Fenland Gamers Christmas Session

Fenland Gamers, game night

A movie and gaming, what a great way to start the holiday season and the weekend. How could it be any better? Well Netflix decided they could by dropping The Witcher (based on the books and video games) tv series.

So the morning was spent watching the first few episodes of that. I’ve not played the video games (shocking I know, and something I should put to right at some point) and I’ve never read the books. Which means I’m coming in cold to this knowing nothing of the lore, the characters etc.

It also means that I was sold entirely on this series in the run up by the promos that were released during the year. So what little excitement I had was based on those alone. There were no expectations or preconceived ideas, other than those created by the said promos.

From the three or four episodes that I’ve watched so far I’m enjoying the series a lot. I like the aesthetics of the series. The costume design, set design, tone. For me it works. Production wise, ok we weren’t going to get the massive army battles of LoTR or even AGoT. But the one major battle so far I was impressed with. It was handled well. I like the way the plot is developing, and the interchanging between each characters storylines. You know at some point they will intersect, and I want to know how, and can’t wait for it to happen, and see where that goes. That for me is the sign of good storytelling.

One thing I did think is this whole Witcher universe would make a great setting for an RPG. Guess what, one has already been done. I know nothing about it, no idea what system it’s similar too, or even how popular it is.

But the whole premise isn’t too dissimilar to a D&D campaign with the traveling from town to town killing monsters for financial reward. It’s the lore and the role of magic within the world that is obviously different. From what I can tell from the tv series, the world that The Witcher is set is very low magic. Similar to Dragonlance I suspect. What magic there is comes at a price.

I don’t think it would be too hard to put a Witcher based campaign together. There are pdf files out there by fans for the official RPG that stat out all the monsters that exist in the Witcher world. I’d be tempted to just do the D&D thing and reskin an existing D&D monster.

If you want something cool to binge watch this weekend this show is it.

Ok the big release of the weekend (Well technically mid week) Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a movie I did have some preconceived ideas about. In the run up to it’s release the leaks, rumours and general feel for this movie was not looking good. So I naturally had set my expectations low.

I actually enjoyed the movie. It’s definitely better than The Last Jedi. Which for the record I dislike.

It’s rushed and the story is a mess because of the previous movie. The criticism that this trilogy was created with no over all arching story/plan is evident when you look at the three in a whole. The hoops that this movie has to jump through to pick up the pieces left by the train wreck that was the previous movie, have a negative impact. But I will add despite this criticism the movie is still enjoyable.

There is some great fan service in this movie. Which does add to the enjoyment.

Overall it’s an average Star Wars movie. Not the best, but not the worst.

If after watching you want to play some Star Wars board games, any of the FFG games would suffice. I’d avoid the mainstream offerings, unless it’s Looping Chewie for a younger fan. FFG also do the official RPG if that is a universe you want to explore. Plus the original 80’s RPG was reprinted last year. So you could step back in time to play a classic 80’s RPG.

After the film Jonathan and I had some time to kill before the start of the Fenland Gamers Christmas gaming session. So after getting a beverage, Jonathan cracked out a game we hadn’t played since 2016 (according to the stats app I use).

Our main game of the evening was five player Wingspan. It’s not my favourite player count for the game. I prefer the middle counts for the game. I definitely wouldn’t want to play it at six players as some online are asking for.

I managed to get a tuck engine going on the wet lands, plus a nice round end triggered bird that tucked cards based on grass land actions done by another player.

But in the end all it got me was third place.

Our final game of the evening was No Thanks! We played using the Amigo variant detailed in the rules. This basically removes the 10, 20 and 30 numbered cards from the game plus six random cards. It made the game a bit more interesting. Some how Jonathan won this also.

It was a great day. Star Wars, board gaming. Great hosts as always.

Games played: Brew crafters, Wingspan, No Thanks!

A big decision for your Judge Dredd campaign

Judge Dredd, RPG

I think one of the most important decisions a GM has to make when planning their campaign set in the Worlds of 2000 A.D., and particularly Judge Dredd and Mega City One is when to set the campaign.

The when is a really big decision. It determines what has happened to the city, whether characters are alive or dead, etc.

For instance when deciding when to set your campaign in the history of Meg City One did you want your characters to be able to bump into Judge Dredd? If the answer is no you are probably best setting your campaign in the early days of Mega City Ones history and the Judges before Dredd was created.

The alternative is to pick one of the many times that the legend was not in Mega City One, such as when he was on Luna 1 or in the Cursed Earth. Although the drawback is he does return to the City. Which is fine if you are running a short campaign.

Or you can just do the obvious and pick any point in the city history and have the party not meet him. But for me the temptation would always be there to call upon the legend. Personally I’d chose the early history of the city because of the interesting story arcs that could be used. That could eventually cumulate into the development of the clones that produce Joe and Rico.

Let’s assume that you want Judge Dredd to be around, and the possibility of your players bumping into him. You now have forty years of Judge Dredd stories to inspire you.

But when do you set your campaign? Which of the major story arcs to you want your players to experience? Each of the main arcs have had an impact on the city in some way. The ones I grew up with were The Robot Wars, The Cursed Earth, The Day the Law Died, The Judge Child, and The Apocalypse War.

It’s very easy to have your party taking party in these events as they happen. For instance while Dredd is off on Luna 1 justice still needs to be kept in Mega City 1. Maybe the criminals are feeling a little bolder while Dredd is off planet. Or your party are doing hit and run raids on Soviet judges during The Apocalypse War.

Naturally another thing to consider is which of the classic adversaries you want to have your party face off against. This will also determine when the campaign is set. Mainly because eventually the adversary ends up dead. The Angel gang is an amazing adversary for a party. But they died at the end of The Judge Child. Fink Angel died after The Apocalypse War. So this is something that needs to be considered. Unless you decide to play the what if? scenario. Such as what if the Angel Gang didn’t die?

EN Publishing has three source books now for the Worlds of 2000 A.D. WOIN system.

Which as you can see cover early classic story arcs. But definitely worth getting.

There is an excellent timeline here. The wiki page also has a cool list of major stories.

Don’t forget that there have been three earlier rpgs based on Dredd. There have been some great adventures for them, and really useful source books.

And finally there are the reprints in the Complete Case Files, of which there are over thirty volumes. You can usually pick these up for less that a tenner second hand from Amazon. Plus if you are after just one story arc there will also be a good chance there is a single graphic novel collecting the issues into a single volume.

I suppose the main point is that there is a wealth of material out there to support you in your campaign no matter when you decide to set your campaign in the history of Mega City One.

Red Dragon

D&D, RPG

I spent yesterday painting the red dragon miniature from the D&D board game Wrath of Ashardalon.

For the record the D&D board games are a cheap way to pick up miniatures for use within D&D itself. Although I don’t think the figures are 28mm but a little larger. Or that’s what I thought when I looked at the skeletons in the Ravenloft edition. They looked larger than the ones I already have from elsewhere.

Back to Ashardalon the red dragon. The previous day I had applied white primer to the model. I’m not sure I’m a big fan of painting on primer. But it’s all I have at the moment so I have to lump it.

Naturally after the primer was dried it was time to base coat the dragon. I did a little research online before hand looking at how others had painted their red dragons. There were a couple of photos of the same model that I had. I did like the idea of painting the breast/chest plates a different colour. So the majority of the model was base coated with a flat red, the rocks/stones were a dungeon grey, and the claws and horns with skeleton bone. Then finally I used lava orange for the breast/chest plates.

After they had dried I used a red tone shader for everything apart from the stones/rocks and claws/horns. For those I used Nuln Oil.

Finally I used a pure red to dry brush the dragon. Followed by dry brushing with the same colours used for the breast/chest plates and claws/horn. For the stones/rocks I used a stone grey. And I really liked how that turned out on them.

The final step as always is to flock the base.

My plans are to use the miniature to be Hoondarrh the red dragon within my campaign. The players will bump into him at some point.

The Wizkids Gelatinous Cube arrived yesterday.

I’m looking forward to putting that on the table. And for those that watched the Jim Murphy video on the Undead Lair, it’s an interesting complication. It’d be nice to get some of the other oozes as miniatures, but that’s a project for another day.

Skirmish at The Luxe!

game night

Jonathan doesn’t do dudes on a map aka miniature heavy games. So when my Kickstarter copy of Final Fantasy oops meant Tiny Epic Tactics (TET) arrived Friday morning I was keen to get it to the table.

So like all good friends I sprung the game on him when we met up at The Luxe that evening. I tried to ease my feelings of guilt by convincing myself that technically it wasn’t a miniatures game, it was a meeples game. There’s a difference, technically!

I think that TET has that table presence. It looks cool on the table. Component quality as usual for the Tiny Epic range is good. Which isn’t surprising because some of the Kickstarter stretch goals are to improve the quality of the various components. I am of the opinion that those sort of stretch goals are cop outs, and that they should be at the higher quality from the start.

The one thing I’m not a fan of are the small sized tactic and solo play cards. I’d prefer they had used the regular 63.5mm by 88mm size. But then that most likely would have meant not fitting everything into the box.

I think I enjoyed the game!

Which is a strange thing to say granted.

Unlike other skirmish/tactical miniature games that I’ve played you can’t use all of your team on a turn. Instead you get three actions to use amongst them. A unit can not repeat the same action on a turn, and if you want the unit to do a second action it basically becomes exhausted while doing that second action. Which unless you spend two health to remove the exhausted token next turn means they are out of action for a turn recovering. At the end of the following turn if the unit has not been used the token gets removed.

The make up of a team is a classic combination of melee based units, ranged attack, and magic attacks. Each game will have some variety because teams are built randomly from each archetype. And each character has a unique ability. So you will need to learn quickly how to utilise each character.

I think the use of the dice to determine range combat success, push backs or extra magic damage seemed a bit fiddly. And probably a mechanism I would remove if possible.

With the dice and not using all the units on a turn I think are the bits that take the shine off the game for me.

I won’t say how many times Jonathan and I missed triggers on our tactic cards. I don’t think we ever played one. Does that make them superfluous? I don’t know. May be remembering the triggers and getting the benefit would increase the enjoyment.

It’s great that a skirmish game can be made this small. It certainly gives that experience. But is it a good skirmish experience? At the moment I think it’s average at best at the moment.

Games played: Tiny Epic Tactics, Jaipur, Hanamikoji

Update on planning session 5 #2

D&D, RPG, session planning

The Chinese I believe have an old saying “may you live in interesting times.” And after last nights election results we can definitely say even after all the doubt and uncertainty, even chaos of the last year or so, things are set to get very very interesting indeed.

However you haven’t come here to read me bitching about politics. You are here to read about board games and role playing. Which technically I could argue are affected by the decision made by the British public. But that will be for a future post when we will have the impact of those decisions come to fruition.

However let’s get back on track and talk D&D and my prep for the next session. But first I have to cut and paste this warning in for my players.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

In my online searching for how to run a gladiatorial arena I came across some advice given on a reddit thread I think it was to look at an Adventure League adventure called Shackles of Blood (DDEX3-2). In this adventure it sees the party taking part in such a situation of gladiatorial combat Hillsfar Arena, recreating a famous battle.

The encounter itself takes part in a flooded arena against halflings.

I like the idea. I can tailor the opposition, and reskin this easily for my campaign.

Because this is an Adventure League adventure there is plenty of advice about running it. There is a colour battle map by one source. Some even made 3D versions of the map, along side giving some great advice.

Naturally access to a 3D printer allows you to do something a bit more impressive like the following:

(source here)

I’ve got to work out how I’m going to present this to the players. I love the 3D but realistically without a 3D printer, not achievable. So something like the first photo might be though. Although I do have foam core I could use.

Who knew being a DM meant being a craft type? It sure does utilise a lot of skills that you initially wouldn’t think of.

Fenland Gamers December 2020 Monthly Meet Up

Fenland Gamers, game night

Last night was once again the second Wednesday of the month, and therefore time once again for the monthly meet up of the Fenland Gamers.

Our game for the evening was a five player (The Usual Suspect, Diego, Gavin, Ollie and myself) game of Wingspan with the European Expansion. Plus the Swift starter pack cards were also shuffled in.

For those not aware a slight tweak was made to the Wingspan base game. For starters it’s price was increased a little to cover the addition of the Swift starter pack that was added. This consists of ten new bird cards and four guides for new players. The guides take new players through their first four turns of the game. They even specify which of the ten new birds that the player starts with. So a very new player friendly addition to the game. I can see why they did this. With the wide appeal the game has outside of the hobby, making it easier for those new to this type of game get playing it is a great idea. Naturally this is something owners of an original version of the game can pick up from the Stonemaier website for $5 plus postage. It’s probably one of the better “promo” things for a game value wise you can pick up. You can easily pay the same for a single promo card for other games elsewhere.

So with the new expansion plus the starter pack, that’s an additional 91 cards being added to the game. Which with the 170 cards of the original game makes a grand total of 161 bird cards.

After a brief recap of the rules we started to play.

I deviated from the usual setup by dealing three bonus cards to each player to choose from.

Our end of round goals were (Round 1 – 4 going left to right in the photo below):

The round 2 goal fitted nicely with my end game bonus card that was to do,with birds that could only be played in the grasslands.

It was nice to have pulled one of the new goal tiles for this game.

I’d like to point out Gavin did get one of the OP raven cards in his opening hand. But played it into his wetland instead of grassland. Which was a minor tactical error for that card.

I think by the end of the game everyone had one of the new birds in their reserve giving them an end of round bonus of some sort. Mine was one that allowed me to discard up to five food and then put that many cards from the deck tucked under it. That alone got me 13 points.

Diego had one that put a number of rodent food tokens on his bird based on which player had the most birds with the hunting symbol. Which Ollie kept adding to his reserve. I think last round that got him 6 points. It was a nice synergy for Diego, because Ollie’s bonus card needed him to have those cards out.

Unusually for me I had only 9 eggs out for scoring. I have lots more than that usually. The decision you have to make during the last round for each action you get to take is, will this get me more points than taking the egg action and any when activated stuff that gets points? For me taking the food action could match it, plus set me up for the end of round activation as well. This is why I rarely play a bird in the final round. It rarely is worth the points it gives you, both in terms of action economy and points generated.

In the end I managed to sneak a win by 4 points. Then Ollie and Diego drew for second place, and Gavin and The Usual Suspect drew for last place. The draws surprised me. I don’t think I’ve seen a double draw like that before.

It was a fun evening, great hosts as usual. Looking forward to our holiday sessions.

Adjusting the Lich

D&D, RPG

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

Monday’s post about my preparing for the next D&D session, I spoke about having to adjust the Lich stats so it could be used as the boss in the Jim Murphy Undead Lair.

It is by chance also the boss he uses within the video as well. So in this post I’ll be making use of his advice, along with the advice of you guessed it Matt Colville.

Before I start these are the Lich stats:

I’ll cover the other bits like actions, spells, etc as and when needed.

Let’s look firstly at Jim Murphy’s advice. After all it’s his idea. Jim talks about taking the Lich down from an 18th level magic user to a 5th level one. So to do this he suggest scaling down everything to the appropriate level, including saving throws against any spells he throws, any special abilities are either not available or greatly diminished in power.

This advice from Jim leads nicely in to the adjusting monsters advice from Matt Colville. However Jim does let his Lich keep counter spell. He says that the Lich with it’s spells and what ever abilities it has cause a minor inconvenience.

With the basic stats above I’m leaning towards lowering the AC. At the moment by a single point. But that might get lowered on the day to 15.

The HP need reducing drastically. Saving throws have been halved and reduced by 1 or 2 points.

Skills I’m leaving, and will adjust on the fly if I need them.

AC: 16

HP: 54

saving throws: Con: +4, Int: +5, Wis: +4

So let’s look at these other things the Lich can do.

I don’t need to worry about the rejuvenation. But I want to keep the legendary resistance. However I’m going to dial it back and make it a once a day thing. Which in reality is for the one encounter I plan to use the Lich in.

So what spells will I give my Lich?

Firstly the spell save DC is too high. That needs to drop to something the group has a chance of meeting. And the to hit bonus is way way to powerful. For one or two of my group it’s an instant hit without rolling!

Spell save DC: 15

Spell attack bonus: +4

I’m only picking about two or three spells. This is mainly because I’m going to be making this an action oriented monster. Actions plus lots of spells would I feel make this too over powered for a low level “baby” Lich. Also because this is a boss monster, and you know from the undead liar video, lots of undead are being thrown at the party. I’m going with defensive spells for “baby” Lich.

I’m also going to give the “baby” Lich only 4 spell slots.

Spells: shield, counter spell, dispel magic and ray of frost

The Lich has the following legendary actions:

As has been pointed out previously this is a “baby” Lich. So I’m just going to drop these legendary actions.

Although technically my Lich could be argued as being in it’s liar and have access to the following lair actions:

The only one I will make available to this “baby” Lich is the regaining spell slots action. The others just seem too over powering at this lower level. And because there are only have 4 slots I’ll use 1d4.

So now onto the Matt Colville advice from his recent (at the time of writing) Running the Game video Action Oriented Monsters. Naturally I’m using “baby” Lich as a boss.

Actions: Cast a spell

Bonus Actions: raise the fallen dead – each round a fallen undead comes back.

Reactions: Cast counter spell

Villain Actions:

Round 1: “stay awhile, stay forever” – entrances and exits shut and become locked.

Round 2: “kill him!” – focuses the undead on a member of the party that has used magic.

Round 3: “I have you now” – a minotaur skeleton appears and attacks the party.

So that’s my modified “baby” Lich I plan to use. What do you think? What would you do differently?

Update on planning session 5 #1

D&D, RPG, session planning

As usual I need to start this type of post with the usual default copy and paste warning to the players in my play group.

SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.

This next session is going to be a “difficult” one to prepare for.

The reason being that no adventure hook was actually picked up at the end of the session. It’s a decision the whole group needs to make, and we were one adventurer down last session due to illness. So it was left with the party back at the tavern waiting for their companion to get better.

Now that leaves me a window to actually offer and try doing something with the party suggested by Matt Colville (yep hardly into the post and he gets mentioned) about downtime. I think I can make this work. Particularly for a couple of the party. I could for instance talk to the absent player and have him do a side quest by himself that happened whilst the others were off doing stuff on the main campaign. They faked being ill and went off and did X. Or the rogue of the group I think could go off and explore the city during the night whilst the others are sleeping. So I’ve messaged them to see if they are interested.

In the meantime I have an idea that the group may want to take part in the gladiator games in the next session. So I need to research how to run such a thing in D&D, and also make it so it’s not boring. There will be no death in this. If they reach zero hit points then they become unconscious and out of the tournament. Healers will be on hand to help them recover to full health. There will be magic items up for grabs as the prizes.

I also want to seed going back to the guard tower that the party found along the coastal road. I know how that’s going to work. For awhile I was unsure what creature or creatures would be the cause of the guards and workers not being heard from. I had toyed with the idea of goblins, dryads, knolls or even an ankheg. But hadn’t made a decision. Then after watching the Colville video on Action Oriented Monsters for another reason (see below), he covered the ankheg. That was it, I’ll use the ankheg as an action oriented monster for the encounter.

Another seed I’ll prepare is the Traitors’ Graves and the lost black dragon Lashonna lair. This will be the catacombs adventure from The Lazy DM’s Workbook. It’s going to be full of undead naturally. If only I’d been getting undead miniatures! I like the idea of using the undead lair from Jim Murphy with this dungeon. It’d mean changing one of the locations or adding it as a secret room to be discovered. However I’m pretty sure I’d like to use a Lich as the boss for the undead lair, and as the overall main baddy for the dungeon. But a level 22 creature for a level 2 and 3 party! So naturally I’d have to go through the process of adjusting the Lich stats. In the Murphy video there are some suggestions on how to run the Lich boss. But then I remembered the recent Colville video about action oriented monsters, and thought I’d give that a watch as well. That gave me food for thought also. So I think in the next post I’ll look at how I adjusted the Lich to be used with my party of adventurers.

I do now have a wish list of miniatures I’d like to add to my undead army. Such as a minotaur skeleton, or the t-rex skeleton. Plus some oozes like the gelatinous cube to use as well. But getting your hands on them is a real pain in the UK, they seem out of stock everywhere. Or if they are the third party has hiked the price up in that age old tradition of supply and demand and exploiting a situation by trying to scalp the unsuspecting or desperate. Which thankfully I am neither.

Wave 2 of Skeleton Horde started

D&D, RPG

Yesterday was such a shite day for me. I had a sick bug or something and was sick two or three times. Spent the day slipping in and out of the depths of sleep. Between the sleep and vomiting there was that constant feeling I could be making a fast move for the bathroom.

The attack chihuahuas were even kind to me and never left a “surprise” for me to discover in the morning. They are quite the little practical jokers some nights.

But today I’m feeling much better.

So much so I even felt up to putting six more skeletons together, and apply the white primer to them.

Once these are fully painted that will take me to thirteen in this part of the undead horde that are dungeon ready.

I’m not sure what the skeletal creature is. But I’m calling it as a skeleton dog. There is also a pile of bones I can use as scatter terrain. Which is useful. Mainly because I can place a couple (which is all I got on the sprues) in the dungeon as a “warning” of what’s to come.

Looking forward to throwing the Jim Murphy Undead monster mambo at some players.

5 Down, 13 to go

D&D, RPG

With the finishing touches to the zombie horde still to be done. I deviated from the plan and built five of the skelton miniatures that arrived.

Once again I had to cut and glue things together before being able to start painting.

I used a white primer with these. Once dry did base coats, that I have to admit weren’t doing much for me. They looked so flat and lifeless. It was only once I applied a wash that the miniatures started to come alive.

The final touch was some highlighting, and flock on the bases.

Not an amazing paint job but table ready (just) or as I like calling it dungeon ready.