Game: Lonely Mountain, the

Thread: Re: Not Quite There and Back Again...

Herr Niemand — 2007-10-29T23:36:48+00:00

Ed_the_Red wrote:
this is a much better job than I would have done!
You're too kind.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughtfulness and kind words.

TT

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Herr Niemand — 2007-10-29T17:33:43+00:00

many Groups fight to flee Erebor before Smaug shows up next turn!

Thread: Re: Not Quite There and Back Again...

Ed_the_Red — 2007-10-29T11:41:46+00:00

Wow, I was thinking of reviewing this game, but I'm glad you did it first because this is a much better job than I would have done!

Eddy

Thread: Re: Not Quite There and Back Again...

mistermarino — 2007-10-21T21:47:46+00:00

Wow, I really appreciate you doing a substantive, detailed review of this great-looking game. As a long-time Tolken fan and collector, I'm thrilled that it's finally got a review.

That's why you've earned a Cordwainer Bird Award and an 8 GG tip for this excellent piece. Good job.

If you want to help winnow the list of unreviewed, OOP science fiction, fantasy and horror games, check out the Cordwainer Bird Award GeekList.

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Herr Niemand — 2007-10-21T20:10:34+00:00

The Orc's battle to clear Room #2; Wight advances on Spotted Group II

Thread: Re: Not Quite There and Back Again...

Herr Niemand — 2007-10-21T19:22:29+00:00

Looking over this review in the cold light of day, I noticed a few things I forgot to mention.

First, having played every Raiding Party in the game, I've determined my favorite -- "Freebooters." That Freebooters get a bonus to Hiding, Stealing, and Disarming Traps dovetails nicely with my style of play. Elves with their increased Missile range and ability to easily pass through secret doors come in second. I really don't like playing Orcs much -- increased Spotting range and immunity to Calm spells are useful only in certain circumstances.

My final note concerns the number of players. The box agrees with this game's entry here on BGG -- 2 to 5 players. However, the rules mention solitaire play as well as an optional sixth player controlling all creatures (except Smaug). True, the Solitaire rules do not mention how to win and the Creature player idea does seem poorly thought out. However, by rights The LONELY MOUNTAIN should probably be listed as supporting 1-6 players instead.

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Herr Niemand — 2007-10-21T19:08:43+00:00

Smaug awakes! Just in time for a tasty "Freebooter" breakfast!

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Herr Niemand — 2007-10-21T06:59:16+00:00

Beginning of a 5 player game, showing all the Treasure Sites set up

Thread: Re: Not Quite There and Back Again...

Moon Knight — 2007-10-20T11:12:47+00:00

Nice review.

Prior to finding the Geek this was probably our most played game. We spent many a high-school summer afternoon running away from Smaug. Even after my high-school buddy and I had gone to school, married and had kids, we'd get together every couple years just to play this again. Then things like Princes of Florene, Citadels, and (almost unfortunately) Heroscape came along and this just doesn't make it to the table.

Modern mechanics and rulebooks are so much more streamlined these days, that these ICE classics seem almost like work at times.Take the treasure and creature piles as a fine example. Couldn't these be drawn from decks of cards rather than dealt out in a fiddly and table consuming grid?

Still it was great fun in its day. We used to love pulling down a porticulus on purpose to trap adventures at the main gate before exiting and watching the other party frantically try to get characters strong enough to open it before Smaug came for his pre-flight snack.

Thread: Not Quite There and Back Again...

Herr Niemand — 2007-10-20T00:31:55+00:00

THE LONELY MOUNTAIN review Not Quite There and Back Again...

After several decades of searching for a reasonably priced copy of this ICE game from 1984, I finally traded with a great Geek for it. Through the years my tastes in games have evolved (due in no small part to the influence of BGG). So does this 23 year old title still have what it takes to get played again? Perhaps others might be interested in my conclusions regarding this dungeon delving game of yore.

"The Lonely Mountain -- the Lair of Smaug the Dragon" purports to be a game based on The Hobbit, but that's not really the case. It's a dungeon adventure through and through, with a few trappings of Tolkieniana strewn about for theme flavor. Set in 2770 Third Age just after Smaug sacks Erebor, The Lonely Mountain depicts a raid on the devastated Dwarven halls by up to five different groups -- Elves, Men, Orcs, Dwarves, and "Freebooters" ("Adventurers" would have been more apt, but Tolkien would probably have used the term "Outlaws").

I've just been reading Tolkien's recent posthumous work, "The Children of Hurin" which also describes a dragon sacking an underground city -- Glaurung destroying the Elven caverns of Nargothrond. When the Elven hero Mablung later enters Nargothrond, all he finds is ruin and the stench of death.

What are players of The Lonely Mountain likely to find? Well, typical old school dungeon fare, I'm afraid to say. Evidently, Smaug having sacked Erebor, hires some buddies to help with refurbishing his new digs. Smaug's sub-contractors such as Wights, Fell Beasts, Trolls, Giant Spiders, Giant Snakes, and even Giant Octopi(!?!) lurk in every chamber, sit upon piles of treasure, and smoke cigarettes in that time-honored way of tradesmen everywhere. Not terribly Tolkien, if you ask me.

On the other hand, if one approaches this design not as a Tolkien product, but as a general dungeon crawl game, these incongruities are not so jarring. In fact, The Lonely Mountain harkens back to the early days of FRPGs like few other games today. Back in prehistoric times (i.e., the 1970s) a bunch of friends would get together and send their player characters down into dungeon after dungeon -- all of them ridiculously structured and absurdly populated. Just room after room of "kill the beasties and grab their swag!" gaming. What innocent bliss!

That's what The Lonely Mountain game captures so nicely.

So if you like your Tolkien-themed games authentic, definitely pass on this one. However, if you crave a taste of that ol' time dungeon romp, read on.

Components -- Adequate
one 12 page rules booklet,
an 18" x 24" mapsheet depicting the Dwarven Halls in The Lonely Mountain,
a large fold-out sheet containing Treasure Displays as well as assorted tables and charts,
216 cards (Creatures, Characters, and Treasures),
78 cardboard chits in primary colors,
and two dice.

Component quality is the cheapest possible and still allow for playing the game. The cards are pretty much paper thin and easily damaged. The chits are so thin as to almost require tweezers to play. The mapsheet is just glossy paper and a plexiglas sheet overlay is required to avoid "the slings and arrows of outrageous folding." The map depicting the main halls of Erebor is uninspired; just different browns with a few colored doors and traps. The display sheet more or less doubles the game's footprint and also needs some plexi to keep things flat. All in all, a pretty sad affair.

However, things are made a bit worse by some truly boneheaded production layout decisions. For example, Player's Groups have two states they can be in -- "Spotted" or "Unspotted" -- and thus two sides to their counters. Unfortunately, both sides are identical except for the words "Spotted" or "Unspotted" in microscopic 2-point type! How easily a stripe or slightly different hue could have distinguished these different chit sides. But no, you have to squint at them instead. There are other follies of production I could mention, but that would be a bore.

I'll just say that the poor production quality and values were not enough to dissuade me from playing. Never judge a game by its bits, I always say. It's the play of the game that's important.

Game Play -- Early 80s mechanics representing late 70s RPG play
Setting up the game is a 20 minute chore seeding all Treasure sites with Treasures and a guardian Creature. Many blank cards are included to fine tune the danger/reward ratio to your tastes, which is a very nice feature. Large Treasure sites are located in the major chambers and one of them will contain Smaug! Now that's a nasty surprise! Once all Treasure sites contain their requisite Creature and Treasures cards, players choose which one of five Raiding parties they want to play. Dwarves, Elves, Men, Orcs, and "Freebooters" each have their special bonuses and provide the player with ten characters. There are many types of characters -- Fighters, Archers, Scouts, and others. Rangers, Mages, Bards, and Animists all have their own unique spells, which adds a great deal of flavor to these characters. These character types are clearly drawn from ICE's Rolemaster and MERP roleplaying systems -- some fight better, some Disarm Traps better and others can cast Magic Spells.

Almost all of this information is located on the Display Sheet. This game uses CRTs to resolve everything. "CRT" is wargame-speak for "Combat Results Table" -- dice are rolled and a table consulted to determine the outcome. To resolve a Missile attack, for example, you would cross-index the Attacker's Character type with the defending Creature or Character and see if you hit or not.

Players enter Erebor with up to five Groups, but only three can be moved each Player's phase. So in practice, there are seldom more than three Groups used per side. Each player in turn Moves, Spots/Activates Groups/Creatures, conducts Missile and Melee attacks. Then the Spell phase. Next the Creatures move and combat in a prescribed fashion unless played by a sixth player. Finally, the Acquistion Phase allows Groups adjacent to or in a Treasure site to either "Steal One Item," "Take One Item," or "Grab Everything." If all that sounds clunky to you, I agree. And yet, part way through my first game, I kind of got the hang of the herky-jerky sequence of play. It's similar to the MERP round sequence. I wrote down a little turn sequence cheatsheet which clarified play tremendously for me (and which I include in my player's aid, soon to be available on BGG).

I even kind of like the way that play reminds me of our old Rolemaster RPG sessions where people would die right and left from Rolemaster's infamous Critical Strikes tables. This game is like that too in that characters who get hit are dead. Kill or be killed, avoid the Traps, grab up gobs of Magic Items, and beware other Parties in the Dungeon -- that's classic D&D dungeon style play right there.

Play can get tedious if players go about things mechanically or without much thought. There are definite tactics which work and ones that don't -- and you'll find out which are which when characters start dying! This game is most fun when you take outrageous risks with your characters all in the name of loot and glory. For instance, when my Scout found Smaug's location and was sneaking around in the same room making off with nearby Treasures. Wow, that's a priceless memory marred only by the tragic death of that Elven Scout when Smaug suddenly woke up on Turn 16!

There is something of a timer in terms of Smaug becoming active through a dice roll check every turn. So you never know when the old boy will open his eyes and start eating people. He randomly pops from major chamber to major chamber, killing most everyone in the room in the process. Once he's visited all major chambers, Smaug flies out of the Lonely Mountain and smashes exits one by one until only the Main Entrance remains. And then Smaug waits for anyone still inside the mountain to try getting past him.

Five Victory Points are awarded for each Treasure successfully removed from Erebor as well as for each surviving Party member. Artifacts vary in VP value between Parties, but each is worth at least 20 VPs. Once one of your Groups exits The Lonely Mountain, your Groups can no longer pick up Treasure; so it's best to co-ordinate your exits gracefully. The winner is the player with the highest Victory Point total when all characters have exited (or been killed) or 5 Turns after Smaug reappears at the Front Gate. Although the listed playing time for this game is 90 minutes, our shortest game was two hours (and that called off by mutual agreement). I'd say two to three hours is more realistic.

Rough Edges -- playtest version?
There's a rough, almost unfinished quality to this game's rules. Part of the problem is in the rule's style which details four different states of perceptual accuity (Automatic & non-Automatic Spotting for Groups and Mandatory & non-Mandatory Activation for Creatures), but does not provide a coherent example of how to play. The other more serious problem is the rules layout itself. The Basic Game is clearly an afterthought and as a result the rules have been ripped in half. I'm not sure if the Basic Game is even playable since it so obviously was missing large sections. The Standard Game fills in those gaps, sort of. Half of the core rules are found in the Standard Game section, but they repeatedly reference the reader to sub-sections in the Basic Game, which having been written to mesh with the Basic Game rules, now contradict the Standard Game. You just have to kind of "know" what the designer meant, I guess. The MPD (multiple paragraph disorder) meant that I was constantly flipping from Basic to Standard to read the totality of the rules. But worse by far was the page flipping to look up something during play -- unbearable -- spells all over the place, Smaug's Movement rules in one place, Smaug's Combat in another, two sets of definitions that do not completely agree with one another, and so on. Never play this game with rules' lawyers...

During that first game, I found that in order to play I had to make my own player's aid. For instance, the Turn Sequence on the fold out sheet isn't just lacking enough detail to be useful -- it's actually wrong in one important regard! At least according to the Standard Game rules...

As of this writing, my player's aid has not yet been approved by BGG Admin. As soon as it's available, I'll post the link below.

http://files.boardgamegeek.com/geekfile_view.php?fileid=2729...

There's also a section of Optional Rules to provide greater "realism" in play. About half these optional rules (like Ambush and Limits on the Use of Items) give the game a much stronger Rolemaster or MERP flavor. Most of these rules only seem to add chrome for chrome's sake, however.

So is this just a playtest version rushed to press?

There are a few things that make me wonder...

- Needed to make a player's aid before being able to begin.

- Rules called for markers not included in counter mix ("Dead" markers).

- Solitaire game provides no Victory Condition. (I play 100+ VPs is a win)

- Rules don't mention whether or not Smaug can be "Controlled." (we said no)

Not to mention the tonne of questions we generated in our first game:

Q- Is making a Missile Attack mandatory?
A- We ruled that Groups were never forced to make a Missile Attack, but were forced to engage in Melee.

Q- When does a player declare he's playing a single-use magic item card (like Magic Arrows), before or after the dice are rolled?
A- Since this game is based on RPG play, we figured that a player would have to declare he's using Magic Arrows before the dice are rolled (unlike in Last Night on Earth, for example).

Q- Does casting a Calm spell cause the Group to become Spotted? Even if it fails?
A- Here, we just played as seemed best at the time, and in keeping with the general sense of kludgey chrome we gave it a twist. Calm spells do not leave the Group in a Spotted state (exception: a Bard's Calm Song does cause a Group to flip to its "Spotted" side).

Q- In a 6 player game, can the Creatures player move Activated Creatures out of their rooms of origin (unlike normal Creature movement)?
A- We ruled that the Creature player could move his Creatures how he wanted -- wouldn't be much fun otherwise!

As you can see, the rules are not "user-friendly!"

Summary -- only for collectors and lovers of the genre
Actually, that could easily stand as my two word review of The LONELY MOUNTAIN -- "Not User-Friendly." Still, there's fun to be had in this thin box, especially if you enjoy the genre and don't mind making up game rulings on-the-fly. I'd have loved this game back in the mid-80s! It would have seemed like a wonderful board game adaptation of the sort of D&D roleplaying I'd been doing five years earlier. Today, more than two decades later, well... this title shows its age.

My rating: a 6 -- I can see playing this game every once in a while, to get a taste of that old 80s style dungeon crawl.

Tim Taylor 10/19/2007

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Herr Niemand — 2007-10-19T06:35:30+00:00

Detail of The Lonely Mountain mapsheet showing main entrance

Thread: Re: Help! What's card #211?

perfumer — 2007-10-05T13:03:20+00:00

Card " 211 is indeed a blank
Willy

Thread: Re: Help! What's card #211?

Herr Niemand — 2007-10-04T21:53:04+00:00

Thanks Dr. Glaze et al!

Being one card short of a full deck kinda bites, but if you gotta be down a card it's best if it's blank!

I plan to play this soon and will get back with you.

TT

Thread: Re: Help! What's card #211?

dr glaze et al — 2007-10-03T22:05:58+00:00

Card 211 is a blank creature card.

I look forward to your comments on game. I have had my copy unplayed for too long.

Thread: Help! What's card #211?

Herr Niemand — 2007-10-03T19:06:13+00:00

Just traded for an unpunched copy of LM which is missing card #211. This is a Creature card and is probably blank (like the other nearby Creature cards), but I want to be sure.

So, would someone out there in BGG-land owning LM take a moment to check what Creature card #211 is?

Thanks!

TT

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Boltana — 2007-06-22T02:44:43+00:00

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Boltana — 2007-06-22T02:43:52+00:00

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Boltana — 2007-06-22T02:43:02+00:00

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homiefud — 2006-06-07T19:35:07+00:00

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homiefud — 2006-06-07T19:24:55+00:00

Everything in the box.

Thread: Re: One fun game

Breunor — 2005-07-11T17:51:50+00:00

I always thouhgt this was a great game. It won an award at Origins for best fantasy game.

Unfortunately, it was never a real big hit. My view is that a lot of people playing fantasy games like simple games, and this was a complex game in a fantasy/Tolkien setting.

Thread: One fun game

delerme — 2003-09-05T14:31:15+00:00

I remember spending afternoons on this one
It was a very well balanced "dungeonlike" game, since so many fail to strike the right balance between "too hard for beginning characters" and "too easy for high-level characters"
This is one of the games that cries for a computerization (shouldn't be too difficult to program and would be a blast to play with a first-person setting)