More Deliveries

Life is still crazy, and I will be taking a break this week for self-care. Which may or may not include some gaming stuff for relaxation; as you're about to see, it will require further purchases.

I picked up the 1st edition Warhammer: Age of Sigmar box.

It was actually cheaper than the original price, and came with free shipping, so I jumped on it.

To my surprise, however - having bought the similarly-sized 40K starter that came out about the same time - it did not contain push-fit figures, nor "one-rule-at-a-time" scenarios, nor painting tips. It'll be a bit more work.

I haven't built anything plastic that wasn't push-fit in years. That's kinda the point of the Wofun Paperboys, after all.

I only cut out one before realizing I'd need
to sort them...

The rest of the contents.

The rulebook is not as beginner-friendly as the 40K starter; it contains the full rules of the game as they were at the time, and the included scenarios do not take you "step-by-step." Probably no point, as none of the included figures have shooting weapons or magic; simple heroic abilities are provided for commander figures. The scenarios do start out with smaller units and simple objectives, and are on larger tables than the 22x22inch paper "boards" provided these days. They are progressive, so that by the end you are using all four units, and a simple campaign bonus is included - if one side wins a Major Victory, they roll on a bonus table and may use that bonus once during the next game.

My next purchase from my Friendly Local Game Store (I recently discovered one about six miles from work) will be plastic glue, and some paint - most likely Army Painter, as I am assured they are of similar quality to Citadel but half the price. I am tempted by their version of Contrast, but the (excellent) painting guide I've found online specifically for these figures is pre-Contrast - the usual base-shade-highlight combo.

Colors required:

Khornate Chaos

• Black
• Brass
• Red
• Skin

Stormcast Eternals

• Blue
• Gold
• White

Both

• Tan undercoat spray (which I need for the Warhammer Alliance stuff anyway)
• Metal
• Brown
• Pink

My other delivery was my long-awaited copy of X-treme Dungeon Mastery, second edition, which finished its Kickstarter shortly after I started this blog. 

Though I've had the e-book and e-audio version for a while now, my hard copy and custom character drawing by Schlock Mercenary cartoonist Howard Tayler was in the very last shipment - probably because my character request was more complex than most:

What I was hoping for was a city-guard recruiting poster for my "Queen's Own Troubleshooters" campaign at work. Not a bad result. This will go inside the cover of my campaign binder - if I ever get the campaign back off the ground, which at present doesn't look likely anytime soon.

Finally, Lexi got another couple boxes to play with:

At least someone's happy!

From the Sewers They Come

 Had another of my 1-hour semi-DnD sessions at work. For once, I had three players, but two of them were fellow staff. This was by design; the other adults are considering running games of their own, most likely as substitutes for mine. (I won't be at work next Thursday, for example.)

• Player 1: Student, playing a Level 3 druid with a chameleon familiar. (This is the same one who played the druid with a cat familiar in the displacer beast incident.) 
• Player 2: Fellow staff with an arcane magic-user, displaced from her own world. (From the Walking Library incident.)
• Player 3: Fellow staff with college-educated magic-user and a powerful magic staff. First game of XD20 for her, but an experienced RPG player and game-master.

When playing games like this, a group dynamic helps enormously, especially when the players know the basic mechanics - not of specific rules, but the social mechanics of working together, searching for clues, and bouncing ideas off each other. This is why I like to draw in adults when I can, even in sillier games like this one.

The party (nominally led by Player 1, who had received a promotion after a previous session in which she rescued a chocolatier held prisoner by brownies), was informed, "There's a giant crocodile coming out of the sewers between Main Street and Taverner's Row! Go handle it!"

They arrived to find milling and fleeing civilians, a giant crocodile clambering out of a pothole, and some nervous City Guard desperately hoping that our heroines would bail them out of this mess.

Fairly quickly, a divergence in method developed. Player 1, peaceful and with the natural world her responsibility, was pitted against Player 3, who defaulted to the usual violent methods inherent in your average DnD encounter. 

They discussed and explored the situation for a while. The Druid's familiar did its best to help sense the monster's mood (hungry), but she rolled badly on a communication attempt; the croc snapped at the poor lizard, whence it scampered back to its mistress and hid in her robes. Other spells the players tried included trapping it with vines (on a die roll we decided the nearby government buildings were covered with ivy) - they failed to hold it; and a cold spell to freeze the cold-blooded creature in its tracks - slowed it down but no more.

As they continued to discuss possibilities and the NPC guards started to panic, I suddenly demanded awareness and dodge checks. Something tentacled appeared out of the nearest manhole cover.

The situation at this point:
- center: giant croc in pit
- circles around croc: terrified guards
- top: tentacled horror
- "You": the players
- upper right: government building
- lower right: tavern

The guards scattered, most of them heading for a nicely fortified government building; they spent the rest of the session firing arrows at the croc.

Player 1 tried to distract the croc, successfully in the sense that it couldn't decide where to go or what to eat first.

Player 2 generally supported the others, helping lift things or adding power to spells, and also tried her best to stop the tentacled squid-thing from ripping apart a nearby tavern.

Player 3 asked if there was methane in the sewer (there was), then dashed into the bar across the street and negotiated for a barrel of ale. Fine Dragon's Brew XXX, to be precise.

Her aim was not precise (her intent was to drop it into the sewer under the still trundling croc), but a high roll for effect definitely scorched and knocked out the croc. It also stunned the squid.

Unfortunately, it also caused a fuel-air explosion underground. Several more manhole covers disappeared into orbit, and fire belched out of every latrine in the area to set the buildings on fire.

The druid, encouraged and assisted by the others, managed to draw rain from the clouds overhead to douse the flames. Amid a fuming haze and the sound of wailing hand-cranked sirens and protests of the citizenry, the drenched party hauled the monsters off to the zoo for disposal.

Still, mission accomplished, right?

XD20 Session Two

 I had three players yesterday to run another session of XD20.

Bet you didn't know you could game AND snack
at the library.

My previous players returned, as well as a new one and a fourth kid who listened in for a while. A warrior (scared of bugs), a frog (scared of pointy things) and a magic-user (scared of heights). The new player developed her abilities and sense of self over the course of the session - read on.

Today's mission: "The Queen's pet displacer beast has climbed the tallest tree in the hunting preserve. Get it down. No, you're not allowed to hurt it."

This was a challenge for all three, since there were jagged branches everywhere, bugs living under the bark, and the monster was fifty feet up. The magic user (we eventually settled on the term "witch") luckily had a cat with which she could psychically communicate, so was still able to participate through him.

They climbed the tree and eventually found the displacer beast sunning itself on a branch. The cat vaguely communicated with the displacer beast, which didn't want to come down but was starting to get hungry. A small cat and a large frog looked like tasty snacks. The players tried several methods to both  annoy and attack the beast (by throwing things at it), but kept rolling low - particularly the warrior, whose player had to switch out dice several times. Attacks and dodges required an extra 1-in-2 die roll to see if they recognized the beast, or its shadow-image instead. Eventually the cat got the beast to chase it down the tree - right over the warrior, frog and witch, who all took damage. 

Once it was down, a couple potions, a nervous and uncooperative tree guard (this was a special and holy tree, you see), and a hastily set trap served to stop the displacer beast from displacing itself to freedom. Job done. The adventurers took themselves off to the infirmary, while the Queen began to cement herself in my mind as a twit - this is the second time she's nearly gotten the party killed.

What will the party meet next week? No idea.

More XD20 at the Library

 One of the hilarious things about roleplaying games (and occasionally, wargames) is the non sequiturs overheard by non-gamers. As pictures are worth a thousand words:

My players were visual learners.

Not having squared paper or miniatures, this was the method I chose to clarify positioning to tonight's players as they hunted... a giant crab. (Get yer minds outta the gutter.)

0: Characters were designed and characterized. We had:

• A giant frog. Not kidding. She may have been thinking of something like a Bullywug, but my monster manual didn't list it. We decided she was an escaped lab experiment with a very long and sticky tongue. She was afraid of sharp things (problematic, given the genre) and randomly was good at cooking. She carried many cooking potions. How useful these would be in an adventure... well, we're about to see.
• A fairly generic fighter, armed with a trident. Frightened of bugs, but ready to fight for his friends and family.

That gave me some useful ideas. Both characters met in the break room of the Royal Guard barracks where they had obtained jobs. After introductions and descriptions, the Captain came in and announced that the Queen was hungry for giant crustacean tonight. Our two heroes were ordered to head through town to the nearby coast, kill and retrieve a monster crab.

Off they went to Murder Rocks. To get there, they had to pass through the Wizards' Quarter, and passed a potion-supply shop with open displays of colorful beetles outside. This enabled our first tests - fear for the fighter, and hunger for the frog. The frog was also wary of running into her former master, but they made it to the coast.

This was a steep, broken slope of black rock and coral (sharp, thus intimidating the frog), with a huge flat crab sunning itself at the bottom (intimidating the fighter).

Zoom in to follow along by the numbers.

1: Our heroes scrambled down the slope - the frog assisting the fighter by letting out her long tongue for him to slide down.

2: The fighter, terrified of the crab, thought it might help if he couldn't see it. We decided that one of the frog's many potions was one for blindness. He drank it, then using his innate sense of the space around him, leapt onto the crab.

3a: He rolled low, and ended up slipping off and lying under the monster. He stabbed it with his trident, but couldn't really move and was drenched in stinking black ichor. (Grossness brings kids to attention like nothing else.)

3b: So the frog dropped a "lightness" potion that caused the crab to levitate.

4: It drifted away towards the sea. Not a good thing, since their job was to capture it. The fighter, recovering from his blindness, followed it and batted it back until it crunched into the cliff.

5: At which point it flipped on its back and died.

Our heroes used the last of the levitation potion to move the crab up along the coast road, through the town and back to the palace, at which point the warrior took a shower and the frog joined the cooks. Adventure complete.

Let's just say I gamemaster by the seat of my pants, and XD20 is perfect for that. The teens enjoyed it, and I think it was a fair introduction to DnD. They seemed eager to try again. This was the first time I was able to get more than one player, which helped enormously; there is a distinct atmosphere in a group game where players can bounce ideas off each other, and it was great to see them cooperate in achieving the goal. Hopefully, more exposure will bring more players and more adventures!

Painting and DMing

 The last couple days were extremely busy. Managing a library is far more than just dealing with books (which isn't as easy as it sounds, either). Preparing for programs, preparing for outreaches, scheduling programs and staff, catching up on training... let's just say I don't get to do much of what I got into librarianship to do anymore.

I'm still the teen librarian, though, so I can (ahem) use some of my interests in programming.

Despite some advertising and actively reminding the teens, though, I got only one taker for each event this week. And one of them was a fellow staff member.

It was still at least mildly relaxing. Between the interruptions, at least.

Wednesday was mini-painting day:

Painting started with lots of paper, about a dozen GW paints,
and a handful of 3D-printed sea-life models, undercoated with
Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray.

I'd tried to get the teens to design and print their own models.
This is Luffy, from the popular comic and anime One Piece.

This is my model for the day - a goldfish, now basecoated with
Averland Sunset.

My guinea-pig working on his figure. He was impressed
by the Contrast paints.

Not using Contrast, or having a wide selection, I tried
shading with Agrax Earthshade, then highlighting with a
little more Averland Sunset. I got a very dirty-looking goldfish.

This bottle of GW white was in pretty horrid shape,
even though I'd only just opened it,
so we used some craft Titanium White instead.

The finished Luffy - red shirt and hatband, blue pants,
white cuffs, black sandal straps and a little Agrax Earthshade
on the hat and sandals. We'll try touching it up next week,
but not bad for a first-timer!

Thursday was roleplaying day. One of my co-workers was excited to try, which was a good thing as I got no takers among the teens. (This is why, in the past, I resorted to playing with younger kids - but I was a children's librarian at the time.)

I used XD20, the same rules-on-a-postcard set (recently upgraded to Second Edition) I started with about five years ago. Building a character is lightning-quick - three rolls, one calculation, and answering a series of questions. My fellow librarian had had her character in her head for a long time, just never having a chance to play it. (This was not the first time this has happened; some of my best players have been ones who have always been on the outside of the game looking in!) What she had in mind was a magical type with a Quantum Leap background. Like Scott Bakula, she'd been separated from her own universe and her children, and was trying to get back, every so often falling through another hole in reality.

You'd think this would make it hard to fit her into a party, but it's what my proprietary campaign was made for. The city of Redwater is a large, cosmopolitan port with many immigrants and passers-through - some of them quite odd. (This is not the strangest character concept I've seen.) The Queen's Own Troubleshooters (think fantastic SWAT team) take anyone, partly for the breadth of ability and experience and partly for expendability. Even though I only had one Player Character, I could and did give her a couple non-player guards and a library acolyte to help her with her task - chase down and stop the city library, which had just stood up and started walking away on giant chicken legs.

This made the first challenge a basic roll - can the party keep up with the library, weaving through crowds of confused and alarmed citizens?

Well, no. She kept rolling low. She suggested a magic spell that would essentially reduce friction, enabling her to slip between obstacles, but it failed. The library was getting away. At this point I had one of the NPCs (being natives and thus more aware of options) suggest an air taxi. They flagged down a small dirigible.

As we were at the reference desk, I turned to the computer
and looked for a picture of the first (1852) dirigible.
I instead found photos of pre-WWI types like this one.

The party hitched a ride and raced off ("Follow that library!"). I left it up to my coworker as to how they would get in - I assumed she would try to drop onto the roof from a hovering position, but her ultimate solution was a lasso. A fifty-foot rope and a bit of magic later, the encounter looked like this:

The wizard, the librarian and the two daring guards ziplined over to the tower, which was glowing from its windows and door. They hurried down the stairs, then picked their way through the stacks towards the high-security vault from which the light emanated. After an encounter with a glowing green tiger, they made it into the vault to find a glowing magical book open on a plinth.

The player crept up, stabbed it with her dagger and tried to close it. As usual for her physical checks, she rolled poorly, and instead it fell to the floor, face-down. At this point, the librarian moved in and closed it. The library now settled back to the ground, much closer to the harbor than it had previously been.

This was a hasty session, partly because I had to leave for an outreach event, and partly because we were forced to play at the reference desk. Surprisingly for the time of day, though, it was not busy and we weren't interrupted often. While I'd been basically running in place to keep the session going, my coworker seemed to enjoy herself, and felt it was a fair introduction to fantasy roleplaying. We'll try it again next week, and her (ahem) experience will help. One interesting thing she noted was that (being a neophyte) she'd needed help to think up solutions and actions that a larger group of players would have provided. She's absolutely right about that - Dungeons and Dragons is very much a social game. We'll have to try harder to get the teens' attention - either that or resort to the kids.

Ah, well, it was an enjoyable one-shot anyway, and a good test of the game mechanics. See you next time!

Playtesting XD20

After weeks of coaxing and beating around the bush with the teens at work (who would generally prefer to be doing techy things in the library's tech lab) I finally got one of them to build a fantasy roleplaying character and playtest XD20 with me.

XD20 is Dragonlance author Tracy Hickman's pared-to-the-bone version of Dungeons and Dragons. This one has an interesting character sheet that focuses more on imagining the character than on determining his stats. In particular, there are three questions to answer that not only help create the character but provide ready motivations for play, and would be useful in any game. 

Once my player realized he could make anything he wanted ... he wanted to make a Yugi-Oh character. 

Now Yugi-Oh is not a game or story I know anything about. I don't go in for collectible card games. But there is something in allowing players to start with their favorite universes when devising characters. I've done it myself when creating NPCs and entire armies for Warhammer - my go-to Imperial Guard regiment was basically Bill Slim's 14th Army in 40K, complete with bush-hats and kukris custom-made by Eureka Miniatures. Stereotypes and popular culture are good for one thing - they engage the mind, providing shortcuts to the nature of personality and even images in the mind's eye.

Our hero for tonight's session is a 1st-level mage with a curious ability. He owns a magical pack of cards that summons monsters to fight for him.

I decided that the game mechanism for this would be: whenever he draws a card, a monster will be selected at random from the DnD Monster Manual, and he may use its abilities, at the cost of his magical Stat, which will fall with repeated uses. He may dismiss the monster at will, and it will disappear into a veil of magical sparkles.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a Monster Manual handy. I had Monsters and Creatures: A Young Adventurer's Guide by Jim Zub.

Now, I'm not saying this isn't an awesome book (and series!) But it does tend to focus on the larger and more dangerous critters of the DnD-verse. Read on to see.

Our hero stands outside a dark cave, which he is told contains monsters and treasure. What will he do?

He draws a card. I opened the book at random:

Before marching into the clearly dangerous cave, he had the banshee howl into it. There was nothing within, though the howl was reflected back out the cave into his ears, and a door at the back of the cave was shattered, revealing a tunnel.

Hoping to have something else investigate the tunnel, our hero summoned an:

This turned out to be a very large owlbear (did I mention I watched Grizzly the other night?), which could not get into the tunnel at all and was rather disgruntled. Our hero marched down the tunnel. He triggered an alarm trap and goblins at the other end started shooting at him. He used his backpack to shield himself, advanced to the end of the tunnel, and summoned a:

Which barely fit in the smallish cave, and automatically squashed the five or so goblins within, their nest, and their treasure. Our hero got the spoils - a bloody, messy cave and some coins which, having been mashed against the walls, were no longer legal tender.

XD20 does not do XP; the players level up when the GM says so. But I think our hero has learned some valuable lessons about using his newfound powers...!