Ring Side Report- 13 Age

 

TL;DR-13th age in a phenomenal RPG.  It combines the best of 4th, 3rd, and 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons all while creating its own soul.  A word to the wise, this system requires more audience and GM participation that most RPGs thought! 9.5/10

 

Basics-13th Age is a new RPG from Rob Heinsoo and Jonathan Tweet , some of the paragons from 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons.  After leaving Wizards, this creative group forged 13th Age alone with a few other projects.  This game focuses heavily on role-playing while not giving up on most of the crunchy bits that players of Dungeons and Dragons love.  The game is set in a world where 12 icons control the fate of the people there.  These icons represent things from races (Elf Queen and the Dwarf Lord) to aspects of nature and power (High Druid to Lich King).  The PCs all have a relationship to these icons and this relationship changes what occurs in every session.  In addition, each PC is unique for several reasons.  All PCs possess powers that most of their race to make it know right off the bat mechanically that the players are better than almost anyone.  In addition to this mechanical benefit, players also have a unique “thing.”  This “thing” ranges from being the world’s smartest Gnoll to a dwarf living in the wild wood in a treehouse in the tallest tree.  The uniqueness of the PCs really makes the game enjoyable, and in general keeps the game fresh.  There is a reason this game was on the most anticipated RPGs of summer 2013.

Mechanics or Medians, Means, and backgrounds oh my!–

Basics-It’s not hard to see DnD was the backbone of this system.  Roll a d20, add numbers, compare to other numbers.  Done.  It’s worked since Gygax, and it still works.  Where fun enters is what numbers you add.  For starters, let’s talk about the escalation die.  For this game, each round of combat after the first the GM places a die on the table.  This die is added to your d20 rolls for that round, and some powers trigger or are affected by it.  There are wizard powers that are not used up if used when the escalation die is even.  This brings combat to a head very quickly and ramps up the fun as combat gradually becomes more intense.

Powers/spells– Powers and spells how a strong 3.0 and 4th edition influence.  All characters have the basic melee and range attacks, but these look much closer to 4th edition powers then simple descriptions in the 3rd edition book.  For a layout point of view, this makes the game much easier to read.  I know some people flee at the slightly whisper of “powers” from 4th edition, but writing the spells and some combat abilities this way really makes the book more digestible.  Also, powers/spells have random refresh abilities.  Some powers and spell can be used again if after  use you roll a 11 or better on a d20.  While this makes the game more random, I will admit it makes the game more fun.  All the standard 3rd and 4th edition powers are in the game, so your favorites are there or coming quickly.

Skills-This game has absolutely no skills, but replaces them with backgrounds.  At character creation you get eight points to place in your backgrounds.  Backgrounds are what ever you want.  There is no limit to this except your imagination.  Now your background could be as simple as “climber+4”, but that’s boring!  What if you were the “savage tree hermit+4”!  The second implies more about who you are the just a single ability.  When you want to do anything that failure would matter, the GM will ask for a roll.  You perform the standard 3rd edition math of d20+skill, but now you can look at the GM as a player and say “As a savage tree hermit, Im used to scaring travelers away from my home, can I add my savage tree hermit background to the roll to intimidate the guards?”  Odds are your GM will say yes in that case.  This makes what you were before the adventure that much more important.  The system is an AWESOME change to the standard gaming landscape of skill use and metagaming.

Medians and Means-This game is not super numbers crunchy.  Don’t expect a hard slog through a book full of different way to game the system. This game aims to put roleplaying center, but it doesn’t forget its crunchy, rule heavy roots.  The game prefers to use standard damage for its monsters.  It also advices the players to do the same.  For defenses, the players use the middle of three abilities to find what defense they should use.  Again, this discourages metagaming and power-gaming as it forces the players to take into account how focusing on one ability will hurt their characters.  Characters can still power game, but this new method for defenses makes a person think a bit more in how they build their characters.

Movement-Like many abstract games, this game uses abstract movement rules.  Basically characters are near, far, or engaged with other characters/enemies.  This style really makes the game move fast.  Honestly, I’ve had combat with six things running around end in less than 15 minutes!  In an average Pathfinder or DnD game, that’s at LEAST an hour.  Spells are built to take this in account and it really helps the flow of game play.  I wish more games were designed like that!

Icon Rolls-At the start of each game session, for each point of a relationship with an icon of the world, you roll a d6.  Getting a six means you get a boon from the icon.  Getting a 5 means you get a boon but with some strings attached.  All this is at GM’s discretion, but it is fun.  Keeps the GM from planning too much and makes the world fresh.  I like it.

Odds and Evens-A final note, dice rolls matter, but it tends to be more than just the total.  Some dice rolls look at if the die is even or odd.  Some powers refresh on an odd roll in combat. Some monsters get to add the escalation die if they get even or odd d20 rolls in combat.  Its more random, but its fun.  New mechanics to keep me on my toes.

 

Theme and Story-Here is where you will either absolutely LOVE the game like me or may possibly be turned away.  As a default, the world is very open.  Honestly, the world building section of the book is about 10 pages or less.  This is very much done on purpose and not a lazy move by the writers.  The writers of the book want each game to be its own thing.  You decide if dwarfs love scotch or apple martinis.  There are common elements such as the icons, but how a negative relationship with the icon plays out is up to you.  Its amazingly fun, but it could cause less creative groups to become paralyzed.  As a group, you build your world on the fly.  If you want a more developed world, then you may want to check out other games or worlds such as the Primal Thule kickstarter that just ended.  To use a food analogy, 13th Age by itself will assume that you’re fine with short order cook work rather than already scheduled catering.

 

Writing in the Book-I want to bring some special attention to how the book was written.  This book has the same vibe that Shadowrun has.  Its much less a white washed, corporate generated book.  This book honestly feels like two guys telling you about some game idea they wrote as are handing you the word file via dropbox.  That’s an AWESOME thing.  I like that I feel the authors talking to me via text.  Even more, the two main authors openly debate with one another across the text or give how the bend the rules of THEIR OWN GAME to make it their own!  One a page, you will see a symbol next to some text and it if accompanies by a small section of someone’s thoughts.  Often this is countered by another author’s symbol and their thoughts.  This whole process fills me with happies in my heart!

 

Summary-A great game.  Its got some flaws, but any book will.  It plays fast and makes the GM really make some choices for the world.  Dice mechanics are great and fresh.  Nothing feels stale.  Nothing is just rehashed 3.5.  Players matter and are the crème de la crème of the world.  Its about $50 bucks at http://www.pelgranepress.com/ with PDF as part of the deal.  To me PDF come standard with a book and Pelgrane Press seems to agree.  Go buy it. 9.5/10

 

Living Games-There is a Living game much like DnD encounters.  Want an adventure to test drive this game after you bought the book?  Crown of the Lich King is FREE!  Go to http://www.pelgranepress.com/ and ask nice and they will send you a link to Google docs where you can get the whole document for FREE!  Did I mention is FREE, even for home play?  Go NOW!

Elder Sign by Fantasy Flight Games

 

Basics:  This is a simpler version of Arkham Horror by Fantasy Flight games. Each Player takes the roll of an investigator trying to stop an elder thing enter this world.

 

Mechanics: Players select a location in the museum and roll dice to get combinations listed on the card.  The mechanics are similar to Yahtzee while you look for combination in dice.  Each card lists what occurs when you succeed or fail.  The mechanics are simple yet fun.  Also, the game is cooperative, simple, and goes up to eight players.  All this combines to make a really great time!  5/5

 

Theme: Here is where the game really suffers.  When you play Arkham Horror, the theme really shines through, but in this game unless you make a serious effort, the theme of the Cthulhu mythos can get lost.  It’s fun, but don’t expect edge of your seat terror like you can get in Arkham Horror.  Also, since the events and rooms of the game are random and you use the full deck of each for each elder thing, there is no real difference in game play for each boss monster.  While each elder thing does have a small game effect, it’s not enough.  I have the same complaint for Arkham Horror.  2/5

 

Components:  Fantasy Flight games LOVES to make all kinds of components, and this game does not disappoint in that department.   And, like any other Fantasy Flight game, these components do not disappoint.  Great quality stuff game parts.  Great art.  Slightly smaller than I would like, but the game is in a small box so I understand why they are the size they are.  4.5/5

 

Highs: Playing a fun game with friends that can fit almost any amount of friends.  Make no mistake, despite my complaints, this game is quick setup, easy to teach, and seats one to eight players.

 

Lows and suggestions: No real Cthulhu feel with a kind of flat delivery.  The game plays quick, but it gives up story to make the speed faster.  The mobile app version of Elder Sign has a more set feel with only selected places/events and a more involved narrative.  In Mansions of Madness, the game is much more restricted as only some sets of cards are used for each story.  A similar implementation would have really helped with this game.  Now, I play this at least once every three weeks, but I would love to be more involved in a story.

Final Thoughts:  It’s a great game, fun, but a slightly flawed execution.  Great game, pick it up and play with your friends.  Quick and fun, but don’t expect to be completely swept away by the story. 11.5/15

I recently stole then bought the Fate Core system, let’s give it the run down…

 

Let me start with a story…The scene is Gen Con 2011.  I was but a young lad, and even back then I was an ass.  I walked from retailer to retailer asking what con specials they had.  I approached the Evil Hat booth and saw the then new(er) Dresden Files RPG using the Fate system.  I asked about con specials and they replied “If you buy the book today, you will get a FREE pdf of the game!”  They acted like this was the most amazing idea ever, to which I quickly replied “I’ve already STOLEN the PDF, what are you going to give me today!”  As you might guess, negotiations quickly drifted south from there.  Later I walked to the Transhuman booth and asked about con specials and they gave me a slip of paper.  I stared at them blankly and they explained that that paper showed a torrent address.  I could get the COMPLETE Eclipse Phase RPG for the low, low price of FREE!  All I needed was an internet connection.  I’ve since bought both the Dresden and Eclipse Phase books, but I felt like I got more from Transhuman than Evil Hat so I bought Eclipse Phase first.  Why did I tell you this story? Well….

 

Evil Hat’s BOLD strategy-In the days of the bit torrent, your intellectual property isn’t really all that secure….in fact as I showed above, it’s as secure as I am lazy.  Paizo may try to keep their property off the torrents, but any book they put out is on the internet as soon as it’s released.  Evil Hat has decided to stop wasting time on the fight.  The latest version of Fate is completely free.  Here.  Go to the website, and get the stuff free.  Their idea is simple-“pay us what it’s worth”  You can pay from $0 to all the money for the PDF.  Evil Hat has taken the stand and sends the message that “If the product is quality, you will pay for it.  You can take all you want, but if the product isn’t supported then we won’t make more.  If you want this game to still happen, then you have to pay for it like anything else.  At the same time, we will EARN your money!”  To me, the men and women at Evil Hat have done a stare down with the 1337 h4z0rs out there (kids like me with the Pirate Bay and time) and said “Look, if you don’t give us money, we will stop.  You will get all the current stuff free, but there can’t be a future if you don’t help!  But give us a chance to EARN your money” And for that, I gave them money.  I decided that even before I would download it, I gave them $10 bucks.  Now, that’s before I read the thing.  I think novel strategies need to be rewarded (The book’s great, don’t worry, but I thought they earned this from me at least).  Based on what I’ve seen on the internet, this is where things need to go for at least the base book of a system.  The free idea of 3.5 DnD and the open gaming license is fantastic, and it serves to make the game that much more available (and profitable) for everybody.  I am much more likely to play a game if I get a free trial and I will watch a movie if get a preview.  The idea of paying over $100 for a monster manual, DM guide, and players guide sight and game unseen is crazy.  Evil Hat is planning on releasing source books or splat books for their worlds later and these will be behind a pay wall, but if I love the game and settings I’m much more likely to buy instead of steal.  This is where Evil Hat has planted their beach head and for that they will get my money.  If you want our hobby as a whole to still be a hobby in a few years, you should throw your support behind this too.  We CAN’T keep stealing and expecting things to still happen.

 

With that, let’s look at FATE…

 

The base mechanics-Like all RPGs you are telling a collaborative story.  Let’s look a little closer at  how you do it with Fate.

Dice and Numbers-if you play many board games you see two general categories: games with a high degree of randomness (Yahtzee), and games with a low degree of randomness (Puerto Rico).  You can kind of see this same split in RPGs.  Dungeons and Dragons is a great game, but it’s very random.  You can have the BEST plan to fight the dragon, but if you roll ten 1s in a row, you will die.  Fate is an almost dice-less system.  When you do something that needs dice (sometimes you don’t need to roll) you roll four six sided dice.  The dice have 0, -, or + icons on them.  0 is neutral, – is a negative, and + is additive.  This gives you a positive, negative, or neutral result ranging from -4 to +4, and you add to your skill total.  Done.  Since the most you can get is a four point swing (a 1 out of 81 chance), the game is not very random.  And that’s ok.  If you’re the world’s greatest swordsman, odds are even when you fail, you’re still MUCH better than the average loser henchmen.

Aspects-Here is the real meat and potatoes of the game.  EVERYTHING has aspects.  Think of aspects as descriptions of things.  They describe locations, pieces of locations, your character in general, your character in specifics, your special abilities, etc.  You gain and lose these as needed for the story and some of the mechanics.  When you take damage you can gain these to represent the fact you got hurt like a Black Eye or really severe ones such as run through with a sword.  You use these to describe your person as well as when you use FATE.

Fate-Fate is the name of the game (literally) and the currency of the game.  Each game you get so many fate chips.  You can use fate to add to a roll, reroll, add aspects of things, or take narrative control of the game.  Those last two are really huge.  Unlike in DnD or Pathfinder where the GM’s word is almost law, in this game everybody can take a small part as the GM.  You can also add aspects to things like places and people.  This can be something as simple as doing an action to add the aspect partially blinded an enemy by throwing sand in the face.  Fate is also how the GM uses aspects of your character to motivate you to role play the character you built.  If you have an aspect such as country boy and the GM says “you’re in a large city you get lost and end up in an ally where a gang is gathered around a young person” while holding up a fate chip, you can take the chip and say that’s exactly what happened.  At the same time, you could look a the GM and say “Well I see a fight is brewing, but since I’m a country boy I know how to throw a punch since I’ve been in a few bar brawls so I should get a +2 bonus to my first attack.” And the GM will give it to you. These chips form an economy of the story where you spend them to add aspects to the story and change it as you all see fit.    

The Book Itself-The book/PDF is a good value.  If you get the book for free, it’s even better.  However, if you give the $5-$10 price that’s suggested for a PDF it’s not that bad.  Honestly, when I see a Kickstarter and the price for a PDF is $10 bucks, I give it without even hearing the pitch.  And thats to a random 3rd party who I don’t know from Adam.  Evil Hat’s proven themselves to me!  As I’ve played FATE before (The Dresden Files), $10 bucks was well worth the book.  Go give them some money, it’s worth it.

System Description in the Book-The system is well laid out.  They book does an excellent example explaining the system.  It’s not a hard system as shown above, but it’s pretty foreign when compared to D20 based systems.  I like it, but the only problem I had was the base book didn’t really give much advice on how to make enemies.  Now I know the plan is to release setting specific books so more enemies will show up in these, but I almost felt like the exclusion of example bad guys was intentional to set up the sale of these books.  Odds are I’ll buy a few because the game is fun, and it will prep me for my own fate game ideas.

What’s Good and Bad– The good and the bad of FATE is really the same two sided coin and it has to do with narrative control.  Let’s use DnD/Pathfinder as the neutral ground of a game needing one person to run the game (GM) and ~four people to play the game (players).  Games like Kobolds Ate My Baby! (ALL HAIL KING TORG!) are almost built for no GMs as the person with the lowest roll has to GM (sucks to be that person!), while FATE almost seems like a game where everybody has to want to be the GM.  In a DnD game, you cannot be completely engrossed at all times, but in a FATE game you have to be much more attentive.  To get the most out of this system, you have to want to wrestle the story away from the GM from time to time and really make it your own.  Now, that is an EXCELLENT thing, but you need the right group for that.  That group can be hard to find when you have a group of people who really only want to play their own PC and leave it at that.  Also, some people may not like the use of Fate chips to direct the characters.  As a cardinal rule in DnD even if you say your character is a crazy psychopath who is chaotic evil, the DM has no real way of making you act out those impulses.  This game focuses on story over mechanics, and that’s great. BUT, you need to make sure that’s the kind of game you say you want to play.  Don’t let this scare you; this kind of back and forth narrative control is amazing!  When you completely change the flow of the story by playing your character well and using aspects you created you feel like a writer of grade A fiction, not just a guy rolling dice.

System Neutrality– This system does not feature a default world.  That may be daunting to some players and GMs.  Extra books are coming to help you, but right now the world is your oyster.  This is good and bad as the freedom is great, but may paralyze some groups before they even start by too many blank pages for them to fill.  If you want to try this game and need a place to start, the Dresden Files RPG has two books and can really get you jumping into the books right away.

 

Final thoughts-Great game for which I’m looking forward to expansions.  I like it, but the flow of story may prove daunting to some RPG groups set in the traditional GM to PC information flow.  Honestly, go get this for $5 bucks and support something new!  8.5 out of 10

I was one of the lucky few to get a copy of the Origins release of Shadowrun 5th edition (5e).  I’ve played 4th edition and love it, but what do I think about the new edition?  Let’s go into detail.

TL; DR-Great changes to a great system to make things run faster and better.  9.5/10

Physical Book-The physical book has to at least be five pounds!  That is impressive itself.  Just that alone pretty much justifies the $50 price tag, but wait there’s more!  The art is gorgeous and it’s on high quality glossy paper.  No, your sweaty hands will not rub off the ink.  I hate cheap paper and ink…  Based solely on the book quality, I was very happy.

Mechanics-While the game world may have changed, the mechanics really haven’t.  Take a skill, add the proper attribute, and roll that number of dice.  Quick, easy, fast.  That makes the game feel like Shadowrun.  You take a brick of d6’s, roll them, and pray for 5’s and 6’s.  Classic fun.  What did change is some of the smaller details.  I’ve seen two really big ones that stuck out in my mind: limits and attributes in tech.  In Shadowrun 4eA, you could roll 30 dice and get 30 successes (if you somehow do, buy a lotto ticket), but this doesn’t really make much sense.  You shouldn’t be able to bench press a Buick if your body and bones would break under the stress no matter how strong you are.  In the same way, if you are a silver-tongued devil, but you can’t read a person worth a damn, you can’t really do amazing feats of persuasion.  The limits in 5e prevent you from doing too much at a time.  Limits have also been added to gear to indicate that cheap gear is cheap for a reason (it doesn’t work that well).  The second thing is how much tech is dependent on attributes now.  To defend against a hacker you now use the abilities of the person it’s attached to or who is controlling/protecting it.  As someone who played a 4e hacker, it just stuck out in my mind as I ran the game.  There are smaller details like no multiple attacks in a round, just more penalties to the defender, but all and all the rules feel like Shadowrun, and that’s a good thing.  But at the same time, the game removed a bunch of smaller details from 4e.  There were fiddly bits that really didn’t make things better, they just added complication and that only served to keep the uninitiated out.  I tell you now, this edition of Shadowrun is the most user friendly for the hardcore runner and the fresh faced chummer out there.

Character Generation-Here is why I think 5e was created.  I LOVED 4e Shadowrun because of the customization, but that customization scared away more players that I can really count.  At character generation, you can build some impressive creations, but you can also make a problem that will only frustrate you to no end.  5e fixes this by adding a five by five grid for character generation.  If you can play simple Sudoku, you can now make a Shadowrun character in about 10 minutes.  The grid makes life SO MUCH EASIER!  Basically, you pick what you think is most important for your character: race (plus bonuses), ability points, magic ability, skills, and money.  The higher the row you pick, the better the items in that row.  This reinforces the mechanics and theme quite nicely.  Great mages can’t have too much money, but they don’t need much because it’s all internal.  Deckers and Riggers need nice toys, but magic isn’t important to them.  Pick how important things are to you, pick the row of that and move on.  Skill points and ability points are now 1 to 1 at character generation making life that much easier for quick start games and GM doing demos (THANK YOU!).  My only problem is gear is still hard to do.  I’m waiting for the gear packs to come out and make character generation an even easier process.

Theme-Shadowrun is cyberpunk.  Rolling d6’s for everything is an abstraction, but no more so than rolling a d20.  Aside from the realities of RPGs and dice, the game and theme work excellently together.  I was somewhat iffy on the limits, but they really make things feel more “real” in my fake fantasy game.  I even like the new rules for extended tests.  The quick thing is you can repeat some tests, but each time you do you lose one die.  Lose all the dice and you can’t get any better on some task.  Using attributes makes the tech heavy classes have to spread a bit more evenly on their persons instead of just buying new gear.  The priority system drives home choices you make and how they affect the person you’re playing before you even touch dice.  That makes me happy.  What I almost play a game making my person (one that will not kill my person as I make them, looking at you Battle tech!), it makes me happy.  Again, this edition of the game makes me very happy.

The elephant in the room-I’ve gushed over this edition for over a page, but the big question that I think most of you will ask is, is 5e worth it?  I had a friend ask me because less than 2 years ago, I bought all the 4eA books and now they are not really useful.  And after reading the book, and playing the game, I have to have to say a resounding yes!  The game is different enough to make it more fun.  I loved 4eA, but this game makes it better.  No messy character generation.  Fewer complicated rules for complication’s sake.  Less obfuscation to keep the more casual gamer out.  I was less happy when I bought my first Shadowrun 4e book then a year later bought the beginner box and had to get a 4eA book, but the 5e book is worth it on many levels.  It’s over 5lbs for one and for two the game feels right.  It’s fun, fast, and quick.  It feels like Shadowrun should feel, and I know that hard to get just right (fun).  The game moves quick now.  You don’t have one character steal the show by making 6 attacks in a round; more people get to shine in even clumsy GM hands (fast).  And finally, you don’t have the character generation problem.  When I ran my first demo of the game, we had two books and 7 people who did not have a character.  Two hours later, we had fully fleshed out mages, riggers, snipers, and adepts.  This makes the game quick. And this quickness makes it available to more gamers.  I really do hope this is the year of Shadowrun.  Even better, by making a new edition, I am less intimidated by the number of books out there.  In 4e, there were so many books, it was hard to know where to start; now I think I’ll be able to get them as they come out.  If you’re listening Catalyst, check out 13th ages’ model where I buy from a friendly local gaming store and you give me a free PDF.  That would make my day….

GM fun-I love the game, but only GM’ed a few times before.  Since this is a new edition, I’ve decided I want to break more into GM’ing this game since we are all on equal footing.   Since this is an RPG, the players immediately went off the rails and destroyed the well written plot within minutes.  I had to improvise quickly.  Using the new rules and book, I was able to keep the game rolling quickly and we all had a great time.  This looks very promising.

Non sequitur-Now a days, I do most of my reading about RPGs on my ipad.  This book came out only as a giant tome (yes, Catalyst, your book is so big it’s a tome not just a book).  It was somewhat strange to read this book about the future on ancient paper….I’m getting the PDF when it comes out (July 11th and ~$20, yes, you should go get it)

Summary-New, approachable edition of the game.  For ~$20 it’s worth every penny for the book.  Got get it!  Great changes to a great system to make things run faster and better.  9.5/10

Summary: A great game with fun components.  Not exactly the game you would expect…and that’s an AWESOME thing. 9/10

How I Found This Game:  I was walking through the Origins Game Convention and saw one of the smaller booths.  It was late in the day on Sunday and I saw a smaller booth manned by a single person.  I struck up a conversation and was instantly enamored by the quality of the smaller miniatures.  After looking over the small box game of Dungeon Heroes, I decided to buy based on the pitch of the salesperson.  Later, while looking over the game, I saw the sales person was none other than the game designer Michael Coe.  Its always great to buy a game from the person who made it.  It shows the highest devotion to their product.

Mechanics:  DO NOT THINK THIS GAME IS A SIMPLE DUNGEON CRAWL!  The best game to compare this to is almost chess.  If either player of this game players this game as just a tile laying/simple fighting game, you will lose badly.  This is not a bad thing; it makes the game amazingly fun.  The game has asymmetric game play, and for a game that plays in less than 15 minutes, it is amazing!  The heroes have four actions per turn and they can spend those actions to move heroes or activate powers like the wizard which reveals tiles or the cleric that heals people.  The rogue and warrior do immediate actions by disabling traps or killing monsters, respectively.  The dungeon overlord first places four tiles each turn in the passive phase.  How he places these tiles really makes the game and leads to a game of cat and mouse.  What really makes this interesting is the game features a standard set of tiles and a random mix in of tiles so each game is different even if two games are played by the same people.  When the dungeon overlord is out of tiles the game switches to the active phase.  In the active phase, the dungeon overlord then replaces the monster tiles with little figures of the monsters.  This is when it really becomes chess.  All monsters only move one space a turn and only four can move.  The game continues until the heroes find three treasures or until they are all dead.  This is a fun mechanic and despite the complexity involved, it plays quick and doesn’t get stale despite how simple the game is or at least appears to be.  Great mechanics supporting excellent game play.

Art and Theme: The theme of the game is a dungeon exploration of a group of heroes.  It carries through pretty well.  The art is pretty good.  I like it, but some of the text is pretty small on the dungeon tiles.  On the heroes, the icons do get the point across well.  The true winner here is the figures.  The game comes with a number of wooden cut painted figures.  They are well done and look great.  Recently, Gamelyn Games had a kickstarter for mass producing these figurines.  It was funded, and based on this game alone, I gave them money because even if you bought the game and used the figures only, this is a value!

Packaging:  This game was made by gamers who love you.  You can tell this by what’s in the box.  The life dials are dice.  You do not use the dice as dice, but to keep track of hit points.  There is no reason for the dice except to enhance the theme of a dungeon crawl with your friends.  Besides this, the people who designed this game truly love you because of one reason; the game includes smaller bags for the tiles.  As a gamer, when I see this in a game, it makes me think the people who made it care for me.  The designers know I will need them to keep things in order and when they include it for me, it shows they are gamers who want their players to have the most fun with the smallest fuss.

Summary:  This game is great, fun, and fast.  I can’t underscore how much fun is packed in the smallest package.  Give it a look if you see it for sale. 9/10.

Dwarven Miner

I was recently at the Origins Game Convention, and I picked up my copy of Dwarven Miner from Rather Dashing Games while there. Let’s have a look:

Art and Theme-The theme is pretty simple. You’re a dwarf, so you do Dwarf-y stuff like mine and make stuff. It’s pretty classic, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact the theme and art are very well done. I like the box, card, and placemat art. Everything does feel sufficiently Dwarf-y. As I played and keep looking over the art and cards, I thought this was a fun universe and would love to play more games or RPGs here. Some of the art is somewhat simplistic, but this is mostly on the art for the resource cards and on the dice. It gets the point across, but its not as in-depth as the art for the item. All and all a solid theme with great art: 8/10.

Mechanics-The goal of this game is to get the most number of points that you earn by satisfying victory point cards. Simple enough, but not bad. Points are scored by crafting all the items for a patron. Patrons will want between 2 and 4 items. Each turn, you get six dice. You roll the dice and can reroll the dice as many times are you want. However, if you roll an ork face, you cannot reroll that die. The die faces generate resource cards that you can store or trade in for items. In addition, you can also roll a stealing symbol. When that occurs, you steal a card from a player of your choice. More symbols means you can steal rarer items. This and some additional card effects are really the only way to interact with other players. When you craft the items for a patron, you get the points for the patron. In addition, some patrons give you extra powers or affect the table in some way. The rogue will kill another patron, thus depriving someone else of a power. The engineer will give you extra storage space for items for free. There is a good variety of patrons and they really drive the game with their effects. Also, you can see some time went it to this design as the higher point characters help the other players so the game has an auto-balance built in. It tends to fight the runaway victor problem and all players end up with a close game when someone finally ends the game. You can learn the game in five minutes and play a full game in ~45. That’s the mark of a good game: 9/10

The Good: Solid Gameplay with good art. Well thought out with nice cards and cardstock. Well worth my kickstarter money! I was also able to meet the guys who made the game and their pretty cool. So, good all around.

The Bad: The game feels kind of short. I like the length, but the goal is 30 points. This isn’t a problem, but some of the cards give you 15 points at a crack. Good to see some high point cards, but since patrons are secret you might just have a person win in less the 4 turns. I would almost like the game to be 60 points.

The Ugly: STICKERS! The game comes with 6 blank dice and a page of stickers. You have to make the dice. There are nice directions for that, but still…stickers? You guys get a pass on this one as you are a smaller company, but one day when you have your yacht and you’re summering in the Mediterranean due to the board game fortunes you’ve amassed, I want a deluxe edition with nice carved or painted dice.

So in the end , Dwarven Miner is a great game that plays quick and is fun. Give it a try! For me it’s a solid 8.5/10.

The Origins Rundown

How I spent my time

At the Origins Gaming Convention, I worked for Baldman Games.  If you get a chance and love DnD (4e or DnD Next), check them out.  Wednesday I was almost late for my first slot.  After a frantic drive across Ohio, I made it to the show just in time.  I ran Show Special 5-3 Wednesday night.  Spec 5-3 and Spec 5-4 are adventures set in the Living Forgotten Realms (LFR).  LFR is an awesome living campaign that features a large catalogue of free adventures set in the faerun.   Afterwards, I went and met my roommates and passed out.  Thursday, I ran Special 5-3 at 8am.  In between slots, I ran as fast as I could to the con floor to get the most exclusive item of the con:  the Shadowrun 5e rules!  I was able to get there in time and get my books signed!  At 1pm and 7pm, I ran a new adventure, Show Special 5-4.  The next day, I ran Spec 5-4 at 8am and 1pm.  That night I ran Living Divine Intro 1-7.  Living Divine is another 4th edition living game.  In this game, players take the role of goddlings who are discovering their power.  Check out the games here.  Saturday, at 8AM I was back to playing LFR with SPEC 5-4.  That afternoon and evening, I ran my first battle interactive.  For those who have never played in a living campaign, a battle interactive (BI) is when several tables are all playing concurrently on a joint adventure where they can interact with one another.  Holy Cow, that was the most fun and stressful time I have ever had while DMing.  We stated at 1PM and went till 12AM with an hour break.  If you get a chance, try a BI.  Its a great feeling of community when everybody is working together at a hobby they all love.  Sunday, I was off!  Great working for Baldman Games, but I wanted to spend a bit of time seeing the sites.  First things first, win a con exclusive for my brother at Kings of Tokyo.  With that done, I headed off to the sales floor.  Here I spent way to much money and talked to a bunch of different companies.  Great to see so many high ups at the con.  I learned a bunch of information about the con and had a ton of fun seeing how the business works.  I had a blast, but eventually had to head home.  I can’t wait till next year.

My thoughts on all the companies I met along the way

Wizards of the Coast and Paizo

The big two!  Its kind of sad, but neither had a sizable presence in the dealer hall.  Both had their wares on display as local dealers sold both stuff, but I like to see high ups in the company.  Next year be here!  You being here is 10 times better than having your grunts like me run your living games.  It makes me think you care if you talk to me at the smaller of the big cons.

Catalyst Games

These guys won Origins.  Hands down.  Why?  Well they got the most of my money.  They released a small print run, only for Origins, of the new 5e rules.  Heck, the guy who sold me my copy was the guy who wrote the damn book!  Seeing a big company have that much interaction with the fans; you win.  That’s it.  I plan to run more of your living game (Shadowrun Missions), especially because the guy who sold me the adventure book for Shadowrun Missions 5th edition wrote the book and worked the register.  I also met Talon the Catalyst booth guy and gave him some crap as I bought at T-Shirt.  He took it in stride and that kind of fun always makes me like a company.

Rather Dashing

I was about to write these guys off, but they made me love them so much harder.  I joined their kickstarter and was waiting for my game copy in the mail.  I saw them selling copies in the dealer hall and had not received my copy yet.  I was about to start some serious crap in the dealer hall, but when I mentioned I kickstarted the game they asked to see proof.  I showed them my phone and they gave me a copy.  NO QUESTIONS ASKED.  That made me love them.  No run around, no emailing, done!  I talked about the steampunk motif of things and they told me about an upcoming novel.  So here’s the deal Rather Dashing, you kickstart that, you get my money.  You make an RPG in that world you’re making, you get more.  Great guys, heads of the company shilling their stuff.  Win all around!

Albino Dragon

Here is the first small company I want to highlight.  These guys were great.  Cash Only, but great.  They were marking down items on the last day of the show and that drew me in.  I bought a T-shirt and Cthulhu playing cards from them.  Then they told me about some of the games they have previously made.  They offered a deal on Ace of Spies and Genegrafter.  I bought them right away.  I can’t wait to check them out.

Z-Man Games

Here I got to meet Zev Shlasinger head of the company.  Remember what I said about meeting company heads and me buying things?  I recently heard about Dungeon Petz and I wanted to buy a Vlaada Chvatil game.  They had it and they were marking things off.  Done and done.  Can’t wait to play it.

 

Stronghold Games

Here I got to meet Stephen Buonocore.  More company heads!  I wanted to buy CO2, but they were out.  I will have to wait till later!

Iello Games

Great games from these guys.  My brother LOVES Kings of Tokyo.  Took me 5 times, but I won the con exclusive standie for the game.  Great game.  Looking for more and will buy the expansion for his birthday.

Ubisoft

Well this is new.  They guys had a online card game.  I’m somewhat conflicted on what I think about this.  Its called Duel of Champions.  They gave away cards with in game gold.  I’ll give it a shot.

Gamelyn Games

I met Michael Coe.  He’s the founder of the company of the company and he sold me a copy of Dungeon Heroes.  Its a simple dungeon crawler.  I can’t wait to play it.  Good times.

 

And that was my con.  Looking forward to seeing the games I bought and can’t wait to play the RPGs.

I’ve been playing a few games of The Doctor Who Card game by Cubicle 7.  Here is what I think

Mechanics-This game is pretty simple to play and easy to learn.  What makes this game interesting is you don’t get to keep all the cards you are dealt.  You MUST pass a number of cards to the player on your right.  This means you know you will give great cards to your opponents, but you have to by the rules.  Every turn you start with five cards in your hand.  With these cards you have a few options.  You can play location cards that give you points at the end of the game.  You can play enemy cards to attack other players’ locations and gain their points.  You can play heroes to defend locations.  Attack and defense cards are played face down with higher number winning a combat.  This aspect makes both sides gamble to see who will come out on top.  You can play support cards to give effects listed on the cards.  You can discard cards to gain time points that allow you to buy extra cards.  The final option is to place cards in your reserve.  Since the only thing that really ends your turn is handing three cards to the player on your right, reserved cards basically function as extra actions in later turns.  Attacking and defending is a simple  The game runs till you run out of cards or one player has defended five locations or taken over five other players’ locations.  My Thoughts-This is great.  Game runs quick and is easy to learn.  Doesn’t need a whole large back story of Dr. Who to play, but it does make the game more fun to see who fights and think up what episodes that came from.

Theme-The game does reflect the Dr. Who world very well.  Its harder to defend places and save everything while destroying things is much easier to do.  I’ve won two games so far and both victories came from capturing other player locations.  As that’s a theme in the Dr. Who Mythos, it reflects the TV show pretty well.  However, don’t expect any characters from beyond the current seasons with emphasis on the Matt Smith Doctor.  My Thoughts-Good execution of the show on a small scale.  The Mechanics and theme work well together.  I’m pretty much up for this game whenever I get a chance.  I would like to see more Doctor Who enemies and characters, but that might be the realm of other expansions.  There is a free idea Cubicle 7!

Art-The cards are nicely done, but they used a painted art style.  The paintings are semi-realistic.  My Thoughts-I don’t hate the art style, but some of the paintings are juussst slightly off.  You know who it is, but you do a double take when you see them as you think something is up with the character.

My one problem with the game-A major part of this game is handing your hand to another player.  While this sounds simple, I’ve found I’ve become confused a few times.  If there was an insert or a direction of play vs direction of passing card, I would be less confused.  But this is nit picking.

Final Thoughts-Great game!  Go get this.  Its less than $30 on Amazon or in your friendly local game store.  Go give this a try.  If you are a Whovian, then this is a must! 9/10.

My wife is a Tolkien-o-phile, and I love co-op games, so I bought the new Wizkids dice game.  Here’s what we thought…

TL;DR-6/10.  Fun, but some execution problems.

Basic Mechanic-if you played quarriors, you kind of know this game.  Here is the game for the uninitiated.  You start with a base bag of dice.  These dice are six sided dice.  Every turn you draw five dice and roll them.  The dice have faces with characters, abilities, or resources.  You have to pay for character and these can be used to attack or be prepared to help other players battle.  This is where this game takes a major departure from the quarriors game.  In quarriors your battle the other players, but in this game you battle the forces of evil (more on that in a bit).  After paying character for battle and battling evil, you can buy characters or items.  At the end of the round, the first player then rolls the evil sides dice.  As the first player rotates, everybody gets a chance to be evil and everybody will lose if you don’t work together.  The evil dice represent  monsters and difficulties on the journey through the three Lord of the Rings books.  If all the monsters are defeated at the start of an evil turn, the players move through the books/movies and go to a new location.  As this is a Lord of the Rings game, every dice that the evil player has at the start of an evil turn gives corruption to the evil side and this cause the first player to lose points or to make dice unusable.  Make to many dice useless   games over.  Use to many points to lower your score?  You lose the game as the other players have a higher score.  That is the main conflict of the game.  You have to pick and choose your battles.  Take a loss for the good of the team or make other players dice useless so you have a higher score.  Also in the mix, you can ready dice for other players to use.  When people use your readied characters, you gain points.  If they don’t, then you might gain corruption ..thus the balance game begins…  My thoughts-Once you figure the conflict between players and the evil dice pool, the game is fun.  Getting to that point is a problem….

Presentation-Again, if you player quarriors in the new flat box, not cube tin, the game looks similar.  The game has some great packaging.  The box has nice rows for the dice AND the game comes with a plastic cover that goes over the dice to keep the in place if the box is tipped over!  As someone who plays these dice games, HAVING THINGS GET MIXED UP IS A VERY BAD THING!  The art is Lord of the Rings movie art, so beautiful.  Wizkids payed for the rights to it, so it should be!  My thought-I do have one major grip with the game and its size.  The game uses tokens for corruption and a ring for the first player.  Wizkids used cardboard tokens.  Ok, that’s fine for corruption, but for the ring?  Really guys?  This game was $50 bucks.  For that price I expect at least a plastic ring to pass back and forth!  What makes it worse is the size of the tokens.  The tokens are way to small!  The box has some decent storage space left so there is room for much large tokens, so I don’t know why the tokens are so small!  As with quarriors, the dice are a bit to small for me, but for $50 bucks you get about 100 custom dice.  As a dedicated RPG player, getting that many dice for $50 bucks isn’t that bad of a deal!  Also, I have a gripe with the rules, but I will save that for a separate section

Gameplay/Rules-The game plays pretty well when you know what your doing.  Each location give you so many options to buy from.  Get to a new location, unlock new dice/character/weapons to buy.  At each location you also get new evil dice and as you buy dice, more area evil dice go to the evil pool.  Since more players mean, more buyers for the dice and thus more evil dice in the evil pool, the game scales pretty well!  Also, if you want a much more touchy feely game, you can play a full co-op game too.  My thoughts-This game works well, BUT you have to know HOW it works.  I recently bought this game and the game just came out.  The copy I bought had rules printed on some basic, white folded computer paper.  Now I’m not a snob on looks, but it kind of was tacky especially for Wizkids and the Lord of the Rings license.  Things like this would not be an issue, EXCEPT, on the Wizkids web page they have the rules up as a PDF.  These rules look GREAT AND REALLY EXPLAIN THE GAME!  The rules I got with my copy are nowhere near as good.  I LOVE really complicated board games, but this one is not the most in depth thing I have ever played and it took my wife and I three times to play this game according to the rules.  Having the version 2 rules on her kindle helped, but why were these not in the copy I bought?  Again for $50 bucks I expect a rock solid game from a solid publisher.  When I have the right explication in front of me, this game is great, but you CAN’T play the game as intended by the base rules.  Heck, there is even a major typo in how to use items in the game in the copy I received.

Overall-I asked my wife what she thought as I bought this game for her as a gift.  I thought I might be a little to harsh with my review of 6/10, but that is exactly the same score she gave this game.  When you know what your doing, this game is great.  But as presented, it has some major problems.  Maybe later copies of the game will be much better or have an insert telling you to go online for errata and updates.  That would have really helped.  All and all, if your friend has a copy and knows how to play, give it a whirl.  Its a great time and has a surprising amount of strategy compared to the basic quarriors game strategy of buy the most expensive dice possible.  However, if you are off by yourself with your friends, then this game might not be the best if you don’t have a baseline for this game.

At my favorite coffee shop, I ran an intro to advanced game of  Kobolds Ate My Baby! (KAMB!).  This is one of the quintessential slap stick, beer and pretzel RPGs of the day.  What did I think?

Mechanics-In KAMB!, you have four stats.  When you want to do something, you get a number of d6 based on the difficulty and must roll lower then the stat of your character.  That’s it.  The GM or as its known in this case the Mayor, may add or subtract from a stat, but that is it.  My Thoughts-Slick and easy to do.  I loved this!

Character Generation-  Characters are made in less then 5 minutes.  Let me do it from memory-Roll 2d6 four times for your stats, roll 1d6 for an edge, roll 1d6 for a bogie, roll 2d6 for armor, roll 2d6 for weapon, and roll 2d6 for a random item.  Choose skills (up to six or your extraneous skill)  if you choose the magic skill, roll 2d6 for a spell.  That’s it.  Since your characters have a 5 minute half-life, you will make them as quickly as they die.   My Thoughts-This is BRILLIANT!  Game doesn’t stop when you die, a new character starts up quick and we move on fast.

General Gamplay-Kobolds die quick and the game plays like the bastard child of a game of DnD and improv.  The goal is to have fun and to roll with punches with as little plot as possible.  The hope is to just have fun.  Piss of the DM/Mayor?  Take a death check and see if random arrows spear your player.  Die from an epic fight with a cat?  Stand up, and tell the noble story of Fuzzybutt the wizard and join back in right away.  Table pissed at the DM for a roll?  Have the party sing a Kobald Drinking song to make that ass reroll!  My Thoughts-All this makes the game pure awesome!  Dont look for a plot, but look for some fun!  But honestly with the system and mechanics, you could do a serious game.  I wouldn’t want to because of the fun, but you could.

The Book-The KAMB! book is 42 pages.  You can read this in 5 minutes and it comes with an adventure.  Best part is the adventure gets you into the game fast.  Go to drive through RPG and you can pick up another adventure right now for free and a third parody adventure for 2 bucks!

My Players Thoughts-The group I played with is my DnD Next group.  After 4 hours of KAMB!, my players now want to stop DnD Encounters and switch entirely to KAMB!. It doesn’t get much better then that.  I wish I could take all the credit for this as the Mayor, but this system makes it easy.

Final Thoughts-Get this!  I got this through the kickstarter and for the money I payed, I’m getting the color edition later.  Bur right now I got the B&W edition and while color would make it look pretty, this games awesome start to finish.  Go buy now and remember ALL HAIL KING TORG!

Random Awesome?!- John Kovali, the main artist of the game talked with me and my players via twitter during the game.  That made of of my players squee when she realized that the also did art for her favorite game Munchkin.