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The Twelve Talismans of Eberron: Korranberg Chronicles

Oct 222011

Here continues the adventures of the “Antiquarians” in the employ of Uncle Zevis’ Curios and Antiques

When we last left our intrepid adventurers they had just disccovered a strange artifact within the tomb of the Lady of Plagues and had taken it back to Uncle Zevis for identification. After a bit of research he determined that it was Clat’Mmegoghu, a powerful talisman from the age of demons. Known as the “lord of the least” the talisman would allow anyone strong willed enough to command legions of vermin. It was a part of a set of twelve demonically powered talismans long thought to be legend. Uncle Zevis, seemingly driven by the promise of riches, sends his employees to the Library of Korranberg, where he’s called in an old favor to have them copy a rare divination spell from the personal spellbook of a mad, pre-war wizard.

Being the “thrifty” gnome that he is, Uncle Zevis hired the party out as guards on a caravan traveling to Korranberg. Wouldn’t you know it, a group bandits attacks the very same caravan. The party managed to drive off the bandits wile only loosing two of the wagons.

Making it to korranberg, they quickly discover that the specific book they’re looking for is missing, and has been for some time. Investigating the disappearance the group seems to have uncovered a strange conspiracy within the gnomish underclass. Tracking the clues to the a shuttered tavern, they confront a cell of deranged gnomes, recovering the spellbook just as the city guard surrounded the tavern. After a few hours of questioning the spellbook was returned to the library and the party was able to secure a copy of the spell as payment for uncovering the dastardly conspiracy.

Proud of their success (and finding that the caravan didn’t want the party on the return trip), Uncle Zevis sprang for third class tickets on the Lightning rail for their return trip. That’s when things got interesting.

Game Night Blog Carnival: Seven Dragons

General Roleplaying, Highlights for gophers, Reviews No Responses »

Sep 272011

Welcome to the new Game Night Blog Carnival! This is a feature we’re doing once a month with a few other RPG blogs. If you have an RPG blog, and would like to participate, check out the FAQ at the main Game Night page.
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When I started playing Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, the art in the books and modules deeply influenced the way I imagine how a game “looks”. The artist that captured my imagination more than the others was Larry Elmore. So when Looney Labs, one of my favorite game companies, released a card game with art by Larry Elmore, I couldn’t resist. The game is called Seven Dragons and the art is beautiful. The game plays like dominoes but with a few twists that really add to the fun. The object of the game is to be the first to connect seven dragons of the same color. The catch is that at the beginning of the game each player is dealt a goal card that is kept secret. The goal card tells the player which color of dragon that he must connect to win the game.

Seven Dragons plays up to five players and there are five corresponding main colors of dragons. The colors of the main dragons are red, blue, green, black, and gold. This means that there are still two more dragons out there. They are the rainbow dragon and the silver dragon. The rainbow dragon is a wild card as it is all colors at once. The silver dragon is the start card and takes on the color of the top action card on the discard pile. The action cards keep the game frombeing just a card version of dominoes. There are five action cards and each has a different color dragon on it which shows what color the silver dragon changes to when the action card is played. The five actions are trade hands, move a card, trade goals, rotate goals, and zap a card. The ability to move goals around makes the game more fun and encourages players to play it closer to the vest. That is really all there is to Seven Dragons.

I tend to write these reviews with role players in mind and this game is great to set the tone for Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, or any other fantasy game while waiting for everyone to arrive. We have played this one several times and have consitantly enjoyed ourselves. I can recommed this game for the art alone but I enjoy that it plays fairly quickly and is easy to play and learn. The rule sheet has plenty of examples of play and is very thorough. Seven Dragons also doesn’t break the bank at only fifteen bucks or so. It is a solid game at a good price.
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The next stop on the Game Night Blog Carnival is Glimm’s Workshop. The previous stop is The ID DM. Be sure to check out the main page of the Game Night Blog Carnival!

Game Night Blog Carnival: Martian Dice

General Roleplaying, Highlights for gophers, Reviews 2 Responses »

Aug 302011

Welcome to the new Game Night Blog Carnival! This is a feature we’re doing once a month with a few other RPG blogs. If you have an RPG blog, and would like to participate, check out the FAQ at the main Game Night page.
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As an old school role player, I love dice. I also have a soft spot for cold war era science fiction. Thus, Martian Dice by Tasty Minstrel Games appeals to me on several levels. You are a Martian and are trying to abduct Earth creatures. It is a quick and easy to learn press your luck game that generally plays in 10-20 minutes. The more players the longer the game. One nice thing about Martian Dice is that it can accommodate any number of players. The object of the game is to be the first to score 25 points.

That packaging looks familiar. (Image copyright Dayton Ward)

Martian Dice comes packaged in a dice cup that contains the 13 dice needed to play and an instruction booklet. The dice are black and feature five different symbols, one of which repeats. Each symbol has its own color. This makes it easy to quickly see what has been rolled. The symbols and their colors are red tank, blue human face, yellow chicken, white cow, and a green flying saucer which is on each die twice. The instructions are a full color two-sided fold out sheet that features clear rules and directions and a sample of play. The game is so easily picked up the instructions really will only be needed for first time play.

Once someone is picked to go first, that player rolls a 13 dice and sets any tanks rolled to the side. Tanks represent the Earth resistance forces and can prevent a player from scoring if they are not countered by death rays represented by the green flying saucers. After the tanks are set aside the player can choose one type of symbol to set aside. The human, cow, and chicken can only be chosen once on a players turn. Death rays can always be chosen. All the dice featuring the selected symbol are set aside and then the player can choose to reroll the remaining dice. This continues until the player decides to quit rolling, can’t keep anything, or runs out of dice. Once a player has seven tanks their turn is effectively over as well, since it is impossible to equal or exceed the number of tanks with death rays. Presuming that the player manages more death rays than tanks they score one point for each human, cow, and chicken. If a player manages to get at least one of each of the scoring symbols they get a three point bonus. This means that a perfect series of rolls that produces only scoring symbols would score 16 points. I’ve yet to see that happen but it is possible, so theoretically some one could manage to win in two turns. When one player reaches 25 points the current round is played to the end, possibly allowing another player to catch up and overtake the leader. In the case of a tie each player rolls 6 dice and the one with the most death rays wins.

Martian dice is an ideal game when you are waiting for folks to show up for a game session. It moves pretty fast but there is enough decision making and strategey to hold folks interest. It is certainly easy enough for kids to play and promotes some critical thinking. This one is super quick and fun as well as boasting a $15 price tag. We have played dozens of games and have had a blast. We’ve even named a roll featuring nothing but tanks and death rays a “Michael Bay” since it is all explosions and no points.

This one is worth it for anyone who plays games on a regular basis.

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The next stop on the Game Night Blog Carnival is Glimm’s Workshop. The previous stop is The ID DM. Be sure to check out the main page of the Game Night Blog Carnival!

Convention Fever

General Roleplaying 2 Responses »

Aug 112011

So it’s been a few days since I came back from Gencon (side note, the last Gencon podcast will go up Monday) and I’ve caught the Con fever. No, not Con Crud, I’ve gotten it into my brain that I should run a game at next year’s GenCon. If you don’t count D&D Encounters at the store I’ve never run a con game, and I’m having trouble deciding what I would want to run. I have a few ideas and I’m gonna’ squeeze a blog post out of them. Most of the following would need to be fleshed out in order to be any good, but I have a about a year to come up with something.

Ghostbusters: London vs. Madam Tussauds’ House of Wax

System: d20 modern

This is the first and so far strongest idea that I’ve had for a con game. It’s a scenario that I ran during my first Ghostbusters game and it wouldn’t be too difficult to adapt it to a convention environment. I’d need to create a few pregens (about 8 to give people some options) and a good one-sheet to cover the way that the proton packs work. For ease of gameplay I’d most likely be running it under d20 modern like I did the first time around (My “GURPSbusters” still need far too much work to expose them to people outside of my gaming group) and I’d have the opportunity to prestat all the wax characters encountered this time around instead of having to wing it.

Nintendo All-Stars

System: Mutants & Masterminds 2e

This is an idea that I’ve had for a while now. It started as a discussion as to how you would build Mario, Samus, Link (the easy one, btw) and other characters in a d20 system and which roles they would have in a party. After an overly long, overly nerdy discussion (the best kind of RPG discussion) ended with the decision that a more superhero based system would be better suited to the mashup (even though we ended up with some really sweet magic items that I’ve been keeping in my pocket for a rainy day) I wanted to work on the idea, but I haven’t done a lot with it because I could never come up with a the time/player interest but as a one shot it could work. The basic idea is that the heroes from the various Nentendo games would come together Justice League style to save a world from the combined forces of Gannon, Motherbrain and Bowser. I love the idea of all-stars of Nentendo together in one party battling their way to the flaying castle/mother ship/command center to do epic battle with the three great Nintendo villains.

Knight of the Living Dead

System: any I’m comfortable with, most likely GURPS

I’ve never understood how you could run a zombie apocalypse as anything more than a two or three session game, and to be honest a straight zombie survival game really doesn’t sound like a game that would work for more than a one-shot without mixing it with something else. The idea would be that a group of knights (I’m leaning towards them being Arthur and the Round Table knights) are escorting some Evil MacGuffin of Evil to be destroyed in the holy [noun] of [placename] when they’re forced to take refuge in the night by a massed army of the dead intent on capturing the MacGuffin. They must deal with the army outside and the people inside slowly being affected by the MacGuffin’s evil.

The rest of the ideas I have haven’t developed farther than simple plot seeds.

A group of wizard apprentices (one of each magic specialization) must flea for their lives when an enemy of arcane magic attacks and destroys a ceremonial meeting of the greatest mages of the land.
- I’m not sure where I would want to go with this one. It could be a race to the safety of an Arcane freindly kingdom. The apprentices could be looking for a weapon that could defeate the whatever that destroyed their masters.
A kidnapper is taking people from around the city and the PCs are the investigators trying to unravel the clues to stop him. Then weirdness starts.
- I have a good twist in mind that I want to flesh out a little more, and surprisingly it’s not “the kidnapper is a monster/Lovecraftian horror”.
Hercules and other great heroes must restore justice to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
- I really haven’t gone much farther than the high concept on that one.
Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego
- Exactly what it says on the tin. I loved the game as a kid, I loved both the cartoon and the quiz show. I would love to run this as a one shot. Truth be told I would love to run a campaign, but it would involve a lot more prep work.

That’s about it. I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts.

The Commandments of Gaming: #9 Thou Shalt Make the Pilgrimage

General Roleplaying 1 Response »

Jul 282011

The Commandments of Gaming is a series of blog posts where 8one6 gets up on a soapbox to proclaim from on high how he feels that games should be run or could be improved.
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Some of us are RPG geeks, some of us are Video Game Geeks, some are Sci-Fi Geeks, or Boardgame Geeks, or Romance Geeks, and some of us are just geeks, unbound by labels and willing to get our geek on about whatever happens to catch our fancy. It matters not what type of geek you are for there is a place where you can go to be surrounded by people like yourself. That place is called a convention.

Most of you reading this are here because you’re an RPG geek. For you I would recommend nothing less than partaking in at least one Gen Con. In my opinion it truly is the best four days in gaming (and with Wednesday pickup games it’s easily the best five days of gaming as well). It’s a place where you are surrounded by people who share your interests (something like 30,000 people attended last year), where you can meet the people who are responsible for the games you love (Like Mike Mearls of D&D fame or Jason Bulmahn of Pathfinder fame), where you can find the rare treasures you thought lost to the depths of time (last year WDR for an intact World of Greyhawk for $15), heck, you can even find love at Gen Con!

Perhaps you’re more into pop culture and sci-fi and fantasy, well Dragon*Con is the place for you. While Gen Con has media guests and costumes, compared to Dragon*Con they don’t hold a candle!

Perhaps your geekdom runs more toward video games, then PAX (and PAX East) are where you’re going to want to journey. Run by the guys who do Penny Arcade, PAX (in my opinion anyway) has relpaced E3 as the go-to Video Game convention.

There are dozens of other local conventions held every year (such as KantCon in Overland Park) I bet that if you look you’ll find one within easy drive distance. You owe it to yourself to get yourself (and as many friends as you can cram in a car) to a convention at least once in your life.