Monthly Archives: August 2020

Inspiration for airships in Eberron notes

D&D, Eberron, RPG

A few posts back I wrote a post with some inspiration notes for playing a campaign in the D&D Eberron.

The focus of that post was the lightning trains and movies and tv shows that could be used to inspire plot lines based around trains.

This post looks at another aspect of the Eberron setting, airships.

So what I have below are movies that feature zeppelins, airships of some kind. Some of them have a similar feel to them as the Eberron setting.

Some of these movies are based on other media such as books and manga. In those cases going back to the original source is recommended. Some are so much richer than their cinematic offerings.

I particularly like that these sources of inspiration show air travel as part of the story, and not the whole story.

The airships act as major scenes within the story. Which is how I think I’d use them as well. Not just as a device to get from a to b, but also the location of some plot development.

What movies or tv shows would you add to the above?

Gifts from friend computer

Paranoia, RPG

Having backed the now fully funded Kickstarter Project Infinite Hole Paranoia project recently. (Which by the way is “…a sourcebox full of tasty tidbits from Alpha Complex’s most thought-provoking service group, Research & Design! And yes, it will provoke a lot more than just thoughts.”)

I was reminded that there was some card decks that I didn’t have for the game. Ok there are three adventures I don’t have either. But they will come at some point.

At this moment in time I’ve prioritised getting the card decks. My thinking is these will add the most to game play per buck (once I get the game to the table with some unsuspecting troubleshooters).

Out of the four available I went with the RAM deck, and the Perfectly Safe Gear deck.

The RAM deck has 50 cards containing words of wisdom from friend computer, a blank card to create your own words of wisdom for, and a how to use card.

As you can see from the example cards above the top half of the card has “humorous” inspiring words of wisdom from friend computer. A banner across the middle with the cards name/title. And the lower half describing the actions the group has to complete, some maybe be triggered by particular events during game play.

They look fun, and will certainly shake things up. I like the idea of handing these out as a “reward” for a player doing something good.

“Well done troubleshooter. Friend computer has decided to share some sage advice with you.” And then hand them a random card from the deck. Obviously if the troubleshooter doesn’t act on that advice it’s obvious they are a traitor and should be dealt with severely.

The Perfectly Safe Gear deck is all about gear that troubleshooters can be allocated to “help” complete their mission.

In the deck you get 50 new pieces of perfectly safe equipment, a blank card to add your own designed piece of perfectly safe gear to, plus a how to use card.

What can I say? More equipment, some more useful than others. There are bound to be some WTF am I meant to do with this? moments.

The remaining two decks for me to get are the Mutant Explosion and More [redacted] Societies. Which as their names suggest add more secret societies and mutants to the game.

Surprise Delivery

Uncategorized

Yesterday my friend Sam wrote the following post.

I’d been the recipient of one of Sam’s surprise deliveries before. So I responded with the comment “Lightning doesn’t strike twice” knowing it wouldn’t be me.

This morning there was a knock on the door, and when answered the delivery person handed over a parcel.

I thought it was the two decks I’d order for the Paranoia RPG.

But when I opened up the packaging I was greeted by a surprise box. See photo below.

I laughed out loud.

This was funny.

Sam had sent me a joke present.

So I opened up the box to see what was involved in making this Bunny decoration.

To my surprise inside were two dice bags that had been made for me by Sam’s mum and cake making genius Doreen. You’ve seen Doreen’s cake skills on here before, granted a couple years back now.

This had me in stitches.

This was sooo funny.

What a great surprise. Lightning had indeed struck twice.

A big thank you to Sam and Doreen. This was very generous. And they will have pride of place in my DM bag and be the envy of the table.

Thoughts on Gamemaster Documentary

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There was a delay between the release of the documentary Gamemaster in the US and coming out in the UK. That delay meant that I forgot all about the film.

As far as I’m concerned there was no fanfare or reviews pointing out that the film was finally available outside of the US. Or if there was then it didn’t surface into my consciousness through whichever media channels I follow.

It wasn’t until I heard the Secret Cabal folks talk about the documentary on this weeks podcast that I thought I’d see if it was available in the UK.

It wasn’t on Amazon digitally except as a region 1 DVD!

Google showed up a tweet from the director/publisher mentioning it was on iTunes in the UK. Otherwise if I hadn’t seen that I’d have assumed that this was still only a US film.

Luckily being an Apple fanboy I could purchase the documentary. Which is something a rarely do. The majority of my digital purchases are on Amazon. I’m assuming that like the documentary Never Surrender that eventually Gamemaster will end up on other streaming services.

Gamemaster is a documentary about the boardgame industry.

Format wise its standard fare. They follow/interview four game designers that are at various points in their game design journey. Interspersed with talking head segments with various established big name game designers dispensing nuggets of wisdom and industry insights.

The four designers that get followed are a guy who was trying to kickstart a game he designed called Thug Life. A Pakistani female designer who had designed and published a game about arranged marriages and avoiding them. The creator of the Parks board game, and the video game designer, ex-Disney Imagineer Scott Rogers and his boardgame Rayguns and Rocketships. The director of the documentary seemed to have forgotten to mention Scott’s past experience. Heck he’s written one of the best, most accessible books on video game design, Level Up!

The female game designer was an interesting inclusion. Her story and the personal experience that formed the inspiration for her game was interesting. Naturally the theme isn’t one that appealed to me. But I loved how personal it was. It was also interesting to see the blow back she got from friends and family when she returned home to Pakistan.

The Thug Life designer also had a personal story that fed into his game design. However it didn’t feel as personal or as well executed as the arranged marriage game. His story within the documentary felt more to do with his Kickstarter journey and ultimately failure.

The talking heads were your usual suspects, Lang, Knizia, Vassel, Leacock, and Cathala, to name a few that instantly come to mind.

They briefly dealt with diversity and representation within the game industry and in games.

On the whole it’s a competent put together documentary up there with Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary, and miles better than The Next Great American Game documentary.

A Game of Wonder!

Funkoverse

Yeah I know the posts title is pretty shitty. But it’s the best I could come up with as I was putting this post together. Naturally a better title will come to mind once this post has gone live.

One thing I think Funko have got right so far in the last year is the release rate of new figures for the Funkoverse game. This sort of game lives or dies by the frequency of the expansions.

As I have said in the past this game for me is a light skirmish type game, where I can just throw together teams on the fly based on the which characters I think will be cool to play together. It’s never going to be that mega competitive scene like X-Wing (although I am pretty sure there are some out there that will treat it as such).

Even having never played a game so far (due to the more than obvious reason) buying the expansions is addictive. They have the same collectability of the full grown versions, with the added bonus you can play with them!

In the last couple of weeks we have seen the release of the DC Wonder Woman two character expansion. Which naturally contains Wonder Woman and also the villain from the Wonder Woman 1984 movie The Cheetah. Which I guess Funko had hoped that the movie would be out by now and help sales.

The other set to have been released is the A Game of Thrones four character set. Which has Daenerys Targaryen, Night King, Jon Snow, and Arya Stark.

The Wonder Woman expansion doesn’t really add anything new to the game rules wise. Wonder Woman gets a special die called the Champion Die. As far as I know this is the second time that a character has been given a unique die. The other was Dr Ian Malcolm with his Chaos Die in the two character Jurassic Park expansion.

Otherwise this Wonder Woman is a pretty standard release and the only decision is do you like the characters? For whether you buy it or not.

For me the A Game of Thrones set is the more interesting of the two just released.

For starters the First Game setup is for a four player game! Each team has one of the Funkoverse figures and one of the four included basic characters. So not the usual three character team. But I feel this is huge allowing four players to play at the same time.

The set also has two new Free-For-All scenarios designed for three or four players, and adds the rule that the first player token rotates clockwise to the next player at the end of each round.

There is one draw back though. Funko only provide one each of four different base colours. I would have liked to have seen at three of each colour. It would have made playing a four player game with two or three Funkoverse characters possible.

But even more impactful is the introduction of companions. As the rule book describes them, they “may be used by a player instead of an item1 Companions are always paired with a character and provide a player with an ally that can do a limited number of actions.”

In this set and the very first companion in the game is the Dire wolf Ghost. Which I am looking forward to adding to my Stomp,Slash,Splash team.

As you can see from the above photo of the components for Ghost I have a mini Ghost Funko figure to use instead of the token that comes with the game.

This Ghost figure is actually the Funko Ghost keychain with the chain part removed. I plan to do the same to the Drogon and Wight tokens that come with the game as well. Luckily there are keychain versions of them as well. Well the Wights will be White Walkers but hey who cares? Now I know that will annoy some hard core fans out there.

I also plan to stick Ghost and the other figures to a clear plastic disc base.

Now I wish I could take credit for this idea. But I can’t. The idea came from some-one on the Funkoverse Facebook page.

So as you can tell I’m excited to what this set brings to the table for Funkoverse. And I’m hoping that we will see more Companions plus more Free-For-All scenarios.

I just need to get all this to the table now. But that part is out of my hands.

Scythe Encounter Token Upgrade

Scythe

I finally made the decision to upgrade the encounter tokens for Scythe.

The upgrade comes not only with the encounter tokens but also upgrades for the tokens that come with the expansion Invaders from Afar.

This is probably the last component upgrade I’ll do for the game.

For me I have what I consider the essential upgrades. Those being:

  • Metal coins
  • Card sleeves
  • Encounter tokens
  • 3D printed coin storage box
  • Board Expansion
  • Neoprene board
  • I have to admit I’ve never been a fan of the realistic resources that were done for the game. Plus the Meeple Source worker meeples didn’t grab me neither. The action tokens might be something possibly I might get. But I don’t see them as essential.
  • Having not played Rise of Fenris yet there maybe another upgrade to get. But until that hits the table I won’t know.

    • There is one upgrade I would do if I had the funds. Well it would be more like if I had the funds and the money was burning a hole in my pocket. That upgrade would be a play set of the metal mechs that Stonemaier Games did. By play set I mean four copies. Each set has one mech for each of the seven factions. So you would need four to be able to use them in the game.

    Now I need to get this amazing game back to the table as soon as the current events allow.

    Love Letter – Marvel: Infinity Gauntlet

    first look

    The latest in the Z-Man/Asmodee line of Love Letter has just been released, called Marvel Infinity Gauntlet.

    This is an interesting version for the game because it takes Love Letter in a new direction. Love Letter goes from its free for all last person standing to a one against many game.

    I think production wise and component wise Z-Man have knocked things out of the park.

    It’s certainly easier getting the game out of the packaging over previous releases from AEG that were the sealed plastic boxes.

    Like my other copies of Love Letter I will be sleeving the cards. That’s just me.

    The art used is thankfully art from the comic books and not photos from the movies.

    As you can see below the art for the card backs makes it easy to identify which deck is which whilst still looking awesome.

    Below I’ve shown examples of the cards from both decks.

    The Thanos deck has cards that are either henchmen or infinity gems. Whilst the heroes deck is made up from superheroes.

    The nice thing is that the graphic design of the cards is straight out comic book. Which you’d expect. But sometimes publishers like to disappoint.

    The life/score tracking card to which you will attach the two sliding trackers has a handy setup summary on the reverse.

    The player aids are double sided, heroes one side and Thanos the other.

    I can’t wait to play this once the on going world event allows to see how it plays.

    Once I’ve played the game I’ll write another post looking at what I like about it and dislike about it. Apart from the obvious there are some new mechanics introduced in this game and they need to be experienced first before commenting.

    Halflings and Dinosaurs

    D&D, RPG

    Back when I got the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide I was pretty excited by the introduction of Ghostwise halflings in a side box on page 110.

    Particularly the following sentence that gave them mounts.

    “Clan warriors known as nightgliders bond with and ride giant owls as mounts.”

    Who wouldn’t want to be a halfling with a giant owl to ride on?

    Ok I maybe a little bit biased. After all I love playing halflings. They are my favourite species in D&D. A carry over from being a Tolkien/LoTR fan.

    It gets better being a Ghostwise halfling because their wisdom ability score gets a +1 bonus on top of the usual halfling attributes. Plus they get Silent Speech. Which allows them to speak telepathically to any creature within 30 feet of them.

    Then I came across this Dragon Talk video that blew my mind.

    Halflings with dinosaur mounts!

    That’s frickin cool. It doesn’t get cooler than that.

    And all I have to do is run a campaign in Eberron.

    I love the opening quote from Eberron: Rising from the Last War for halflings on page 27.

    “ZOMBIES? MINOTAURS? THEY DON’T SCARE ME A BIT.

    But a howling halfling warrior charging in on a clawfoot raptor? Most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.

    -Sir Danton ir’Lain, Brelish knight”

    These halflings sound badass. Which I always thought they were. This just validates my opinion.

    I love the fact that the halflings are nomadic and have close ties with their dinosaurs.

    The halfling monk I created many many posts ago would be amazing once changed to fit in to Eberron. Give him a dinosaur mount, and as suggested in the Eberron book theme the monastic tradition around dinosaurs. Maybe name the fighting style after the dinosaur mount that the monk has.

    I also like the idea of taking the Silent Speech of the Ghostwise halflings and making that specific to dinosaurs. Something the Eberron halflings developed as their bond between them and the dinosaurs strengthened over the generations.

    Oh this has got me so excited about Eberron now and halflings.

    Unable to Install

    apps, rant

    Today I’ve gone through the process of transferring stuff from my old iOS device to a new one. One of the joys of free upgrades. Luckily Apple have made this a painless experience that just requires the two devices to be close to each other.

    However this process highlights my main point or one of the major ones I have for board games that rely heavily or can only be played using an app.

    Two app versions of board games I paid for are no longer on the App Store. So therefore no longer installable on the new iOS device.

    Plus two official companion apps for a couple of board games have disappeared from the App Store.

    The Crossroads app I’m not surprised by due to the recent change of ownership of the IP from Plaid Hat to FFG. Will FFG take ownership of the app and bring it back to the App Store? Who knows.

    The Sub Terra app is just typical ITB. It took them much longer than promised to produce the app on iOS, and for it to disappear is just what this company are like.

    I was very surprised by the disappearance of the two board game apps. These were paid for. I’m not sure why these have gone. It makes me a bit angry that these have gone. I paid for them.

    But it highlights just how fragile things can be with apps.

    Imagine if these had been required to play the actual game (in the case of the two companion apps they enhanced the experience). The games would be unplayable.

    The likes of Ignacy Trzewiczek have dismissed this argument. They see it as a none issue. I find this approach as insulting in a way. It ignores the harsh realities of life and particularly software development.

    But I’m not going to go over an old argument again. Except point made.