Author Archives: Rick Neal

Eldritch Horror

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Trying the solo version of Eldritch Horror.

Trying the solo version of Eldritch Horror.

Last night, I had a bunch of friends over, and we played a game of Fortune and Glory and a game of Cards Against Humanity ((I lost both games pretty badly, but still had an awesome time.)). This afternoon, after I had cleared up all the game stuff from the table, but before I removed the table leaf and pushed the table back into the correct position, I decided to try out my newest board game: Eldritch Horror, from Fantasy Flight Games.

Eldritch Horror is another Lovecraft-themed game from FFG. It’s got the same basic underpinnings as Arkham Horror or Elder Sign – it’s a co-operative game, set in the 1920s, with a Ancient One trying to break through into this reality and mess up all the furniture ((And, by “furniture,” of course, I mean, “reality as we know it.”)). It differs in scale; it covers the entire globe, while AH is a town ((Or a couple of nearby towns, with the expansions.)), and ES is a single museum. So, your investigators have to travel the globe, tracking down clues and information to prevent the Ancient One from winning.

Complexity-wise, EH falls between AH on the high end and ES on the low end. There are more moving parts and options and special rules than in ES, but not nearly as many as in AH ((Caveat: of course, there haven’t been any expansions for EH, yet. This may change; the expansions sure ratcheted up the complexity of AH, after all.)). Turn structure is a simplified version of AH turn structure, with three phases for players:

  1. Action Phase. Players get two actions. This is stuff like moving, resting, acquiring assets, resting, etc.
  2. Encounter Phase. Players get to have an encounter. They may fight a monster, or draw a special encounter card, or what have you.
  3. Mythos Phase. Draw a card to see how the Ancient One tries to screw you over.

Turns seem to tick along more quickly than with AH, and possibly even more quickly than ES, once you remove the fact that I was relying pretty heavily on the rulebook and reference guide while trying to get the hang of the way things work. All in all, I got set up and through five rounds in about an hour, with two characters. About half that time ((Maybe a little less.)) was me checking the rules to see what I was supposed to be doing. So that’s about ten minutes set-up, the big part of which is building the Mythos Deck ((You use a subset of all the Mythos cards in each game.)) and sorting out cards that don’t get used with the Ancient One, leaving about a minute per phase per player.

Of course, if you’re not playing solo, some of that time savings from not relying on the rulebooks so heavily will be eaten up by discussion, planning, and socializing. Still, compared to about five minutes per player per phase in AH, you still come out ahead if you double the EH turn esitmate.

Right there, that’s enough to make me like the game. I mean, I love AH, but it is a huge investment of time to set up and play. A version that sets up and tears down quickly, with speedy play, is just what I want, and I’d have been happy if that was all EH brought to the table ((As it were.)). But there’s a lot more than that.

I mentioned while describing the set-up that you use subsets of different kinds of cards during the game – building a Mythos Deck from a larger assortment of cards, for example. You also have some specialized decks for the various ((Four, right now: Cthulhu, Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth, and Shub-Niggurath.)) Ancient Ones that you must battle. These decks allow the game to build strong narratives for each of the different Ancient Ones, setting different goals and tactics for each one.

To defeat each Ancient One, you must complete three ((Or four, for some Ancient Ones.)) Mysteries. These are unique to each Ancient One, and are related to the trademarks of the specific Ancient Ones. For example, you may have to investigate the strange meteor that landed in Tunguska if you’re facing off against Azathoth, or explore newly re-risen R’lyeh if you’re dealing with Cthulhu, or defeat the Dunwich Horror if Yog-Stothoth is your opponent, or break up horrid witch cults in remote corners of the world to beat Shub-Niggurath.

In addition, there are specialized research cards and (for some) encounter decks. These, coupled with the special ways the different Ancient Ones advance the Doom Track, add a lot more consistent and ((To my mind, anyway.)) interesting narrative to play. Facing off against Azathoth is qualitatively different than dealing with Cthulhu, which is great.

There’s also a mechanic for scaling the difficulty of the game based on the number of players. A set of crib cards show you how many gates, monsters, and clues get spawned at the appropriate times, as well as the position of the initial Doom Track marker.

One other mechanic deserves mention here: double-sided cards. These are Condition cards and Spell cards, which have information on two sides. Players can freely read the top side, but are not allowed to turn them over to read the back side until something specific directs them to do so ((This is a little like the Danger/Cliffhanger cards in Fortune and Glory.)). For Spell cards, this is usually casting the spell. For Condition cards, it’s when a certain symbol comes up on a Mythos card, indicating that a Reckoning is due. The cards flip over, you get to read the consequences of your leg injury acting up on you or your bank loan coming due or the downside of messing with powers man was not meant to know.

Players win if they complete the three Mysteries of the Ancient One before the Doom Track reaches zero. Well, they mostly do. When the three Mysteries are completed, there are instructions on the Ancient One card as to what to do next. Sometimes, that’s it, you’ve one. Other times, you must face the final Mystery that is printed on the Ancient One card itself.

The Ancient One wins if the Doom Track reaches zero before all three Mysteries are solved, or if all the investigators are eliminated.

I do worry, however, about replayability. There are only the four Ancient ones included in the game, and each has a deck of four Mysteries, three of which get used each game. Right there, you’re only looking at sixteen combinations. But there is a lot of other stuff going on, too, that adds variety to each game, so it’s entirely possible that my concern is completely misplaced.

Another concern is a common one to Arkham Horror and Elder Sign ((And, indeed to other games with similar rules for getting various stuff to beef up your character, such as Fortune and Glory.)) : once your character starts doing well, he or she can get stuff to help him or her, like gear and allies and spells and so forth. But if you need to succeed at a couple of encounters without that kind of help to get the game currency you need to get the stuff that helps you. If you take some time to get rolling, it can be very frustrating ((Trust me. That’s how I spend a lot of these games.)).

On the up side, it looks like the gate and monster holders from Litko that I got for AH will work just as well with EH. I’ll have to check to see if I have the character figures for the investigators in EH, too.

So, final evaluation? I like Eldritch Horror. It fits nicely into the complexity/duration gap between Arkham Horror and Elder Sign, and does some very cool things that neither of those other games do. It’s not just a simplified version of AH, though it is that too. But it’s a great game in its own right.

I’m glad I bought it when it came out. I’m looking forward to playing a full game with real people.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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***SPOILER ALERT***

I’m running Tomb of Horrors for this leg of the Storm Point campaign – indeed, for the rest of the campaign. You may not want to read on if you’re playing the game yourself.

***SPOILER ALERT***

We finished off the ((Truncated and slightly retooled, in order to push on through the module quickly.)) last session of the Abandoned Tomb section of Tomb of Horrors last time we got together. I had decided to cut out all the hunts for keys, and let them find the way into the Tomb of Betrayal and face Moghadam right after the fight with the callers in darkness, so I decided whichever way they left the chapel, they would find their way down to his lair ((Yes, this robs them a little of character agency. But it also pushed the game toward the parts of play that the characters enjoy. As Ken Hite has said, players don’t mind riding the plot railroad too much as long as they get to toot the whistle.)).

I kept one simple, but evocative and atmospheric ((Specific atmosphere being, “You’re in the Tomb of Horrors! Screw you, adventurers!)) trap from the Tomb of Betrayal section, and it worked wonderfully. Our heroes found a large room with a raised dais in the centre, topped by a skull with gems in the eyesockets and teeth. They crept in very cautiously, spotted the seam on the floor around the edge of the room, and figured that the floor was going to drop out and the skull was going to animate.

To try and prevent the skull from animating, the cleric lobbed a vial of holy water at it. It hit the skull dead on, shattered, and sent the skull rolling. Of course, the trigger for the trap was anyone messing with the skull or dais. The floor dropped down 90 feet, shattering into jagged, sharp fragments. The couple of characters near the entry tried to leap back to the hallway, but failed, so everyone got nicely battered.

The initial reaction at the bottom was to heal up as they could. I kept them in combat rounds, which caused the following exchange ((Paraphrased.)):

Player 1: Uh-oh. Something else is going to happen.

Player 2: I bet the floor falls away, again.

DM: Nope. I promise I wouldn’t do that to you.

Player 1: The ceiling, then. The ceiling’s going to come down.

Players look expectantly at the DM, who grins.

Players: Fucking Tomb of Horrors.

So, yeah. The ceiling fell on them a few seconds later. Again, those near the entry had a chance to jump free; again, none of them made it. Cue more healing.

On they went, and found Moghadam and his Ruinblade. The first round of the fight, with Moghadam having the initiative, made it look as if things were going to go badly for our heroes ((Brought the ranger down to 9 hp, in fact.)), and I was starting to worry about a TPK. But, once they got a turn to act, the Storm Point boys completely schooled the archwraith ((This despite the fact that I had misremembered how some stuff worked, and gave the archwraith an immunity to physically forced movement. Ooops.)). They kept stunning and dazing the thing, denying it an opportunity to act, while they took it apart.

Once it was destroyed, the swordmage claimed the Ruinblade, and pledged to use it to destroy Acererak, causing the artifact to bond with him and preventing Moghadam from reforming. They smashed the bricked-up archways open and found the library and treasure, and that’s where we called a halt.

I’ve pared down the final adventure to 2-3 sessions, depending on how things go, and then that will put a wrap on the Storm Point campaign. I’ve got a couple of special things planned for the final session, so we’ll see how that goes.

And after that, it looks like the gang wants to start a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign ((Specifically, they want to start a campaign where they play the members of a cantina band. My plan was to run the Beyond the Rim adventure, but we’ll see if we can blend the two ideas. Because playing a cantina band traveling around and getting into trouble has some real appeal.)). I’m good with that.

Five Hundred

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Five hundred blog posts. Wow. Time flies.

It’s been almost a year and a half since I wrote my Four Hundred blog post. Obviously, my output has slipped. I’m going to have to think about that, and see if there’s something I want to be writing about but am not. I know that this summer, I was really slacking on the posting, and then there was some downtime as I reworked the site. Since then, I’ve been posting a little more regularly, and I want that to continue.

Anyway.

Over the past hundred posts, by far the majority of what I’ve been posting has been play reports from my campaigns. Maybe not the most interesting stuff in the world, but I try to spice them up with thoughts about what’s working and what’s not. They get some solid traffic, so I’m assuming that someone out there ((Beyond my players.)) is enjoying them.

Of my new posts, the biggest draws seem to be reviews – this makes sense to me, as word of the review usually gets broadcast further than my normal reach allows, thanks to the publishers, authors, fans, etc. People are obviously interested in my reviews of games and books ((So much so that I’ve posted my review policy here.)), so I’m going to try and do more of those, I think.

The biggest draws on the site are still – and I think this is a testament to how good the game is – my articles about The Dresden Files RPG. It’s gotten so that I can tell when a new group is starting a game, because of the spike in page views on campaign creation and character creation posts. I’m pretty pleased that the game is going strong, and glad that I’m able to contribute to people’s enjoyment of it in my own way ((If you were around when this all started, or if you look back into the misty past as represented by the blog’s archives, you will recall (or discover) that without DFRPG and the cool folks at Evil Hat, this blog would not exist, so the game will always have a special place in my heart. Thanks again, Fred, for your brilliant Disclosure Policy during the playtest!)).

So. Five hundred posts in five and a half years ((Five years, ten months to be a little more precise.)). Daily traffic that averages around 300 page views per day. Nine different campaigns I’ve wonked on at length about, four of which are recorded from start to finish in the play reports on this site. And a number of good friends made through the blog.

Thanks to everyone who reads the blog. Extra special thanks to everyone who comments, or who comes up in person to talk to me because of the blog – it’s nice to know I’m not shouting into a void.

Thanks to the publishers who have said nice things about the blog, and who always treat me so well whenever we interact. Special mention goes to Evil Hat Productions, Margaret Weis Productions, Atlas Games, and Pelgrane Press. These folks all treat their fans with great respect, care, and friendliness. And the make great games ((I don’t have sponsors or advertisers on this blog, and I never plan to. When I recommend something, it’s because I think it’s good, and no other reason. So, take me seriously when I say these folks deserve your dollars.)).

Most of all, though, thanks to my friends – my fellow gamers – who let me use their game sessions as blogfodder. They are good people ((Except for Erik, who is a great big freak. And Chris, who is my nemesis.)), and I appreciate their tolerance and indulgence, especially when I go into one of my weird, experimental phases.

Now. Something I don’t normally do. I’m going to open the floor to suggestions. Is there anything that you folks out there would like to see a blog post on? Can’t guarantee I’ll do it, but I am curious to see what people are interested in. Toss your suggestion up in the comments.

And I hope you’ll stick around for another hundred posts, at least.

Apocalypse World: Quantum Canadians

By | | Apocalypse World, What's he playing?
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We’re in the end-game, now, folks. Last session of Apocalypse World was number 9 of 12, so I’m starting to reveal ((And, because of the nature of AW, when I say “reveal,” you can pretty much freely substitute the phrase “make up on the spot.”)) a number of secrets about the world. This particular session has shown the shape of what is probably going to be the rest of the campaign.

One of the things that got revealed was the nature of the apocalypse. Now, I’m guessing that this is not something that comes up in every game, but one of the players is playing the Quarantine. And, the Quarantine – Snow -  has a special start-of-session move that lets him ask or answer some questions about the apocalypse, when he was placed in stasis. This means that, over the course of a few sessions, a rough outline of what the apocalypse was like ((Not necessarily what it was. Just what it was like.)) will emerge. Combining that with Snow’s desire to find his way back to the stasis facility ((A number of the Quarantine’s advancements have to do with the stasis facility.)), and it became… well, not exactly necessary, but logical that the nature of the apocalypse would emerge.

I’d had a feeling that it was going to come out by the end of the campaign, so part of my prep for each session was looking over my notes about the answers I had given to Snow about the apocalypse, and coming up with some ideas that would fit them. I’d try to keep the answers rich in detail while still being applicable to a few different causes, but as they stacked up, some possibilities became unlikely, and some became more probable. So, this session, I had about four possibilities ((No, players in my campaign, I’m not going to tell you what the other possibilities were. I may need to use them for something before we’re done.)), figuring I’d pick the one that made sense if it came up, just like the last couple of sessions.

This session, though, I actually needed it.

Our heroes decided to head out of Roosevelt again in search of the second beacon, which would – according to Snow – lead them to Snow’s stasis facility. Also, they were kind of uncomfortable with the changes that had come to town since Dawning came to “stabilize” things. They had a rough location for the beacon, north of town, along the road to Dawning, but on the far side of the river from the road. They managed to get their hands on a zodiac boat, and took the Dawning road as far as they could.

Along the way, they passed by a large encampment of Dawning soldiers about two hours north of Roosevelt. The soldiers didn’t do anything threatening, but the group still got nervous, and set a guard that night. In the middle of the night, they heard one of their tripwire alarms go off, and went to investigate. At first, they could see no sign of what might have tripped the alarm ((They had a range of possibilities, including Dawning soldiers, Canadians, Yellowhammers, and razor weasels. Oh, and one of the freaky bears that they saw the razor weasels kill.)), but then discovered some hastily-piled underbrush concealing the corpses of two Dawning soldiers. They had each been shot in the head with a high-calibre bullet.

The group figured that meant the Canadians ((Just a reminder, here, that the group that the characters call “Canadians” are probably not from Canada. But they were very polite and apologetic the first time they met, when they got the drop on Nils and Magpie. Less polite when they were trying to blow up Snow with the drone, last session.)) were nearby and, rather than shooting at them, were shooting at the folks sneaking up on them. The way the bodies had been concealed so quickly made JB think that there were at least three, probably four, Canadians nearby: a sniper, maybe a spotter, and two forward men to hide the bodies when the sniper took them down.

Also, they obviously had some sort of night vision apparatus.

Not comfortable with that idea, our heroes decided to chance a night crossing of the river, and trying to lose the Canadians on the other side. This they proceeded to do, heading away from the beacon for most of the day, and finally approaching it at night. It kinda worked: they lost their tails, but the Canadians had found the beacon and set up an ambush there.

There was an abortive attempt at a parley at gunpoint, but that went to hell pretty quick. The resulting fire fight was pretty brutal, leaving JB badly injured, but with the Canadians dead, chased off, or captured. During the battle, Magpie had opened herself up to the maelstrom, and seen that the Canadians were just blank holes in the world, but that the beacon seemed to have several alternate images of itself superimposed on its position.

This bit started to make sense when they interrogated one of the Canadians. After some negotiation – involving the release of all the prisoners but the one agreeing to talk – I got to reveal the cause of the apocalypse.

The seeds of the idea grew out of the latest iteration of Gamma World, Robert Sawyer’s Neanderthal Parralax, random stuff I’ve read about quantum physics, Warren Ellis’s amazing comic Planetary, and a neat video I saw about quantum computers. Now, I want to stress that, if I were to say that I don’t really understand quantum physics or quantum computers, I’d be claiming waaaaaay more knowledge of the subject than I actually have. So, everything I’m using here is based on the cool bits of quantum physics that I’ve picked up from books and movies. Do not use anything I say here to try and resolve a waveform’s superposition. It’ll just get messy.

The apocalypse started because of the invention and use of quantum computers, which use essentially use alternate reality versions of themselves for almost infinite parallel processing power, enabling them to perform massive calculations very quickly. These alternate realities started bleeding together as the computers became more powerful and more prevalent. This accelerated, until the realities became inextricably smeared together, destroying most of the social and cultural and physical infrastructure of the various worlds.

The Canadians are from a different reality than the Roosevelt folks. They created a facility on their reality that shares the position of Snow’s facility on this ((Or is Snow from a different reality, too?)) reality. They’ve been trying to eliminate the beacons that point to their location, and anyone who might have knowledge of them.

One thing the prisoner told them that gave everyone some pause was that some of the scientists at his base have said that the math suggests that the quantum computers create the alternate realities so that they have a place to do the quantum processing. This means that shutting them off might wipe out all the realities except the prime one, and no one is sure which one that is.

That’s about where we left things. Snow now has the location of his stasis facility, but is even more unsure of what they’ll find there.

Of course, I don’t know, either. That’s one of the great things about AW. We both get to be surprised.

C4 Is Here!

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Central Canada Comic Con, or C4, starts today. I’m not going to be there this evening, due to a previously scheduled Apocalypse World game, but I will be there all day tomorrow and Sunday, down in the gaming area with a big pile of games to talk about and demo.

This year, I’m bringing the largest selection of games in all my years doing this at the con:

Board Games

  • Firefly boardgame
  • Fortune and Glory
  • Betrayal at the House on the Hill
  • Tsuro
  • Tsuro of the Seas
  • Lords of Waterdeep
  • Pandemic
  • Carcassonne
  • Legend of Drizzt
  • Race to Adventure
  • Shadows Over Camelot

Roleplaying Games

  • Firefly RPG
  • Fiasco
  • Leverage RPG
  • Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
  • Dungeon World
  • Fate Core
  • Fate Accelerated Edition

Card, Dice, and Other Games

  • Zombie Dice
  • Cthulhu Dice
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse
  • Infiltration
  • The Resistance
  • Dixit
  • Elder Sign

That’s twenty-five games in all. I’ve managed to pack them into two large packs so that I can haul them all up from the car in one trip, but I expect I’m going to look a little like Nodwick hauling the whole pile.

So, if you’re interested in playing some games, come on down to the gaming area tomorrow and Sunday. I got ya covered.

Civil War: We Are Gathered Here Today

By | | Civil War, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, What's he playing?
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***Spoiler Warning***

My group and I are playing through the Civil War event book for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, from Margaret Weis Productions. While the course of play may not follow the event book – or the comic books – precisely, there’s going to be a certain amount of stuff that does conform to the adventures and comic series.

In short, if you don’t want to know what happens in Civil War, don’t read these posts. Or the comic books.

***You Have Been Warned***

Friday evening was a very interesting session of our Civil War campaign. It was the marriage of Black Panther and Storm in Wakanda, and the Guardians went to celebrate, politic, and recruit for their anti-SHRA campaign. It wound up being a session entirely of roleplaying ((Well, there was one punch thrown, but we’ll get to that.)), which was a nice change from the usual combats that exemplify superhero games.

Now, that’s not to say that I dislike combats in superhero games; quite the contrary. The reason you play a superhero game is, I believe, to have all the awesome excitement and spectacle of reproducing the comic book fights. But a steady diet of combats not only gets boring, it doesn’t accurately reflect the way most comic books tell their stories these days. So, I was pleased to have a whole session of talking to people and character exploration.

Volcanic decided to stay on Volcano Island to safeguard the civilians there, along with Cyber and Daredevil. The rest of the Guardians – Jumpstart, Mega Joule, The Doctor, Luke Cage, and Spider-Man – took the GX-1 to Wakanda for the wedding. At the hotel, they found a whole bunch of other heroes gathered around, and got to do some schmoozing. Some highlights from the evening:

  • The Doctor chatting with Tony Stark and getting the information that a) he’s not as drunk as he seems, and b) “normal” MGH shouldn’t have done what it did to Nitro and Declan.
  • Spider-Man and Human Torch going out to take pictures (and ogle the women, in Johnny’s case), and Spidey talking Torch into joining the Guardians.
  • Mega Joule laying hands on Namor and getting punched. He soaked up the punch, and called the Sub-Mariner rude for striking another guest ((Mega Joule’s kinetic control let him take the punch without damage, and he spun his counter-attack as doing Emotional Stress instead of physical. Very nice.)).
  • Jumpstart warning Reed Richards that, unless he started paying attention to how she was feeling about this whole SHRA mess, Susan was going to leave him.
  • The Doctor finally finding someone who understood how he feels about the SHRA: Cyclops. Though the mutants at the School aren’t in much of a position to help, Cyclops promised to take in any Guardians who needed refuge, and gave The Doctor some contacts in Mutant Town who might be interested in helping.
  • The Doctor and Mega Joule convincing Hercules that fighting the SHRA would be glorious and noble, and thus convincing him to join the Guardians.
  • Sub-Mariner coming to Volcano Island and arranging an alliance with Volcanic, the “King” of Volcano Island.

Of course, the centerpiece of the evening was T’Challa calling together the Guardians and the pro-SHRA forces (represented by Captain America, Reed Richards, and Hank Pym) to try and talk things out. This went about as well as you would expect. Cap is still sore at Jumpstart over the whole insubordination, betrayal, and (possibly) treason thing, so he was less than receptive to the talks right from the start. Reed decided he’d had enough once The Doctor essentially called him a Nazi ((Note that this happened before his little chat with Jumpstart.)).

Once Cap and Reed walked away from the table, Hank Pym explained that this was just a courtesy to T’Challa, and the last chance for the Guardians to surrender with some dignity. He said that the anti-SHRA was doomed, thanks to the new weapons and resources that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been developing, and that it was no longer a question about right and wrong, but about pragmatism – the resistance was going down, and anyone siding with it when that happened was doomed.

When Hank walked away after his little speech, T’Challa thanked the Guardians for being willing to talk and stay at the table. He let the Guardians know that they were welcome in Wakanda, and he would provide a safe haven for them if needed. He also gave them a number of Wakandan nanotech medkits to help with their humanitarian efforts. So, it wasn’t a complete loss.

Then, I got completely blindsided.

Volcanic, who had been back at Volcano Island but was getting periodic updates from the Guardians in Wakanda, climbed into the freshly-finished GX-2, and flew to Wakanda. Not to attend the wedding, but to surrender himself to Captain America for trial.

The reasoning behind this ((I think. I’m viewing it from the outside, and haven’t discussed this with Clint, yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m at least partially right.)) is that Volcanic knows that fighting S.H.I.E.L.D. and the pro-SHRA heroes isn’t going to do much to get the SHRA repealed. Only lessening the fear of the populace and forcing a vote in Congress is going to do that. With S.H.I.E.L.D. controlling most of the information about the situation, the only way to get the counter-arguments out to the general public is a highly-publicized trial.

I’m cool with this, though it’s a huge departure from the published event book. I don’t really care about that so much, really. But it is a factor, because departing from the stuff provided in the book means more prep time for me, so I wanted to make sure that the player was really committed to this idea before accepting it. I had Cap make a demand – Volcanic would have to agree to have his powers neutralized for the duration of his confinement.

Volcanic had a problem with that – see, he accepted the mantle of these powers to remove them from the Volcano God of Volcano Island, and prevent the Volcano God from running amok and sinking Manhattan. If he gives up or neutralizes the powers, they would revert to the Volcano God, and that would be a big problem for the eastern seaboard. He agreed to surrender the powers, but only if Cap would accept them to keep the Volcano God under control. Cap agreed, and we ended the session with a splash page of Volcanic reverting to his human form, Dr. Nick Burns ((Yeah, yeah. It’s comic books. If you can have Ben Grimm and Sue Storm, you can have Nick Burns.)), and Cap turning into a towering mass of lava ((We glossed over the wedding itself. It was a lovely wedding.)).

Now, before the next game ((Which is scheduled for November 15.)), I have to do a few things:

  1. Talk to Clint to get a feel for his ideas about what controlling the mantle of the Volcano God is like for Cap.
  2. Figure out how I’m going to handle the trial of Volcanic.
  3. Get some feel from the other players about how they want things to proceed.
  4. Decide whether the trial is going to be the big showdown for Act II – or even for the entire event.
  5. Check to see if the group are spending XP to unlock Human Torch and Hercules as playable heroes.

Yeah, Clint through me a curve ball with his decision that may change the entire rest of the campaign. I don’t mind, though. I love it ((I didn’t always love it. It took me some time to figure out that saying yes to crazy player plans always led to the best play. I don’t always say yes, even now, but I always wind up wishing that I had.)) when player actions and decisions have the kinds of far-reaching effects. It just means that I need to take a little time to figure out how to respond ((That’s usually the reason I say no. No time to figure out how to handle the coolness.)).

Anyway. I’ve got about two weeks to sort this stuff out.

Then we’ll see what happens.

C4 Is Coming!

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Next weekend – November 1, 2, and 3 – is Central Canada Comic Con, or C4. There are some awesome guests this year, including Ron Perlman, Tony Amendola, Walter Koenig, James Marsters, Bruce Boxleitner, David Prowse, Avery Brooks ((Hawk! Hawk is coming!)), and Chris Sarandon. There are lots of others, too – those are just the ones I’m personally most excited about.

As has become traditional, I’ll be hauling a huge pile of boardgames, card games, and roleplaying games down to the convention, and demoing them in the game area for Imagine Games & Hobbies. It looks like the gaming area is in the same spot as last year, on the second floor of the Convention Centre. Unlike last year, it looks like you’ll need to actually purchase a con pass for access to the gaming area.

I will be showing up early on Saturday ((Prior commitments prevent me from attending on Friday evening.)) morning, and will be in the room all day Saturday and Sunday, running, demoing, playing, talking about, and answering questions about games. You should join me.

How do you get in on the gaming? Simple! Come by the table, find a game that looks like fun, find me – I’m usually within arm’s reach of the table – and say, “Can we play this?” If you already know the game, you’re good to go. If you need me to demo or run the game, you’re good to go as long as I’m not currently running a different game and we have enough people for that particular game.

Pro tip: if there’s a particular game that you really, really want to play, check the box for how many players it can handle, and bring your own group. That way, we don’t have to scramble to find other players and – bonus – you get to play with your friends!

Here’s a tentative ((Subject to change if packing any of them proves a problem or if I think of something better to bring.)) list of the games I’m bringing:

  • Firefly boardgame
  • Firefly RPG
  • Fortune and Glory
  • Betrayal at the House on the Hill
  • Tsuro
  • Tsuro of the Seas
  • Zombie Dice
  • Cthulhu Dice
  • Fiasco
  • Leverage RPG
  • Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse
  • Infiltration
  • The Resistance
  • Lords of Waterdeep
  • Pandemic
  • Dungeon World
  • Carcassonne
  • Legend of Drizzt
  • Dixit
  • Elder Sign
  • Race to Adventure
  • Fate

So, come on out to C4 next weekend and play some games with me. It’ll be fun!

 

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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***SPOILER ALERT***

I’m running Tomb of Horrors for this leg of the Storm Point campaign – indeed, for the rest of the campaign. You may not want to read on if you’re playing the game yourself.

***SPOILER ALERT***

It’s been over three months between sessions. Scheduling has been problematic, based partially on all the usual summer stuff plus some weddings and travel. In addition, I think fading enthusiasm for the game is a contributor ((We’ve been talking about it pretty much every session we get together – including this one.)) – with people getting somewhat tired of the game, they are less likely to make it a priority in their schedules.

Now, we still want to get together and game, but we’re all getting a little ((Or, in some cases, a lot.)) tired of D&D after more than eight years. That said, we also don’t want to just leave the story hanging. So, once again, I’ve taken it upon myself to pare down the remaining adventure of Tomb of Horrors so that we can wrap up the game in about four more sessions – right around the start of the new year. We talked about what we wanted to play next ((The assumption is that I will run the game, which is fine.)) and, while there was some murmuring over Night’s Black Agents, in the end, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire won out.

Anyway, much of the evening was taken up in discussion about the next game, about what happened in the last session, about all the other stuff that’s been going on in our lives in the last three months, and a looooong combat.

We jumped right in with initiative, fighting the callers in darkness that came boiling out of the temple walls. They were annoying, but didn’t really threaten the gang all that much, thanks to having two high-level leaders in the party dishing out healing and saving throws. It took a while to wear the monsters down, but they eventually did, and were happy about that.

Now, in the intervening time, I’m taking a machete to the end of this adventure and the entirety of the next one. I want to hit the high points, giving the gang a worthy payoff to a campaign we’ve all had fun with.

Or, y’know, a TPK. Whichever.

Mask of the Other

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motocover

Mask of the Other is a modern Lovecraftian horror/military adventure novel by Greg Stolze. Here’s the sell text from the back cover:

In 1991, a squad of US soldiers in Iraq stumbled across the wreckage of Saddam Hussein’s secret occult weapons program. Mask of the Other tells their story.

In 1974, something two armies couldn’t kill was buried under the wreckage of Varosha, during the invasion of Cyprus. Over the next three decades, teams of Turkish soldiers repeatedly attempted to poison it, burn it, or blow it to bits. They only succeeded in keeping it pent up, waiting.

In 2001, a skirmish in rural Afghanistan somehow escalated to the point that an entire village was wiped out, along with most of the personnel of a private military company. The only survivors were four Americans suspected of looting Iraqi antiquities a decade earlier.

In 2004, those same Americans were hired to provide security for a mining firm looking to restart operations on the abandoned island of Hashima. Both they, and the man who hired them, knew that the island’s abandonment in 1974 had left it as the home to far worse things than smugglers and squatters.

Mask of the Other takes modern ghost towns, low-intensity combat zones, international espionage and corporate intrigue, weaving them together with the ineffable horrors of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. It’s a war story, a survival tale, and an account of existential survival against incredible threats.

Now, bias alert. Here’s a list of reasons that you might decide my review of the book is biased:

  • Greg Stolze, along with John Tynes, bought a bunch of my writing back in the days of Unknown Armies.
  • I got to know Greg back in those days, and we’ve been friends ever since.
  • Greg sent me a .pdf of the book back when it was first released, for free.
  • I backed the Kickstarter for the audiobook version ((Some may view this as bias, some may view it as further endorsement. I leave it to you to decide which it is for you.)).
  • In general, I like Greg’s writing, both his fiction and his game material.

So, those factors may indicate that I am predisposed to like this book, and you’d be right, I guess. But I try to be honest in my reviews. I think the above points make it more likely that I’d read the book, certainly, and to write a review if I like it ((I don’t write reviews of things I don’t like. I’d rather celebrate and share stuff that I think is good than whine about or tear down stuff that I don’t. After all, opinions are very subjective, and there’s lots of good stuff out there, so why not focus on stuff I like?)).

This review is coming very late – the book was released over a year ago, and I started reading it then, but I got distracted and never got back to it. When the Kickstarter for the audio version of the book came along, I backed it at a high enough level to get the softcover version, as well. I just finished listening to the audiobook this afternoon, so it’s time and past time to write a review.

The sell text above hits the high points of the story. The book actually weaves a few different narrative tracks together, some of which come together later in the book, and some of which are more in the nature of vignettes, filling in some blanks from the story and illuminating the nature of the threats facing the characters ((Most of the illumination is some form of “See? This is why it’s very, very bad.”)). This does a good job of controlling the revelations of information for the reader to heighten suspense, because sometimes it’s scarier to be surprised and sometimes it’s scarier to see it coming.

I had a bit of a problem with this approach, though, especially in the earlier part of the novel. The chapters don’t progress chronologically; that is, they jump forward and backwards in time. Each chapter starts with a date/place heading, so it’s not that huge a deal – except with the audiobook. With a written text, you can flip back to the chapter’s beginning, and to other chapter beginnings, to help keep track of where you are in the story’s timeline. You can’t do that with the audiobook, though, and with all the jumping around in the start of the book, it’s not hard to lose track.

It’s not a huge problem, though; just something that caused me a little confusion. And, as the book proceeds, the narratives come together and begin to advance in a more conventional manner, the problem evaporates.

The story itself is a lot of fun, and really quite disturbing in many places ((Which is what one looks for in Lovecraftian story, after all.)). Greg uses a couple of very common monsters from the Lovecraft corpus, and uses them pretty much in their conventional roles, but throws a couple of awesome twists in to move them from standard tropes up to things of real horror again. The deep ones are nasty and terrifying in their breeding program and level of infiltration, and the shoggoth pulls some tricks that show why they were essentially an Old One doomsday weapon.

The main characters of the book – the squad of soldiers – are great. They make the same kinds of desperate, foolish, awesome decisions as player characters in an RPG ((And, incidentally, so completely unlike the rather sterile, cerebral characters of an actual Lovecraft story.)), and enjoy the same kinds of great victories and horrible defeats. The horror of Lovecraft’s stories is often so cosmic, that it is removed from personal horror, but this story does a good job of showing how the cosmic horror leads the characters into personal horror. Their choices, and the consequences of those choices, really drive the most disturbing parts of the novel.

Of course, some mention must be made of the narrator of the audiobook. His name is Trevor Dutton, and Greg described his voice as “gravy on gravel.” I can’t do any better than that; it’s a smooth voice, with a bit of a rumble in it. He doesn’t do a lot of voices, but reads clearly, and at a good pace. I believe he produced the book, as well as reading it, so he’s responsible for the sound effects interspersed throughout. The first time I heard one of the sound effects on the recording, I was startled, but they work really well, and I wound up enjoying them a lot ((Mostly. There were one or two little tinkly musical stings that struck me as kind of incongruous.)). All in all, a fine job of reading.

End result? I really enjoyed Mask of the Other. It hit all the right buttons for modern Lovecraft fiction, as far as I’m concerned, marrying his stark, horrific universe with the more personal, immediate horror of modern sensibility. It’s a tough balance to strike, and Greg Stolze hits it about perfect. If you like Lovecraft, Delta Green, or just modern horror, you should read this book.

The Demolished Ones

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TheDemolishedOnesFrontCover

So, a while back, Steven D. Russell at Rite Publishing asked if I’d be willing to review their first Fate product, The Demolished Ones, by Brian Engard. I sent him an e-mail talking about my review policy ((Spelled out on my About… page.)), and he said he could live with those conditions, and sent me a free .pdf copy of the game. This was back at the end of July, and I’ve finally got around to reading it.

Here’s the blurb for the game, from the back cover:

You wake in a room.

You don’t where you are, where you came from, what’s happening. You don’t know who you are. Your identity has been taken from you. It will come back with time, but can you trust it? This world is not what it seems. Are you?

And then there’s the murder. 

Who killed the dead man? Was it you? Was it one of the people who woke in the room with you? Are you all being blamed for a crime you didn’t commit? If you want to keep your freedom, you’ll need to solve the mystery of Jack Smith’s murder while you solve the riddle of your own identity. But is freedom even possible, or is it just another lie?

This is a game.

The Demolished Ones is a game about identity, amnesia, and the power – and danger – that comes with knowledge. This game uses Fate, a rules system that helps you build characters with personalities, histories, and baggage. If you’re not familiar with Fate, don’t worry: this game teaches you everything you need to know.

This is a story.

This book also includes a full story for you to play through. It contains all of the characters, locations, and events that you’ll need to tell a story of mystery, intrigue, identity, and horror.

The Demolished Ones is written as a limited-duration campaign. Looking at it, I estimate it could be wrapped up in as little as four to five sessions, or stretched out to double that, depending on how you ran and paced things. There’s also a section near the end that gives you a bunch of options for continuing play after the main storyline is completed.

I’m not going to talk too much about the plot, because a lot of the great bits about the game depend on revelation and discovery. The whole idea of starting as blank slates of characters, slowly adding abilities and memories throughout the game, is interesting, and Fate is a great system for doing something like this, as it already has a default build-as-you-play character generation option. The strangeness and mystery of the setting unfolds as the story proceeds, and the characters learn about the setting at the same time they learn about the world.

And it’s a world worth learning about. The background story is deep and interesting, with wonderful secrets to uncover and explore. The weirdness is compelling and engaging, and the options it offers for characters are just cool.

But the game has one potential flaw. It seems ((I say, “seems,” because the movie is never directly mentioned in the book.)) to be based on a particular movie ((The back of the book hints at what that movie might be, but for those who wish to know, I’ve hidden the movie name here: [spoilers]Dark City[/spoiler] )). And based very firmly on the movie, in both setting, structure, and terminology, so much so that, if I were playing, I’d be hard-pressed to keep from anticipating things from the movie in the game.

It’s not like the game slavishly follows the movie, though. There are plenty of tweaks to the plot and the setting. But if the connection is made early in the game, it will give away some of the cool secrets of the world, and may undermine the enjoyment of the players. In other words, knowing the movie constitutes spoilers for the game.

That said, I think this would be a very cool game to run for a group that were unfamiliar with the movie. And, if I were not familiar with the movie, I would love to play it. Brian Engard has done a great job of creating a claustrophobic, twisted, paranoid world where identity and reality are fluid and unreliable. It’s a great mini-campaign for the right group – one that enjoys mystery, horror, adventure, and isn’t afraid of something off the beaten track.

Beyond that, it really shows off a lot of the strengths of the Fate system. The implementation of the Fate rules fit into about 20 pages, including all the special character stuff the game requires. The in-game weirdness works very well with the structure of aspects and skills. And the cinematic, free-form mechanics make for some potentially fantastic sequences.

Yeah, so if any of that sounds interesting, I’d recommend you check out The Demolished Ones.