I created a short (less than a minute) clip of a couple of rounds of doing a dark draft against the AI in the Epic Card Game Digital app.
This clip was then shared on Instagram. Which then pushed it out to Twitter and Facebook. Yep I use Instagram to spam other social media outlets.
It gives a brief idea of how dark draft works. In total there are ten rounds of drafting to generate a thirty card deck.
Below I’ve embedded the code from the Instagram post below. I’m hoping it works!
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
It’s now a tad less than a week until session 7 is upon me. So how have I been spending my time since the last planning post been spent on getting ready?
In reality very little has been done for the next session. So far. This week will be a flurry of activity.
I started this morning by creating a new category ‘session planning’ for this post, and then trawling through my previous posts and adding it to all the session planning posts. I also at the same time added the ‘post mortem’ category to the relevant session write ups. It may seem a little thing, but it’s going to allow me to get to my notes a lot easier.
In a way my creative process has been kicking in whilst I have been doing ‘nothing’. As I wait for inspiration, I expose myself to new ideas. Sometimes watching or reading some of the campaign inspirations I’ve talked about previously.
During this period of contemplation I have made one or two decisions.
The first is that the sahuagin will attack the party whilst they are transporting the tribute. It fits nicely in with the story so far. The Sahuagin have already tried to steal part of it whilst the party were escorting the contribution from the town of Queens Cove. It makes sense they would make another attempt to get their hands on it.
The sahuagin this time will consist of ‘regular’ sahuagin, sahuagin baron and possibly a sahuagin priestess. Apart from the Sahuagin having their manta ship they will also be accompanied by sharks.
As an encounter this will most likely be border line hard/deadly, leaning towards deadly. The important thing is this will need to be sign posted to the party somehow.
Using the following table from the Lazy DM workbook I can get away with a priestess and baron plus a handful of regular sahuagin.
My gut feeling is for a party of 5 regular sahuagin boarding the parties boat. With a couple of sharks in the water between the boat and the manta. Then on the manta itself the baron and priestess plus 3 regular bodies. This will not be a big manta.
In my head this scene plays out a bit like the trench scene from the Aquaman movie. Where Aquaman and Mera fight the trench. I like the idea of having my encounter at night as well.
The other decision I’ve made is to use the connectors for the boat tiles to pre-make the boats before the session. This will speed things up a little, and allow me to make the manta from left over tiles. Which hopefully gives it that salvaged feel.
The final encounter of the session will be a social one. How that pans out depends on the outcome of the sahuagin encounter. When the party get to the island, the brigands will be waiting to take the tribute.
At the time of writing this post in less than ten days time Epic Card Game Digital will come out of its beta phase of development, and become available to all for free.
Epic Card Game and its digital version is a MtG like card game. But instead of having that collectible element, Epic has a fixed card pool that. So everyone that buys a copy of the game has all the cards. The nice thing is that the game supports all the expected modes of play for a card game like MtG, constructed, draft, cubes, etc.
Naturally there are differences between Epic and MtG when it comes down to the actual game play. But you can look those up.
I’ve had early access to the digital version after backing its development on the Kickstarter that WWG ran well over a year ago now.
What I’ve been impressed with during this time that despite the limited resources that a company like WWG have compared to the likes of say WotC. They have still managed to develop the digital version across multiple platforms simultaneously.
My use of the app during this beta period has been sporadic at best. I’ve not played online with the game. I’ve not tried deckbuilding. So what have I been doing in the app? I’ve been playing dark draft against the games AI.
I really love dark draft.
It’s such a great tweak to drafting that works really well for two players (it is a two player format only). What I like is that you have an idea what cards the opposing player may have but not exactly. There is that bit of unknown. You don’t know which two cards were not chosen and which two were removed from the game.
Compared to other games like this that have digital versions, I’m looking at you MtG:Arena, the game is completely free to play on a casual level. You get all the cards, unlimited copies, expansions are free. It doesn’t cost to play online against your friends.
So where do WWG hope to make their money?
“The only things players pay for are cosmetics (like digital foils), extras (like extra deck slots) and competitive play (like Arena and Tournaments).”
I’m really rooting for this approach to do well. It makes a refreshing change to the nickel and dimming by the likes of WotC.
Another reason I’m rooting for it is that WWG are releasing across multiple platforms at the same time. No “it’s only available on PC, other platforms later” (much much later).
I think WWG have done a great job with the digital version of Epic. It doesn’t have all the flash animations of the likes of Hearthstone and Arena. And that’s a great plus. It’s concentrated on providing a solid, good looking card game.
I look forward to playing my friends online when they can finally get their hands on the game.
You can read the full announcement here.
Despite the failure of the ‘experiment’ with our gaming group to find like minded people interested in playing/trying Paranoia or Judge Dredd: Worlds of 2000 A.D. (which was a little disappointing) I still dream of playing them and other RPGs at some point.
Despite Disney’s best attempts with the last two instalments of the trilogy, and less than subtle messages in the media, I’m still a big Star Wars fan. So it’s only natural that I’d want to play an RPG set in the Star Wars universe.
One of the options available to me is the FFG developed Star Wars RPG.
There are three versions of this to play depending on the focus your want for your characters. In Age of Rebellion you join the surprisingly the rebellion in it’s fight against the Empire. Edge of the Empire focuses more on smuggling and bounty hunting. Force and Destiny allows you to play Jedi and Sith. All three share the same core mechanics, and use custom dice from FFG (similar but not the same as the Genesys dice). The Star Wars RPG system is basically what the Genesys was based upon, but made more generic.
There is a Force Awakens intro box set that allows players to dip their toes before deciding if/which of the above three tracks they want to follow. There used to be a similar one that wasn’t tied in to a movie as well I believe.
Another option is the original 1987 Star Wars RPG that FFG reprinted a couple years back now to celebrate its anniversary. Which I do own. Which is a plus over the FFG one briefly discussed above.
There was an RPG between these two that I think was by WotC and was a d20 system. It should be possible to find second hand copies of this on the likes of eBay.
It’s nice to have these official versions, whether in print or not. They have done all the heavy lifting for you. But if you don’t want to use them there are other systems out there such as WOIN: N.E.W. , Genesys(!), Fate etc. However this option would require a bit, ok a lot of effort in advance. Luckily there is a wealthy of source material available on the Star Wars universe to help. However for me at the moment this is a route I’d like to avoid.
The nice thing about playing a Star Wars RPG in this day and age is what can be used by the GM and players during a session.
One option is the use of Star Wars Lego, especially the minifigures as a change from traditional miniatures.
But on the traditional miniatures front we are spoilt with what we can get. With the Imperial Assault game and it’s expansions there are a tonne of great minis available. The only drawback with this option is that the game has now come to the end of its life and no longer being printed by FFG. So that may push up the price of copies of the game and its expansions. Luckily for me I have 80% of what’s available. I think I’m only missing the last big expansion and the mini ones that accompanied its release.
FFG also have Star Wars Legion their skirmish game which has slightly larger sized minis. But this is is still being supported, so easier to get. The draw back for me on this is the assembling the miniatures.
With X-Wing and Armada it’s actually possible to use the models from these two miniature games to do space combat with in a session. Naturally the X-Wing models would be used for dog fight encounters, whilst Armada gives that more tactical higher level option. I like the idea of being able to run different types of space encounters. Unless you are buying the bigger ships, a lot of the models are really affordable, and prepainted. Although I’m now regretting getting rid of my X-Wing stuff.
It’s never been a better time to play a Star Wars RPG with all that we have available these days. Stuff we could only dream off back in the eighties.
Other RPGs I’d love to try that are based around an existing IP are the new Alien RPG, The Expanse RPG, and the Elite Dangerous RPG (yes based on the video game). I have the rules as a pdf for the first two but not the last one. Maybe one day.
Those with a long memory will remember reading an idea I had for a taster scenario for the Judge Dredd Worlds of 2000 A.D. RPG.
Something similar in idea to the Tomb of the Delian Order dungeon that Matt Colville created for the start of his series encouraging people to become/try being a DM.
Since then there has been an official adventure Monkey Business released that the publisher uses at cons etc as a taster.
The scenario that has been kicking around in my noggin is for a party of judges out on patrol, all stationed in watching bays over looking the same bit of Mega City One. The image I have of the judges is similar to the one drawn in the opening panel of the classic Judge Dredd story The Graveyard Shift Part 1 (see image below taken off the Internet).
While at their watch bays the judges notice a vehicle driving erratically, swerving in and out of traffic at speed. They give chase.
In the core rule book there is a section of running chases. Which are basically extended opposed tasks. Within the rules for running chases is a table for Random Chase Terrain and Obstacles that uses 2d6, and has columns for vehicle and foot chases in different environments.
For my scenario these tables are perfectly usable, if the GM has the core rule book. However I wanted to tweak them. This is not me saying my tables are better. They are not. They are different, slightly. I’ve kept the majority of the obstacles and changed one or two. Plus for my scenario two of the environments are not needed. So I removed them.
Part of the goal of the scenario is to primarily give that taste of playing Judge Dredd. But to also offer a variety of different play styles and mechanics. And that is where this chase comes in.
The judges capture the driver of the vehicle and interrogate them. This is when the judges find out that the driver is being blackmailed to commit a crime to free their family who are being held hostage back at their flat.
The judges naturally have to sentence the driver. But then go to the block that the driver lives to free the family.
I need to write this up, with the above table. But at least the hard bit of the table has been done!
A couple of weeks back I saw a tweet where some-one was going to be running a D&D session at work in their lunch hour.
It struck me at the time what a challenge that would be. I thought a two hour session was tough.
Running a session of D&D with tight time constraints such as an hour or two is difficult.
At a high level (as far as I can tell with the limited experience I have) a session is best described as a series of encounters. These encounters can be either social or combat driven. Naturally these are broad catch all descriptions, and that they can be broken down into finer more descriptive descriptions such as chases, interrogations etc.
I’ve found that in my two hour sessions that they are roughly four or five encounters of some kind, with the combat encounter being the main showpiece of the session. It’s something I’m challenging myself to shake up. I don’t want my sessions to be formulaic and predictable. But I do need to make sure that whatever the number of sessions and combination of, that the mix is roughly even. So that the session allows each player to experience the part of D&D they enjoy, and hopefully characters to shine.
How that person is running an hour session I have no idea. I can’t see it having more than two or three encounters in a session. Possibly if they are hacking through a dungeon just a single encounter.
So far I have found that when running a session as a DM you have to be very economic with descriptions and the scale of encounters, especially combat. It’s a tight line to walk. One I don’t feel I have the hang of yet.
There are many tools, and frameworks out there to help a DM plan a session. One I think that helps me a lot so far in the planning is the 5 Room Dungeon. The nice thing is that the 5 Room Dungeon doesn’t have to be just for a dungeon. Each “room” of the dungeon is an encounter which can be anything or anywhere. So easy to use as a framework for planning, and it matches up with what I find fits into a session for my group.
I think if I had that time restriction of an hour I’d be tempted to plan an adventure as normal and just see how much can be done each session. There wouldn’t be a nice clean beginning and end, just finishing at a convenient point. Which let’s face it is every session really. I think the important thing is to try and avoid a session feeling rushed because of the time constraints of it being a lunch break.
Then last night WotC on their D&D YouTube channel released a video of a panel from the 2019 PAX Unplugged. This panel was basically a promotional panel for an up and coming live stream series called T.O.R.C.H. Which is a live play game of D&D using the latest D&D products.
The DM for these shows will be the legendary DM and WotC D&D chief writer/designer Chris Perkins. During the panel they were asked how long these live stream sessions would be. To which Chris Perkins responded one hour and forty five minutes.
That got me really interested in watching this series when it is shared on YouTube (I’m not a Twitch person). I’m not interested in the performances of the players. For that is what most of these sorts of things are performances for the camera and home audience. I am interested in what Chris Perkins will be doing as a DM. Particularly how he structures the sessions, story/plot progression, pacing etc.
Once I’ve seen a couple of sessions, during which I’ll be making notes. I’ll write another post following up this one with my observations and hopefully what I can use in my own games.
Yesterday I was skimming through the pages of the Genesys rulebook and the Expanded Player’s Guide (EPG) whilst I was soaking in the bath (yep you now have that image in your mind, you’re welcome).
The section I was particularly paying attention to was the settings section that makes up part two of the rule book, and the start of the EPG.
Genesys is a generic RPG system, so it can be used with any genre you can think up for a setting. Hence the inclusion by FFG of these example settings to help fuel the imagination, and give a jumping off point for your own ideas.
One setting that appeals to me a lot is the Modern Day setting.
However it’s not to use it for the basis of some James Bond, super spy exploits, or crack spooks team chasing round the globe fighting threats to national security. Although they would be fun settings I’m sure. But more street level, the average dude fighting against the machine, the oppressive state.
The inspiration for this are books like Little Brother and Homeland by Cory Doctorow.
I’m also looking at films like Hackers and Blackhat. Also the graphic novel and movie V for Vendetta. Plus the truly amazing Mr Robot tv show. Throw in some 1984 and Brazil for good measure. Oh and that old nineties movie with Wil Smith Enemy of the State.
In away I see the Modern Day setting I’m interested in as a current day cyberpunk. Where the fringes of society, the disenfranchised, the poor, are struggling daily to survive. A society that is constantly under surveillance from the state, with civil liberties dwindling day by day. That somehow events have drawn the party into this very one sided struggle between the haves and have nots.
Words I’d use to describe or inspire this modern day setting are: gritty, realistic, dystopian, surveillance, Snowden, Wikileaks, privacy, encryption, drones, big business, one percent, police state, injustice, human rights, conspiracy theories, enemy of the state, Anonymous.
I’m a big fan of cyberpunk. I have been ever since I came across it in the late eighties with the writings of Gibson and the Shadowrun series of novels.
I loved the often gritty settings. How often the hacker had a prominent role in the plot, if not the hero. I loved where they saw technology going. The online virtual world. The interface between man and machine. The use of cybernetics to enhance people. And very often the stories were about those on the fringes of society taking on big corporations or corrupt governments.
So whilst Genesys would definitely allow me to run such a setting, and using the hacking rules from the Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk source book allow for hacking to be an integral part of the game. Are there other systems out there that would allow me to run the setting?
This won’t be an exhaustive list of systems. In fact it is rather short. It’s basically ones I’m aware of. So very limited indeed.
If we stick with the late teens side of the Little Brother book and Hackers as a starting point then I think the Tales from the Loop RPG could be used as a basis. I know the game is set in the eighties and is a take on the popular Netflix show Stranger Things. But skipping it forward in time to current day shouldn’t be that difficult. But take that statement with a large pinch of salt. Like the next system I’m not fully familiar with the rules, nor have I played the system. This system is geared towards you playing as teens, and has options that would allow you to easily have characters that would fit the Little Brother setting.
It should also be possible to use the N.O.W. rules from the W.O.I.N. RPG system. This too is aimed at the eighties and nineties, but also at those super spies, government agencies type roles. However it is a modern day setting that bringing more up to date shouldn’t be that hard or a difficult job.
Finally in these mini musings I think The End of the World RPG might be a good starting point. It’s a cut down Genesys system. But for me the big plus is players would be playing themselves. The realism would be through the roof. Especially if like in the rules you start the players off with the only equipment they start with is what is in their pockets and the room playing in.
None of the above RPG systems give hacking the emphasis that you would get from using the Genesys Android rules. The Android rules make the hacking something the hacker of the team can do during an encounter. So while the team are fighting, breaking in , whatever, the hacker is doing their thing with equal importance. So at the end of the day which of the above you use would depend on whether you want hacking to be an integral part of the setting.
There may be and probably are other systems out there that could be used. The Fate system for one comes to mind. But these are ones I’m aware of and have rules for. Even if I haven’t spent time reading the rule books.
At the moment even after writing this post I’m not sure which system I’d use for this modern day take on cyberpunk. I just know it’s a setting I’d love to play in.
Inspired by the many calls by Brexiteers over the last few days to be optimistic about our future outside of the EU (which I’m not). I thought once more I’d test the waters with those in our gaming group for interest in the following two non-D&D RPGs.
I love playing D&D. I’m enjoying being a DM. However I’d love to try one or two of the other RPGs that I own.
The reason I went with these two and didn’t include the Genesys system with either the Android setting (which I really really want to play) or it’s Terrinoth setting, is that Genesys requires special dice. I have a couple of sets, but a set or two wouldn’t hurt. What I have should be enough to get started. However if those wanting to play wanted to bring their own dice they couldn’t without forking out for a set. The reason this is a problem is that these FFG special dice are more expensive than a set of dice for D&D. Unless you are buying one of those WotC fancy dice sets. So I wanted to avoid that sort of expense for potential players. Plus with the recent redundancies at FFG that impacted the RPG area of the company (along with other departments), the future of the Genesys system is looking a bit uncertain. Which isn’t a problem using the rules etc. However when a system relies on custom dice things become a little bit trickier to play once these are no longer available.
The nice thing about the Judge Dredd and Worlds of 2000 A.D. and Paranoia is that they are both d6 systems. No special dice required. D6 dice are ridiculously cheap to buy. If I remember correctly £1 of the realm will get you six from my FLGS.
Add in they only other stuff they need is pen and paper, the out lay for people interested in playing is extremely low.
I also think that there is a nice contrast between the two RPGs chosen, despite them both being sci-fi themed. Paranoia is competitive, back stabbing, light hearted. Whilst Judge Dredd is your more traditional co-operative working together RPG.
For both I would use readily available official scenarios.
In the past I’ve said how much I like how the introductory mission
[YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH FOR THE TITLE OF THIS ADVENTURE] from the Mission Book is written. It really does take the new GM by the hand and talk them through their first game of Paranoia. It’s so good you don’t actually need to have read the rules to use it! So for a taster session this is an ideal adventure to run for a GM and player. The only decision really to make is whether the players use pre-con characters or generate them on the day. Personally I think that generating the characters is all part of the Paranoia experience, and sets the tone for the rest of the game.
For Judge Dredd there is the State of the Empire scenario that is in the rule book, which allows players to play it as perps, civilians or judges. Whilst the Quick Start version of the scenario is limited to judges only. I also have the official scenario Monkey Business that the publisher uses at conventions etc to demo the game. My inclination at the moment is to use this scenario with the pre-con characters from the State of the Empire, so running as players playing judges. Monkey Business is designed to be run in a single session, approximately a couple of hours. So ideal for my needs.
The big unknown is how many will actually show any interest and respond to the post. Let alone actually want to turn up and play. I’ve bemoaned about this in the past. It can be very very frustrating.
But we will see.
Back in November of last year I made some tokens for D&D and a cyberpunk rpg. These were based on tokens created by Sly Flourish.
Yesterday Sly put up a YouTube video (embedded below) on how to make them. Which compliments a recent post he did as well on the subject.
I made double sided tokens, however Sly has been making single sided tokens that use 1″ adhesive magnets and 1″ epoxy stickers.
I have found that the epoxy stickers I got are a bit sticky! So when stored in the little container they clump together. They do come apart with a little force. But not ideal. Not sure how to get over this. I’m hoping it will be less of an issue over time.
This is such a great and simple idea. Very portable and gets round the “high” cost of minis. Ok they don’t have that 3D table presence. But they are very effective. And make tracking damage and conditions for the monsters easier, and identifying which one is doing which.
The following tweet popped up in my Twitter feed on Sunday:
It’s a great bit of advice to check how dangerous an encounter is. Especially if you are creating the encounter on the fly during the session.
Sly also on his blog has a great DM cheat sheet that has Quick encounter building guidelines amongst some other useful info for DM’s that they might use during a session.