My latest AD&D session saw six players and one easily-forgotten thief henchmen delving into the Caverns of the Oracle, my own mega-dungeon. Unusually for this campaign, I used my Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles for the session, representing where the characters were standing. The basic trouble with this is that AD&D uses a 1″ on the tabletop represents 3 1/3 feet in the game, so it’s … Continue reading AD&D – Miniatures and Terrain
Caverna is the latest game from Uwe Rosenberg and it follows very much in the tradition of his great success. It’s a worker placement game where more actions get revealed as the game progresses. You also start with a simple dwelling and then construct additional rooms for more workers, whilst expanding the farm outside. Unlike Agricola, there are also caves, which you mine ore and … Continue reading My first game of Caverna
Originally published in Operations #50 and now available on the MMP site, Purple Heart Lane features a situation shortly after D-Day where the Germans were trying to hold the town of Carentan whilst American paratroopers attempted to take it. ASL has quite a few scenarios of this sort, but this one is made quite special by the victory conditions. The basic victory conditions are for … Continue reading ASL Report: S19 Purple Heart Lane
The monthly X-Wing tournament at Goodgames Ballarat was rather short of players this month: only three of us. I ended up playing two games against Robbo and one against Josh. The game against Josh was played on his new space station battlemat. It looks really good… up until you put the ships on it, at which case the two Rebel squadrons we were fighting with … Continue reading X-Wing: Why are there Asteroids above a Space Station?
Dungeons & Dragons has an underlying tension between the power of the monsters and the power of the characters. There will be combat in a D&D campaign, and what happens then is of paramount importance to how the game plays. If every combat ends with the monsters being destroyed in one round, then it’s not a very satisfying game. Likewise, if the characters end up … Continue reading Monsters, Adventure Design and Balance
This is a reprint of a review I first posted on RPG Geek. Dungeon Module G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief was the first adventure module released by TSR for the Dungeons & Dragons game. The scenario debuted at Origins ’78 as part of the D&D tournament there, and was shortly available for purchase by D&D fans. A previous scenario, Temple of the Frog … Continue reading AD&D Review: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
Last Saturday’s boardgaming was good. I got to play a new game, break in an expansion, and return to a couple of favourites. Suburbia was the new game. Designed by Ted Alspach, it allows you and up to three others to design a city. Well, a strange board game type of city. Different buildings are represented by hexagonal tiles which fit together. Each player is … Continue reading Suburbia, Last Night On Earth, Lords of Waterdeep and Love Letter
A package arrived from MilSims today. It contained an expansion for Twilight Imperium (3E), the new game Russian Railroads, the L5R version of Love Letter, and four Dice Bags. They’re quite pretty. So, they needed to be filled. I got all my dice together, sorted them into sets, put them into the bags… and still had dice left over. There are two to four sets … Continue reading I Game, Therefore I Have Dice
Arggh!!! Dwarven Forge want to take more of my money! I can live happily without having the lava tiles. The water tiles? Those I rather want. Yeah, there’s a week left on the Dwarven Forge Cavern Kickstarter. Continue reading Caverns Water Tiles
We had fewer players at Goodgames Ballarat this week, but it was still a healthy number with 17 players turning up. Tables were DM+5, DM+5, DM+4, and with the shop quieter as well, the games went by pretty smoothly. My own table was lacking Harry, but Lily, Danielle, Josh, Sondra and Tait were all present. I finally organised myself well enough to bring in miniatures … Continue reading D&D Encounters: Scourge of the Sword Coast session 7
