Tabletop Fun

[Nunavut Pants]

More Terraforming Mars games, more losses. The last one was close--I was in the lead for the first half of the final "generation", but both the others passed me by the end of the turn.

Hosted a boardgame afternoon today. One table played American Mahjong, and one played Mexican Train Dominoes. The table I was at played TransAmerica, which I won. Then we moved on to Splendor, which I also won. Not that surprising, since one or both of the other players had never played before.

[Ceir]

Still working on cleaning up my copy of Richthofen's War. I'm about halfway done transcribing the rule sheet, and it's been an interesting way to read the rules for the first time. I-go-you-go actions; just fixed scenarios with no 'casual' point values in sight; a blend that feels weird where everything except altitude is measured in hexes, altitude/climbing/diving is measured in meters (where other WW1 plane games I own just have abstract 'levels'); outline-format rules...it's a bit of a trip. 'Old school' all the way, down to a font that I surprisingly have a facsimile of. And it's not like I'm unused to old and weird game mechanics either, I've been playing tabletop games for decades. After I finish up with the other side of the rules, it's just a matter of sorting out the plethora of counters and frobbing a couple d6 from my bag, and it'll be 'restored' to playable.

[Nunavut Pants]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

We're still technically in the endgame portion of this Adventurers League campaign, at Level 11, attempting to recover a magical codicil for an allied mage, and in the midst of the fortress of the titular evil winter goddess, Auril the Frostmaiden. However, the codicil is in the fortress vault, and in order to open it, one must pass four trials to show that one understands and embodies the "virtues" of Auril: Preservation, Endurance, Isolation, and Cruelty. The DM advised us that some of the tests would take days to complete (correctly guessing that Endurance and Isolation would be the ones in question) so we opted to start with the shorter ones and went for Cruelty first.

We were transported to a remote tribal village, which was having to deal with the fact that they were starving. The party were all designated as "emissaries" of the Frostmaiden, and were asked to help. The tribe had decided that, in order to ensure the majority of the tribe could live, they would effectively sacrifice four willing elders to serve as food for the rest. Their traditions forbade killing one another, and they asked us to help them. This prompted some debate among the party and players. Boron the ranger had access to a spell called Goodberry that could provide nourishment for everyone, but that wouldn't help long term unless we stayed there. Axe the monk wanted to give the elders an honorable death by challenging them to combat before killing them. But the rest of us realized that the cruel thing to do, would be to just walk away without killing them. None of us were happy with the choice, but that's what we ended up doing.

When we were transported back to the fortress, however, we were confronted by Auril herself, and so began the combat encounter that took up most of the session. She could summon ice mephits (elemental creatures) and also brought back the Abominable Yeti (albeit in a weakened undead state) at one point, could remove herself from the battlefield (probably some kind of plane-shift spell or similar) so she couldn't be targeted, and otherwise could deal some nasty damage. But we were putting up big numbers too. Rhoric, my sorcerer, hit her with a 5th-level Blight spell to inflict some damage, but later, when she had been reduced to a smaller, crystal-like owl shape, she summoned up a blizzard in her vicinity, making her heavily obscured and thus harder to directly target. I had an option, though, and hesitated because two party members were right next to Auril. Their players told me to go ahead and do it, so I cast a 4th-level Fireball.

We eventually managed to put her down, destroying her avatar, but as she was banished, she declared, "This changes nothing." She would recover and return, more powerful than before, so long as any of her worshippers remained. But it gave the Icewind Dale at least a little reprieve.

Very little. The DM rolled to see how long until she returned, and came up with just 23 days.

We looted the fortress, and then decided to continue the trials to unlock the vault. The Preservation trial involved making sure the last survivor of a massacred tribe could survive until help came. This survivor was a "child of midsummer" who wasn't affected by the winter cold, and after taking out a rival tribe's hunter that was coming to finish him off, we soon left the child with an awakened wolf (a wolf that could talk - we'd encountered it a few times already) that would care for him.

The Endurance trial involved guiding another tribe from one place to another, traversing through a blizzard, and having to pass increasingly difficult CON saves to avoid exhaustion. Our rogue almost died, as he took 5 levels of exhaustion from repeated failures.

The Isolation trial involved protecting a tribe's village while the majority of the tribe set out to go hunting for game. As we remained over several days, one by one members of our party disappeared-- finding themselves alone in a flat blizzard-swept plain-- despite all precautions to prevent it. By sheer happenstance (the DM was rolling to determine who vanished), it ended up with Rhoric left alone with Boron. The table was quite amused by this, and I leaned into it by having Rhoric muttering, "This is hell. I'm in hell." and then, "I could just slit his throat. No one would know. 'I dunno what happened, I just woke up and found him like this.'" The tribe's hunters returned, and brought our missing party members with, but the DM had them roll on the Indefinite Madness table to determine what sort of madness afflicted them after their isolation.

For the lulz, the DM decided that the cleric, who had rolled a 99 on his d100 Indefinite Madness roll-- rather than take the madness from the table-- now believed that everything that Boron said was 100% true and accurate. The cleric's player leaned into it, professing his newfound truths, and the whole table burst out laughing when I sighed and cast Greater Restoration on him to clear the madness from him. (By contrast, two of the other party members each got the same madness, believing that they (singularly) were the strongest, fastest, toughest, smartest, wisest, and most attractive member of the party.)

Talking of Boron, the DM continued the running gag of having Boron's player roll an Insight check, and regardless of the result, declaring that Boron-- after much thought and deliberation-- had realized the truth about Rhoric and what class he was. To remind you, Boron initially believed (this was the player's initial joke) that Rhoric was a warlock. Then the DM had an NPC "correct" him by saying he's a bard. Then a different NPC corrected him again-- he's a zealot barbarian. This time, it was that Rhoric was clearly a druid. Only to then, later in the session, issue another new correction-- Rhoric was clearly a wizard.

The DM is running out of classes to use, and I fully expect by the end of the entire campaign, we'll probably end up having him finally learn the actual truth.

Everyone is enjoying the banter and antics that Boron ends up causing, and Rhoric's increasing exasperation at Boron's stupidity. Though as a player, I had some fun before the session started, as we were quipping around the table about Boron's gullibility. Someone put forth the idea that nothing was real, that everyone and everything was just imaginary. Then I slipped in later with the line, "Boron, listen to me: You're just a figment of your imagination." His player took a moment to parse what I'd said before a look of existential confusion, bewilderment, and terror came across his face.

Next time, we're probably gonna have to deal with a pissed-off winter goddess coming to clap our ass.

[Ceir]

Why are you transcribing the rule sheet? Making it easier to read/larger font/clearer wording?

Readability, and it's a folded-up poster that unfolding and refolding is just gonna destroy - it's not in great shape already. Still, enjoying the project!

[Nunavut Pants]

Oh, I hadn't thought of that reason! Good on you for preserving it!!

Several more games of Terraforming Mars, no victories. Two games ago, one player had a 57-point final generation! That was more than half of his final score! Sadly, I was never in contention for that one.

In the immediately-previous game, I was able to claw to a lead through the second half of the game. However, in the final generation, that same player put in enough points to put me into second place. At least I was NOT LAST.

[dalesys]

... NOT LAST.

I finished second. They were next to last.

[Nunavut Pants]

Actually, I was both. It was a three-player game.

We had a replay, though a different board setup and such. I pulled off a victory in that one! 90 to 85 to 83. I had a small lead in mid-game which disappeared pretty quickly, leaving things pretty close until near the end. One player started pulling away just a tiny bit, and he's the one who had the 57-point turn a couple of games ago, so I was very worried. But his progress ebbed a bit right at the end, and I was able to make several plays that put me over his total. I also was able to stall in that last generation so that I took a number of actions after everyone else had passed, which kind of let me do what I wanted to, unopposed.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Camilla, one of our players who portrays our group's kender, was out sick this week. She lamented in our Discord that fate keeps conspiring to keep her away from the game. But there wasn't too much combat this week that needed another hand in, but she missed out on some roleplay, which I imagine DM Bob will address next time.

After routing the Red Dragon Army, our ragtag bunch of Misfits had some choices to make regarding our next move. We still needed to rescue the metallic dragons' eggs from the imperial capital of Neraka, but we suspected the place would be crawling with dragons, and powerful ones at that. Ember had made it clear just how outclassed we were. We figured we'd need dragonlances to stand a chance, but even if we crossed the world to get back to the region with the dragonmetal ore that we'd need, it would take months to forge enough to equip an army, and even then, they're meant to be used from dragonback, so we'd still need to rescue the eggs first. A real catch-22 situation. Can't get friendly dragons on side without the eggs, can't get the eggs without the lances, can't use the lances without friendly dragons to ride.

So we figured we should keep building the coalition to fight back against the Chromatic Dragon Armies. We were on good terms with the Solamnic Knights, the Ergothian Empire, and now the Dwarves of Thorbardin, so the next logical step should be getting the Elves on side. The nearest elven kingdom was Silvanesti-- a notoriously insular and almost xenophobic bunch-- and the rumors we'd been hearing were that the Green Dragon Army was besieging it.

So we headed that way, passing through the charred ruins of the town of Solace, but along the way Runa the Barbarian started experiencing nightmares. Seeing a pulsing red light, hearing chanting in old languages, and hearing the cracking of eggs and the shrieking of lizard-like creatures. We were able to figure out that the dreams were coming about because she'd had red dragon teeth implanted into her swords' hilts, and that the dreams were visions related to a ritual being performed to corrupt the dragon eggs. There was nothing for it but to continue onward.

The forest around Silvanesti, however, was becoming twisted, drained of hope and emanating despair. We ran across some zombified elven warriors, but Gavin the Cleric (me) was able to destroy them all with a single use of his Turn Undead ability. Some trees attacked later, but they weren't too much of a problem. But when we approached the city of Silvanost, we were confronted by a spectral army of elven warriors and banshees. (We all made the requisite LOTR references. "The way is shut...") We were able to parley with them, however, and the ghosts explained that there was no Green Dragon Army here, but that the same rumors had reached them, and so their King Lorac had evacuated the city of its civilians, claiming he had some power that would protect the city. Only, something went wrong and now there's an unending scream coming from the royal tower.

So we entered the city, and everyone failed a WIS save. We all found ourselves separated, trapped in our own personal nightmares.

• Gavin found himself in a burning city, surrounded by slain silver dragons that he knew-- including the bodies of his children-- and then saw his wife Gwyneth killed by a red dragon before getting incinerated himself.
• Sir Evrouin saw his family's castle sacked by the enemy, with his parents' bodies hanging from gibbets, and confronted the notorious Death Knight, Lord Soth, before getting struck down.
• Runa found herself back in the midst of her tribe's doomed battle against the Red Dragon Army, including seeing her mother getting slaughtered by Ember. When she tried to fight Ember, the dragon disintegrated her.

Justinius the Wizard was the only one who didn't find himself in a complete nightmare, just an empty city. But he rode on to the royal tower, where King Lorac was screaming, clutching a Dragon Orb (a powerful artifact that can control dragons, if one has a strong enough will and the intellect to do so), while a huge Green Dragon, Sayen Bloodbane, laughed at his misfortune. Justinius tried to bluff his way into convincing Sayen to leave, and even tried using some of his magic to banish him, but Sayen just shrugged all of it off. We could tell that Jesse (Justinius' player) was getting a bit frustrated at not finding a non-violent solution-- Sayen was explicitly said to be on Ember's level in terms of power-- until the rest of us suggested he try using the Dragon Orb.

Justinius did so, and had to make a WIS and an INT save. He evidently rolled well enough that it came down to a straight roll-vs-roll between him and the DM. DM Bob rolled a 17... but Jesse rolled a Natural 20.

Justinius ordered Sayen to leave, "and don't come back until you're ready to die." The dragon did so, freeing everyone from their nightmares and ending the plague of despair over the region. King Lorac was able to whisper to Justinius to find his daughter before passing away, and now we've got a new task ahead of us, to go find her.

[Ceir]

Decided I needed some anti-summer vibes, and picked up a new Final Girl module - North Pole Nightmare, the Christmas movie from season 2! This one's the North Pole Village map, Krampus as the killer, Mrs. Claus or 'Cindy' as the PCs, a bevy of Christmas puns, and gimmicks of annoying elves and (possibly literally) explosive gifts.

My first run at it, with Mrs. Claus, was bluntly a redux of Christmas At Ground Zero. Mrs. C being a healing/health tank of all things helped for a while, but Krampus as a killer ramps up real quick. It started well enough, I was able to throw enough elves out the exits to get a whack of extra HP early; and the elves actually managed to put a little damage on Krampus, but...well. After that it kind of all went to hell. I started fluffing rolls, elves fell under the Krampus's broom and hooves or died to booby-trapped presents, Santa was ripped to shreds on the runway, and the Workshop exploded in a fireball (incinerating several useful items and barbecueing Comet). The game ended with Mrs. C going at Krampus with a hammer, during a blizzard event, in front of the flaming workshop, and finally running out of HP to fall under the monster's horns.

Phew. That was a whopper, and I haven't even tried Cindy yet. She's a reference, of course, to a certain Who despite not being blonde, and is a speedster - maybe that'll help get some bonus victim saves out of the gate.

[Kit-Ginevra]

Phew. That was a whopper, and I haven't even tried Cindy yet

That's what she said

[Nunavut Pants]

Went to another Game Day this past Saturday! Played "Fresco", a game about restoring an old painting. You're a master artist with five apprentices, and you have to choose what time to get up in the morning (earlier means you get more choices, but pay more for paints and your crew's morale drops) and choose where to dispatch your apprentices to. You can have them use paint to restore the fresco, or send them to the market to buy paints, or have them paint portraits to make extra money, or have them mix paints to make more colors, or send them to the theater to improve their morale.

Each space on the fresco requires some combination of paint colors to restore. You spend the paints, and collect the tile for the space. The tile gives you an income every turn, as well as victory points. The actions above have to be taken in order, so any paints you buy this turn are available for use this turn, but any paints you mix are available for use in the next turn, as mixing paints comes after restoring the fresco.

There were four of us playing, one of whom had played the game once. He won; I came in third. He basically got into the lead about a quarter of the way through the game, and just kept it for the rest of the game.

After that, we played quite a few rounds of "Just One". Lots of laughter, lots of fun was had. We were successful most rounds, guessing the words correctly.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

The running gag of "Boron doesn't know what class Rhoric is" took a couple of new twists this week. After last time, Boron thinks Rhoric (a sorcerer) is actually a wizard, but due to circumstances during the session this week, he now thinks that Rhoric is "on the run" for "wizard reasons" and hence his insistence that he's a sorcerer is to cover up what he really is-- and so now he's "playing along" to help cover for him. When an NPC remarked on this to Rhoric, I just shrugged and said, "I'm accepting the fact that he's right, even if it's for the wrong reasons."

And then, a new wrinkle came up during the main combat encounter of the session. The party had gotten split up while exploring a cave. Our monks had gone down a tunnel to investigate what appeared to be a hot spring, and been attacked by a monster called a remorhaz (basically a worm-thing ambush predator), while the rest of the part on the origin point of the tunnel got attacked by a vampire gnoll and a pack of vampire kobolds. Our cleric cast Daylight in the area, impacting all of the vampires, and I had burnt down a bunch of the gnoll's HP with spells beforehand.

Then Boron hit the gnoll with an arrow strike before spewing a bunch of insults at it. When the gnoll's turn came up, it took enough damage from the Daylight spell to die, leaving Boron to think he'd done that somehow. He repeated it on the kobolds (who lost a bunch of health from my Fireball) by using a Conjure Barrage technique and then some insults... kobolds' turn comes up, cooked by the Daylight. Leaving Boron to think that he'd somehow done it himself.

Before the session, the DM had asked Brian (Boron's player) for the actual specifics on Boron's backstory, where it came out that Boron's brother (who had "beaten him in an honor duel" to become king of their homeland) was a wizard. So when this moment came up where Boron thought he'd somehow used magic, I quipped, "Are you sure your brother is the wizard?" Brian played it for what it's worth, first with an existential crisis, before Boron decided he must be a sorcerer (since wizards develop magic through study and practice, while sorcerers are just born with it) started trying to "embrace his newfound sorcerous power" in various situations.

I noted to the DM, "You were kind of running out of classes for Boron to mistake Rhoric for, so this new wrinkle might just be the way to sustain the joke."


Somewhat related, during a break in the session, the conversation turned briefly to Cyberpunk RED, a more recent variant on the classic Cyberpunk TTRPG (the inspiration for the Cyberpunk 2077 video game). It had started with talking about 2077, and specifically the character Adam Smasher, and Brian was the only one at the table not familiar with it. We sort of caught him up as best we could, both about the game world and Smasher (a cyborg psychopath who is 99.9% machine and is really pissed off that there's still that 0.01% human left), when DM David mentioned he still wants to run a RED game sometime.

Three years ago, when I had just started getting into TTRPG's, responded to an LFG post on one game store's Discord, where David had been hoping to gather a group together to Session 0 for RED. To create characters and whatnot. I was sadly the only player to show up, and with a character no less. David and I spent some time chatting for a bit while I explained a little bit about the character I'd created, a mechanic called Wayo with a mild case of Tourette's-- mostly just a twitch and a stutter, but the latter would lead to his occasional outburst of coprolalia ("PISS!") more out of frustration than anything.

Anyway, when David mentioned still wanting to run a RED game, I commented on still being interested. Peter and Mark, two other players, also expressed interest. Brian looked vaguely interested, and seemed to get a little more clear on it when we described it as "Shadowrun but without elves." Brian had played Shadowrun once and had not enjoyed the system much, though he enjoyed playing with the table he was at so he just put up with it. David told us he'll message us on Discord if he gets around to committing to running a RED game.

[Ceir]

Anyway, when David mentioned still wanting to run a RED game, I commented on still being interested. Peter and Mark, two other players, also expressed interest. Brian looked vaguely interested, and seemed to get a little more clear on it when we described it as "Shadowrun but without elves." Brian had played Shadowrun once and had not enjoyed the system much, though he enjoyed playing with the table he was at so he just put up with it. David told us he'll message us on Discord if he gets around to committing to running a RED game.

As opposed to "cyberpunk with elves", which is how I had to explain Shadowrun back in the day. I've been eyeing the RED Combat Zone skirmish game, 'cause it has some neat mechanics and pretty spiff looking models, but I just do not have room on my hobby table for another miniatures game right now.

We've been playing Flash Point fairly frequently at my FLGS board game nights, and I finally picked up a copy of the base game myself. I love co-ops, it's great for solitaire, and for as simple as the mechanics are it delivers a pretty thematic game - probably the most important thing for something in my solo collection. There's a few spots where the rules are a little muddy, and in reading up and watching some videos I realized just how many house rules we'd been working with in the FLGS group, but it didn't knock the game too askew.

Last solo I played, I set up the easy 'house' map, medium difficulty number of hazards, 4 firefighter team. Since it's co-op regardless of number of players, there's one way to win (save 7 victims) and multiple ways to lose (4 victims die, running out of damage markers means the building collapses, the outside chance of the entire firefighting crew dying...).

I got lucky with the initial rolls to place points of interest, they all wound up in one corner of the house - and they all turned out to be people. I was able to get in, breach a wall, and haul three victims out in the span of about six activations. Of course, while I was doing that, half of the building became - as they say - 'fully involved', with a couple of hazmat explosions blowing out doors and cracking walls. And then I had to go into that mess to get the other points of interest that may or may not have been people. Took a couple of fatalities, and one firefighter got KO'ed for a turn by an explosion, but I saved enough victims to win the run.

Definitely eyeing a couple of the map expansions, I'm not too fussed about the miniatures. House rulings aside, last game I played with the FLGS group was on the High Rise map in hard mode and good lord we lost that quickly. Chain reactions, busted elevators, flare-ups that took out a whole cubicle farm...it was messy.

One neat thing that I swear I've seen before but can no longer find is photos online of someone's giant-size game at a convention - all built out of Lego. It was scaled to Lego fire trucks and ambulances at the old 4-stud-wide City size, the map was built so the walls and doors were breakable, and they'd custom-painted the minifigures. Super neat.

[Nunavut Pants]

Another on-line game of Terraforming Mars lost. I was leading partway through the last turn, but one player did the kind of annoying "sell one card and end turn" thing over and over so she could take all of her actions uninterrupted at the end. And she had a 32-point final generation, out of a 92-point score. The other player and I tied for VP, but I won the tiebreaker. So I could proclaim "NOT LAST!"

Board game afternoon today at a friend's house. We played a three-player game of Azul. The one person who had never played before won. I led early on, but wound up coming in last.

We played a round of "So Clover" while the other table finished whatever it was they were playing. Then we consolidated to a single table so we could all play "Ransom Notes". Which is basically refrigerator poetry the game. There's a prompt on a card that gets drawn from the deck, and everyone has a bunch of words on magnets. Each person tries to follow the prompt as well as possible, and theoretically you collectively choose the best fit, but we all just shared ours and laughed a lot. One of the prompts was "Write the text for a missing cat poster". Which is tough if your bunch of words doesn't contain "animal", "cat", "missing", "return"... Of course, the prompt that I drew was "walk us through the act of masturbation". Which led to some .... interesting word sets.