Tag: Tabletop

Play your Cards Right – Highlights from Essen SPIEL Games Fair 2024

by MonkeyMagic

Over the course of four days in October, thousands of people flock to Essen in Germany to celebrate their love of tabletop gaming, playing and buying (and buying and buying) games from a vast array of new titles making their world debut at the fair each year. As publishers and players begin to prepare for SPIEL 2025, now is a great time to reflect on the games from SPIEL 2024 that have remained hot titles since their introduction there last year.

If I say ‘Tabletop Gaming’ you probably either think of pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, or conjure up in your mind the image of a big board in the middle of the table covered in wooden tokens, cardboard counters and plastic figures. There might even be some cards in there too, but you’re certainly less likely to immediately think of a card game. However, the same way board games have evolved a lot since Monopoly and Risk, the world of card games is now much bigger than the standard 52 deck of cards we’re all familiar with. Card games also hold several advantages: they are usually cheaper than bigger boxed games, making it easier to justify adding them to your collection; they are generally smaller and more portable; and because they are often easy to learn and quick to play, it’s often a simpler task to get them to the table in the first place.

One of the many Halls at SPIEL 2024

There is no better place to see a cross-section of modern card games than at SPIEL, the scale of which cannot be overestimated. SPIEL 2024 was no different, with 68,500 square meters of hall space occupied by 923 exhibitors from across the world. Some 204,000 attendees were able to sample over 1,500 new games over the course of the fair.

While many of the headline grabbing titles were more typical board games, the impact of the more humble card game should not be overlooked. The SPIEL 2024 games list on boardgamegeek.com categorised some 384 of the releases as ‘card games’. Now that some time has passed and these SPIEL releases have percolated their way through the gaming community to the shelves, pockets and gaming tables beyond Germany, we can take stock of some of the big hitters from the fair that have made a lasting impact, and that I would recommend you might want to consider picking up yourself.

Flip 7

While these are all new releases, some may seem familiar to you as they play on traditional card game mechanics — Flip 7, for example, feels a little like blackjack. On your turn, you have cards on the table in front of you and will either stick or twist/hit, hoping not to go bust. The important change here is that the goal and the ‘bust’ condition are completely different. The deck consists of twelve ‘12’ cards, eleven ‘11’s and so on down to one ‘1’, plus some special cards. The value of the cards in front of you is your score for the round, but if you ever get two cards with the same value you are out. So while a 12 and an 11 is great for scoring, you have a very high chance of going bust if you take another card. And although a collection of low cards wont score much initially, it increases the chances of you getting to the mythical seven cards in front of you. If you ‘Flip 7’ cards you get an extra 15 bonus points and end the round (and of course, you garner cheers and admiration from the rest of the table for your cojones). There are also special cards, some of which adjust your score, but the more in interesting ones give you an extra ‘life’, force a player to duck out of the round early, or make a player ‘Flip 3’. This latter card is great to play on other players to force them to take three cards in a row (making them likely to go bust), but occasionally it feels like the right thing to do is to really push your luck and play it on yourself.

The designers have self labelled the front of the box ‘The greatest card game of all time!’, and while this is more than a little hyperbolic, it is not totally unjustified. Of all the card games released at SPIEL, this soon became the most played and most purchased among the team here, and has remained so since.

Seers Catalog

If you have ever played the classic card game President (maybe you know it as A✱hole), then you have played a ‘ladder climbing’ game. In these games, one player leads the trick by playing a ‘meld’ of cards made up of a run or set of matching cards, the next player must then beat the played meld by playing a better meld (often of the same number of cards), or pass. The goal of the game is usually to be the first player to get rid of all your cards. Seers Catalog is a great new twist on this mechanic, standing out from the crowd for two reasons. Firstly the presentation, which starts with a nice little pun on Sears Catalog and some linked 1960s style box art with a twist. The card design is also great with lots of references to Werewolves and magical Seers, combined with clean art and a pleasing colour palette. Secondly the gameplay. A small twist is the addition of special power cards that disrupt normal rules and gameplay. More impactful however, the simple ladder climbing mechanic is subverted by the end of round scoring. Ideally, you want to hold on to a high value card in your hand at the point another player ends the round by playing their final cards, but the more cards you have the more your score is reduced, and if you have too many you will score only negative points. This creates a delicious balance between playing your high cards to win tricks and keeping them in your hand for scoring, and of shedding your cards quickly, but not too quickly. Since picking this up at SPIEL it has made it back to the table several times and I think it will likely gaining playtime for a while yet to come.

Before we move away from classic card game mechanics, we need to mention the most well used mechanic there is – trick taking. One player leads with a card and the others then take in turns to play another single card to the trick, following or trumping the suit, highest card wins. There are numerous new twists on the trick taking game every year, and SPIEL 2024 was no different. Notable titles that we enjoyed included Bottle Imp, Fischen, Panda Spin, and Power Vacuum.

Agent Avenue

Card games often lend themselves well to team games of two vs two players, and a beautiful example of that is Agent Avenue. The theme is of anthropomorphic animals spying on each in other in 1950s suburbia, and the artwork is gorgeous. In the two player version you pick two cards to offer your opponent, one face up one face down. They pick one, you get the other. The cards either move your pawns round a circular track on the small central board until one wins by catching the other, or tick you towards sets of three cards that spell instant victory or instant defeat. The agony of which cards to put on the table face up or face down is nothing compared to the “I can clearly not choose the win in front of me” mental gymnastics you will do when choosing which card to pick. One might be terrible, but does that mean the face down one is even worse, or is it a double bluff and the face down card is actually amazing? While the game is great fun at two, it is even better with four. In your team of two, one of you must first decide, without discussing specifics with your partner (the other team are right there listening!) who will play a card face up, with the second player then forced to react with a suitable face down card from the limited selection in their hand. In the months since picking this up I don’t think I have ever sat down and played only one game of this, it’s just so compelling!.

Ito

Card games also have the ability to take a single deck and scale up to a multi-player party game. Ito does just that, accommodating up to 8 players co-operating together. First you will draw a category card, something like “Things you want to take a picture of” or “Best ever holiday”, then each player is secretly given a random card numbered between 1 and 100. On your turn you place your card face down on the table and try to give a clue to help put the card in the correct rank order relative to the cards the other players put down. For example, if the category was “Important life events” and you drew 91 you might say “Getting married” or if you drew 5 you might say “Brushing my teeth this morning”. Once all the cards are on the table the players discuss how to rank them based on the appropriate clue, and once agreed flip them over to see if you placed them in the right order. It’s a simple premise, but as you can see from the example questions, it usually generates some interesting discussion at worst, and some hilarious moments at best. It is so easy to teach, requires almost no table space, and a round can be played in just a few minutes. The perfect pocket game to take to the pub. One of the perks of SPIEL was picking this up early several months before it came to retail — unsurprisingly it sold out at the fair.

Castle Combo

Another card game that was so popular at SPIEL that it sold out was Castle Combo. A game about making combos in your castle, of course! More specifically, you are each building a 3 by 3 grid of cards, taking it in turn to choose and pay for a card from a common market of 6 on the table. Once you all have your 9 card ‘castle’ you calculate your score and declare a winner. Each card has a mediaeval character on it, but more importantly also has some kind of scoring mechanic. These are widely varied but might be: score 5 points if this card is on the top row, or score 2 points for every blue card beside this one, or score 6 for every card suit you don’t have in your castle at the end of the game. Some cards will also give benefits when you place them such as money to spend buying cards in future turns, or keys which are used to manipulate the common card market (and are worth points if unspent at the end of the game). The game rattles along at a satisfying pace with very little down time, and as the name implies there are plenty of ways to find combinations of cards that power each other up for maximum points. This game taps into that intrinsic joy of building combos such that even when you don’t win you usually feel like you achieved something.

Hopefully this snapshot of some of the hottest card games from SPIEL 2024 illustrates that games that come in small boxes can have as much impact as their bigger box cousins. Big games may grab the spotlight, but as SPIEL 2025 draws closer, we won’t forget to look for those surefire hits in smaller packages.

Before Next Month’s SPIEL, We Take A Look At Current Trends In Boardgaming

by MonkeyMagic

You may or may not know that the modern boardgaming world is actually a massive industry. One of the best ways to see this demonstrated is at the planet’s biggest boardgame event – SPIEL. This event, held in the city of Essen in Germany, is an annual pilgrimage for both the companies and designers who make games, as well as the many geeks who play them. At last year’s event in October of 2018, 190,000 gamers roamed the 80,000 square metres of the fair to check out 1,150 exhibitors attending from over 50 countries to showcase their latest releases.

With such a large array of new games being released each year, it’s possible to detect trends in the ever evolving hobby. Now that nearly a year has passed since the last SPIEL, the dust has settled and one can step back and get a feel for the titles that have remained standing. By looking at the games released at the fair that have continued to capture the attention of players and find their way to the table we can spot some of the current memes in the gaming hobby that are still going strong as we approach SPIEL 2019 next month.

Asymmetrical Play

While not a new concept, some of the games making a big impact recently have this element as a dominant feature. In asymmetrical games, every player is given a ‘faction’ that has a distinct way of interacting with the game and the other players, often resulting in a unique approach to achieving victory with that faction.

Root

One of the hottest games in this genre would have to be Root. Following a successful international Kickstarter, this game saw its German language premiere in Essen. On first glance Root appears to be a fairly cute kid friendly animal game with some beautiful art from Kyle Ferrin showing animals such as birds, cats mice, rabbits and even a raccoon. However, don’t be fooled, under the hood this is essentially a war game. Each player controls a different faction of woodland folk vying for dominance of the forest. Players build buildings, recruit warriors, and engage in combat to control the various clearing on the board. Each of the four factions in the base game plays completely differently including how they move around the board, what kind of buildings they build, how they get more units on the board, and crucially, how they score points. While you can dive into this game without too much thought, play becomes so much more rewarding when you not only learn the intricacies of your own faction, but also how the other factions tick, allowing you to interfere with their plans while nurturing your own to fruition.

That desire to master all the factions, combined with deep but rewarding gameplay means that there is a lot of play here and Root has really stood the test of time. Since SPIEL in October it has seen a hugely successful Kickstarter for a second expansion with more than 20,000 backers pledging over 1.7 million dollars. It has also won a host of awards including a 2018 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year and 2019 UK Games Expo Best Board Game (Strategic Style).

Spirit Island

Another highly asymmetrical game sitting in the all time top 20 on boardgamegeek.com currently is Spirit Island. It already had a strong following from its 2017 release but also saw the German language version premier at the SPIEL. In this reversal of the traditional colonisation theme players are working together to support the indigenous people of an island being invaded by new world explorers. You each take on the role of a spirit and must synergise to beat back the colonists either by directly attacking them, empowering the natives to push them back or simply by instilling so much fear in them that they turn tail and abandon the island themselves. Different spirits will focus on different strategies and they all have a unique play style. This is a fairly deep game that rewards repeated plays as you learn the strategies and try out all the different spirits.

Mind Reading

Working with or against other players using limited communication, often non verbal or even borderline telepathic, seemed to be another theme that came through at the fair, and has shown no sign of dying out yet.

The Mind

In the co-operative game The Mind the players all try to synchronise their thoughts into one single hive mind. The premise is simple. There is a shuffled deck of 100 cards numbered from 1-100. Each round an increasing number of cards are dealt out to each player. All the team have to do is play those cards on to the table in ascending order. The catch is, you are not able to communicate with each other in any way. You need to go with your gut as to how long to wait before you play your card. Let’s say you have the 42. You will sit and wait for quite a while before putting it on the table to allow a player who is holding any of the 41 cards lower than yours to get them out first.  Of course if someone plays, say the 39, you are not going to delay much longer before tabling your 41. Play a card too early and the team loses a life. If the whole team manage to play all their cards then that Level is over and you move up to the next Level, with each player starting the round with one more card than in the last Level. If you ever make it all the way up to the final Level (10 in a three player game) then you have mastered the game. I’m yet to get beyond Level 5.

While The Mind came out earlier in the year the buzz that had already been created meant that it still hot at the SPIEL and both it and the expansion that launched there, Level 13, sold outduring the show.

Fuji

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the exhibition halls another game from the same designer was being premiered. In Fuji the team of players are trying to move their pawns across a series of tiles to all escape the island before being consumed by lava. Each player secretly rolls a set of dice which have different coloured numbers on them. Each tile they want to move to has different dice requirements. You can only successfully move there if you meet those requirements better than your neighbours. The rub is again that you can’t just discuss this. While in Fuji you are allowed some communication, you are not allowed to discuss the specifics of the dice you have, only suggest how strong or weak your collection of dice are for the requirements of a given card. Again in this game you will only succeed if the team all get into the same head space. You can talk about being ‘fairly weak’, ‘quite strong’, ‘very strong’ and so on. Our group felt that both our effectiveness and our enjoyment was enhanced if we adopted the ‘bear scale’ – if I tell my team that my dice are “as strong as an adolescent bear with a hunting knife” on one spot, but as weak as a ‘”baby bear still in nappies” on another, then they have a reasonable idea how I am positioned. This game has probably hit the table more times since the SPIEL than any other game we picked up.

Other honourable mentions from the fair requiring you to get into someone else’s head include the ingenious competitive deduction game Cryptid and the team based game Shadows: Amsterdam where you play in real time giving non verbal picture based clues to your team mate.

Unique Games

A new genre of games emerged for the first time in 2018, the unique game, where every single copy of the game differs from the next.

KeyForge

You know that little niche game Magic: The Gathering, the one that has been on the go for 26 years and made Hasbro $2.45 billion in net revenue last year? Well it’s designer, Richard Garfield (featured in Geekscape 519) had a brand new card game to show the world last year, and there was a premier at SPIEL, just days before its full worldwide release. That game was KeyForge. The core gameplay has similarities to Magic: The Gathering, with two players putting creatures on the table that then attack the other players creatures. There are some interesting fundamental changes including the main goal of collecting Aember rather than dealing damage, and the way players pick one of their three ‘suits’ and then play and activate all cards in that suit, and only that suit, for that turn. But what really makes this game stand out are the unique decks. Unlike in Magic there is no deck building, players buy one or more pre-constructed decks which cannot be modified in any way, but every single deck in the world will be completely unique. Using procedural generation to ensure that all decks have an appropriate mix of different card types and a reasonable balance of three of the ‘suits’ (as well as a procedurally generated name) there are more than 104,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible decks. This intriguing concept results in a focus on getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of your own individual deck and the resulting fresh perspective combined with solid central gameplay has kept KeyForge alive, with one expansion out already and a third one set to release in time for SPIEL 2019.

Discover: Lands Unknown

Also showcasing at the fair was another unique game by another high profile designer, Corey Konieczka, famous for titles like Star Wars: Rebellion, Battlestar Galactica and Eldritch Horror. Discover: Lands Unknown is a co-operative game in which players find themselves stranded in the wilderness and must team up to find food, water and tools with a view to their ultimate goal of surviving. Published by the same company as KeyForge similar technology has been used to ensure every copy of this game is also unique. While one game might be set in the desert another might be in the frozen tundra or the jungle. In addition the combination of items and encounters is also unique to each box. Although this game generated a lot of buzz at SPIEL, subsequent reception has been a little lukewarm. While this game itself may not still be getting played in a few years time, more unique games will almost certainly be around the corner and that alone is an exciting prospect.

Roll and Write

Everyone has heard of the great granddaddy of roll and write games Yahtzee, and although it has been around since at least 1956, this genre as a whole has suddenly exploded in the last twelve months, while SPIEL 2018 being a clear indicator of the year that changed.

That’s Pretty Clever

Like Yahtzee, the central mechanic of a roll and write game involves rolling a set of dice and then taking the results of those dice and writing them down in some way to maximise your score. Looking at That’s Pretty Clever, one of the biggest successes, in more detail is probably a great place to start. This was another title that was available earlier in the year, but really took off at the SPIEL. It now has multiple awards nominations as well as successful mobile OS ports. On your turn your roll six different dice, pick one of them to use on one of five corresponding coloured areas on your score pad and write the result in the appropriate box. Each coloured area works differently either scoring points in some way, or giving you power- ups to use later in the game. You then roll the remaining dice and pick another result, and repeat. Crucially all other players are involved during your turn (and vice versa) as whatever dice you don’t use they get to use for their score pad. The game strikes a great balance with quick and intuitive play but also meaningful choices.

Rolling Ranch

Elsewhere in the halls, a pre-release version of Rolling Ranch was available to play. In this game each player is building a farm – putting up fences and building while placing animals within the enclosures. This time only two dice are rolled and all players use the same results to write on their farm pad. However the combination of numbers and icons on each die means that there are multiple possible ways to use the outcome of the roll and each player makes their own decision. The simultaneous use of the same die roll means that there is no down time with all players active all the time. While fairly simple in terms of choices there are just enough there to hold the interest on repeat plays.

Yet another new roll and write release was Railroad Ink, available in Blue and Red versions. It has a similar shared dice result mechanic with 4 to 6 dice being rolled for everyone to use each turn, all of which show different road or rail sections. The goal is to use the results to build a transport network on the dry wipe grid in front of you, scoring points for connecting exits, entering the middle of the grid and having the longest routes, while losing points for dead ends.

Welcome To…

Elsewhere in the same hall was a roll and write game with no rolling. Welcome To… uses what is essentially a roll and write mechanic, complete with disposable player score pads and multiple different scoring options, but replaces the dice with a deck of cards. Again there is a shared pool of results to use from across three cards flipped each round, meaning play is simultaneous. Players are building houses in a suburban neighbourhood, and deciding when to add features like fences and pools. While this game lacks the physical neatness of other games that only have dice, a handful of pens and a scoring pad, it makes up for it by, for me, having both the deepest and most rewarding gameplay as well as the strongest theme of all the roll and write games I played at Essen.

What Next?

With all these games going strong almost a year down the line there is no sign of the associated mechanisms losing their buzz. In fact Root, Spirit Island, The Mind, That’s Pretty Clever and Welcome To.. all have expansions in the pipeline. We will see many of these at SPIEL 2019 in just over a month, but what will be more interesting to look out for in Essen will be the discovery of the next step in ongoing evolution of boardgames.

D&D Beyond: Phase 1 Beta Has Us Wanting More

by Courtney Dossett

The hardest part of playing Dungeons and Dragons, especially when you’re first starting, is figuring how the rules work. The Player’s Handbook gives you the framework of the game, spells, character creation, but it’s hard to find exactly what you need quickly. If you’re the Dungeon Master, you have additional materials to consult as well, like the Monster Manual, loot tables, crit charts – the list goes on. Looking up information on the fly can be time consuming and slow the pace of play.

Up until now, there haven’t been any official electronic resources from Wizards of the Coast, although there are some decent 3rd party apps, as well as pirated (illegal) PDFs of the handbooks.

Last week, Wizards teased us with the release of D&D Beyond, which promises to be an in-depth, cohesive, digital resource of all things 5th edition D&D to be released in 3 Phases. Phase 1 of the beta was released today, and it is already more than I had hoped for.

Phase 1 has several sections: the compendium, spells, magic items, and monsters. The compendium includes the basic rules of the game; how to run the game, how combat works, how to do different ability checks and when each type is appropriate. The layout is easy to navigate and makes finding details quick and easy, without having to pause the game for long periods of time to find the rules as written.

Each section has clickable links that lead you to more detailed information. Organized and easy to use!

Spells, Magic Items, and Monsters all have extensive browsing and search abilities. For instance, you can look at spells based on class, or do a search with the filters and look for spells by name, school of magic, or casting time.

You can click on individual spells listed and get a general idea of what is required for each spell, and who can cast it. This is basically a digital spell card.

Magic Items can be browsed through by type of item (like a ring) or with the search function, by how rare an item is, or what abilities it gives the bearer.

The filters for searches are very details for each section. This shows exactly how far down you can drill to find an item to purchase or verify that a player is using their items within the rules as written.

Monsters can be filtered by regional type, class range, abilities or just by what kind of monster it is (like a fey or dragon).

I haven’t had the chance to use D&D Beyond at the table yet, but just by searching for some basic information while creating a campaign, I have high hopes for it’s usability. I definitely think that this will be a good tool for getting more people to start playing D&D, since the fat handbooks are intimidating when you first start, and finding information in them can be difficult.

 

I’m looking forward to seeing what else Wizards has in store for Phases 2 (character building and character sheets) and 3 ( Homebrew Integration and Campaign Management).

D&D Beyond is an open beta worth signing up for, whether you’re new to the game and just looking to start, or a seasoned adventurer.

Sign up here, and let us know if you like this new edition as much as I do!

The 12 Days Of Switchmas: Day 8 – TableTop Crossover

by Courtney Dossett

The Geekscape staff have done a great job of covering so many different aspects of what we want out of the Switch, but what about tabletop applications?

I like to play games with friends in the same room, which means hauling your gear over for a LAN party (console or PC).The gear is heavy and cumbersome (I’ve almost broken my monitor on more than one occasion), everyone’s rig takes up a lot of room, and it’s hard to get everyone into the same room without overloading a power circuit. This is one of the reasons why I love playing tabletop games, especially Dungeons and Dragons, because you can have a large (read: more than 2 or 3) friends come over and play without having quite so much hassle.

What does that have to do with the Switch? Well, I’m hoping it could mean that there will be options for tabletop gamers to use the Switch to enhance their role playing for table tops. There are some great programs already available for PC, like TableTop Simulator, and Roll20, which allow you to have your player sheet, character avatar, maps, ambient sound and music, and roll your dice, all digitally. If these programs, or one like it, could run on the Switch, it would be like creating your own RPG with your friends, that you could see on TV in real time.

There are two ways that I think this would work. The first option option would be to have one Switch that would be controlled by the dungeon master would be able to show maps on the TV, control the character placement, and could also incorporate sound effects and music. The second option would be if every player and the dungeon master had their own Switch. The players would be able to access all their player sheet, have custom spell cards, and roll dice available on their individual tablets. The dungeon master would be able to control the map display and character placement. Currently in Roll20, dice rolls are shown in a chat on the side bar, as well as on the map, so that the whole group can see how good or bad your roll is.

This is a screenshot from Roll20, which operates in a browser. The turn order and character placement make playing live a lot easier.

Custom figurines are also really popular in Dungeons and Dragons, and could possibly cross over into an amiibo option that you could integrate with the Switch, so that as your character changes and levels up, you can level up your character in game.

I haven’t been able to find anything specifically related to tabletop gaming for the Switch, however, there are some options available already for the NVIDIA Shield, and Steam Machine, so it’s not a completely crazy idea for Nintendo to add this capability to the Switch.

Do you think tabletop gaming would marry well with the Switch? Let us know in the comments below!

How And Why: Miniatures Wargames

by Necroscourge

The number one thing I get asked about besides how to play Dungeons and Dragons is my miniatures hobby; usually assuming that I play Warhammer (down that road lay madness). It’s somewhat understandable since the popularity of cell phones has let everybody comprehend computers a bit more. I still like plenty of tabletop and miniatures wargames, and play them often.

Miniatures wargames are a time honored hobby, inspired by the movement of pieces by generals and used now to simulate pretty much everything. Gary Gygax’s original RPG, Chainmail and the first few DnD editions were more or less wargames, a lot of focus was on the combat abilities of the character improving over time and fighting on a grid or table. Steve Jacksons OGRE can be bought in a travel version that is some maps, the booklet, and a bunch of cutout tokens to move around the map; that style persists today in many space-ship combat sim games.

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There’s a miniatures line for everybody

There are two popular styles of Miniatures Wargame. A war simulation, and a role playing wargame with the difference being how much focus is put on character development. Necromunda and Gorka-Morka are two Games Workshop specialist games where you have your own party of characters you outfit, customize, upgrade, and level up. Their most popular game line Warhammer has no such aspect, forces are made from a point buy system with customization but no persistent aspects. It’s worth noting that both types of game benefit from organized campaign play that adds enough persistence to keep people interested.

To some extent both styles require you to put together a force of models that represents your army, and the other players do the same according to an accepted point value (almost all games use one, and it just tends to work.) and then take turns adding terrain to the table until you have a battleground. Initiative is rolled, game begins.

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Gorka-Morka, which can be summed up as Mad Max with Orks

Warhammer 40K uses both a point buy and a squad choice system. You have to have minimal types of squads before your army is table legal. The game I play, Dystopian Wars, is the same way: A table legal force contains at least one large/massive, one medium, and one small sized squad, with a commander placed on one of your large/massive squads. Because you can only bring so many of your models to the table, you have to be clever about how you build and play your force.

The Empire of Man in Warhammer Fantasy has huge groups of regimental infantry they can creep forward with, supported by cannon and arquebus fire. The Orks on the other hand outnumber everybody and fling wave after wave at the enemy until they win, being absolute rubbish at range. The Ogres string together charge attack after charge attack, smashing into lines of smaller units. Every army plays a bit differently for every game; which can be damning if you find out you don’t like the style of the army you bought.

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Alternatively there are paper miniatures for cheapskates!

Individual models have ratings and qualities that set it apart from others. Empire infantry aren’t tough like Orks, but are more disciplined. Federated States tanks are loaded with sharpshooters while the Republique uses many status effect inducing weapons. It can be maddening at first with some games trying to understand what does what, i’m still struggling to be better!

What game you pick also tells you what to expect out of combat. Warhammer Fantasy does not let you shoot into melee fights, Dystopian Wars has three different size classes of units for any environment, and Infinity channels the complexity of cyberpunk firefights. Those three games have different rhythms because they simulate different kinds of engagements. Infinity is all about cover, terrain is a core part of the experience; while in the game I play I have not even bothered trying to dabble with terrain yet. Let’s win a game first before I try that.

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Part of a Warhammer Fantasy army

What still makes wargamers a rare breed is how much time, money, and effort that the hobby demands. I chose DW specifically because it was cheap and I still have put down a lot for it; an amount that would of hardly bought me a full Warhammer army. Then comes painting and assembly, depending on what game you chose that can take days. A decent Ork army numbers 150+ models! With 3D printers coming out swinging, these models now have even more detail than they used to, that adds time too. And then play is 3 hours minimum for a wargame, less if both people know what they are doing. You don’t do this unless you want to.

I just finished priming a massive Republique of France army, a 2000 point list using all of my favorite tricks: Floating naval cruisers, screens of fighter aircraft, heat lance tanks, and more. The next step for them is painting. The great thing about the game I chose is they are more or less all vaguely round or square shaped tanks with a low profile; perfect for beginners. The major marketing strategy behind the new Age of Sigmar line on the other hand was larger, more detailed models intended for enthusiasts. Painting Galleries aren’t complete if there isn’t a well painted Space Marine army on there somewhere.  

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Mandatory Space Marines

A game typically ends when one side is hopelessly outfought. Some games like Dystopian Wars gives you a random win condition, meaning you have to fight the enemy a specific way if you want to win. You usually have to blow up all of a certain size class in addition to a percentage of the enemies points. Other times you have to capture specifics positions, it varies by game. Campaign based games usually have you retreating if you are losing, not by force but the alternative is losing all your good units; a rule in Necromunda is if a character dies you lose its gear (Some street kid runs out and grabs his stuff before the fight ends) and in Gorka-Morka don’t expect to drive a car the next match if it’s been blown up. 

What I like about Miniatures Wargames is that they are a social experience mixed with arts and hobbies. There is a certain calm that comes from painting up an army, and a certain freedom you feel when priming your first army. It’s something I suggest for those that want to try it out.

New ‘Dungeons And Dragons’ Movie In The Works At Warner Bros.!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: Somehow, all of this slipped past me, but apparently, for some time now Warner Bros., Hasbro, and Sweetpea Entertainment have been in a legal battle regarding the rights to the Dungeons and Dragons franchise (THR has a great write-up about exactly what happened).

Warner Bros. lawyer’s have apparently passed their ‘persuasion’ skill check, as said battle has just ended, and the studio wasted no time at all in announcing a new Dungeons and Dragons film.

The announced, as yet untitled movie already has a script written by Wrath of the Titans scribe David Leslie Johnson, and will be produced by The Lego Movie and How to Train Your Dragon producer Roy Lee.

“We are so excited about bringing the world of Dungeons & Dragons to life on the big screen,” said Greg Silverman, president of creative development and worldwide production at Warner Bros. Pictures. “This is far and away the most well-known brand in fantasy, which is the genre that drives the most passionate film followings. D&D has endless creative possibilities, giving our filmmakers immense opportunities to delight and thrill both fans and moviegoers new to the property.”

Are you down for a Warner Bros. developed Dungeons and Dragons film? Or were you a bigger fan of the lower-budget SyFy entries? Sound out below!

Geekscape Tabletop: ‘Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures’

by MonkeyMagic

I suppose that here at Geekscape not that many eyebrows would be raised if someone said they were thinking about dropping $110* on a Star Wars model. After all, she is a beauty isn’t she?

[*That’s UK prices, in the US you can pick it up for a mere $61]

TANTIVE IV
TANTIVE IV

While the Tantive IV would look great decorating your shelf, this is not just an ornament, it’s part of a board game, or if you are being pedantic, a miniatures battle game – the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game. I think that Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures is a great game for any gamer, but especially the geek gamer. While the Star Wars connection is one obvious reason (and they also make a very similar Star Trek version for those who swing more that way) I will try to give you a few more.

The Basics

Let’s start by explaining what the game is: it’s Star Wars dog fighting. Is that good enough? OK. It is a game of two sides, Alliance vs Empire of course, designed to be played by two players but that can easily accommodate more with a few extra ships and team play. Each of you controls one or more ships flying around in space trying to achieve your mission goals. These can be as simple as a TIE Fighter vs X-Wing fight to the death or a more sophisticated scenario involving escorting shuttles, scanning probes and so on.

(IMAGE: XanderF) – TIE Bomber Run

The rules are pretty simple which makes it an easy game to pick up, and I think it’s worth me going through them briefly. At the start of each turn the players all secretly and simultaneously select how far their ships are going to move and in which direction by using little dials that belong to each ship. Each type of ship a different choices – TIE Interceptors for example are obviously quicker and more manoeuvrable than Y-Wings. Players then reveal the dials one at a time and move their ships, in order of pilot skill. After a ship moves it can take one of a small number of actions that vary depending on ship type. For example they can Target Lock in order to increase their chance of attacks hitting and have an opportunity to fire any missiles they might have, or they might Evade reducing the chances of being hit if fired upon.

DICE AND RANGE RULER

Once all the ships have moved, it’s shootin’ time. The most skilled pilots go first and pick a target. Simple range and line of sight is determined with a natty little ruler shaped like a laser blast – red on one side and green on the other. The attacking player rolls a number of special attack dice and sees how many hits they score. The defending player rolls the defence dice and tries to cancel out any hits. Players may spend those tokens I mentioned that you can take as actions. Each hit damages the ship, reducing shields first and then causing hull damage. Once your hull is depleted the ship explodes in space. Feel free to hum the sad Binary Sunset music mockingly at your opponent. After all ships that are able to fire the round is over and you start again setting your manoeuvre dials. And that is basically it. Simple yet elegant. I think this is a great game for both the first time casual player or the hardcore seasoned gamer, and here’s why.

Simple but meaningful choices

As I hope I have shown, the rules are easy and your choices fairly simple each turn. Do you fly at the enemy head on with all your forces, or do you divide your strength by splitting up to flank them , do you go for their strongest ship first to take it out early, or do you try and pick off the weaker ones quickly first? Do you pull a difficult manoeuvre to get into (or out of) a crucial spot but then take a Stress token limiting your options later? And after your move you will have another choice to make. This will probably be one of 3 or 4 possible actions for each ship, and these again can be crucial decisions. Maybe your ship has the option to do a Barrel Roll [best Peppy voice please], Evade or Focus. The benefits of each choice will dependent on what your opponent does and whether you plan to be opening fire or trying to duck and cover. The options are never complex but the choices can be agonising and the consequences weighty.

Variable ship characteristics

SHIP CARDS
SHIP CARDS

As illustrated above each ship has unique characteristics. The X-Wing is has 3 attack dice [red number] and only 2 defence [green number] meaning it has more firepower than the TIE [2 attack] but is not as evasive [3 defense]. However when the tie is hit it will explode in a ball of flames after taking only 3 damage [yellow], whereas the X-Wing has 2 shields [blue] to take out before it receives real damage. As mentioned before they also have different abilities, for example TIEs can do a barrel roll and X-Wings can target lock. As a result it really feels like you are flying very different ships and you therefore adjust your play style accordingly.

Squad Customisation

Not only is each ship different but they all cost a different number of points. This is further modified by the skill of the pilot, as more skilled pilots move last (usually an advantage) and shoot first (always an advantage). Better pilots are also more likely to have special abilities that can modify the game, changing die results, adding or removing tokens, adjusting combat rolls and so on. As an example of cost Luke in his X-Wing costs 28 points whereas a lowly Academy Pilot in their TIE is only 12. Finally you can further customise a ship by adding upgrade cards like missiles, pilot skills and R2 units. When picking your roster you set a number of squad points each; 50, 100, 200 or whatever, and build two squads. If you enjoy this kind of thing you can spend ages fine tuning a squad. If you don’t it’s pretty easy to do off the cuff, or you can find pre-made squad suggestions in the box or online. And while the box says 2 players, bigger squads mean you can play with more players. I have had many enjoyable 3-5 player team games, with each player controlling one or more ships.

Ship Collection

In the starter box you get one X-Wing and two TIE Fighters with a bunch of different pilot and upgrade cards. This alone is enough for plenty of game, with a few different scenarios adding variety if you want a rest from last-man-standing type play. But we are geeks and cannot stop there. The damn company keep releasing more ships and how can we resist? For about $10 each you can get A-wings, B-wings, Y-wings, TIE interceptors, TIE bombers and the TIE Advanced. Each ship plays a little differently and has different pilot and upgrade cards in the box, with the latter often usable on many of your other ships. And there are bigger (of course more expensive) ships like the Falcon, Slave I and an Imperial Shuttle. And recently even bigger ships with the Tantive IV and a Rebel Transport. Many of the new ships add minor or major new rules and mechanics to the game. There are now even extended canon ships like TIE defenders and Z-95s. I am up to 14 ships at the moment and having a bit of a rest. For now.

DEATH STAR ATTACK
(IMAGE: SEBASTIAN BLANCO
sebastianblanco.zenfolio.com) – DEATH STAR ATTACK

Conclusion

For $27 you get a simple and fairly elegant game with amazing models. You have a rules set that is easy enough that my 5 year old son can play the game and squad build with a little help, and yet create deep enough play to satisfy the tactical needs of many of the more hard core gamers in my group. You can keep it light and drop it on the table for a quick casual game or you can spend hours honing your squad to compete in national tournaments.

Bottom line is, at the end of the day it’s just fun. And did I mention it’s Star Wars?

Essen Recap: The BoardGame Geek Convention – Part II

by MonkeyMagic

So you join us fresh from Essen Part I. If you have not been there first this may not make much sense.

FRIDAY

Day two of the fair started with another early morning tactical table grab. This time we went for Kohle & Kolonie. It looked like a heavy game we could sink our teeth into. All about coal mining. As soon as the rules started we knew it was going to be our kind of game. We only played a partial game but got a good feel for it. It is a complex and heavy game. Not in so much as the rules are very complex, but the interplay of mechanics makes it a nice challenge to see just how to best play. Reminded me a little of a classic by the name of Brass. I didn’t buy a copy immediately due to fear it might hurt my head just a little too much. Went top of my shortlist though.

We managed to get a couple of other quick games in before it was time to head over and demo for Portal Games. Two of us were on shift at once demoing the previously mentioned Theseus as well as their other new release Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy. The latter is a fun family building card game where you all try and develop the most well renowned family by facilitating your family members having children, marrying of these children to different characters, buying property, holding social functions and so on. It is an enjoyable game with a strong narrative. When teaching I saw a number of players making little stories as they went. “We are poor so have to marry the shoemaker”, “the bakers daughter is very fertile and so we have an extra child”, “his wife dies in childbirth, no problem, he will get married again”. The character art also works well. It was always interesting to watch all the guys crane across to get a better look every time the attractive and mysterious “Pirates Daughter” was placed on the table. There would always be some disappointment when one of the other players took her as a bride.

It was a fairly intense but still enjoyable 4 hours of demoing running up until the doors closed for the day.

... in a big ass hall
… in a big ass hall

As it was Friday night we decided to go out for dinner. One of the traditional locations is The Mexican, no idea what it is actually called. After a couple of games of Donburiko we were ready to go. When we arrived it wasn’t looking good. It was very busy and we were 8 people. More importantly cocktail happy hour was about to end. We managed to shoehorn ourselves onto an undersized table some friends were leaving and maximised our cocktail order about 3 mins before half price cocktails was over. This meant two pint of cocktail per person. Excellent. Cocktails arrived and we placed our food order. Then disaster struck, the kitchen was too busy to take any more orders. We had about a litre of cocktail to drink each and no food. We could not leave, but it was almost 10pm, we needed food. In the end we managed to get two sharing platters between the 8 of us. There were some hungry tums after that.

As the evening went on the conversation deteriorated. After the great story of the friend who ordered a thousand chicken nuggets at McDonalds, we moved onto to the popular dinner table topic of “Most Embarrassing Shit”. This was not about the turd whose shape and consistency one was most ashamed of, but the most embarrassing circumstances in which one had laid a devil cigar. Favourites included the one that plopped out of the bottom of the bus while everyone was loading their luggage at the station, the chap out in the forest who knocked on the door of a nearby house to find it was a show home and so peeled the cellophane off the pan but discovered that there was no water plumbed in to dispose of his good work and had to simply re-wrap the toilet with a gift inside, and the turd that wouldn’t come in the airplane toilet so had to be sucked back into the gentleman’s body in time for landing after which his friends had to leave him at the airport to allow him the time needed to get the task completed. Next one of the larger gents in our group managed to convince pretty much all of us that he could beat two of the more lithe chaps in a 25m sprint. Sadly this was subsequently proved to be incorrect in a sprint across the wet central town square of Essen.

When we got back to the hotel it was late and we were not at our mental pinnacle. Two of us tried to master the fairly hefty Cornish Smuggler. We struggled through what was probably a very reasonable rulebook and played a few rounds. After a spell I realised I had backed myself into an untenable position with no way to sell the goods I had smuggled across half of Cornwall and no money left to make a different play. With our brains aching we decided to call it quits while we still could. Despite this the two of us decided to play Lost Legacy in the room. It is based on a game we know very well called Love Letter that plays in about 2 minutes. Reading through the rules it all sounded good, although the fact I fell asleep briefly and dropped my card as my companion drew his first card was a bad omen. Then, after scrutinising them for a while he declared that he could not legally play either card. Soundly beaten by the fatal alcohol+fatigue+Essen combo we gave up.

SATURDAY

The must play table dash this morning was Amerigo, designed by Stefan Feld, the man responsible for the classic that is In the Year of the Dragon. It had some clever mechanics and we all enjoyed it as a good solid effort, but nobody was totally wowed.

We had another good day getting in quite a few reasonable titles. Just after a game of L’Aéropostale we saw our 3rd chair-destruction-by-overweight-gamer. Comedy value was added by the fact that despite not actually being that massive they did a great beached whale number on the floor, I think more due to low IQ than high BMI. They need to get stronger chairs next year. Or scales at the door.

The highlight of Saturday at the fair was SOS Titanic. A co-operative game where you try and evacuate the passengers off the Titanic onto the lifeboats before it sinks. It has a Solitaire/Patience mechanic at it’s centre with each passenger represnted by a card that you have to line up on the deck of the Titanic. It has some really nice touches that make decisions tough but avoids the one player dictator problem some co-ops can have. It is also beautifully presented with a ring bound book representing the Titanic that sinks as you flip the pages with the progress of the game.

Back at the ranch we played Northern Pacific. A game we have had to class as Broken AND Genius at the same time. There is a map with a rail network across America and the train will make it’s way from one side of the board to the other without ever doubling back. On your turn you can do one of two things – place one of your cubes in a city the train has not yet been to, or chose which city the train goes to next from its current location. Every time it reaches a city with a cube in it each player gets their cube back and one more from the supply. The player with the most cubes when the train has completed its E to W journey wins. Unless no one has more cubes than they started with in which case the game wins! Crucially each city will accommodate one less cube than there are players. Consequently someone will always be left out. So if players 1, 2, and 3 load up a city that the train can go to next, player 4 will move the train to one of it’s other possible destinations, meaning all the other players have made a cube loss. So when player 1 places in A, player 2 might decide to join them or might decide place in city B. Player 3 must decide whether to join in the fun in A or B. Or maybe they will speculate on C, the common location the train could go to next after A or B. And so on. On the one hand it feels like there is no game and there will be a solvable “best move” each turn, on the other each situation seems different and one player can suddenly change the landscape completely with a single cube placement. Despite the concern that we were the ones being played, I have tabled this three times and it has been played 4-5 times in a row each time. The fact in plays in 10-15 minutes helps this, but it is very addictive.

We then had a game of what we call Wobbly Ship, officially know as Riff Raff. Why describe it when a video speaks a thousand words.

Finally we played the catchily titled Geistesblitz 5 vor 12. Place a selection of 8 wooden items on the table – a ghost, a mirror, an owl and so on. Flip a card. First player to grab the item from the card that matches one of those on the table, same item and same colour, wins the card. Get it wrong and you lose a card. Simple. But…

– If there is no exact match then you must grab the item which has neither it’s colour nor it’s likeness on the card.
And then add the advanced rules
– If there is a ghost with a clock grab nothing but shout the time on the clock
– If there is an item reflected in a mirror grab that item regardless of colour
– If there is an owl on the card shout the correct item rather than grabbing it
– If there is a mirror and an owl shout the colour of the item in the mirror
Stand back while your brain melts.

Geistesblitz 5 vor 12
Geistesblitz 5 vor 12

Need sleep.

SUNDAY

 As we entered the final day I still had a certain emptiness. While there had been some excellent filler and party type games I was still looking for my Game Of The Show. A classic 90-120 minute medium to heavy weight game that I might continue to play for years to come. Each Essen should have at least one.

Our last great hope was Nations. We had been too slow to get a table Saturday morning so got in extra early and sprinted right there. Having secured a table we were then lucky enough to be taught by one of the game designers.

This is an epic 40-60 mins per player civ game, a bit like Civilization the computer game. You build up your empire by buying different cards from a common board and placing them on your own board. There are the key commodities of grain, stone and money, which have different uses. There are also tracks for books (knowledge), military strength and stability. Each track has its own rewards and opens up various options. How much you have of any of these variables is determined by the cards you buy for your board and in some cases which cards you deploy workers to. And of course there are VPs, both earned during game and at end game scoring.

Nations
Nations

Initially it sounds pretty simple; the rules are pretty elegant, if a bit solitaire. But it’s not. Other player actions are crucial. You are frequently in direct competition on the three tracks, with absolute score on any track often much less important than position relative to other players. Also you frequently really want 2 or 3 cards from the common pool and will agonise over which one might still be there by the time it gets round to your turn again. One player’s move can often have a huge impact on your plans.

At last. Game of the Show. Several copies were bought and I felt satisfied. So far it has stood the test of time. Mission accomplished I felt free to wander the halls aimlessly. We then stumbled across a free table. It was a slightly odd setup being a shop booth, rather than a publisher booth, but it had a single gaming table tacked on to the edge. And what was laid out but Coal Baron. Or in German “Glück Auf”. Sounds a bit like “F**k Off”, which is enough to be mildy entertaining to our childish brains. More importatntly it was one of the few remaining games on my list to try. As icing on the cake a charming and pretty young lady was waiting to teach us.

It’s a game about mining. Expand your mine, mine your coal, obtain orders for different kinds of coal, fulfil you orders. After we had got over our excitement at the little lift in the middle of each player board that actually slides up and down, accessing different levels, we got stuck in. What a great game. Simple, intuitive, and fast paced but with plenty of interaction and tough choices. My number two big box game of the show. What a day!

As time was ruuning out it was important to complete the Essen experience by visiting the visiting the Geek section. Yes, even as a bunch of geeks travelling across Europe to a boardgame convention, there is a subsection even we find too Geek. The cosplayers and LARPers. In one part of the hall you can find massive arrays of weapons for sale, both foam and metal, stunning armour, booths selling mead for the drinking, pixie ears and so on. And some pretty intense costumes.

The rubber armoury
The rubber armoury

Skaven I believe [image - JPWatts]
Skaven I believe [image – JPWatts]

And so we played a couple more games before we exited the hall for the last time and made our way to the car for the long drive back to Paris.

Once again our journey took us through godforsaken Belgium where we bookended our weeks awful diet with another MacD’s. It did however bring us a sweet reward from the petrol station were we found some neat little limited edition Lego cars to bring home for the children. As we struggled to stay awake in the dark we had plenty of time for post match analysis of this year’s Essen.

It is always hard to judge the games in the bigger scheme of things until they have had time to settle in to their place in the wider pantheon of boardgames. Some years produce classics that still have a place many gamers all time top 10’s. For example 2007 gave us In the Year of the Dragon and 2008 Tinners’ Trail both of which still have a warm place in many of our hearts. Will Nations be viewed through rose tinted spectacles in the brave new world of 2019? Over all the impression was that, yes, this had been a good year for games. From fillers like Donburiko and Pick-a-Polar Bear to the bigger boxes of Nations and Coal Baron. We both felt satisfied that our games booty would get some good mileage in the future. The experience in the fair each day had also been good. The new halls worked fine and, with the exception of awkwardly placed toilets, the layout seemed to work. We also felt as though, unlike some previous years, we spent very little time wandering around unable to get a table when we wanted to. The group size worked out well too. Eight is a good number as two groups of 4 is the ideal split (a lot of games will not take 5 or more players). Although we got into a habit of sticking in the same 4s for the whole show, this was partly due to taste in games and beer-game priorities, and we did manage to mix it up a bit. Maybe most importantly the company was good and there was a lot of laughing. We laughed while playing games, laughed with good games, laughed at bad games, laughed between games and laughed at plenty of really bad chat. And there were some really embarrassing shit stories. Probably the only thing missing was sleep.

Within a few days of getting back I had already booked us 4 rooms for 2014…

I had to fit the left hand tower of 25 games in my suitacse
I had to fit the left hand tower of 25 games in my suitacse

Crowdfund This: ‘Saving Throw – An Instructional Webseries About RPGs’

by Derek Kraneveldt

This may be the most useful project that we’ve ever featured on Crowdfund This.

RPG’s are freaking cool. And I don’t mean Pokemon X/Y or Final Fantasy XIV or Bravely Default (even though I have all three in front of me right now and they’re all fantastic), I’m talking tabletop; Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Warhammer, etc. Sadly, not nearly enough people have any idea where to get started when it comes to tabletop gaming.

I’m, unfortunately, one of those people. About a year and a half ago, I decided that I wanted to get into D&D. I went out and bought a shit-ton of miniatures (awesome deal on Craigslist), picked up the (now unavailable) Dungeons and Dragons Starter Set, grabbed a bunch of my friends, and… we got as far as character creation. Sure, I loved every second of it, but as soon as it came time to actually play the game, play our characters, and actually role-play, everything fell apart; people got silly, we had no idea what we were doing (even with the instructions, it was tough), and we only attempted to play one more time before much of the group decided that it wasn’t for them.

I’ve still been interested in the game since that time, but simply haven’t had an opportunity (or group) to really learn about what I was doing (and what any of it meant). Saving Throw may be just what I (and you) need to really figure things out.

Just take a look at the Kickstarter video below to get an idea of what it’s all about:

It’s really a simple idea, and I’m not sure why it hasn’t been done before, but here it is: an instructional series on how to play tabletop RPG’s. I’m in!

The project describes itself as “an instructional web-series and website, designed to teach you not only how to play, but why. We love pen & paper role-playing games and want to share that passion with you, your friends, and the world.

With over 40 years of history, RPGs can be an intimidating prospect for some geeks. And with new systems emerging each year knowing the choices and rules becomes daunting. That’s where Saving Throw comes in!

Saving Throw will teach you what you need to get started in a friendly and engaging manner where YOU are in control. Episodes will be bite-sized and shareable because we know you’ve got that life-thing that keeps getting in the way!”

'Saving Throw' hosts Ivan Van Norman, Amy Vorpahl, and Ben Dunn
‘Saving Throw’ hosts Ivan Van Norman, Amy Vorpahl, and Ben Dunn

The project is already at $6978 of its $8000 goal (a great start), but the group (including Ben Dunn, who you may recognize around these parts) has a variety of stretch goals in place to take Saving Throw even further, and you can be a part of it!

As always, there are plenty of awesome rewards up for grabs, including, shirts, bags, PDF’s, custom-written songs, producer credits, and a lot more! You probably always wanted to learn how to play RPG’s (or didn’t know that it interested you until now), and here’s your chance! You can check out the campaign page for Saving Throw here, and be sure to let us know if you back the project!

Already a tabletop gamer? What’s you’re favourite system? What are your thoughts on D&D Next? Sound out below!

A Beginner’s Guide To Board Games: What To Play & How To Learn!

by MonkeyMagic

So. What kind of geek are you? Comic? Movie? Video game? There is another kind of geek out there. There are many similarities: we collect stuff, we get excited when new stuff is coming out, follow its progress on the internet, post pictures and speculate, pre-order, get tempted by limited editions and bonus stuff. There are celebrities with their own followers who crave their hero’s signatures upon shiny new releases. There are different genres with their own sub-groups of devoted fans. There are lame in-jokes. And there is the mother of all geek conventions, Essen, in Germany every October. Bigger than Comic-Con (130,000 geeks), Comikaze (45,000) or E3 (48,200), with 149,000 geeks visiting 827 exhibitors over 4 days. These are the boardgamegeeks.

Wait. Before you dismiss it as a totally ludicrous hobby for people that even geeks think of as freaks, let me tell you about our world. Follow me. Come closer. Maybe I can persuade you to put cardboard to the table.

But before getting a taster of some of the 66,449 boardgames available to you, there is one key question. Why bother?

WHY?

For most people, the number one reason is social. It’s a fun thing to do together with a bunch of people, friends or not-yet-friends. There’s usually lots of banter, and in our group well mannered cussing, creative swearing, and inappropriate urban dictionary style sexual references. It can be a chance to flex your mental muscles and get heavily competitive,  a chance to get stupid and childish, or a chance to get lost in theme and atmosphere. It all depends what you choose to play, what pops your wheelie.

And that’s what I’ll try to dip into next. To give a flavour of some of the different itches that can be scratched.

WHAT?

Board (and card) games can be categorised in many ways. Like with anything, put enough geeks together with keyboards, and some of them will get into pointless internet arguments. You can categorise by mechanic, theme, number of players, designers…. you get the idea.

I will try to go through what I feel are some of the main styles that may attract different players for different reasons.

1. A BIT SHIT

So in my opinion, this is where Monopoly sits, and to a lesser extent some of the other ‘classic’ games. Don’t get me wrong, these games had their time and place in history, but have just been superseded. Personally, I had not played Monopoly for about 20 years but didnt remember it being that great. However I decided to give it another go a year or so ago. The first 45 minutes was actually quite fun – properties came up, there was some ineteresting bidding, decisions to make on where to develop. Then there came the next 2h 15 mins. For this whole time we could all see who was going to win, which to guys were screwed and the other 2 guys who would kind of be in the running for another hour or so. We could do nothing to affect the outcome and just had to watch painfully as the poor got poorer and the rich richer. It may be an accurate simulation of life but it was truly awful.

Having said all that, if you love Monoploy and get a kick out of it every time, more power to you. But be aware, in my books you are missing out on the Class A stuff.

2. THE EURO

So without boring you with the history, probably around 20 years ago boardgames began to evolve. Many of the issues with Monopoly and other similar games were ‘fixed’. These games mostly came out of Germany, which probably is still the heart of the modern boardgame industry. As a consequence these games are called Eurogames.

Typically a Eurogame will have the following. A clearly defined game end, making play time predictable, usually between 60 and 120 minutes. It will have multiple different strategies that can be effectively employed to win the game. There will be no player elimination. The game will often try to avoid the problem of a runaway leader. Or instead there will be hidden victory points so people can enjoy the game through to the end before they realise they are being royally humped. Oh yeah, and there will be brightly coloured wooden cubes.

Puerto Rico

You are all settling in the New World in the age of discovery, constructing your own buildings and plantations, populating them with ‘settlers’ (clearly slaves), producing goods and then selling them or shipping them back to the Old World. One of the central elements is that on your turn you selected one from a limited number of actions remaining that round and carry it out. The rub is that everyone else gets to do the same action you choose. You get a special bonus for choosing the role, but it could still benefit another player more than you. Do you really want to start a round of producing goods when the next guy is going to start moving them on to the ships, leaving them full and your goods wasted. Even worse if they have a special building that allows them to move extra goods. But if you dont they might choose it themselves, get the perk of the role, and leave you last to produce goods and finding them all gone. Oh, the sweet agony. A classic 90 minutes for 3-5 players.

Image binraix.
Image binraix.

Image OldestManOnMySpace
Image OldestManOnMySpace

Image naturemorte
Image naturemorte

Power Grid

Supply electrcity and make the most money. Simple. Bid for different power plants, buy the fuel for your plants, build into the cities you want to supply, fire up your plants and get cash. Rinse and repeat. Easy eh? But which plant to you put up for auction, maybe the one you dont want to get someone out of the running and maybe get a better one into the market? But you might be lumbered with it if nobody else wants it. How much can you afford to spend on that plant  and still leave enough cash left to buy the fuel for it? And do you take the lead and face being the last one to buy fuel at the highest prices? Or do you hang back to get the perks of last place, hoping to can predict the game end coming, and leapfrog into first place at the crucial moment? A great game to teach new players as it’s so easy to get the basic flow of the game, and yet full of strategy and player interaction.

Image garyjames
Image garyjames

 3. AMERITRASH

Yet another topic boardgame geeks can argue endlessly and tediously about – what is Ameritrash? The name is clearly derived from the hybrid of American and trash. Get it? They usually originate form American and are trashy in as much as they can be a more about style than substance, and are hence looked down on by some. Common elements that are found in Ameritrash games are as follows. A large quantity of highly detailed plastic miniatures, lots and lot of bits, dice, a strong theme which will usually be of a fantasy or sci-fi nature, a reasonably hefty rule book, high quality art.

Arkham Horror

This is a fairly good example. There is a lack of figures but it otherwise fits most of the criteria. You each play an Investigator trying to hold back one of the Great Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos world. Characters move around, having encounters, getting tooled up, fighting bad guys by rolling dice and trying to seal the gates the old ones threaten to burst through. This game has a fucking gazillion bits. With all the expansions it could just about take an hour to set up and fill a 10 seater dining table. But it drips with theme and is a really fun ride.

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Most would also class Civilization as Ameritrash. It a pretty accurate simulation of the PC game many of you will be familiar with. Develop your civilization in a struggle against your opponents to be the first to claim a military, economic, scientific or culture victory.

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Image envision

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4. CASUAL

Some games are well suited to the more casual experience. They usually play in under an hour, have fairly simple accessible rules, feature a slightly higher luck / lower strategy ratio and often have a light, humorous theme. These a great ‘gateway’ games. The kind of soft drugs that get you hooked and make you move on to the hard stuff. While I love them in their own right, I will also often pull out one of these games to pop the cherry of the boardgames virgins.

King of Tokyo

You are an oversized monster trying to wreak havock on Japan’s capital, kaiju style, to become the King of Tokyo. You win by having the most points or by kicking everyone else’s asses and being the last beast standing. The play centres on rolling and re-rolling special dice, Yahtzee style, picking the ones you want to heal, damage other monsters, get points or collect energy to buy power ups. While undeniably light there is definite strategy there. The power up cards feature entertaining art and titles that kind of tempt you to read them in a stupid movie voice. ‘Giant brain’ ‘It has a child!’

Image garyjames
Image garyjames

 Cockroach Poker

A very simple game about lying. Pick a card from your hand and pass it face down to another player making a claim about what it is. ‘It’s a fly’. They have two choices. Call you – truth or lie. If they are right the card goes back to you as minus points, if they are wrong it sits in front of them as minus points. Or they can look at the card and pass it on making a claim ‘It is indeed a fly, Andy would never lie’ ‘Do not believe him, its a bat’ [It’s actually a toad]. Genius. Do you have a good lying face?

Image Marsh
Image Marsh

5. HARDCORE

You toked on the mellow of the casual game, experimented by popping a few Euros, now you find yourself drawn into the sordid world of the Hardcore from which there is no return. These games are heavy duty. They will usually take 2-3 hours or more to play. Have a fairly complex ruleset but a much more complex interplay of tactics and strategy. These games can make your brain hurt but give you serious satisfaction once you get your head round them.

Die Macher

So if I asked you if you wanted to play a 3 hour game about German politics I might not be surprised if you told me you would rather stick pins in your eyes. But hear me out. In this game for 3-5 players you each take the role of a political party trying to achieve victory over a number of local elections. These elections are contested one after another but you can influence more than one at any time, if you are clearly going to tank in one you might focus on another instead. In each election the elecorate have certain preferences – they may pro-economy, anti-nuclear and anti-tomato (I think it is supposed to genetic engineering). You try to align your policies with theirs, by changing yours or perhaps by taking control of the media to change public opinion to match your stance. In each election you also try to improve the popularity of your party and maybe reduce that of others and hold ‘meetings’ to increase awareness of your party. Finally the votes are calculated and the winner decided. Or maybe winners if two parties chose a coalition, or even if one was forced unwillingly into a unwanted coallition. As the elections pass you gain votes, increase your party memebership and try to influence your policies and the global agendas to tie up. There is a lot going and many different ways to try and fight your way to victory. There is a lot of interaction between players with the  appropriate amount of resultant name calling. Did I convinve you, or shall I get you those pins?

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18XX

This game is so hardcore it is actually a family of over 50 games with running times between 2 hours and half a day. They may look like they are about building railway networks but are actually brutal stockmarket manipulation games. OK, and you build rail networks too. Each features a number of railway companies, a map and a crucial stock market track. Players buy shares in the rail companies. The companies can use that capital to build their network and buy trains in order to run routes and make money. The money can either grown the company or pay all the shareholders. Shares in the companies go up and down depending on how they perform. The player who makes the most money wins. Easy. I  wish it was, I am awful at these games due to a lack of innate financial ability. Doing well is simple surely, buy low and sell high. Milk the company for what it’s worth then dump it on the other shareholders just as all its trains are about to rust leaving it bankrupt. I usual place last in these games but enjoy them just the same. Although they do make my head hurt. In a good way that is. I think.

Oh, and it’s a video game. Well there was a DOS version called 1830: Railroads & Robber Barons  back in 1995. Anyone?

Image DarkoBeta
Image DarkoBeta

 6. CO-OPERATIVE

For some this is the antithesis of gaming. No competition? Surely just an exercise in mutual masturbation? I’d hate to comment on that, but for me and many others co-operative games offer a different but very enjoyable experience. A team of you (if you wish it might be just two of you, or even solo) try to use you collective whit to beat the engine of the game, to solve the puzzle and choose the best moves under pressure. Some games add a secret traitor element to appease those with an irresistible competitive urge.

Ghost Stories

As the Taoist monks you must work together to hold back the waves of ghosts haunting the inhabitants. If you last long enough you will face the challenge of defeating their master Wu Feng, the Lord of Hell. Each turn you much choose which ghost to try and fight, protecting yourself, your fellow monks or the village buildings. Villagers can help you in different ways and you must choose wisely who you turn to and when, never knowing when they might be scared off by a haunting ghost. The game is accessible with simple but tough choices to be made, has great art, and is really damn tough. I have played it over a dozen times and have yet to beat it. I just keep going back for more punishment. Wu Feng, I will crush you yet!

12-GS
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Battlestar Galactica

GalacticNar has already written a nice piece on the BSG boardgame right HERE on Geekscape. You are all humans working together to lead Galactica safely to Kobol. Except some of the crew are actually cylons with a totally different agenda. Filled with paranoia, lying and deception it’s all about the table talk.

7. OTHERS

While I seem to have go on a bit there a lot I havent covered. The whole world of collectable card games that was kicked off by Magic: The Gathering. MTG itself is still going strong but has spawned a host of others. A notable mention is Netrunner, set in a William Gibson style future where one player is the massive Coropration and the other the hacker [Runner] trying to break into their servers and steal valuable data. Netrunner also follows a new trend of being sold in such away that expansion packs contain all the cards you need, for those of us who dont want to go bankrupt buying and trading in the hunt for those elusive rare cards.

Or solitaire games. A concept freaky and a bit sad to some but a hugely rewarding way to spend a quiet evening for others.

Or a diverse range of two player games, within which are many well suited to gaming couples where one partner, realistically often the lady, can be persuaded to join their geek mate and enjoying a shorter lighter morsel of gaming.

Or wargames, again a whole world in itself where the Grognards get down and dirty with their hexes, blocks and chits. Again these range from the softcore with plastic tanks and glossy cards to the hardcore extreme with rulebooks the size of War & Peace, expansive maps and stacks of cardboard counters

HOW?

So if you have read this far you are either very bored, morbidly fascinated by this apparent car-crash of a hobby or perhaps slightly interested. So how does one go about dipping the toe into these fetid waters.

GROUPS

You can find a local games group. The advantages are that you dont have to research any games, dont have to spend any money buying games and probably wont have to read any rulebooks.

The disadvantges are the unknown. They may not play the kind of games that you are interested in. They may be weird and socially awkward, although probably not more than you. They may have set up their group as a front to lure you in and harvest your organs.

However, in my experience gamers are a friendly and welcoming bunch who are usually pleased to see someone else interested in their hobby. We have a group of around 28 people at present, of which 10-14 will turn up on any given night. We have a website that is the main way new members find us and we try to play a variety of different types of games to suit the varying tastes in the group. And we have a strong tradition of bad chat.

To find your local group, try the Googles and have a look at this list HERE too.

DIY

Or do it yourself. Go buy some games, gather some mates and give it a whirl. When choosing what to buy one option is to browse boardgamegeek.com where you can read reviews, check out pictures and rulebooks or post in the forums for advice. There is an all-time ranking and a ‘Hotness’ section where inspiration may be found if needed. The site also features session reports, rules questions, random Geeklists and is home to a massive friendly and welcoming community.

The other option is to find your friendly local games store (FLGS) and asking them for advice. Don’t be shy, they are just like comic stores. In fact some of them also are comic stores. HERE is a list of stores in the USA, and HERE is one for the rest of the world.

So, does it all sound like a load of cock? Or have I convinced you? You tempted to try it out?

Flame me in the comments below or find me at BGG as MonkeyMagic!

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Watch A New Trailer For ‘Zero Charisma’

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: Zero Charisma has to be my most anticipated film for the remainder of 2013, and this trailer is absolutely wonderful.

Following the poster release earlier this week, Nerdist today debuted a phenomenal new trailer for the comedy. Zero Charisma premiered at this year’s SXSW, and has been garnering universal acclaim ever since. Our very own Jonathan London even said that “Zero Charisma is one of the best Geek culture films of all time.” Yep, it’s that good (check out his full review here).

Sadly, I still haven’t had an opportunity to see the film. That’s all set to change next month however, as Zero Charisma is scheduled to hit VOD and iTunes on October 8th, before beginning its theatrical run on October 11th. I can’t freaking wait.

Take a look at the new trailer below, and let us know just how much you want to see the film!

As the strict Game Master of a fantasy role-playing game, Scott (Sam Eidson) leads his friends in a weekly quest through mysterious lands from the safety of his grandmother’s kitchen. But his mastery of his own domain starts to slip—along with everything else in his life—when neo-nerd hipster Miles (Garrett Graham) joins the game, winning over the group with his confident charm and dethroning Scott with an unexpected coup. Caught in delusions of grandeur, Scott must roll the dice and risk everything to expose Miles as the fraud he believes him to be. A darkly comedic fable of epic proportions, Zero Charisma is an ode to nerds from every realm.

‘Zero Charisma’ Gets A Wonderful New Poster!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Briefly: Preceding a brand new trailer that’s set to be released on Monday, Nerdist today debuted a phenomenal new poster for Zero Charisma.

Zero Charisma premiered at this year’s SXSW, and has been garnering universal acclaim ever since. Our very own Jonathan London even said that “Zero Charisma is one of the best Geek culture films of all time.” Yep, it’s that good (check out his full review here).

Sadly, I still haven’t had an opportunity to see the film. That’s all set to change next month however, as Zero Charisma is scheduled to hit VOD and iTunes on October 8th, before beginning its theatrical run on October 11th. I can’t freaking wait.

For now, take a look at the new poster below. We’ll be sure to share the new trailer when it’s released on Monday, and be sure to watch for more Zero Charisma in the coming weeks!

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Tabletop Tales: ‘Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition’

by Necroscourge

As some of you on Steam may have noticed, Shadowrun Returns by Harebrained Schemes is on its way, which is of course based on the long running Cyberpunk meets Magic RPG series Shadowrun. This is also the first game in a long while that has been actually worked on by Harebrained’s founder, who also is responsible for the RPG, along with several other games such as Mageknight and something called Mechwarrior. Some of you may recall 2007’s Shadowrun for 360 and PC, which was a Counter-Strike esque team game that, while it had some of the spirit, it was more or less not really all that faithful to the source material at all. Yes, it was a good game, but it was not a good Shadowrun game.

Shadowrun Returns
‘Shadowrun Returns’ concept art.

While the first RPG to blend the Trolls and Elves of fantasy with cyber linked machineguns it was not, a year prior to its original conception, Cyberpunk 2013 debuted, later succeeded by Cyberpunk 2020 and its nuke and paved sequel Cyberpunk V3 (Oh trust me, that waits for another day). While they are comparable and to an extent the same game, there really are key differences. 2020 is simpler, with a heavier focus on the lifestyle of being a Cyberpunk without any of the trolls,orcs or magic, while Shadowrun focuses on well, its namesake: The Shadowrunners. A “Shadow Run” is a tactical operation performed, usually on the behalf of a megacorporation, that involves breaking several laws and must therefore be hush hush. Normally this occurs in meatspace, but it usually pays off to have a hacker capable of traversing the Matrix or a Shaman that frequently steps into the astral realm. While 2020 is all about how awesome it is to be cybered up, Shadowrun is all about the lifestyle and career of a team of Shadowruns created by the players with a greater focus on storytelling.

I own the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition, which uses the fourth iteration rules. Full color hardcover with a nice silken bookmark. Like all dramatic RPG systems (Ex: World of Darkness), there are several vignettes that exemplify core themes and characters in the game’s lore. The first story “What is inside your heart” introduces the concepts of magic and hacking but most of all the important thing to take away from the first story is a mantra that will save your Shadowrunner’s life time and time again: Dragons are douchebags. Yes, the flying kind, but more on them later. The second story “Happy Trails” shows us inside the Matrix and introduces Fastjack, the best damn decker there is. Normally this is bullshit, but Fastjack goes on to save the internet by repeatedly smashing a cyberdragon directly in the face with his signature weapon: The Jackhammer.

Fastjack
Fastjack (in glorious non-English).

Fastjack was born 1999, and narrates the game’s history lesson to explain exactly what happened between his birth and 2072 that left the world as it is today (in the FUTURE). Long story short, magic reawakened in 2011 bringing forth disasters of biblical proportions. Earthquakes around the globe, volcanos simultaneously coating the world in lava, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! Thankfully, the wise dragon Dunkelzhan appears and gives a 16 hour marathon interview explaining exactly what is going on and that magic had surged back into the world, causing the Earth to peak in arcane energy, which is the reason the world was fighting right back. At the same time, various megacorporations were fighting “terrorists” all over the world and constantly winning senate rulings in their favor resulting in their status as world superpowers. Now here in 2072, dragons rule most major corporations and in the same store you buy your guns, ammunition, pants, and can get your ears chopped and replaced with cybernetic ones. Why stop there though? Cyberware comes in four flavors, with varied tolls on your sanity, the best stuff is cloned tech if you can afford the insane fees.

The third story, still before any rules, is “Weekend Edition”, telling the story of an Orc Decker named Taylor, and shows off more of how to play the part of a Runner, making contacts, and managing the finances. Food, shelter, booze, ammo, it all costs Nuyen and most runners need to ply their trade to get bread on the table. Strange, since they go on to display bar prices. No way in hell are you getting tap water, but for 1 Nuyen a bottle of water who cares? Not into water? that same Nuyen gets you a can of FUTURE coke and a few more puts booze in it. Granted, that’s just one bar, but its already cheaper than bars are now. The rest of the chapter discusses the big ten megacorporations, combat sports, and finally the major theme connecting the three stories: Simsense.

Simsense
Simsense by Chad Sergesketter

Nearly everybody has a commlink, which is a form of cell-phone/computer and acts as your electronic swiss army knife, that emits a Personal Area Network or “PAN” allowing you and anybody nearby to indulge in the Matrix and experience Simsense. Simply watching movies is boring, why not be inside them? Simsense lets you do just that, but there are drawbacks as you might imagine living somebody else’s events can be addicting and the worst offenders are Better Than Life chips, they act as the major illicit drug in the setting. In the first story the main character mentions walking by several tags and online obstacles in his walks around town, in the second Fastjack pretty much fights Black ICE and in Weekend Edition, Taylor’s date is an Ex-BTL user that experiences withdrawal when a car pumping out raw Simsense data passes by. You can tell reading this book that every detail stated actually exists in the game world, you never feel too much doubt about the validity of the statements where earlier iterations likely felt more patch-worked.

The next story before the games rules is “Gaia’s Heart”, a brief story of a runner told a story about an artifact of great power that twists her into paranoia. The important moral being there are as many liars as ever and the existence of magic makes it even more dangerous. Shadowrun‘s system, like the type of drama it employs is very World of Darkness inspired with all tests using dice pools of Stat+Skill+Mod, with each rolled die of five or more considered a hit. The most important aspect of Shadowrun‘s character sheet is Essence, which starts at six for everybody, and is used for both magic and cyberwear. If you run out, your soul is very violently consumed and you die.

Shadowrun Character Sheet
The ‘Shadowrun’ Character sheet.

One of the largest factors to how your Runner will behave is his race of metahumanity, that is to say whether he is human, ork, troll, elf or dwarf. Elves tend to be the less affected by racism, and many movie stars, celebrities, and porn stars are elves. Orks and Trolls, due to their very decidedly not normal features are usually without a registration number and subsequently, rights. Being a metahuman also means you either have thermal or low light vision, instantly making you better at fighting than a mere human is at the expense of Build points. Every character is made with a point buy system, a much more arbitrary system than the World of Darkness that severely handicaps the points of the various metahuman races in exchange for better stats and abilities. Those that are unwilling to play or mess with the build point system are able to pick from a handful of pre made character archetypes from Enforcers to Adepts, allowing anybody to jump into a field of interest fairly quickly without the math.

Getting to the halfway point in the book, the stories begin to sink in quality. “Fresh Meat” details the formation of a Shadowrun team, what roles these runners normally have, and how they would go about getting prepared in an actually fairly good cohesive story. The sink begins with Monica the Ork Adept in “Extraction”, which tells of Corporate back dealing. At least, I think it does, to be honest the story is written in a chaotic ‘action packed’ style that unlike every other story thus far is much more happy explaining abstract concepts than helping us understand what we are looking at. The last page is indecipherable, it’s hard to figure out who to root for, and what the twist is at the end.

Cyberpunk media prides themselves in a few major genre “requirements”, the first of which is its dark world. Atherton of the first story loses all of his friends in his search, if Fastjack had lost against the dragon both him and his daughter were to be devoured. Drug use, racism, and such themes are much more relaxed than other editions, but its far from gone. In the FUTURE, Orks play heavy metal (more), and are essentially treated poorly. The very nature of being a Shadowrunner is that you are a deniable asset specialized in crime, and part of this involves leading a double life. I appreciate the more dramatic tone in the fourth edition, but it’s worth noting that the 20th Anniversary Edition is NOT a compendium, it flat out sites the other books in the series in a sort of taunting manner. The book’s size is primarily attributed to how very detailed every single aspect of the world is. Factors like recoil, cover, drugs, and summoning are awarded plenty of room to be fully explained. Some may argue a lot of it does not really need to be so explained, but it does really show the effort put into making the reader get into their role in the way a roleplaying game should.

Just a few of 'Shadowrun's weapons.
Just a few of ‘Shadowrun’s weapons.

Second, the toys. We want our smartlinked guns, decking rigs, and cybernetic muscles. Like the Cyberpunk video games, the genre has spawned such as Deus Ex or EYE Divine Cybermancy, a staple of Cyberpunk is the equipment and weapons and Shadowrun still delivers exactly what it should with plenty of Cyberwear coming in several flavors, an extensive weapons list and plenty of drugs to nuke your characters memories. 4th edition presents even more with wireless technology: hackers no longer need to jack in, as most people carry a Commlink and can access whatever they want with it with no wires needed. Which is important as it keeps the group together.

And then of course we have the Cyber Realm, which in Shadowrun is known as Matrix 2.0. As said earlier, almost all tech is wire-free and most electronics allow you to simply think a certain way and things shall happen. In past Cyberpunk games, you normally need to escort your Decker inside the enemy facility if you wanted inside, otherwise your hacker was safely somewhere else. In 4th edition, Hackers can ply their trade wherever they stand and Technomancers act as Cyber-Magicians to add depth to the usual roster of agents (They basically get their own versions of mage abilities, but all sciency).

Deus Ex
‘Deus Ex’, a great cyberpunk video game.

What seals Shadowrun‘s reputation as an extremely tactical combat game are the pages upon pages of “much easier than it looks” combat rules. While Cyberpunk 2020 had simple yet brutally realistic combat rules, Shadowrun takes it many steps forward with special rule after special rule detailing absolutely anything that could potentially happen or go wrong in combat. The main thing to note is through Magic or Cyberwear its possible to have more than one turn (called an Initiative Pass) in a round, with the most possible being four. Each Initiative Pass, a character has either two Simple actions or a Complex, with a multitude of choices of various actions. Firing semiautomatics is a simple action even if you are using two at a time, giving lots of room for badass Adepts to come crashing through windows with a gun in each hand blazing death. Another factor to combat is cover, as every material has a durability and armor rating, and gun control is a punchline in the future so I hope you are not expecting heavy caliber ordinance to be uncommon. Thus, it’s easy to expect combat to turn into Gears of War, running from cover to cover, blind firing to prevent snipers from getting too good of a shot on you. This presents realistic and gritty combat, and once you take the time to read through it, it’s really not too confusing.

The rest of the book details available gear and cyberwear, as well as shows off the Technological and Magical aspects of the game’s system. The last few stories thematically run through a combat scenario, a magic scenario, and then another net scenario; introducing more and more concepts alongside characters that we have no connection with. The only character we actually seem to care anything about is Fastjack and we already know pretty much everything that happens to him. The players are meant to be the sort of heroes, at least until you get the brand new NPC book released just the other week.

5th edition
A shiny new 5th Edition is on its way.

Shadowrun‘s main appeal is that in most cases you are playing a criminal, one in the darkest, deepest pits of society, and you’re shackled to the top of the pile. The rules are extensive and its one of *those* RPGs that is intended to be very deeply structured in the base material, with characters as an extension of it. In order to play the game correctly, its very suggested you read the book cover to cover; That can make the game very hard to learn at first. A lot of the concepts are covered in the book, and those without the time to learn the setting will be missing out, or getting their team killed. That’s something else that always looms in your team’s future as well, from how violent and deadly combat is, to how very ready everybody else is to sell you out: it’s far too easy to get yourself wiped out.

A Fifth edition is on its way, though I have not had the chance to really look through it. The 20th Anniversary Edition is worth checking out: it comes with its own bookmark and has a great comprehensive appendix for the then series of books. Other than that, the Anniversary Edition mostly just looks nice. All in all, I really enjoy Shadowrun‘s well fleshed out world, though its not to the liking of all gamers; those wishing for a much simpler Cyberpunk game need look no farther than Cyberpunk 2020. A great game of magic, guns, and tech, is worth checking out.

-Necroscourge 5/22/13

Shadowrun 20th
‘Shadowrun’ 20th Anniversary Edition

Tabletop Tales: ‘Operation Perfect Blue’

by Necroscourge

When a computer game is successful (or at least interesting), it’s only a matter of time until it’s adapted to RPG form. Everquest, EVE, Dragon Age, have all been brought to the tabletop at some point but what about the classics like XCOM that may never receive an adaptation? Here’s a fun fact that may blow your mind: An XCOM RPG does exist, brought to us by none other than Cutters Guild. Anybody familiar with my works knows that I tend to be really harsh on them despite how dear the company is to my heart. The reason for that is, of Cutters Guild’s offerings, there are two that excel above the rest and today I will discuss the most influential of them.

For those that live in a cave and remain ignorant to XCOM’s existence, I shall explain. In the roaring 1990’s when we were 100% sure PC gaming was just a fad and the internet would never achieve a damn thing, I was but a wee lad when XCOM: UFO Defense was released for free by PC Gamer Magazine to its subscribers. In this game, you were tasked with operating mankind’s last defense against the alien menace, and were dropped into the world with no tutorial or information. The game was hard, the enemies were without number, and you were expected to fail. This game was later remade by Firaxis in 2012, and it was more or less a pretty accurate reimagining of the original XCOM, but to be honest when I say XCOM, assume I am referring to the original and not its reimagining, if only because today’s review is of a game that was designed before the Firaxis version was even in production, much less released. Originally, Operation Perfect Blue was going to be a licensed XCOM game, but due to licensing issues the game was given another direction, which honestly provides a much more open sandbox for the group to play by bringing us a unique “Uncanny Valley” situation of the world being invaded and fully taken over in the same way that would happen if losing the original XCOM game.

Operation Perfect Blue takes place on the far off Planet Orna in a far away, previously undiscovered sector of space during a routine search for Itosium, which much like “The Spice” from Dune, must flow, for it is the only known source of spaceship fuel capable of sustaining interstellar travel. Orna is inhabited by the docile and polite Ornan people, blue colored humanoids with a tech level comparable to modern day earth. Orna is a paradise, untouched by major industry and mostly ignored by the universe until the EVIL Triaxy Corporation scams Orna into selling itself to Triaxy for the equivalent of three turnips and a cow.

Map of planet Orna
Map of planet Orna

Only then do we get the real setting of this story. Triaxy has now covered the entire planet with mining facilities, the pollution generated by the Itosium factories having reduced Ornas status to a Trash Planet. The Tri-Galactic union is powerless to stop Triaxy, leaving Orna to its fate; to be destroyed by Triaxies greed as they rape the world and use Ornans for biogenetic experiments. It even seems like there is no hope, Orna’s government has been disabled by Triaxy and its people comb through ruined cities avoiding Triaxy, manhunting parties while scavenging for food and water, while the Galactic Sena- Err Tri-Galactic Union is doing nothing to help. That’s where Operation Perfect Blue comes in.

OPB is a gigantic resistance shadow organization that officially does not exist, established by the ever enigmatic ornan known only as Majestic Blue; This operation is split up into several levels, such as RED level, ORANGE level and of course: BLUE Level (Black ops, Land and Undersea Espionage) which the players take control of. Unlike other tabletop RPG’s in circulation, OPB is fairly unique in its hybrid design, in that the players create and control main characters called “Executives” that act as their avatars and run BLUE level by managing its bank account, designing the bases, researching new technologies, manufacturing new equipment, hiring soldiers, and of course, launching raids on EVIL Triaxy bases. The ultimate goal of Perfect Blue is to repel the Triaxy occupation and re-establish Ornan control of the planet.

Now, who is Triaxy? Triaxy is an Andromedan Mining Corporation that specializes in mass Crystal Aggregate (AKA: Itosium) production that is used as starship fuel. The Andromedans are closest in stature to the Grey Aliens of modern imagination, and are separated into a common and higher caste of Psionic Andromedans. All Andromedans of common stature are capable of using Hardpoint cybernetic armor that links into their nervous system. This armor makes Triaxy soldiers difficult to take down in contrast to lightly armored Ornan freedom fighters and can pose a difficult challenge to the players with the powerful armors unique to the Andromedan race.  Ornans, in addition to being blue in color also have natural resistance to psionic attacks, making them ideal for fighting stronger Andromedans.

Play begins with the creation of the players Executive Characters. They also begin with 400 Revenue Points (2 Million Dollars) and a starting base to call their own with basic amenities. In addition to their base and startup, BLUE Level has a league of Funding Corporations, including Perfect Blue itself. The players begin with eight all on the verge of dropping out if they are not shown results within three months. More corporations can be gained and it is feasibly possible to continue the game without them by selling resources gained from missions. Most of the game will be spent in base managing and improving its various functions. But when tasks cannot be completed by BLUE Level, the operation can lease equipment, manufacturing services and research firms from MerCore (a fellow Perfect Blue operation) or other companies if the proper structures cannot be afforded.

The character creation sheet for 'Operation Perfect Blue'
The character creation sheet for ‘Operation Perfect Blue’

Cutters Guild’s titles have always stacked the odds against you, but Operation Perfect Blue brings even more pain to the table with the hyper-realism introduced in its combat system where damage is concerned. A character’s Endurance Stat directly limits each character’s hitpoints, with each part of the body given its own HP totals. The Head and Torso are critical locations that result in death if lost, while the arms and legs are less important but can be severed. Thankfully here in the SPACE FUTURE, the technology exists to replace and repair such damaged parts. This becomes most relevant while in the middle of a combat where more advanced and powerful characters are able to dispense a lot more pain and damage than lower leveled characters. In contrast to the realism presented, there are several alien races available to hire as mercenaries and personnel from bug aliens, the cousins of the Brutes from Halo, to big blue dual-larynxed scientists and their creations the Androids (Mistakenly referred to as Cyborgs despite their lack of organic structure)

You may of notice up until now Humans have not been mentioned. This is not because they do not exist, but remember in Titan A.E when the Dredge blew up earth? Yeah that happened. The Andromedans, fearing Human Adaptability blew up our solar system reducing most Humans to being exotic creatures and many turn to space piracy, some of which becoming MerCore agents available for purchase by Perfect Blue. Each race is accompanied by a few pages of explanation and the general state of affairs surrounding the race, most of them having moderate reason to be capable of being hired by Perfect Blue. Humans and Androids are fellow victims of Triaxy racism and readily are available to aid in the struggle, and even some Andromedans are willing to join though those that do should be held suspect.

In addition to the diversity, every race has a unique special trait that can range from minor to gamechanging. Some races like the Lotharians are immune to psionic influence, while others like the Andromedans/Androids can purchase upgrades for themselves. This provides a lot of choice for how to construct the 3-4 man teams that BLUE Level can send out into the world depending on circumstances of the battlefield. Adding more diversity is a series of military professions available that fit combat roles from assault to heavy demolitions as well as providing the ability to hire psionic personnel.   Realistic systems for space, underwater, aerial and land combat exist along with dedicated vehicle rules similar to land combat rules but with added systems like locking onto targets for missiles.

One of my gripes with the systems used, is that uses pretty much every kind of system available. Statistic rolls are settled with a D20 roll, Skills with percentile, and combat uses a complicated D20 system mixed with various types of action points, and this can get very confusing when trying to remember what to roll for what. The benefit of this system, however, is that combat becomes very tactical, lethal, and difficult. Every character in combat has a number of Action Points, using one per combat. In addition to this statistic is a character’s Aggression, and his Aggression remaining for the entire day. What this means is that a character with 29 points of aggression can fight well for 29 rounds over the course of the day before becoming tired. These points are drained even faster depending on the nature of the actions taken, making underwater combat even more tiring.

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Initiative is also very important in the gunfights taking place in OPB, as characters can use up to three actions instead of one per turn, which primarily benefits higher level characters with more APRs, as it allows them to shoot, dodge a return shot, then shoot right back again if they want to. This mechanic gives combat a very tactical and action packed feel, as shots fly and characters are given the choice to duck into cover, take it, or even attack right back. Thankfully, to aid with the confusion the book includes a very helpful series of detailed Tutorial examples that walk you blow by blow through solving a few combat situations which can help those willing to read through it understand the system rather quickly.

Base design and functions are fully realized, with a large section devoting itself to the manufacturing and research functions. I really enjoy the treatment science is given, as players are expected to come up with their own pseudo-scientific theories and thus research pretty much anything within reason that the GM allows. There is no shortage of structures and variety for bases, with mechanical benefits for installing doors and alarms. The alarms of course can be programmed with thousands of different sounds for different occasions. Everything you would expect you can build in XCOM can be built and more, from things like the mess hall to defensive cannons, to containment cells and their upgraded versions.

Players begin with a Trident Base, which is a half constructed base for the players to turn into the glorious first base of Perfect Blue, giving the players quite a lot of freedom in its customization. More space for facilities can also be constructed as additions to the base and theoretically allow you to build a base pretty much anywhere you want, even on land if you were that ready for Triaxy to bomb you from orbit and/or send their large amount of Big Fucking Mecha to stomp it flat. In addition to the base and tactical aspects of Operation Perfect Blue, there are pages upon pages of various craft for the air, sea and even space if need be. Though that’s far from where the list ends, as then there are several Combat Walkers available as well (tanks are for wusses, real men use giant mecha) that are oddly rather cheaply available from one of the many fronts that Perfect Blue uses to purchase and design weaponry and vehicles, Ornan Technologies Center, a thinktank established by Perfect Blue that has been secretly designing and constructing a wide variety of weapons for sale to Perfect Blue and other companies.

The (tiny) key art to 'Operation Perfect Blue'
The (tiny) key art to ‘Operation Perfect Blue’

I have several issues with this. OTC and many other such businesses lay in the Atlantean Cities, never mind that I seriously doubt the Ornans would know what Atlantis is, but the fact these cities lay in domes underneath the oceans (Which is where the primary Itosium deposits are!) and have for an indeterminate amount of time in the “deepest” parts of the planet’s oceans… Which is where Triaxy would logically want to scan first for large Itosium deposits as beneath mountains and on the ocean floor are common locations for them. Granted, the game mentions that it’s only a matter of time before they are found, but with the amount of military presence Triaxy has and the fact that the cities are stupid enough to actually conduct interstellar trade as well as train MerCore soldiers makes me call bullshit that Triaxy has not located them already. They have spies everywhere, at least one has to have made it into MerCore and thus into the cities despite how I already call foul that there are gigantic underwater utopias that somehow no Ornan has told Triaxy about, despite the countless acts of torture they are subjected to.

The overall theme of the game, if you have somehow not noticed yet, is that Triaxy represents the Nazi’s in basically every way. They conduct genetic experiments to create cyberzombies called Enforcers on top of pretty much every war crime imaginable, even having more than a few concentration camps on the planet. The game wastes no time in telling you just how really bad the Ornans have life now, some becoming servants, many others as common slaves, and the rest fighting for their lives amidst the ruined cities for scraps of food. As a child of 1990 I managed to miss the Holocaust, but I’m pretty sure this is what it would look like if Hitler made cyber attack jewzombies, which can make reading the games lore more than a little difficult to those that strikes a bad chord with.

While Operation Perfect Blue has a learning curve, it’s not a very steep one. The game is written in a very informative manner, which can make it rather easy to learn for those willing to read the massive book. The combat system is very brutal, as it’s designed with the intention of players being able to replace characters easily, which they can, due to the base mechanics of hiring mercenaries. The game does a good job of giving the player a large amount of variety, and while not all of the story actually makes sense, the way it is written gives the players a ton of free choice to play the game exactly how they want to play it (which is odd, considering the same person wrote What Lurks Beyond). I highly recommend this game, I have very few bad things to say about it, and the fact that you can buy miniguns that can fire underwater make this one of the best Cutters Guild products ever released.

-Necroscourge 4/13/13

SXSW 2013 Review: ‘Zero Charisma’

by Jonathan

A few weeks ago we had filmmakers Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews on the show to talk about their SXSW film Zero Charisma, the story of a tabletop RPG obsessed 20-something living with his grandmother who begins to lose control of his gaming group (and more) when a new table member threatens to sway his carefully crafted social order. At the time, I didn’t know Katie and Andrew, and they didn’t know me, but I really responded to the sincerity, and humor, of the Zero Charisma trailer and wanted to help them with their IndieGogo campaign to finish the film before the premiere. Sure, I had fears that most trailers are better than their actual films and that Zero Charisma might follow in a long line of indie films about our geek culture, and specifically the tRPG sub-culture, that have missed the mark. And every single one of them, from The Gamers to Role Models, have missed that mark, choosing the safety of goofing on the film’s subjects to actually compelling the audience to feel for them.

And not to say that it’s an easy temptation to avoid. We geeks and our and social idiosyncrasies are so particular that it’s just easier to point a camera at what’s loud and funny than what’s true. We spend so much time in fantasy (especially when tabletop roleplaying is concerned), that it’s almost always more appealing to narrate the fantasy of our lives than the oftentimes painful inadequacies underneath. But something in the trailer for Zero Charisma and its anger possessed main character of Scott, told me that Katie and Andrew’s film might just avoid those trappings and get right to the heart of the cultural and social re-appropriations that fantasy culture is all about. Going in to the film’s premiere on Monday night, and as the lights dimmed in the theater, I had hope (for all us geeks).

ZeroCharisma2

I’m happy to report that my hope in Zero Charisma was beyond well placed. Katie, Andrew and company knocked this one out of the park. Before there was even an image on screen, the music hit and I knew I was in good hands. The first thing that you hear is shrieking fantasy metal. I let out a loud “fuck yes” (which most at the after party admitted to hearing… sorry!). I’m a huge Luca Turilli and Rhapsody fan and the music that starts Zero Charisma off was right in line with the heavy metal songs of wizards and fantasy that inhabit his music. I even let out another shout when an extra in the film wore a Rhapsody shirt later on. The movie opened up and there was Scott, alone and head banging down a grocery aisle stocking up on snacks for his gaming like a playable character would on questing supplies. The journey was about to begin and I was thrilled knowing that I was in good hands.

The actual plot of Zero Charisma is simple. Scott lives with his grandmother and runs a tabletop RPG a few times a week for his similarly geeky group of friends. He invests everyting into the game and the experience he is creating. So when one of the longtime players drops out, it leaves Scott (and his sidekick Wayne), searching for a replacement. They find their fifth player in Miles, a hipster geek who is just looking for a group of guys to play with. Miles brings beers (and levity) to their first game, and quickly becomes its most popular and successful member and Scott’s alpha grip on the game begins to erode. Scrambling to keep the script that he’s written for everyone else on track, Scott wrestles to take back control and things go from bad to worse.

ZeroCharisma

 And that’s what Katie and Andrew got the most right: the personal nature of who we are. The group of gamers are a surrogate for Scott’s powerless role in a family that doesn’t really exist. His father is non-existent and his mother abandoned him long ago to move out of state. His Grandmother has had to look out for him long past the expiration date on his social maturation and he is angry. The failings of others in his life, and subsequently the excuses that have led to his own, have turned Scott into a short fuse who doesn’t see the dangers in scripting friend’s lives or trying to control others. From the opening metal music, he is both alone and ready to explode and watching newcomer Sam Eidson portray him is awesome. Sam’s not an actor playing a geek. He is a geek, and he gets the pain that makes our lots in life so compelling and Katie and Andrew don’t avoid going there. In fact, they go there a lot.

Other reviewers have said that when Scott’s mother shows up halfway through the film, that it feels like a plot device, because she only shows up to complicate things for Scott and his grandmother. I think those viewers need to re-role their Perception checks because you don’t need to hit a 20 to realize how wrong this is. The very antagonist of Scott’s fantasy quest is The Goblin Queen, a shadowy matriarch of a dark kingdom who rules from a distant tower. He’s enlisted his friends in helping him destroy the Queen and when that obsessive goal is challenged by Miles “just wanting to have fun”, Scott’s fuse is lit. Everything Scott does in the film is informed by the pain he feels towards his mother’s abandonment, and her showing up only makes a bad situation worse as he scrambles for a way to cope with a rapidly deteriorating social order that he had only a fabricated control of in the first place. Andrew’s script is fantastic on a character level and I urged he and Katie to continue Scott’s story in whatever other ways they could.

I know I’ve given a pretty serious review for a movie that is being showcased as a comedy. And I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. Zero Charisma is hilarious. The crowd responded vocally to the many jokes in the film and I watched it in a constant state of losing my shit laughing. If I hadn’t had to return to Los Angeles, I would have caught the rest of the screenings in Austin, I am that obsessed with the film. I even B-lined it for the filmmakers and gave them a hug for how incredibly moving the movie is. It just does so many things right in regards to a subject matter that we care so much about (almost similar to Scott’s obsession!). From skewering hipsters for their misappropriation of Geek culture (that scene in amazing) to our intensely passionate debates (like if the USS Enterprise is faster than the Millennium Falcon), Zero Charisma does everything right. The comedy flies pretty frequently but never at the expense of what makes Zero Charisma work the most: its sincerity.

As I said to Katie and Andrew Monday night, I’ve been attending the SXSW Film Festival since it began playing films in 1994 and this is one of my favorite SXSW films that I’d ever seen. But beyond that, and probably more importantly, Zero Charisma is one of the best Geek culture films of all time. We will definitely be championing it here on Geekscape. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a quest more worthy of the undertaking.

Tabletop Tales: ‘Pokéthulhu’

by Necroscourge

If there was ever the perfect invention for gaming, it was giving us things to collect. People love collecting things, I know I do! That’s probably why Pokémon nearly took over the world in the late 90’s, as it was literally a show, cardgame, and series of gameboy games with the sole purpose of collecting creatures, using them to fight other creatures, and getting a bunch of shiny objects to help us collect more monsters. Why, there is almost nothing you can do to make it better, short of mixing it with Cthulhu. Cumberland Games brings us Pokéthulhu, illustrated by John Kovalic of Dork Tower and Munchkin fame.

 

The world of Pokéthulhu takes the concept of collecting monsters and vigorously mixes it with H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Players are Pokécultists, young children that have found a Pokénomicon and Shining Dodecahedrons and use them to capture and use Pokéthulu. You see, Pokéthulhu scare older people, but kids are unaffected. The eventual goal of all Pokéthulhu Cultists is to become a master, and what better way than to journey forth and collect Elder Badges.

 

The more you know about Pokémon, the funnier the game is, but really you can get away with just knowing about Lovecraft. There is no concrete lore used in the game, it’s expected of the players and gamemaster to go wild with their imaginations and just enjoy the game for what it is: playing psychotic children that pit fight other psychotic children with eldritch monsters for entertainment.

 

Characters have six different Statistics: Grade Level, Sanity, Phys Ed, Pokéthulu Lore, Shoplifting, and Trash Talking. Every kid also has a preferred Aspect, which is an overall type of Pokéthulhu and represents supernatural energy. The rules are simple, tasks consist of rolling a few D12’s, and you want to roll under your statistic. In combat, your Pokéthulhu Lore works in conjunction with your Pokéthulhu’s attributes. Every one of the darling non-euclidean monstrosities has a Power, Speed, and Hit-Point rating. There are also four types of attacks, each with their own ratings. Injure deals hit point damage, Trap binds the enemy, Dodge regains hit points from attacks, and Frighten attempts to end the battle by scaring the enemy away.

 

Pokéthulhu is completely free, and available on the author’s website. The games rules are amazingly simple and its a way to enjoy playing a Pokémon rpg without actually knowing anything about Pokémon, and while being cool. Go go Blhastur!

 

thulogo

 

‘Zero Charisma’ Gets An Awesome SXSW Poster!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Last month we showed you the wonderfully impressive trailer for Zero Charisma, the upcoming comedy by Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews.

 

The movie looks like an absolute blast, and will be premiering at next week’s SXSW. If you find yourself in Austin next week, I implore you to give Zero Charisma a shot, this one looks to be something special.

 

To celebrate the upcoming world premiere, a new poster for the film has been crafted by artist Jay Shaw. It’s quite the piece of work, and has some cool history behind it too; the weathering and texture from the poster is actually lifted straight from an old D&D Player’s Manual.

 

Check out the poster below, and let us know what you think! If you’re one of the lucky folks attending this year’s SXSW, the film will be screening at the following times and locations:

 

Monday, 3/11 @ 7:15 PM – Rollins Theater at the Long Center – World Premiere

Wednesday, 3/13 @ 7:00 PM – Rollins Theater at the Long Center

Friday, 3/15 @ 11:00 AM – Topher Theater at Zach Scott

 

ZEROCHARISMA_FINALPOSTER

 

Bah, I’d kill for a copy of that poster. Again, if you haven’t seen the trailer, watch it here, and get excited!

 

Tabletop Tales: ‘The Shadow Project’

by Necroscourge

Something you quickly realize about Cutters Guild products is that they are all very clearly inspired by popular mainstream works, specifically popular games of the time. The mascot of Deathstalkers 2, which is fought in What Lurks Beyond, is a large armored black knight called a Juggernaut, which heavily resembles a Chaos Warrior from Warhammer, the popular tabletop wargame. The Shadow Project seems inspired by quite a lot of media while proving to be fairly original in its own right.

 

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This game, like many indie RPGs, is a custom ruleset with its own niche setting. This game is based on the fictional man-made island New Prometheus, a 3000 square mile large floating city-state off the coast of New England. Much like other islands off the coast of Eastern America, the entire island has entered a state of emergency. In this case, it’s due to a rogue computer virus so powerful it has hacked into the human genome and discovered the secrets of perfect biomechanical parasitism, enslaving the populous as cyber zombies and threatening to take over the entire world if so much as a single bit of corrupted data escapes the island. Thankfully the book later mentions that somehow the Shadow Project constructed a gigantic containment wall around the infected downtown sector (I suspect wizards were involved), which is where the majority of the game  is suggested to take place

 

The intro takes this concept and immediately poses a scenario that if  true, the world has already been conquered, and there is no further reason to play the game. It follows a combat journalist on his deployment to New Prometheus to help recon the city and figure out  just what’s going on. The team is killed near immediately by the techno-zombies, robo-vampires, and other deadly creatures of the city, leaving the infected journalist to wander off on his own. He eventually find a computer terminal, which the virus naturally threatens him with; it’s suggested that the man kills himself soon after. What is not mentioned however, is the fate of the anti-viral Archangel chip in his camera, which he did not botherto destroy after the evil virus pretty much demanded the damn thing. It’s implied that if the virus got its hands on this camera, it would completely nullify the single edge humanity had left against the DEVIL virus.

 

 

'The Shadow Project's character creation sheet.
‘The Shadow Project’s character creation sheet.

 

At the end of this story, the journalist also decides to mention that in addition, an Archangel chip that the player characters use is nearly ready, which indeed makes me wonder why they sent a recon team with the well known repercussions of rendering their secret weapon completely useless. The opening of this book is flawed; the players would get to the scene and immediately become infected since the virus has by then figured out how to defeat its one predator. This part of the setting drives me nuts, not only is the setting so generic but it flat out denies its own possible existence with just a small bit of logic.

 

The books art is the other thing that irritates me; for the life of it, the games artists cannot decide what any of The Shadow Project’s soldiers or the monsters themselves look like.

 

Many illustrations depict the cyber-undead as decomposing bodies with metal graphed bits, while the bestiary pages suggest they are built completely of sinew-like cybernetic tubing with maws of gnarly teeth. Other pages picture Shadow Project soldiers in infantry combat armor while other agents are decked out in the same sinew-armor the undead appear to wear. It’s like the art of two very different games but with the same enemies and ideas behind them.

 

Shadow Project soldiers are tasked with defeating the virus, and are outfitted with Archangel chips that limit the exposure of the DEVIL virus and allow the operatives to hack and utilize the virus for themselves. This is not only extremely dangerous but the main way characters gain power and weaken their enemies. Various weapons the agents are equipped with hack the data within the enemy which can then be applied to the agent’s body, mind, or soul. Yes, as in there is actually a readout on the wrist of every Shadow Project soldier that says body, mind, and soul, and their survival hinges on their ability to shoot monsters and apply it to their SOUL. The fact that this mechanic is in no way actually a meta-concept yet commonly accepted in the game world helps completely undermine any horror the DEVIL virus may have had. If the Hindu philosophers ever saw this book, I think India would declare war on us.

 

Boogeyman - one of the DEVIL virus' most feared spawn.
Boogeyman – one of the DEVIL virus’ most feared spawn.

 

With the great power and reward that comes with the virus there is also great risk. Every time you reach certain levels there is a chance that the DEVIL virus will assume direct control and kill you, as is what normally happens when you plug a virus that shares the name of the dark one into your neural net. Yet Shadow Project is completely fine with their agents doing this, to the aforementioned point of labelling their equipment for inputs of this data to their body, mind, and soul. I can’t get over how weird it is for a horror game to be so laughably flawed in its setting.

 

Every monster in the game is named after traditional fantasy monsters, with various ghosts, wraiths, werewolves, and vampires around. The art for them all is of the sinew variety, and thus once you see one you generally have seen them all. Large humanoid figures with big round eyes, gnashing teeth, and a PHD in kicking your ass. Many of them are designed to be serious threats, as they are created by the DEVIL virus for various functions and purposes. Why however the DEVIL virus named them the way they did, the world may never know.

 

This game is for collectors only, and I don’t suggest actually trying to play it. The book itself is a large softcover book, ships in great condition, and while the artwork flips between two different settings, it’s also rather in-depth and quite pretty. The story of this game is a black hole devoid of any actual plausibility, to the point of being insulting. I don’t question the DEVIL virus at all, in fact that’s the most brutal virus possible. What I object to is how there is no possible way with the current setting that the game should be playable. It sounds like the DEVIL can simply fall into the ocean, grab a fish and suddenly the world is fucked. Also, how is a 20 foot tall wall supposed to stop the DEVIL minions when they almost all can climb buildings effortlessly? There is no possible way to actually quarantine the island! Everything we know about the DEVIL virus just points out more and more that there is nothing we as humanity can do. Not since the reporter basically gave our secret weapon to it!

 

This is a horror game that manages to fail at every quality of being a horror game. The monsters are simply not frightening, the game technically has already been lost, there is a meter for soul on the military’s armor, and on and on. It’s too easy to analyze the game and see exactly what it is doing wrong, and thus draw little entertainment from it.

 

-Necroscourge 3/1/13

 

The company has much, much better offerings!
The company has much, much better games!

Tabletop Tales: ‘What Lurks Beyond’

by Necroscourge

As I like to bring up near constantly, I love OGL (Open Game License) content. I play a third party character in every game that I play in, and utilize plenty of OGL content in my own games that I start. However, it’s not all made equal in any way shape or form and I make no claims otherwise; sometimes it falls flat and descends into obscurity where it can’t hurt anyone. What Lurks Beyond is a published 3.5 adventure that helps support the argument of why if you don’t specialize in writing DnD products you should not write one. This is also going to be your one warning, since this review covers a specific adventure it, by nature, is chock full of spoilers. If for some reason you plan on playing this adventure (you poor sadistic bastard!) then this review may hurt any enjoyment you would receive in doing so. Unless of course you are insane, then rock on!

 

What Lies Beyond

 

Supposedly, What Lurks Beyond is built for 4-6 level 7-10 characters and it warns not to admit anyone of a higher level than that. A core concept to designing adventures, or at least this is Wizards of the Coasts method, is to build it around a group of four characters and test it with various builds and parties of characters. On the first page this book has already filled me with a sense of dread, as you can’t help but wonder how the adventure accounts for the mere possibility of two extra party members. Another warning flag is the adventure’s size. The softcover book is easily over a hundred pages due to the two dungeons contained within.

 

The adventure is split up into a series of chapters, each covering a particular area of the adventure. This clean organization makes the adventure quite easy to run as there is no question as to where various areas are located, while past adventures I have seen lacked such a neat arrangement. The first of these chapters covers the overall area of the adventure and contains the entrances to the various dungeons as well as major points of interest while each more defined location has its own chapter.

 

The back of the book also contains a series of “handouts” meant to be copied and passed out to players, though only a handful of them are not maps but actually puzzles. What Lurks Beyond prides itself in mentioning how well written and cerebral it is for having developed puzzles, but don’t get too amazed; these are mostly boring crosswords, hangman, and other such activities designed to pad out the sessions and punish any players that could care less about the adventure’s plot. The book also claims at the beginning that it is acceptable to swap out the names of some of the gods for whatever is relevant in your campaign, without telling you that one of these gods is the answer to some of these handout puzzles. Along with these puzzles are a series of small, barely detailed maps, but I have no idea why these maps would be passed out in favor of using a traditional mapping method since there is no reason whatsoever the players should have access to a personal map (A useless one at that; this is not exactly the most complicated adventure.)

We begin this adventure in the middle of the woods moving East. The party very quickly runs into a wrecked coach for a chance at a little looting before starting the adventure proper at a fork in the road, presenting the first choice since the book makes no claim that the party can deny to loot the wrecked carriage. The passage in the book swears up and down that it does not matter if you go left or right, and that is simply a damn right lie. No matter which path you take the party is thrown into its first combat encounter. Ever wondered what would happen if a Headcrab from Half-Life rampantly bred with rabbits? That’s more or less what a Blood Bunny is. On either side the party is faced with a large amount of the creatures and there is no written way to dodge this first encounter (it’s forced). That’s a shame because the adventure throws no less than TWENTY FIVE monsters at you, each with ten hit points and a +7 initiative, all of the little bastards do up to five damage per turn as the horde leaps around like the little hell-beasts that they are. Though this encounter is heavily overpowered there are ways of dealing with it using standard classes; if the party has spellcasters specializing in area of effect spells or stocked up on alchemists fire  then it should not be too hard to roast that army of head humpers.

 

No doubt spending eight hours to rest or using a good amount of healing magic, the party then continues to see what happens on the left side. Earlier the adventure claimed that it was fine no matter what side you took. By “it does not matter” they of course meant “Pick left and die.” As not even a page later the book mentions that the players are absolutely not supposed to go left, and “discourages” the players by putting yet another fight in their path in the form of tainted Grizzly Beasts, all the while showing the party signs to turn back now. The beasts are dispatched easily enough, they may hit like freight trains but at least they have a normal array of hit points and AC. Wasting even more healing, the party can then walk 30 feet down the road to a broken bridge, where once again the book begs the GM constantly to try and get the players to go right but by then it is too late since the party is then faced with a SWAMP DRAGON, on it’s own this is easily a CR 15+ monster waiting to penetrate you with four bladed tentacles a turn that do 4D6 damage EACH. Seeing a pattern here yet? Guess what’s directly after the dragon? Surprise, ANOTHER COMBAT ENCOUNTER!

 

By then if your party has not strangled you and impaled your skull on a pike for trying to run this adventure they will likely immediately plead to just let them go right. Unlike the left road, this option lacks the three encounters put there to ensure that the choice is one in name alone (Cutters guild, you are aware that a choice with one correct answer is not actually a choice right?).  Keep in mind that the party has no goals at the moment yet can already be faced with complete destruction. On the plot railroad the party finds the first handout, a cypher that leaves the party with a cryptic phrase that is the secret to finding hidden loot later in the adventure. Loot of course, the party would not know existed if they had gone left. Afterwards the party is introduced to the Tower of Bladesedge, the first dungeon (Likely designed by whoever built Sauron’s tower.)

 

The tower is the hellhole you would think it is, filled with arbitrary traps and strong use of the word “Immune”. I held back on this detail but most (if not all) monsters are outright immune to *something* as opposed to using the vulnerability and resistance system in D20. For instance, if you are a spellcaster that uses anything but Earth magic, a cleric or a rogue with points in Open Lock or Disable Device you are going to very quickly find that the book seems to be under the impression that everything only has one answer and will happily declare everything you do to be either ineffective or outright not allowed. As you could also tell the damage values of everything in the adventure are also very arbitrary, to the point where instead of having an enchantment rating like it’s supposed to, there is a sword laying around that is magical and does a whopping 3d8 damage per swing. I really want to know where all these high damage numbers came from and what game the writer thinks he is writing an adventure for, because it sure as hell is not standard 3.5.

 

The tower serves as another slog of secret doors, riddles, and tasks that all have one single way of being completed. The top of the tower is another deathtrap, with three riddles, ever descending spikes, and a conveniently impossible to dispel Wall of Force to contend with. Completing this riddle opens a secret door in the dungeon that contains the lock for the McGuffin you grabbed from the Well outside. “What key?” you ask? Obviously the key that was never hinted at before yet conveniently is the only way to work the lock that because the plot demands it opens the door to Ezreal’s tomb. Who’s Ezreal? The book seemed to forget to explain that part too. Hidden in *another* dungeon below the dungeon you already are in is a scrap of exposition explaining that Ezreal is a foul witch, though it’s never explained why all magic around Bladesedge is completely bullshit and incapable of being dispersed and why no locks in this land can actually be picked.

 

After wading out of that HELLHOLE the party can finally walk down the road to yet another fork, presenting the group with two possibilities. By now the party is aware that they have opened Ezreal’s tomb in the Cemetery so there is little reason to go anywhere else really. The Generic Hellish Cemetery houses the Tomb of Ezreal and serves as the last real area of the adventure and its oh so varied locations of ruined cities, abandoned towers, and dank dungeons all the while raining and storming. The Tomb is unlocked in the tower, or at least that remains an option since you could…. you know… just climb over the gate and enter the tomb anyway. And yes, that is a viable option capable of saving the party a large amount of time. You would think so at least, despite the ability to get into the tomb it’s still impossible to complete the adventure without opening it with the key in the tower (damned impossible to dispel enchantments!). Though you better hope that you have already done everything you need to do before going to confront Ezreal because halfway to the tomb the dead begin to rise in mass. You thought 25 rabbits was bad, try taking on 200 lesser zombies!

 

FINALLY! It’s time for the final battle! The party, tired from their battles stumbles into the main tomb of Ezreal to find his eternal prison, the stained glass statue of Ezreal and the four key shaped ho- No… NO… NO NO NO…. Ezreal’s tomb is surrounded by four towers, each with its own key and trial (and of course are protected by bullshit magic) that conveniently are required before the final confrontation. If the party were to start at level 7, by now they would measure around level 13-15 (Its hard to tell because the monster entries lack CR’s and thus make it difficult to award experience) from the sheer amount of puzzles, riddles, bullshit magic locks, monsters with bullshit immunities, and McGuffins the adventure puts them through, so what’s a few more towers? Just like every other dungeon in the adventure this is a linear trek to the top to solve a puzzle, slay some critters and repeat.

 

Four towers later….

 

Ok. NOW it’s time for the final battle. Ezreal’s dark soul encased in Stained Glass animates once the final key is inserted and turned and he gives the generic “Rule by my side” speech one would expect. In both forms he acts as a level 15 Sorcerer and is one of the easiest fights in the adventure, since Ezreal fights completely alone and as a Sorcerer will provoke attack of opportunities if he tries to cast any powerful spells; there is really no way you can fail to beat him… Upon destroying his larger Stained Glass form Ezreal rises in his medium sized mortal form ready to continue the battle, which actually makes him even easier to circle and puddle stomp. Suddenly, before you strike the final blow, Ezreal launches bolts of energy that instantly without any save needed knock you all out, he then turns you into his Nazgu- I mean Shades that have been hounding you this entire adventure. That’s right, Ezreal (like everything else in this adventure) has plot armor and cannot die thus winning by default. The party has failed and Ezreal goes on to rule the world because he is invincible for no established (or possible) reason.

 

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What the adventure fails to alert the players of in any real concrete way until they actually bump into the McGuffin required is that Ezreal can ONLY be slain with the powers of the dead paladin Seth, whom every now and then is referred to in scriptures found in the adventure. Due to how the adventure’s maps are structured and because the book itself makes it fucking impossible to go left (Which is where Seth is buried as well as the exposition needed to signify that Seth is even needed to slay Ezreal.) You actually are encouraged to metagame and be aware that Cutters Guild fucking hates you, has never played DnD in their life, and of course would never make it as simple as just slaying the end boss and bringing happiness to the world.

 

If the players instead chose to continue down the road before confronting Ezreal, and braved the lair of the growlings beneath the tower in order to get Seth’s amulet then the party can journey past the ruined city and travel to Seth’s burial ground where the party can then revive the dead Paladin, who promises to help you in the final battle against Ezreal. From then forward if you bring the Amulet to Ezreal and destroy his stained glass form the character wearing his amulet will poke’morph into Seth and thus be able to lay a divine asskicking on that damned defenseless Sorcerer that could not fight his way out of a paper bag. After the two to three rounds needed to encircle and destroy Ezreal, Seth will behead the blighter and forever doom his eternal soul to hell (Heaven and Hell of course is called something different in DnD and behaves completely different, but I don’t expect the authors to know the first thing about the game at this point)

 

The birds sing, the sun shines, and your party is now victorious holding the various overpowered weapons and artifacts found from the adventure and the knowledge that pulling their own teeth would’ve been less painful than trying to win this adventure. What Lurks Beyond is a strange animal, as the book itself is actually well written and diverse with plenty of adventuring to be had; yet it falls completely flat with its arbitrary judgement of monster and loot strength and the obvious fact that the authors probably never played a real adventure beforehand or have any knowledge pertaining to the balance of a written adventure. A core rule to playing GameMaster is that there should never be such a painfully linear path to victory, and I count the possibility of losing for just not exploring enough to be too much of a “videogamey” cop-out. Unlike a videogame, a RPG party rarely gets the option to continue from where they lost and often will not want to sit through fights or sections multiple times. There are too many overpowered enemies, arbitrary traps, and the ever present impossible to dispel magic that seems to litter these godforsaken woods.

 

Gary Gygax has often been accused of writing the worst modules in DnD’s history, and to that I call bullshit. Mr. Gygax’s infamous modules were written for the express purpose of thinning out crowds of gamers at tournaments and as a test of a party’s ability to min-max and create a balanced group while What Lurks Beyond was written as a serious, cerebral adventure of high (as a kite) fantasy. Though honestly the adventure itself is not too hard to fix, the main issues lay in the sheer amount of magically locked doors, unbalanced encounters, incomplete monster entries, and joke of a final battle that leaves you feeling like you wasted more than a months worth of sessions for the weakest payoff possible. Copies of this adventure are rare as the book was not very widely circulated. Like the rest of Cutters Guilds titles you can get What Lurks Beyond from their shop, while it may be the weakest of their titles I will one day visit their stronger ones, as their better works can be considered somewhat legendary.

It turns out the reason the balancing is off is because the module is technically not for D20 at all but their own 3.5 setting book Deathstalkers 2 that uses a very different ruleset, behaving like a completely different animal. Many of the monsters in this adventure are from Deathstalkers 2 as well (Including their re-used bestiary pictures, tsk tsk)

-Necroscourge 2/15/13

 

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Tabletop Tales: ‘Legacy: War Of Ages’

by Necroscourge

RPG’s based on TV and movies are nothing new, with more famed series having received better and better adaptations by saner and saner designers. Normally a good sequel is met with a cash-in RPG, or in Highlander‘s case, a good third party RPG, The Quickening and later… The Source. Legacy: War of Ages can most simply be described as a labour of love for their favorite movie; taking every (good) part of the first two films and injecting their own creativity into the project to create an “Alternate Version” of the Highlander franchise with all of the buzzwords replaced with more generic titles. For instance, The Quickening became The Rapture, and The Gathering became The Conclave. Zeist of course, is never mentioned or even suggested to possibly exist.

 

The beginning of Legacy very quickly explains the various periods of Immortal History, along with the basic rules of Immortal protocol, such as “one must never do combat on holy ground”. It turns out that over this history, many important names have in fact been Immortals including Gustavus Adolphus, Gilgamesh, and Jesus. Not Hitler though, he was mortal. This history goes up until the 1890’s which is known as “The Age of Madness” by the Immortals. Oddly, directly after this history lesson is a section devoted to pointing out that this is in fact a Cyberpunk setting, complete with Neural Interfaces and a 3D version of the Internet called…. The Winternet. The reason I call this “Odd” is because the game points out quite quickly that Immortals are not able to use cybertech due to how their regeneration works, leaving me with many questions such as “Why is this important?” Answer? It’s not. As Neural Cybertech is THE method of reliably hacking anything, or even getting a decent experience out of the Winternet, it makes me wonder why they felt that they needed to explain a part of the setting, and immediately tell you that Immortals have little to no reason to care about it. They also cannot decide upon calling hacking countermeasures “ICE” or “EIC” (Supposedly pronounced “ICE”).

 

Character creation is simplified and offers a point buy system à la World of Darkness, with a few notable deviations. Such similarities include scaling costs for points, ranks 1-5, karma/experience system, and a constant “Crawling in my skin” tone towards how much it sucks to be Immortal. Anyone familiar with the storytelling system will be able to pick the game up rather quickly, making it a rather good alternative to those seeking a less complicated form of the World of Darkness. The key difference: rather than use a truckload of D10’s, Legacy only uses a single one, but with the same general idea. The Statistic, Modifier, and Skill values are attached and if this number is rolled at or under on a D10 the roll is considered a success, combat rolls being slightly different from this. The resulting system can be as lethal as any other hard realism game, which poses an interesting idea considering the general difficulty in killing that which cannot die.

 

The only way to put down an Immortal for good is to sever the spine between the heart and brain, most popularly the neck. The book makes it quite clear that The True Death should never happen casually or randomly, as Immortals are expected to be “killed” often but never truly fall until their luck runs out. The reason for this is called The Rapture. When an Immortal’s neck is severed, energy forcefully pours from the corpse into the surrounding area, other Immortals in this area can collect this energy for extra experience, in the process causing thousands of dollars of property damage as the surrounding area bursts into flames and explodes from the amazing energy of Immortal life.

 

As any Highlander fan knows, Immortals can sense other Immortals based on their strength; in Legacy this is known as The Foreboding and is dubbed a psychic power alongside a choice of several other such abilities available to said psychics. Foreboding however, is always available to Immortals, and innately roll when another Immortal gets too close, which I like more than Vampires take on such a mechanic. Psychic powers are designed to be rather broad in order to be utilized in different ways, such as to denote psychics and vampires.

 

The combat mechanics are presented in a “use the rules you like” fashion and suggest that in combat the players make up moves and maneuvers to use for slight benefits such as a thrust doing more damage while sacrificing accuracy or vice versa. Legacy sports a large armory filled to the brim with all the weapons and armor one could ever need, from swords to assault cannons and all the way to plasma rifles. Armor includes the traditional Immortal garb of armored trenchcoats (Dishwasher safe!) with modern styled ballistic and heavy armors. Behind this of course is a load of Cyberwear that most characters can’t use. The rules do suggest a character may be mortal, and rulings do exist that specifically target mortals with the trade off of being able to use Cybernetics and the Winternet. Could you imagine having to choose living forever or being able to turn your car on with your mind?

 

Legacy was given a tough break due to the time of it’s conception, a mere two years after the very complicated Old World of Darkness began its run, and predating the New World Rules by nearly a decade. The setting and jargon heavily dates the game and really shows the paranoia people had towards gamers at the time. So much so that a very large disclaimer exists in the first few pages, and the game outright demands that this disclaimer be read before and after every single session of Legacy: War of Ages. With the added fact that Legacy‘s setting is Highlander with a coat of paint and the obvious influences of Highlander II: The Quickening can leave a sour taste in the mouths of some fans. The original book’s “art” is a series of black on grey polaroids of the Blackmoors with their friends running around with swords and trenchcoats, usually drained out by some annoying aftereffect. Every section begins with a loosely relevant quote from a movie or song (Including a mangled version of Pink Floyd lyrics).

 

There was a remake of Legacy published in 2010, I hear that this revision is vastly different from the original Paperback version that I own, which you can get in hardcopy from Amazon for just $5, half the price of the 2010 Legacy Revision PDF from Drivethrurpg. If you even loosely like collecting RPG’s I would suggest adding this title to your collection, as while its inspirations are painfully obvious, it still beats within it the Blood of Kings and deserves praise for doing so before its time, in an age where many games fell into obscurity. I would hurry on your decision between which copy you desire as much like the Immortals there will be one day where THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE! I’d love to see the look on the poor bastards face that tries to burn THIS book! KABOOM!

-Necroscourge 2/8/13

 

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‘Zero Charisma’ Looks Amazing, But It Needs Your Help! Watch The First Trailer!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Since discovering the trailer for Zero Charisma just a few days ago, I honestly couldn’t tell you how many people I’ve shown it to (I may be slightly hyperbolizing here, so let’s just say at least a dozen).

 

The movie looks like absolute gold, and as wonderful as the final product is sure to be, Zero Charisma also has quite the story behind it. Directors Katie Graham (Cinematographer of Best Worst Movie and The American Scream) and Andrew Matthews (Editor on Best Worst Movie and The American Scream) raised over $25,000 in preproduction over the course of their successful IndieGogo campaign in Spring 2011.

 

As I mentioned above, the first trailer for the film has just been released. Trust me, you’re going to want to keep your eye out for this one.

 

 

Metal-loving gamer geek Scott Weidemeyer lives with his ornery grandmother and works a lousy job at a donut shop. But every Tuesday night, he is the omnipotent Game Master, guiding his role-players through a tabletop journey of fantasy and adventure. However, when neo-nerd hipster Miles joins his game, Scott begins to resent the admiration Miles receives from the other players. To make matters worse, the health of his grandmother begins to falter, and his estranged mother visits town, reminding Scott of a childhood he’d just as soon forget. Caught in a spiral of rage and delusion, Scott is forced to take drastic steps to reclaim his honor, and his identity as the Game Master.

 

Of course, independent films are costly to make. Zero Charisma is currently in post-production, and Katie, Andrew, and everyone else involved need your help so the finished product can see the light of day. Another IndieGogo campaign is currently underway, with a goal of $30,000 (currently sitting just under $10,000). This campaign will take the film from post production through to distribution, and you can score lots of cool goodies by backing it (including of course, a copy of the finished feature).

 

You watched (and very likely loved) the trailer above, so why not throw them a few bucks and score yourself a copy! I’m sure they’d be forever grateful (as would I, as I really, really want to see this)!

 

Zero Charisma is set to premiere at this years SXSW, where Jonathan will be watching, and I’ll be stuck in Canada.

 

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Tabletop Tales: Dealing With Stress: My Own ‘Dungeonland’

by Necroscourge

For months I have been awaiting the release of Paradox’s new title, Dungeonland. 

 

The game finally launched just a few days ago, and is most definitely an early contender for the most embarrassingly terrible release of 2013 (and it’s only February!). The game was originally pushed back a week to January 29th, with the promise of a smooth (and relatively bugless) launch. This would have been quite a change for Paradox, as they have a very spotty history, full of bugged releases and bad ideas.

 

 

Dungeonland released publicly with severe balancing issues, and Paradox decided to make it available the very hour Valve Staff were arriving to work at their California office, rather than a more traditional midnight release.

 

dungeonland logo

 

The Steam Community forums were flooded with cries of lag, connection problems, balancing issues, and a severe limit of content. Paradox’s Facebook page is filled to the brim with hatemail (Though to be fair, I wrote a fourth of it…). It’s almost a joke in the way Paradox behaves after botching a release so badly.

 

It was after trying this tangled mess of a game that I angrily stood up and perused my own game shelves, mumbling angry truths to myself that I dare not repeat here. It was only then that the planets finally did align and the angels did sing a lovely tune, my fingers grasping the sacred book as it came free from the shelf…

 

“Those petty fools and their Dungeonland stand no chance against the joys of… The Sunderdome!”

 

The book I held in my hands was Xcrawl; one of my most prized possessions and the tome that shall seal the fate of many witless saps and heroes who so much as dare to enter my domain! Xcrawl is a setting book based on a generic fantasy world with the idea that it is “Modern day” with a few very major difference between the two timelines. For starters, instead of beginning as a godless Democracy, Mr. George Washington took the other option and forged America as the North American Empire (NAE), crowning himself Emperor George Augustus I, with his first major decree being the immediate release of all slaves within the empire. Within this great Empire, LARP (Live Action Role Play… silly) was born when a pack of dim witted college mages descended into their basement, only to encounter a pack of ghouls (much to their dismay)! Instead of being terminally punished, the college boys were rewarded as the founders of the NAE’s new national sport. The titular XCRAWL Games!
 
Xcrawl Cover
 

I madly flipped through the pages, “Blah blah blah, Empire this, Empire that.” Normally I prefer to keep the setting intact when I do such a thing, however, any setting based in an empire that has banned all adult entertainment definitely has no room in my heart! Finally, 87 pages into the book, I was able to start reading about the actual sport of Xcrawl, which with some distinct differences, behaves much like a regular dungeon crawl.

 

Xcrawl is a combative sport where a previously established team of heroes ventures into the equally preconstructed labyrinths created by the event’s Dungeon Judge. This “judge” is given a generous budget to hire hunters to bring bloodthirsty beasts, wizards and architects to his hospitable dungeon! While real Xcrawl events have various “rules” (like a ban on firearms), I chucked such principles out the door nearly instantly realizing, “Those puny heroes will need every edge they can get in my new park!”

 

As such, it’s no big wonder that Sunderdome could be classified as an illegal event by the NAE. Well bah, I didn’t want my porn banned anyway! Much like the infamous illegal Chinese events, all players will be allowed in my dungeon at once without a real time limit, and will gain glorious prizes for bloodshed – the value increasing if they should happen to shed the blood of a fellow player, hehe.

 

Sunderdome gives its heroes the standard bonuses and edges one could expect from a regular Xcrawl event, including rest rooms and the Mojo system. For glorious feats of teamwork and violence the party is rewarded with Mojo points that can be offered to fellow players in times of need. However, a player may not beg for the use of these points; it needs to be offered naturally.

 

In my park, the heroes won’t be the only ones that are cheered for, as my hoards are also allowed Mojo points if they are built of preconstructed teams such as the vicious “Eleven Imps of Hate” I have hired to guard the exit to the first stage of Sunderdome. The ranks of Xcrawl are filled with the standard classes of adventuring lore, but for those that take the sport somewhat seriously, the Athlete class makes a good replacement for combatants that want to dedicate their lives to Xcrawl, or any sport really.

 

Ran by the enigmatic DJ Majesty, this dungeon will test the mettle of any party! Composed of two stages and a mighty Boss level to smash those would be heroes who progress too far. No expense was spared in the park’s development and even the most seasoned Xcrawlers will have a problem or two getting out alive! Why would one subject themselves to this? What are they playing for Suzanne!?

 

“Thousands of gold worth of prizes, with the winning purse valued at 100,000,000 gold!”

 

That’s going to buy the winning team a few good burials for their fallen comrades, with enough leftover to retire to boot! Remember, all teams are in it to win it. Running into another dungeon crawling team need not be a fight, but you can’t risk them getting to the Boss before you do, can you?

 

Stage 1 is more like an application than a true stage, as the heroes battle their way through the entrance area known in the nightmares of heroes as the Parking Lot of Pain! This regular looking parking lot has a few surprises in the form of Anti-Hero Mines scattered intermittently around the pavement. Those that evade the mines will then have to avoid the eagle-like sight of Crimbles, the Kobold Sharpshooter that makes his home in the water tower that overlooks the entire area! Head still intact? Time to march up the Sunderdome Steps as the famous Eleven Imps of Hate pelt the party with stones, small arms fire, and boulders. Only then will the party be allowed into the Sunderdome Proper and be admitted to Stage 2.

 

Stage 2 is the Sunderdome itself. A gigantic labyrinthine maze of twists, turns, and deadly traps! Players enter through the Lobby of Torment, assaulted at all sides by Rabid Elven Lobbyists my boys have injected with Kermitis C bacteria; highly illegal, very entertaining. From there, the Players must navigate the Vicious Maze of Horror and its assortment of Spike Cannon traps, more Anti-hero Mines, and the great many monsters that stand between the party and the elevator. Said elevator takes you atop the Sunderdome, where the final confrontation against whatever fiendish boss I have chosen to rip them limb from limb today awaits. If they can overcome this monstrosity of a problem, it’d be less of a problem than Paradox’s blundered release.

 

See, right there. RIGHT THERE is a better idea using Xcrawl and Dungeons and Dragons, than Dungeonland is; I suggest that you don’t question it. What? WHOS THERE!? NO DON’T TAKE ME BACK TO THE WHITE ROOM! AHHHH!
 
Its almost as if they thought I was crazy or something!
 

Fin.
-Necroscourge 1/30/13

Tabletop Tales: RPGObjects ‘Abandon All Hope’

by Necroscourge

Just like their video game counterparts, RPG’s fall into different genres as well as different styles of play. Some games glorify combat like a fighting simulator, while some focus on deep roleplaying experiences. Abandon All Hope is a Sci-Fi Psychological Survival Horror RPG effectively set in Hell, fully capable of immersing you in one of the worst possible situations a person can ever imagine. AAH presents an interesting concept; in the future, after a long string of wars, the tired planet turned to a paranoid utopian Meritocracy. One that grades everybody’s dispositions, attributes, and which even has a system of quantifying how crazy they are. Taking this knowledge, they proceeded to launch everyone, even those predisposed to violence on a big spaceship (called Gehenna) sent in a random direction. On this spaceship, you as a prisoner must survive both the robotic Custodians and your fellow prisoners.

 

Cross section of a typical Gehenna floor.
Cross section of a typical Gehenna floor.

 

Of course, it always gets better. At some point during the Gehenna’s voyage the ship was caught in a form of rip in the Space-Time continuum referred to by the prisoners as “Perdition”; that is for lack of a better word, Hell incarnate. This is both a weak and strong point of the game’s writing, as the book assumes that players begin after Perdition, and everything has already gone wrong, leaving a sense of confusion for those that don’t understand prison life as it is, much less how a prison behaves in hell. In addition, AAH has no source books, only additional adventures taking place in a canon plot string. The result is that the setting book provides only the core basics of how the ship operates with very little explanation of how things actually *work* on the ship. This can make Abandon All Hope a hard game to DM, despite how comparatively easy (and fun!) it is to actually play.

 

Character Generation is very simple and demonstrated in an easy step by step (and to the point) process, beginning with rolling up your Prisoner ID number. From there, you make choices for your inmate regarding his criminal background, attributes, mental health, and even your secret agenda which in turn opens up several Traits that can be taken to make your character even more unique. The result is that every player’s Prisoner will widely vary depending on their dice rolls and Trait choices. AAH also sports a very efficient balance: those who lack high statistics as weaker characters are given extra Build Points to buy more equipment and traits than a stronger character who has less dependence on good starting equipment.

 

Death Slither, a demon from the game.
Death Slither, a demon from the game.

 

In its inspirations, the game pays a lot of homage to Survival Horror games such as System Shock 2 and several high-casualty RPGs such as Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia, all of which is very evident by reading through the games rulings. However, amidst all of its detailed rules and systems there is always one thing that seems to be missing from every section. Fluff. As stated before, the game makes little to no mention besides casual references to “common” rules and laws amongst the prisoners and the vague warning that you will be searched for contraband often. There is very little mention of the inner workings of the prison itself besides the presence of robot Custodians and a Warden AI that rule the ship with an iron fist. The end result is that the book only contains rules and should be treated as a rulebook only (All of the story seems to be in the adventure modules), which as stated before makes this game hard to DM: if you lack basic knowledge of how prison life works, you will be playing this game wrong.

 

This is an important thing to mention, actually. This is a game based in a prison spaceship that tells you absolutely nothing besides basic descriptions of facilities and expects you to run the game as a Survival Horror Prison game. Honestly, I think detailing how a prisoner lives their daily life in this gigantic deathtrap of an ugly ass spaceship is sort of important. Things such as politics and the behavior of the Robot Custodians are often hinted at and mentioned at different parts of the book but there are no concise rulings actually made concerning the ships politics besides the enigmatic Wardens control of the ship and the SUGGESTION that there are demons running around.

 

A preview of the Abandon All Hope character sheet.
A preview of the Abandon All Hope character sheet.

 

Yes, Suggestion. You see while the game does detail several demons and how they generally appear, the rules for actually using demons are incomplete. A demon can spawn when a mental statistic meets or exceeds 10, however no mention is made of how often this occurs, or when another demon is allowed to spawn (I emailed the writer, all he could do is copy paste the rules on manifestations in the hope it answered my question. It didn’t). Demons are also mentioned to be prowling the decks often yet the Wardens Guide (DM Section) swears up and down that such beings should be rare due to their strength and shock value which leaves me the impression that they never considered that Abandon All Hope could be ran without the adventure modules.

 

While the game is criminally lacking in fluff, explanation, or plot, AAH does have a brisk explanation of the combat system within two pages and that is a plus. There is also a loosely imagined crafting and salvage system in place for those that want to research and build new items out of items collected from the various broken terminals and devices around the ship. As crafting systems go, AAH’s is easily my favorite. Every source of salvage can be checked once for materials, of which it has 0-2 different components you can grab that can be in turn used to make items and equipment using experience points. Certain characters may even to learn how to craft various items with toolkits, or even craft drugs.

 

Cover from the module 'Seeds of Rage'
Cover from the module ‘Seeds of Rage’

 

Despite the numerous weak points, AAH is a fairly well written game for those who just want to use the rules and play their own campaigns. There is very little effort required to make your campaign unique and interesting as the setting itself (while unexplained) is original enough to be interesting on its own, but could also easily be adapted to any space-borne setting from DOOM, all the way to Pandorum. Abandon All Hope is a Horror game by heart and its unexplained vacuous nature lends to the setting, adding to how lethal the game itself is.

 

Abandon All Hope is available on Amazon and various other websites where RPGs are sold. I do give you one word of warning however when purchasing books from the RPGObjects website: Only buy in bulk from them. My copy of Abandon All Hope came in a flat rate envelop with no protection whatsoever and thus arrived at my doorstep damaged and dogeared; the response I received from RPGObjects was an amatuer “Wow, How did that happen!? Pay for the shipping and I will replace it” response. I was also not happy that the PDF(Less than $3) is in full color while the print version of the book($25) is in black and white. This normally is not too much of an issue. In this case however, the most painful section to look at is the Demons part of the book; all of the art is bright and colorful causing the pictures to come out as muddy dark and grey abominations. This alone is enough reason to skip on getting a hard-copy in favor of the cheaper (and prettier) PDF if you have the means to.

 

Despite how much I hate their business practices (and owner), I do have to report that RPGObjects games (Of the four or five books of hardcopy that I own) are brilliant. For instance, I have been running a weekly Darwins World game for a little under a month now and it’s an extreme hit with my group, and when we start our weekly AAH game I’m sure it will be a hit too. In short, their books are good, but for the love of the maker don’t get anything non-bulk shipped by them if you like your books being in mint condition.

Abandon All Hope is a an easy to learn system akin to Traveler, and is perfect for Horror gamers.

 

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In the 27th century, after generations of war, Terra has finally entered a Golden Age. With the rise of a new global regime, and the installment of a Pan-Terran Meritocracy, efforts are made to stamp out crime and violence permanently. The solution: the ruthless rounding up of all murderers, vice offenders, dissidents and anarchists and loading them onto the colossal prison hulk, Gehenna. The concept is simple. Eradication of all lawbreakers from Terran society and indefinite exile to the furthest corners of space.

Five years into its automated voyage, the Gehenna has inexplicably vanished from all tracking and earth-based telescopes. Five years into is voyage, the Gehenna and the nine million souls aboard her has slipped through a spatial anomaly into another dimension entirely.

The event has wrought havoc on the ship and caused the death of many aboard. Thousands more are now free, running riot in the ship’s dark levels. Murderers, rapists, and maniacs are loose, but they are not alone. This new dimension is home to strange alien lifeforms that are drawn to the hate, misery, fear and suffering of those aboard.

Abandon All Hope is a science-fiction/supernatural horror role-playing game in which players take on the role of the condemned aboard an automated spaceship that has plunged over the edge of the known universe. Here, in another dimension, they must contend with escaped lunatics, robotic controllers, and monstrous aliens who feed off of their fear and suffering. Former convicts are now the heroes, and every day is a fight for survival. For those who seek it there will be chances to escape, to gain power, embrace damnation, or seek redemption…