Life had once again aligned the two schedules of Diego and myself so that we could once again have a morning together playing Vampire the Masquerade Rivals.
We selected our prebuilt clans for the morning. Both of us went with the “default” leader for our clans.
To decide who was first player we rolled two of my “who goes first” dice. Diego won that one. I should have heeded the warning sign.
Nosferatu vs Thin-blood
This mornings games couldn’t have started off any worse for me.
Turn one for Diego, play Constant Surveillance and shutdown my Agenda.
Constant Surveillance
My thoughts were to hold off playing another vampire until my next turn, and instead draw two cards trying to dig for some alchemy cards. Which I had none off in my opening hand. And that was my first and only mistake in the game.
Despite drawing four cards in that opening first turn of mine I didn’t find a single alchemy card. Which made Diego’s next turn sting just that little bit more.
Turn two for Diego was to attack my leader in my haven. I had nothing to do but take the beating and watch my leader get sent to torpor, and Diego get one of the quickest and easiest wins possible.
Game one over and done with.
Game two it was my turn to start.
I wasn’t making the same mistake twice.
This second game lasted much longer, and went the distance so to speak of an agenda points win.
I had the early lead on that front, but that was capped at a max of six points from my agenda ability. Diego soon caught up, and then went ahead.
I was much happier this second game. I was getting alchemy cards and attaching them to vampires. We were up to three S.A.D. Agents in the Street. I was more than happy to leave them there as a problem for Diego as I could absorb their damage by spending a prestige.
In the meantime I started picking off citizens in the street. Sadly not fast enough to catch up with Diego who grabbed an agenda point win.
Vampire the Masquerade Rivals Scores for Second Game
We followed up Diego’s comprehensive victories at Rivals with a game of Port Royal.
This was a different experience to the two player game I played with “has to keep pushing his luck” Jeff.
Diego was a much more cagey player. I don’t remember either of us not getting to choose a card on our turn through two ships of the same colour being out.
But like our second game of Rivals after I took an early lead Diego closed the gap and took the lead by completing at the time the only contract that had been drawn. A second contract did appear near the end in which I was in a better position to claim. However the cards didn’t work in my favour, and Diego was able to get the final two points he needed for the win.
Final scores for Port Royal
Although I lost this morning. I still had a great time. I look forward to our next Vampire Thursday Morning.
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.
As soon as a session finishes the clock resets and the countdown begins once more until the next session.
I did cave at the end of the first session and let the players level up their characters. Naturally I’m waiting for the new stats to be sent to me. I’ll probably send a gentle reminder at the weekend.
Although I suspect I’ll be running The Delian Tomb next session or a variant. I might stick to goblins. Plus maybe add one or two other surprises, such as a slime or two.
I think my main prep will be to come up with more “jobs” for the party to do for their patron.
This campaign could easily turn into a D&D version of Warehouse 13. I don’t mind having them retrieve the artifact of the week so to speak. But like Warehouse 13 I need that story arc, a big bad for them to lock horns with.
For this I think the “Hunt For The Relic” adventure generator in the Lazy DM Companion might be very handy for generating the artifacts for them to go after.
The nice thing is some of these artifacts can be keys to opening one of the many arches that give the City of Arches it’s name.
There is also with the arches the opportunity to have the “alien” of the week mashup like episodes with them arriving at the city through an arch. This could be very Star Trek/Stargate like. Or there is even the chance for them to visit other realms via the arches and the relics they retrieve. Once again very Stargate or The Time Tunnel influenced.
I think that’s enough brainstorming for this post. Catch you in the next one.
I finally decided to change the Play 20 New-to-me Games challenge.
You’ve read me pontificating (poorly) about how I might have set this challenge to low. Thus making it probably the easiest of the four gaming challenges I undertook at the start of the year. So easy in fact I was pretty close to completing it.
Have no fear I’m not making as great progress through the other challenges. They are much much harder to achieve.
So I doubled the number of new-to-me games I need to play.
Our intrepid adventurers found them self at a doorway to one of the many crypts lining the Cliffs of the Dead above the City of Arches.
They had been hired by their patron, Adel Rosethorn, to enter the crypts, find her lost adventurer Quintus Harrowtoes, and locate a lost artefact the obsidian skull.
The adventurers freed Quintus from two members of the Children of Ibraxus cult in the Crypts entryway. Who had been aggressively asking him questions. After administering some first aid to Quintus, he guided the party deeper into the crypt looking for the obsidian skull.
After avoiding a booby trap in the Collapsing Catacombs they came across more members of the Children of Ibraxus cult. Who were led by Irvana Blackstar who is performing a ritual with the obsidian skull to open a portal to the abyssal plane of the Choul in the chamber’s gilded arch.
More violence ensued. Two badly injured cult members survived. Although during the enthusiastic questioning of the party they wouldn’t reveal details of their cult, they did try and barter for freedom with information about a recently discovered tomb that possibly contained a magical sword.
The party were left outside the crypts ready to return to the shop of relics, and Adel Rosethorn.
Post Mortem
You know I have to say this, just in case.
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.
“If they are having fun, then you are doing it right.”
I can’t remember who said the above quote, most likely Mike Shae aka Sly Flourish or Jim Murphy. But it does seem to sum up this first session with the new group.
The session lasted between an hour and a half and two hours. I thought it might have lasted a little longer. Because of that I was very tempted to throw a surprise encounter at them on the way out. But I couldn’t justify story wise having a skeleton, stirge or shrieker attacking them. It just didn’t make sense of them suddenly appearing.
In the session zero I had said I would not roll for initiative but use cards instead. Guess who forgot to take the cards with him? So we had to roll for initiative. I did speed it up by pre-rolling some d20s and recording their values to use during the session for the monsters initiative.
I thought the meeples, A3 map, and the use of index cards to hide bits of the map, worked well. Especially because it was a small map that came out at a usable size at A3.
The aid spell helped avoid a tpk during the climatic fight with the cultists doing the ritual. So that was a good call. The party have levelled up at the end of this short adventure. So no more Mr Nice Guy. Although they do have three healing potions that they found. That was a deliberate decision I made. One less than the number in the party. It forces them to make decisions of who gets them when they are needed.
As for running a published adventure. This short two pager was a pleasant experience. I did like the way Mike Shae wrote it. I only needed to dig the stats out for the cultist fanatic and cultists. Although stats for the npc Quintus Harrowtoes would have been nice.
Next session is in 2 weeks. I’m looking forward to it.
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.
Tomorrow (Saturday, well today when this gets posted) is session 1 of the group 2 campaign.
I was going to use the Core Adventure Generator from The Lazy DM’S Companion. However as I was looking through the City of Arches pdf there was a two page adventure at the end called The Obsidian Skull.
It is described as “…a two-hour adventure for two to five 1st level characters set in the City of Arches. The characters reach 2nd level when completing this adventure.” City of Arches pdf
This sounded perfect. I haven’t run a “published” adventure before. The nearest I’ve come is the Delian Tomb adventure by Matt Colville for first time DM’s. But that was very bare bones, basically an annotated map!
I need to change a couple of things to suit our campaign, such as the patron and the reason the adventurers are there. But they are minor changes to make.
Today involved visiting the library to print some bits off ready for tomorrow.
Ok the first two aren’t actually needed. Well might be. I might not advance the party to level 2 at the end of this first adventure. I’ll make that decision at the end of the session.
The two A3 maps are player handouts for the session. Although the city map will be used for multiple sessions.
Oh before I forget here is how the party are made up.
The Group 2 Characters
I still have some Secrets and Clues to do. But these I’ll do tomorrow morning. I like one or two prompts from the Lazy DM Companion Creating Secrets and Clues page. Such as “What family history might be revealed?”, “What dungeon entrance just became revealed?” or “What monsters recently appeared in the realm?”
I get the feeling that the party may not be leaving the catacombs of the Cliffs of the Dead anytime soon.
Right see you next time with the post mortem of the session.
I enjoy driving over to Jeff’s fortress of solitude (yes it does seem that remote where he lives.) Especially when I go the back roads.
It’s like a trip down memory lane.
As a kid my grandad (Dads side of the family) was the landlord of the Wheatsheaf Pub in a small fenland village called Walpole Marsh. The pub was a true old school spit and sawdust type of place. I remember the large walk in pantry it had. But more importantly if you had to do a number two that involved using what was basically a plank with a hole in it over who knows what! The mens urinal was outside with no roof.
The village is unrecognisable these days to my time there in the seventies. The pub is no longer a pub but a house. As is the chapel that was next to it.
My godparents home across the road from the pub, which was a bungalow with a barn next to it, has no trace of either.
The village hall gone and replaced with a home. The nursery that Nan sometimes worked at, homes.
Somehow I think the sense of the village being a community with the heart being pub has long gone for Walpole Marsh.
Today my back road route took me through the Walpoles and towards Walpole Marsh via Marsh Road.
As a kid we used to love going down Marsh Road. There is a slight slope/embankment it goes up. Dad used to go faster over that, and as you went over the top there was that rollercoaster moment of the tingly stomach. Pure joy for a young kid! Funny I loved that and have such find memories of it. But I can’t stand rollercoasters!
Once I was at Jeff’s it was down to business.
Jeff made the coffee, while I set up Libertalia.
Our first voyage was disastrous for me. At the end of it I’d only 7 doubloons to store in my treasure chest. Jeff had clocked up twenty odd. It was going to require some amazing turns and a lot of luck to overturn this deficit.
Voyage two was better for me. Jeff still scored more. The gap was only two or three doubloons. The third and final voyage I did much better and edged it over Jeff. But sadly not enough to overcome that first voyage.
As you can see from the final score I never really recovered from that disastrous first voyage.
Our Libertalia Scores
Our next game Port Royal followed a similar start to Libertalia with Jeff making the coffee, whilst I setup aka shuffled the cards.
This was a learning game. I.e. reading the rules as we went.
For this game we were playing the base game, plus the cards from the expansion Just One More Contract. We did not use the contracts from the expansion.
I did enjoy the push your luck element of the game. Which is handy as it’s a major part of the game!
“You’ve got to know when to hold ’em Know when to fold ’em Know when to walk away And know when to run” The Gambler
Apparently the above advice isn’t something Jeff knows! The number of times he just pushed his luck too far. Me a couple of times I stopped after my first card. Hey a ship giving me three coins is worth it. Plus it screws over the other player as they don’t get anything! However the game rewards pushing your luck, as the more ships of different colours you have out the more cards you get to choose (up to a maximum of three).
I still need to play this game with more players. But as a two player game I enjoyed it. Definitely need to work out how this fits in the gaming case, or what goes to make way for it. However that’s a decision for another day.
Our Port Royal Scores
Playing Port Royal with Jeff meant that I made progress with three of my gaming challenges.
The Challenges Port Royal helped towards
A great afternoon gaming with Jeff. I hope there is an opportunity to repeat it in the near future.
Last night saw the return of my favourite boardgame of all time to the table.
As usual the bgstat app reminded me when I had last played Scythe. Which was just over two years ago, in December 2019. Obviously not much gaming took place in that intervening time.
But damn it was a bloody good idea of Diego’s to play Scythe over Tapestry (although I do love playing it).
To maximise play time I arrived early (which is an achievement in itself these days with the bridge works at Sutton Bridge) and set up everything before hand. The only thing I did as soon as some-one turned up was the shuffling of cards etc. Just so it was above board, and accusations of rigging decks etc could not be made.
This game of Scythe was basically all in on the expansion front (excluding Rise of Fenris). We did not use the Resolution tile module in this game. I thought that would be a step too far for our new players.
The two airship tiles for the game were:
Airship tiles for our game
Our structure bonus tile for the game was 3 – Number of encounters adjacent to your structures. Only count each encounter once. These count whether or not the encounter tokens are still there. Rivers do not break adjacency.
Using the selection method described in the modular board rules, I dealt out player mats randomly to each of us. The highest numbered player mat (me it turned out) then got to choose a faction. Obviously avoiding the “banned” board combos.
This is how the faction choices ended up.
Crimean Khanate/Engineering – Colin
Nordic Kingdoms/Industrial – Marcin
Clan Albion/Militant – Diego
Rusviet Union/Patriotic – Me
Given a choice I was only ever going to choose Rusviet Union (despite what is going on in the real world at the moment, is that wrong of me?). I really love this faction ability. In fact who wouldn’t love being able to repeat the same action again?
I stumbled upon this bit of analysis from 2017 of the synergy between player mats and faction boards. Obviously this doesn’t take into account anything in the Rise of Fenris expansion.
It turns out my board combo was pretty neutral, as was Diego’s combo. However there was a really poor synergy for Colin. Which I now feel bad about. After all this was a first game for him. It was also a first game for Marcin I believe, but he had a very good synergy between player mat and faction mat.
Diego didn’t like his starting map position much. He was the only one without easy access to a tunnel. Which didn’t work well with the mech river walk ability. Before play started we did offer him the chance to switch factions. But it was declined.
After a brief explanation of play to Colin, Marcin had watched the Watched It Played video before hand, and leaving combat out until later, play began.
Mind you considering the amount of time that had passed since our last game, Diego and myself were a little rusty on the rules also. So some rules clarifications were made through out the game.
My first turns I dashed to the nearest encounter tile to make use of the negotiate ability. I’m glad I did because I got to use another players faction ability for the rest of the game, all for the princely sum of $5. After some pondering I chose the Crimean COERCION: Once per turn, you may spend 1 combat card as if it were any 1 resource token. That would become a crucial piece to enabling me to trigger the end of the game and winning later on.
On my way to the Factory I grabbed a second encounter. It gave me a nice boost. But the factory card I grabbed allowed me to spend two different resources to get either a mech or building. I was soon building mechs and buildings. Although I only built two buildings to capitalise on the bonus tile.
Marcin was the first to complete an objective and thus was the first to put a star out on the objective track. Not many turns later joined by Diego.
I didn’t initiate my first two combats, that was Colin and Diego being aggressive towards me. I could have won them. But I deliberately lost them to burn up their combat cards and bolster points. Which meant when I hit back I could do so using the minimum of cards and bolster points, as I certainly didn’t have enough of either to win two combats otherwise. It wasn’t until the later stages of the game that Marcin decided to be aggressive.
One thing I didn’t expect to get away with near the end was planting a mech with three farmers on the Factory to take control of it. Naturally the farmers were there to act as a deterrent to being attacked, because any victor would get hit heavily on their popularity. But unchallenged I was.
Mid game I did get an encounter card that allowed me to use another players faction ability for a turn. I already had Colin’s for the game. But I did use Marcin’s faction SWIM:Your workers may move across rivers, to move a couple of workers into Colin’s quarter of the board. It was a territory grab basically.
A late surge of complete objectives by Marcin meant it would be close for who triggered the end of the game. However Colin’s faction ability meant I only needed one trade action to allow me get both my final two enlist recruits out. Plus a second trade action to give me the resources to get my final mech out using my factory card. Which triggered the end of the game.
Now I knew that triggering the end of the game did not mean I had won. However we were all in the same zone on the popularity track, so no points advantage there for anyone. It would all be down to who had the most of each scoring item. With no resources left I knew I’d have zero points on that one. But all six stars out, control of the factory (worth three tiles), plus the structures bonus. I might have edged a victory.
Once the dust settled, and coins counted. I had indeed won. My third victory in thirteen plays!
Final Scores
A big thank you to Diego for suggesting getting this back to the table. Plus to Colin and Marcin. I had a blast playing this with you all.
I have to say I love the Scythe Complete Rulebook. So glad I finally got the ring bound version.
Scythe the Complete Rulebook
It just makes life at the table so much easier not having to search through several rulebooks to find that one rule. I also appreciate through out the spoiler warnings for the Rise of Fenris expansion. I haven’t played it yet (my copy is still in shrink!). I want my experience of the campaign to be as fresh, exciting, surprising, and amazed as it is for whoever else is playing it with me.
Oh the post title? A line from The Times They Are A-Changin’ by Bob Dylan. I thought considering one of the first things on the normal board you are trying to do is get across that river penning you in, it seemed appropriate.
Last week Free League announced a partnership with Titan Books (an off shoot of Forbidden Planet if memory serves me correctly).
In the official announcement this partnership has been described as “a collaboration to publish a unified storyline set within the ALIEN Universe. For 2022 and into 2023, the editorial and writing teams will share assets and coordinate plotlines to form a cohesive narrative across three original novels and the multiple award-winning ALIEN RPG.”
In the next year Titan Books will be publishing three new Alien novels.
Alien: Colony War by David Barnett (April 2022)
Alien: Inferno’s Fall by Phillipa Ballantine and Clara Carija (July 2022)
Alien: Enemy of My Enemy by Mary SanGiovanni (February 2023)
The first two can be pre-ordered on Amazon already. Which funnily enough but hardly a surprise I have pre-ordered.
If unsure which version of the books to pre-order, as there are three versions, audible, kindle and good old physical?
You first need to be aware of the following snippet of information about these novels. “ALIEN RPG lead setting writer Andrew E.C. Gaska will develop three unique RPG scenarios which will appear as bonus features in the books, one per novel.”
I seriously doubt these scenarios will be in the audible version (which I did spend a credit on to pre-order). But I’m not sure that the kindle version will have them either. The only edition I would bet money on that definitely will have them is the physical (hence why I pre-ordered it).
However Titan Books aren’t the first to do this sort of thing.
Back in 2017/8 FFG did something similar when they released four novellas set in the Android universe that had in the physical versions exclusive content for the Genesys RPG Shadow of the Beanstalk source book. Such as “a 16-page color insert detailing the treacherous Los Scorpiones gang …”
That exclusive bit was annoying as it was very challenging to get the actual physical edition, especially here in the UK. I did manage to get them all. But I don’t think the print run was very big.
This shouldn’t be an issue with the much more popular Alien franchise.
In other Free League Alien RPG news (yes they have been very busy it seems) a new cinematic adventure called Heart of Darkness has just gone on pre-order.
Heart of Darkness is “written by sci-fi novelist Andrew E.C. Gaska. It is a stand-alone adventure, but also serves as a conclusion to the Draconis Strain Saga begun in the cinematic scenario Chariot of the Gods and continued in Destroyer of Worlds. The scenario is designed for 3–5 players plus the Game Mother, and is a spiraling descent into soul-crushing madness.”
What does your money get you?
Basically the following:
The main Heart of Darkness scenario book.
A huge double-sided map (format 864x558mm) of the Erebos plasma trawling space station.
Seven pre-generated characters to choose from.
Custom cards for secret messages and personal agendas.
Player maps and handouts.
Plus when you pre-order you get early access to the PDF’s. The actual physical version will not be out until sometime in the Summer I believe.
There is a VTT bundle for this as well.
I do like that buying from Free League also gets you the PDF version. Other publishers do this as well, such as EN Publishing. It’s a nice incentive to buy direct from them. But I am a bit conflicted on this. Pre-ordering and early access I’m happy with. But for those that can wait, and want to support and buy from their FLGS, surely Free League and other publishers can come up with a way for those to get the PDF as well as part of their purchase.
Anyway I’m an impatient so and so, so come payday Heart of Darkness will be added to a virtual shopping cart.
I’ve used the following with the other session planning posts. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m using it here as well.
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.
Next Saturday is the first session of actual play for the new group.
So far I have only had one character sheet sent to me. I was going to summarise the party here. But at mo until I get the others I see little point in doing so.
However with the campaign being set in and around the City of Arches. The arches/portals do allow for a variety of adventure opportunities whether visitors to the city from other realms, or with a key the chance to visit other realms.
Earlier in the week Seth Skorkowsky posted a review of the classic D&D adventure Isle of Dread.
Which reminded me I had the Goodman Original Adventures Reincarnated #2: The Isle of Dread version of the original. Which reprints in a single hefty volume the 1e edition of the adventure, a 5e conversion and an expansion. I think there might be more than one version of the 1e edition included.
It also got me thinking I could run this with both D&D groups.
In the video review Seth recommends running The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh adventure first, as that gives the party the chance to get a boat at the end of it. This adventure was updated by WotC in The Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventure book.
However that isn’t an issue for this new campaign as I can have the party getting to the island via an arch. Plus the other group have a boat already.
I did order The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh from DriveThruRPG as it is a much cheaper than eBay way to get a physical copy of the original 1e version of the adventure. Sadly that isn’t an option for The Isle of Dread (it’s digital only for some reason). So I had to pay the eBay rate for a copy.
But running this with the new group is a few sessions off in the future.
I know in a recent YouTube video Mike Shea said he had been working on a version of the core adventure generator from the Lazy DM Companion for the City of Arches. But I don’t think that will be ready for me by Wednesday when I start prepping for Saturday. So it looks like I’ll be using the core adventure generator to inspire ideas for our first session.
One of the characters only has 3 hit points! Life is going to be very hard for that character or very short! So I need to probably use the advice from Mike Shea in this post Building First Level Encounters and cast aid on the party. I like the idea of giving them a single use relic that their patron could give them as part of doing some task for them.
Right I’m off to re-read the guide to the City of Arches.
Last night was one of the “every other Friday” nights for Fenland Gamers.
It was looking to be a very well attended evening. If the advanced maths were correct it was looking like twelve would be attending.
However reality, life and whatever else you can think of reduced that number down to six.
Although as the evening got underway we were not to know that. We thought it would be down to eight.
With Gavin drooling over the resin bloodbowl figures Colin had printed for him. Diego, Chris, Nino and myself started playing Libertalia.
For this game we used the stormy side of the game board.
I’d like to say I did a good job of explaining the rules but at best it was adequate. And that would be very generous describing it as so.
During the first voyage there were too many misplays that were my fault. An example of a major one being triggering the anchor abilities at the end of each day instead of at the end of the voyage. I don’t know why that was in my head that they did trigger them. But it was for whatever reason.
I won because of the tie break condition. But in reality it was a tainted win. The victory really should have been Diego’s by a country mile. He has the moral victory!
Libertalia Scores
The next game we played was a six player game of Survive Escape from Atlantis.
Which meant reading very quickly the expansion rules.
I did a really shit job explaining the basic rules. No other way to describe it.
We forgot to put the squid out when a whale was added to the board. Not a big misplay. Just meant we never used the squid mini expansion.
I did get frustrated with a couple of the others during the game who insisted on reading what the red bordered tile did that they had just drawn, instead of rolling the dive dice and finishing their turn. And then reading the tile description. I didn’t hide that very well at all.
Despite the above everyone seemed to enjoy playing it.
Survive Escape from Atlantis Scores
I have to say I didn’t get much enjoyment out of last nights gaming session. Afterwards I felt down about it. Even this morning as I type this post I don’t feel any more positive about it.
It’s a combination of things about the evening I think.
The misplays during Libertalia upset me a little thinking about them.
Moving the wrong coloured counters, not seeing a word when reading card text. It’s easy to dismiss them at the time as mistakes. Let alone the anchor error.
I’m pretty sure others think I’m trying to pull a fast one during the game. But I’m not they are genuine errors made by whatever brain fart causes them to happen.
I’d like to say it’s just old age. But I’ve been doing that sort of thing all my life.
Last night there were too many happening early on in the game.
The poor attendance also got to me. Particularly the two that just didn’t say anything. Although one apparently did post rather late it turns out that they’d not be attending. That message wasn’t picked up until I got home.
It meant Gavin and Colin were kinda left out when we could have included them in the game of Libertalia, split into two groups, or played a different six player game.
Then there was the guilt trip I felt after Diego pointed out in a conversation with Gavin that we didn’t play any of the games he, Gavin and Colin had bought along. We just played my two games.
I know if everyone had turned up we would have had multiple games going on and they would have got games to the table.
But still there is no excuse for me “forcing” my games on them. I need to change and be more thoughtful of others and not so selfish.
I wasn’t on my A game last night. And it was bloody obvious to all and sundry.
At the moment I might step back from the fortnightly gaming, and have a little break from it. I’ll still organise adhoc sessions to play some of my bigger games. That’s if I can find others prepared to game with me.
As I said not feeling very positive about last night. That all might change between now and the next one.
But still all I can say about last night is the title of this blog post.
