August 6

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 4: Most Surprising Game

Normally when it comes to writing I have a rough idea of what I’m going to pick, this question has given me lots to think abut; like what does it mean by surprising game?  So I scratched my head and thought long and hard about this question; what game has surprised me?

Does he mean a game that surprises that shock or horror; blood and gore; or something that makes you laugh?

After giving it a lot of thought it occurred to me that the game that has most surprised me of late is Fluxx and specifically Star Fluxx.  Two games that play differently because the players can change the rules of the game while it plays and being able to change the victory conditions makes a change; for now you can win through nothing more than luck if a player isn’t concentrating on the game at hand.

The game is cheap, simple to understand and above all a great way to kill an afternoon with beer and pretzels; although being English that is more likely to be tea and hob nobs 🙂

August 5

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 3: Favourite New Game of the Last 12 Months

Thanks to the deals offered by Bundle of Holding I’ve bought several games in the last twelve months, so trying to pick a favourite is going to be tricky and the whole point of this challenge is to select one game from my collection.

Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of playing a 60s campaign after the fun I had with the supers game I did a few years back.

One of the bundles yielded me this gem

THE AGENCY
A roleplaying game of sixties spies
and the supernatural
by Matt Machell

It’s a wonderful example of design, simple and keeps the action flowing which is the sort of thing I’m favouring these days.

There was another game I wanted to pick but it falls outside the remit of the challenge, perhaps another day?

Link to Matt’s homepage: http://eclecticdreams.com/

Category: Modern, RPG, spy | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 4

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 2: Kickstarter you’re most pleased you backed

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 2: Kickstarter you’re most pleased you backed

According to my Kickstarter history I’ve backed 94 projects thankfully most of them are digital so I’m not knee deep in packaging and boxes and about 10% have failed to be backed.

You could say I’m really enthused by the concept of Kickstarter and many of these projects aren’t really mainstream to be picked up by a standard distribution channel so in many ways crowd funding is the only way these games will see the light of day.

The project I’m most pleased I backed is Space: 1889 – SF Role Playing in a More Civilized Time.  I liked the original GDW game but the system was a bit wonky for my tastes, I bought the Savage Worlds Red Sands campaign and I felt let down by it.  The new edition from Clockwork is very good indeed and the Ubiquity system is a nice fit as well as letting me use material from other Ubiquity games.

 

August 3

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 1: Forthcoming Game You’re Most Looking Forward To

#RPGaDAY2015 – Day 1: Forthcoming Game You’re Most Looking Forward To

There are so many interesting games scheduled to come out this year it is hard for me to say which one I’m looking forward to the most.  Many of these games are ones I have backed via Kickstarter, so I would have to say the impending Thunderbirds board game is going to be the one I’m really looking forward to.

 

August 2

Catalogue update #8

I’m really making progress now with the catalogue, all my false starts have been mostly overcome and the Calibre library is growing.

I have found using Calibres main strength in maintaining a library to be a huge advantage of a directory listing of poorly named files. Once the book is imported, Calibre can also extract the stored metadata of the book and add it to the collection as well as being able to supplement it with on-line lookups.

When I started this journey I was only interested in using the ISBN as the primary way of identifying a book, now I have come to realise that embedded metadata is just as important to maintain an accurate collection.

I just wish game publishers would take this into account when creating their pdf files for distribution to the general public.

At the rate I’m going I may only have one or two updates left in this subject.

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August 1

D&D Starter Set

Recently I’ve been on holiday and one of my friends expressed a desire to play D&D; this was something he had never done but always wanted to try, so I agreed to run it for him.

I thought this would also be a good opportunity to try out the new D&D Starter set that had been released by Wizards of the Coast, partly because I was curious to see what the new version was like and I wanted to see how it introduced new players to the hobby.  In all my years of being a GM, I’d never had to break in a group, all the people I had gamed with had prior experience.

In anticipation of getting the game going, I sent links to the new rules on the Wizards website a couple of weeks beforehand and I also ordered the new starter set.

Inside the box.

Upon unboxing the set I was struck by the contents; which was one rulebook, one adventure, pre-generated characters and a set of dice.  This reminded me of the red box D&D set I had got for Christmas one year; the included dice were pre-inked, unlike the red box dice which had I coloured in with a white crayon.

I glanced at the rules and dove into the adventure; Lost Mine of Phandelver, which is a massive improvement on the old B2 Keep on the Borderlands adventure.  I also thought the pre-generated characters where nicely done and the backgrounds tied them to the adventure.

The Rules.

Reading the rules booklet gave me a flavour of the new 5th edition rules and I certainly liked what I saw.  There have been fundamental changes to the system; the concepts of advantage and disadvantage are not new ones but I think they are a major improvement over what has gone before.  I also appreciated the changes made to the magic using classes, you prepare your spells and then you use spell slots to cast them.  This really does give you a lot of flexibility as spells become more potent if you use higher powered spell slots to cast lower level spells, although doing it this way means that spells no longer increase with power as the caster does.  A first level Magic Missile will always give the same number of magical bolts if cast with a first level spell slot.

The designers used some of the 4E elements here, where you can take a short rest or long rest; long rests get you all healed up and takes some of the burden of not having someone who can heal the party.

The Characters.

Trying to get an existing gaming group on-board using pre-generated characters can be a time consuming process, a new gaming group is far more likely to welcome the chance to play something already done since it takes all the work out of the character creation game.

The five provided are good examples of the archetypes which first appeared in D&D 3, when the iconic characters first appeared.  Each character also has a reason for being there and an interesting background as well.

With characters selected, a brief explanation of what the players needed to know to get started, I kicked off by asking each of them to explain why they were working for the patron.

The Adventure.

Is pretty good, with a nice mixture of sandbox play and set-pieces as well, I had to find a good description of some of the monsters as saying it’s a goblin wouldn’t mean much to the new players.  It also meant I good embellish the descriptions a little 🙂

After five hours or so of play we packed up and I put all the characters into the box for another day.

Conclusion.

If I didn’t have so much Pathfinder materiel I may be tempted to go down the 5th edition route and use some of the older material I have with the rules.

Links:

D&D Starter Set Fantasy Roleplaying Tabletop Game

https://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/rpg_starterset

The official page of D&D5 complete with links to the downloadable rulebooks.


 

Dungeons and Dragons 5E: A Dozen Resources to Get You Started:

http://www.neuronphaser.com/dungeons-and-dragons-5e-a-dozen-resources-to-get-you-started/

A very useful collection of resources for the game.


 

 

Category: fantasy | LEAVE A COMMENT