Campaign and adventure guidebook for Middle Earth - review

This is an odd product. Despite it's title, it is not a campaign, nor does it include an adventure. Indeed its almost like it's not designed for the role player at all. There are more oddities too.

However let me start by telling you what I'm missing. The original product came with 2 by 3 foot colour map of middle earth. Many people rave over the glory that this map is, however, my second hand copy didn't come with the map, so my review does not cover it.

The book itself feels like a magazine, it is staple bound and 24 pages long. Most pages use a two-column layout.

The front cover uses a image is from the cartoon version of Lord of the Rings, and features no characters or identifiable buildings or landscape. This graphical choice is rather odd, I presume they were trying take advantage of the buzz around the film, although this book came out four years after the film's release. Its quite bland.

Inside the front cover is the contents list, credits and introduction. The introduction has a quite telling line. It reads...

"The entire of ICE's approach is aimed at those who want a foundation from which to work, not necessarily absolutes."

If we take that line as a guide for what they are aiming at with this product, then I will say they have built a base from which you can build, but not a lot more!

On page 1, they give us a list of their reference sources. I have no idea why. We all know the reference materials, its plainly obvious. As this product is not designed for use with MERP I guess this is because the purchaser would not have read LOTR or The Hobbit

Most of the page is taken up by a section called "Definitions and Terms" which defines role playing terms and some of the nouns common to Middle Earth such as Valar, Morgoth, Mirkwood etc. It's here that another oddity comes to the fore. The size of the font used in this section is smaller that the preceding section, and not only is it smaller, it's practicably illegibly small. Capital letters are at most three millimetres tall. I needed a magnifying glass to read this. To describe this text as dense would be an understatement. There is a lot of middle earth general-knowledge here, if you can read it.

A section called Geography starts on page 2, thankfully back at a reasonable size. This section gives you an overview of the continent of middle earth, from bodies of water to mountains and plains. Woven through the text are references to the history of world. For instance it mentions how Morgoth was responsible for the lack of symmetry in the continent.

On page 4 details of Climate and Weather weave together not only weather patterns mentioned in the source material but general real-world climatology.

Page 4 also starts a large section that covers the history of nations and politics. If you have tried to read Tolkien's Silmarillian and failed, then here you will find an extensive blow by blow summary. In fact this section is almost entirely made up of a huge time line running from Eru calling the world into being, right through to the destroying of the ring.

On page 11 is the start of a section that deals with the inhabitants of middle earth, men, elves, orcs, hobbits, balrogs, nazgul etc. Unfortunately this section is once again in the tiny tiny tiny print. It's such a shame that this section, which actually is quite fascinating is printed in a way so difficult to read.

On page 14 starts a section on languages. This section uses another font size, not the smallest in use, nor the biggest. Once again a fascinating read. You'll read about how and who uses the various languages and how the languages evolved.

If you're like me and deciphered the runes on Thorin's map using the guide in "The Hobbit" then I think you'll like this section. Most of one page here is a guide to reading and writing using the Tengwar. This is not the runes from the Hobbit, but rather the curly writing you'll have seen elsewhere (remember the glowing writing on the One Ring in the 2001 film). This boxed panel will have you breaking out the sharpies.

Onto page 17 where a section on "Power" in middle earth begins. This is a reference to the greater magical sources middle earth. Not a lot of information here.

On page 18 is a section on using middle earth in a fantasy campaign. There is nothing specific here, just general hints at how a GM should start, picking a power level and a location.

Also on this page is a section that advises on how this booklet will integrate with the "modules to come", and how to use maps. Pretty much a waste of space.

Page 19 has a BW map of middle earth showing the prevailing winds. Eh?

Page 20 has a BW map of western middle earth showing which languages are used where.

Page 21 has a BW map of middle earth showing the prevailing temperatures and rainfall.

Page 22 has a BW map of western middle earth showing major trade routes.

Page 23 has a BW map of middle earth showing … nothing in particular.

Page 24 has a BW map of middle earth showing elevations.

All of these maps seems a waste of space, considering that the booklet comes with a 2 by 3 foot map of the place in glorious colour. Why have they spent 6 pages repeating the map in not so glorious black and white, and then squeezed in the text in the tiny tiny tiny font?

Inside the back cover, is a suggested reading list that includes not only Tolkien's works but various real world histories and fantasy novels.

I'm really not sure how to rate this book in role playing terms, it's not really one thing or another. I think they have met their stated objectives. They have given a broad overview of middle earth to someone not steeped in its lore. Yet, at the same time, this really is not a role playing aid. A role playing primer perhaps?

I can clearly state that the majority of the text in here is good and will be of interest to a Tolkien fan regardless of whether they role play or not, provided their eyesight is good.

I spent £2.58 getting this via eBay (without the big colour map) and feel like it was money well spent.

Middle-earth Role Playing Combat Screen - Review

I have the old Combat Screen in my collection and have had since the old days. My version consists of only a four panel fold-out piece of card, yet my memory is tingling with the idea that when I bought this there were some paper thingies inside. If that is so , and what the paper thingies may have been, my memory has failed to recall.

As stated, this is a cardboard four panel screen. The card is pretty thin and a little wobbly although it does stand up perfectly well. It is easily creased and does not stand wear very well. Each of the four panels is the size of the core rule book.

First lets have a look at the outside, the players side if you will. 

Panel 1: The back-cover sales blurb.

Panel 2: The front cover, the same art as the core rule book.

Panel 3: The action table, detailing various combat actions, such preparing a spell, loading a bow, melee attacks etc.

Panel 4: The Moving and Maneuver table. This is the full table and list of the usual mods.

Hmmm... not too sure I like their choices for this side. The M&M chart is useful to players, but the Action table not so much. I wonder if the basic combat charts might have been better. The other two panels which formed the front and back cover of the product on the shelf add some "colour", but are wasted in game terms.

Okay, so onto the GM's side.

Panel 1: 1-Handed-Slash/Conc, 2 Handed, Missile attack tables, plus lists of the Crit mods and the usual combats mods such as flank-attack.

Panel 2: Tooth/Claw Attack, Grappling, Movement and Maneuver(same table as shown on the players side) tables.

Panel 3: Action table (same as players side), Animal Weapon stats letting you know what crits Claw/Stomp/Beaks etc do.

Panel 4: This contains the general action chart, for Disarming Traps, Picking locks, Influence,Reading Runes, Tracking etc.

I think they made some good choices for this side of the screen. The product calls itself Combat Screen and they've got all the really important combat charts here. When I use this screen, I can leave the game rules open on the crit charts and I'm good to go.

Obviously the attack tables are a gimme, but the inclusion of the other mentioned charts really allows you to bring the combat environment alive by giving you everything you need as a GM. If you have some guys in melee protecting the wizard who's trying to open a magical lock, then this screen definitely has that covered.

If you don't like or want to use this as an actual screen, it is ideal to leave open on the table for reference during combat, it WILL save your book from half the wear and tare it would otherwise suffer.

Overall : Pretty Good.

Shikishima Heroes - micro RPG

"Shikishima Heroes" is micro RPG, that allows you to play pulp-style Naval Superheroes.

The battleship Shikishima was commissioned in 1900, but disappeared on its its first sortie with no explanation. A year later the ship reappeared. None of the crew had a memory of the lost year, nor did they know where fully an eighth of the crew had gone! Men from every section were simply missing, with no signs of foul play.

Even as the ship steamed back to port the crew realised they had been changed. Every member found themselves to have gained strange super powers.

When the Japanese people realised how changed the crew were, their joy was turned to fear, and now the Shikishima and its crew are kept at sea.

When anything unusual appears, be it super villains, giant monsters or aliens the Emperor dispatches the Shikishima.

Shikishima Heroes is a micro RPG, it is designed to printed on a single sheet of paper and folded into a little booklet using the "PocketMod" system. 

Available for only $0.99 (about £0.60) from RPGNow.com

This is the first of at least three micro RPG's, that I'll be putting out over the next month!

Lovecraftian Shorts story telling game

Announcing my latest release, the "Lovecraftian Shorts story telling game". It's a game for three people and gives them a framework for telling a collaborative story where the protagonists can only defeat the evil foe by sacrifice of their minds and/or bodies.

Currently available as a PDF from Drive Thru and an ePUB at LuLu

Nearly here..and not so nearly here

Today I sent for a POD copy of the gamebook project that I and KA Cartlidge have been working on for a few months.  If it comes back in a suitable condition I'll be opening it up to the world and publicising it like crazy. It's just now at that point when I can almost taste it. Frustration is blossoming in my soul, and 1-3 working days for delivery seems like a life time right now.

I mentioned in the previous post that I would wait on the submission process at BoardGameGeek to admit an entry for my new boardgame before I progressed it to the next level. I wanted to use a round of  play-testing to also help boost the notoriety of the game product. This is becoming frustrating too as its now been well over a month since I submitted the game to their database, and it's still in the queue. Admittedly the queue is massive and the submission process handled by volunteers, still the long long wait is frustrating.

So I have two game related frustrations burning in my chest. ARRRRGGHHHHHHHH!  I'm glad I got that out, I feel better now.

Publicising my new game

My new game design is nearing its play-test stage.  Board and counter art is complete, cards are in-progress, rules, still to be done.

I've been pondering how to approach telling the world about this fantastic game.

I liked the approach taken by the designers of Where There Is Discord. They got the game into the database at BoardGameGeek and started throwing up over a number of weeks a few teaser items, and even posted the rules asking the community to proof read them.

Once that was done they started posting well written and detailed Session Reports, each made of multiple posts made on separate days that really related the narrative of the games story. All in all it was a good way of building interest in the game, it certainly sucked me in, I ended up buying the game (and I'm delighted with it!).

I still have to finish up the little details of the game, but once that done I'm going to start following the model above. I'll register the game, put the call out for play-testers and start posting teasers and rules on the 'Geek. Of course I'll post those same teasers here. It'll be an interesting experiment to see if such an approach works with a print and play game!

Designing a new game

I've been working up a new game design for a few months now.  When I say "working up", what I really mean is that I've been thinking about it. What "thinking about it" means is that when I wake up in the middle of the night stressed out by work and money worries, I try to distract myself by thinking about this game.

I've found that during this game thinking I get into a mental flow. Where ideas build one upon another.  I'm also a bit of a writer and the I enter the same "flow" state when I'm sketching out a stories outline. It's a hard thing to describe, but it is most definitely a different state of mind. I suspect that it is almost meditative, perhaps it is meditative, I've never studied that sort of thing.

Do other game designers do a similar thing? Let me know if you do, I'd like to think that I'm not a lonely weirdo!

So what's going on in my mind during these flowing game design periods? I usually start by reviewing what I'm trying to achieve with the game, what the feel should be, and how the interaction with it should feel. From there I start going over mechanisms that could be used.  There is no order to this, I don't have a list to work from, it's just a random selection. Each one is considered, can I use it, how, where, what for, would it be better than one I've already decided on, which is best, all these questions just kind of whirl around in my head.

For example, if I'm thinking of cards within a game, there are so many uses that can be made for them I usually work my way through them all. Consider this little off the cuff list of possible uses...

Resources ... wood, sheep, computer time, interrupts
Timing .. count down, count up, increasing danger levels
Combat ... collecting combos, take that, initiation
Events ... lose all your items, an ogre attacks, you gain a gold, jump forwards to spaces

That's just a sample of what can "flow" over my mind in the middle of night, along with counters, tiles, dice, figures, tables, charts and every other game crafters tool.

I find myself considering, as I've said, what the feel I want the game to give the players, and so my mind often drifts into art, but this is a dangerous area for me, I'm no artist, and despair lies this way! Where, I ask myself, can I get public domain art, and so what Google searches can I use to find what I need....

But enough of the midnight stuff, what about the actual play testing? Well, in this case I take the ideas I've been pondering in the night and with pencil sketch out a board, then if there are counters in my idea, scissors find their way to a cereal packet, and if cards are in order, a few A4 sheets of paper are cut up.  Then these components are marked with a pencil. and finally the whole laid out on a table.

During this phase I'll put counters on the board, cards in my hand, and shuffle everything around seeing how they fit together. Try different set ups. Consider the juxtaposition of the various parts and how the board might be rearranged.

Then the cat walks across the board, sits on it, gets bored and walks off, and if I'm lucky something the cat did makes this paper and card game work!

In the case of last night, the cat didn't help. But I did rough out a play sequence for my current design and discover that the feel is right, but the game was too easy and needs to be ramped up.

That's all for now.  I just thought I'd share some thoughts about how I'm going about my current game design. Tune in later for more. :)

Epistolary

A set of rules for a "Story Writing" game have appeared on RPGGeek called "Epistolary", don't worry that's not a swear word.

The easiest way to understand this game is to refer to the book Dracular by Bram Stoker. This famous book is written with each chapter being an extract from a diary, journal, letter or even a report from a newspaper. The whole effect of which is to tell the story from multiple points of view.

This free set of rules lays out a framework to allow you and a friend ( perhaps two friends ) to write a story in this way. Each taking turns to write a part of the story from a certain point of view, and then hand off the story to your fellow player(s) by giving them a choice of "leads".

I think these "leads" are the challenge and the beauty of the system.  Suppose I've just added a section to the story, I finish off by offering between three and five leads to the next player.  Leads take the form of chapter headings, such as :

• The shadows advance!
• A friend.
• Long lost love returns.

So the next player looks at those leads and decides on which one they want to pick up and use as their next section heading.

I find that whole idea fascinating. I can interpret the leads given to me, but as I have no idea what leads I'll be offered they can inspire your creative juices and take the story in a whole new direction.

The system is not just limited to the classic letter writing age, but can be brought up to date or even into the future.  A "chapter" ( a grand title for a section you write ) can be a letter, a blog post, a video transcription, a transgalactic finance report, literally anything you can conceive.

If you have a space half hour and have creative writing "urges" this is well worth a look.

Alien Module 1:Aslan

Alien Module 1:Aslan is an expansion book for the well aged "Traveller" RPG.  Traveller has been through many releases over the years, but this review refers to the original release.

I brought a PDF of Alien Module 1:Aslan via RPGNow.com and it's the PDF I'm reviewing.

The PDF is not a specially constructed PDF, rather it is a scan of an original hardcopy. The scan suffers from the source document being well thumbed, the covers are worn and there has been no attempt to tidy up the imagery.

After seeing the cover page I had feared for the contents, but on paging through the PDF I found all of the pages inside to be cleanly scanned and easy to read. Unfortunately various pages of the original document had been stamped with "GDW Library" and these appear in the PDF, on one page even partially obscuring some of the text.

The PDF pages are a 1 to 1 scan of the original book so the PDF is 44 pages long (including the covers).

This book presents the reader with pretty much everything you need to know about the alien "Aslan" race. Aslan are bipedal aliens that resemble an earthly Lion on two legs.

Here's what the book contains:

• Anatomical diagrams
• Introduction to the Aslan empire
• How they measure time.
• Physiology
• History
• Society
• Government
• Armed Forces
• Language (including tools for generating Aslan words)
• Character generation (including Aslan careers, skills, mustering out)
• Aslan Weaponry
• Special rules for Aslan world generation
• Encounter/Patron tables
• Aslan's in the Imperium
• Humans in the Aslan Empire
• Aslan space vehicles.
• Scenario
• Map of Aslan space.

The book is made up of dense text in a two column layout. There is enough information here to create Aslan PCs and to go adventuring in Aslan space without there ever being a Human involved. Each of the sections above are very detailed and extensive, you will not lack for knowledge. It's hard to explain just how much detail is crammed into this book, but there is a lot of it.

I'm very happy with my purchase. It only cost $5, but I would have been willing to pay a little more had the book not been a simple scan. They have missed an opportunity in not creating a new digital layout that could be rendered comfortably by any E-Reader.

Summary : Buy it.

Death Bringers

Late last night I finally managed to release an RPG campaign book that I've been working on for about six months.

"Death Bringers" is a campaign book for the "3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars" role playing game. The campaign contains 20 missions on twenty different planets and each mission is broken down into anywhere between 3 and 8 separate combat encounters.

The back cover blurb is...

Death Bringers is a series of twenty pre-programmed combat missions for "3:16 Carnage amongst the Stars"

Each mission centres around destroying all life on an alien world. ALL THREATS TO THE CONTINUANCE OF PARADISE ON EARTH MUST BE ELIMINATED.

Each planet presents a unique challenge with different world wide conditions and a new life form to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.

Each plantary mission contains 3-8 seperate combat encounters building a progressing story as the play moves from encounter to encounter.

The game is available for purchase from RPGNow.com

.

Playing "3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars"

I started GMing a game of "3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars" game a good while ago on the RPPG-Geek forums. I took it through the first three missions, then another guy "Howitzer" took over the GMing role and breathed new life into the game.

As a "For Instance" of what this guy has done to the game...

Our characters are inside a massive hurtling asteroid that's been targeted at our home planet. We were in a warship, but it crashed into a massive cavern on the asteroid. Inside we find another smashed up ship from earth. We meet the survivors, only to find ourselves surrounded my beasts of half shadow and half our-imagination.

So these "ghosts" of our former comrades, lost loves and parents slide on up to us ...then attack. Troops in power armour taken out by ghosts! Oh the ignominious-ness of it. My character is left "crippled" by this attack. One of the other troopers is not as bad, he's "a mess".

My character did manage to kill 8 of the alien scum in the process, but he's unlikely to survive another attack. Things are looking grim. Surrounded by aliens. Trapped in an asteroid. No ship, no com' and rapidly running out of friends. Great game :)

Playing Evil in RPGs

Gosh I don't know what's kicked this off but I've recently heard two different podcasts discussing the pros and cons of playing Evil characters in fantasy settings.

Trying to remember - it hurts! - which podcasts it was, but I think it was Fear the Boot and RPG Circus.

Anyway neither show really hit what I thought was the "answer". Okay, now you're wandering what the question is ...aren't you. The question is "how" to play evil characters?

Why is that even a question? It's the question because most peoples initial view of "evil" characters is the baby eating back stabber who is some kind of constantly uber evil person. That's the problem. If you try to create a group of PC's of that type the group cohesion will not exist they will constantly be attacking each other!

What you need to do is accept that "evil" is more insidious. Look around the world we're in, look for evil and how it manifests.

For example, lets take the Nazi example. Nazi's imposed evil practices on the countries they controlled. They were organised, but they were also cohesive. We see this type of evil all of the time. What we call evil is so often the imposing of "evil" policy. So, be it a dictator in some desert country killing his own people, or some euro' with crazy ideas about people of another religion, they are imposing evil policies.

At the top of these organisations the people are generally quite evil , but even so they don't eat babies, or at least not in front of their followers.

When you want to play an "evil" campaign ( you sick git ) your PCs will have to be cohesive and organised. You could play the minions of the super evil character. Another alternative is to play bandits who are considered evil by everyone they pillage. Another alternative is to be a spy group, perhaps mercenaries who join up with the good guys but with a plan to double cross them.

In summary the group can be evil, but they have to remain a cohesive group. They can be "evil" to each other!

Playing Avalanche

Today a co-worker brought in a 1965 copy of Avalanche into the office. After pondering about this marble game that's actually 3 years older than me, we set to playing.

It's actually a great little filler. It's on a level with something like "Connect 4" in that it's obviously a toy and easy to play. Explaining the rules took no more than 20 seconds and off we went for a two player, quickly followed by a three player game.

Dropping the marbles in the top of the game gives a nice satisfying click-clack sound as they drop down the chutes and hit the swinging gates. When you get a bunch of marbles to drop in one hit it's satisfying, even if they are not the marbles you need.

During our three player game I managed to apply tactics, in that I noticed one other player was the only chap collecting blue marbles. So I actually concentrated on collecting blue by inserting red and yellow marbles ( the colours I was after ). I was able to keep him from winning but and only squeezed a second place out for myself.

After two plays, I'm quite sure this is a game I'll pick up myself if I see it in a shop somewhere. Great for kids, and a good little filler for me!

Contemplating a new RPG

I've been thinking about creating a new Role Playing Game. The idea for a one-shot type game came to me last night. I haven't really thought it all through yet but I'm still rather enamoured by the idea so I'm going to lay out the idea here so that it wont be lost.

The premise is a sci fi game where the players are super rich characters who like to hunt. The game starts with the PC's being dropped off on a remote planet by a shady guy who's promised them the hunt of a life time.

The game is simply the hunt. Other than the PC's the only other characters are the alien creatures being hunted.

I'm thinking that the Alien should be rolled up at the beginning of the game. This rolling up would consist of simple picking a collection traits/aspects that the GM would have to combine into some suitable target of the hunt.

The PCs would not be aware of the aliens aspects ( the shady character didn't give too much information ).

I'm thinking that the PC creation would be a little more complex. A small collection of skills would be available to pick from. Then they get a couple of positive traits/aspects and one negative. That would allow the PC's to be generated quite quickly which is required in a one-shot scenario.

Another variable that could be decided by a die roll, would be the environment, anything from swamp through to deserted city.

So that's the idea, a simple one shot game. I'll probably throw together the first draft of the rules in the near future, if I can find the time between work and recording audio books.

OSRIC RPG Review

What is it?

OSRIC is a retro clone of AD&D 1st edition. That means that the rules of AD&D are in this book, but none of the original art or artistic presentation. That's not to say there is no art, the book has a varied collection of art sprinkled liberally through its pages.

You can download this rules set for free as a very nicely laid out PDF, or order a hardcopy from the POD publisher LuLu. It's this Lulu copy that I'm reviewing.

Format?

The hardcopy I ordered is a softback, black and white inside with a colour cover. Its 380 odd pages with two column layout interspersed with single and double column art.

The cover is thin card and shiny, the paper inside seems to be about the same weight as standard printer-paper. The binding is solidly glued with no loose pages. I can not fault the print quality at all, the type and art are clear and crisp throughout. ( I had feared a lower quality because it was print-on-demand but it is actually better than some standard print products I've bought in the past.

The art is generally of the "hobbiest" quality with a few standout pieces, they seem to have come from a collection of different artists so there isn't a common look and feel throughout.

Contents?

The major sections in the book are :

Character Creation
Spells
How to Play
Dungeons, Towns and Wildernesses
Monsters
Treasure
Appendix

Each of these sections is stuffed with content and in the whole very well written. If you have a history of AD&D then you'll find all of the usual classes, races, spells you've seen before, although they may have slightly different names due to copyright restrictions.

I love what they've done with the "How to Play" section. This section is very very clear and suitably concise. They've managed to produce a text that describes how to play the game in a step by step manner that is clear and straight forward. I've introduced a couple of new players and they've found this an easy introduction to role playing.

Opinion?

This is a great book. Although it has a lot of pages, the actual rules are a limited to about only 60 pages with the rest being reference materials. This means that it's easy enough to get playing without a massive slog through an expanded rule system.

There is no hint of a background or environment in this book, so you'll have to add that yourself.

Value for Money?

Considering the cost, I've more than got my monies worth. I was pleasantly suprised by the price. I've been led to think that buying POD books is an expensive way to get your role playing games, but here I got very good VFM!

Mouse Guard RPG - Character Generation

Creating a Mouse Guard Character

The first step is to decide on your character concept you could be anything from a young Tender Paw up to the lofty heights of Guard Captain. Well I'm looking for something in the middle, without the responsibility of the higher ranks but also with some skills so I opt for Guardmouse, which one of the middle ranks, the foot soldier if you will.

Being a Guardmouse means my character will be aged anything from 18-25, I opt for middle of the road again, age 22, this also means the character will start with a "Will" stat of 3 and Health score of 5.


The next step is to determine the characters "Mouse Nature", basicly how strong is the Mouse as opposed to the anthropomorphic side. Starting with a value of 3, you then answer some questions each of which effects the Characters generation. For instance if your character goes without now so that it can save for

the winter then Nature increases by 1, and so on. I end up with a Mouse Nature of 4.

Next you decide where your character was born. This effects the skills your character gains before joining the Guard. In this case I opt for the town of Copperwood. This means my mouse gains the Skills of Smith and Haggler and the "Independent" trait.

Life Experience is the title of the next section. Here you answer a number of questions with each answer generating a number of skills. During this process may pick the same skill across multiple steps thereby increasing that skills rank.

The first step is to pick some skills, Guardmice such as mine get to pick just one. I opt for Hunter because it sounds cool!

What was you parents trade? This lets you choose another skill, here I opt for Cartographer. My thinking is that if I'm skilled at Hunting that means I'm out and about, so the information I bring back about the terrain would help with the Cartography of my parents and my own skills in that line.

Next comes apprenticeship. All Guardmice serve as an apprentice for two years, you get a single skill from this. I opt to up my Cartography.

Then comes mentoring by a member of the Guard and you get to pick from a sub list of skills. By luck I see Hunter is in the list and up that.

Your experiences in the Guard gain you a batch of Guard related skills, a Guardmouse gets 6. You can pick skills from a select list of Guard skills. In this case Hunter is there so I'll spend 3 on that making it a quite strong skill and spread the rest around. 1 on Fighter, 1 on Pathfinder and 1 on Scout.

Each Guardmouse has a speciality and this earns a skill, no two party members get to pick the same, and there are only 8 to choose from. As I'm rolling this character up as a stand alone it can choose any of the skills. In this case I'll up Fighter so that it's not too weak should an enemy turn up.

Now comes the tallying. What that means is that you add 1 to all of your skills to find their final value.

"Wises" come next. You get Wises, based on your rank, which in my case is Guardmouse, which means 2. Wises allow you "Know" facts, even introduce new facts the GM didn't know and also to augment skill checks. I'm figuring that as this mouse is a very good hunter, he should be Wise about related subjects, so I

opt for "Squirrel Wise" and "owl Wise". My rationale behind these is that Squirrels hide nuts, so knowing about that helps me character hunt out their food, and being outside means that he knows about the terrible Mouse Predator the OWL!

Guard Resources, is your acharacters ability to pay for or at least get hold of Guard resources, such as a replacement shield. As a Guardmouse I start with a rank of 2, but as I answer questions about my mouse this goes up and down, there are six questions. An example is, "Do you buy gifts for friends?". After working through the six questions my final score is 3

Circles is next. Circles refer to circles of friends, this allows you get help , it tells us how well connected socially the mouse is. Guardmice start with a score of 2 and answer some questions to modify that score. For example, Does your character have powerful enemies? My final score is ... 2.

Now come Traits, these represent personality quirks. I've already picked up Independent becuase of where the mouse was born, but the answers I given to questions in previous phase of character generation have ruled out a bunch of possible traits. There are pick lists for each of the trait phases.

Quality born with : I pick Longtail
Inherited from Parents : I pick Early riser
Life on the Road : I pick Sharp Eyed

We're nearly done now. I pick "Kole" as a name, Brown for a Fur color, my parents are Laird and Daye, I apprenticed with Abram, was mentored by Vidar and my best friend is a femail Guardmouse called Rona. My cloak is Red.

Now for the juicey bit. You have to make up an enemy. I decide on a hermit who lives in the wilds nears Copperwood. While hunting one day I picked food from one of his traps. Unfortunately although he's a Hermit he's the son of the aged Mayor of Copperwood.

Next you select a Belief for your character, this is an ethical or morale stance. I make up... "Self reliance is the foundation of the communities strength."

You would at this point, select a "Goal" for the character, but as that is based on the mission, I'll skip it for now.

Instinct is the final attribute. What is the characters first reaction likely to be, what are they trained to do. I make up the following. "Gather information, make an informed choice."

So there you go. Generating a character for Mouseguard . I have to say it is one of the most rewarding character gen' experiences I've had, at each step you feel like you really are building a personality rather than just min-maxing. It does have 21 steps, but each is quick and easy and thoughtful.

Age 22
Will 3
Health 5
Nature 4
Guard Resources 3

Skills:
Smith x2
Haggler x2
Hunter x6
Cartographer x3
Fighter x3
Pathfinder x2
Scout x2

Traits:
Independent
Long tail
Early Riser
Sharp Eyed

Wises:
Owl
Squirrel

FATE 2.0 RPG

I'm running a play by forum game using the FATE 2.0 rules. As I'm a newbie to these rules I keep forgetting some of the rules. So with that in mind I'm making this post to summarise a few rules that I need to remember ( or at least be able to look up quickly online).

Aspects can be used to do the following if the action is applicable to the Aspect :
1. Reroll all dice after the event
2. Choose any die and change it to a "+"
3. Reroll a single die.
4. "Spend" an aspect to aid the character in narrating a scene. For instance, the Aspect "Rich" could be called on to allow the character to purchase a car.

FATE points can be spect to :
1. Add +1 to a roll(before or after the actual roll.
2. Take a minor narrative control of the scene. For instance you could spend a FATE point to have a witness turn up, or a bicycle just happen to be nearby when you need to escape.
3. Counter someone elses spending of a FATE point.
4. To take the camera for a monologue
5. Spend 2 FATE to give someone else a +1 to their roll.
6. Switch places with someone in combat
7. Take a hit in combat instead of someone else.

May 14th 1982. Sit Rep.

This isn't a full session report as much as a "Wow I can't believe it's going so well this far into the game" type of thing...with pics. Obviously, me being so hyped on how well its going is definitely going to make it all go wrong, well maybe, we'll see. The game in question is Where there is Discord

Let's look at the turn track...

At first glance all is well. After a spectacular bombing raid on Stanley airfield, including Vulcans and 5 Harriers I've managed to cave in the Argentine Supply situation. On second glance you'll not they still have 5 Exocets. In fact they've only launched one Exocet raid but that was bounced (phew). And I took a hit in international opinion to stop them getting further missiles.

Now the Opinion track...

It's blurry but you can still see that International opinion is really low. I took a piece of advice from a session report here on the geek, to sacrifice International opinion if it keeps National up. So far it's not hurt me much even though it looks bad. I'm not too worried about losing Acension as the early warnings from them have been few and far between so far! You'll also note that I only have one San-Carlos event so far. Compared to the way these cards normally fall for me, I'm way ahead of the curve!

The card decks...

Another blurry one, sorry. Not a lot to see here, but you'll note I've been held up on my journey south, as the Sit Rep number is behind the date. A minor conveniance actually :) Card number 2 was a UN call for a cease fire which I rejected, I told you I'm on a high, and when everything is going well, why sue for peace!

The SAS...

I've stuck to my usual practice of leaving the SAS watching for Super Etenards throughout most of the game as I am so often creamed by the Exocets. That hasn't happened this game so far, in fact the Skyhawks have been my bane, they just sunk HMS Coventry. :angry:

Under the water...

My own inclination in previous games has been to drop one sub in each zone and leave them there. Yet, once again I've adopted another stratergy from a previous poster here at BGG and I've been focusing on the Coastal zone, and only moving out if there is something to target. This hasn't been as successful. None of the naval conflicts have resulted in a kill as yet. I was hoping that this change would have helped eliminate the naval threat early in the game, but no such luck.

In the air...

Not a lot to see here, but I've basicly been pumping 5 Sea Harriers a turn out on missions each turn to whittle down the Argentine supply situation. Once again, this is something I have always only sent one or two harriers out for it in previous games. It's working very well, many turns I haven't put up a CAP at all. CAP's look even less likely for the next few turns as I'm now two Harriers down. One to bad weather and another in the raid on Stanleys airport.

On the transports...

This is my secret load-out pattern, you MAY NOT copy it in your games. It's actually a new pattern for me, so wish me luck with it :)

Onto disposition of the fleet...

You'll immediately notice the inset top left. Yes it's true the Sheffield has been lost...but not in the game if you take my meaning. Do not cry, I've done enough for everyone!

You may wonder why I only have HMS Alacrity in the western zone (a type T21 no less!), well that's because those blasted Skyhawks have just sunk the Coventry which was in that zone. They'll have to be some rearrangements next turn. Perhaps the loss of the Coventry signifys the ending of my good run, even if that is the case, at least I'll have this report to look back on and smile.

Monty Python Fluxx

Until this Christmas I'd never played or even see any of the Fluxx games played. I have to admit that what I'd heard about it did sound fun but wasn't going to risk my hard-earned on a game I wasn't sure about.

Still Christmas rolled round and presents arrived and you can guess what was included!

I played one game with my wife and son, and it was pretty good, apart from me having no memory for songs and losing out because of it ( and not having seen any Monty Python for about 15 years ). We had some fun.

Then this weekend I had a bigger game with daughter #3 and her intended added into the collection for 5 people sitting round the table. We'd just had a meal and were sitting back and relaxing with some drinks when the game hit the table.

I think I found its sweet spot with five people. That's enough people so that someone has something funny to say, and that at least one other person is going to get the Monty Python joke. It's also not so big that that you sit around waiting too long for your turn.

We ended up playing two hands ( or is it rounds ) and having a jolly good time. I recommend the game to monty python fans but would offer a stern "stay away" to anyone who doesn't.

Dragonology , a review

My son received "Dragonology:The Game" for christmas. He's a simply nuts for anything with big teeth, be it dragons, dinos or even crocs, so this is way up his street.

When I saw the box I was impressed. Its about the size of a standard square box, think Lord of the Rings(2000) or Doom:The Boardgame or Memoir '44, and you're on the right track. This box is a nice heavy weight card with a loverly design printed on it, it exudes quality. What I especially like about it though is that the top of the box is also a flap! Open the flap and behind you find a transparent plastic top that lets you see the playing pieces inside the box.

When you take off the top inside you find some excellent looking bits. There are a number of character pieces that you use as pawns. These characters are full of ... well character. They are pre painted and each is different. There's the woman dressed for a tea party, an explorer and a chap in a nice suit and so on. You'll be moving these around the board. Unfortunately play has revealed that a couple of these are perched on bases too small and tend to fall over.

Then you have a bunch of dragon miniatures. These represent pretty much every type of dragon you've ever heard of. The standard four legs two wings, the chinese dragons the wyverns and so on. These are fairly small and not in scale to the player pawns.

The board is a wonderful peice of art featuring the entire world laid flat with path ways traced aross it. Along these pathways are cities, ports, dragon homes and special spaces that allow you to collect tickets or knowledge ( more later ).

The theme of the game is that your character will be travelling around the world researching information on dragons, which you then use to ensnare a dragon or three. Some of the special spaces I mentioned allow you to take a Ticket to help you on your journey around the world. These tickets are absolutely wonderful. Shaped like old world tickets and depicting airplanes, balloons, trains etc they look like real tickets!

As I said you're going around the world researching, so when you land on a city, dragon-home etc you can take a "Bit of Knowledge" card. These either give you an ability to break a rule or give you a bit of knowledge about one of the dragons. When you collect three bits of knowledge for a single type of dragon, you should make your way to the dragon's home space and collect that dragon. Once you have it, no one else can get that dragon... unless they have a card that lets them steal it!

The "Bit of Knowledge" cards are loverly to look at, they have a high sheen and the art on the front is top notch, unfortunately they choose to have odd shaped cards without a straight edge on them. They look great but do suffer from not being easily shuffled or fanned in the hand.

As to play. Well it's basically, roll the die, move, pick up a card or ticket if you can, collect a set, get a dragon, move to the end game space. And that's it. There just isn't any substance to it for a hobby gamer. For the family however to play over the Christmas break, once a year, instead of Monopoly... most definitely.

It is a wonderfully produced and smashing looking, and sadly missing any real game play.

Deepsea Desperation

Deepsea Desperation is a board game released by Greenpeace. It's a little print and play game that quite obviously is a dig at BP, and politically driven. At first glance you can see that the oil drillers are the bad guys and animals are in danger, everything as you might expect.

What did I expect?

I expected a miserable piece of rubbish. The "real" world often puts out these kinds of things and without fail thay are rubbish. Roll 'n move in a snakes 'n ladders style.

But Wait! What's this? The game is designed by Terror Bull games? The people who designed "War on Terror"! Real game designers. Wow!

That's right a small print and play given away with political motives designed by real game designers! I was shocked.

Well I printed the game and gave it a try. To be sure its not a great game, but it is a real game with tactics. Considering that it's only two pages to print and games last about 10 mins' what do you have to lose.

I hope this kind of thing becomes a trend. People pushing agendas, maybe even products, but with real playable interesting games we can get our hands on.

Not much chance , but I've got my fingers crossed.

Get the game

.

Nile - review

"Nile" is a straight forward card game for 2 - 5 players. I've been playing this with the guys at work during lunch and it's proved itself very popular. Our first couple of games went quite slow but now we're easily getting two games in during the lunch break with minutes to spare.

The cards in the game represent five basic crops, Lettuce, Castor, Wheat, Papyrus and Flax. During play you'll be playing cards of the various types out on the table in front of you into your "fields". Of course it's not that simple!

At the start of your turn, you turn over a "flood" card. The crop shown on the Flood card is then harvested by all players that have that crop planted. So if you have a field with three Wheat cards in it and the flood card was "Wheat" you would take the top Wheat card from your field and place that in your score pile. You'll be collecting cards of the various types like this throughout the game.

Once the flood has been dealt with you can "trade". There are two types of trade neither of which is actually trading with other players. The first type of "trade" is where you discard two cards and draw one from the deck, hoping to get a card that you need. The other trade type is to discard two cards and turn over a new Flood card causing extra Harvests.

After the trades you get to plant new fields by playing cards straight to the table in front of you or into existing fields. You can plant two matching cards ( for instance two Wheat ) as a new field. You could also plant two cards of two different crops ( one of each ). Additionally you can any number of cards that match into fields you already have planted.You can't however plant just anything! You cant plant any cards that match the current "Flood" card, and you cant plant a new field unless playing more cards than any other player has on the table in that crop. So if the Flood card is Lettuce, I can't play that, and if any other player currently has Flax planted I can't play that... unless I can plant two Flax and he only has one. If you do manage to plant a new and bigger field the other players have to discard their smaller field!

The last thing you do on your turn is to draw two cards.

You go through the draw deck once for each player, and as players are constantly adding cards to their score pile each iteration gets quicker as the deck is shrinking.

There are two more card types that add flavour. A single "Locusts" card when drawn makes the player with the biggest field (largest number of cards in that field) discard the entire field. The other type of card is "Speculation". On your turn you can play up to two speculation cards. These cards have two crops on them, if the next flood card matches either then you immediately get to draw three cards into your hand.

At the end of the game, you sort your score pile into the different crops and score one point for each card in your smallest pile. If you haven't got one of every crop, you score zilch!

That's it. Simple stuff, yet it is tactical and you will be making plans and actioning decisions during play.

Some anecdotes for you.

I discovered that one player was tracking what crops I had harvested and had deduced that I hadn't any Papyrus, so he made great efforts to keep a big field of Papyrus in front of him, denying me any score at all at the end. It worked too!

During another game I was again trying to harvest a Papyrus, if I got it I would have at least one of every crop type scored. I had a two Papyrus field in play and was very aware that the Locust card had not come out yet. So to protect that field I built up a field of four wheat ( so if the Locust came out they would take Wheat and not my precious Papyrus ). A few turns later I still hadn't scored it, so started discarding cards to generate new floods and did manage to get Papyrus in flood, Huzzar!.

In a similar incident I wanted to plant a field of Castor but one of my opponents had a two Castor field. So again I started discarding to cause Floods and that paid off, I flooded Castor, reducing the size of his field. Then flooded Lettuce and was able to play out my two Castor in a new field.

On a number of occasions I've felt the pressure of trying to score that last type of crop and watching the deck shrink far too quickly, adding a level of interest to the game, a tenseness.

In summary, I'm really quite taken by the game and it's proved very popular with my group.

Where there is Discord - Session Report

Yesterday was a good day for me! Why? Well I got to play a game of "Where there is Discord : War in the South Atlantic" right through.

It's a solitaire wargame where you control the British task force heading south to retake the Falkland islands in 1982 and the reason I was so happy about playing it is that I dont get it to the table very often at all.

The reason it's a rarity is that it is massive, the sides of the board actually hang over the sides of my table and the game play itself usually takes me about nine hours! I'm not able to leave games set up overnight so reserving the time and table can be a challenge.

Yesterday's was of the usual length, but do not fear, every minute of that game was great fun. I just love the way the game builds in intensity as you play. My wife noted my occasional bellows of "Oh yeah!" and "In your face!". Sadly she also noted my occasional wail of pain. It's that kind of game, it gets to you.

Before I say how it went I want to advise that anyone playing this game grabs a copy of the "Expanded Order of Play" by Board Game Geek user Doug Adams as it can save quite a bit of looking up when you haven't played for a while.

So here's what happened in May 1982...

1st : Had to reduce demands on US resources and send two ships home. I regretted this later.

3rd : Had a terrific offer from the French to train with them that meant I got to bounce all future Mirage and Dagger attacks. This undoubtably saved me a few ships.

4th : A bad day all round, not only did the world hate the interference with the banking system neccesary to stop the Argi's getting more Exocets, but worse still a surface battle group snuk through the screen and managed to sink HMS Yarmouth before getting away.

6th : HMS Avenger had to be sent to Chile rather than sent to the Falklands as a reinforcement. Once again, this came back to bite me later.

7th : Today felt like I was stabbed in the back. After sending the Avenger to Chile yesterday, today they stopped giving me intel because of all things I upped the security at Malta!

8th : Finally the weather started letting me interdict Argi' supplies. HMS Splendid spotted the Argi' Carrier group but couldn't get permission to fire, dang!

9th : Splendid got the permission it needed and sunk the Carrier. Also launched a joint Vulcan/Harrier bombing attack on the Falklands airport which was mildly successful but at the cost of a Harrier.

10th : HMS Sheffield sunk out in the defence zone

11th : HMS Invincible had to withdraw with a couple of escorts for repairs.

12th : Had an opportunity to launch an SAS mission against the Argi' Exocet supply, but cancelled it because of potential international reprecussions.

15th : An Exocet attack took place but the missle missed. Harrier "Red 2" took on four Skyhawks, he got two of them before he was shot down.

16th : HMS Ardent sunk by bombs.

17th : Two destroyers taken from picket duty to escort a "friendly" Russion trawler away from the task force at the worst of times. Immediately after, a raid by Skyhawks sunk the Invincible. I was devastated. Fortunately the remaining Harriers managed to make it off before she went down.

The very next raid meant the loss of HMS Brilliant to an Exocet. I was really cursing the Russians at this point. Then a second Exocet came in and sent HMS Brilliant to the bottom. All in all, a very bad day.

18th : The dreaded Exocet struck again, this time HMS Glamorgan. Revenge was sweet, the next attack in was by a pair of Etendards but a rapidly scrambled Harrier managed to shoot the one carrying the Exocet out of the air. "IN YOUR FACE!" Doubly sweet because intel said it was the last they had.

19th : Harrier lost to bad weather, such a waste.

23rd : After delay 3 Para land in San carlos but HMS Glasgow and HMS Andromada both lost.

24th : Both the Welsh guards and the Gurkhas failed to get a lodgement when landing.

25th : Intrepid lost, 42 Commando lost, vicious counter attacks fought off by the SBS and 8 Commando.

26th : HMS Fearless sunk. The people back home couldn't take any more and the government ordered a withdrawl.

And so the game ended in a complete loss. Looking back over it there were a couple of decisions that I went the wrong way with. I definitely should have gone with the SAS attack on the Exocet supply, those things are just too dangerous to ignore. Why didn't I attack, because of the International Opinion. i think I was being too precious about it. With every other option I had, I ensured Exocets were blocked withheld banned etc but this a big regret.

In San Carlos I should have placed "junk" ships on either side of the ones carryingout the landings, to soak up Skyhawk attacks. Failing to do this cost me a landing ship which subsequently meant I lost a unit on sure beacuse it was at diminished strength

Also I will study my troop loading more carefully next time. I felt I was almost wasting a turn/day sitting in San Carlos not unloading everything I could.

Once again, a Great Game

Legitimacy - Review

A couple of months back I sold my copy of Talisman which I'd been lugging around since the 80's. Why did I sell it? I realised that I'd become reluctant to play it. The reason I was reluctant was simply that the game was too darned long, even when I used my "play fast rules". I also found the use of counters for everything a wee bit fiddley.

The hole that Talisman left in my collection has now been very well filled by Legitimacy!

In this game you take control of a character in a fantasy land and move around the board fufilling quests collecting crown jewels and then race to claim the throne.

The charcater you play can have three stats, move, fight and magic. Move is a bonus you add to a die roll when it comes time for you to move. Fight is added to a die when you're bashing another player, and magic is a ranged attack which can take various forms depending on spell used.

All the chracters start as "Good" but if you attack another player your'll become "Evil". This doesn't change your character as such, but if you have any "Good" followers they will leave you when you turn "Evil" and vice versa. Once you complete a mission and gain a Jewel however your character becomes "good" again, huzzar!

You'll also start with a random pet, which adds to one of your abilities.

The board is based on large hexagons each of which has a colour. Your character has a colour too, and an associated board hex. When setting up the hexes as the play board you always start with the black hex and add the hex for each character. So if you have three players you would have a board made up of a total of four hexes. These hexes are cute with comical graphics and little characters hidden amoungst the artwork such as the nessie in the lake.

These hexes, contain a number of path ways and you can move your character along these (roll a die add your move stat). The paths cross from hex to hex. The paths all have various munbers of spaces along them, including named spaces and black spaces. If you choose to stop at a black space you can draw a card that might be a mission or an object. If its a mission, which is usually just travel to a named space, your in luck. Once you travel to that named space you'll get to draw a Crown Jewel card. You'll need three crown jewels to win. As a bonus some of the Jewels also have special abilities.

As you're traveling around you are able to attack or zap other players and nick their stuff, of course they'll be trying to do the same to you! This leads to some careful decisions as to which direction and how far you might travel along certain branches of the paths. As I found out while playing, it does no good to travel up a dead end path to get to a named space so you can grab a jewel, only to find yourself trapped,attacked and looted!

Once you've got your hands on the required three jewels you race to the castle throneroom at which point you'rw the winner.

This is a light game with comical artwork that is fun to play with the family. It's length is just right for the complexity.

Here's why I feel this replaced Talisman:

The game DOES NOT drag on for three hours of roll and move.
It DOES NOT have lots of fiddley counters used to track everything.
It DOES NOT have a bunch of fiddley rules for what you can carry.
It DOES NOT have you constantly going backwards and forwards trying to get to a particular space.
It DOES NOT have the equivalent "Bandits" card to spirit eveything that you worked to gain in the last two hours away to the oasis.

IT DOES play in a decent amount of time.
IT DOES use cards to track your goodies and abilities.
IT DOES vary with each play depending on what characters you choose.
IT DOES vary what spells, pets, objects and missions you have to complete.
IT DOES generate a lot of table chat and FUN!

All in all, I really like this game, comical, light, fantasy adventure in less than an hour.

Sturgeon - A Review

Today I played the new card game from "Minion Games" called simply "Sturgeon". I played with three but this game does cope with up to five.

It's an odd name for a game, but the game behind the name is pretty good.

It's not really a gamers game, but a more family orientated light filler. Once your first learning game is out of the way I think you'll get through a game in about fifteen minutes. That length feels just about right for the variety of mechanics and decision making involved.

The theme of the game is fish, yes fish. Not fishing, just fish. The table in front of each player represents a part of a shared lake. Each player wants to get two Sturgeon ( thats a fish! ) in their part of the lake. The first player to get two of these big fish wins.

You turn is pretty quick and pretty easy. You start by drawing a card into your hand, you can then play as many cards as you can, with a limitation being that you can only play one fish card. Then if you happen to have more than five cards in your hand you discard down to five. That's it.

You play fish cards down in front of you. You can simply play a "Minnow" into your part of the lake. However to play a "Bass" which is a bigger fish you have to eat ( discard ) two "minnows". To play the mighty "Sturgeon" you have to eat ( discard ) two "Bass".

However you don't just have to eat fish in your own area of the lake. Ther is another type of card, a "Swim" card. If you play a swim card as you play a Bass or a Sturgeon you can eat a fish from another part of the lake, play two "swims" and you can eat two fish from someone else part of the lake. Normally a swim card can only allow you to reach an adjacent player, but if you double up the swim cards you can reach further around the turn order.

There are other cards in the deck, one revserses the order of play, which also effects how "swim" cards are played. Another card is the Fisherman, which you can play to remove another players Sturgeon. Also you can protect your fish with "Weeds" or by making them into a school.

And thats about it. It's a simple path to victory and the play is certainly not going to strain your brain. It's a light and quick to play game, ideal for family play or as a simple filler. You might even play a round to see who'll be your start player of the next game.

The game comes in a nice shiny tuck box featuring a Sturgeon leaping out of the lake, and the game is made up of 60 cards. The cards are themselves are standard weight and thickness and feature some nice cartoon fish, and I just love the minnow hiding in the weeds, he's so cute!

The rules cover 1 side of a sheet of paper with the rear side of the same sheet containing examples of play.

All in all its a nice family game, well presented, clearly explained and all for under 12 US Dollars. At that price you can't complain, it's simply a bargain!

A MERP RPG session heading for a TPK

The party have entered an underground Orc infested dungeon like affair.

Two orcs escaped from the first combat, running down a corridor. One nipped into a side room, The other ran to the end and opened the door. the door led to a cafeteria and 6 more Orcs were muching their chow in there.

The Orc that opened the door turned and guarded it waiting for back up from his pals. The party first nipped into the side room which turned out to be the armoury and put an arrow or two through the orc who was himself grabbing a bow and some arrows.

Then they decided to deal with the other Orc, as they emerged into the corridor they found that he was standing his ground but a table had been turned on its side and pushed across the doorway and a bunch of Orcs were behind it waving nothing bigger than cutlery ( they had been eating ).

The partys sniper ( Elf with +71 Missile ) planned to start picking them off and pulled out his bow and commenced to fumble it dropping it. Then the tank came running down the corridor ( Fighter with +43 1 Handed Edged ) and he too fumbled, badly, and ended up rolling a D crush crit which broke his leg giving him a -40 to activity! We ruled that he'd tripped over the elfs bow as he ran forward.

The partys scout and wizard came rushing foward to protect the fallen warrior. The Orc tried to kill the fallen man with a big swing but HE fumbled! The sword went flying! I gave it a 30% chance of the sword flying over the barricade to the Orcs with the cutlery, and it did!

The Orc threw itself onto the warrior in a grapple attack.

The partys scout jumped into the grapple and managed to pull the Orc off the fighter in a full nelson. The sniper and Wizard put an arrow each into it.

At this point the Orcs behind the barricade boosted the Orc with the newly aquired sword over the obstruction in a flying attack. He crashed into the floor and was pin cushioned with arrows before he could rise.

A few more arrors went over the table thinning the Orc heard before the Scout could stand no more of this waiting. He decided to jump the Barricade and get into combat, but rolled poorly, ending up only halfway over the barricade! The Orcs immediately all fell on him, opening him up with thier knives.

And there we ended it. Scout dead, tank immobile ( with -40 he couldn't even move! ) four angry Orcs a few feet away, and only a weak Wizard and the Sniper left on their feet.

A fun time all round and proof that the crit and fumble systems of MERP can make for great game play :)

Five Torpedoes and down she goes...

I've just finished my first game in a couple of months of "Sink the Bismarck", and managed a reasonable score, but in a rather odd way.

The first couple of turns passed with things going my way quite nicely, I managed to down a couple of Swordfish planes quite quickly, but then things started going weird.

The early success turned into air-gunnery disaster, when for turn after turn I hit nothing at all, and the first torpedo hit the ship very quickly.

Another couple of rounds later and the air was filled with Swordfish and I was having to point all of the guns into the water to fend off torps.

It was in the water that my luck was strongest. In the end I blew thirteen torpedos and only downed five aircraft! Most turns I was pointing two gunnery dice at a torpedo, other turns all of them. Only when there was a slight breather was I able to target an aircraft.

In the water I kept getting 6 after 6, but in the air... only despair!

When you target an aircraft in one of the outer air lanes it gives you a two thirds chance of targetting the right space, as the plane only has a one third chance of deviating. However this did not work for me at all in this game. The Swordfish just kept dodging.

Back in the water my luck was outrageously good. But luck is of course fickle, and my run of 6's couldn't hold. Eventually it broke and the last three torpedos all hit within two turns.

It all ended with a not-bad score of 70 points.

The end for Talisman?

Yesterday I played Talisman for the first time in probably a year, maybe two years, I havn't actually checked.

I played it because my son had been asking. I was reluctant because I knew just how long the game takes. I've felt for a long time that the game is too long, under the normal rules it usually runs for 3+ hours.

To address the time problem I've made a few house rules, which are as follows.

1 ) When you kill Craft based monsters you can cash in your trophes for a gain in craft, just like you do for Strength.

2 ) Instead of needing 7 Strength ( or Craft, see rule 1 ) in trophies to increase a stat, you only need 5.

3 ) You can have as many followers as you can collect.

4 ) No limit to how m any items you can carry

5 ) No limit on the number of weapons, armors etc you can use, so yes, you only have two arms but can use 6 swords.

6 ) Start with 4 gold.

So thats what I changed in order to speed up the game. However, it wasn't enough. Sure it speeded up the game, but something was still wrong. It's only now the next day that I've allowed mysef to see the problem.

"Allowed myself to see", you say? Yep, I believe that I've been in denial about this game. I've actually had this game since the 80s and even bought an expansion for it back in the day. This game has followed me for over 20 years and that has given it a certain amount of "value".

But now, now that my experience of games has grown, I've come to realise in the last day that I don't actually like the game. I don't like this game that I've kept safe and secure for 20+ years and carried from home to home. That was a hard truth to uncover.

So, what is it that I dont like? Obviously it's too long. But it turns out there's more. It's just too random for my liking. As a principal I dont mind randomness in games, but here, it's gone too far. Roll to move, roll for the event card, roll for the encounter, roll for the location effects. Roll, roll, roll leading to too little choice, too much bad luck and too little stratergy.

With my new realisation I'm now planning on selling my 1983 copy of Talisman along with its expansion, making room in my collection for a game I do like!

Oh, and despite the game being so random, how come the Witch always ends up on the doorway to the inner circle?

A six turn limit.

I have now played exactly one game of Risk : Transformers.

From a read through of the rules before playing I thought I had finally found a risk variant that would work for me.

My experience of risk has been the original version which simply drags on and on longer than a game of Talisman! The other verion I played was the awful Star Wars : Clone wars disaster, which was totally broken.

So how'd it go with this game? It went very well actually!

For a start the box is just the right size, The two other versions I mentioned are in larger boxes that take up too much space. This box fitted a hole on my shelf perfectly.

Inside we have a very colourful board, Robots (transformers) and tanks for playing pieces and a somewhat bizarre L shaped piece of plastic for each factions leader, The dice are good quality and heavy.

Another nice addition is the plastic scenery. There are two turntable areas that allow you to join or break connections between two areas. You get an army into the zone, only to have your opponent swivel it so it no longer goes where you want it to go. The other two plastic zones have a sliding area that can be moved to open a factory where extra units can be created.

So what we have are some good variation to the basic game.

1) Plastic terrain pieces that move
2) Strange L shaped leader pieces ( that also fight with D8s )
3) The game is only 6 turns long

STOP! WAIT! WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?

Yes that's right the game is exactly 6 turns long. And this fixes the biggest bugbear I have with Risk, that it goes on far far too long.

So all of the usual tactics are here, take over areas, earn cards, mass for attacks etc, except now it doesn't go on for 20 hours.

After 6 turns you just count who has the most areas occupied to see who's won. Frankly thats just enough for the repetitive Risk mechanics, but here it's even enhanced by the ability to use the plastic terrain pieces to your advantage.

So I reccomend this version of Risk.

The Decktet book.

This is a review of the recently released Decktet book.

Disclosure : I designed a game that uses the Decktet, a variation of that is included in this book, and I was sent a complimentary copy.

The Details :

This softback book is the size of a regular paperback and runs to 136 pages, has a glossy colour cover and is black and white within.

In my murky past I once read a book about the various standard games that can be played with regular cards. That book ( long since lost ) basically listed the games and gave the rules for each in a dry style. This book does not do that, this book has a jaunty style that makes it an engaging read, it also contains much more than just rules!

Lets step through the pages.

After a couple of pages preliminaries it leads into a section that I found really enjoyable. In this section the author describes the genesis of the Decktet gaming system, from first ideas to final version. The text and images show how the card designs evolved and give an insight into the desingers mind and inspirations.

The next section is the biggest in the book and actually gives you the rules for a number of games. This is not some dry recital of mechanics! As I mentioned earlier, the mood of the writing is jaunty and never boring.

I should mention that the designer has a "game world" in mind when dealing with the Decktet, and many of the games have a background story about their development or place in the world. What this does is help to build a theme into the card play. With a regular deck you'd just be following suit or some such, but with this background you have a theme or a story to the game play. I have found that having that background adds to my enjoyment of the games.

In general each game description is broken up into "Setup", "Play", "stratergy" and "using the Extended Deck", the final section often giving extra rules which you might consider the advanced version of the game.

In total 21 games are presented.

Next up are a few pages suggesting how you could use the card deck within a role playing game. I hadn't thought of that until reading this section, and I found that it did inspire me to use the deck for this. Some good ideas here.

Then comes part 3, which a guide to using the Decktet for fortune telling. Obviously this is silly nonsence, BUT the process' and suggestions here are very useful once again for the roleplayer. The Gypsy fortune teller in your RPG could be played out in full at the gaming table using this guide.

For the number crunchers out there, you will find the final section of interest. It presents a number of analytical views of the deck with especial reference to how the numbers add up for the various games. this knowledge will certainly be of use to a serious player.

A final note, about art. The book is liberally scattered with black and white art, varying in style from simple pen and ink drawings to wood-cut like. All of the art adds to the "feel" of the book and the theme of the Decktet itself.

In summary, I've really enjoyed reading the book and would reccomend it for any fan of the Decktet, or anyone who wants a game related book for some light reading.

The Decktet

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Zooloretto

We played out first game of Zooloretto tonight as a family. I've played a couple of games at work with "the guys", but today was the first at home.

I really only gave the family the briefest outline of what the game was about. Pointed at the enclosures, and said you can only have one animal type in each. Pointed at the coins, and then pointed to the coin-action aid mentioning what could be done in the very briefest of ways.

Then we started, I just told then to draw out of the bag and then put the tile on one of the trucks, which we all did for the first round. Then as my wife started the second round I told her that instead of adding to the trucks she could take a truck, but would have to sit out a turn. She added to the truck. Same info to my son who also added to the truck.

A coin tile came out and I explained that the coin tile would be swapped for a wooden coin.

We all took a full truck at the end of the first round.

During the next round a Male camel came out, so I explained the breeding rules. My son bailed early this round, realising I wanted the male camel he took that truck half full. Grr!

I soon filled my first enclosure and took the coins, explaining why I got them. During my next turn I swapped my full enclosure with a partially full one, once again explaining what I was doing.

My son queried buying a tile. I think he was eyeing up one of the animals in my enclosure so I had to disapoint him and say he could only by from the barn. He was still happy though, and took a Panda off of me. It was an attack, it was a Male in my Barn which would have matched nicely with the Female I had out in an enclosure. Grr!

So here we go. My son and I were bashing each others animal selection and meanwhile my wife was just taking trucks and filling enclosures like mad. We got into the final sections of tiles and she started spending ALL of the coins she had aquired to empty her well stocked barn.

So we ended and my wife wins followed by me and my son came in just behind. It was a close game, and the introduction of the rules as we went along obviously didn't hurt their play.

This is a fun game, and deserves it's Spiel de Jahres award.

Inns and Cathedrals

This week I've a couple of games of Carcassonne using the "Inns and Cathedrals" expansion, and it's been a good experience.

Basically it includes a number of new tiles.

A couple of "Cathedral" tiles, which are entirely city with no green edges. This adds a really fun effect. When added to a city that city becomes totally valueless unless the city is completed. If completed the city is worth extra points.

Likewise the other tiles include road tiles but they roads have inns next to the road. Like the Cathedral if completed the road is worth extra, but if not complete the road is worthless at the end of the game.

Both of these features cause a few things to happen, especially in the end game. If you draw a Cathedral tile or an Inn tile and an opponent has a big feature going you can take a gamble and play this poisoned chalice into their feature spoiling it for the end game score.

Of course you can likewise take the tile and try to make the most of it earlier in the game by scoring extra points.

As well as these great score effecting tiles, it also includes a number of extra tiles that are new, and will cause the tile-counters to have to recalculate. These are not repeats of existing tile types but whole new shapes that give you new great options.

This expansion is a worth while purchase for a Carcassonne fan. It adds new scoring options without either unbalancing the game or breaking the existing stratergies.