Monthly Archives: February 2019

Exhausted but fighting on!

D&D, game night, RPG


I hope you have enjoyed the last couple of days of no posts happening. For you dear suffering readers the positive side of me being ill for a couple of days. Sadly as this post shows I’m back.

The astute amongst you will have noticed I’ve been doing posts recently about planning a RPG campaign and in a soon to be finished and published post plotting an adventure.

I thought in this first half of this post I’d share the tools/apps I’ve been using in getting ready for my first time as a GM and the Android universe.

I’m a fan of both the physical and digital versions of books. So for the digital side I use the two most popular apps for ebooks the Kindle app and iBooks. DrivethruRpg is a great source of RPG books and their digital format of choice is the watermarked pdf. I use iBooks mainly for pdfs. For me it’s the better experience for the consumption of a pdf than the Kindle app.

The advantage of the digital version of a book is it’s easier for me to create my own custom cheat sheets. I can copy and paste the information I need. Plus I find it’s easier to print a page from the ebook than photocopy a page from the physical book.

This is why PDF Expert is included here. It enables me to manipulate and extract information from a pdf. It also allows me to select pages from the original and create a separate pdf with the pertinent pages for printing, and keeping for future reference.

I’m a big fan of brainstorming apps. That’s why iThoughts (mindmaps), Outliner (outlines) and GoodNotes (general note taking with an Apple Pencil) are here. These are the apps I capture ideas and plan.

Scrivener is a writing app. It is focused on writing, but it’s a very flexible app that works round projects, which can have research notes within the project. This is where the adventure gets written. The research functionality is amazing, and being able to include or not include sections is really handy.

I’ve included MS Word here, but it could also be Pages. This is the app I use for creating my custom cheat sheets.

Finally I’ve included Pixelmator for any image manipulation that’s needed. This really is one of my favourite apps. It makes it look like a can create graphics.

I have recently found a couple of apps for creating dungeon maps randomly which I need to play with. Once I have I’ll talk about them here. I know my friend Edmund, and the GM for the D&D 5e campaign I’m playing in uses his autodesk expertise to create the maps we get to use in our sessions (which are rather good). So I’ve downloaded the iPad version of it to play with.

Finally before we get onto the dramatic retelling of last nights shenanigans FFG are looking at character creation with in Shadow of the Beanstalk (the Genesys source book for the Android universe) this week along with the taster scenario. People that pre-ordered directly from FFG are starting to receive their copies. Although not shown on this weeks sheet for new releases that Asmodee UK, one or two are saying it’s available tomorrow (Thursday). But I tend to think more likely that it will drop next week. However this wouldn’t be the first time something gets released that is not on the sheet. So basically Shadow of the Beanstalk due out any day now.

And now we rejoin Dram and the rag tag team he is currently having adventures with…

Feeling magically spent. Dram really felt like he could do with a long rest to recoup.

But considering there was still unknown threats in the rest of the unexplored castle the likely hood of that happening were very remote.

He’d have to push on through the exhaustion and use his cantrips as much as he can to back up the others. They’d just have to accept that is all he had left at the moment. No big theatrical spells to save the rests butts for the time being.

After a very brief discussion the party started to move through the rest of the castle room by room. Ace would first check any closed door, and listen for any signs of danger the other side of the door.

This started off well, Dram was hanging back, Ace was taking the risks.

Ace disappeared into one room that turned out to be a chapel only to be ambushed by three goblins. Dram in his exhausted state was happy to let the others rush in and help Ace out and nullify the goblin threat.

Once the sounds of battle stopped Dram joined the rest in the chapel. The group made their way to the far end of the chapel and the unblocked door.

Ace again repeated the drill of checking the door. Despite the gnome having already checked it. Ace could be heard mumbling under his breathe something about being better at it than the short arse.

The party piled into a small hallway. As Dram was examining a curtain over what looked like a door way. A scream of immense agony could be heard coming from the chapel. It was Nick. He had been attacked.

The others once again rushed into the chapel to help Nick. Before doing the same Dram peaked behind the curtain to make sure there would be no surprises coming from that direction.

Dram joined the fray. Surrounded by the party in the middle was a grey stone coloured serpent like creature with four tentacles surrounding its beak. It was a Grick. A Grick caught in the mouth of a dire wolf. Nick had gone all canine on it. Dram used Grull as cover as he tried to use his cantrip shocking grasp on the Grick. His hand sparked blue and just as quickly faded away. The cantrip failed to connect.

Before Dram had another chance to try again with the shocking grasp the Grick was dispatched by the rest of the party.

Back in the hall way Ace checked another door and heard voices the other side of it.

Unusual for Ace he stepped back and prepared himself to attack anything that appeared from behind the door.

Dram pushed open the door and stood back out of the way.

Suddenly a hobgoblin appeared in the door way. There was a sudden flash of metal as Ace swung in and killed it.

A whoosh of air could be heard as Sarmyar let lose an arrow through the open door into the room. Closely followed by the javelin of Grull.

The party rushed into the room, jumping over the hobgoblin corpse. In the room was a fat goblin and a seriously wounded hobgoblin. The hobgoblin was quickly killed by adventurers. But the fat goblin was sneakier than expected and disappeared off behind a curtain door. Ace gave chase. Throwing caution to the wind, not waiting for back up.

Back up (minus Nick would had decided to stay behind in the room with the hobgoblin corpses) finally caught up with Ace in a small hallway. Just as he disappeared into a room. The whelps of a wolf could be heard from the room.

As the back up bundled in to back up Ace, they were greeted with the scene of Ace standing over a badly wounded wolf, a disgruntled bugbear, the fat goblin and a seriously injured dwarf laying on the floor.

Sarmyar’ s panther attacked the fat goblin, while Grull and the gnome took on the bugbear. Once again Dram used Grull as a shield as he used his Ray of Frost cantrip to attack the badly wounded wolf.

In all the confusion that is combat, another enemy used that confusion to it’s advantage to attack the party from its hiding place. It was a female Drow.

As the wolf was killed by a particularly effective bolt of ice from Dram’s cantrip, Ace was knocked to the ground badly injured by the Drow. Before the bugbear followed its pet wolf to the next world, it took the gnome out.

It was at this point that the Drow decided to make a run for it. She grabbed a parchment off a small table in front of Dram and made for the door. However her escape was blocked off by Nick and Sarmyar. The Drow was soon surrounded by the party. Sarmyar grabbed the parchment off her, while a ropey Ace, blade to her throat tried to interrogate her. With no answers forthcoming Ace took revenge on the Drow by slitting her throat.

While this was going on Dram administered a healing potion to the downed gnome that had been given to him by Ace.

And that is where we leave our adventurers for another week.

Testing 1,2,3 Testing

Game day, magic, Magic League, MtG

Yesterday was the start of the Ravnica Allegiance Magic League with my FLGS.

I discussed this format for MtG in previous posts, but for those new to the blog, MtG or just poor memories and don’t want the trauma of remembering my posts, I’ll try and summarise it briefly.

Magic League is a sealed event, where a player buys three booster packs, and with the contents builds a 30 card deck to play against other participants. The league takes place over four weeks, and each week you are able to buy an additional booster to strengthen your deck. Also after three losses you can also buy a booster pack to strengthen your deck. At the end of the league you get a cool promo card for participating.

The nice thing about the league is that it is accessible for new players. It provides a level playing field between new and old by removing the large card collection, and having to spend lots of money to get a “competitive deck” (although you can build a competitive deck on a budget).

After buying my three packs for the league, naturally I cracked them open and did the first thing every MtG player does. I went to the back of the pack and looked at the rares and uncommons I’d pulled.

With two Simic Guild Gates pulled I was getting the distinct hint I should be leaning towards a Simic deck.

After just throwing my Simic cards together I had no decision making to make to get the right number of cards. I had the right number to build the deck with. Instead of playing a league match we played some Commander!

I only had the one Commander deck with me. It was my big green stompy deck. I didn’t win any of the three games we played. But I had a blast. My deck did it’s thing. I got creatures out, made them big, and stomped over a player or two.

I also managed to get some testing of my Simic Standard deck against John and his Merfolk deck.

Our first game was a surprise to me and John. By turn four I had three Llanowar Elves out, three lands and I’d cast a Biogenic Ooze. Ramp wise this was a start I could only dream of. With my removal and counter spells, pumping out more oozes, and them getting bigger each turn. I easily took the first game.

In our second game of the best of three, it was more to plan. Ramp, Wilderness Reclamation , Biogenic Ooze, frustrating John with counter spells and bouncing creatures back to hand. A bit of mill with the walls. Threats from John to kick me under the table.

We started a second round of best of three. But this time I took out the walls and replaced them with two Incubation Druid’s (it’s all I have) and a Llanowar Scout.

Despite losing to John 2-1. I did like what these bought to the table. The Incubation Druid was pretty good, getting a +1/+1 on it was easy with the Essence Capture. So I wasn’t having to wait for the three mana it can tap for. My main problem during these three games was my mana sinks hadn’t come out. So I wasn’t getting the full value from them.

During these games John got to witness the double Wilderness Reclamation, Biogenic Ooze combo. There was a little questioning with the stores future MtG judge (he’s,in training) about the way that combo worked during the start of the end step. My interruption was correct.

Our third game was pretty close. If John hadn’t tapped down all my creatures when he did, my Hydroid Krasis would have swung in next turn for lethal. As it was I didn’t have enough tricks in hand to prevent the loss. I really like games that are like this, where they could go either way. Close games that turn on a moment. They are exciting. Even now the next day, I’m replaying the decisions I made at that point, and working out if I’d done things a little different would the result have been in my favour?

Afterwards there was general chit chat. But eventually I went home after having a great afternoon of MtG. The Hobbit Hole really does have a great MtG community.

Can I Play With Madness

Fenland Gamers, game night

It was cold walking from the car to The Luxe. A definite nip in the air. I was kinda glad I had my big boy trousers on, and not my usual cargo shorts.

There were four of us due to meet up for the evenings gaming session.

We started off our gaming for the evening with Wingspan. That’s three sessions in a row now that this has hit the table. And once again one of the players was new to the game. Which I’ve not seen as being a disadvantage when playing so far. A testament to how good the design of the game is.

All four of the end of round objectives were eggs on nest based. Which guided my choice of bonus cards at the start. It tied in with one of the objectives nicely.

My woodland habitat was in MtG/Commander terminology a care bear or group hug line. I had a couple of when activated abilities that benefited everyone by giving them a resource as well as myself.

My grasslands habitat was a nice little egg laying engine, while my wetlands was a single bird that gave me a little extra card draw.

Jonathan’s first round was very confusing to me, he had accumulated a lot of resources, had one bird in his reserve. It looked like he was going to be playing a few birds in the second round. But at that point it felt like he was behind on the engine front when comparing his board state with everyone else’s.

Through the four rounds I was either first of second on the end of round objectives. My last round was triggering my egg laying and amassing points that way. It was worth five points each time, and for a couple of activations six. However my last action was wasted because I had no more space left to lay eggs, no resources or birds in hand to play a bird. So I accumulated some resources just in case of a tie breaker was needed. It also meant I didn’t get any extra eggs when The Usual Suspect triggered his when activated ability. So I also missed out on points there.

After the dust settled and the final tally was completed, I was first loser. I had lost to The Usual Suspect by 3 points. Which was the extra eggs I missed out on. But for the want of having an extra bird in my reserve to place eggs on I would have won.

Our second and final game of the evening was Lovecraft Letter. Earlier in the day I had finally opened and sleeved my copy of the game. At that moment in time I looked at the rule book to see what was different in this version to the others I had played. Mechanically it sounded very interesting, and I thought I’d take it along with me to the evenings gaming.

I knew Jonathan wouldn’t be a big fan of the theme. It’s not his thing. Which is fair enough. When selecting games to take along to play things like this have to be taken into account.

I like what Lovecraft LoveLetter brings to the table with the sanity mechanic. It brings some new decisions to make to the game, and win conditions.

Having to make a choice between going insane or keeping your sanity during the round is nice. However as Jonathan pointed out, that choice may be taken away from you if you start off with a card that has the sanity mark on it, and then draw a similar card. You have no choice but to go insane.

The sanity check at the start of your turn if you have lost your sanity is a nice push your luck element.

The benefit of losing your sanity is that on the cards with both a sane and insane option is that you can chose to do the more powerful insane option. It’s a risk reward choice. The more cards in your discard pile with the insane symbol the more cards you have to reveal on the sanity check. But you are doing more powerful actions, potentially if you get Cthulhu win the game. However you are more likely to be knocked out of the round, and need one more insane win than a player going for sane wins.

The component quality of the game, just like the Premium edition are out of this world. I really like the poker chips used to track round wins. They have a nice weight to them.

The art is for me on the right side of none offensive. With the Lovecraft theme it can be easy for a publisher to go dark. Which if they had would have made the game less appealing to a wider audience. It’s the right side of tasteful. More importantly I didn’t feel embarrassed or uncomfortable with Jonathan playing the game with the art on the cards.

However with the over sized cards and the larger really cool presented box (made to look like a book), along with the Premium edition. I do feel that these two editions have moved away from the micro game that fits in your pocket that you pull out and play at a moments notice.

Lovecraft Loveletter was the only outstanding version of Loveletter that we hadn’t played. It’s a nice addition to the family of games. Is it good enough to knock Loveletter: Batman off the top spot as my favourite? No. But it’s in the mix with The Hobbit and Archer editions.

Afterwards there was some gaming related discussion, where Jonathan reminded me that next weekend we are at the inaugural Alley Cat Games Con at their offices in Letchworth. Which I hadn’t forgotten about, but had for some reason not clicked was next weekend. I’m growing old. But take that as a warning about what you’ll be seeing on my social media and here next weekend.

We had a great evening of games. Awesome hosts in the form of The Luxe and the amazing staff.