A Game-Full Weekend (plus!)

 It is Tuesday, May 5th. Cinco de Mayo, but also Children's Day in Korea and Japan. A public holiday. Yesterday (May the Fourth) I had to work, but today was a day off. And we just finished up a really fun Star Wars d6 session a couple of hours ago. 

But before I get to that, I got a lot of writing done on Missions & Mayhem over the weekend.  I did a little bit of editing of the main rules, but mainly I was working on the next campaign module, Bughunts & Bedlam which covers military-adjacent, horror-adjacent sci fi like the Alien series, Starship Troopers, the Ender books (and movie), and games like Contra, Doom, Xenophobe (remember that one?), Halo, and countless others. I finished up the advanced classes (Agent, Cosmosoldier, Planetologist, Space Cowboy, and Xenologist), got started on weapons and gear, and wrote rules for androids. 

On Sunday, Justin, Steven and I joined Peter for a game of BattleTech: Alpha Strike.  None of us had played before, so we stuck to the quickstart rules. It was pretty easy to get into, and not overly complex like the full BattleTech game is (or so I've heard). I ended up winning by getting both of my objective tokens off the board first, but it was close. The mech with the second token was drawing lots of fire, and all its armor was gone. It had three points of body integrity left, and Justin failed to kill me in the second to last round. I failed initiative every round, meaning I got to go first (there's advantage to move after everyone else has) and get my damaged mech off the board. Justin shared some pictures: 

 It was fun, and hopefully we can play it again. But we also want to play more Mutant Year Zero Zone Wars, and more Stargrave. And Peter suggested trying Bolt Action next time. 

 In a related note, yesterday I was chatting with an acquaintance about the upcoming Busan Con (May 23-24). He was asking if there were any wargames scheduled. I said I was thinking about running some Chainmail next time (next Fall, probably), and he said he has over 300 1/72 scale Medieval knights/warriors we could use. I've got plenty of 1/72 scale warriors, wizards, and monsters, so we may make something of this. 

And finally, today's Star Wars d6 game (It is Revenge of the Fifth, today!).  The timeline is now shortly after the Battle of Endor. The last time we played (quite a long time ago), the guys suggested that going after the Imperial Remnant would be fun. So I made an adventure where a mysterious Alliance spy named Fulcrum* sent them on a mission to recover a Jedi Holocron from a remote Imperial base that has been understaffed due to the losses at Endor. 

They came up with a good enough plan to get in, but then came up with (and a lucky die roll improved) a second plan, which they implemented to get in easily. Once in, Michel the Jedi (Steven's character) sensed the holocron in the center of the structure. They managed to sneak in easily enough, avoiding security, then found out the holocron was guarded by a rancor! 

After quite a few useless blaster and slugthrower shots, Michel the Jedi got a lucky roll (and an unlucky damage resistance roll by the rancor) and slew the beast with a single stroke of his lightsaber! He had a 6 on the wild die for the damage roll, I got a 1 on the wild die for the resistance roll. And my other dice were low. They had tripped an alarm, so had to fight a few battles with stormtroopers (stun grenades made it pretty easy), and managed to get away. 

Now they're deciding if they want to keep the holocron or turn it over to Fulcrum.

Peter joined us for this game, and Jada was playing d6 Star Wars for the first time (she's not really into SW, but she's seen a few movies). They both got the rules easily, and enjoyed the game. And both of them came up with some good ideas during the game that definitely helped. 

Back to work tomorrow, but it's been a fun and game-filled weekend and a day.  

 

 

*Yes, if you've watched Rebels, that Fulcrum! 

Stargrave Preparations

Recently, Justin, Peter, Denis and I played a round of Stargrave. If you don't know, Stargrave is the sci-fi themed cousin to the tactical minis board game Frostgrave. 

In it, teams of sci-fi marauders fight each other and try to collect loot boxes from the field. It can be played as a one-shot (as we did), or as a campaign. In campaign mode, the loot you collect helps you power up your team. 

Justin is thinking of trying to get a campaign going, and suggested that we might all want to get our own custom minis to use for our teams. 

Well, it doesn't take much to get me wanting to buy and paint more minis! 

After a few quick searches, I found a 3D printing outfit in the UK called Ott's Workshop that sells via Etsy. Nice looking sculpts, reasonable prices, and reasonable shipping to South Korea. 

So, I bought two related sets to get myself a team. I've got them all painted up already. 

Two snipers (Crowe and Frost?) plus kneeling Dietrich

Hicks in the center, and Apone on the right. Maybe Wierzbowski kneeling?

On the left is actually Future War John Conner from one of the Terminator movies. Plus Drake and Hudson.

 

Frost and Vasquez flank what seems to be a cross between Ripley and a Future War Sarah Conner.

 

 Ott's Workshop threw in some extra figures for free. There's a goblin wizard that I haven't painted up yet, but also these guys: 

 

This guy needs no introduction.

The exposed endoskeleton didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, but good enough.

Gave Ripley a bit more melanin, since the group was pretty pale overall. Plus, there's the Ripley (Sarah Connor?) mini above. Dallas, Brett and Parker looking relaxed. 

 

I'm pretty happy with how the figures turned out. I didn't do much fancy work on them. Most of the detail is from the sculpts and the clean printing. Good enough for a Stargrave campaign!

 

The 2025 Busan Tabletop Gaming Con Was a Success

Last Sunday, November 30, was our first game con. I picked up Justin around 9am, and we arrived at the cafe just a little before 9:30. Richard was already waiting, as well as Jonathan (Kojaq) who I only had interacted with online before this. We got everything set up, and most players, and Peter the other morning GM, made it there by 10am when we were scheduled to start. But Kurt, the cafe owner, didn't show up until around 11 so we had to make due with water or drinks people brought in from outside for a bit. Kurt had given me the door code so we could get in early, if you're wondering. 

In the morning session, I ran Classic D&D, using the same dungeon from the previous Online Summer Con arranged by Amae's Seoul group. This party followed the same route at first, but had a TPK in their first encounter. Four carrion crawlers took out a party of five 6th to 8th level PCs. As they can, especially if the party only has a cleric as a caster. The players got new PCs from the pre-gen pile and set out again in a different route. They didn't have time to make it to the dragon, but they had a great time anyway. 

Just before the thief misses on a backstab and everyone fails their saves (the Dwarf is already down).

Richard's Call of Cthulhu game only had one character death, but that PC died, was brought back, and died again. 

Richard brought his King in Yellow robes.

 

I didn't hear of any PC deaths in Peter's Black Sword Hack game, but everyone said they had a great game. 

Justin's BSH character sheet

We took a lunch break, and more people arrived for the afternoon games. A couple of people also went home (or elsewhere, anyway) after the morning games. I was a player in Keith's Cyberpunk Red game, which was a lot of fun. I got to play the Solo (combat character), which is always nice. But our new player David (who played his first RPG ever in my morning D&D game) was the star of the show. Of course, Richard's PC managed to shoot Peter's PC in the back...twice! None of us died, though several gang-bangers and scumbags died at our hands. 

The start of the game, in our gang's alley base, dealing with druggies

Jonathan's Mothership game was really good, too, from what I heard. There were definitely some PC deaths as well. 

An alien gestated inside one of the PCs. You'll never believe what happened next~!

Both Scott's 5E game and Elyse's Pathfinder game went over time, but this is something they'd planned for, and the players were aware of this. Scott did have one PC death. Elyse runs a more story-forward sort of game, so no PC deaths in her game. She did a think where players started with blank, or nearly blank character sheets, and had to discover who their PCs were as they played. 

Scott's got a lot of style when he runs a game. We could hear lots of laughing and some shouting from them.

Elyse's players were all really intent on the story that unfolded. 

Then it was the dinner break time. Most folks went home (or elsewhere), but a stalwart few soldiered on through into the night. Peter, Richard, Elyse, Jada, Justin, and I were there the whole day. Keith and his partner CC stayed for evening games, too, but they weren't here for the morning session. 
 

Justin had his group (Jada, CC, Elyse) play board games including Whitehall Mysteries. They also played a few smaller games. Justin had planned to play 1775, a tactical wargame of the Revolutionary War, but I guess they never broke that one out. 

London was scoured for clues.

 

My evening game was Gamma World. Richard, Keith and Peter chose their mutants and set off to explore a ruined tower. They dealt with crumbling infrastructure, hungry mutants, friendly mutants, and at the top of the tower androids intent on capturing Richard's mutated ape PC. Keith dropped to negative HP twice, and Peter once. At the end of the game, Richard escaped with his companions' bodies, evading the androids to survive the horrors of Gamma Terra. We had a blast. 

Peter's altered human scout is down thanks to poisonous two-headed bat mutants. The espers are about to meet the androids. 

It was a long day, but very much worth it. And we plan to do it again sometime soon. Scott wants to do the next event in May. I'll be back home for my son's high school graduation that weekend, but I'll probably help with the organizational side of things as best I can. 
 

 

 

Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars

Yesterday, I met with Justin and a guy we met on the TTRPG in Korea Discord group to play Zone Wars, a tactical tabletop skirmish game based on the Mutant Year Zero RPG. Peter wanted to get some war gaming in over the long Chuseok holiday. Sandwiched between National Foundation Day on Friday the 3rd and Hangeul Day (Korean written characters get a holiday...yeah, a day to help prevent Koreans from overworking) on the 9th, we've got an entire week off, 10 days in a row for people who can take the 10th as a holiday. 

Free League link

Board Game Geek link 

The game plays pretty similarly to Stargrave, which my son and I played with Justin a while back. I thought I'd posted about that game here, but apparently I didn't. Both games have players managing a tactical team across the "board" to defeat the other teams or collect enough loot to win. 

When we played Stargrave, I quickly realized that the loot collection was the key to winning, so getting loot and getting my figures off the board was my strategy. And it worked. 

Zone Wars has a similar strategy. There are artifact tokens across the board (it's a post-apoc setting, after all) that score victory points. But you also get points for defeating other players' figures.  To cut to the chase, Peter used my strategy from the Stargrave game, while Justin and I were more into duking things out. Peter won. 

The initial set-up. I'm yellow, Peter is blue, Justin is green.

The game has four factions (two in the base game, two in the expansion): mutant humans and mutant animals (base), androids and psychers (expansion). There are five characters/figures for each faction, but you have to choose three of them for your team (at least for the first scenario that we played). 

Justin's dudes teamed up on my gatherer, and stole his loot.

Each comes with starting equipment and mutations set, but with a bonus random mutation. Justin took the mutant animal team, I took the mutant human team, and Peter played as the android team. And we all seemed to take one tough/melee figure, one ranged expert figure, and one balanced figure. I'm not sure about the other factions, but the two I left behind were another ranged expert and another balanced figure.

My melee guy takes out Peter's sniper just before 30-50 feral hogs rampage through me!

The game has a lot more randomness than Stargrave. Not only do you roll dice for actions, but the initiative is done by pulling chits from a bag. There's one chit per figure, and four Zone chits, which trigger events. And there's a ticking time bomb in the form of Trigger events that scale up the acid rain which will kill anyone still on the board once four have been drawn. 

Land Shark! (unfortunately, no one was eaten)

The random mutations and events, and the ability to not only switch factions but experiment with different teams within your faction should add to replayability, but will also make the game take a little longer to really sus out the best strategies for each faction/team composition. There's obviously an optimal strategy of grabbing loot and running over fighting (due to the built in time limit of acid rain), but where's the fun in that time after time? 

My runner recovered and knocked out Justin's dudes with his mutation...but my sniper was downed.

Anyway, we're planning to meet again in a few weeks, hopefully with a fourth player if we can find one, to play it again. Peter also seems interested in trying Stargrave or Frostgrave, so we may try one of those out as well in the near future.  

A robot named Bender grabbed a bunch of loot and made it off the board before the acid rain fell. Fitting.

 

Gaming Swag from Japan

Over the weekend, my family took a little trip to Fukuoka, Japan. My wife currently has a broken toe, so she almost didn't go, but decided to go anyway. It wasn't easy managing things, as there was a lot of walking involved, but we got through it. [And the doctor exam yesterday showed no problems.]

The last two times I'd been to Fukuoka, my mother-in-law was with us. That meant a lot of the things we did were focused on her desires. This time it was just us, so the boys and I got to do a few things that WE wanted to do. One of them was to visit a geeky resale shop called MANDARAKE which was sort of like a vintage geek Mecca. Steven, my 10yo, is already planning to save money for our next trip so he can purchase a used gaming console. They had a SEGA MegaDrive (J-version of the Genesis), PS2 through 5, an original X-Box, and a few others. Plus games, of course. He wants one...not sure if he'll get his wish, but we'll see. 

They had manga, US comics trade paperbacks, old CD/DVDs of music, anime, etc. Lots and lots of toys: action figures, cars, model kits, and so on. Oh, and books. 

I finally, after years of (not very extensive) searching through used bookstores in Japan, found a copy of Sword World RPG. 

 So far, I've only had time to skim through it. My Japanese is pretty rusty, but I did read through the "What is an RPG" section. Luckily, the few kanji I didn't remember were easy to guess from context. That is probably one of the most straightforward, concise, and effective explanations of what RPGs are and how they play I've ever read. I took notes for my revised Flying Swordsmen game. 

When I get more time to go through the game, its mechanics, and what not, I'll probably have more to say here. 

Also at the shop were three boxes of vintage Grenadier Star Wars metal minis! The first I noticed was a Bounty Hunters set. Then there was one with the Heroes of the original trilogy (plus Vader). And the third was an Imperials set. I ALMOST bought them. My boys were encouraging me to get them. I wanted them. But all three sets together would have been close to $100 and my wife would not have been happy. And at 1980s 25mm scale they would be so tiny next to my 54mm plastic SW minis from my previous time in Japan. So I didn't get them. 

I'll probably be kicking myself for that decision years down the road, just like I sometimes kick myself for not spending $100 to get the Japanese Basic Set shortly before I left Japan for Korea. But such is life.

Additionally, at the 100 yen shops Seria and Daiso, I picked up some dice (two sets of 4 d6s at Seria), and some condition counters for RPG or board/card games (4 sets of 8 counters at Daiso). 

At Daiso, I also found two copies of the Werewolf game, with really cool art. There are some common cards in the two sets, but each also has some unique characters. 

Next to the Werewolf cards were these cards called "Biology Card Game: Cell". I had no idea what they were, but they looked like a CCG. My wife said to go ahead and get them, since they're only a dollar each. The cards are themed around viruses, diseases, organelles, medical tech, and various biological fluids each illustrated with a cute anime girl. 

The QR code on the box and on each card leads to a video tutorial which I haven't watched yet. Because I'll probably never play the game. But a fun curiosity for $2. 

Finally, in the books section of Daiso, I found this book about yokai. A lot of my players aren't familiar with them, so this is something I can use in my Jade Campaign to show off what some of the creatures they encounter look like. 

That's the extent of the gaming related stuff I picked up. Other than that, we met my friend Keita, bought some clothes, lots of snacks, saw a few touristy things (finally went up in Fukuoka Tower, rode swan boats in Ohori Park again), and ate a LOT of good food. 

All in all, a fun trip!

Some Board Gamin'

In the first two weeks of January, I taught my Speaking English with Boardgames class at the elementary English camp I usually do every summer and winter break. 

This time, I didn't change much, other than to bring in some of my miniatures to use as character markers for the Dungeon! games. And the kids loved it! 

Each class is only 50 minutes long, so in order to explain the game, set it up, and have enough time to give the kids a chance to have a winner, I have to simplify the game a bit. 

First, I cut all the treasure requirements in half, and don't require the group with that much gold to return to the entrance. 

Second, monsters don't fight back. If a group fails to kill a monster on the first die roll, they can try again next turn (or run away). Other players can come in and fight that monster, though, and possibly steal the treasure. 

Third, Wizards get a set of 3 fireballs, 3 lightning bolts, and two teleports, rather than rolling and selecting spells. 

Fourth, this time, I made a small change to the Thief (elf in the original). In addition to the increased chance to find a secret door, I decided that the Thief ignores traps and just gets the treasure. I also decided the original Hero/Superhero names were easier to explain than trying to explain what a cleric is.

Fifth, the Chambers only have one monster each, and also provide a treasure. The only thing different about them is that the Wizards can only teleport to/from Chambers. 

These rules make the game play quickly, and the kids really got into it. 

The first time I used Dungeon! at a camp, a kid mangled one of the treasure cards, so now I keep all information about each team on the white board. This includes what type of hero they are playing, how much gold they have/need to win, spells for the Wizards, and any magic items they pick up.

Painting Again

 This morning, I finally got around to painting a set of the Red Hat Russian War Monk Artillery figures that I picked up a year ago. 

I'm going to teach at the usual elementary school English Camp over the winter break (starting on Monday), and one of the board games I use is Dungeon!

This year, I plan to use some of my 1/72 scale minis (20-22mm) instead of the cheap cardboard standees in the new WotC edition of Dungeon! that I use for the camp. [I don't want to risk damage/loss to my old 80s edition.] 

These were quick paint jobs, with all five done in around 2 hours. I probably could have done it faster, or better quality, if they were a larger scale or my eyes weren't as bad as they are. But still, I think these look pretty good all told. 

Maybe I'll get around to painting some of the minotaur and cyclops minis after the camp. Winter seems to put me in the mood to paint the past few years.

Chess Anxiety and RP Themes

 

Edie Cossaboom (not their real name) is a friend of mine, and posted this on FB today. It resonates with something I've been considering about RPGs for a while now, especially those of the more narrative bent. But trying to put into words twice now and being unsatisfied with how I'm explaining my thoughts, I think it might be better if I just post this here and let the reader interpret it as they like.

More Star Wars (and other gaming) Coming

My May the 4th game went well, but I'd still like to try and get a few more people interested in the campaign. So I'm gonna try again. May 25th is the anniversary of the release of A New Hope, and it's also a Saturday. Perfect timing. 

I've got a very busy gaming schedule at the moment. Tomorrow evening, Richard is running his Call of Cthulhu game. Taking a cue from me, he'll be running it face-to-face instead of online. 

Sunday is my regular TS&R Jade game. For the past two sessions, the party has been trying to reach some dimension door portals in the Pits of Lao (the micro-mega-dungeon) to restore companions who were bitten by spectral hounds. They finally achieved that, and there are seven portals in that room, and they only know the destinations of two of them. There's also a lot more dungeon to be explored. But some players mentioned that they want to return to the 18 Chambers of Lotus Fist temple to continue clearing it out (that's where there met the hounds). So I have no idea how this session might play out! 

Wednesday next week is a public holiday (Buddha's Birthday), so I'll be heading down to my friend Adam's house to continue the Swords & Sorcery board game campaign. 

And then there will be Star Wars on the 25th. The 26th should be my next Jade game, too, but we'll see if my wife will allow me to spend that much time gaming on a weekend. Hopefully, she'll be busy with her badminton club! 

 As Wayne and Garth famously said, "Party on, Wayne!" "Party on, Garth!"

___________

In other news, I was watching a Bob Worldbuilder video on YouTube where he was praising the 5 Room Dungeon. For D&D, I find the format a bit too stiff, because it's purposefully made to mimic the rising/falling tension of a movie's five act structure. If you don't use the encounters in that order, you don't get that rising/falling tension, so why not just create a small dungeon as you like? And if you do the dungeon rooms in that order, it's railroady.

For Star Wars, however, I think it might work a bit better. The d6 game is designed to be "cinematic" and the modules I've looked at so far seem to be saying "Choo Choo, Motherfuckers!"

I may not go full on railroad with these adventures (my game the other day was set up as presenting the challenges, but not expecting any particular attempts at solutions), but the idea of an initial "guardian" encounter, followed by an unexpected complication, then a trap/setback/lateral thinking challenge, then a confrontation, and finally a reward or twist seem reasonable for a cinematic style game. 

Of course, I won't force the plot on the characters, and I'll give them plenty of opportunity to flip the script or make an end run to skip stuff, but for my notes, having a chain of encounters set up for the most passive play style seems handy. I can riff off of that when the players go "off script."

Alright, time to decide what exactly the next adventure should be about! I've got an idea involving the death of Jabba the Hutt. The campaign started shortly before the Battle of Hoth, and it's probably been going on long enough that they're coming up on the Battle of Endor (not that the players have ever had much interest in joining the Rebellion).

Fortune and Glory? Nah, just play some Elfgames.

I had a discussion last night with my older boy about gaming, marketing, and all that. He's got some game ideas (card games, board games, computer games) and was wondering about how successful he might be. 

Interestingly, I'd just finished reading the recent (now pulled) article on how toxic the RPG online community is, and that definitely influenced the direction of our conversation. 

We talked about how easy it is to promote games on DriveThru, how easy it is to run a Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign, and so on. 

Want some numbers? Flynn did. In the past six years since I released Chanbara, I've sold just shy of 300 copies, and made $1600 from those sales. I've made less than that from the paper minis and TS&R. 

All told, since 2015 when I uploaded my first printable paper minis file, including pay-what-you-want downloads that didn't pay anything, I've sold 2413 products on DriveThru, and made $2338.11. Not exactly the big bucks. 

But then the bigger names in the TTRPG circles (many of them named in that article for being toxic presences in the community) regularly have crowdfunding campaigns that make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few have topped the million mark. 

Now, I'm not trying to cast any aspersions on the "big names." And this is not sour grapes. I was just being realistic to my son. Yes, it's possible to make good money by publishing games online, but to do so you really need to work on promotion, really need to get out there and get known, and need other big names to support and promote your work. But the bigger you get, the more of a target you can become. 

So I'm happy to stay a little fish in a small pond. I really do appreciate all of you who read this blog, review and promote my offerings, and everyone who's purchased something I've put out there. But I'm also never going to put in the effort needed to become one of the luminaries of the hobby, because I don't need to. That $2000+ I've made over the past nearly a decade has helped me to buy other gaming goods, and every now and then a birthday or Christmas present. I don't need gaming money to support my family. I'm happy to do this just for the joy of creating stuff, putting it out there, and seeing positive reactions to it. 

That's why TS&R is PWYW and I'll probably never get around to making the second edition of Flying Swordsmen, with actual new art from paid artists rather than public domain and donated art. 

I'm happy with my place in the hobby. 

But hey, if my son can create some board or card games that become a hit, I'll do my best to support him in his efforts. 

And also, if Zak S. is reading this, my apologies. I don't think I jumped on the anti-Zak bandwagon, but I wasn't a big fan of his and took the words of others at face value when I shouldn't have. Looking back at some of my old blog posts, I was pretty much just dismissive of him at the time Mandy was accusing him of some pretty horrible (and not completely believable) stuff. I hope that the word gets out and he gets a chance to make a come-back. 

I never had a negative interaction with him personally, and I should have been more critical of others claiming that they had had negative interactions with him rather than letting those claims color my opinion of him.

An idea for a simple RPG or Tabletop Skirmish game?

Yesterday, a couple of things happened that proved serendipitous. Flynn, my older boy, has been trying to get a game development group started within the local independent (mostly expat) artist scene, a group called Liquid Arts. Some of you may remember the GoFundMe he made that I promoted a while back. Well, that failed. And yesterday he refunded the few backers that he got. But he's got an idea to start the Liquid Arts game design group working on board games, and if he has some success there, try again with the computer game design ideas. 

I explained this, and the Liquid Arts group, to one of my friends, who was a backer. And it got me thinking about some of the simple board games my best friend and I designed back in elementary and middle school. One or two of the ideas we had may be worth re-developing. 

Also, my younger boy Steven has been playing a lot of the GBA version of GTA on our Super Console X emulator lately, but yesterday he wanted to play some Gauntlet II with me. Which we did. And while playing, he was wondering about more modern versions of Gauntlet. I told him that there were a couple of 3D games during the PS1/PS2 era, Gauntlet Legends (for PS1, which I had), and Gauntlet Dark Legacy (for PS2, which I never had). He got me to look them up and see if we could acquire them for emulation. 

Our box doesn't have (and apparently isn't a good enough processor to handle) PS2 emulation, but I found Gauntlet Legends, and also the arcade (MAME) version of Dark Legacy last night. 

Anyway, ideas converged, and I started thinking about whether the way Gauntlet rates character abilities might work as the basis for a fantasy RPG. I found this pretty quickly. And yeah, with a few tweaks, and the addition of some mechanics for outside combat activities, it could work. Or, it could be merged with something to make a tabletop skirmish type wargame. Something probably more simple than my ideas to use 4E just for tabletop skirmish games.

For a while now, I've been interested in what D&D would be like if Chainmail combat were used. But I've had too many irons in the gaming fire to start up a campaign using the Platemail 27th Edition rules or something of my own devising. 

My thinking, as I was laying in bed last night not falling asleep, and this morning in the shower, were to maybe merge Gauntlet style character ratings with Chainmail man-to-man/fantasy combat (and the Dungeon! board game) 2d6 style combat. Maybe throw in something like the Classic D&D Turn Undead table for a resolution mechanic for non-combat tasks if needed. 

Gauntlet ratings (taken from the original version) could be translated to: 

• Speed (how many spaces you can move per turn)
• Armor (how much damage is reduced by your armor)
• Attack Power (how easily you hit when you attack, melee)
• Attack Strength (how many hits you inflict on a successful melee attack) 
• Attack Speed (how many melee attacks you can make on your turn)
• Shot Power (how easily you hit when you attack, ranged)
• Shot Strength (how many hits you inflict on a successful ranged attack)
• Shot Speed (how many ranged attacks you can make on your turn)
• Magic Power (how easy it is to successfully cast a spell)
• Magic Strength (how powerful are the effects of the spells you cast)

The above Speed, Armor, and Strength ratings would all be set numbers. The Power ratings would be modifiers to 2d6 rolls. The Strength ratings might have a few levels with variation, such as:

• Lvl 1: 1 hit
• Lvl 2: 1-2 hits (roll d6, 1-4=1 hit, 5-6=2 hits)
• Lvl 3: 2 hits
• Lvl 4: 2-3 hits (roll d6, 1-4=2 hits, 5-6=3 hits)
• Lvl 5: 3 hits

For the Attack/Shot Speed, I'd probably look to AD&D attack progression:

• Lvl 1: 1 attack per round
  
• Lvl 2: 3/2 attacks per round
  
• Lvl 3: 2 attacks per round
  
• Lvl 4: 5/2 attacks per round
  
• Lvl 5: 3 attacks per round
  

Of course, one thing to consider would be that Gauntlet characters have hundreds or thousands of hit points, and can kill hundreds or thousands of opponents on each level (and with emulation, adding a "quarter" for more health is as easy as pushing the Select button on the game pad). Monsters do large numbers of hits compared to PCs, and armor reduces that damage. That's something that would need to be changed. If this were an RPG, it would probably be more difficult to scale it correctly. But for a tabletop skirmish game, it might work out alright. 

A variation of this system may also work for one of those old games from my youth that I mentioned above. The game was probably the best (and most complex) game that Todd and I made as kids. We made a map of our home town. Since the home town is tiny, it was a fairly accurate map, as we had every actual house, store, and church on it, minus a few people's sheds and whatnot. The game was an alien invasion game. We over-complicated it by having just about every type of alien from UFO lore that we could think of, plus a few from sci-fi movies (little green men, Men-in-Black, Grays, Critters, robots, etc.). In the original, the aliens had the goal of planting bombs in buildings, while the heroes (us) had to raid buildings for tools/supplies/weapons (all on cards) to fight off the aliens and prevent the bombings. 

It was a tough game, as we made way too many aliens, and we played them ruthlessly. 

I was thinking as well that this might be an idea to revive. Instead of bombing the town, though, maybe it would be an abduction game. And it could be played either cooperatively (like our original game) or competitively, with one or more players as the Heroes and one or more players as the Aliens. 

Again, I'm wondering if a 2d6 style mechanic like my Gauntlet idea above might be fun for this. Originally, I think we had just a regular d6 mechanic. It's been a LONG time, and Todd had our only copy of the game.

So, it looks like this year I may be experimenting with some table top board/tactical game designs in addition to RPG stuff.

Summer Camp Board Games

So the summer camps I'm teaching are for elementary students, and I'm teaching a "listening" lesson using board games. The kids need to listen well to the rules so we can play. Parents like the academic facade, students like to play the games! 

I'm using five different games this camp, with a slightly different line-up than I used last summer and winter camps. My games are: Bang!, The Keeyp, Dungeon!, Dominion, and King of Tokyo. 

Most of these games need to be simplified, because a) I'm teaching them to Korean speaking elementary kids with [mostly] rudimentary English, b) we've got 50 minutes for a class...if we don't get interrupted by snacks or other things, so explaining in 10~15 minutes then playing for 35~40 is ideal, and c) with 8 to 13 kids in a class, I need to have the kids play in teams.

Here are how I'm modifying the rules for each game for the camp. Anyone else wanting to use these games in lessons, or play with really young kids, these may be of interest to you. 

Bang!: First of all, I'm not using the various cowboy/gunslinger characters that give special abilities. Too complicated, and takes too long to explain. Everyone starts with 4 bullets, except the sheriff who starts with 5. I've pared down the deck to cards that can be easily used: bang, miss, beer, Cat Balou, panic, Gatling, Indians, Wells Fargo, stagecoach, Volcanic and Schofield. Everything else just complicates or prolongs the game. 

All the other rules stand. Roles besides Sheriff are secret (it helps that there is a "mafia game" Korean kids love that I can compare this to). Sheriff plays first. Draw two cards on your turn, play all you can/want except only one Bang card (unless you have the Volcanic). Discard if you end the turn with more cards than bullets. 

I give teams stickers when their team is eliminated, and the winning team(s) gets 2 stickers each. Kids love it. With these rule changes, most of the time we are able to finish a game within the class period.

The Keeyp: This game is so simple and easy that I really don't need to modify anything about it. I do keep track of the Keeplings' hit points and special ability use on the white board instead of using the dice for hit points, just so there's one less thing on the desks. Some kids just can't resist playing with everything in front of them, so they'd never keep their hit points straight otherwise! Or remember how many times they've used a special ability. 

We maybe finish the game half the time. The randomness of  when the key and gate get drawn, plus how well the kids figure out combat, seems to vary the time for this game a lot. Again, 2 stickers for winners, 1 sticker to everyone else.

Dungeon!: I made the mistake the first time I played this last week of letting the kids keep their treasure cards on their desks. One kid mangled a card (see above), since I don't have card sleeves small enough for the dungeon cards. Luckily or unluckily, this is the new version of the game I got for my son a few years ago. Luckily that they didn't mangle one of my old cards from the 80s, unlucky that my son will not be happy when he sees that. 

As for rule changes, there are a few. The gold each character needs to win I kept the same last week, but this week I think I'll reduce them by 1/2. Only one team got more than 1/2 their necessary treasure last week. Second, Wizard characters just get 7 spells: 3 fireball, 3 lightning, 1 teleport (I may give them 8, with 2 teleports, this week). I allow teleports from any Chamber to any other Chamber. Chambers only have one monster, but also have a treasure. If players face a monster and fail their roll, they don't roll for the monster, they just move back outside the room and can try again next time (with a random monster). 

Finally, as I said, I'm not letting the kids draw the monster and treasure cards anymore. I draw the monster, show it to them, and let them roll the dice. If they win, I draw the treasure card, show it to them, and add the value on the board. Then the treasure card goes at the bottom of the pile. 

So I played this once with only some of the variations, and twice with, and it went a lot smoother with all the variants, except as mentioned above, no one got close to their score threshold. So I'll try them with the values cut in half on Thursday and see how it goes. 

If we get a winner, it will be 2 stickers to them, 1 to everyone else. Without winners, it's just 1 sticker each as compensation prizes.

Dominion: This is a game I didn't use last summer or winter, so I was curious how it would go. The first time I played it last week, we played it straight, using the 10 action cards suggested by the rules for a "first game." The kids understood the basics of turn taking (action card, buy, clean-up), but they really had trouble with the concepts of cards in their deck, cards in discard, and cards in their hand. They kept mixing them up, shuffling when they shouldn't, etc. Also, 10 action cards (plus victory and treasure cards) to choose from when buying was a lot. And a few of the action cards were difficult to explain, in particular Workshop and Mines, which require players to "trash" (remove from game) a card and replace it with a more valuable card. 

So after the first go through, I cut the action cards in half. Five is much better. I kept Cellar, Village, Woodcutter, Smithy, and Market, plus the 3 treasure and 3 victory cards. 

Because Militia (which 'attacks' other players) and Moat (which protects from 'attacks') were removed, that allowed me to make a variation that helps with the deck/discard pile/hand confusion. The deck is on the desk in front of each group. They don't touch it until I tell them. On their turns, they draw 5 cards and play, then discard all the hand and purchased cards (as normal). They don't immediately draw new cards. They wait until their next turn to do that. This really helps avoid the confusion. 

We haven't had a game yet where a supply (pile of cards that can be bought) has been exhausted, but we play until just before the end of class, then I have the teams sort out victory cards and add up their points to see who wins. It works pretty well that way. 

Stickers as above.

King of Tokyo: I realized early on that the monster standees were going to need monitoring, as well as the dials on the monster boards. Even knowing this, last summer one of the standees got damaged, so I show it off at the beginning of my instruction to warn the kids not to do the same. That's worked so far. 

The big variant that I use with these students is to not use the cards. They are random, many are complex, and they slow things down. Instead of buying cards, I let teams buy Stars or Hearts with their energy cubes. Last summer, I had the price set at 5, but soon dropped it to 4. I'm considering dropping it to 3 next time. Using energy is the only way to gain Hearts while In Tokyo. 

Other than that, die rolling (roll and keep, up to 3 rolls per turn) is the same. Combat is the same. Healing is the same. Earning Stars is the same. 

I actually like playing the game this way. The cards are fun, but the simple beat-em-up nature of playing without them has its charms. 

Most of the time, we finish the game, with one team reaching 20 Stars before time is up. If we don't, at the end of class the winner is simply the team that earned the most Stars. One sticker for every kid, two stickers for the winners as usual. 

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The kids seem to have the most fun with Bang!, and it's probably the game I get asked to play again the most. King of Tokyo is a hit, as well. Gotta love kaiju battles! The kids have had fun with the other games, too, but Bang! and KoT are the favorites.

Back! Gaming! Happy!

I've been avoiding blogging the past week or so, because of the OGL whoop-de-doo. I said my peace earlier about it, and didn't really have more to add. And now, I've got my TS&R campaign started up again, and am working on notes for the next Star Wars d6 adventure (nearly done). My older boy and I also, at the invitation of a friend, started playing a campaign dungeon crawler board game called Swords & Sorcery: Ancient Chronicles. 

I mentioned this game over on BX Blackrazor's comment section, and it spawned a whole post by JB. I may have some thoughts to add to his post later. For now, though, I want to talk about the game itself.

Like many of these campaign style games, it's fairly rules heavy. The basic mechanics are pretty simple and straightforward. There are red and blue dice (d10s). Red are better offense, blue are better defense. For any task, you roll the number of red and/or blue dice indicated, and try to get the right symbols to come up. When to roll, what to roll for, and how the cards (items, abilities, etc.) interact make it complex. 

One really cool thing about the game is the way it runs monsters. After each player takes their turn, they turn over an Encounter card. This card will say to activate certain types of monsters. All monsters are colored by strength tier green - blue - red - purple, and given their primary attack method (Strength, Faith, Magic, Dexterity). The player characters also have these attack methods. So one card might say "Activate all red creatures -or- activate any two creatures." Any red creatures would then take an action, and if there are none, players decide which two creatures in play take actions instead. And each monster has a card with various if/then statements, combined with all their various attacks and defenses. So if a monster activates, we read its card to see which situation applies, and how they act. 

For example, the first two dungeons had a lot of giant spiders. The spider cards (didn't get a picture of that, so going from memory here) have actions for the spiders if there is a hero in the same area, 1 or 2 areas away, or farther than that. And within those, there are if/then conditionals. If a character is in the same area, and it is slowed (webbed up), the spider uses a special attack. If not, it bites then moves 1 area away. If a hero is 1-2 areas away, it shoots a web. If no heroes are within 2 spaces, it moves closer. 

The interaction between the Encounter cards and the various conditionals on the monster cards make the monster actions unpredictable, and emulate a DM running monsters in D&D fairly well. In fact, the monsters in this game are a lot more challenging and unpredictable than most monsters that I run in D&D... I do sometimes get into the bad habit of having monsters just rely on their main attacks once combat starts, unless I'd specifically prepared some interesting tactics for them beforehand. 

Another thing the game does that mimics D&D or other RPGs is that it has a story book. Certain markers get placed on the board, and when characters move onto them, story events happen. It's also a bit of a choose-your-own-adventure style, in that some of the events are different depending on if we're playing the Lawful or Chaotic versions of the heroes (my hero, the Thief or Alchemist, is always Neutral, so can play with either party). Also, some of the events include actual choices like a CYOA book that we can make. It's not quite the same as playing a proper RPG, but I can see why Adam (the host) prefers this sort of game to an RPG.

The premise of the game is that the gods have awakened these five heroes from their immortal slumber to stop an evil threat. Being already dead, death in the game is not the end. You become a ghost, and can rejuvenate at a shrine. The players fail the dungeon if all four are ghosts at the same time. And of course there are soul points that need to be earned during play, which need to be spent to rejuvenate...but they're also needed to level up your character. 

It's a bit of a learning curve, but we're getting better at it as we play. In the first session, we only managed to get through the introductory adventure and the first town phase (shopping, info gathering, gambling...we lost most of our cash there). The second dungeon took us two whole sessions (the picture above is where we stopped at the second session, halfway through the dungeon crawl. The third session, we managed to finish that dungeon. Each session has been 4 or 5 hours of play. It's a bit smoother, though, and probably our next session (next Monday) will go a bit faster than that. 

After we get through the winter break, we'll only be able to play on weekends, though, so that will probably have some conflicts with my D&D game.

______________

In other news, Pat of the original Busan Board Game group is finally leaving Korea soon. As he prepares to leave, he's getting rid of a lot of stuff. He contacted me the other day and asked if I wanted his RPG books. Of course I said yes. So yesterday, I drove over to his apartment and got them. He had the 2E DMG and Monstrous Compendium (original versions, I only had the black reprint versions until now), a few modules and the Ravenloft Masque of the Red Death box set. 

Also, he gave my his 4E books. That collection includes the PHB, PHB2, DMG and MM, plus three modules and some modular dungeon tiles. 

I'd mentioned to Adam that he might dig 4E more than other editions of D&D, so the books may end up with him in the end. For now though, I'm wondering if I'd like to give them another try, running the game more like this S&S board game than a proper RPG campaign. I think that's what 4E was really designed to do, after all. But I've also got my TS&R campaign, my Star Wars campaign, and I think I'm about ready to take the plunge with a PbP Gamma World game that I've got set up but haven't recruited players for yet. So probably no time for an experiment with 4E.

Game Trek: The Next Generation

My research trip/vacation in the US is almost over. It's been a good month with my family. And one of the best parts has been seeing my boys' interest in gaming increase while I've been here.

I've got two boys, Flynn (12 next month) and Stevie (5). Flynn played in my West Marches game while he was in Busan, but for the past year they've been in the US so he only got to play once with us online last year. He has tennis practice or tournaments most Saturday mornings, so our Saturday evening Korea time games are usually busy times for him. Stevie's been asking to join the D&D games ever since Flynn got to participate, when he was only 3.

They've gotten into board games, and one I got for Flynn last Christmas was the updated version of Dungeon! We played a few rounds of it while I've been here.

In this game, Stevie and I were both the Rogue (Elf in the original version) and Flynn was the Wizard. Flynn ran out of spells pretty early on, and Stevie went to level 4 and kept getting damaged by a werewolf that he kept fighting to get his treasure back, while I went around levels 1 and 2, got the treasure I needed, and won the game. They had fun and learned a thing or two from the game, I think. 

Later, we went to the local hobby shop. I think I mentioned this the other day. The first time we went, Stevie picked up a pair of HeroClix singles based on Thor: Ragnarok. He got Valkyrie and Arena Thor. The next time we went, he convinced us to buy him a set of 6 Captain America themed figures (Cap, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier, and a couple of Cap clones I'm not familiar with from the comics) and a map, so he could play. We've done some actual(ish, no rulebook so going on my memory of what the powers are/do) games, and just played around with the figures, as well. Stevie's only 5, so he's got plenty of time to actually learn the game. And yesterday, we were back at the hobby shop and the dude there just gave him some more figures and maps for free! They were old promo items, he explained. 

At the same time we picked up the Captain America set, Flynn got four Official D&D Minis of dragonborn (which he played in West Marches, they didn't have any Half Orc Paladins, which he also played) and he's been painting them himself. He's got two done and another nearly complete. 

Pretty good for his first time! He's always been artistic. Hopefully he'll get the last two finished tomorrow, since the weather will be good and I can show him how to use the spray-on top coat I bought while the weather is nice. 

Finally, one day while rummaging around my old bedroom at my parents' house, they found this 2E era starter pack for D&D. I picked it up many years ago when I was working at WaldenBooks (back when there was a WaldenBooks) mostly for the minis and dice that came with it, because I had the employee discount. The boys brought it home, and we've been talking about playing it but they keep finding other things to do. I'm leaving it with Flynn, though, so maybe he'll go through it and give DMing a try this year. 

It's a bit disappointing that we haven't actually played D&D together this month. We still have this weekend, but since it's my last one in the States for a while, my parents want to get together one more time, the boys want to go out and do fun things...we'll see what happens. I just feel good about leaving the boys with a gaming itch. I bet they're going to be bugging my wife to take them back to the hobby shop from time to time to get more HeroClix, minis to paint, and so on. 

Oh, almost forgot. We watched The Mandalorian together as well. They both loved it! And they want Mandalorian helmets an LEGOs and so on for birthday presents. Flynn wants to craft his own armor for next Halloween. :D 

All in all, this has been a great trip for me to share my love of gaming/geekery with my boys!

Vacation's Over

I finished my first day back at work after an entire week off.  Unlike public school teachers, Korean kindergartens are for profit affairs, and that means I get one week in the summer, one week in winter. When every other damn person in Korea also has vacation, so it's pointless to try traveling.  At least not on the money I'm making and with the grad school tuition I have to pay (which is incredibly cheap compared to grad school in the States, but I've digressed from my digression so I'll stop now).

Anyway, the week was nice, eventful, and allowed me to catch up on some lacking daddy time that my son needed.  It also meant I was away from the blogs for the most part, so I didn't post anything.

Didn't do a bit of work on Chanbara either.  I don't know if I'll get around to playtesting this thing after all.  I've got books I need to read in preparation for choosing a dissertation topic on order, due to arrive soon.  Not light reading by a long shot.  That will suck up all of August, I'm afraid.  And then the next semester starts in September, so I'll have to continue the readings for the dissertation selection while doing normal class readings.

Long story short, Chanbara rules are more or less complete and should be playable.  Are they balanced?  Does it matter?  I've still got a bit of setting detail to write up.  A bit of editing.  Formatting and proofreading.  I may manage to slip out an untested version by the end of the year or early next.  And that may be the end of my hobby RPG publishing career.  At least until I either earn my Ph.D. or quit.

On a positive note, I did spend evenings last week working on the mega-dungeon, and after last Saturday's game the guys were asking when we'd play in it again.  So I may find some time to DM it in the coming weeks or months.

Also, yesterday I took my son to the weekly board game meetup (which I usually miss).  After we got home, he wanted to play some games with me, and we did.  This morning, he got up and while I showered he played the games again by himself, just rolling the dice and moving around (snakes and ladders, and a similar rocket themed race game).  My son is finally old enough to grasp rules, and not to get upset when he loses.  And obviously smart enough to have realized that by playing by himself, he's guaranteed to win.  I'm sure we'll be playing all sorts of games within the next few years. 

Anyway, expect a session report from our game last Saturday over the next few days, and hopefully a few other posts about RPG related stuff soon as well.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Ftaghn!

Cthulhu menaced the city of Arkham, but a group of brave and plucky investigators managed to turn the tide and send the incomprehensible presences from beyond time and space back to the cyclopean expanses from which they came.

That's right, the old Busan Board Game Club (myself, Pat, Josh, and Alex, plus Pat's friend Jenna) got together this afternoon to play another round of Arkham Horror, the HPL Mythos themed board game.  And again, it was a lot of fun, but we managed to win without too much risk this time.

For whatever reason, before I arrived everyone had decided to go up against Cthulhu (since he's the toughest of the Great Old Ones in the game), but to counteract that we didn't select our heroes randomly.  I was the P.I., and was the primary monster hunter (and became the deputy).  Pat was the psychiatrist, and kept us all in the game with timely aid in sanity tokens and money.  Josh, as the photographer, and Alex as the researcher, were the main gate explorers/closers.  Jenna, as the doctor, ended up being the primary clue collector, and didn't really need to
use her healing ability much except on herself.

Our team worked well together, and managed to seal six gates while Cthulhu still had three open slots to be filled on its track.  Good thing, too.  Cthulhu would have slaughtered us if it had come to the final battle.

Board Game Review: Stone Age

I had the whole first week of January off from work.  Thought I'd get all of my board game reviews written then.  Boy, was I wrong!  Anyway, I've got time now, so here's another review.

Stone Age, by Bernd Brunnhoffer, and released by Rio Grande Games (and others), is not a new game, but I got to play it for the first time the other day.  It's a full on Euro-game, and really fits the Euro criteria to a T.  It's small, simple, takes little time to explain, has no in-game text at all, and all players compete until a set completion time at which point everyone adds up their points and they see who is the winner.

The game play is done by managing your resources.  You have only so many workers, and need to divide them between collecting food, wood, bricks, stone and gold in the wilderness, and also between creating farms, crafting tools, and having children in the Love Shack.  With the gathered resources (besides food, which you spend each round to feed the workers), you can purchase huts (worth certain amounts of victory points and costing various amounts of resources) and cards, which provide certain bonuses at the time of purchase, and are worth victory points at the end of the game as well.  Fairly simple. 

There are always 4 huts face up that can be purchased, and four cards with escalating costs.  When a hut is bought, the next one on the stack is turned face up.  When one stack is exhausted, the game ends.  Cards move down the price track as others are bought, so a card that seems too expensive at 3 or 4 resources might be worth it next round for only one or two - but someone else might claim it first.

For me, the strongest point is the "no in-game text" bit.  That means I can easily buy the game here in Korea.  Then I can just download and print the rules in English for reference.  It will likely be the first Euro-game I play with my son, since he's just beginning to learn how to read.  Anyway, as you can see, I'm planning to actually buy a copy.  It's not the most fun game I've ever played, but is a nicely done Euro-game and seems like it will have fairly good replay value.