Why so silent on MtG?

magic, MtG

I’m kind of sad that I’m not writing more about MtG.

But since dropping Standard Showdown (WotC stopped this event for whatever reason, although my FLGS kept up the event because it had built up a community) and changing the prize support they give stores to something entirely less generous. I have not played standard. So no weekly games, or building standard decks.

The once a month Commander that I tried getting off the ground (once again) petered out after a couple of sessions. And Commander is my favourite format. So I’m not building or upgrading decks for that at the moment.

Brawl? No-one plays that over Commander when playing paper MtG. It’s a dead format everywhere other than digitally in Arena.

Pioneer is not at the moment something I’m interested in playing. I wasn’t a modern fan. So it’s a solution to a problem I don’t have. Am I tempted? Possibly. But at the moment I’m not seeing any events at my FLGS for it, and modern is a once a month thing for them. O’ve not been to the store since Pioneer was introduced, so I don’t know the likely hood that this is something they will be supporting.

I’m reluctant to try and see if there is any interest in the format locally. My track record in getting a regular MtG thing going within the club has been what can only be described as less than successful at best.

It’s a pity. It’s an amazing game.

I take your words and try them on

D&D, RPG

As a beginning DM it seems like a steep learning curve. Unlike players you have two guides to read, plus a monster manual to study.

Plus there is a wealth of great advice both as blog posts, podcasts and YouTube videos aimed at beginners like ourselves and more experienced DM’s. I’ve mentioned some of those sources in previous posts.

I think the best skill a DM needs is to be like a sponge, being able to absorb all that information.

It’s early days for me. I’m still finding myself as a DM. As I come along interesting articles or videos, or I research a particular subject like travel (I did a post summarising some of the alternative ways to handle travel between two locations) I like to sometimes share them here, but more importantly clip them to Scribe in the research folder.

A lot of the time the authors like to present their way as the correct way, it “fixes” what they perceive as being broken.

I don’t like to think as stuff being broken, but something that doesn’t work for me. Sometimes it may not even be that. I may just think “oh that sounds cool”.

For example I think having a variety of ways to handle travel is cool. But apart from that I think it helps to keep things interesting for the players. Plus one way of travel does not fit all situations, and being able to choose the most appropriate is a handy thing to have in your toolbox.

But I like that we can take some-one else’s ideas, try them out, and if we don’t like them either go back to what we were doing or try something else. “No harm, no foul” as Jack Reacher says in the books.

This experimentation as far as I see it is all part of the DM’s journey. We are almost like magpies picking up shiny nuggets of information as we go along.

I hope that as I find new and interesting stuff on my journey others are finding what I share interesting and useful.

For those curious the title of the blog is a line from the Alice Cooper song Stolen Prayer from the “concept” album The Last Temptation. Which by the way has a pretty cool comic book/graphic novel by the living legend Neil Gaiman.

A couple of useful bits for DMs

D&D, RPG


Finally getting round to make the generic double-sided tokens that The Lazy DM Sly Flourish shows off in his DM kit video below. Well ordering the bits I need.

I like this idea a lot. And a lot cheaper and lighter than carrying a ton of minis. If I don’t have the minis already and can’t find them at a really affordable price. This is a fantastic super affordable option.

In fact if you follow the links on the video you are sent to a site that does something similar using images from MtG cards. So they can be as fancy as you like.

What is missing from the video above is the link for the images used. Luckily over on another social media platform called Twitter is a tweet from Sly Flourish with the links to the items required and more importantly a pdf of the images used. I’ve included those links below.

Apparently the icons used were from the website game-icons .

While I’m sharing useful links for Dungeon Masters I have stumbled across a website to generate various sized sheets of graph paper. Here is the link. I used it to generate an A3 sheet of graph paper with 1 inch squares. Ideal for battle maps.

How I create my encounters in D&D

D&D, RPG

Like most things D&D has it’s various factions when it comes down to certain topics within the game. Such as Critical Role good or bad?, are Challenge Ratings useful?, theatre of the mind verses tactical combat. The list goes on.

Both sides of the discussion, and it usually is a discussion, rarely have I seen these things turn into all out flame wars, have good supporting arguments usually, and are on the whole polite and respectful.

In this post I’m going to talk about how I create encounters for my sessions. Which as you may have gathered by the first couple of paragraphs might just fall into that category of being a controversial subject.

In the DMG they go into great detail about making sure an encounter is balanced.

The DMG has you calculating the XP threshold of your party of adventurers, adding up the XP of monsters being used, and other maths things just to work out of what you want to do falls into the difficulty level of the encounter you want to give your party.

In XGE an alternative method is presented, still reliant on CR, but simpler to follow and quicker to use. (I think the Lazy DM uses the idea behind the tables presented here for his own quick encounter builder.)

As a new DM (which I am) it’s great that there is a way presented for me to create an encounter, despite it seeming overly complicated. Although I do like the four difficulty levels for describing how dangerous an encounter is. It just seems great as a way to help plan the encounter, and make sure that the encounters are varied in their challenge to the players. You shouldn’t be constantly throwing just deadly encounters at the players (unless your intention is to TPK them) or just easy encounters. The sessions would quickly become boring and monotonous. Varying the difficulty level of the encounters encountered allows for an ebb and flow that can build tension and excitement, and moments of relief. Which keeps the game interesting for everyone.

I fall into the camp that chooses which monsters to use for the encounter not on their CR, but on do they make sense story wise to be there.

For me this helps present a more cohesive, immersive adventure to the players. And for those experienced players used to seeing level appropriate monsters based on CR a few surprises.

Naturally if you are using higher level monsters you will need to adjust them to be more inline with the level of the party they are going up against (I’ve summed that process up in a previous post). But before I do that I use the tables created by The Lazy DM to see what ratio of that monster I should be using with the party based on it’s CR rating. I may still need to adjust the stats a little because I want to use more or less of the monsters depending on the encounter I have planned.

I think if I remember correctly The Lazy DM mentioned somewhere (in a blog post or YouTube video) that his tables should fall into the hard encounter difficulty level. So based on those tables and my adjustments I have a rough idea of the encounters difficulty. Which may see me fiddling with quantities or stats, or even adding new monsters to move that encounter difficulty to the desired level.

In my session notes and the adventures I’ve shared on here you will notice that I only give the monsters name(s) for the encounter. I don’t give how many there are in that encounter (the odd occasion I have though before anyone points it out). Yes I know that for my session that my party are at level X, but I don’t know what level other people (if they use what I have created) will be using with it. So even though I may have in my mind while creating the adventure this is aimed at a tier 1 party of 4 adventurers. I think it should be usable by more powerful parties. I basically leave it up to the DM running the adventure to decide the difficulty of the encounter they want to throw at their party. They have the monsters that fit thematically, story wise for the encounter. The rest is up to them.

So that’s how I work. I’ve found a system I like, that works for me. It may not work for you. That’s fine. I don’t think any two DM’s are the same. Find what works for you and don’t let anyone tell you are wrong. But don’t stop learning and trying new things, and tweaking what you do. Become a magpie, pick and choose the nuggets of information you like and horde them away in your DM’s nest.

Darren and the Chocolate Factory

game night

Last night Jonathan and I met up for a game of his recently arrived Kickstarter edition of Chocolate Factory.

I’d last played the game back in February at the Alley Cat game day. Back then it was still a prototype waiting for the Kickstarter to be done.

Naturally the final components are a lot better than the prototype (which btw was pretty good quality for a prototype).

What I hadn’t appreciated back then, but was blatantly obvious to Jonathan and myself what a lot of set up is required for this game, and how much space it takes up on the table.

It’s a relatively quick game to play, basically seven rounds. It took roughly just over an hour to play.

As engine builders go, Chocolate Factory is an above average game. It’s fine.

There are pockets of down time during the game. These tend to happen during the running the factory phase. All the players do this simultaneously. So if one player gets stuck in mentat mode (sorry for the Dune reference), the other players are left hanging around waiting for that player to complete their turn.

The components are really high quality. The factory and the sliding crates is a neat novelty mechanic. The theme is fun, and unique. Not many games out there about running a chocolate factory.

But at the end of the day I don’t think there is enough here to warrant going through all the flaff of setting up (and tearing down) to get this game out on a regular basis.

Afterwards Jonathan and I started talking games, and particularly Wingspan and the “broken” Raven cards (image below nicked off bgg).

I personally thought it was a none issue. And people should stopped whining about it. It is such a situational thing, you need them very early on in the game, ideally starting hand. I don’t think I’ve seen the cards come out in the games I’ve played (granted not many, especially compared to some).

There are 170 birds if I remember correctly in the base game. And two of them are particularly good if you get them at the start, and really good if you get both. Oh come on. Plus with the new expansion adding more cards plus a take that mechanic where you can take food from another player (oh wait until some-one gets these Ravens and a take that card at the start, watch the uproar).

Is it really a problem that needs dealing with? I don’t think Stonemaier Games need to ban them. If it upsets some players remove them from the game. Simple. Maybe errata the card to as Jonathan suggested take the food token from the feeder instead of the general supply.

But as I pointed out to Jonathan there seems to be a trend these days on line with people playing a new game and declaring it broken or needing more play testing before it was published.

I tend to put this argument in the camp of “I don’t like X therefore it has to be broken, I demand you fix it”.

There have been similar grumbles about another Stonemaier game Tapestry. Particularly with certain civilizations, or they don’t like the random nature of certain aspects of the game.

I don’t mind comments of “I don’t like this much randomness in a game”, that’s fair enough. Not every game is for everyone. But to declare a game is broken, and then go on to say they “fixed it”. Just gets my heckles up.

I think from time immemorial players have house ruled games. Nothing stopping players doing that if they don’t like an aspect of a game. Heck does anyone play Monopoly properly using the actual rules?

Heck with Tapestry we hand out three civilization cards to each player to chose from. Do I shout out about it online that I “fixed” the game? No.

Some players in Wingspan draft their cards at the start. Which is fine. It adds to the play time, and is great for players that have played the game a lot, but new players are at a disadvantage. Maybe something that could be added to the rules as a variant for more experienced players. But it fixes nothing. It wasn’t broken.

Don’t get me wrong. There are games out there that are broken. Or have elements that are. It’s pretty obvious which games these are, everyone is talking about them (when they occur). But in the cases above and the trend I’m seeing it’s a handful of people. Some passionate fans of the game, that are doing it from a position of love for the game. Although some have other motives, and use it as an excuse to knock the game or publisher. But what they are really doing is expressing an opinion about an aspect of the game. Some may agree, others will not. I just think they need to rephrase their words, from “this is broken” to “I didn’t enjoy this aspect” or “I didn’t like”.

A long long Star Realms game play video

star realms

I’ve not uploaded any boring Star Realms games for a long time. Thank god! I hear you shout.

Well sadly for you I’ve uploaded another one. Well to be more accurate 2 and a bit. But they are in one video.

There first is a game where I hit my opponent for a massive fifty odd damage in a single turn. I hadn’t done that much in a single turn for a long long time.

That’s followed by an epic game with Scott. Where he just wouldn’t die, and I thought at one point he was going to come back for the win.

Finally there is an Arena game from this morning where they conceded after it was blindingly obvious they were finished. It demonstrates the power of outposts which belong to the same faction that trigger each other’s faction ability.

So for your torture here is my latest Star Realms game play video…

General gift advice for that tabletop gamer in your life

Uncategorized

We are entering that time of year where everyone and their dog (or cat if you are a cat person) will be producing their Christmas gift ideas for that special loved one into board games or role playing.

Not to be one to miss a moving wagon. Here is my general advice if you want to avoid that Amazon gift certificate or store credit route at your friendly local game store (FLGS).

For that Magic the Gathering player in your life your options are really easy. Forget the myriad of Planeswalker decks, gift boxes, bundles, deck builder kits, and whatever other product your FLGS is needing to clear off the shelf. Work out your budget and buy booster packs for that special person. Usually your FLGS will have a promotion on which will be something like buy three packs for twelve pounds. Which gives you a little saving. Depending on budget and number of packs buying you could buy a variety of packs from different sets. Once you hit the £90 mark, you might like to consider getting a draft booster box instead. That’s thirty six booster packs. The current set is Throne of Eldraine, which has a fairly Tales meets Arthurian legend theme.

And although I’ve specified Magic the Gathering above I’d use this advice for any of the trading card games like Pokemon etc.

Next up that role player in your life. Slightly harder to buy for because you need to know some stuff before hand. Do you know what role playing game they play? Is it Dungeon and Dragons, Pathfinder or some other one? Do they run the game or just play the game? With that information you can be a bit more specific in the present you buy.

If that special person runs the role playing game, a generic games master screen is a good idea. There are some basic ones, and there are some really lavish expensive ones available. Battle maps that can be used with dry or wet erase pens, dungeon tiles, plastic or cardboard standees of characters and monsters are also good presents to get. Once again let your budget decide for you.

If you know the role playing game they play I’d look at third parties producing accessories for that system, such as Galeforce 9 with their reference card packs for spells and monsters for Dungeon and Dragons. There are some official card packs for Pathfinder. Even FFG produce official ones for Genesys.

For both types of player fancy ornate notebooks with fantasy or sci-fi art on are always an option.

A good general gift idea if you can’t get answers for the above are dice sets. You can never have enough dice as a player. You will be amazed at the variety of dice available. However when you buy a set make sure it has a d4,d6,d8,d10,d12 and d20 as a minimum. If you are confused by what those numbers mean, they refer to the number of sides on the die. The d just stands for die. So d4 is a four sided die. Just as there is an almost unlimited variety of dice available, there is also a wide range of prices as well. With the metal dice usually being the more expensive. But you can find sets that fit most budgets.

Another general idea and this would also be an option for the next category of gamer we will look at are dice towers and dice trays. Like dice there is an incredible variety to chose from. And there will be dice trays and towers to fit most people’s budgets also.

Finally let’s look at that board gamer who somehow has managed to take over half the spare room with their cardboard boxes. I’d generally avoid buying this person a game or expansion, unless you really know that they want the game/expansion you are thinking of buying.

You could go with the dice tower and dice tray suggestion above. I’d continue that theme and go with accessories that enhance or make the gaming experience more enjoyable. Such as a neoprene playmat for the table. It protects the table and the game being played. Or little trays/bowls to put tokens in while playing. You’d be surprised how useful these are.

If you know their favourite game (and they own it), many popular games have upgraded components available from third parties. Or if you know that they really like a particular artist you could look into getting a piece of art from that artist. Or maybe a print of the game box art made.

I’m not sorry I didn’t link to specific items, and not handing things to you on a plate, so you don’t have to think. This was meant to stimulate ideas, or promote specific items. Which by the time you went to buy them may well have sold out anyway. The above seemed the most sensible option. I hope you found the ideas useful.

Update on planning session 4 #3

D&D, RPG, session planning

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.

This next session is going to be an odd session prep wise for me, hopefully.

So far I’ve only had to prepare the adventure hook that the party have decided to nibble on for the next session. It’s a great way to work. Cuts down on the amount of effort for me. Instead of preparing multiple scenes/locations I just need to prepare the one.

Sadly in the next session I know that the party are going to the Ogre’s Hideout Tavern were they will meet the two new players. From three who knows.

To help me out so I don’t forget what secrets,clues and adventure hooks I have active and ready to seed I summarised them in a mind map below.

A couple of the above hooks came about organically from the last session.

In fact the players unknowingly came up with the Gladiator Arena one. They seemed fixated with the arena, I thought afterwards why not? So they will see a poster next session asking for combatants to take part in a “royal rumble” to celebrate the tribute going off to the Red Rage, with the winners getting some magical items, and gold. It will be a none lethal event, if they hit zero HP they are knocked out and removed from the arena.

The Investigate Guard Tower came out of the role play of the Mintarn Guards, and will see the party being hired to investigate why the guards and workmen sent out to bring the guard tower back into active use have not been heard from. I think the party will suspect Sahuagin, and be expecting them to attack. But I have an idea to use Ankhegs. However that may change to Orcs Attack!

The Traitor’s Graves and dragon lair came from the Dragon magazine detailing the parts of the town Alhaster I’m using for Mintarn. It just happened that within a day or two of reading the description of the Traitor’s Graves I looked at the maps in the Lazy DM Workbook (LDW), and there was a catacombs map that would be ideal for the abandoned dragons lair. I also think that puzzle I found would fit in nicely here.

Naturally the ship caper sprung up from the discussion with the new players and discussing backgrounds, why they were in Mintarn. This will use just the warehouse from the docks map in the LDW.

The Lost Ironstar Mine will use the Dwarven Excavation map from the Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure from the Essentials box set. This as I have mentioned previously is where I’d like to try a skill challenge again. I know I wasn’t happy with the first one I ran in the first session. But maybe this will work better. Ever the optimist.

The Zhentarim hook was seeded in session 2 with Valdor. However he needs a boat to pursue it. Which gives him motive to help out on the boat caper. For this I’m going to use the Tower of Storms map from the Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure.

The Red Rage Tribute Delivery will see the Sahuagin attack them whilst at sea, and will show the adventurers new info about them. Like their boats are made from wrecks, and that they ride sharks. I also need to find a dragons lair map.

I suspect that the party will go with the boat caper first. Which with the tavern introduction encounter with the new players should be our session. Remember our sessions are approximately two hours in length.

Mintarn is a rich town for adventure ideas. Even now as I type this post I’m thinking “I could have them go into the sewers of Mintarn” or “how do I get them to the Whale Bone islands?” It would certainly make a nice base for the party. For a short period any way. But the nature of this campaign sees them roaming the high seas from island to island.

Update on planning session 4 #2

D&D, RPG, session planning

I forget which YouTube/blog I was looking at, it was probably the Sly Flourish one, but still I came across a link to this great website called Hexagonal Graph Paper PDF Generator.

Which was just what I was looking for.

As the screen grab below shows it allows you to generate a custom sheet of hexagonal graph paper to your specific needs. Mine was 1/2 inch hexagons on a landscape A3 page. Which you download as a pdf.


There are some pregenerated pages as well for visitors to download if they match what they are looking for.

I took the pdf the site generated and took it into GoodNotes, and then saved the page as an image so I could use it in Pixelmator.

In Pixelmator I created a new image using the one just saved. That way I knew it was an A3 sized image. Then in another layer I brought in the map of the Sword Coast. Which I resized so that each hexagon on the map represented 25 miles. Using the map scale was handy for this.

Below is a screen shot of part of the finished product.

The final image is A3 size and is something I can print off and use with the players for when they hit the high seas.

If you remember back in the post where I briefly summarised different options for making travel interesting I mentioned the D&D adventure The Tomb of Annihilation and the method they used within the campaign. This map would be ideal for that method. But it might have to be tweaked to take into account the greater distances travelled by ships. For instance a Keelboat can travel 75 miles or three hexagons in a day.

Sadly for the players we will probably have to play test one or two of the ideas I have as solutions.

We now have a date for the fourth session. Which is the last Saturday of the month, which also happens to be the very last day of the month as well.

Some late Halloween RPG suggestions

D&D, RPG

Yeah I know Halloween was five days ago, so this is a little late.

But hey give me some slack I only just came across these two D&D Beyond posts.

Yes you could argue if I had checked D&D Beyond last week I could have posted this in a more timely manor.

Although in my defence I did post about trying a fantasy horror D&D adventure for free at the start of October. So in a way I was ahead of the game.

However D&D Beyond now have a couple of articles about playing Curse of Strahd in a single session that can be played at Halloween as a one shot.

Sadly to make use of these two most excellent posts you will need a copy of the Curse of Strahd Adventure book. They also recommend (although not necessary) the Galeforce 9 produced tarokka deck, a sixty minute hourglass, a top down map of Ravenloft (they point to a battle map pack on the DM’s Guild).

Here are the links to the two D&D Beyond posts.

Strahd Must Die Tonight! How to Play Ravenloft in a Single Night

Strahd Must Die Again (And Again And Again)

But what options are there if you don’t like the Ravenloft setting or want a break from the D&D system? Hence why I’m not mentioning Pathfinder first edition and the horror scenarios and rules it has. Plus not sure if they are out in second edition. I don’t play Pathfinder.

Well there is always the Lovecraftian Call of Cthulhu RPG. Like all good RPG’s these days they have a Starter box set that allows new players (both to RPGs and the system) to dip their toe in the system for a relatively cheap price. Sadly it’s not entirely possible to try the game for free with a bunch of friends. But if you visit their page here, you can get the basic rules and a solo adventure (both in starter set).

Another alternative is Tales from the Loop RPG. “In this roleplaying game in the vein of E.T. and Stranger Things, you’ll play teenagers solving mysteries connected to the Loop. The game rules are based on Mutant: Year Zero.” Sadly I’ve not located a free way to try before buying. Personally I think that’s a mistake. Which as far as I can tell the following two recommendations also make.

For a more mature r rated RPG gaming experience there is Vampire: The Masquerade which might be worth a look.

The final option that is the FFG The End of the World Series of RPG’s. In particular the Zombie Apocalypse one. Which seems more appropriate to the time of year than alien invasions or machines taking over.

I wish there was more “you can try these or play these for free” above. I don’t like the idea of splashing out money for stuff that might only see the light of day once a year. Plus that free option is great advertising to get people to maybe buy into the system once they have tried it.