lunes, 16 de marzo de 2020

Gobliins 2 - Meatballs Of Happiness

By Ilmari

Last time I got the impression I would start this section instantly from the throne room. Alas, my journey from the subterranean sea ended somewhere else.


In the kitchen

Still, throne room wasn't far away, so let's move there for a while.


Note the pepper pot, it will become handy later

Movementwise, there was an interesting trick in the throne room. Usually the exits of a screen have been pretty much fixed. Not here. Whenever my goblins were at the right side of the screen, the exit list showed the kitchen. Then again, I could move the goblins through the various secret passageways to the left side of the screen (and no, moving in front of the eyes of the demons wasn't an option), where instead of kitchen the list of exits showed another room (we'll get back to that later).

On the throne room sat the evil demon Amoniak, and to the left of him was the Prince Buffoon I was here to rescue. But the demon lackey was interestingly called a lover of meatballs. Say, didn't I just see a big pile of those?

Indeed, in the kitchen, a servant was preparing them. He would put them through the window, one by one, suggesting he was feeding the demon lackey. I had been carrying a bottle of kindness elixir for a while now, and my suspicion was that I could spice the meatballs with it. In fact, when I tried to do it, goblins told me that the idea was good but they were afraid it would spill and the cook would throw the spiced meatballs away.

Checking the kitchen a bit more, I found out that pressing the eye of the swordfish would contort the fish, which would hit the goblin, who would fly to the salt shaker, which would drop to a position where it could be taken (remarkable cause-effect chains). Now, I could spice the meatballs with salt, and the cook would be reprimanded for oversalting.


Like this

For the couple of seconds cook wasn't sitting, I could interact with the case he was sitting on. What could I do with it? Well, I began by adding some salt in the big pot. Someone was apparently using it as a bath and was glad that we had put some bath salt in it. As a token of gratitude, I received a file, which could be used for releasing bird.


Although not from its cage

With the cage gone, I could move forward on the shelf and take some thumb tacks. Obviously, these were the things I could put on the case, while cook was being disciplined. When the cook sat on them, he lost the grip on the meatball he had been holding.


Poor cook should have stayed in bed today

This was a most frustrating sequence. Clearly I had to use the elixir with the meatball while it was flying. Problem was that time was so short and the spot I had to click was so small. Worst of it was that I had to do the whole salt-the-meatballs-wait-quickly-apply-the-thumb-tacks routine again, every time I failed in spicing the meatball. After dozens of failed attempts (and agony experienced by the cook), I finally managed to pull it off. Next time I entered the throne room, Amoniak's lackey was having a silly grin on his face


One down, two to go

My next target was Amoniak's demon dog that was said to eat cockroaches. This wasn't as intuitive a problem to solve as the one with the meatballs, but involved more of random experimentation. I noticed that if Fingus entered the ear of the demon throne and Winkle at the same time pulled at the tongue of a statue on the left, the left eye of the demon throne would open and Fingus would automatically manipulate the right eye, releasing a cockroach, which would walk toward the dog and be eaten after few seconds (yep, a bit random). The trick was to quickly take the cockroach through one of those magic holes and then to use some elixir on it.


The room at the other side of the throne room

Only one to go! Demon king Amoniak was dealt with a very similar manner as his underlings, that is, by mixing some kindness elixir into his food. I found a painter who told me that Amoniak ate only ladybugs. Since I knew where to get cockroaches, I tried painting one of them with red paint from the painter and adding some black spots from a pepper pot. It apparently was enough to fool Amoniak.


And then we were three

The game wasn't over yet. I still had to escape the castle, but I had no idea how to do it. After a while, I met the real king of the castle, locked inside his armour, hanging from a rope.


He's smaller than I expected

Amoniak had turned the king to a small child, and only his crown could turn him back to normal. I had already stolen from Amoniak this crown (one of the goblins could snatch it, while entering the head of the demon throne), which I now gave to the king. The castle scientist noticed this and went to find some help to release the king. With the scientist left, I could tinker with one of his machines.




Honey, I shrank the gobliins!

Finding myself on a desk (what desk actually is this?), I immediately noticed a box with a lock of a shape similar to one one on a seal. Should I use the seal to make an impression from the wax of the nearby candle and use it to open the box? If so, how could I get the wax?

Checking the other items, I noticed a pen knife that one goblin could lift for a couple of minutes. Using the other goblin on the knife during those few minutes moved the knife a few millimetres nearer to a book. Doing that couple of times brought the knife close enough to the book that I could cut from it a piece of the bookmark, which I could use as a wick of the candle.

What next? I picked up a match and used it to pry one glass eye from decorative skull. I tested what each goblin would do with the ball. They all kicked it, but Prince Buffoon particularly managed to break a piece from glasses with it. There was a conspicuous beam of sunlight coming from a window and hitting the candle. Using the piece of glass with that beam, the wick started to burn and a piece of wax dropped from the candle.

Just like I thought, I could shape the wax with the seal and the use this impression to open the box. Inside, I found some beans. Playing around with them for a while, I finally tried to use them on the map. To my surprise, the seed started to sprout a beanstalk - in the map. Without further ado, I entered the map.




I am getting confused. Was it a magic map? Did it teleport
me somewhere? If so, did I just create a huge beanstalk here?

It was definitely a silly ending, but just right what to expect from this game. And it wasn't the end, but only an end - the game still continues. What more lies ahead of me, now that I rescued the prince? We'll find that out next week.

But before ending completely, let me advertise a new feature of our blog. Our readers occasionally note that some noteworthy game is missing from our official list. We have been playing such missing games as Missed Classics, but there has been no way for our readers to suggest what to play as a Missed Classic. We admins decided it should be time to change this. Just for this reason, we've set up a simple spreadsheet (you can find the link also on the left column), where you can add your suggestion. We are still not sure how we will add your suggestions to our Missed Classic schedules, but we are working on it.

Inventory: match, file

Session time: 2 h 45 min
Total time: 19 h 15 min

domingo, 15 de marzo de 2020

X-Wing: Second Edition Is On The Way!

Feeling fresh.

Oh man, I'm excited.  I haven't played X-Wing in a while because the competitive meta was just so stagnant with all the health regen, turrets,and bombs.  Now that they rebooted the entire game, I'm really pumped to get back into it.

The official announcement is here:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2018/5/1/x-wing-second-edition/

There's a thread on the FFG forums that has all the consolidated info:
https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/274813-consolidated-x-wing-20-changes-thread/

Here's a quick run-down of what changed and what didn't..

These things have not changed in 2.0:
  • Models carry over (some models may be re-released with new sculpts/paint/features)
  • Dice are the same
  • Range ruler is the same
  • Range bonuses and obstructions work the same (except turrets)
  • Templates are the same size -- but have a line down the center for alignment on nubless bases
  • Basic game flow (but phases are renamed; some new phases)
  • Maneuver driven by hidden dials plus actions
  • Actions include: Focus, Target lock, evade, boost, barrel roll, cloak, reinforce, jam, coordinate, rotate arc (specific action mechanics may change)
  • Upgrade slots: EPT, modification, title, torpedo, astromech, bombs, missiles, crew, system, turret
  • Some upgrades will still take two slots
  • Tokens (some art changes, shape): focus, evade, target lock, cloak, stress, tractor beam, jam, shield, ion
  • Conditions are still a thing (Director Krennic)
  • Setup Phase is largely the same

These things have changed in 2.0:
  • New phases/phase names ("Strategy Phase")
  • Medium ship bases (confirmed: U-wing, ARC-170, K-wing, G1A, Kimogila, Scurrg, Firespray, TIE Punisher, TIE Reaper, TBD)
  • The new templates have a centerline that aligns to hash marks on the base and assists with bumping.
  • Green maneuvers become blue 
  • Red actions which gain a stress after taking
  • Push the Limit is gone; some ships may "link" a first action into a second and gain a stress (example: focus into target lock linked action)
  • New tokens: Force, charge
  • Force tokens which power force abilities for some pilots; they may also be used to change one Focus result
  • Charge/surge tokens which power some pilot abilities and ordnance
  • Token shape now indicates when removed: "End of Round" tokens are round; square tokens have other triggers to remove (e.g. ion, stress) 
  • Evade tokens to not add evade results; they just change green dice to evades.
  • No costs on pilot cards or upgrades; these are in the squad builder app. Baseline is now 200 points.
  • Each ship base has a bullseye arc and quadrants marked
  • Turrets adopt mobile arc mechanics
  • Turrets also get ranged bonuses and penalties, Ordnance does not.
  • New upgrade cards are full sized, landscape
  • New upgrade slots: Force Abilities ("Instinctive Aim"), Configuration ("S-foils")
  • Resistance and First Order will now be separate factions
  • Firespray-31 is no longer Imperial; Scum only
  • New pilots
  • No upgrade bar; either use ship build cards from the core set or the squad builder app
  • Pilot skill is now called Initiative and goes from 1 to 6 [Wedge Antilles: 6]; no Veteran's Instincts or ability to change
  • Damage deck - new. Repairing damage is now a thing. New cards ("Fuel Leak", "Panicked Pilot", "Wounded Pilot"); only 5 Direct Hits in the deck now.
  • Regen exists, but is powered by charge tokens and nets a weapons disabled (R2 astromech)
  • Decimator gets Reinforce and a red Coordinate
  • Some ships have built-in abilities: Phantom (Stygium); TIE Advanced (Advanced Targeting Computer)
  • Ordnance appears not to spend target locks (e.g. Proton torps); 
  • Ion tokens: 1 for small ship, 2 for medium ship, 3 for large ship
  • Bombs can blow up obstacles (and do damage in the process)
  • New abilities will affect the Setup Phase
  • They will introduce new obstacle types
  • Shield levels have been reduced on many ships
  • Barrel roll is not adjustable; they use the hash marks on the bases for alignment.Barrel Roll now only has 3 positions per side (6 total) – makes Barrel Roll more inline with Boost as you only have 6 total positions.If you declare and action and you can't do it (ie Barrel Roll would land you on a rock), you just lose the action now
  • There is a "range 0" for own ship abilities.
  • Target Lock is now just Lock – and you can Lock on to objects as well as ships (friendly and enemy).
  • Certain ships have different attack values for different arcs now.

Took inventory last night.  Looks like I'm going to have to do some massive trading when the game comes out.

Rebels:
3 A-Wing (2 Aces)
4 B-Wing (2 Aces)
4 T-65 X-Wing (Core)
2 Z-Wing
1 HWK-290
1 Y-Wing
1 E-Wing
1 K-Wing
1 YT-1300 (Heroes)
1 YT-1300
1 YT-2400
1 Sabine's TIE Fighter

Imps:
3 TIE Interceptors
2 TIE Advanced
1 TIE Phantom
7 TIE Fighters (Core)
4 TIE Interceptors (Royal Guard)
4 TIE Interceptors (181st)
3 TIE Defender (Veterans)
3 TIE Bomber (Veterans)
1 TIE Advanced (Raider)
1 TIE Advanced Proto
1 TIE Aggressor
1 VT-49 Decimator
1 Lambda Shuttle

Scum:
2 BroBots
1 Slave I
1 H-6 Bomber

Resistance:
4 T-70 X-Wing (Core)
1 T-70 X-Wing (Heroes)

First Order:
7 TIE F/O (Core)
1 TIE Silencer

jueves, 5 de marzo de 2020

Italian Wars Campaigning


An interesting question came up on the Twitters whilst I was chatting about my review of the Furioso rule set, what about a Campaign System ? You know each player is a Condottiero building his forces and manoeuvring for position, fortune and fame in late 15th Century Italy, that sort of thing.

Well sit back, I think I have found it.


I present Dell'arte Del La Guerra from a Company who are new too me Real Time Wargames. I found them during a random search on the Googles, I couldn't find much information or reviews about them on the tinterwebnet so I took a punt.

The book has a Campaign System for up to 6 players to take the role of a Condottiero in the late 15th Century in the years leading up to the French Invasion in 1495 (or invitation depending on your viewpoint), everything I mentioned in my opening paragraph.


They are avaliable as a PDF for around £10 from Wargames Vault (you would need to print and mount the game cards this way) or direct from the company as a printed version complete with gaming aids for £20 (link below)

https://www.realtimewargames.com/product-page/dell-arte-della-guerra

I bought the printed version and if it's your thing I would go for that version as will become plain during the review.

The Contents

First thing to say is that the book also has some tabletop rules within them, this review does not cover that part of the publication, I am happy with Furioso at the moment. 1st off a video covering the physical content of the book.


For those who don't do the Utube here are some stills of content. The use of the cards becomes clearer when watched in conjunction with the game play video.


Above are the game mats included in the printed version, we have,

  1. A fast play sheet for the tabletop rules
  2. A chart for recording current financial details of the players and the City States involved.
  3. A campaign chart for army movement.
  4. A Chart for recording passage of time during the Campaign 

A set of Unit Cards for each of the Condottiero, defining two units from that army, they are printed on decent card and are good quality. Each of the 6 players have 10 cards each.


Next up are three sets of cards, one each for the two schools of warfare in the game. These are specifically for the tabletop rules and are used to influence game play, however I don't think they would be too difficult to adapt to whatever rule set you use.

The third deck are objective cards, these are drawn at random each game year and provide a focus for the campaign.


Above is a picture of the remaining cards in the set, there a unit cards for the City States (50 cards) plus a number of cards representing the French Invaders.

The rest of the cards are for use on the Campaign Charts shown above, things like markers for money on the finance chart, army position markers, debt markers for money owed etc

In fact everything you need, bar a few dice and a deck of playing cards. There are hundreds of cards here and for me, well worth the extra 10 quid.

Campaign Game Play

The next section covers an example of the set up and workings of the Campaign, I have done this solely on the Utubes as it's much easier to present that way.





Hopefully that will have given you an idea of the rule set and how they might work for you. Don't forget they include a tabletop rule set as well.

The movement map for the armies is very straight forward and some may miss a more traditional map based system but it's a nice simple way of working out Army Movement and we will definitely be giving it a go. 

I'm off to raise (ok paint) some more troops for his Holiness, "Viva il Papa"

Grav-StuG Kickstarter 61% Funded... (New 3D Print Images)
















Nintendo's 8-Bit Obsession With Golf

Golf is popular in most parts of the world with any concentration of wealth.  It is rather popular in Japan, at least for those who can afford to play it.  Green fees and club memberships are extremely pricey in Japan, so it may not be any surprise that many people who enjoy the game may have to turn to less expensive alternatives to get 18 holes in.  Most video game systems have a golf game, or something intended to resemble golf, released for them.  When Nintendo was releasing early titles for its Famicom, a golf game was a natural addition to its sports library.  But Nintendo kept revisiting the sport with its 8-bit systems, so let's explore how its implementation of golf evolved throughout the 8-bit lifespan.

Read more »

miércoles, 4 de marzo de 2020

HOTT 52 - Getting Ready

Kaptain Kobold over at the Stronghold blog has been holding forth on the game HOTT (Hordes of the Things) for years now. This year, they decided to play a weekly game of HOTT a year and record them as HOTT 52. This sounds like a great idea for me, and will allow me to get off my painting/modeling obsession (and Minecraft addiction -- you should see the "Empire" I'm creating in my world, all in Survival!) .. anyway, to actually play games.

(See [1] for what HOTT is, if you've never heard of it before.)

I'm going back in time, though, back to the last published version of HOTT, 1.2, which is now available again on Lulu! After playing a version of HOTT that was updated for the latest DBA 3 rules, I've decided to go back. Not because the update HOTT2DBA3 rules are bad, but because a lot of HOTT play at conventions/events is still based on 2.1. I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the actual version.

I was reading through my well worn copy of the rules and kept finding odd notations that implied I had done something earlier, so I went through my Google Drive and found this:

HOTT Reference Sheet (Google Drive Link)

The first page is written for my Etinerra campaign world, and I converted the measurements to inches because "'Murica", but the rules summary works very well as a one sheet/two page summary of the game.

Rather than try to do a huge big restart to my wargames campaign in Etinerra, I'm just going to play some games with miniatures and get to playing HOTT regularly, THEN I can see about tying things back to Etinerra. So this coming weekend, I will do two games to catch up with the weeks - last weekend was all about my playtest of Hommlet!

While I love Chaos Wars and still play it, HOTT is perfect for an hourlong game that gives me some fun, but doesn't require a lot of time.

Thanks, Kaptain Kobold, for the inspiration!

[1] HOTT/Hordes of the Things is a fantasy miniatures wargame that uses a small number of figures to play out just about any fantasy setting you can imagine. It also allows you to make just about any army you can imagine, with an army list that ranges from high Tolkein fantasy, to Asian Indian mythology, to Discworld and even Christmas Land! The rules can be interesting to interpret, with "Barkerese" on the same level as "High Gygaxian" in terms of writing. There's a ton of help on the web and my reference sheet to help you with the rules!

WIP - "Rescue Of Hommlet" - Playtest Weekend

Having written stolen and mashed up rules to create a Chainmail/Book of War hybrid Frankenstein monster, I wanted to make sure that the thing played well, and I wanted to see what comes up that I hadn't thought of.

And I wanted to give the model a shakedown, to see how it would be used by (hopefully) friendly faces before taking it to GaryCon to sit next to two other Greyhawk games taking place with the same topic - the goings on of the Temple of Elemental Evil and the infamous Moathouse.

But first... picture porn of the model! I've made progress since the last model update from early December.

      

It felt really good to get the model to a point where I could play with it. Obviously, a lot of work left to be done, with painting details, making the mucky moat and surrounding terrain. The comments I got from players was very positive!



Playtesting - I had three concerns with the scenario and rules:
  • Will the rules work in reflecting that we have figures that represent single characters (1:1 scale) and figures that represent troop units (~10:1 scale)
  • With using the forces as represented in the module T1 - Village of Hommlet, is there a huge mismatch?
  • What surprises do I need to account for that devious players will come up with?
I ran one session on Saturday for Chris and Alex, two of my D&D players and members of the Northern Illinois Fantasy Miniatures Association. On Sunday, I ran a session for my D&D player Derek.

 

I'm happy to say that I got tons of great feedback from my very patient friends! Overall, they all expressed enjoyment with the scenario and with the approach of playing "D&D" with Chainmail as the battle mechanism. It became clear that what we had was more of a skirmish game than a huge battle. That turned out to be OK!

If you go and look at the rules, you can see a number of tweaks and approaches that I've adopted to reflect lessons learned. Here are the three big ones:

I. Having a character figure that isn't a superhero somehow take out a troop unit figure with just a single dice roll didn't feel right. The character should be a lot more threatened when they go against a unit of soldiers [1].

To solve that, I took this approach:
1. If the battle is troop unit figure vs. troop unit figure, or character/creature vs. character/creature, roll number of dice equal to Fighting Capability (FC) of unit. Count hits. This is standard Chainmail or Book of War.

2. If battle is troop unit figure (representing 10 soldiers) vs. character/creature, scale the dice. Roll # of dice representing FC of unit multiplied by number of soldiers left in figure. Count hits against character. Character rolls number of dice equal to their Fighting Capability.

So, Rufus the Fighter is facing a figure of bugbears. He has an FC of 6. He is attacking as Heavy Foot (HF) and the bugbears are defending as Armored Foot (AF). In my rules, he needs a 6. He rolls 3 6 1 1 2 5, so he scores a hit! That means a bugbear will be a casualty out of the unit.

The bugbears return the favor. Their FC is 2. The figure represents ten bugbears. So the player for the bugbears would grab TWENTY six siders and roll. The bugbears attack as HF and Rufus defends as AF. With twenty dice, the chances are likely for at least 3 to 4 hits, so Rufus might be in trouble here...

THIS felt right, even though it would be murder on the characters - as it should be! Up to about Superhero level, a single character is taking huge risks to get involved in an Aragorn-esque fight against a bunch of baddies.

What helped was the adopted rule that magic armor removes a dice from each roll. So if ten bugbears are rolling 2 dice each, Rufus's magic armor made that 1 dice. Which, magic armor should have that effect. So this felt right as well.

It does mean I'm going to have to track the "hits" on a troop figure from characters. So that as the character whittles away at the troop unit, it grows less and less effective in attacking, meaning less dice to attack with. I'm OK with that right now, but I'm still considering if this is the approach I want to take.

I may revert to the approach of Chaos Wars and represent units as multiple figures - so it will look like a 1:1 game, although troops on troops will still be adjudicated at a 10:1 scale. I'm not sure yet.

II. Magic and the different classes. At first, I was struggling with how to interpret the various bonuses and minuses from the gear that the inhabitants of Hommlet and Moathouse have with them. Through testing, we agreed to use the approach from "Compleat Chainmail" - if the defender (against ranged or melee) has magic armor, attackers remove a die from their roll. If attackers have a magic weapon, they add a die to their roll. This worked well for a convention game approach.

I also had to dig through OD&D history, original booklets, supplements and the Strategic Review articles to fill the rules and approaches for things in T1 that don't come in OD&D/Chainmail as written. Things like how to implement Elmo the Ranger (riff off the Ranger article from Strategic Review Vol 1, #3), the Druid Brother Smythe and his spells (look at Supplement III, Eldritch Wizardry), how does Lareth's Staff of Striking work in the Chainmail combat rules (riff off of AD&D/DMG description of the staff and have the player opt to improve a hit to be two or three, while spending charges).

That was a fun exercise in looking at how iconic classes were built, and how AD&D was still a similar game to OD&D in that you could easily use magic items from one in the other.

III. Crossbowmen are murder! The basic scenario has the Forces of Woe at the Moathouse, prepared with full knowledge of the approach of the Forces of Weal. This means that logically, the ranged forces are going to be on the ramparts, ready to shoot down any who approach. It's a sound tactic, used effectively through history. In the first game, I had written down the wrong range for crossbows, using the heavy crossbow range of 24" versus the actual range of 18". I also had two figures of crossbow units on the ramparts, to represent the 20 Guards of the New Master.

Had we run with the rule of multiple dice x FC of troop units versus single characters, I doubt that many would have survived the approach!

In the second game, I reduced the number of New Guards with crossbow to 10 soldiers (1 figure) only, but even with that, they murdered the approaching forces of Weal - taking out both single figures of mercenary bow and militia bow, then the elderly farmer captain armed with a crossbow.

The one factor in both situations was that the crossbowman had cover on the Moathouse's ramparts while the forces of Weal were out in the open.

I have a solution that is tied to the description of the terrain around the Moathouse.
A scrub of thorns, thistles, weeds, and shrubs grows thickly along the edge of the track which leads to the ruins, and even the track is mostly overgrown and cluttered with fallen branches and trees.
...
After two miles of distance, the land begins to sink and become baggy, as the track turns more northerly, and tall marsh plants grow thickly where cattails and tamaracks do not. Off to the left can be seen the jagged silhouette of the moathouse.
...
The bogs here stink, and the vegetation appears dense and prolific, but somehow sickly and unhealthy, creepers and vines throwing their strangling loops over the skeletons of dead saplings and living bushes alike. The rushes and cattails rustle and bend even when only a slight zephyr blows over the marsh, and weird bird calls, croakings, and other unwholesome sounds come faintly across the fen.
I had been saying that the only place where normal movement can happen is on the path/track to the moathouse. If you go off-road, you are in that thick scrub and vegetation, therefore you move at half movement. My fix here is to give anyone in the weeds the benefit of cover as well.

So it's a tough choice, go slow and with benefit of cover, or go fast and possibly get cut down. I think this is a good tactical choice, so I will leave the forces as-is, and playtest this approach.

Plus, I get to make more terrain! Scatter terrain to represent the bog/swamp around the moat.

There are a lot of other lessons and tweaks from the play-test, but these are big ones. I'm really glad I did the testing, it's going to make my Greyhawk game that much better.



Researching Greyhawk is interesting for me, because it's such hallowed, well-trodden ground in D&D lore. The Battle of Emridy Meadows and the Temple of Elemental Evil are well-known and beloved. This has led me to approach this scenario with a lot more preparation and thought than I normally do with my "plan a little, play a lot" approach. 

I want players to "feel" like this is OD&D/Chainmail and that the game is accurate, for the most part, to how T1 - Village of Hommlet sets things up. Judging by how my testers reacted, they weren't all that familiar with Greyhawk, but they enjoyed the experience. So I'm hopeful!

As a reminder, if you want to see what I'm doing, here are links to my documents on Google Drive:

[1] I blame Daniel Collins (of Delta's D&D Blog) for converting me to the view that many of the 'single person versus an army' fantasy scenes are just really unrealistic. I feel like it's a better game when I keep that in mind and take that approach.