more about making sure that they didn’t lose. It was still fun, though.

The Professionals

I won’t pretend that I didn’t approach the idea of playing a game like this with academic professionals in the middle of a working day with some trepidation. But at the University, the game actually went as well as I think anybody could have expected. We had already covered the behaviours and skills we were looking for on the day and the team were making sure of the things that were important – speaking clearly, making sure everybody got a turn and at the same time having a bit of fun with what for many of them was an unfamiliar activity! I also saw the team turn the game right around on its head, and all start working together as a team to overthrow the Dark Overlord by coming up with an explanation he had no choice but to be satisfied with. I don’t know what the team do on a day-to-day basis, but if the accommodating and collaborative style they showed here isn’t conducive to a great working environment, I don’t know what is.

So, three different groups, and almost literally three different games! One thing that didn’t change, though, was the fun. We always enjoyed it. And I’m looking forward to running the activity at the Univeristy in a few weeks’ time, to give some light relief in to what is promising to be an enlightening and very productive day for the team – and, it seems, for Coady Consultants.

29/12/2011: Braggart

This is once again thanks to the guys at BCRPS, where I got into a game featuring Tony, Scott, and his step-son Josh. The thing I love about this game is simple: it's hilarious.

Knowing that Josh didn't really know how to play, I was trying to be as tactical as possible while making sure that everybody was in the runnings until the end. So while it wasn't necessarily tactically sound to use the 'Pick Pocket' card on Scott, since Tony had more cards, I chose to do so anyway because I'd been picking on Tony all the way through the game and I didn't want to bully Josh. It was particularly amusing since 3 of us, including me, bragged about rescuing the princess - only to have our claims shot down with a well-placed 'Liar!' card.

In the end, it was a draw between me and Tony - which, for how flexible the scores are, can't come up too often.

The lads at the club play this before the roleplaying games begin, and it's not looking likely that I'll have The Fakes practice on Thursday any more for a while, so there may be more of these coming up...

22/12/2011: Kings of Chicago

How do I get myself in to these situations?

This one came about, as so many of them do, in the Roleplaying Club in Blackheath. I'd brought along a few games, but Pat had some too. This one, Kings of Chicago, reminded me and Paul of an old PC game Gangsters, that was absolutely brilliant as a concept though I found the game very difficult and rarely got very far. So I decided to give it a go, joined by Pat, Mel and Chris's brother Doug.

So how does this game work? You're chasing 'Power Points, which can be obtained by opening businesses in the city, having the most influence, or conducting mob jobs. You do this by driving around Chicago in a car, opening businesses if you have enough resources, shooting out anyone who tries to stop you, and every so often the resources, events and opportunities get updated. Details on exactly who has what are kept secret in a separate folder, one for each player which is a nice touch indeed.

That's how you win the game. However with four of us playing, it became a game of how do we stop the other guys from getting too far ahead? Example: Pat systematically clawed his way up to 7 power points largely by opening businesses. He was comfortably ahead of the rest of the crowd until I opened a level 3 business - which is basically as good as it gets -  and caught up with him, also at 7 points. At this point, I only needed to complete a job and open a level 2 business in order to win, which was never far from my grasp. So the other players had to do what they can to stop me: Using the police to bust my jobs, attacking my business,  using events to steal my resources. We didn't make this easy for each other.

So what do I think of the game? A good one, in all. The system is as good as it needs to be; there were no 'What the hell just happened?' moments and it was all pretty clear exactly what does what, and in what order. The only slight ambiguity that I didn't like was the fact that the cars move in squares based on how much you can roll on 1D6. I don't know what this purports to represent exactly, as at some point you're going to roll all 1s in one phase and by no stretch of the imagination should it take you 4 turns to get to the end of the road. This did happen on a number of occasions. However, this comes across to me as a necessary evil - you'd either have to use a specialist dice (not actually all that common,) or increase the size of the game to take 2D6 which nobody wants because it's a pretty decent size as it is. Is the experience representative of gangsters in Chicago? Well it's a board game, so in of itself probably not - but when we were playing, there were insults, threats, lots of "are you talkin' to me?!" backstabbing, loansharking, underhanded tactics and a ferocious struggle for power, so actually it's likely not all that far off. It's a good environment to trade that sort of thing and being role players, we were more than happy to get into the role of vicious gangsters.

Who won in the end? Well, Pat reckoned we'd have the game wrapped up in about an hour. This was at 8:30 and we were still playing 3 hours later, in a huge power struggle that could go either way and we hadn't got a hope of finishing before the club closed. So we counted up how many power points we all had, and we came up with the following:

In 4th place was Doug, who'd started off neatly enough but had some very bad luck with the driving and in the end his tactics looked like he was scavenging off the other players, which wasn't really working very we;ll for him. I'm pretty sure he ended with 3 points.

In 3rd place was Mel. He again suffered from bad dice rolls but used the opportunities to exert power over the city by taking over the most territory. The result was that he almost always had the police in his pocket and the extra power point awarded for having the largest territory; none of the rest of us had a hope of catching him up on that one. He had a lot of money but only a few businesses to show for it, which cost him in the end with 5 points.

In joint first with 7 points a piece were Pat and me. Pat had got a steady hold on a lot of the small businesses and built up a veritable army of gangsters which were working well for him, as we were never going to be able to affect this significantly. If he lost 1 business, he could just open another one quite easily. I'd done the most jobs and got a fair number of gangsters, but what really set me in the runnings was the level 3 business I'd opened, which continued to remain open despite Doug's best efforts to shut it down. This was a bit of a risk - if he'd managed it, the balance of power would have shifted very quickly, and my hopes for victory depended on keeping that business operational - but in the end it paid off, another half an hour and I'd have got it, I reckon. Having a gangster with the driving skill helped as well.

Thoroughly enjoyed it, probably won't play it again as it's not a new game and isn't for sale on Amazon so if I want it I'll have to chase obscure copies. But if you do happen across one and you're looking for a not-so-friendly evening in with a few friends, you could do far worse than this.

See you next time!

8/12/2011: Blood Bowl Team Manager: The Card Game.

I actually played this one down at the Roleplaying club in Blackheath; we're taking some time off the roleplaying games in the last couple of weeks of the year and using the time to try out some different board games and things like that. I've seen this one talked up by Fantasy Flight Games over the last few months and really wanted to try it out.

Before we did, though, we stated with a quick round of Braggart, in which you have to pay cards to make the most strategically fantastic boast out of everybody playing. Having never played the game, or indeed anything like it before, I fluffed it completely and came on to the bottom of the pile.

And now on to the main event...

Blood Bowl, when it was a Games Workshop game, looked really good and I'd always wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately it had been and gone by the time I got in to the hobby, and now it's been lumped into the forlorn graveyard of 'Specialist Games.' These are basically a collection of spin-offs from the core systems that GW produce and, once the initial excitement of the game has passed, absolutely refuse to give them any mid to long term support. And that is a crying shame because they've come up with some absolute gems in the past, but anyway...

The card game, I must admit, hit me with some incredulity. How do you do a sports game in cards? My answer was apparent as soon as I saw said cards; they shouldn't be news to anyone who's played an FFG game before and it's less of a sports game, and more of a battle system. Actually, so is Blood Bowl. So what happens in the game is that you commit your players to highlights of 5 seasons, and try and win the most fans by the end of the game.

This particular game we had Chris, who's game it was, playing Dwarves, yours truly playing Chaos, Paul playing Orcs and Mel playing Wood Elves. There are subtle and important differences to each team; the Wood Elves have more skills that will enable them to capture the ball, and Chaos are out to cause as much brutality as possible.

So how the game works is this: You draw a hand of 6 cards that represent players on your team. You then each take it in turns to commit one player to a game in the highlights. Each player comes with a number of points representing their power over the game, and once all 6 cards from each player are down, the side that has the most points is the winner of that game and gets any associated bonuses. These include coaching tactics to help you win more games, a 'Star Player,' more fans, or even a set of bonuses specifically related to your team.

That's the short version. In reality there's a lot more going on and we all know it. So... Each player you put down (beyond the most basic blocker) has a skill that can, on the turn you put him down, be applied to the game. This represents the character's influence over the game. For example, my Chaos Beastmen work as tackling muscle, and as it's pretty much taken for granted that they're going to cheat at some point, they automatically get a 'cheat' token, and then get to make an attack against any member of the opposing team, if there is one there. If that attack is successful, their card effect kicks in and they have to take another cheat token. Cheat tokens are skulls and one side, and on the other is an affect applied to the game at the end. This will be either more fans (What you're looking for,) more star power (Better than a kick in the teeth but not all that useful as you're unlikely to commit to a game you're not already sure you're going to win) or if you're unlucky, your player will be sent off. As the Chaos Blood Bowl team purport to be more interested in fighting than playing Blood Bowl, this isn't exactly uncommon.

And so it carried on for 5 seasons. But as will all Fantasy Flight games, there has to be a winner...

In 4th place was Mel, who made a really big effort at winning the major tournaments featured in the game at the expense of regular matches, an interesting tactic but a bit of a gamble which unfortunately didn't pay off.

In 3rd place was Paul, who appeared to be struggling but due to his card effects got a lot more fans at the end of the game. He only didn't come in ahead of me because I managed to use one of my Chaos cards to switch around one of the games and apply different bonuses for winning and participation.

I came in 2nd. I had ammassed the most fans by the end of the game but I hadn't taken into account that a lot of the effects of the coaching cards give you more fans at the end of the game.

For this reason, Chris quite comfortably came in first.

So, the Dwarves are the Blood Bowl Champions of the World for the time being. Unfortunately I won't be participating in tonight's game due to other commitments. I should hopefully be back next week though!

See you soon...

New Space Marine Scouts

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here for a number of different reasons, namely holidays, band and work, but I’m back now and I’ve got t-shirts or pictures, hopefully, if I can get it to work, for everybody.

Firstly, a quick note about the role-play: The regular readers, if any, will have noticed I’m not posting any more blogs that relate to things that went on at Role Play club. Just so we’re all clear on this, I’m still in the club, and the only session I’ve missed since I joined was the week I was on holiday. And I still play the games and I really enjoy them. But the obligation to blog them up every single time I did it was, I have to be honest, more work than fun, so I won’t necessarily be doing it again. Or at least, not any that relate to the club; if I do some home games I might think about it but I’m a long way away from that yet.

So, on to the main event: Space Marine Scouts!

So what’s brought this on? Well, judging by the fact that a great many – if not all – hobbyists paint or play Space Marines at some point, I found the temptation too hard to ignore. It will be a nice change to play with a ‘good guy’ army, and having Space Marines as the heroes of the universe lends a nice protagonist nature. What I didn’t want to do was get a Space Marine army by getting a Battleforce, or Assault on Black Reach; no standardised forces for me thank you. I much prefer the idea of a bitter struggle, a desperate fight for survival and really developing the characters in my army. Enter the Black Consuls…

All the Space Marine Codex has to say about the Black Consuls is this: “Recorded as annihilated at the Siege of Goddeth Hive, 455.M41. Current status unknown.” Deliberately vauge, but I think that’s the whole point: To a certain kind of hobbyist, it’s nice to fill in the gaps for yourself, and I’m one of them. The codex doesn’t say where Goddeth Hive was, who wiped the Consuls out, or why, and I’m not going to assume responsibility for this. What I am going to do is create the chapter again, after a desperate attempt to rebuild its former glory. What I will say is this: Though the chapter is now active, its master knows not to make a show of it just yet. They are nowhere near the strength they need to operate in anything other than the utmost secrecy…

Inspired by an article in a recent edition of White Dwarf, I decided to gear the army around Cities of Death, which so far has lended itself to how I’m doing the paint job but there you are. It fits in with the idea of remaining in the hive to rebuild the chapter. All Space Marines start out as Scouts, everybody knows that, so Scouts was the best option for me to go with. I gave them a Heavy Bolter because I’m picturing having to deal with more infantry than vehicles, and besides with the reduced ballistic skill of the Scouts I feel they would appreciate the ability to fire 3 shots per turn rather than 1. With Scouts, Hellfire rounds is an option that I fully intend to employ, but I need to be careful when and where; just because they can do something doesn’t mean that they should.

Sergeant Collatinus leads his brothers into yet another conflict...

For the painting, this is the colour scheme described in the codex, black and gold. I don’t know how I’m going to reconcile the shoulder trims should I decide to include regular Space Marines in the army – the colour scheme changes with each company – but I’m a long way from that at this point, and Scouts don’t have shoulder trims, so problem solved. I’ve done some battle damage on them as well; I wouldn’t usually be inclined to do this with Space Marines because they do make an effort to look after their armour and equipment so battle damage on Space Marines is not as common as you might think. However, the idea I wanted to get across here was of seasoned campaigners; they may be out on missions for weeks or months before they get a chance to come back and maintain their equipment, and would doubtless get in to a few fights along the way, so most of these models are going to be damaged to a certain extent. One thing that worked out very well I think was the appalling damage to Sergeant Collatinus' right eye, done by being a bit clever with a modelling knife, red paint and a purple wash, giving him the look of a man who's just lost an eye in a fight and still wants to come back for more. I am pleased with the way the skin tone and fatigues work with the armour; colour selection was actually quite important for this. One thing I wasn’t too happy about was the freehand; you can’t see it on the photos but I was trying to paint their squad number on their shoulder pads. The insignia on the left shoulder didn’t work out too badly, but the Roman numerals on the right shoulder looks like they were done by a 6 year old with a white chalk. I might have to re-do those at a later time; it’s not something I make a habit of because I don’t like going over old ground but I do want this army to look quite good so it will probably become necessary.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Where did I come up with the name? Actually I didn’t come up with it at all. As they are the Black Consuls, I thought I’d name them after, well… consuls. So I dragged up a list of consuls off Wikipedia and named Brother Sergeant Tarquinius Collatinus after one of the names I found. With my usual approach to things I will probably name them all in order. Now, if you know anything about the Roman approach to names, you’ll know that there was usually a ‘praenomina,’ which would be the equivalent of your first name. The consuls were no exception but the choice of first names was very limited and in a formal setting you’d usually be called by your family name anyway. So I decided to leave them out of my army, reasoning that 2 names were quite enough for a Space Marine to be getting on with!

So what’s next for the army? I’ve brought a captain for them, and I’m quite excited about this one because it’s not a model you would typically see leading a Space Marine army. However I’m tied up in some other projects at the moment, not least of which the Goblin Spider Riders I’ve been painting on and off for a couple of months now. Who knows what will come next? See you then…

23/6/2011: Leagues of Adventure: Plateau of the Ape Men

As you've probably gathered from my 'bunched' approach to blog writing, I tend to fall behind quite a lot. I end up writing about things literally weeks after they've happened by which time I've generally forgotten everything that went on. I've got a lot of things to talk about that's happened over the last few weeks and a limited amount of time to write it all in. For this reason, I'm going to leave you in the hands this week of Mike, AKA Gruffalo Crumble, who played the part of Evelyn Cross and did a bit of a write-up of this session that I ran. I'll give you a bit more in-depth information about what went on when I come to write next weeks session up:

"Gliding low over the expansive African savannah, daredevil aviatrix Evelyn Cross pilots her prototype dirigible (on loan from the Aeronautics Society in London) into a rolling cloud bank, which utterly obscures her view of the terrain. Also on board are eccentric German antiquarian Wilhelm von Bremer, gluttonous game hunter Big Allistair and brilliant detective Lewis Granville.

The dirigible is rocked as some unseen assailant shreds one of the airship's wings, severely hindering Evelyn's ability to control the vessel as it careens blindly through the fog. Big Al readies his rifle, as a dark shape circles back around towards the dirigible. A huge, winged monster swoops at the ship, but one deafening blast of the big game hunter's elephant rifle leads the hungry pterosaur to veer off in search of less formidable prey.

However, the damage to the dirigible has already been done, and while Evelyn (narrowly) avoids a catastrophic collision with the side of a mountain, she is unable to prevent the vessel crashing down along a densely forested, tropical plateau. The pilot and passengers all survive the impact, but even the least technically-able can see the dirigible has been damaged beyond hope of repair.

Stranded in the depths of some explored jungle, the heroes forge on through the trees towards a distant cave, leading north along the bottom of a long, narrow trench. It isn't long before the ground begins to tremble underfoot and a thunderous roar heralds a rockfall blocking the group's retreat. The only way is onward!

Emerging from the trench back into the jungle, the heroes are ambushed by a small group of savage Ape Men wielding primitive clubs. Big Al and Detective Granville quickly dispatch the hairy brutes. Searching the bodies, Evelyn finds a locket, inside of which is a photograph of one Cynthia Davenport, a female adventurer and anthropologist of some renown, who disappeared on some mad expedition several weeks previously.

Following the trail, the heroes reach the crumbling ruins of an ancient city, constructed in a style that Professor von Bremer recognises as being vaguely Egyptian. The missing anthropologist is spotted being dragged towards a sacrificial altar by a particularly impressive looking Ape Man adorned with feathers and baubles befitting his station as spiritual leader of the group. The heroes battle their way through a horde of savage tribesmen and confront the shaman, who throws Cynthia to the ground and draws his knife - only to be blown into red mist by the fiery discharge of Big Al's enormous gun the instant he relinquishes his human shield.

As the shaman dies, he implores his pagan god to punish the heroes for their trespasses - and the volcano towering above the ruins rumbles into life! As molten lava rushes through the streets of the forgotten city, the party race for Cynthia's hot air balloon - and their only means of escaping the plateau alive! Evelyn makes it first, with Big Al, Professor von Bremer and Cynthia all diving into the basket as it lifts off into the air. Nobody had noticed how Detective Granville had fallen behind, and they look away as the unfortunate man is overtaken by the river of liquid fire."
I think that more or less covers it. Cheers Mike!

16/6/2011: Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv

You have no idea how many times I've started this one and got nowhere, and it comes to something, I reckon, when you end up writing about things like this literally weeks after they've happened... This will be the last one on Smuggler's Shiv, as the adventure ended here and as Viggy, the Games Master, is committed to games for the rest of the year, it is unlikely we'll hear from Raziel and his friends before then, if at all.

So, we ended the last week having killed all the cannibals and learned that the Serpentine Demon we were supposed to be hunting had headed to the Red Mountain on the South East side of the island. We went there to discover a cleft in the rock that forms a way down through a succession of ladders to the ocean below. After not-so-easily dispatching a winged assailant (like a dimorphodon but a little bit bigger,) we examined and used the clearly magical collection of rocks (thanks to Gorman for verifying that for us.) This managed to drain the ocean to the point where it showed a couple of closed doors...

There was also a ship on there where we found a mad fungus-based critter who believed himself to be the captain of said ship. Through his incoherent mutterings we discovered that our quarry had indeed gone in through the doors, and we followed... we eventually ended up in a large room with a walkway running across it at an angle, on which were three skeletons firing arrows on to us. I had the idea of using my rope to climb the walkway and take the skeletons out from there. Bronn the Dwarf had the far better idea of using the grappling hook to pull the skeletons down to us; it worked almost every time and the skeletons took damage each time. We won the fight with out too much difficulty, and moved on...

Walking through a veritable maze of tunnels we ended up in a room which featured four pillars and a pool of blood, with a door at the other end. Before we had time to figure out what to do, the door slammed and a pendulum swung down, hitting Gorman and only just missing killing him. Raziel used his knowlege of dungeons to guess that the answer lies in the button on the four pillars; we each pressed one and stopped the swing of the pendulum. Gorman had time to heal himself...

We ended up in a cathederal where our serpentine quarry was there, inspecting the room. She was surrounded by three skeletons, and on seeing us told us she had found something beyond our imagination and attacked. She put up an impressive fight, but with Traugan turning one of her own skeletons on her and the rest of us beating the living daylights out of her, she never stood a chance. It transpired that she thinks she's found instructions on how to get to a lost city, an empire that's been missing for generations. Our party was well aware that the Pathfinder's society would pay large amounts of money for this information...

After this, there wasn't much to tell. We repaired the lighthouse, rounded up our survivors and finished up on the place we were bound for in the first place (Raziel neither knows nor cares what this place is; his only ambition through all of this was of getting out of the Shackles...)

So, how about that for my first adventure? Quite entertaining actually, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a bit of a shame that the format of the adventure doesn't necessarily sit well with a 'club' environment; the idea of a sandbox adventure is for the characters to explore, examine what they find, make use of it, scurry about the place and maybe come across some red herrings that are nonetheless fun to explore. Viggy tried to do it like this for the first couple of sessions, but after a while it became apparent that there wasn't going to be time, and he had to bend it slightly so that we got the main points of the adventure done by the time the 8-week rotation finished. That being said, it was a great adventure to be part of, and it got the best ending I could have foreseen...

What of my character? I evisioned Raziel as somebody who is handy in a fight but prefers not to; a con man with a conscience of robbing the rich and giving to the poor. His only motivation, really, was to avoid trouble, and yes, getting off that Hell-hole of an island was a good step in to doing that, but had the rest of the characters not volunteered to take out the Demon, he may not necessarily have gone all the way to do that. He would have done as much as was necessary to rebuild the lighthouse and escape Smuggler's Shiv, but he wouldn't necessarily have gone hunting for Demons. If they think there's something to be gained from this island let them get on with it! However, now that he has information that the Pathfinder's Society might be interested in, he may or may not choose to exploit it. For now, he's glad to be safely away.

There's a continuation in this. Whether or not Raziel will play a part in it I don't know, owing to the fact that there's a very real possibility that I'll be moving away from the area in the not-too-distant future, and if that proves to be the case then I won't be involved with the Role Play society anymore, which will be a shame. However, if I am...

9/6/2011: Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv

Once again I find myself behind with my blogs! However, with only 5 hours to go before my next gaming session, it's probably about time I updated you all on what went on last week. Warning: MAJOR spoilers here...

We finished last week outside the cannibal's camp, which was good because that's where the lighthouse is and also where our estranged captain and his girlfriend had apparently disappeared off to. Our party doesn't really have a fighter as such. We've found that our two monks, Garond and Bronn, are pretty handy in a fight, as is our ranger Rassdass. Traugan the half-orc mage has got it where it counts up close, as does my character Raziel, if only by being mobile enough to set up combat advantage. Gorman's never really much good up close but his cleric abilities more than make up for it in the aftermath. Nonetheless, we have thus far tried to avoid such tactics as marching directly into the enemy camp and expecting to win a fight. So we spent some time scouting out the area; finding out where the sentries are, using Gorman's detect alignment/chaos to find out where our enemies were likely to be. We came in from the East, where the lines were apparently thinnest, and attacked a small hut with a wizend old woman in there. It turns out that she's a mage and did some horrific things to our psyche by cackling and granting us all misfortune, however she couldn't stop the onslaught of several angry warriors and eventually fell.

Investigating the North we found our way blocked by a corral that apparently contained 4 skeletons. There was somthing about the general area in relation to the rest of the camp that made us feel it would be a bad idea to start any trouble at this time, so we scurried around to the South. We came upon a building that looked like it was a butchery of some description, where prisoners are kept and made to watch as their fellow captives are butchered and become dinner for the cannibals. We were heading ever onwards towards the area where the lighthouse was, killing a couple of cannibals along the way which, if I'm honest, didn't put up much of a fight. And then we happened upon the lighthouse itself...

This was a ferocious fight made all the more hard by our positioning. We were aware of a male and at least one female voice upstairs and Bronn, Garond and I snuck up the stairs to see what was going on. Unfortunately I fluffed my stealth roll and drew the attention to us, whereupon a man who looked like a stereotype Scottish Barbarian came charging down the stairs. A lot more tough and substantially more strong than the creatures we had encountered up to that point, the fact that we were fighting on the stairs of a lighthouse meant that only one of us at a time could effectively attack him. Raziel slunk back and covered the guy with his crossbow but the fact that there was always at least one person in front of him made this a very risky business indeed. Owing largely to the villian's penchant for smearing his opponent's blood all over himself, we eventually managed to wear him down and kill him without any losses to our own side. On going up the stairs, we found 4 young girls in a state of considerable distress. Calming them down, we learned that the two most prominent figures in the camp were the man we'd just killed, who was apparently the leader of the cannibals, and the witch we had killed earlier. We inferred that had we gone after the skeletons, we would have alerted the whole camp and had a much larger fight on our hands. And we also discovered that our captain and his lover had been here at some point, though they were not there now... We also found the room they had been staying in, and a shrine to some heathen God. We had the lighthouse, and as long as we can get it to work we have the means to escape the island. However, we had a feeling that this wasn't over just yet...

We assumed to kill all the cannibals, and on inspection of the camp found a hole in the ground we felt worthy of investigating. Underneath the camp we found a network of tunnels on which we discovered, amongst other things, a note, apparently from our captain. It turns out his lover, Ileana (I think) is a serpentine demon and he was under her ruse for most of the time since she boarded the ship. It was her influence that caused the captain to wreck the ship and cast us all off. Eventually, she betrayed the Captain, who in the note reckoned he was well on his way to becoming some sort of undead. And we learned that she was now headed west towards the Red Mountain to complete her work. The captain offered his apologies and beseeched us to kill her... We found a old and sinister serpetine cathederal, where we came upon the sort of spell that Ileana is trying to cast. We could let her do it... but with one more week to go, hunting her down and killing her just seems the right thing to do.

Incidently we found the captain in the not-entirely-surprising form of a ghoul. Killed him, obviously. It occurs to me now that the original plan was to kill us all and it was only by the intervention of the first mate that we and the NPCs survived. Even if we kill Ileana, the real hero of the story will be him...

2/6/11 Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv

Not much to say about last week's escapade; there was no plot-bending revelations or nothing like that, it was mostly exploration and no small amount of fighting. We were also without Bronn/Garuda/Paul (for the purpose of the game all the same person) for tonight as he was off on his holidays, lucky for some. Picking up from a couple of weeks before, the Tengu had come on the ship called the Crow's Tooth, and seemed quite interested in us challenging the cannibals. Before we did that, however, we journeyed North towards the two islands at the North West section of the map in search of the lighthouse...

After crossing a slippery but nonetheless traversable causeway, we came upon an island literally covered in fungus and decay. The stench was appalling. We happened across a shipwreck - everything from the wood to the sails covered in fungus, but otherwise in good condition - which turned out to be the Night Voice, which was the ship our Gnome friend back at the camp was after. Investimagating the ship proved problematical as we were accosted by Vegipigmes, (sic) and fighting them was difficult for me as they were resistant to the piercing damage a Rapier would instigate. The best I could do in that situation was scurry around the back of the monsters and set up combat advantage; this worked very well except that no one was really rolling very well so it took a while anyway.

While investigating the ship, finding some documents of interest to the gnome, I remembered too late that I also had a Dagger+1, which can either be slashing or piercing and would have easily hurt the monsters. I kept that in mind as we came up on a pillar of fungus/stone, because whatever we found in there was unlikely to be good...

What we eventually found was a human skeleton covered in the fungus; it suddenly became animated and got us in a desperate battle. I tried my usual tactic of using my mobility to set up combat advantage, unfortunately this time I failed my tumble roll and fell flat on my face. This also left me open to the skeleton's tentacles, (yes, tentacles,) which proceded to gouge several large holes in me and leaving my character for dead...

The rest of the party killed it in the end and I've got a good friend in Gorman (Dave) who helped me with his healing powers once again. I suffered penalties to my stats but it was nothing a couple of days exploration wouldn't cure. Long story short, we eventually found ourselves at the south-west corner of the island, where there is a lighthouse, and what looks like a whole lot of cannibals...

1/6/2011: Thundertone: Dragonspire

Interesting one here...

I was asked to try out this card game from AEG (No idea what it stands for, presumably the publisher.) I played it once again with Dave, who is the only person I know who would play a game like this so the choice of opponent was obvious really! This is going to be in two parts - a recollection of what went on in the game, and because I was asked to comment on the game I'll offer my comments here. I'll give a description of the areas I was asked to comment on and you can decide for yourselves whether or not I gave it a high score...

So the idea of the game is that your party is trying to obtain the "Thunderstone," a mythical artefact that will help protect the world from impending doom. The game is for 2-5 people and whoever gets the most victory points - achieved by killing monsters or having particularly powerful artefacts, spells or heroes - is the winner. How it works is that on your turn, you can either "go to the village" and use the monetary value of the cards you have in your hand to upgrade your deck by buying new heroes or better equipment, "Enter the Dungeon" and kill any one of 3 possible monsters that are in play with penalties to your skills depending on where in the dungeon you are and what equipment you have, or "Rest," where you stand and do nothing or throw one of your cards away. Each time you kill a monster, another monster is drawn from the 'Dungeon Deck,' until eventually you come to the Thunderstone (shuffled into the last 10 cards,) and when that reaches the first level of the dungeon, the player that caused it to do so claims it for his own. As far as I know there are no victory points available for it, however it hands over the game to the player that owns it in the event of a tie.

If that sounds complicated, well, it is for about the first half an hour, but once we'd got used to the game mechanics we were merrily building decks and entering dungeons as much as you like. More complicated - but all the better for it - is the strategy of building decks. You start of with some basic cards which are useful but of fairly low power. When you start buying different monsters and equipment, you need to try and balance your need to have reliable cards with the fact that if your deck gets too large, it will take far too long to get the card you need. Almost certainly at some point you'll come across a 'disease' card that will give you penalties to your party as they attack, and the smaller your deck, the more likely they are to come up as well. Monsters that you kill are added to your deck and are counted for victory points, but they rarely do anything to help you once you get into the dungeon; is it worth throwing some victory points away so that you can increase your draw rate?

Party-building is interesting as well. I should point out here that Dave and I were using a fairly basic 'starter' set of cards that the game recommends which gave us a selection of fighters, thieves, clerics and wizards. While the monsters we had to face gave the impression that a balanced party would be the most useful (some monsters can only be damaged by magic, for example, or can't be attacked by heroes that don't have any weapons,) the reality is that this isn't practical. It's unlikely you'll draw a party to enter the dungeon that is both balanced and powerful enough to do any significant amount of damage - a fighter, for example, does not do the same kind of damage as a wizard, so while two fighters would probably make one very powerful attack, a fighter and a wizard would result in two not very powerful attacks. No, it is more useful to focus on one or the other and be aware of what your opponents are doing so you know which one to go for. I chose to focus on magic and built my party around wizards and clerics; Dave went down the fighter route and got mainly fighters and thieves.

We made it quite difficult for ourselves because after a preliminary scramble to get into fights in the dungeon, we found ourselves having to face three extremely hard opponents and had to slink back to the village to regroup. This was when our parties began to take shape. However, Dave had the advantage in that he had killed more monsters than me, and could use the experience points he'd gained as a result to improve his heroes; it therefore took him less time to get back to the dungeon and take out two orc warlords who are worth a huge amount of victory points. We carried on - by then our attacks were powerful enough to take out most comers - until we came to the monsters that stuck a significant penalty for attacking them, at which point we were forced to play a bit more carefully. Eventually the Thunderstone appeared and went to Dave, and as he'd earned more victory points than me, so did the game.

So, what do I think of the game?

In terms of build quality and value for money, in general it's very good indeed. The box seems sturdy enough and allows room for the upcoming expansions, and the artwork on the cards is beautiful. The 'board' is a nice touch, not crucial but if you've never played a card game before then I guess it's useful as a guide. Coming from a background of Games Workshop and Yu Gi Oh cards, it's a great change to be able to explore aspects of each of the heroes/villains that you come across in the game without necessarily having to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds on a new deck or a new army. One slight aspect that niggles - we noticed that the cards were bending quite easily, even after one game, and the way they are stored does not lend themselves well to deck protectors. My advice? If you get the game, keep in mind the cards are going to take a bit of looking after.

In terms of theme and originality, there's not much to go on here if I'm perfectly honest. Heroes and Wizards, Orcs and Zombies, Dragons and Magic Stones, I've pretty much been aware of all of those things since the age of 4, and nothing will surpirse anyone old enough to have read Lord of the Rings. The Party Building system is interesting and I like it a lot; it's a new spin on the idea of building a party and going to war. But we've all done Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer before; there's nothing new here.

The game took a while to get going but once it had nothing could stop us. We'd grasped the fundementals of the rules and rarely had to reference them, which meant we could spend the majority of the time we were there playing the game. Never a bad thing! The instructions could have been clearer, I think, at exactly what means what. For example, we didn't know, and pretty much had to work out for ourselves, how 'Strength' affects the heroes. You use 'Attack' values to attack monsters and Strength didn't appear to have an effect until we discovered that you need a certain amount of strength in your heroes before you can use some of the game's more powerful weapons. An index or glossary would have helped. But for how often we have to reference the rules in the games Dave and I usually play, it was a refreshing change to see a game that, once we had got it, we could just pick it up and have a play should we wish to.

Is the game balanced? Difficult to say on the precedent of one game with two people. With hindsight, Dave had me on the back foot for most of the game, and we're used to playing card duelling games so we were looking for ways to hinder one another's progress; it's not a strategy you'd necessarily employ in a game like this but we like it! The game can have up to five people, at which point I would suggest the ways in which you can build and upgrade your party become far more limited, i.e. there are rarely more than 2 top-level cards for each hero type, which means that only 2 players can ever have the top level of any given hero. This will lend a competitive edge to the game but I do wonder, if the game ever featured the full compliment of 5 players, whether one or more of those players would find themselves out of the runnings quite quickly.

All that being said, we had a top laugh playing it, we really did. There's a nice sense of achievement that we get from killing the higher level monsters, and while we're hardly working together to do it, it's not like we're killing each other's monsters either which is a nice change. It is what it is - a great way to spend a couple of hours playing a fun game with some friends (though I doubt games would actually take a couple of hours to play once you know the rules) and I can't fault it for that at all. Dave loved it, and went home promising to look for ways in which to get hold of a copy himself.

If he does, great, but this copy of the game is being returned toda so I doubt I'll be playing this game again in the near future. But, here's to hoping; the game has a lot more to offer than I had time to explore and I'd love to give it another go.

Roleplay tonight, look forward to my next story about my life...

19/5/2011: Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv

We covered a lot of ground this week...

Having made a new camp on the east side of the island, the Japanese guy who I've now found out is called Ishiru turns out to own a cache of treasure maps, one of which concerns Smuggler's Shiv. Ishiru thinks that the party is near it, and that as the treasure is going to take more than one person to obtain, could we help him dig it up for a reward? Never ones to back down we soldiered up to the top of a hill and waited for a little while, until the following morning where the light between two stones shines on the area that we have to dig. And dig we did, until we found a wooden floor and the skeleton of a dwarf with a dagger in his back. Traugon the Half Orc Mage hacked through it with his greataxe, and there was little underneath but a pool of water. In this water were three water-ghouls, forgotten their names, whereupon there were several members of the party dingle-dangling from the rope swashbucking with these ghouls. Raziel leapt down the ropes and shot at them with his hand crossbow; the weapon isn't strong enough to do them any significant amount of damage but at least it was something. Having finally killed the things (it took two goes during which Garond (Dave's character) got himself paralyzed and infected with Ghoul Disease, that would have turned him in to a ghoul were it not for the restoration potion that we had,) we found an exit underneath, and thereafter the treasure. Ishiru took 1/4 of it and the party had the rest, though it was of little benefit to me as the other members of the party had the magic weapons, and this being a desert island there were precious few places to spend the money.

Journeying on into the centre of the island we came across an abandoned campsite, featuring a partially-completed shack. It was a disturbing sight once we got inside, there was a large pentagram on the wall with what looked like human teeth hammered around it. However, nobody had used the place for years and it didn't appear dangerous, so we spent the some time resting there.

The next place we found was, if anything, even more disturbing. In a small clearing was a partially-collapsed hut made out of skulls, and the skulls weren't in superb nick either. Many of them were scratched or damaged, the damage being done by stone weapons and human teeth... Inside we found a journal in tatters that appeared to come from the captiain of the ship called the Throom's Fang. There weren't many pages left but the ones that were seemed to infer the following - somehow the captain had fallen out of ideal with a female called Nylithati. The captain went away and Nylithati looked after the crew, who subsequently and probably because of her influence became cannibals. The diary makes reference to ceremonies involving a calron, half-eaten bodies that were still alive, and the evidence suggests Nylithati as their leader. I'm envisaging an antagonist that we're going to have to deal with at some point...

Further down the line the path winded down a gulch, where we happened upon a snare trap. As far as we could see the trap was supposed to fling it's victim up towards some spikes at the top of a ledge. I disabled the trap, and set it off, when we were set upon by what looked very much like a cannibal. Using the right combination of spells and missiles we tore after it, and when it became scared and ran away, Raziel shot it in the back of the head with the crossbow and it died. Always nice to make a kill, but somehow I don't know if we'd fare so well against a whole army of the things.

The path branched South and North so we decided to head North. Happening across a narrow beach we saw an immense crab, though the appropriate amount of perception suggested to us that this was no true creature. Instead, we flushed out it's owner, who turned out to be a Tengu. The Tengu told us that the crab was for protection, and that he used to be on a ship called the Crow's Tooth and the Captain was his another Tengu. He also suggested that he'd seen our Captain and his co-called lover heading south towards the cannibals... though he could just be three parts bonkers.

And that was where we left it. Well, if my purpose for being away from the shackles is to lie low for a little while I seem to have picked the right place; it doesn't look like anybody who lands here makes it out again alive. I would not, however, like to think I was stuck here permanently, and would like to find a way off the island if possible. Nonetheless, I have a feeling things will get far more complicated than that once we find our erstwhile Captain and the cannibals...

12/5/2011: Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv

Well we were all eager to pick up where we left off last week, with Dave's character starting a food fight that ended in a challenge to a duel to the death between one of the NPCs and Dave's character. After an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile with the Japanese-looking guy that issued the challenge, we had to come up with a way that we might prevent the fight from going ahead; nobody wanted to see the guy die and we're pretty sure Dave's character never had a chance. It was then that we discovered the 'assist' rule, where the other PCs could assist a character with their skills in order to add an extra 2 to their modifier. So all we had to do was find the character with the highest charisma and skill in Diplomacy. That character turned out to be me.

I had a +6 modifier for my own skill in diplomacy, and all the character's attempts to assist me gave me an extra +8 (unsurprisingly, Traugon, the Half Orc, failed his roll for this.) Nonetheless I had to roll very high in order to make any significant impact on the guy. Thus began the first time in living memory I managed to roll a 20 on the D20. With a score of 34 not even I could have failed to make an impression... and thankfully, I was right, as the Japanese guy apologised for being hasty, and because I rolled so high he actually became friends with us as well. I won't apologise for feeling very pleased with myself.

We explored the West side of the part of the island we were on at that point, and happened across a nest of Dimorphodons. I rolled surprisingly high for initiative as well and got the first turn, scoring an impressive hit on one of the creatures. Not quite enough to kill it though, at which point I started begging for one of my companions to finish it off. This amused Vic (Traugon,) but he happily obliged. I'm starting to get an idea of Raziel as a 'Commisar Cain' type character; he's got it where it counts but he panics and avoids a straight fight where possible. We managed to kill the Dimorphodons, stealing both an egg and a young chick and bringing them back to our crazy assassin friend who agreed to teach us some of her technique, to the point where we all have a higher initiative modifier now.

This didn't really help us as we didn't get in to another fight for the rest of the time we were playing. We did, however, make a point of exploring the Eastern part of the island. We found several wrecks with a couple of things them, including the documents that proved Jask's innocence, and although we had a curious incident on one of the beaches with what appeared to be the ghost of a captain of the ship crying out for his lost love. We happened to have pilfered a locket of the woman from one of the ships and we showed it to the ghost; he 'touched' it and vanished. There was also some evidence of a hastily built camp that suggested that Captain of the Genevieve - the ship we were on in the first place - and his lover - were there at some point but had moved on. In addition to this we found viperberries growing in the jungle somewhere; we manange to take some (again thanks to the dexterity of Yours Truly) and make friends with our drunken half-elven friend. Both of those guys promised to help us with something that's going to take a while to do because in this case one item has to go around all 6 of us, we'll see what happens. And that, I think, was where we left it.

Roleplay tonight, we'll see what comes next! One thing about this - we seem to have no particular aim. Obviously there's something strange going on on the island; we keep having dreams about our escape from the Genevieve.  But there's nothing concrete going on out of the ordinary that doesn't have anything to do with our estranged captain. I follow the rest of the survivors out of a feeling for self preservation, but were I in Raziel's shoes right now, I'd be happy just to get off the island...

5/4/11: Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler's Shiv.

Interesting week...

As it was heading towards the middle of the day we decided to take some shelter in the jungle to sit out the hottest part of the day, whereupon we were attacked by some killer monkeys. All attempts to communicate with them to find out why this should be the case were met with barely intelligable howling, and I took a hit, but the dwarf monk Bronn used a couple of shurikens to take two of them out, including the leader which caused the remaining monkeys to flee. Problem solved, though I was glad that Raziel wasn't wearing heavy armour; the strain would have certainly caused him some problems.

After this, we had a quick chat with some of our fellow survivors and decided, since we only had a limited amount of time to do it, to head on over to the wreck of the ship. The dexterity that comes with being a rogue did me proud as I climbed across the rocks heading towards the ship, and eventually the entire party made it though not without some tumbles. Once we were there, we could hear noise coming from the underside of the ship. I used Stealth to try to investigate, and found that there were a couple of those crab monsters trying to get in through a door. Stealthy though I made myself, I couldn't prevent them from smelling me, and all of a sudden the party and I were set upon by the creatures. I used my acrobatics to leap down the stairs doing a half-twist to come up behind one of them and stab him in the back, with one of the party already there it was caught unawares and Raziel made his first kill of the game.

We checked the ship after that to find several useful items in the Captain's cabin, including keys that would hopefully get our friend Jask out of the clink, and a bottle of brandy that our half-elven friend had asked for. We also found the captain's log, which suggested that he was enamoured of the female passenger Ilyana, and that his desire for her eventually lead to him casting aspersions on the rest of the crew and passengers. It was apparently at Ilyana's request that the ship get wrecked off the coast of Smuggler's Shiv. Further inspection of the ship revealed the first mate, dead. He was the one that the captain had a problem with the most, and it appears to have been he who ensured the party's safety by dragging us onto the beach. From his wounds, he was most likely subsequently killed by the crab/scorpions/whatever. The other door - the one the creatures were trying to get in to - hid the cook, also dead, though I can't quite remember how. We found quite a bit of lumber and enough materials to build a camp, so with this we headed back to the beach...

After hearing some bits and pieces for our colleagues again - including viperberries for the half-elf who feels it will eradicate her drink problem - a few of us set off to explore parts of the island. After being attacked by dimorphodons (sic) and having a very close shave with one or two of them, we managed to get to the other side of the 'shiv' to find that the coast beyond is green jungle, the terrain being the same all the way through. On the islands to the South West, we noticed that the trees have a grey hue to them, though how we're going to get over there I don't know. We came back to the camp, where misfortune befell the party once again...

In trying to engage a serene but impassive looking asian guy in coversation, one of the party - persumably by throwing food at him - angered him to the point where he challenged him to a duel to the death. When Traugon, our half-orc mage with a toad on his head, tried to rescue the situation by casting Charm Person on him, he became the second on the man's list of people to kill. And that is where we left it, Thursday should prove a nasty surprise for some people...

I can see why the others wanted to build a camp on the beach where they knew it was safe, or at least as safe as it gets, but for how long it took us to get from one side of the island to the other I can't help but feel it would have been better to do this later on, when we could have journeyed to a central position on the island. We're going to have to do a lot more exploring if we're going to get anywhere with this, and every night we spend away from shelter is another night something horrible may happen. We'll have to try to find another way around it but it's going to be a tough one, I think...