DnD

Got my copy of the new DnD 5th Edition Players Handbook today, preordered from Amazon. My initial impresson is "much simplified from 3.5th Edition, much less Video-game-on-a-tabletop than 4th Edition". More at my Battle Honors blog as I get into it.

DnD

Just received the starter set for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, which I've heard described as "D&D 2.5". The starter set includes an adventure module and pregenerated characters, so I'll put them on the table for a test run this week.

Also got Victory Point Games Moundbuilders, which looks interestin both from a historical standpoint and as an engine for generating a game campaign background.

GZG ECC 17

For about seven years I attended Ground Zero Games East Coast Con in Lancaster PA; however, a few years ago the con organizers decided to move the con to Owego NY, which makes it a nine hour drive instead of six hours, and I hadn't gone since. Since I now have the time, I decided to go

I drove up the Eastern Shore, through Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and into New York. The Eastern Shore has a lot of pretty places, open fields and farms and such, but there's an air of decay that you can't miss. Businesses closed, houses abandoned, buildings collapsed. The good part was that, compared to the highway hypnosis of the interstate, the route was varied enough to keep you awake as you're driving, and even though "nine hour trip" sounds like a long time, that includes three or four breaks so it wasn't bad. Starting in Pennsylvania, the ground was covered by snow, and the Susquehanna River was frozen over, but the roads were clear.
The con had about 35 people attending, which was a bit less than I'd have hoped but sufficient. Jon Davis and his sons were there, as well as Indy Kochte, Stuart Murray, Aaron Newman, Martin Connell, Steve Barosi, and the Canadian contingent of JP Fiset, Tom McCarthy and Jim Bell, and others. As it happens, I was in Stuart's games three times--a homebrew Jedi vs Droids game on Friday night, and two runs of the same Hammer's Slammers scenario on Saturday morning and afternoon--and then got into Martin and Steve's Mars Needs Women VSF StarGrunt game on Saturday night. AARs will be at Battle Honors. I decided to forego the Sunday morning game due to the length of the drive. Had a great time, and it was good to see old friends again.

   

Ironclads

For my first time out of the house in a week (not counting trips to doctor's offices and the hospital), I went to Ryan's to kick the gaming year off with a bout of Ironclads. Dan, Ryan and I rotated among the three ships in the Ferrol 1865 scenario, with the Confederates winning twice, the Union eking out a win once.

DnD

I've found a new D&D campaign, this one using 4th Edition rules. Tonight was my first session, and my first die roll was a natural 20--an auspicious way to start off the game! I'm looking forward to getting back into campaigning.

Monster Hunter

We've gotten our copy of the Monster Hunter International RPG. I say "we" because Josh immediately grabbed it and started making notes for a campaign.

I note that one of the Navaho hero/gods is Monster Slayer.

History

In the morning I went to Echoes of Time, a vintage costume shop on North Witchduck in Virginia Beach. I'd been hoping to find a frock coat or a Victorian British uniform jacket for sale--they had some for rent, but not for sale--but I did pick up some leather gaiters and a vintage tuxedo shirt, which I think can be made to go with the Steam Gunslinger look.

In the afternoon Jon Davis came over again. Apparently someone didn't follow procedures the way the manufacturer intended, so the nuclear tests are delayed and Jon had some free time. We set up Close Action and each took three ships; Jon ended up losing 15 sections while I lost 16, earning him a marginal win. Pretty good for being the second time he'd played !

I ordered Navajo Wars and one of Gwen's favorite games Dominion.

Carcassonne

Gwen likes Carcassonne, so we got a copy in preparation for her coming to the US. Oddly, I've played it with Canadians and Australians, but never with a group which is primarily Americans.

As it happens, we also received a copy of Trireme. When it arrived in the mail, the conversation went thus:

"Son, I got you something."
"It's A BOX!"
"And you know what's inside it?"
"Wait, there's something INSIDE it?"
"Yes -- another box!"
"IT'S MORE THAN I EVER DREAMED!"

Later, Josh posted: "Got a copy of Trireme in the mail today...SOON THE WORLD WILL BE SHATTERED BENEATH THE CORVII OF ROME!...I mean, uh, "thanks Dad".

Battle of Montgisard

Broke out GMT Games' Infidel, which I've had for a while, and put counters on the board for the Montgisard scenario. Historically, in 1177, a tiny Crusader force under the sixteen-year-old King of Jerusalem, Baldwin the Leper, came across a much larger invading Saracen force under Saladin. The Saracens were tired from marching and unprepared for battle. Although outnumbered by something like 6 to 1, the Crusaders merely paused for a quick prayer, then attacked. With the King leading the attack personally, they broke through the whole Saracen army, destroying 90% of it and nearly catching Saladin himself. The game AAR went pretty much the same way.

Gaming Session

We've had a couple of small Close Action games at the house before, but this Saturday was our first RPG session at the house. Josh and I had characters who investigated a derelict galleon...

A secret of Game-Fu

From Eric S Raymond : "when in doubt, play to maximize the breadth of your option tree", and "It looked like I was getting lucky; what I was actually doing was maximizing the number of possible ways I could get lucky." As is noted in the comments on that post, this strategy also applies to life.

D&D

When it comes to role playing games, I have reluctantly concluded that "a badly designed one with lots of local players" is better than "a well designed one with no local players". With that in mind, I've found a nearby D&D3.5 campaign which seems to be based on the European trading companies and the East Indies. Met the game master, designed a couple of characters, and had the first "introduction to the setting, let's get you to where the rest of the party is" session. It's a pleasure to be rolling some dice again.

MegaMek

Had a good game with Josh tonight, 10,000 points to a side with my slower and heavier mechs doing a creditable job of taking on his lance of faster and lighter mechs. Jump jets make a big difference in hilly terrain, which is what we were fighting in. After four hours and 18 turns, we called it a draw, although I have to say my force was looking pretty chewed up at the end with two of six mechs destroyed, one immobile and and one down with an unconscious pilot. I need to get better at the mech equivalent of the Lufbury Circle, and to pick a specific set of mechs instead of rolling randomly to see what forces I get.

Battletech

Got the Battletech 25th anniversary boxed set. That means I now have a game in which 30ft tall robots sprint (or plod) across the landscape, blazing away at each other with incredible weapons from ridiculously short ranges and still missing. This is implausible but still curiously satisfying...

Melbourne: Friday

Starting off the day with a typical vacation activity: pouring concrete. You see, Marguerite has some artificial trees, and there needs to be some weight in the pots to keep them from blowing over...so we put a layer of concrete in the bottom, then a thick layer of styrofoam so it wouldn't be ridiculously heavy, then a finishing layer of concrete, then some cedar mulch.

After stopping in a cathedral for part of a Good Friday service, we went to Josh and Gwen's place for Game Night. We were joined by Gwen's brother Chris (who lives there), James and Kylie, Tim and Monica, and Russell.

We had a round of Munchkin to get started with--first game of Munchkin I've ever played. I got up to level 9 but got hit by a wandering monster which dropped me back to level1, thanks to that conniving fiend Chris. It looked like he was going to win but a couple of us conspired to throw the game to Kylie instead.

We split into two groups for Dominion, with one group playing a cutthroat version and

my group playing a more production-oriented game. I've played Dominion before, but it was a couple of years ago. For the Prosperity version we played, it seems to be important to have a sense of tempo, so you know when to switch from "building up your resources" to "buying your victory points". I delayed a little too long, and Gwen didn't, so she won that game by quite a margin.

After that we had "barbie", which means Josh grilled beef, sausages, and satay chicken, plus salad and potato wedges.

For the third round, my group went back to Munchkin. I got up to level 5 and stuck there. Josh got up to level 3, fell back to level 1, but then used his items to have James win instead of Kylie, "If I help you win, will you mock her unmercifully for three days? No? How about three hours? Okay, done. Unmercifully. You can't go back on your broath."

Had a lot of fun and Josh and Gwen's friends all seemed like good people.

XDM: Xtreme Dungeon Mastery

I saw the description of XDM: Xtreme Dungeon Mastery on the Schlock Mercenary blog. I'm still getting almost everything in dead-tree form, but I bought this in the Kindle edition and read it on my laptop.

Good point about e-book: you can click back and forth between the main text and the footnote.

Bad point about e-book: trying to find a font setting which makes the footnotes big enough to read, while leaving the main text small enough that the screen has more than six words at a time.

As for the content of the book...

The point of the book is to make RPGs exciting and entertaining. I'm all in favor of that, couldn't agree more.

About a third of the book is very good. Structuring a story, creating the atmosphere, keeping the pace, the Campbellian monomyth structure.

Another third boils down to "have a good, experienced DM and let him run things". You don't need a lot of charts, tables, skill lists, statistics and such, if the DM is good; you just get a few basic stats and then describe what you want to do. The DM assigns a target number and you roll a pair of d20s, to see whether you succeed or not, and how strong your success or failure is. This works out really well, quick and fun, IF you have a good, experienced GM. The fact that you don't have combat modifiers written down anywhere doesn't mean that you don't need them; you still need to know whether, for example, it's reasonable for a guy with a dagger to beat a guy with a sword, or a crocodile, or whatever you're likely to be facing. If those kinds of things aren't written down, they have to be in the DM's head. That is to say, this section is great if you have the sort of GM who doesn't need this section.

The third third was not useful--funny, a lot of it, but not anything to significantly enhance your gaming experience. It tells the imaginary history of the secret society of Extreme DMs. It tells you how to juggle, do card tricks, use flash paper, and perform a couple of stage illusions; but prestidigitation is hardly a key component of being a DM. I'm sure you can use magic tricks to enhance the game experience. I'm also sure that for the same number of hours, you'd get more benefit for your game by learning storytelling technique and doing prep work on your game than you would by learning stage magic.

I wanted to give this book high marks. For some people--people who have a moment of enlightenment and say "ah, I can streamline things and speed up my game", or people who haven't thought about making the game follow a story arc--this could certainly be worth every penny. In my case, though, I'm glad I only paid for the Kindle version rather than the hardback.

Bussaco

The latest battle report is at Battle Honors.

Game reviews

From Armed and Dangerous, a review of ZMan Games Merchants and Marauders and Yggdrasil. After reading this review, I'm particularly interested in Yggdrasil, both because it's cooperative and because it can be played solo.

Settlers of Cataan

Josh, Josh's friend Tom Paul and I played Settlers of Cataan tonight. Josh almost invariably wins, but tonight I managed to get to 10 points and victory just before Josh did. I'm documenting it just because it's unusual, not because I'm bragging in any way. ;-)

Skirmish at Pass Christian, 1862

   Ryan hosted an Ironclads game today, a recreation of an action at Pass Christian, Mississippi in April 1862. Ryan, Bill and I commanded four Union ships, including one armed troop transport, moving upriver to land the 9th Connecticut at a pier; Josh and Dan commanded three Confederate vessels trying to prevent the invasion. All of these were wooden ships, relatively small guns balanced by light armor.
   The Union plan was that New London, our advance ship, would fall back until our other two fighting ships came down and joined her, whereupon they would advance; our transport, Henry Lewis, would hang behind. The Rebel plan was for one ship to go up the west channel, guarding the landing site, while the other two took the central channel. These plans lasted about one turn.
   I had command of New London and Henry Lewis. I decided to keep Henry close behind Ryan's ship Hatteras instead of staying back; I sent New London on ahead to tangle with Pamlico, the Rebel guarding the piers, since he seemed far enough away from the other Confederates that they couldn't support each other. Let's get it started--I tried to ram, barely missed but got a point blank rake which was nearly as good. Hatteras followed New London into close action but got caught between CSS Pamlico and Josh's CSS Carondelet and set afire. Shortly afterwards Carondelet was set afire.
   CSS Oregon, steaming up the east side of the river, made a navigational error. Turning west would have put her closer to the action, but she'd bounce off a cliff; she turned east and went aground on the mud flats along the eastern riverbank, which kept her out of action for most of the game.
   With Oregon hors de combat and the other two Confederates in the eastern channel, I realized I could send Henry Lewis up the central channel without risk of being intercepted. Carondelet shot at her but Lewis was moving at high speed, and Carondelet's crew was busy putting out their fire; Lewis escaped unscathed.
Pamlico attempted to ram Bill's ship USS J P Jackson. At the last moment, Jackson's guns boomed, hitting Pamlico's magazine and destroying her in one tremendous blast.
   Carondelet, fighting alone now, shot in all directions.  She set New London ablaze and crippled Jackson, but missed Lewis as she sped by. Carondelet set off in pursuit; New London, with fires burning out of control, moved in to intercept. The two ships collided bow to bow, putting them both dead in the water. Moments later, New London's fires reached her boilers. She exploded and sank as Carondelet backed away from the blast. Ryan's Hatteras staggered off, burned to the waterline and sank.
   Oregon worked her way out of the mud bank and joined Carondelet in trading shots with Jackson and the distant Henry Lewis, which was approaching the landing zone. A lucky long range shot managed to start a small fire on Henry Lewis, but Lewis's crew quickly extinguished the blaze. She came in, anchored, and landed her troops.
   It was a hard fought battle. The Union lost two ships, with a third crippled and facing two to one odds, while the fourth achieved the scenario victory condition. The Confederates lost one, with a second heavily damaged. I'd call it a tactical victory for the South; it was a strategic victory for the North, but could easily have gone the other way.
The historical result was that the Union squadron landed 1200 troops at Pass Christian, where they destroyed a Confederate camp before moving on to Louisiana.