D&D Grp 2 Session 4 Planning #4

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

The following is for a small, select group of people. For everyone else just ignore it and read on if so inclined.

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

After searching Dyson Logos for a suitable haunted house map I narrowed it down to one, his Blackhall Haunt map. However there was a nagging feeling I was making a compromise somehow.

I then looked at the map for the Witch Cat Inn from the introductory adventure The Dance of Dreams in the Vaesen core rule book. I felt happier about the map. Maybe because it was a multi level building. I could definitely make it work plot/story wise.

For some reason I decided to do one final image search and my results took me to the haunted house map in The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Wait I have that map already! I have the adventure twice in fact. I have the DriveThruRPG 1e printing, and it’s in the 5e Ghosts of Saltmarsh. How did I not remember this?

The haunted house map in The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh needs to be annotated with where the planned monsters are located. What makes sense story, location wise on the map.

I’ll be adding the two monsters of giant weasels, and giant poisonous snakes, that the The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh has hidden outside the house to the possible encounters for the party. I hadn’t planned on having anything happen before the party enter the house. But this seems a good (ok good may not be the right word here) little surprise for them.

I finished the note that will be given to the players at the start of the session. Which is basically the plot hook for the session.

The finished note

Whilst I was on the page with the Blackhall Haunt map on it, there was a second map also, which did inspire me. The map was called Prior’s Hill. Truth be told I can see myself using this with either group (once the other groups sessions start up again).

Prior’s Hill map by Dyson Logos (link above)

“On the right nights, with the right rituals, you can open the portal on Prior’s Hill and climb down the stairs to the black dungeons below.” Or with the right relic I’m thinking. Maybe Adel already has that relic and needs the adventurers to go retrieve another more powerful and dangerous relic for her.

After listening to a recent Tomb Show podcast where they started going chapter by chapter through Izirion’s Enchiridion of the West Marches, I ordered a physical copy of the book.

I’m not sure where the practice of putting in a thematic disclaimer came from. But I know WotC do it with their books. This one continues the trend with one I found funny, and a very true warning. I may use it as small print on a note from Adel at some point.

Izirion’s Enchiridion of the West Marches Disclaimer

Ever since way back when I watched the Matt Colville video on West Marches I thought they sounded pretty cool. And most definitely thought I’d like to run one.

Maybe with two groups, and interest from others I could finally run a West Marches campaign.

But until that day arrives I’m pretty sure there is stuff in here I can make use of in both campaigns.

Right I have some miniatures to finish painting before this Saturday’s session. Laters.

My Gaming Con Plans for the rest of 2022

Uncategorized

With UKGE just under a month away I thought I’d share my board gaming con plans for the rest of the year.

This year I’m only going for a single day to UKGE. I don’t think I can justify more than that. Renegade aren’t doing any Vampire the Masquerade Rivals tournament there (I did ask them). Plus I missed the window for cheap accommodation. Which swung it.

Tabletop Gaming Live has moved from its initial home of London to Manchester. Which is an even bigger pain to get to than London. Plus it was barely worth the effort when it was in London. Not convinced it’s improved enough to warrant another visit, and the associated costs that’d go along with it.

Currently I’m undecided about (I think it’s fair to call it this) the UK’s premier, and largest RPG con, Dragonmeet. It’s in London which I hate. However it is just a day! I’ve been curious about it for a year or two now. Maybe this year curiosity will get the better of me.

What are your con plans for the year?

Scythe Rise of Fenris Campaign Episodes 5 and 6

Game day, Rise of Fenris, Scythe

SPOILER ALERT! The following post contains spoilers for the Rise of Fenris campaign for Scythe. If you haven’t played the expansion and wish to avoid any spoilers you may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

Ben messaged me saying he was not up to joining us today. I called him to check he was ok. But his life event is taking it out of him at the moment.

You know the drill by now. I get there early and set up.

Episode 5

I setup the changes for episode 5 which saw box D being placed on the Factory. An amazing bit of theatre. Then some influence tokens were placed on each tunnel and on each of the three land territories adjacent to the Factory. These would be worth -$1 for each one collected at the end of the game.

Our faction/player board match ups for episode 5 were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards. (I remembered to record them this session.)

  • Vesna & Voltan/Industrial (Cyan) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Militant (Blue) – Shane
  • Rusviet Union/Engineering (Red) – Me

We were allowed the Wind Gambit expansion again so airships were back on the map. This episode we went with the Backup Plan resolution tile. I’ve never played with this resolution tile. It looked interesting with its extra turn if the player triggering the end of the game does not have the highest score.

The two airship tiles drawn were Bombard and Reap. Reap was going to be especially useful for ramping up production.

My beloved Rusviet were having to use the alternative Township mech tile this game.

True to form I made a dash to the Factory, whilst the other two did their “going to complete achievements and get points thing”!

Getting to the Factory got me two influence tokens for my efforts. Aka -$2 at the end of the episode. Was it worth it?

However once there I got to open the mysterious box D.

Inside the box was an Annihilator mini that I had to fight. Victory would trigger the end of the game. Defeat, a major set back and humiliation.

I rolled the two dice.

Double 3.

I had a total combat score of 17.

The Annihilator had a base power of 3, plus the total of the top 3 cards from the combat deck. Well that’s what the expansion rule book said. However the complete rule book said it was the top 4. After a quick debate I went to the Scythe FAQ. It was indeed the top 4 cards. Bugger. There was a misprint in the expansion rule book.

Any card 4 or less and I win. I drew the fourth card, it was a 3. I had defeated the Annihilator and triggered the end of the game.

Sadly I hadn’t won.

So there was one more round. Which saw Shane steal the Factory from me and reduce my score even more. Jeff was the run away victor.

Episode 5 Final Scores

My reward for defeating the Annihilator was to get to play a new faction Fenris, lead by Rasputin.

Episode 6

After moving to another part of the community centre (there was a booking that evening, and they needed to setup where we were). We commenced with episode 6 considering the previous episode had been over so quickly.

Our faction/player board match ups for episode 6 were as follows after randomly drawing the player boards.

  • Vesna & Voltan/Innovative (Cyan) – Jeff
  • Nordic Kingdoms/Industrial (Blue) – Shane
  • Fenris/Agricultural (Orange) – Me

The Wind Gambit was still in play, and we decided to stay with the Backup Plan resolution tile. Our airship tiles for this episode were Negotiate and Toll.

There were no special rules this episode. It was to be just a “normal” game of Scythe!

It was so odd playing without the Rusviet faction ability. How do others do it?

The Annihilator mech has such a War of the Worlds Martian vibe.

I need a sound board app to play that ulah next episode.

No river walk needed with the Annihilator mech, it gets leap! Plus a really cool mech ability called Death Ray! ULAH!

Death Ray is sooooo cool. It allows you to play as many combat cards as you want in combat as long as they are all the same value. So amassing combat cards is a necessary thing to do. Which I did.

One drawback of Fenris is it starts with -$16! However Rasputin (the Fenris Commander) gets to place one influence token on the tile he moves to. Plus one more on an unoccupied tile. These are great fun as they mean -$1 to an opponent if they land on a tile with one on.

I did trigger the end of the game. And I won by a single point much to Jeff’s annoyance. That one point was the influence token he had to take! Plus there was extra salt in his fresh wounds because he might have won if he’d remembered to collect the oil resource at the start of his turns.

Episode 6 Final Scores

Afterwards players were given the chance to swap faction. I decided to stay with Rasputin and Fenris. It was a hard decision. Jeff decided to keep the “broken“ Vesna faction. But Shane couldn’t wait to abandon the Nordic faction, who let’s remember had fought tooth and nail for him in this campaign. Shane wanted to take my beloved Rusviet.

I’m so looking forward to the penultimate episode, episode 7.

D&D Grp 2 Session 4 Planning #3

D&D, D&D Grp2, miniatures, miniatures painting, RPG, session planning

Hey if you are part of the adventuring party and don’t heed the following warning. Just don’t blame me for any disappointment from knowing too much!

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 should be a very short post. A bit like the previous one really.

I actually had a moment of madness this morning and primed the new minis that arrived the other day. Plus also the four new minis I picked up last night from Colin at club night.

I now have four mummies. So super chuffed about that. Plus a mystery mini that inspired me when I was shown it.

I’m not sure what or who this humanoid is, but I think they will be the owner of the haunted house. Possessed probably and extremely dangerous with that meat cleaver(?).

The shadows I’ll finish first. They will get a dry brush finish similar to the one I did on the Alien figures to give them some highlights.

After that it’s a little research into how to paint mummies!

Told you this was short. Laters.

D&D Grp 2 Session 4 Planning #2

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

To whom it may concern, the following is for you. If you decide to ignore those words then so be it. But your enjoyment of the next D&D session is liable to be diminished. Even spoiled for want of a better word.

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.

The gap between session 3 and 4 has been increased to 4 weeks! Mainly due to a little confusion about when the next session will be.

However that’s given me time to do very little except order some miniatures! Which arrived today.

As you can see these were mentioned in the previous post for the haunted house idea. I’ve not been able to find any mummies, or ones I like. I already have zombies, and oozes. Not been able to find any giant bats or swarm of bats miniatures that are in stock or affordable! Etsy is so flippin expensive, especially the postage.

That’s one thing that doesn’t get mentioned about being a DM, the cost. Between printing out stuff at the library (cheaper than buying ink cartridges for my printer, that just acts as a scanner these days), miniatures, books, and various accessories. The cost mounts up.

Granted much of that stuff isn’t needed to play the game. However some of it does make life easier whilst running the game.

Cost is one of the factors in why I’m moving to using a battle map with the room drawn on it, odd bits of scatter terrain, and minis. It’s also quicker to setup during the session.

You hope that the players appreciate the efforts that go on behind the scenes to give them a fun time.

Now I have to get motivated into painting those minis. Especially the shadows.

May the 4th Be With You 2022 Edition!

Uncategorized

There is only one thing to wish you on this most geeky of days…

So how many Star Wars games have I played or own?

I own 7, have played 6.

Which the image below covers.

I no longer own Star Wars Destiny. It was a great ccg. I have great memories of playing it with my friend Dale. Sadly it was let down by FFG who massively underestimated initial demand, it was so hard to get hold of for months. Then it didn’t get much better on the supply side after that. Sets started to crash into each other. Not as bad as Dice Masters but still enough to put you off.

The two I haven’t played in the above are the Star Wars versions of Carcassonne and Risk. Everything else has seen the table at least once.

Do I have a favourite? It’s a close call between Rebellion (the Star Wars movies in a box) and Outer Rim. I know Nathan loves Outer Rim. So because of that I’ll give it the edge, and make it my favourite.

I also have the 30th Anniversary edition of the West End Games Star Wars RPG.

Like the majority of my RPG collection it hasn’t been played. Which isn’t surprising.

Anyway May the 4th be with you, and have a great day.

Two new arrivals

new arrivals

The roll/flip and write wing of my game collection has grown by two.

Saturday Jonathan generously gave me his copy of The Castles of Burgundy the Dice Game as a birthday present. Which was a very pleasant surprise. We had discussed it earlier (along with one or two other games), and I had expressed an interest in trying it.

Latest additions

Dungeons, Dice & Danger arrived unexpectedly today. I had only ordered it Friday from Amazon.de.

Why the German Amazon?

Apart from there wasn’t a copy to find in the UK online (at the time). What swung it was the edition on sale was multi-lingual with English being one of the languages. Plus it was cheaper than in the UK (if they had a copy) even with postage.

I think this was the second or third time I’ve used the German Amazon, for exactly the same reasons.

Naturally it’s not my fault I bought it. I blame Rodney of Watched It Played! and the how to play video he did for the game.

With the two arrivals the unplayed games challenge has grown once more. The grand total is now 68 games on that list. Of which 10 have been played. Leaving a rather easy 58 games to get to the table by the end of 2023.

Oh you wish to see the full list of roll/flip and writes in my collection.

Well here you go.

As you can see a third of them have not been played yet!

Ok enough rambling, have a great evening/day.

Birthday Gaming

Fenland Gamers, Game day

Yesterday I turned 54.

To celebrate that fact I organised a Saturday gaming session with some of my favourite people to game with, members of Fenland Gamers. Some of the finest people on this planet of ours. Although one or two of them have dubious opinions on roll and writes, and A Game of Thrones. Heck a couple are so deluded they think Barenpark is a game! But they are salt of the Earth folks that will exploit any weakness to get that all important victory.

We split into two groups of three to play games.

I taught and played Dune Imperium (plus Rise of Ix expansion) with Anthony and Shane.

You can see who played which character below.

Characters played in Dune Imperium

The scores below say it all really. With two rounds to spare Anthony claimed his inevitable victory. Which the seeds for were sown a turn earlier.

Until this point we were all roughly around the same point total. No one pulling away from the pack. It was looking like it would be a ten round game with no one getting ten points.

Then a level three combat card came out that gave the winner a victory point. Then the winner had the option to buy two more victory points using spice and solari.

Anthony won that combat and bought an extra victory point with solari. Which he also followed up by gaining a third victory point using an intrigue card. That was some power play!

The following round the prize for winning the combat was two more victory points. Which Shane and myself could do nothing to prevent Anthony from also winning.

Wow what an incredible play.

Dune Imperium Final Scores

Afterwards Shane, Anthony and Colin had to leave for other commitments. Leaving Jonathan, Julie and myself to play a new game Jonathan had just got, Long Shot the Dice Game.

Yes you read that right. Jonathan bought a roll and write. Well two actually. Whilst we were finishing off Dune Imperium. Jonathan and co were playing a London Underground themed one that he had bought at the same time as Long Shot.

Scenes from the birthday gaming

Long Shot is an enjoyable roll and write. It’s not the heaviest. I’d say it’s almost an entry level roll and write. The theme and lightness make it a great introduction to the genre. In fact I prefer this to Camel Cup (not a roll and write). Which has a similar theme.

Final score for Long Shot: The Dice Game

I had a great afternoon gaming, and a big thank you to those that made it so.

And finally over to Jonathan…

Photos taken by Jonathan

D&D Grp 2 Session 4 Planning #1

D&D, D&D Grp2, RPG, session planning

Let the following warning/disclaimer be said. Then be it on your head if you ignore 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.

We have broke the fortnightly session routine already. But that’s on me. Instead of D&D I’d arranged an open gaming session that coincides with the celebration of achieving a 54th year on this Earth. So we will be having our next session the following weekend. A three week gap.

The start of the session will see the party waking up to a note from Adel sending them off on a hunt for another relic.

I knew I had some parchment images from a patreon I had backed a while back. Luckily I had them on my iCloud and was able to find them.

Below you will see my initial version of the note to check I have the look and feel right. I used the Dreaming Outloud Script Pro font within MS Word on the iPad to give me that hand written feel to the note.

Initial test of note for session

Naturally I’ll share on here the final note with all the plot hooks for the session once it’s completed.

As for what the party will be doing in the session I have the germ of an idea.

Obviously I’m going to be running with the overall theme based around Warehouse 13/Friday the 13th the series/Relics & Rarities/The Librarians.

However they still need that relic/artefact of the week to go retrieve.

But that could get boring/repetitive so I plan to break up that formula with the Stargate SG-1/Time Tunnel inspired style session with the party visiting another plane via the arches in the city. I might also throw in the odd Star Trek Deep Space 9/Babylon 5 style alien visitor to the City of Arches plot line.

I have the really inspiring tables from the Lazy DM Companion Hunt for the Relic page, and the City of Arches adventure generator pages, to help generate ideas for the session. The tables Sly Flourish provides generate some really great names for items. I’ve used them for naming the magic items the players have received already.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been mulling over setting the session in a haunted house. A ghost might be too difficult for the group to take on but shadows aren’t (must rewatch the dungeon dudes to see what they have to say about them). Plus I can throw in mummies, werewolves, the odd giant bat, have oozes oozing out of the walls. You get the idea.

I might after this artefact has been retrieved start to drop hints about a big bad. There needs to be that big bad. But I have “time” to think about that.

Now the red dragon wyrmling, who I named Littleflight, may or may not have something to do with that big bad. I need to sleep on this idea.

Anyway that’s where I am currently on my planning.