First Thoughts - The Devil's City

Yesterday I discovered two amazing looking books on Kickstarter I really wanted to bring to everyone's attention.

Matt Corley, the creative mind behind; Tales From The Margreve, Lamp Light's Sanitarium, and Harper's Tale has recently turned his focus to investigative horror set at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century building up from a basic foundation of 5e D&D.  So what I'm saying is, if you like:
-D&D 5e
-Horror RPGs
-Call Of Cthulhu
-Ravenloft: Masque Of The Red Death
-Investigative RPGs
-Horror stories or games based on real (seriously!) world events
...then this is a Kickstarter you owe it to yourself to check out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37222410/the-devils-city-for-5e

The Devil's City Kickstarter is basically comprised of two books.  First up an illustrated 90 page novella co-authored by Matt Corley and Sara Tantlinger based on a fictionalized version of the story of HH Holmes (I'll come back to that in a bit for those of you not familiar).  Like I said I'll elaborate in a bit but if you're a horror fan, the story of HH Holmes is definitely a case of truth being far stranger than fiction.

The second book will be Horror In The Windy City.  A 5e compatible campaign book that will build on to Mr Corley's existing Whispers In The Dark game.  The author has extensive experience writing horror gaming and he has shown he consistently 'gets it' in terms of writing excellent thinking-person's horror rather than classic D&D hack-n-slay style.

So that's what the Kickstarter is, now let me tell you why I backed it, and why I hope you'll consider backing it too.

From a gaming point of view I've always liked D&D as a game system and it's the system the greatest number of existing players are familiar with, and the greatest number of potential players are open to.  Most of my gaming friends and I have always liked the idea of Call Of Cthulhu and in all fairness it is a good system but in my opinion it doesn't have the familiarity or the ease of use of D&D.  I really think for a ton of gamers investigative games could be a real inroad to discovering D&D outside of the more traditional 'dragons inside dungeons' style of gaming.  As prep for this I'm planing on running a group through Whisper In The Dark in two weeks.  I'll let you know how it goes, and how it works.

From a story point of view the story of HH Holmes has always fascinated me.  Again I have to reiterate, this is a TRUE story from our real world.  I'll give you the truncated version but if it interests you the way it interested me do some research online and back this Kickstarter!
HH Holmes was 1890's version of Jigsaw from the Saw movies.  He built a hotel in Chicago that was filled with secret passages, dead-end hallways to nowhere, and (in a manner of speaking) traps.  In short he built a hotel, invited people to stay there, and then starting murdering them once he got them inside.  I can't stress enough, this is a real thing that happened in an American city just over a century ago!

So there you have it.  An investigative horror RPG set in an only slightly warped version of our own world 130ish years ago.  A talented creative team, a game that manages to be familiar and new at the same time, and an inroad to a whole new genre of gaming.

I hope you'll all check out the Kickstarter at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/37222410/the-devils-city-for-5e and my plan is next week to write a full review of the novella, and the week after that to provide a review of of my Whispers In The Dark game-play experience (hopefully integrating) Horror In The Windy City's new alignment system.

-Jay

First Thoughts - Harper's Tale

Normally when I get excited about an upcoming gaming product I'm quite content to wait until release and absorb it in it's entirety, writing my reviews after I have the finished product in hand.  Today however I want to talk about a new D&D adventure that's currently seeking funding on Indiegogo and I honestly hope I can encourage some of you to give it a look and hopefully back it.

Harper's Tale is a 10 chapter D&D adventure co-created by Matt Corley and his daughter Harper with the goal of benefiting Friends Of Kids With Cancer.  Please check out their crowdfunding page at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/harper-s-tale-an-adventure-path-for-dnd-5e#/ for full details and the story behind the adventure's creation.  After reading Harper's story I was ready to back the project regardless but after looking at the art, and since then getting a backer's copy of the first chapter of the adventure I'm blown away by how great this project looks and I can't wait to start running it.

The first chapter 'Welcome To Grove' starts with the PCs investigating an abandoned town and mixing a combination of exploration and trying to determine what has happened to the inhabitants.  One of the things that immediately appealed to me about Welcome To Grove is that it is family-friendly without being in any way childish.  There is a definite mystery to be solved, a dark secret to uncover and combat to be had but nothing that would be objectionable to running with a younger audience or a school D&D club.  Welcome To Grove is also a great potential introduction to D&D for new players as the players will have the opportunity to engage in; skill check, role-playing, social interactions with NPCs, and combats scaled well for 1st level PCs.  I don't want to spoil any details but the mystery of the town follows a logical but not overly simplistic investigative path and solving it should give players a real sense of accomplishment and establish them as folk heroes in the community.

From an objective point of view I have to say that the quality of the writing and the style of the art are extremely professional and even though the first chapter I received as a backer made it clear it was not a final edit, it was very polished and ready to be played as is.  I didn't find any gaps, logical fallacies or even simple editing issues common to early drafts that crowdfunders tend to share with backers.

I sincerely hope everyone reading this will check out Harper's Tale and consider backing it.  The opportunity to get an interesting, well thought out D&D adventure while also supporting a good cause doesn't come along every day.

Harper's Tale is currently funding on Indiegogo at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/harper-s-tale-an-adventure-path-for-dnd-5e#/

-Jay

First Thoughts - Frostgrave

I've now had the opportunity to play 3 games of Frostgrave with 2 different wizards against 3 different opponents and I wanted to share my thoughts.

First up a bit about the game.  Frostgrave is a skirmish level fantasy campaign game set in a ruined city where competing warbands led by a variety of wizards search the ancient ruins looking for treasure and relics of days gone by.
The game is mechanically very straight forward, it uses a D20 to resolve all actions and you are typically rolling off against an opponent where each of you has 1 die plus or minus 1 modifier to get your total (high wins).
The basic game rules are very simple and straight forward, going into it my one concern was that it would be overly simple and might get repetitive quickly.  Based on my limited experience so far that seems unlikely.  although the rules themselves are quite simple the order you activate in really drives you strategy and makes careful planning really important.  The other thing is the variety of spells along with them having varying degrees of difficulty for various casters mean there are a lot of value judgements being made during the game.
On the downside the placement of treasure seems to create a situation where in many scenarios you just won't bother crossing the centre line of the board.

Overall I really like Frostgrave.  Osprey Games has hit on that perfect middle ground of 'easy to learn, difficult to master' and the campaign system seems to do a good job of maintaining balance.

If you like D&D, Pathfinder or Mordheim I highly recommend this game.

-Jay

First Thoughts - Through The Breach

I finally ran my first game of Through The Breach tonight and I wanted to share my thoughts on it.

First up I had a strange realisation as I was getting to run the game; this is probably the first completely new RPG I've tried in years.  Every other "new" RPG I've played in at least the last 10 years has more or less been a variation or derivative of D20 Dungeons & Dragons, it was really odd to suddenly find myself doing something completely fresh and new.

For those of you not familiar with the game Through The Breach is the RPG set in the world of Malifaux.  Malifaux has a great backdrop and really well developed art and background so it was super-easy for my players to understand and visualise the world around them.

The big adjustment for gamers who have experience with traditional RPGs is that in Through The Breach none of the Fatemaster's (that's the person running the game) actions outcomes are random.  Basically everything an NPC does has a set value assigned to it and the players actively oppose all the actions of Fatemaster controlled characters.  I found this to be an outstanding mechanic because it meant that every player was actively involved in every action as opposed to sometimes sitting back while the Fatemaster pushed the action.

The one downside is that as new players I didn't feel the game was immediately and automatically intuitive.  There were a couple of occasions where I wasn't 100% sure we were using skills and making flips correctly but I'll figure that out before our next game.  I felt like a few summary charts or cards could have made things a bit simpler but maybe that's what the Fatemaster's Kit is for (I haven't picked that up yet).

I won't go into the details of our adventure as it is part of the ongoing Nythera worldwide event and other groups will still be playing through this adventure for a few more days and I'd hate to spoil anything.

Overall I really enjoyed the game and will definitely play it again.

-Jay

First thoughts - Age Of Sigmar

Last week I finally got the chance to play my first 2 games of Age Of Sigmar.

There were things I expected to like about it, things I was concerned about, and things I was curious about how they would work.  Overall I have to say it was a really fun, enjoyable game that I believe is actually a lot more balanced and interesting than it's nay-sayers would have you believe.

The friends I was playing with agreed to a six Warscroll limit but in hindsight even that wasn't really necessary because once you start deploying and you realize all your figures have to fit into your deployment zone the nightmare scenario of the "big" army stomping the "little" army quickly becomes no concern.  The only issue I could see would be if the "little" army was extremely small, but games amongst friends shouldn't have those kinds of issues.

I played two very different games.  The first was against a Skaven army that massively outnumbered my Vampire counts (I don't remember the exact model count but it would have been roughly 2:1).  We were playing a basic pitched battle but due to the disparity in models I was able to choose a sudden death victory condition, I choose to secure a scenery feature on the far side of the table by turn 4 and was able to win the game by accomplishing that.  The game was decided on the final (fourth) turn and a couple of die rolls one way or the other and the outcome could have been completely different.
My second game was against a slightly larger Dwarf force (roughly 60 models for the dwarves vs 48 models for me).  We played a scenario from the new campaign book where the savage marauding Dwarves attacked and massacred my peaceful Vampire village, my forces returned and set to expelling the intruders.  For this game we played in a built up urban area which created far more dynamic movement, I was again narrowly able to eek out a victory by driving off the evil Dwarves, at the time of my win my forces were only 4 more models away from losing the game!

So, I had a lot of fun and will definitely keep playing, but by now most people have either decided they do or don't like the game so rather than a thumbs up/thumbs down point of view I'd like to specifically address some criticisms of the game that I have a different understanding of having now put models on the table and rolled dice with them.

I've already mentioned my first point that your models having to fit into your deployment zone does in fact create a very real practical limit on army size.  Although I could have been more significantly outnumbered in my second game and that could have changed the outcome I don't believe it would have changed any actions in the first 3 turns and both myself and Carmin would have walked away still feeling the game was "fair".
Secondly if you play a scenario or introduce the sudden death victory conditions rather than just lining up and fighting each other you don't end up with the swirling mass of models in the middle of the table just rolling dice off against each other endlessly.
Third the reach of a model's melee attack limits the advantage of a huge unit against a smaller unit.  In one case Darren's Skaven were able to start encircling one of my units and really bring his advantage to bear.  I don't re-call a single fight in either game where an entire unit of 20 or more models was able to attack a single enemy unit.
So my recommendation for anyone who has models but has avoided the game because of how they think it looks on paper, I would highly suggest you actually try a game and follow the rules, you might fins there are actually some filters for the things you think are unbalanced.

Having said all of that there are 2 things that I think could and should be done (not printed in the rules) to enhance your Age Of Sigmar gaming experience and avoid some of the internet's worst fears.
First always play with an objective.  Either a scenario or if you're playing with just the free rules (like me) then consider having both players choose a sudden death victory condition and if a player would normally qualify for one let them choose a second one.  This will keep the game moving around the table and give both armies something to do other than just fight in the middle of the table.  If someone asked me to just play a straight punch up I would probably just pass.
Secondly don't play with unpainted models.  A few people online have proposed some ridiculous forces (all Blood Thirsters for example) if people have to put both money and effort into these ideas I imagine not too many of them will actually make it to the tabletop.

So that's my 2 cents.  I had fun, the game plays just fine as written and as long as you don't plan on playing against dicks you'll have a good time.

-Jay