Actual Play: IKRPG Season II Session 2

Arriving in Five Fingers, the ILF honors their strange invitation and encounters a figure from their recent past, who appears to be strangely...altered.

Episode 2: My Dear Komrades (download)

Actual Play: IKRPG Season II Session 1

Welcome back to IKRPG! Season two kicks off with the Immoren Liberation Front receiving a mysterious and threatening missive.

Episode 1: Every Story Begins With a Journey (download)

2015 in Review

I'm going to basically steal the format for this post from Age of Ravens, because it's been ages since I've blogged anything and, well, I'm out of practice.

2015 was certainly a jam-packed rollercoaster of a year, filled with new experiences and all kinds of terrible, terrible life choices. But hey, at least I didn't buy any 4e shit this year, so that's a fucking win right there.

I think my last post was in early november? I'm still sitting on 2 APs for IKRPG, and chances are I'll have yet another one to edit and post after tonight when I run my now-traditional kill me right goddamn now tabletop gaming marathon. Last year it was D&D 5th edition. This year I'll be running Bad Moon Rising in IKRPG, because a) my good friend Susan has been GMing this system for about 2 years now and has only played it...once? Twice?

also b) because IKRPG is all I apparently know how to buy anymore.

In any case, let's get onto the Year in Review.

New RPGs:

Um...Did I play anything new this year? Oh yeah!

• Night Witches
• Lasers and Feelings
• Through the Breach: Malifaux RPG
• Runequest

Well. That was a brief list. Seems like I pretty much stuck to my guns for most of the year, really barely getting into anything new until the latter portion of the year (stupid personal reasons). All of these new systems were quite entertaining and enjoyable, but I think the game that I look back most fondly on would have to be Through the Breach, seeing as it was the sophomore outing as GM for one of my other friends (and Susan's husband), and I'm always a fan of a RPG system where I don't have to roll dice.

What I Ran:

This year I believe I focused mostly on running my weekly game of IKRPG, with occasional weekend or one-shot forays into other gaming avenues. To be honest, I don't recall running a good amount of gaming this year, and that makes me unspeakably sad.

• IKRPG: Completed a solid season of murder-hoboing in Western Immoren, and got started on the following one as well. Just good times all around.

• Scrolls and Swords: I think I just got one session of this in this year, which makes me a little sad, because if I'm recalling correctly, I was down one of my core players that day. So yes. Sad. In better news, I'm hoping to rectify that sometime soon because every time I run Scrolls and Swords my listener base increases significantly!
• Savage Worlds: I think I ran two games of this. Maybe three? It was a duet-style campaign set in Sword Art Online's super kawaii MMORPG animu universe, and apparently my GMing style is not very conducive to a single player. Perhaps I'd do better with some kind of prewritten game in with that small of a captive audience. Like, you know, the Great Pendragon Campaign.
• Lasers and Feelings: In terms of awarding myself some kind of trophy for running a table with the most number of gamers at once, I'll have to hand it off to my recent unrecorded session of Lasers and Feelings, which I believe featured...seven players? Three of which were on Skype? Good times with it, though, I definitely feel like the Lasers and Feelings mechanics are more suited to the oddball style stories I end up creating for the 'everything and the kitchen sink' universe of Spacemyspacebook.

My 2016 Projections:

Well, to start things off, I'm going back to fucking GenCon, bay bee, because that shit is fun like no other! This year, I'm hoping to actually run some games (I'll probably focus on accessory-lite systems) so that players can look at me like I'm some kind of gamer who has his shit together and didn't only post like 24 blog entries in a single calendar year. Currently in my head to run at GenCon:

Savage Fallout: I'm somewhat on the fence regarding Savage Worlds. I've played in it, I've GMed a little bit of it, I'll need to GM more of it to get into any kind of shape to run the system for players who actually know its ins and outs. That said, with Fallout 4's release this November, the iron is already super hot and ready to strike, and honestly with my utter disappointment with the design direction of contemporary Fallouts I'm hoping I can inject some of the pure, exploratory-slash-madcap entertainment I remember experiencing playing the original CRPGs.

BRP Diablo: Yet another purist approach, because while Diablo III is an entertaining and addictive iteration of a beloved series and II is inarguably the best game of the franchise, there was really nothing like starting a new game of original Diablo, watching that intro cinematic, hearing about the butcher, descending into the Cathedral, and suddenly really needing to pee because holy shit that game creeped me out. Newer iterations have set even starting players up as unmitigated badasses, with very little acknowledgement for the underlying themes of the game series: mortality, terror and madness. I feel like a return to form would be the best way to communicate this with tabletop RPGs, and perhaps this year at GenCon I'll discover if I'm right.

???: I'm thinking I should run three games this year in Indianapolis. Originally I had thought to run IKRPG, but there is a lot to cart around with that system, from minis to tiles to maps. I'm leaning towards running something else BRP, but that may overload me on just one system, and I really feel like 2016 is the year for me to branch out. Well, if anything, I've got a shit ton of core books to pore through.

In Summation:

2015 I felt like I was in some kind of a holding pattern; perhaps 2016 will be the year I can break free from that line of thinking. In any case, if I just stick to my guns and keep not buying 4e stuff, I'll be doing pretty damned well.

The Sixth Annual Painting Challenge.

Well looks like I'll be participating in the annual Miniatures painting challenge. Of course with the numbers I'm putting up I'm slightly embarrassed. Most people are dropping in upper hundreds of points, I'm throwing in 280 unpainted points...I totally thought I'd have more.

Painting Challenge List 280pts:

55 pts: Legion of Everblight Battlebox

• 5 pts: Lylyth1
• 25 pts: Blighted Ogrun Warspears
• 20 pts: Shredder 4x
• 5 pts: Carnivean

45 pts: Protectorate of Menoth Battlebox

• 5 pts: Kreoss1
• 25 pts: Knights Exemplar
• 5 pts: Repenter
• 5 pts: Crusader
• 5 pts: Vanquisher

45 pts: Circle Orboros Battlebox

• 5 pts: Kaya1
• 25 pts: Warpborn Skinwalkers
• 5 pts: Argus
• 5 pts: Winter Argus
• 5 pts: Feral Warpwolf

30 pts: Sam Machorne and the Devil Dogs
15 pts: Stormblade WA
15 pts: Swamp Gobber River Raiders
10 pts: Cygnar Hunter Light Warjack 2x
10 pts: Stormblade UA
10 pts: Saeryn & Rhyas, Talons of Everblight
5 pts: Sorscha1
5 pts: Haley1
5 pts: Journeyman Warcaster (female)
5 pts: Stryker1
5 pts: Squire
5 pts: Sergeant Nicolas Verendrye
5 pts: Gatorman Witch Doctor
5 pts: Captain Arlan Strangewayes
5 pts: Ilnerik Sivanshin

Of course, because of the nature of the painting challenge, you don't get points for models you've already begun to paint...so I've got even more partially painted models that won't net me any points at all. Getting them done will at least give me some peace of mind...sigh...

Pro-Bono Peace of Mind List 310pts:

60 pts: Arcane Tempest Gunmages 2x
50 pts: Long Gunners
30 pts: Stormblades
30 pts: Croe's Cutthroats
30 pts: Field Mechaniks
25 pts: Man-o-War Shocktroopers
10 pts: Long Gunner UA
5 pts: Brun Cragback
5 pts: Centurion/Avenger/Hammersmith
5 pts: Ironclad/Defender/Cyclone
5 pts: Ironclad
5 pts: Stormclad
5 pts: Lancer
5 pts: Charger
5 pts: Hunter
5 pts: Allison Jakes
5 pts: Caine1
5 pts: Journeyman Warcaster (female)
5 pts: Kara Sloan
5 pts: Stryker2
5 pts: Savio Montero Acosta
5 pts: Captain Jonas Murdoch

Pray for me.

Actual Play: Scrolls and Swords III

This Week's Intrepid Party

My god, it's been almost five months since the last Scrolls and Swords episode. This time, I rolled the dice awesomely again and generated yet another exciting adventure to tie into our returning characters, while offering new players the opportunity to shine a bit in the system.

Once again I'm pretty astounded at the ability of everyone at the gaming table to pretty much pick up the bare bones of a game and create something really engaging and entertaining from a 4d6 roll on a static table, and we really had some standout roleplaying from our vets. Excitingly enough, we also had a bit of a newbie at the table with us, our friend Clint deemed to join in the fun and really rock out some exciting decisions during the game's climax.

I'm definitely a little rusty at running games, and now that I've got a bunch more free time I'm super excited to finally be getting back to running IKRPG next week, so expect more constant updates with Actual Plays on the blog real soon!

...and another hex is filled in!

Scrolls and Swords III: Almost Ready for a Reboot


You can download the episode here (right click, Save As).

Collating and Preparing

Once again, I take my sweet time getting back to blogging though, to be fair, it'll be another month or so before I have anything of substance to post. In a week I leave for Japan and thank fucking god for that, I need this vacation. That said, I've been listening to my good friend Susan's Actual Plays of IKRPG over at her blog, and what kind of GM would I be if that didn't inspire me to start planning out what I'll be doing for my next IKRPG arc.

That, of course, spirals back into the fact that I've been meaning to collect all of the IKRPG actual plays I've posted into a single page, easily accessible to any who wish to listen to them back-to-back, so you'll notice at the top of this page there is now an AP: IKRPG header, which will take you to that page. Obviously, as this is merely a playlist, I won't have the individual session rundowns I do for each upload, but one must sacrifice verbosity for function, occasionally.

In any case, this is more of a heads-up than anything else, to let you all know that I'm not quite dead, just resting, and raring to pick up with the Immoren Liberation Front.

Cheers.

GenCon 2015: Undercity Demo

Well, this past weekend, or rather two weekends ago because I contracted the GenCon cold and cannot relate what my life was like last week (or if I was even alive to live it) I went to fucking GenCon, for the first, and definitely not the last time. I played some games, one of which I'll blog about and pimp outrageously because the makers are super cool dudes who didn't make me hate a d20 system for once, but today's highlight (if you can't see pictures for some reason) is all about Privateer Press' The Undercity, a dungeon-crawly board game with watered-dow- you know what, I don't like calling Undercity's mechanics watered-down. Distilled. Undercity is a dungeon-crawl board game that's like a hybrid between the original HeroQuest (or any of it's spiritual-successor bastard spawn) and a finely distilled version of the core IKRPG ruleset.

I had the opportunity to play one 'mission' on the boardgame, and below are my thoughts, carefully separated into three categories to increase reading comprehension in this internet age.

What I Liked:

It's a HeroQuest-inspired IKRPG-lite board game that features a leveling system and persistent characters over a campaign that is touted to last (overall) for 14 hours (Thanks to TechRaptor for the paraphrase, and inspiration to write this blog post). Miniatures of a quality akin to the Iron Kingdoms Unleashed Starter Set are included, and to a greater amount than that box, so that's again, something to love. Some of the minis are either reposes or mods of existing WarmaHordes miniatures, and I don't see any reason why they can't be included as proxies for existing characters (Milo Boggs for Gorman Di Wulfe, Random...ogrun...for Ogrun Bokur, Croe's Cutthroats for....Croe's Cutthroats, Cephalyx for Cephalx. You Get what I'm saying here.)

On one hand when I first saw these all I could think of is that PP was being exceptionally lazy in designing original models, now I see how I can be cheap right back and include said models in my Warmahordes games. So there's that bit of silver lining.

Delving a bit deeper into the actual mechanics of the game, I enjoyed the round-table aspect of play, with enemy AI-esque things happening during and after each player's turn, in the sort of constant 'menace' that creates a decent enough facsimile of a GM. Essentially, each enemy is gambitized (think FFXII) into performing various actions on a player's turn, priority is given to either green or red foes, various foe 'action' cards dictate which enemies activate when, etc, etc. Like I said, it's a decent enough stand-in as an expy-GM, and it's refreshing to have a dungeon-crawl boardgame that eschews that usually-necessary antagonist-player in favor of full-on table cooperation (a la recent D&D boardgames - Drizzt, Ashardalon, Ravenloft).

The distillation of the standard IKRPG mechanics is also handled elegantly (rather than clunkily), and Privateer Press has indeed trimmed some of the fat that threatens to bloat standard IKRPG sessions, in a series of new definitions for existing terminology that is somewhat confusing for the first five minutes, but is easily incorporated afterwards. Statistics are boiled down from 13 main and derived values to 6, and the revamped Feat system is a fantastic hybrid between the original feat mechanic and character abilities from the RPG.

I didn't get a chance to experience the level system or the side-quest options in the demo, but I'm hoping those add depth in terms of loot and XP, and perhaps offer some kind of replayability to the boardgame.

What I Disliked:

That said, the changes made to the mechanical system are still jarring, even for a short time, and players more immersed in the RPG system might have a harder time adapting, specifically the 'always-right' rules lawyers who seem to enjoy bickering rules for the sake of bickering. I can see some stalling at the table when revised rules are rolled out and play grinds to a halt while someone reaches for a core book while the GM flips frantically to the index of the boardgame rules.

Another sticking point for me is the overall drabness of the finished product. The miniatures I already expected to be flat colors, and it's interesting to me to see that PP actually incorporated the base colors of miniatures into gameplay mechanics (and I cannot wait to see some of the finished painted models some PP-forumites are probably already mocking up), but after being blessed with the Unleashed starter box's absolute wealth of play tiles, I was hoping for something more expansive than just 36 tiles of grey, tan, and white cobblestone. Supposedly this monotony is broken up somewhat by modular individual tiles, but nothing in the online rules looks as visually engaging as WotC's efforts in their randomly-generated dungeon tiles. For a brief game, I can see this being all right, but seeing the same tiles repeated endlessly over the course of a 14 hour campaign...things might get tedious.

Lastly, and this is more of a minor issue, when I joined in the Demo I'm pretty sure I was joined by absolute novices to the IKRPG rules, and the only character left to play was the tank. This may have been an intentional choice by the guy running the demo, to leave the tank open for himself to potentially take over or for a drop-in to be able to easily pick up the mechanics after everyone had already gotten the basic gameplay spiel, but it seems like the more 'interesting' characters have highly-involved and specialized rules that might serve as a minor barrier to new players. The goblin comes with a steamjack, the alchemist has a limited number of bombs, and the gunmage player must adapt to the rune-shot mechanics. The troll fighter, though? Hit all the stuff. The disparity in important rules means there are a few places where a 'veteran' player of the game can help out a newbie who chooses a more difficult character to pick up.

What Concerns Me:

Grind concerns me. That may not make much sense at the outset, but just realize, Privateer Press attempted to create a boardgame from the IK franchise already, and it was called Grind, and it was a 2-player football/soccer-esque warjack game and...kind of tanked. Now, I love the concept of Grind. If it was approved as official lore of the IKRPG, I'd support that in an instant, because underground robot full-contact sporting leagues are basically the definition of awesome. However, it was a slog of a system, only 2 player, and just kind of meh. The main selling point of it nowadays is that you basically get free warjacks with the purchase.

This concerns me because I believe Undercity is a good product that has the capability of being fantastic...if Privateer Press supports it after release with further adventures/villains/tiles/PCs. As it stands, it seems very bare-bones for the advertised play time, and I think that the folks at boardgamegeek are going to have a hell of a fun time coming up with homebrew scenarios to keep things interesting.

The modularity, but not random tile placement means that every mission replay, at least aesthetically, is going to be identical. Sure, you might get a random different enemy on one particular draw, but overall most mission replays are going to feel similar. This means that, potentially, this is a fire-and-forget campaign, similar to Privateer's published scenarios, which are really one-time use for any game group (with the exception of the Noble's Tourney, which my friend Susan has utilized...three times? Is it three times now, Susan?).

All this really boils down to is my concern that Undercity will undersell, and Privateer won't want to drop any more money developing it further, leaving it to stagnate.

Undercity is a really promising product, and if it were published by Fantasy Flight games I'd say it would be destined for utter success and lots of cool expansions. My experience with Privateer Press boardgames (not RPGs or Wargames, just boardgames) means my usual IKRPG fervor is tempered by my buyer's remorse regarding Grind.

None of that is really important, though. What's really important is the question of 'hey Dave, are you actually going to throw money down on this?'

The answer to that is yes, and I would have probably even bought it at GenCon, had I ample space in my return luggage. Hashtag sadface.