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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full article with pics here http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=312
First, a confession. I am late to the Thunderstone party. I played Thunderstone at the Games Expo last year and was very impressed. It was a quick and easy game to play with plenty of depth. Since then I kept meaning to pick a copy up but it didn't happen. There have been a couple of base sets and several expansions, however this latest base set looks to clear up a lot of rules questions and advance the rules further, so it’s ideal time to crash the Thunderstone party.
We have already put up our Thunderstone videos showing what you get in the box (over here http://youtu.be/w41oynGKGrY) and how to play the game (and over here http://youtu.be/wBtLD6NGrqA), so we took it to the Wigan Wargames game night for a play. We played a 5 player game with all new players, at the start of the game someone asked how long the game ran for. The box says 45 mins, however our game took 3 hours to wrap up. Like I say however, 5 new players, so there were a lot of rules checking and working out strategies. The last half hour we all knew exactly what we were doing and flew through the turns, so our next game will be much quicker. There are a few things you can do to speed your turn up as well if you have a few players, you can be looking at your cards and deciding what you want to do as the other players take their turn, as most of the actions you take are not directly affected by other players actions.
Our video takes you through the rules in more detail, but the idea of the game is to build your personal deck of cards, full of heroes and weapons, then work your way through a dungeon of monster cards till you beat the Thunderstone bearer. At that point all players add together the victory point values of each monster they killed, the player with the highest points wins. Each turn you can either go to the Village and buy cards to add to your deck, or go to the Dungeon to fight monsters.
The game started well, the players picked up the base rules quickly. As with all card games, you can only fit so many rules on the card, so some of the cards needed more clarification for everyone. Some benefits were not immediately obvious, but when combined with other cards the benefits became clear.
After having played a solo game before hand there were a few tactics I wanted to try. When you are in the village buying heroes you can either buy a Regular (a basic fighter that you start the game with 6 of) or a level 1 named hero. These have special abilities and can be levelled up past the first level to level 3 to increase their power using xp points gained from killing monsters. Also Regulars can be levelled up to any level 1 hero. I tried to avoid buying any more regulars and went straight for the heroes, with the plan up level them up as soon as possible.
Quite early on we got a couple of basic rules wrong, a common problem when playing a new game for the first time. One of the starting cards is a Thunderstone Shard which give you +2 to a heroes strength. Our rookie mistake was to add that the attack strength when fighting monsters, wrong! Each hero has a strength value that determines what weapons they can use, as each weapon also has a strength rating. A hero can only use a weapon if their strength rating it equal or higher than the strength rating on the weapon card. What this meant is we were giving heroes +2 attack, but they could have been using weapons that they previously couldn’t because there were not strong enough. By the time we had worked out we were doing it wrong it was too late, so we carried on using our "house rule" for that game.
Initially we also over looked the Regular special ability. In a dungeon if he is equipped with a Polearm you can pull an additional card for the combat. Your starting deck contains Longspears, which have the Polemarm keyword, so can be used for this ability. This brings an element of chance into what could be a dry combat system, where you counted your attack value and knew before entering combat if you were going to win. The Regular card, and other cards that let you draw extra cards once in combat, allows you to take a chance and start a combat with a creature that has a higher defence value than you could beat. Then, when drawing the extra cards you are gambling on getting cards that boost your total attack value.
I greatly enjoyed trying to work out the card synergies available. The scenario we played had the Bandia’s Wisdom card in it. This gives you +1 strength to each hero, gives you 3 xp, but then takes 2 xp from you at the end of combat. On its own the card doesn’t make a lot of sense. However, when used with Whetmage in combat, this lets you level a character up during combat and put it straight in your hand. So, cast the spell, gain 3xp, level up, then fight straight away with the newly levelled character. If you don’t have the 2xp to give back at the end it doesn’t matter, so you might as well use them. As you use different card sets from the basic set each game, you will be able to see different card synergies and have to be able to work out how to use the cards together.
We all managed to enjoy curse cards at one point or another. A curse card is put into your discard pile to be drawn at a later time. This can happen a few ways, it’s usually monster effects that curse you, and sometimes give you the option to curse other players. When drawn all curse cards give -1 attack and have various ways of discarding them if you draw them into your hand. You can take a rest that turn (do nothing else and destroy the card), or you can carry out the action on the card to destroy it. These actions vary, one player had to discard 2 gold, I got one where you basically had to walk into the dungeon naked to destroy it, harsh.
Another observation we made whilst getting our heroic party ready, if you get a strong draw of monsters in the dungeon you may be in a position where nobody can defeat them with the cards they have. The options seem to be either keep trying to build your deck and get better hands, or fight the monster and lose. The reason for this is when you lose, the monster goes to the bottom of the deck and the dungeon fills up again, with possibly weaker monsters. At the time we mulled over why, if you thought you already had enough victory points, you wouldn’t just purposely lose fights to get to the Thundersotne bearer at the bottom of the deck to end the game and win it. After thinking about it, it’s too risky a manoeuvre, it would mean wasting a turn for quite a few rounds whilst other players potentially took out the lesser powered monsters that came out and claimed those victory points. Also some monster cards have unpleasent side effects or curses for losing combat, or by not beating the the monsters defence by a certain amount.
The game finished with one clear winner (not me), however 2nd to 5th place was a closer run thing. The game took around 3 hours to play as I said before, but that was mainly due to getting used to the rules and most cards prompting the question "so what does this do?". Next play through should be a lot quicker. Due to the way it plays you draw your next hand at the end of your turn, so as play passes around the table you can be planning your next move to save time. One thing we did find good for new players is on your turn you actually reveal your cards so everyone can see them. This makes it much easier to help new players with their cards without resorting to cryptic conversations about what cards they might have.
As with these types of games, at the end you don’t want it to finish as you have spent all game crafting your perfect deck. Although it is very satisfying going though your deck counting victory points at the end, and looking at the little army you have put together.
I liked this game a lot, and will getting a lot more play out of it. If you want to pick up a copy its available from us here http://www.grimtreegames.com/thunderstone-advance-tower-of-r....
Thanks for reading!
Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:28 am
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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For article with pics see here=http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=265.
Hello all, I took our freshly unboxed Game Of Thrones to the Wigan Wargames club before Christmas to give it a test drive. Being a club consisting of thoroughly nice people it’s always good to sit down with them as even if the game is rubbish, you are in good company. Luckily, Game of Thrones is not rubbish, it is very good. I however, I am rubbish at conquest type games. I always misjudge expand vs consolidate decisions, attack the wrong fronts and have seemingly endless bad luck with dice rolls. The last excuse I listed was not applicable for Game of Thrones however, in a normal game there is no luck factor, just cold hard tactics. So I was really screwed.
We played a 4 player game, so that eliminated a few of the factions from the game. You chose one of the Houses that feature in the books and TV show, I chose Lannister, my opponents were Stark, Baratheon and Greyjoy. The game dictates how the starting units are set up so we all set up our pieces. The Starks set up in the north, they have quite a wide expanse of land that they can expand into, however they have few castles up there to take over. Capturing castles is the objective of the game, you have 10 turns to be the one with the most castles, or the first to 7 wins the game. So, that makes life a bit harder for the Starks as they have to push right down into enemy territory for castles. The flip side to that is they have a lot of uncontested land that they can use to consolidate power. Consolidate power is one of the possible orders that you can give your troops, and the order mechanics are the real meat of the game. You have several orders available,
March: Allows you to march onto an adjacent territory and attack enemy troops if they are there.
Defend: Troops stay put but get a bonus to defence.
Support: Your troops don’t move, but can assist in any adjacent combat.
Raid: Remove an adjacent Raid, Support, or Consolidate power icon.
Consolidate Power: Gain a power token. Used to keep control of land once you have moved out of it and to bid for power.
Everyone places their order tokens face down, then everyone flips them over, then they carry out Raid orders, then March orders, then Consolidate Power orders.
So as you can see, with no one to attack or use raid orders in the beginning the Starks can build up a pool of power tokens. Power tokens are very important as they are used when bidding for power. At certain points in the game all players bid secretly to gain a position on one of the three influence tracks, more on this later. This means that even though the Starks had not a lot of castles, they were able to bid their way to power.
That’s enough about the Starks, people want to hear about the Lannisters. I was situated in the middle of the map, close to Greyjoy, and with the Baratheons a little further south. There was a number of castles here to take and it would be hotly contested.
I won’t go into the details of the rules here, we do that in the game overview video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axMfYMReXbI, and that was hard enough. It’s a tricky one, as the rules when read don’t seem complicated, but the act of trying to explain them seems mammoth. I think it’s because of the way rules interact with each other, you can’t really just explain one rule and leave the rest out until it is relevent, you need to know everything before you start. However once you know the rules the game flows very quickly.
One the first turn, I thought it would be a good idea to come out fighting, so I launched an attack against the Greyjoys on my first turn. Unfortunately this made a counter attack inevitable, using a tactic I had not taken into account. Units can travel via ships without penalty and any distance. My shore based units were attacked by troops that came from a few sea spaces away, and were defeated. Losing units this early was not ideal and I started to lose my foothold. This tactic is important to remember as sea spaces surround the map. Enough ships and you can attack the other side on the map with one order. At the same time House Baratheon was amassing troops and land mass.
Here is where another mechanic came into play. You can only have as many armies as your supply track indicates. An army is any territory that has 2 or more units in, and your supply track is a track on the board that shows how may armies you can have. The more territories you control with barrel symbols, the more armies you can have. When you gain new troops, you place them on the castle that produced them, and the trigger for gaining new troops is a random card draw so you never know when it’s going to come. Based on that I as the game progressed I was reluctant to move my troops away from my castle and leave it weak, but that meant when mustering came (the term for acquiring more troops) I couldn’t place them as it would mean my army was too big on my castle.
As the game progressed the order placing phase became nerve wracking. Trying to second guess opponents and place suitable orders is one of the core game play mechanics, and also can lead to some spectacular back stabbing (Of course I will support your attack *flip* Sucker). There were are least 2 turns where myself and house Baratheon had 2 territories just placing defend orders, neither side wanting to risk combat. Myself and house Greyjoy agreed on a fragile truce whilst we dealt with Baratheon who was quickly expanding, whilst Stark was busy acquiring land and power. I lost several battles by going up against small numbers, who had a cunning support order from a larger force behind.
A quick note on the influence tracks at this point. At random points in the game dictated by event cards, players have to bid for power on each of the tracks. In turn players secretly bid available power tokens for The Iron Throne, The Fiefdoms, and the Kings Court. Being at the top of each track has its advantages, the Iron Throne determines turn order, the Fifdomes determines combat ties, and the Kings Court give you access to special orders. There are over advantages that we go through in the Overview video. At any one time you will probably see a benefit in one of those and bid your power for that, however when you need more you need to split your available power between them when bidding. This is when alliances and formed and broken, you want to be on the good side of powerful players, however when their influence drops, then is the time to pounce. This game is ready for some heavy backstabbing and plotting, which is awesome. The rules do state that with a few limitations, they encourage players forming deals and plotting between themselves.
We saw the influence track change wildly in our game, however House Baratheon seemed to have sway most of the time through clever bidding.
In the end though, Greyjoy came right round my territory and rushed a Baratheon castle on the last turn, giving them victory. I know I am generally pretty rubbish at Conquest games, but House Lannister needs a solid plan from turn 1 and to keep the pressure on. The Starks and Baratheons seem to have a more leisurely start, but in hindsight if I had made a rush for the castles sooner that may have won me the game.
So there you go, hopefully you get a taste of the rules and tactics possible. It’s like I said previously, it’s not a complicated game when you break down the individual parts, but the game when played has so many tactics available, its can be hard to get your head around your options to begin with. Once the game is flowing though it is all second nature. I can’t wait to play this again, the depth of the game means there is plenty of life left in it yet.
Thanks for reading!
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full article with pics here: http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=237
Hello again, we got Elder Sign in the store recently and decided to do the usual unboxing and gameplay videos as we usually do. We arranged to send a review copy off to GMS magazine, but before we did I had a few solo games to see how it played.
Fantasy flight + Cthulhu = guaranteed awesome. I think I am right in saying that is the assumption. I would also say that is the correct assumption with Elder Sign.
It is a dice based game so there is a fair amount of abstracted play, even for such a heavily themed game. The game is set in museum filled with ancient artefacts, most of them based in the Cthulhu mythos and wanting to devour the world. The main card are the Adventure cards, Ancient One cards, and the Investigator cards. You first pick an Ancient One to go up against, either at random or pick one. Each one has different abilities that may effect the game. You then choose Investigator cards, these again have different abilities that you can use through the game, some Investigator will work better with others. Then deal six adventure cards face up, these represent the starting tasks the Investigators must over come. There is then the museum entrance card where the players start.
The basic goal of the game is the players must gather elder sign tokens, the amount they need is different for each Ancient One and is shown on the Ancient One card. They gather these by completing Adventure cards. They need to do this before the doom track on the Ancient Ones card fills up. Once it does the bad guy is released and the players need to defeat it or lose the game.
To complete an Adventure card you simply move your token to it then gather the dice. Each task on the card is a line of symbols, you must roll the dice and match the symbols to complete the task. Keep doing that to complete all tasks and you beat the card.
Sounds easy, but there are limitations on the dice. Firstly there are only 6 green dice you roll. There are a yellow and red dice that roll better, but they can only be used if you have a card that plays them. You roll all 6 dice and try to match symbols on the dice to a task on the Adventure Card. Say you need to roll a skull symbol to beat a task, if you beat it you put the dice that came up a skull symbol to one side and roll again to try to beat other tasks on the card, this time only with 5. To make it worse if you fail a roll you can roll again but with one less dice, you can do that until you have no dice and fail the card. There are ways to manipulate the dice, you can save a dice roll by placing it on a character token at your location, there are spell cards that can save dice rolls to be used in a later task, more on this later.
Each adventure card has rewards and penalties, rewards can item cards the give you more dice, clue tokens to give you a reroll on a dice, ally cards, the all important elder signs, and Other World cards. These are very similar to adventure cards however they usually give lots of elder signs on completion so you should hunt these out.
Penalties can be loss of health and sanity from the Investigators, doom track markers, and monster tokens. Monster work by adding another task to existing adventure cards making them harder to complete.
Any adventure card you defeat you keep and can spend their trophy points at the museum entrance for helpful goodies, such as more health or item cards.
On top of all that you have a clock tracker. It starts at 12 and moves a quarter round after each players turn. Every time it hits 12 again you pull a mythos card, which contains more unpleasantness in the form on monsters, doom track markers and other nasty things.
That’s the system in a rough nutshell, but is it good? I liked it, I played it solo which works really well as it’s very quick to setup and play. You can use it as a heavily themed version of solitaire on a rainy day. The rules are simple and quick, yet you have to use every trick at your disposal to win the game.
The artwork is amazing, as could be expected from Fantasy Flight Games. Some has been reused from Arkham Horror, but allot is original.
One piece of advice would be to always bear your items and clues tokens in mind and use all your resources when possible. If you wait and your Investigator dies you can always start again as it lets you come back as another character as long as the Ancient One isn’t active, however you lose all your cards and clue tokens. Death can be quick and unexpected, so live for the moment and use those advantages.
Another tactic to bear in mind is to anticipate midnight. The mythos card in play has an effect that happens at midnight, other cards can have midnight actions. If you bear those actions in mind you can limit the damage. For example there is a mythos card which adds a doom counter is you don’t have any unique items. If the clock is at 6 you have 2 turns to get an item to stop that effect.
You can play Elder sign solo, but even if you do it’s a good idea to control more than one investigator. One of the reasons for this is assisting. If another investigator is in your space you can save a dice result on their token after a failed roll, as you can do with your token. This is a very handy feature of more than 1 investigator, allowing you to keep rolled dice to help with the next roll of the task. There is a draw back however, if the card is failed any investigators assisting lose sanity or stamina.
Another drawback with focusing and assisting is when you hold a dice back it locks it for the remainder of the turn. So if you lock it on a result you think you will need, then you don’t, you are a dice down as you can’t reroll it.
Another tip that you will quickly discover, once monsters start appearing on cards there maybe cards you cannot complete with your standard 6 dice, so you need to use your items on those. Like I said, don’t be afraid to use them.
Lastly, you have to be lucky with dice rolls. I am notoriously unlucky, so some of my roll were quite frustrating, that’s the gods mocking my dice rolling however, I wouldn’t say it’s a problem with the game.
I liked this game a lot, good quick little game on your own or with mates. With a copious amount of Cthulhu.
Until next time
Mark
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Originally published in the “Winter is Coming” RGP festival as a guest blog. Designed as a side quest, it can be used for a group of 4E DnD players of any level to inject a bit of wintery horror into your campaign.
Original article here http://gamerblog.twwombat.com/2011/09/wic-winters-wrath.html.
Fireside stories are told next to the warmth of the flame about Winter's Wrath. Few have survived to tell the tale of the bone chilling cold and the shapeless entities that reach from the ice.
Winter's Wrath envelops whole towns with darkness and ice, only when it’s finished claiming the souls of all within does it wither back to reveal an empty town, all living creatures pulled into the abyss. The few that have managed to escape the Wrath are left half mad and gibbering about ice monstrosities claiming all lives in sight.
Winter's Wrath is an adventure side track to give your campaign a winter feel any time of the year. It’s designed so you can spring it on the players during any town-based down time. As the players are relaxing the sky grows dark and blots out the sun, ice spreads over the ground and freezes all water where it stands, then creatures of ice pull themselves from the ground to lay waste to the townspeople. That is, they do until the players do something about it.
The Wrath Cometh
It would be good to set the scene up before introducing the Wrath. A good hook would be to have one of the aforementioned mad men that has seen the event from a nearby town burst into the tavern the players occupy, and blurt out the horrors he has just seen. He witnessed the sky grow black, the very air seem to freeze, and ice formed monstrosities emerged from the ground. He hid whilst the other towns folk were enveloped by the ice creatures and pulled into the earth. In time once everyone else had been taken the dark sky and ice passed, and he fled the town. This could prompt others in the tavern to declare they have heard of Winter's Wrath, building it up as a mysterious event that claims all the souls of a town then moves on. Of course a few people in the tavern will declare them as mad and a debate will ensue.
As this conversation is happening, the sky slowly starts to grow dark. Not just night time, pitch, unholy dark (obviously much more effective if this is done during a day time setting). Once the sky goes dark, the players notice they can see their breath in the air, a thin film of ice begins to creep across the floor and over the tables, Ale freezes rock solid in their flagons. At this point panic spreads and the patrons of the tavern will flee outside, to see shifting shapes of multi limbed creatures formed from moving ice grabbing people and pulling them into the ground.
Once the tavern freezes over, the players should go outside and encounter a group of ice creatures. The screams of innocent people should prompt them to go outside, if not just have the ice creatures burst into the tavern. Either way the towns folk are being attacked and pulled into the ground around them. A group of the ice creatures focus on the players. The players see the townsfolk being attacked, put one or two of the attacked villagers close the players encounter. The players then have the option to save their own skin or help the villagers. As soon as combat starts have 2 villagers grabbed by Frozen Earth as described below, they have 5 rounds from the start of combat to rescue them by defeating the ice creatures that are pulling them down. If they rescue them they then have companions for the rest of the adventure.
Seeing the villagers being pulled screaming in the earth is indeed maddening, and will have an effect on the most hardened hero. Make an attack (Heroric +8 vs Will, Paragon +18 vs Will, Epic +28 vs Will), on a hit the character is Dazed, save ends.
Use any group of creatures that is a suitable build and XP cost for your level of players. Use the stats for that group of monsters, however describe the creatures as shifting forms of ice. Their legs come from a main body of ice that walk it across the frozen ground, and limbs that end in blocks of ice for smashing or blades of ice for slashing. In the centre of the body is a cold black orb for an eye, never blinking. Any attacks your chosen creatures have substitute the descriptions for ice related attacks, bow attacks become launched shafts of ice, axe attacks become swinging blades of ice limbs. For example if you were to use an Orc war band for this you would build the group of monsters as you usually would spending XP and balancing the group, but describe their abilities as being ice related, e.g. Orc Sergeant’s Warriors Surge, use the same attack but describe the attack as a sharp appendage shooting from the creatures body and hitting the player, then seemingly drain life force and reform the damaged ice. Use your imagination here, the idea is to make this scalable and compatible with whatever groups of monsters you with to use. As well as the monsters usual stats add the following ability:
Frozen Earth: The creature performs a normal grab action. On its next turn instead of attacking it pulls the player into the ground. As characters are varying heights measure the depth of the pull in rounds. After 5 rounds the player is totally submerged in the earth, effectively being buried alive. Once being pulled down no push pull or slide can break the grab. Once the ice creature has been defeated or has released the grab a strength check is needed to free them, either from the affected player or by the party. The DC starts at 8 for Heroic tier, 13 for Paragon, 18 and Epic, then add +2 for every turn they are pulled further. Once submerged only another players can dig the earth to reach them, as the earth is frozen this is a difficult task and can only really be done out of combat, effectively taking any player submerged out of combat until the end of the encounter. As long as the other players don’t dawdle they have time to dig up any companions at the end of combat and pull them to safety.
Make this an easy to moderate encounter as it is relatively easy to quickly bring all the party down. This encounter should serve to make the players wary of the ice creatures.
Once these creatures are defeated the screams have subsided, the PCs realise that they are the only people left in sight, unless they managed to rescue a couple of villagers. These can be known NPCs if the players are in a familiar town, or new ones of your devising. They can give the players a bit more background on the town as described below, but should also be used to add tension. In any future combat the villagers will run to the shadows and avoid combat at all costs.
Clues in the Dark
After the attack they can explore and try to find a way out of the situation. The town is suitably eerie, being void of life and totally silent, and this should be played upon. Shadows cast on walls of creatures waiting to pounce when investigated will just be old brooms, distance cries will be heard then muffled. If the players had rescued some villagers the villagers can be used here to crank up the tension. When they pass a house which belongs to someone the surviving villager knows, the villager runs inside shouting their name. The players should panic about this and try to stop them from making massive amounts of noise. One of the villagers can have a melt down and curl up into a ball, refusing to take another step, a diplomacy check needed to move them on.
If the players try to leave town any street they walk along will be lead them back into town. If they leave one player in the middle of town and walk out they will eventually end up back in the middle of town. Streets and building seem to shift. This should make the players feel very uncomfortable and very uneasy.
Trying to determine what has happened and what to do is a skill challenge, this can be a complexity 3 with 8 successes before 3 failures, as this can be an opportunity for the players to use their ingenuity to try and work out what has happened. Any good ideas the players or yourself come up with as skill checks to determine what has happed are valid, however few suggestions are:
When exploring the town they can enter buildings, a moderate Perception check can determine that drawers and cupboards seem to be open as though someone was looking for something. An easy Perception check at another house can see the same thing, in fact most houses they have been in. If they don’t seem to be exploring the houses have a noise come from within. It’s just something falling to the floor, but it will build tension.
A moderate thievery can see that some of the houses' locks have been tampered with from the outside to gain entrance.
A hard tracking perception check can see that there seems to be a single wheeled track in the frost outside, leading to each house.
A moderate Arcana check can help determine firstly that there is an air of magic behind the mysterious events. A hard check can help the player feel a pull to a central location, as though there is a source of the magic. They won’t be able to find the source just based on this roll as the sensation is too faint, however it will help in the overall skill challenge.
If the players rescued villagers they can try Streetwise or Diplomacy when talking to them gain a better insight to the layout of the town.
A Climb check could allow a player to climb to the top of a building to get a better view of the town and the surroundings.
A Wizard did it
If they succeed in the above skill challenge they are lead right to the cause of the Winter's Wrath. The wheel tracks lead to an old storage / barn house that stands empty, apart from a large open trapdoor and a wheel barrow full of miscellaneous goodies, loot plundered from people’s houses around town. The trap door leads to a large dug out cellar with steps down. If the players are cautious at this point they can attempt to sneak down. In the cellar is a balding crooked man, muttering to himself. His robes are filthy and worn, and his features are worn and wrinkled. He looks very very old. He is gathering up some belongings. In the centre of the cellar is a 4 foot staff planted into the ground standing upright. The golden shaft leads up to a large shining sapphire which is glowing brightly. Sparks of blue and white ice leap out from the jewel and skitter across the floor.
If they fail the above skill challenge the old man sees the players as he is wheeling his wheel barrow of loot into the barn as they walk around the streets outside. As both parties see each other there is enough distance and surprise for the old man to run into the barn, into the cellar and close the trapdoor. The scenario plays out the same as below, however they now have a trapdoor that needs to be broken open before they can get to him and he will still summon ice creatures next to the players whilst he is in the safety of the cellar.
The staff is the cause of Winter's Wrath, and the old man has been using it a long long time to clear towns of their valuables then move on, to do to the same again.
If the players manage to talk to him he is called Gilbert, however he does not want to talk to them and seems horrified that is cunning plot has been foiled after so many years. For stats use an appropriate human of the same level of the PCs, that will only be for HP and defences, he will not try to actively attack himself. Once the players see Gilbert they have options. He is in no state to fight, so when confronted by the players he will quickly hold out his hand and clench his fist, he is wearing a golden ring with a glowing sapphire embedded in it. He mutters a magic phrase and summons more ice creatures to do his bidding. The ice creatures pull themselves from the ground between the old man and the players as a form of protection. If there were rescued villagers at this point they will avoid combat to hide in the shadows, and as the ice creatures are protecting Gilbert they will not actively attack them.
For the ice creatures use the same abilities as before, only this time, as soon as one is destroyed, the old man summons more to take the place of any fallen creatures when it is his turn as his standard actions (he can summon as many as need to replace them in one standard action). Use any monster soldier stats of the same level of the players and summon one creature for each player. The ring also has protective qualities, whatever stats you are using for Gilbert, add +10 to his defenses for Heroic tier, +15 for Paragon and +20 for Epic. Any attempt to attack him is met by a shower of blue ice as the attack it hits a protective field projected by the ring. If the players manage to perform a grab on the Gilbert (at his normal AC) one of them can try and take his ring off. If they do this the ice creatures stop in their tracks. They slowly turn to Gilbert and advance. He screams at them to stop, declaring himself their master, but to no avail. They advance, envelop him and pull him into the earth.
Alternatively they can just kill him by getting hits past his defensive ring, at which point the ice creatures melt away. Once the staff is pulled from the ground Winter's Wrath fades from the town and all returns to normal.
However, if all the players are grabbed and are being pulled into the earth at the same time Gilbert sees the opportunity to flee. He grabs the staff and runs for the exit, when he does this the effects of Winter's Wrath fade and the players are freed from the ice creatures, but the process is slow enough for the Gilbert to flee with his loot, leaving the PCs with nothing.
Wrapping up
There are quite a few ways this can end, and this leads to different potential further adventures.
Depending on how dark your campaign is, even if the players retrieve the staff the villagers can remain in the earth and the town a turn into a ghost town. If they failed to rescue any villagers they now stand alone, probably the last people to be seen leaving the village. This could lead to the law enforcement hunting them down and getting them to explain what happened.
Or on the other hand the villagers can all be regurgitated back to the surface safe and sound, the soul that now handles the staff a kinder one than the last if they retrieved the staff. They will be hailed as heroes and rewarded handsomely.
The loot in the wheelbarrow can go back to the town if the town’s people are brought back, if not that can be the encounter loot. The staff and ring have value, but without knowing the arcane methods the players cannot use it to summon and control Winter's Wrath or use the ring for protection. However if they spend the time to find the right help they may be able to use their powers again, to what ends would depend on your players own imagination.
The staff and ring were actually stolen from a very powerful wizard long ago by Gibert when he was a young boy. The wracked body and etched face of Gilbert is not just due to old age, it is the constant fear of the wizard finally catching him and exacting his revenge. Unearthly Servants of the wizard were always tracking Gilbert on is travels, constantly searching for their masters artifacts. Now the players have them they will be unaware of this, it’s only a matter of time before the wizard's underlings try to take them back. Will the players try to bargain a way out and hand over the items, or keep the chase going and flee with them?
Whether this ends with the players defeating Gilbert, freeing the villagers and gaining loot, or empty handed with all the towns’ people dead, I hope you enjoy Winter's Wrath.
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Ful article here - http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=216
Hello all, I am by no means an expert, but in the years I have been a Dungeon Master (or Games Master depending on your system) I have had a few ideas and tricks that have worked out well. I thought I would share a few of them with you, they may help out in your game, or you might think I am talking rubbish. I going to do it anyway damn it! (If your are new to Role-playing games and want to know what I am wibbling on about, I explain it as best I can here http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=151)
One thing I want to achieve in my games is to create a living breathing world for the players to exist in. That will probably be a theme running through most of these blogs as its something I focus on a lot. I know other people focus on a particular style of play, but I love the feeling of immersion. The feeling that all the characters you meet in the game have their own lives and go about their business when not talking to the players, the feeling that the players actions have consequences in the world.
There are a few ways I try to go about it, but I think once you can achieve it there are a lot of things that start to happen.
Ways to make it happen
There are a few ways I try to do this. We go into the things the characters did between adventures, not just buying new gear, but any interactions they had. Do they have family they have to visit, maybe a sick Mother or Father. That doesn’t have to then fire into a quest for a holy flower to heal them, but its something they can pull from and you can also use for character background.
The day to day of the characters life can be brought into the story. Not the mundane, you don’t want to be role-playing the characters doing laundry, but there will be aspects of the characters life that can bleed into the story. Maybe there is a merchant that the character passes everyday when leaving his lodgings, they bought something from him and he makes a point of saying hello every day. Not a big thing, but a detail that the character comes to expect and grow comfortable with, like routines in life. Maybe one day the merchant isn’t there, there could be a side quest behind this, or it could just be more flavour to the story. Things change, that’s life, reflect that in the story.
Rumours and news are essential to creating a living world. The feeling of immersion comes from events happening the world regardless of the characters actions. The world keeps turning no matter what the characters do, so let them know that. It could be big news, distant wars, plagues, natural disasters, or it could be smaller, the local tavern has been shut down due to rats in the stew, the mad wizard is trying to charge 10gp toll on the street outside his house. In fact mixing the big and the small up makes for a good combination. How you get this news to players depends on your setting, but whispers in the taverns, town criers, newspapers, all work.
Benefits
Firstly, no matter how fantastical the plot, if its full of real characters with real motivations, you pull the player in. Players are able to buy in more if there is a foundation of reality in the characters. Its like all good films and books, if you buy into the story and characters it will pull you in regardless of the setting.
Trying to build an immersive world to live in will mean the players will invest in their characters a lot more. A character that has a feeling of being grounded in a real world will make it easier for the players to relate to. This will create more Role-play opportunity’s as the character is fleshed out, it will give them the chance to think about who they are in the world and how everything else relate to them.
NPCs in this immersive world will be generally be more believable also, characters become emotionally attached to them, allowing you to play on that. It packs more of a punch if they are betrayed by an NPC who they had a background with, rather than a 2d character that they have no connection with.
Not everything in life results in Epic Quests
All of these extra bits of information do not have to result in quests, sure the characters can investigate them if you like, and if your running a sandbox kind of game you may like where its going and make a quest out of it. If you pepper your campaign with this kind of info you can then pull the info back at a later date and expand on it for a quest, if they players do remember it will feel like a natural progression of the story and the world evolving. All the other elements that you don’t use just give more flesh to the world the characters live in.
Bookkeeping
This could be a lot of extra information in your campaign and you don’t want to get bogged down in more book keeping. The way I handle it usually is to have a document and just list any extra news or rumours that I inject into the game. Just a one line description will usually do. Another sheet per character for any extra in-between quest news or routines per character is usually handy. At that point if nothing else after a few sessions of doing this you have a few lists of quest ideas to draw from that already in the players subconscious.
That’s it for now, I have a few other articles revolving around the same subject of immersion. Until then, happy gaming!
Mark
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full article here - http://www.grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=184
Hello all, I had the chance to finally play our demo copy of letter from whitechapel at Wigan Wargamers games club. A very good club with very nice people, more info here http://www.grimtreegames.com/grimforum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=....
I have wanted to play this game for ages, but at the same time dreading it. I did a video on youtube about the concept of the game and how you would play it, as looking at a board of numbers looks confusing. The game breakdown video is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9kEqze7rs if you need more info on how you actually play the game. When you get down to it, it’s a very good game, but the pressure is on for the player playing Jack.
The idea of the game is Jack has to pick a hide out from one of the many numbered circles on the board. The Police and Wretched (a politically correct term for prostitute I think) tokens are placed on the board and moved around by the players, Jack chooses the right moment to kill a Wretched pawn, then the police have to track Jack down before he gets back to his hideout. They can move and look in adjacent circles for clues (Jack has to say if he has been there since the last murder and put a marker on the board) or make an arrest. If they make an arrest on a circle Jack is on they win. On his turn if he hasnt been caught Jack can move by secretly noting down an adjacent location to show that’s where is has moved to. Once he gets to his hideout that night is over. You start again and have to last 4 nights. Sounds simple.
With this in mind, I was trying to work out the best place for my hide out. My thinking was, too central and my tracks would be easily seen, as there was a lot more chance of the police moving over this area and searching. So, my cunning plan was to have a the hide out to the edge of the map, less chance of the police encountering me. But, as I found in my first turn, there is a downside to that. You have less access to the board and the Wretched figures. You don’t want to kill one and have to go right over the board to get home, so I went for a localish kill. Then it occurred to me, I cant get home too soon, if I make it home in 3 turns they know I am very close to the first murder. So to confuse them I stretched this out as long as I could buy circling the hide out. Eventually I had to go the hide out as the police were coming closer and closer to the scene of the crime. So, night 1, not a great start but I had put up a smoke screen, at this point they had no idea where I was.
Second turn, not so good. I spotted my mistake of the first turn and decided the kill had to be further away, so went for a central location. Because of the last turn most of the police were around the last kill site, so I had to lure them away. I picked a target near the centre then started my escape. The very first move I made I decided to use an alley token. This would mean I could move to a space next to any adjacent block. I thought this was a good idea as I could move away then easily disappear from that location. However, due to it being a small block the police worked out that I could be in one of 2 locations. No problem I thought, as I could out run them. Using good strategy the police brought their pieces up from where they were after the first night and started to surround me, then the ones that were near me just chased me down, getting clue after clue following my trail until they made the arrest. Using the alley was a mistake as it gave a good indication as to where I was.
My thinking was to get distance between my self and the murder site as soon as possible, but I think the trick is, you don’t have to. You can be on the same circle as the police if they move onto you and you are still safe, the only danger is if they make an arrest. They will only do that if there are pretty certain you are there or they loose the opportunity to look for clues (you can only do one of the other in a Police tokens turn). It think it’s a case of holding your nerve and not panicking and dashing to the hide out, which I did. I know, I’m a wuss.
I like the game, a lot. The first game for Jack is hard though, well, it was me. If I play it again there are a lot of mistakes that I would not make again. The problem is there are so many choices that need to be made by Jack, each one critical to not getting caught.
That’s not to say it’s a bad game, its very good, might just need a few plays to master. There are extra rules to make things easier for either Jack or the Police if its looking a bit one sided after a few plays, which helps the balance.
Anywho, more games to play, until next time.
Mark
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full blog at http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=159
Two for one for you, Stabcon over view and Conquest of Nerath breakdown. Get in.
Firstly a bit about stabcon if you have never been. It’s a weekend event held at the Britannia hotel in Stockport, a good venue with friendly staff. The event itself is held in one of the big conference rooms and is crammed with tables playing board games and roleplaying games. Everyone is willing to give anything a try so you are never short of a game to play. There is also a bar in the conference room for lovers of beer (me).
If you get in touch with the organisers beforehand they can sort your accommodation in the hotel as well as the Stabcon entry, meaning you can play games non-stop from Friday to Sunday. I went along with a box of games, the biggest game we played was Conquest of Nerath. We played a short version of the game which should have been 2 hours, however due to chatting and learning the rules ended up being about 5. Didn’t mind though as it was awesome.
The game is basically a world conquest strategy game. Four factions fight for land and supremacy, Karkoth (Undead), Vailin (Elven), Nerathian League (Human) and Iron Circle (Goblin-kind). It’s a 2 to 4 player game, with 4 players you have a choice of free for all, or an alliance game. Free for all self-explanatory, where an alliance game lets you have a 2 vs 2 game. This is essentially the same as a 2 player game but each player takes 2 factions. This worked out well, as to begin with there was only me and Grim Tree regular Andy, who started the game taking 2 factions each, however as soon as someone else wanted to join in it became 2 vs 2.
So, the game started with just me and Andy, new to this game but veterans of plotting world conquest and laying waste to continents. The game round breaks down into the following phases, draw event card, move, fight, reposition, reinforce, then income, with the active player running through those phases then moving onto the next player.
There are 3 game lengths available which you agree on before starting. Short and medium, which are won by accruing victory points, and long, which is won by capturing all the capitals or gaining 8 treasures (which I will mention later). This is good, as it means you can play a game of this type and it only take 2 hours, usually world conquest games can take days.
You start by drawing an event card. The event cards give you advantages and powers that you can use through the game and are different for each faction. Each faction has a different theme to the event cards to reflect them, for example the Undead faction has cards that lets you sacrifice units to give you unearthly powers.
Once your event card has been drawn you can move your pieces. You are free to move in your own territory spaces, into unoccupied enemy territory (gaining a victory point) or into occupied enemy territory to trigger a fight. Each unit has different abilities, dragons can fly 3 spaces over the enemy, storm elementals can do the same but end their turn over water, different units can move farther than others. War ships can pick up coast based troops and drop off them off else where for quick and sneaky movement behind enemy lines. Lots of decisions and strategy to be had.
Next, units in the same territory fight. Its a very easy system, for every unit in the fight, they each get a dice. The better the unit, the bigger the dice, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20. Each side roll their units dice, every 6 or over they get is a kill. The defender chooses which of their units takes the hit and all damage happens at the same time, which could mean all units dying. The attacker then chooses to attack again or retreat to a safe space. Each unit has special abilities that makes them good to use in the right situations, storm elementals roll double against ships as they might capsize them, wizards get to roll and dish damage before the other side, siege engines roll double dice when attacking, monsters if they win the fight can run amok in unoccupied adjected enemy territory. Strategy overload.
Also in this phase if you have any hero units that entered dungeon spaces they can plunder the dungeon. Dungeon spaces are special spaces that only hero units can enter. They contain random dungeon door tiles that when turned over reveal monster the heroes need to defeat to claim the monster treasure. Beware, there are easy monsters, and very very tough monsters. I lost more than a few wizards by in this way.
The last couple of phases in the turn see you buying new units and collecting income. When buying units each unit has a gold cost, the more expensive the better they are. More strategy, which units to buy? Foot soldiers only have a d6 to attack but are cheap and can soak up damage, castles give you another starting territory for your troops to move out from, each unit has it’s own strength. To begin with your troops have to start at your capital and your default starting castles, but if you build castles out in the world your troops can start there instead. But be careful as if your castle is captured the enemy can start there instead of you.
Lastly you collect income, 1 gold for each territory you hold, unless you have lost your capital, then you half that. Bearing that in mind it’s very important to take and keep land, not just for victory points, but for income.
So, our game, we started playing with just me and Andy. We were getting used to the rules and playing it cautiously, attacking but stock piling troops. We were then joined by Nathan and another Andy to fill it out to 4 players. New Andy joined me and took the Undead whilst I had Goblin-kind, Nathan joined Grim Tree Andy and took the Elves whilst Grim Tree Andy kept the Humans. The new guys were cool and got into it straight away, told them the rules and they got started. Then they unleashed hell. On the Elven vs Undead front they pushed all the troops forward and had a huge battle, with Undead coming off slightly better and pushing down. In later turns the Elves retaliated by buying dragons an flying up the coast and coming in behind the Undead. Once there the land was not as well defended so they were able to capture and score more victory points. My Goblin-kind side struggled, at the end I was down to 8 territories and very few men left to defend. I had stretched myself too far trying to take the centre island. The humans were just about to smash me as they had managed to push right down, but we scored enough victory point to win the game before that happened.
Dungeons are definitely worth plundering, the Human facion gained a treasure that allowed all hero figures to move an extra space, a big advantage. Also treasures give you victory points when played. I would say go in with a group of heroes as some of the monster are very difficult, with them rolling more than 1 dice or needing more than a 6 to hit, amongst other nasty surprises. Once a monster is defeated 2 take it’s place, so it’s worth trying to get them early.
We had a conversation about dragons, why would you buy anything else? I described their flying ability above, but they are also durable, which means that they can take 2 hits before dying, and they roll a d20 in combat. One reason is the cost, they are the most expensive unit at 5 gold. I think in the end part of the game it can get dragon heavy as winning sides have the gold to spend, however I think that there is merit in having lots of smaller cheaper units, more dice to roll, but also more damage to soak up.
I can’t wait to play this again, after the game I was thinking about the tactics possible, what to do next time, the best fit for each unit.
I will be taking it to any club nights I go to so keep an eye out on our Twitter / Facebook / forum if you want to come along and have a go. Also, it is available in our shop here http://www.grimtreegames.com/conquest-of-nerath-p-67.html.
Thanks for reading, hope to see you across a table soon.
Mark
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full blog over at http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=151
What is a roleplaying game?
It’s a hard thing to describe. Well, it’s hard to describe in such a way that does it justice, that will get across how good it is without actually sitting someone down and letting them play. This may be drastic, and not everyone may agree, but I believe that roleplaying games are one of the best forms of entertainment you could partake in, ever. It’s a bold statement so I will try to back it up.
Most people don’t know what the term ‘roleplaying game’ means, but chances are they have heard of Dungeons and Dragons. Then they will think of nerds in basements wearing wizards hats and move on.
Dungeons and Dragons is the best known mainly as it was the first, has been very successful, and has had other branches out in media, but there are many others. So just for now, put wizards hats and dragons out of your head. I will try and start with the concept.
Imagine you are in a room, you have no memory of how you got there. It’s dark, dank, with stone walls and a stone floor. It’s bare apart from a hole in the ceiling with a rope dangling from it down into the middle of the room. You think you can hear whispered voices coming from the hole above you. What do you do?
As soon as you think about that situation and how you would react, you are playing a roleplaying game, putting yourself in a role. What did you think? Did you pull on the rope? Did you listen harder at the voices? Did you wonder what equipment was on or around you that you could use?
Someone needs to answer these questions, that’s where a games master or dungeon master comes in, they have the details about the situation you are in and the info to fill in the blanks. Maybe you said you pull on the rope, the games master will know that the rope is fixed to a beam and is sturdy. He knows this as he is working from a story, or a script, with a start, middle and end. It’s his job to let the players know what is happening, what they can see and hear, and what happens based on their actions, and it’s his job to drive the story along. He will have either come up with this story himself or bought a published adventure that games companies produce.
Let’s say that we are in a fantasy setting and you are in the room as you were caught stealing from a noble man, he has taken matters into his own hands, knocked you out, and put you in his personal cells. You as the player won’t know this yet and the game master won’t tell you, but the games master will know as he knows the story. You will find out later as the plot unfolds and the games master reveals the story, like all good films and books, if it’s a good one there may be a twist or further intrigue.
Back to your current predicament, your stuck in the room. Let’s say you decide to pull the rope, the games master says the rope seems fixed to something sturdy. You want to climb it, but like all things in life there is a chance of failure and consequences of failure. This is where the rules come in. Different games have different rules and ways of resolving things, but the principle is the same. Your character will have statistics to say how strong you are, how intelligent you are, how dexterous you are, etc. You usually have to roll under or over your stat to succeed. Let’s say it’s based on strength as you have to pull yourself up the rope, the games master says you need to roll a 20 sided dice, you have good strength so you need to roll 5 or higher to do it. Good chance of rolling that and succeeding, if you have bad strength it might have been 15 or more. These kind of rules govern everything that the characters do that involves success and failure, that includes fighting and combat, of which there is generally a lot of. You are playing brave adventurous heroes after all!
In a nutshell that’s a roleplaying game. What is hard to put into words is the feeling of being in your favourite book or movie, and being able to do whatever you want and having a story unfold with you in it, shaping it. Part of the job of a games master is to improvise if the story doesn’t follow the planned path, that’s when the magic happens and the players and GM are bouncing off each other creating the story as they go.
As people get more into the game they become attached to the characters they are playing. They dream up back-storys, develop catch phrases, give the characters traits and flaws. Then when playing they role-play this character, the other players role-play there’s and suddenly made up personalities are having in-depth conversations about potentially life and death situations. Do we trust the noble to pardon us if we complete this dangerous task he has asked us to do in exchange for a pardon? The player that has decided his character is a rash and bad mouthed dwarf and will have probably chimed in straight away, telling him to stick his pardons where the sun doesn’t shine. A good games master wouldn’t punish this, he would go with it as it’s fun and good roleplaying, especially when the other characters would probably do their best to shut the dwarf up. The games master at this point knows where he want the story to go, but right now anything could happen. The games master has decided the Noble in this case is needs their help so will give the dwarf a chance to apologise, maybe making then a roll on a diplomacy type of skill. At that point a more diplomatic character might step forward and try to smooth it over.
That’s a primer. I play Dungeons and Dragons as I love the fantasy setting and it’s the daddy of all roleplaying game. However, any setting you can think of, horror, sci-fi, thriller, espionage, has a roleplayig system to it. Any film you have seen and thought, ‘I
wouldn’t have done that! I would have done this!’ or ‘I would love to be in that setting making those choices’, there is more than likely a roleplaying system for it.
If that description sounded good and you wanted to get started, we have the starter game set for DnD over here http://www.grimtreegames.com/dungeons-dragons-fantasy-rpg-st.... It will get you started on the path. Take the first step, you won’t regret it.
If you want any more info on getting started come and say hello on our forums here http://www.grimtreegames.com/grimforum/, I will be happy to point you in the right direction or run a demo for you at a club night.
Thanks for reading, and good luck!
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full blog at http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=144
Another peach of insight from the low hanging branch of Alex’s mind, our human mage in the Grim Tree DnD game and fellow DM, enjoy!
There is always a way a Games master can make a game run smoothly, there is always an answer to the hardest question and more often than not it’s infuriatingly simple.
Example, finally the game of Serenity is back on my schedule, ergo the verse is not safe once more. The group had a mind jacked Redcoat trying to kill them all off one by one and he was hiding in the vent system. For Fifty minutes the guy managed to evade the PC’s using cunning traps and ploys, the group went through every resource they had at disposal to try take this guy down, then suddenly they had a brainwave!
The ventilation system has a purgatory protocol if any sort of foreign germs or plant spores ever getting into ventilation, the guy was burned out of the vents and finally caught.
Another example is a wonderfully sadistic game of Paranoia where the COMPUTER OVERLORD CODENAME “Sally” glitches, so she thought a corridor was Red when it was Blue. Now for anyone who knows Paranoia this makes sense, for everyone else, you’re a red citizen. If you walk on blue you will be shot. Now you can understand the problem, so again after two of them were shot for trying to cross said corridor finally they has another idea, so they decided to call the computer and say that the Communist terrorists had altered her memory and being the paranoid girl she is ordered the corridor to be painted Red!
So there we have it folks, if your ever in a jam just remember that your games master probably has the most aggravatingly easy way to fix it. –Alex
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Mark Collins
United Kingdom
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Full blog and pics at http://grimtreegames.com/grimblog/?p=113
It’s been a nearly a week since UK Games Expo now, should have written this up sooner but I have been mad busy.
It’s going to be written from the point of view of a newbie (or noob as the kids say) when it comes to the UK Games Expo, as the was my first. I had high hopes though after hearing reports from other people.
I went with my mate Andy who goes with me to nearly all of the clubs and events I go to, he is there mainly to console me when I lose (which seems to be a lot). We went on Saturday for the day and we set off early as we had a 2 hour drive. We got there and saw floods of people heading towards the venue clutching games, it was going to be awesome.
We were greeted by the Empires finest Storm Troopers when entering the car park, luckily we weren’t the droids they were looking for and we got in without any trouble.
We took a quick walk around the venue first to see what was going on before we got stuck into any games. The demo halls had a few games that caught my eye, Conquest of Nerath, Star Trek Expeditions, Ankh-Morpork to name a few. I also saw the queue for the Bring and Buy game check in, there were a lot of people Bringing, that was for sure. The line was pretty big. Considerably bigger than the broom cupboard they chose to have it in. Trying to get a glimpse of the games for sale was turning out to be a full contact sport so I ducked out after a bit. Also, unless you were looking for it I would also say the room was pretty easy to miss. Minus 1 point for the Bring and Buy.
Moving past that you walked through the trade halls, lots of awesome trader stalls and games publishers to see. Even more game demos from the publishers and designers, didn’t get to play any of these ones. maybe UK Games Expo week is an option to fit all this in?
Moving upstairs you came to the family area, war game area and more traders. The family area looked good, lots of kiddy friendly board games available. My daughter is only 3 at the moment, so she doesnt have the attention span to play games, yet. I have been slowly conditioning her however, and did bring her home a set of pink sparkly dice, which she loves. They had an Xbox with Kinnect and a PS3 with Move for the kids also. I was tempted, but I prefer to look like an idiot in the comfort of my own living room (even though my wife often sticks in on youtube).
Quick brew and we made plans for the day. We wanted to look at the Mantic stand and Dwarf Kings Hold, and there was a cool looking RPG demo from Savage Worlds with a big ice tower model, and then fit on what else we could.
The Dwarf Kings Hold and Savage World stuff I will save for another blog, I will say it was very good though. Mantic (who make Dwarf Kings Hold) revived my interest for war gaming with it not costing a bomb, that interest may filter over to the store if the demand is there.
I played a huge zombie game in one of the demo areas. I didnt catch the name of the group of guys demoing it (sorry fellas), but they were pulling people into play. It was a 4 player zombie survival free for all, played on a large 3D model of an millatry installation with rooms and corridors. I did take some pics but they didnt come out too well. Us 4 players had to find a key card and escape, or kill the other players, whilst fighting off a zombie horde. We all had to pick a name for our character, I went for Captain Awesome. Probably a mistake. There was a rule for opening doors, 4 or more on a dice if I remember rightly, no good if you roll continuoius 2′s. My game involved struggling to open a door, opening it, killing zombies, coming back out to have my mate Andy shoot me in the face and nick my gear. Not so awesome.
The rules were simple and were devised by the guys running the game, one clever mechanic involved noise. The more noise you made in a room, the more attention you drew from the zombies. Louder guns drew more attention and more zombies. Counters were used to tally the attention, then when you left the room that many zombies were waiting for you outside. This meant you had to be a bit more careful when using your guns. All in all a good game. I lost though. Andy was there to console me.
Another sit down and some dinner (the steak slice was amazing) and we were off again. I wanted a demo of Conquest of Nerath, but at 2 hours a game that would have eaten up a lot of the day, I will have to wait till we do the unboxing on release.
I stopped by the UK Gaming Media Network, said hello to Mark Rivera and had a quick chat about the network and if we could do anything to help. We are now a member of the Network which is good news. They have big plans for spreading the gaming hobby through the UK, so keep an eye on them. We are hoping to help as much as possible with this in the future.
We finished the day with a demo game of Thunderstone from AEG games. It was a very good game, enjoyed it a lot. Will put a separate blog up about hat soon also as there is a lot to cover about it. I lost. Andy was on hand.
As the venue closed up we had a potter over the road to where the gaming continued in the opposite hotel, but we had a long drive back so called it a day soon after.
All in all it was a good day, played a lot of games and met a lot of good people. Hopfully next year will see bigger crowds and even more games, but it will definitly see us.
Mark
Tue Jun 21, 2011 10:27 am
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