Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Gaming in November

November is a busy month for gaming!

The first weekend of November from 5th to the 7th, is Vermont's only gaming convention, Carnage. Carnage takes place in Fairlee, VT at the Inn on Lake Morey and is an awesome gaming event. If you cannot make it for the whole weekend, we highly recommend going for at least one day. We are heading down on the 5th and and are coming back at about noon on the th. We have one spot available in the car for a passenger so if you are looking to hitch a ride, let us know.

Then, on November 13th, we will be at the Goodrich Library in Newport, VT (or visit them on Facebook)to participate in National Game Day. We will bring along some board games, Magic the Gathering cards and some roleplaying books. We hope we can introduce some people to some new games.

On November 20th, we will have our regular Border Board Games game night. To honor Thanksgiving, we will bring along board games with a exploration and colonization theme. So we'll have Settlers of Catan, Castle Ravenloft, Battlestar Gallactica, Age of Empires III, and Race for the Galaxy. If you have any gaming requests, please let us know.

And, to end of November, on the 27th, we will plan to have our regular D&D session.

Monday, October 25, 2010

The best laid plans....

Our D&D 3.5 group gathered for the October installment on saturday night. The gang assembled minus Ken (where are you dude?) and discovered that its latest task was the most hazardous yet. Despite the hazards, Splinter somehow managed to avoid getting clobbered. Instead it fell to "Soak" Amra the barbarian to absorb the misfortune that rained down on us.

The task was fairly clear from the start. A hobgoblin champion was attempting to infiltrate the wizard tower and alter the course of history. The whole was complicated by an apparent temporal shift. Just as the gang had gotten used to fighting in the future, we were suddenly transported back into the ethereal past as a result of our meddlings in the Wizard's Tower. Our band of mercenraies, assisted by a cadre of inexperienced troopers and war mages, was tasked with stopping the champion in his tracks.

In truth we had only to steal the hobgoblin's amulet and return it to our wizard contact. The hobgoblin was not in an especially cooperative mood however, forcing us to take it from his dead, lifeless hands. Sort of. DM Rob actually managed the complexity of a mass melee in a format that was both logical and less tedious. The mobs of troopers squared off against mobs of enemy warriors leaving the individual combat to the PCs and a select few enemy combatants. This enabled us to experience the fear and uncertain of large scale combat without hundreds of tedious die rolls between the NPC forces.

Our plan fell apart almost from the begining. We had initially decided to purloin some uniforms from the enemy dead. Doing so on an open plain with magical might arrayed on both sides was not helping things. Homer, aka Splinter, was acually able to acquire a uniform with little fanfare. Josh, aka Amra, was not so lucky. Dordo's plan to pretend Amra was an enemy combatant by shooting at him failed. the barbarian failed to understand the plan and simply exposed both he and Amra to withering arrow fire from both sides of the battlefield.

Splinter managed to return to the town sporting his new enemy uniform. This was in itself a problem as the guards promptly assumed he was a spy. "At least we know it works," Homer declared. he managed to talk his way out of imprisonment but the remainder of the party was not so lucky. We had a good night's sleep in the maximum security stockade before we managed to escape and formulate a new plan. Since sneaking into the enemy camp and assassinating the hobgoblin was no longer an option, we had to take the direct route.

The enemy forces advanced en masse and our little band was tasked to identify and take down the champion. The wizard cadre accepted the direction of our resident Sorceress, played by Angela, and used their magic to help divine the location of our foe. having spotted him and his legions, we moved to intercept. Dordo's unparalelled longbowmanship harried the advancing hordes. Angela managed a well-timed volley of magic missiles that disperesed the enemy's peasant levies as Beth, aka Noname, and Amra moved forward to bolster the front rank of swordsmen. Our elation proved short lived. The hobgoblin's crack troops surged forward to engage our troopers.

Amra was a beast on the battlefield swinging his axe to terrible effect. Enemy soldiers died by the dozens as Dordoand the sorceress provided covering fire. The invisible Splinter slithered forward with the goal of stealing the amulet. Noname also moved forward to engage the champion hoping that her flanking would help her and Splinter eliminate the champion once and for all. Splinter, however, had a different plan in mind. With a well-executed snatch, he pulled the amulet away from the hobgoblin even as Noname struck.

Soon enemy soldiers rushed to their commander's aid, surrounding Noname on all sides. In a rare moment of bravado, Splinter struck and delivered an awesome blow to the champion. Coupled with the wounds the hobgoblin suffered from a final magic missile assault, Dordo's continuious rain of fire (in spite of using the doomed eight-sided d4) and Noname's attack, the champion fell. Splinter sent up the signal flare and the elven cavalry surged forward to scatter the demoralized enemy troops.

Having emerged victorious on the battlefield, we returned the amulet to our contact only to find the boundaries of time shift once more. As the gaming session wound to a close the party found itself transported into a desert valley. Our journey into the dreaded Canyon of the Yellow Sun was only begining....

Sunday, October 17, 2010

October D&D Session

The next D&D 3.5 session will be on Saturday, October 23rd starting at about 7:30 PM at Richard's and Bethany's house.

Reflections on death and undeath

Border Board games hosted its monthly gamefest on Saturday, October 16. With All Hallows Eve only a few short weeks away it seemed the perfect time to break out some of our favorite monster themed games. Hitting the table on Saturday were Arkham Horror, two sessions of Last Night on Earth, Ghost Stories, Bang! and a game of chess that, oddly enough, never seemed to get started.

First to hit the table was a rousing game of Arkham Horror. Though the new characters were introduced from the Dunwich expansion, the game was otherwise a standard AH scenario with Azathoth as the primary horror. Josh, Homer, Ken, Beth and I tackled the growing horror with a surprisingly effective group of characters. I chose Mandy Thompson the researcher. I generally prefer characters with fairly balanced stamina and sanity and her re-roll power proved very important throughout the game. Homer picked up Sister Mary , Ken chose the archaeologist Monterey Jack, Beth played newspaperman Darrell Simmons while Josh ruled the world with Ashcan Pete.

Ashcan Pete turned out to be almost godlike in his foraging. His ability to rummage through the trash earned him a slew of useful items as well as a retainer to write a book for "Ole Misk," the title of which is probably something like Living on the Edge of Sanity and Society. Whatever it's name it afforded Pete the only source of income he ever derived in the game. Likewise Monterey Jack was a monster killing machine. In spite of his low sanity, nothing seemed to disturb Jack as he slashed and shot his way through ten monsters over the course of the game.

Speaking of money, Mandy had absolutely no qualms about some shading dealings that netted her a cool $8. After falling a dollar short of buying two potent weapons (the magical Lamp of Alhazred and a rifle) she decided the risk of jail was minor compared to the gains. While the good Sister never seemed to get any money she enjoyed sufficient success that she still managed to travel to distant, terrible planets and emerge intact or largely intact at least.

In many ways this was as atypical a session of AH as I have ever played. The investigators seemed largely able to gather what they needed, some of the Mythos cards actually proved beneficial and the trips through the outer realms went pretty smoothly without the usual "A Monster Appears!" actions being drawn. We also managed to draw a disproportionate number of cultist, zombie and ghoul tiles as well as a fistful of Byakhee, Mi-Go and the odd Elder Thing. The one Cthonian that appeared was destroyed by Mandy's Dread Curse of Azathoth and the twin Hounds of Tindalos were nullified by virtue of closing the last gate right after they appeared.

After saving Arkham and post Great War New England we decided to switch things up a bit. By this time Rob and Angela had arrived and struggled through a game of Ghost Stories. The game lived up to its billing as one tough mutha co-op game. I think they were good and ready for a Wild West shoot out. Though only Beth, Homer and I had played Bang! before, it is a delightfully easy game to teach.

Josh had the misfortune of pissing off Deputy Homer, his seatmate to the right and the Renegade was the first to fall in a hail of bullets. The constant attacks by Indians and the rattle of Gatling guns only seemed to weaken the outlaws. Sheriff Rob was never put in much danger as the game progressed. Deputies Homer and Ken seemed willing to antagonize the outlaws and, admittedly, I probably focused too much attention on Ken. It's hard to forgive a guy who hands you a stick of dynamite.

Outlaw Beth, the only known outlaw as she took the only shot at the sheriff, was gunned down by Indians after enduring repeated attacks from Outlaw Angela. I didn't fare much better finally getting plugged by the lawmen after a game-long blood feud with Ken. In the end Outlaw Angela was outgunned and out manned. Both deputies and the sheriff took pot shots, occasionally wasting bullets on her empty whiskey barrel, but ultimately emerging triumphant.

In the last gaming session of the night we pulled out two copies of Last Night on Earth and had two four-player throw-downs with the Escape in the Truck scenario. Shannon and Ken were the zombies squared off against heroes Rob and Josh at one table while Angela and I ushered forth our legion of undeath against heroes Beth and Homer. At both tables the heroes struggled to gain ground in a pretty unforgiving scenario.

That is the one problem with LNoE. Some of the search scenarios appear to be heavily skewed in the zombies' favor. Certainly there are multiple copies of useful cards buried in the hero deck but the right combo of zombie cards can effectively shut off the heroes from the very items they need. Our zombies overran Sally, who had found the keys, in the gym. Automatically one set of keys was lost to the heroes. It was further compounded when we played a zombie card that then removed the keys from the game!

The same sort of misfortunes were happening at the other table, based on the gloating of the zombies and the sullen expressions worn by the heroes. In the end, despite finding the gasoline, Beth and Homer were unable to get back to the truck before the scenario timer ran out. A search through the hero deck revealed that the keys were so deeply buried that it likely would have required an extra ten to twelve turns of searching to uncover them. Even the helpful "Just What I Needed!" card was at least eight to ten cards down.

I guess it was appropriate that since the forces of good triumphed in Arkham and the Good Guys won the Wild West the zombies would triumph in the end as the night wound down into the witching hour. "All it takes for evil to triumph is for heroes to find lighters but no dynamite."