The Root of the matter

2018 turned out to be a even better a year for board games than I originally thought (and the year was pretty awesome to begin with) and that’s on account of this little wargame called ROOT. I had the game on order at my local game store for quite some time, but it was sold out after the kickstarter arrived last summer. It finally came in and I’ve played four times, twice with adults, and twice with kids. Like Rising Sun, Eclipse, Blood Rage and Lords of Hellas, ROOT is one badass fucking game.

A lot of people know and have played this since it’s release last summer and for good reason. The the game has a lot of elements from many great games (GMT COIN games, Dune, Magic Realm, Fief, Armello, and a bunch more to boot) and all that got poured into a mixer and through massive amounts of playtesting, it came out quite good.

Root is definitely the hotness now on BGG and the second printing is likely going to sell out. I’m amazed that people on BGG like this one as it is a brutal wargame for most factions, and totally in your face (much like Dune) right from the outset. What’s more, it has PHASES of turns rather than the typical 2-actions and then play passes to the next player that’s very popular right now (for good reason). Maybe the era of thousands of shitty co-op games, or games with little to no interaction while you build your own little economic engines is starting to be over. One thing I felt while playing is if you like this, I think you could like Advanced Squad Leader quite a bit…

The core element to Root is that the factions are so very different it seems at first that you are playing a different game on the same map, however, your goals will conflict with nearly everyone else’s goals almost all of the time. As the factions are very different, you may not like playing as some of them, which could interfere with your enjoyment of the game. Here are the factions (that I’ve experienced) and which to pick based on what type of person you are. The conflict between the Marquese de Cat and the Eyrie is the central conflict in Root so I would pretty much always have one or both of those in a game, but it’s OK not to like nor play either of them ever, as long as some of your friends like them.

Marquies de Cat: This is the Atreides of the game, or the human Imperium in Warhammer 40k– they have taken a savage fucking beating from all the other factions in the games I’ve played, and it seems like they can get nullified completely mid-game with no chance to win. However, they have a lot of options for how to proceed and have very strong area control early game. Play them if you like building stuff or being in the thick of the fighting all the time. I’ve played them three times and find that they are easy to play, but VERY difficult to do well with.

Eyrie: This is the super-aggressive faction, (think Tyranid swarm) but glass jawed. The other players can see what you are planning and act accordingly. Play them if you like to just wreck shit (mostly the Cats) and play an all-out-war faction. While they can be hamstrung and they are the only faction that can loose victory points, If they get rolling, they are very difficult to stop.

Woodland Alliance (i.e: the ‘loafs’): These guys remind me of the elves in a bunch of other games. Few warriors on the board at one time, none at the start of the game in fact, but can hit all over the place and are costly to attack. They can score a lot of points, yet are very fragile to disruption and interdiction. Play if you like to play the quiet game until such time it’s no longer time to be quiet and if you like to punish people that attack you and gain from it.

Vagabonds: Rather than an army or faction, this is a single dude wandering around the forest. There are a bunch of different vagabonds you can play with as well. I’ve been in games with the Tinker, Wolf and the insane Pumkincat-thing. Some of them have crazy effects (the Possum…wow.). Some vagabonds are helpers, some are basically serial killers. Playing the Vagabond is ‘adventure’ mode with quests for the win OR Fist Full of Dollars/Yojimbo style where you can work with or hurt various factions in the game to score points, then go hide. Frankly, with newer players, the Vagabond has the best chance to win since they are left alone FAR too long and too often. In a few of the games, the vagabond was very peaceful, but in one, it destroyed a third of the shit on the board by the end. Play this if you like to sneak around, don’t want to bother with area control and possibly get really good at destroying the other faction’s armies. Root would just be a war game without the Vagabond, and I think it REALLY shows how cool the design of the game is to have a faction that is so incredibly different from the others like this.

I haven’t had a chance to play as the Riverfolk Company or Lizard Cult yet.
Out of the factions, I like de Cats the best so far personally, likely because everyone attacks me in every game anyway and playing them is a big ass come at me bro with bells on.

While I recommend the game, one thing to note is that Root is a wargame, like the excellent Lords of Hellas, it rewards aggression and is highly interactive, the opposite of something like Brass or Ticket to Ride.

Frostgrave Again!

Here are some shots from our day of Frostgrave this weekend. Fun stuff! A great, very cheap to get into game of wizard warfare in the frozen city. This was only my second (and third) time playing, so I can’t make a ton of comments having only 8-10 hours of play in, but there are some things I really dig about it. It’s easy to build a warband, the most difficult thing being selecting spells/school of wizardry. The rules, while a bit sloppy on the edges, are very clear with the entire game being run off of two D20’s per player (of different colors). The dice in the game matter, especially since it’s a D20 rather than a smaller die size. If your dice are hot, you are going to do really well, if they are in the shits, you are going to be eating snow and frozen mud. While some players have found this abhorrent, I believe this is a feature of Frostgrave.

Stuff I don’t like all that much is archery being very powerful. I can’t attest to this over many games played, but you can do a ton of damage to a warband via archery. This was a common problem in the early days of Mordheim as well though…. make sure your tables are chock full of cover (it is a ruined city after all).

You need to remember as a player that your non-wizard/apprentice figures are FODDER. They don’t level up and they can be replaced pretty easily. My initial warband was a couple of dogs, two templars, a thief, an archer and (usually) a summoned bear. Templars are slow but horrifying to face in combat. Like two handed guys in Lord of the Rings SBG, you pair them with a normal dude and have the two-hander attack for a +6 fight score with +2 to the damage– which is enough to break armor with a roll of 6 on a D20 for most troops. I may have gone with a barbarian but I couldn’t find any painted miniatures.

One of my games took FOREVER on account of the fact that there isn’t a ‘bottle out’ rule like in Necromunda/Mordhiem and the fact that there was fog and mud EVERYWHERE. You can get your little maings to fight to the death no matter how outnumbered or outclassed. Matt complained about his luck, but the fact is, that shit happens when you play with unpainted miniatures. He should know this by now.

Otherwise, I’m going to let the pictures speak for themselves.

I’m proud to say that both my witch and his/her apprentice are rockin g-strings!
The first battle revolved around this magnificent Inn
My Witch trapping a summoned imp on the balcony with treasure…

Lords of HellASS!

We’ve gotten a couple games of Lords of Hellass and I have some initial thoughts. This is one of those hero/RPG/PVP/Conquest war game type of games and one that comes off at first as a total mess of subsystems, but is an enjoyable whole.

This game gets some love initially from me as I had a summer where my buddy Dan and I played through this old Apple game called “Return of Heracles” where you take on the role of various Greek heroes and heroines and try to complete quests. We would run until our hero got killed and then the next guy would take up the mantle and try to make a run. I had some attraction to this game since it was announced, but didn’t get in on the kickstarter and stuff (way too many kickstarters….).

Subsystems is the name of the game when you sit down to learn and play Hellass. Your hero has their own powers, you can fight with your armies, you can fight monsters with your hero, you can complete quests with your hero, you can build monuments with your priests, and so on. It’s a lot to learn, and not all of it is easy. Take your first game and call it a learning game right from the outset. I know a lot of people are heavily competitive and want to win all games, even to the point of withholding information from other players the first time they play in order to win. See below* for how to win your first game of Hellas without having to learn many of the rules.

Despite the game’s subsystem madness, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and if two of my friends didn’t own it already, I would definitely pick it up. It is very very ameritrash, in your face and not coop at all, which is refreshing. Nor is the game a false-Ameritrash game like Scythe (a Keyflower-like Euro that looks like an ameritrashery war game). You must compete against the other heroes and their armies, often directly. There is a lot of shit all over the table, cards, miniatures, tokens but it’s nothing like say Warrior Knights (from fantasy flight, not the GW version). Yet the game is not super long, which is a massive plus.

The Gods are well worth mentioning. They are these awesome multi-part monument miniatures that you slowly build over the course of the game to give your hero level-ups when your priests go pray. You MUST build these and get priests to level up. Priests are tied to the number of temples each player controls on the board. This set of mechanics allows people that are into the war/area control part of the game as a strategy to stop others who are trying to level up their heroes in order to take on monsters and quests for the win.

On the flip side, Quests, when completed, allow the heroes to take over parts of the board for free! There is some nice interplay between the sub-systems, and you cannot just go all-war in the game (unless it’s your first time playing).

All in all, Lords of Hellas is pretty crazy to learn not due to the overall complexity or individual complexity of the systems, but due to the amount of subsystems there are. The game won’t be super easy for new players to get into vs experienced players, but it gets a big fuck yes from me because of the theme, the miniatures, and the gameplay. I have a soft spot for games that feel like a mess like this (ie Dungeon Degenerates) where players have TONS of options and nothing seems optimal, but are actually pretty tight when you learn the game. We’ll see how Hellass stands the test of gaming time.

*to win your first game. Take Laconia (Sparta) as fast as possible, grow a ton of hoplites and go for the area-control win. Other players will be goofing around with the other parts of the game (hunting monsters and doing quests, making statues) that you should be able to pull out a win in turn 3 or 4.

Fav RPG books of 2018

Anyway these are not necessarily from 2018, but just books that I took a fancy to throughout the year.

Shinobigami Modern Ninja Battle Game

I finally got the final PDF of the rules and printed them up and have read them cover to cover. If you like Hillfolk or Fiasco, you can see where they got all their inspiration for those games from (this and Tenra Bansho Zero). Looking forward to running this. I have not played this yet, so I can’t truly review the game itself.

Down Darker Trails

While this uses an inferior D100 system to Mythras, Down Darker Trails is an incredible supplement to CoC for the old West. It’s extremely thorough in it’s descriptions of the era and nature of roleplaying in the old west with monsters without getting totally overboard like Deadlands (which is cool too). The adventures in the back of the book aren’t too great, but it would be easy to wing something with this source material. With the rate at which I’m able to run games, this may never get played, but it’s a great read.

Runequest Glorantha/Guide to Glorantha

These are excellent RQ books, especially the Guide to Glorantha which finally laid out to me what the heck is going on. While RQ requires a lot of player knowledge of the setting, it’s much easier to have it all consolidated in a couple of books than all over the place. No matter what system you may choose to run RQ with, the Guide to Glorantha is a must read.

For play in 2018 year, we continued the Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign, but some of the players got sick of the non-levelling up and general low power level of the game (with silver=experience, it can be rough to level up), so we are going to switch to Mythras after the current campaign arc is done.

My favorite game from 2018 is probably DCC, we’ve had a lot of fun with friends and the kids with the game and adventures. My favorite RPG event of last year was the 2 day 13th Age level 1-6 switching GM’s every 3 hours.

STraaaahd game and 5E

I want to do a serious post about my thoughts on 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons, the system and where I think it’s great and where I think it’s sort of lacking.

We had our monthly Straahd session a week or so back and it was a good one, we ended up in our first (that I was there for) combat with the vampire himself and one of the characters was completely destroyed in a single round, which always keeps you honest.

While I think 5E is excellent, there are times when, compared to my other d20 faves (13th Age and DCC) it can fall flat like when BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT

PAFFFFSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

Shirigui DEATH FRENZY

I first saw this Anime on netflix years ago, watching only the first episode. We just had a kid and I couldn’t give it the attention it deserved at the time. You can tell from the first episode, it’s going to be a series that rewards close attention.  My first draw was that Shigurui looked like the art style of Ninja Scroll with some of the same animators and, of course, it is, which should tell you something about it’s quality.  For those of us that grew up with Ninja Scroll as the GOLD STANDARD (along with Akira) for Anime,  Shigurui is like Ninja Scroll all fucking grown up.

From the outset, I want to highly recommend this anime with almost zero caveats… maybe just two.  First, it’s very dark and violent along the lines of 13 Assassins but a bit worse. Second it is UNFINISHED.  There is no resolution to the entire story, as that would have taken most of a second season which was never made. You never get to see what happens in the end, which a tough pill as things are set up in the first episode for a climactic battle, yet most of the series is a flashback that never flashes forward again!  How can you get the full story? You have to read the manga. That said, while incomplete, this is a masterpiece of anime.

What’s is Shigurui about? Like the film 13 Assassins, the series takes place during a peaceful era after the ‘warring states’ period in Japan.  And again, like 13 Assassins, a relative of the shogun is a Daimyo of a province and a full bore psychopath, one who dreams of a more violent era, regardless of the fact that he lives in lazy splendor and can kill servants on a whim. At the beginning of the first show we see him getting his head lopped off in a seppuku ceremony– one in which he ONLY touches the fan–he isn’t even given the time to touch the fan to his abdomen as is traditional– the executioner just lopped his head right off!  So he must have done something more than raping and killing peasantry right?  Right.

We then have a first flashback to a one armed man and a blind man about to duel to the death in front of said Daimyo. They prepare to fight and then another flashback occurs when one of the men (the blind one, but no longer blind) steps into a dojo. The other combatant is there and neither have any injuries (yet).  The show moves on to show the rivalry of these two men at the dojo, but then turns into something very different towards the end.

Add to this the fact that the master of the Kogan-Ryuu dojo is  insane, and lies in a state of dementia for most of the show, however, he has massive parts in the series when he is in his right mind and is probably the most dangerous character in terms of ability to apply violence.

The show and manga has everything samurai you can imagine–various fighting styles, ‘magical’ or unlucky swords, western sword styles, rival schools. You know how Game of Thrones very much includes nearly every fantasy trope and most of the ‘fantasy’ races without being like a bad Forgotten Realms based Dungeons and Dragons movie?  Shigurui HAS all the samurai tropes, it just presents them in such a way–again, much like ninja scroll– that helps you forget that you are seeing/reading about the same old tired stuff that showed up during the ninja and samurai craze in the 80’s.

The meat of the show outside of the character development are the various fighting styles.  The fighting styles are extremely well detailed, and will have you thinking quite a bit about it as the learning of the two protagonists increases and they not only learn the secrets from the master, but come up with their own modifications and evolution to the styles.  Having read the manga, I can say that this continues well into the second half of the series and ends spectacularly.

One other thing I really like is that if you look up the series in google and do an image search, you cannot find out what happens in the final duel.  The manga author has many dream sequences and day dreams where BOTH of the main antagonists are show to be killed or terribly wounded during the final fight, so it’s impossible without reading the manga to get spoiled by the internet.  The picture you are looking at with the guy with one arm’s face cut off could be during the final duel, or could be a dream sequence.

The entire series is up on youtube.  The manga is a bit harder to get a hold of.

Gaming

The only mechanical system that would be able to handle Shigurui’s level of combat depth and manner of wounds, is, of course, Mythras.  Most of the sword fights are over in a SINGLE stroke, which is simply not possible with D20 systems that use hit points, nor WFRP, nor 13th Age.  Story games would not effectively simulate the fights without far to heavy narrative control: you may as well just play with action figures at that point rather than roll dice.

In Mythras, both of the protagonists would have over 100% in their relevant sword skills (in the Kogan style), and you would probably need to break out different weapons having different skills (such as the shorter sword, the longer katana’s, and the big honking club thing one of the characters uses, and two swords at once).

One other thing that may be difficult in any RPG, even Mythras, is that the Kogan-Ryuu sword school students NEVER parry.  This means that the swordsman that strikes at the higher strike rank and hits is going to need to score a heavy wound most of the time to not himself be killed, but vs another Kogan swordsman, he will get a special effect straight away since there is no parry.

In order to simulate the sword styles, I would give special traits when characters got to 90 %, 100% and finally 120% skill levels, so every style would have three traits.  These are usually only given once to an entire style in the core game, but it should not break anything to give more, especially at such high skill levels.

I would also recommend using the advanced range and distance rules.  There are a couple of the fights in Shigurui where the range is critical.  In fact the first Kogan style trait I would add at 90% mastery would be that the sword used counts as one level up in terms of weapon length.

Passions can also be very useful in this type of game, as they could boost combat skills in certain situations to god-like levels.  Getting close to 10% chance of a critical is scary– 14-17% is insane.   Anyway, a game with Mythras where on one wears armor and no one parries could be very interesting…

Mythras

Boob post

This is a post with boobs on it.   If you want to put boobs on the internet, don’t use a SERVICE like blogger, tumblr, twitter, G+, facebook or instagram– get your own domain, get blog software (much different than wix or some blog SERVICE) and then boob out all you want.  If you don’t want to use blog software, just code your own HTML pages. It’s really not difficult.

Otherwise your content isn’t your own, your followers aren’t your own, you can (and should) be censored based on the whims of the platform service you are on, and your information and your followers information will be sold and used for marketing.  If you use a free blogging service, you are their PRODUCT. 

Without further adieu….

 

Free WFRP 4 adventure

Night of Blood is a classic WFRP adventure and it’s free on Drivethru RPG.

I partially ran this one in college– the players didn’t take the bait due to ‘running away from some baron’s men’ factor and avoided the fun. There are many, many adventures influenced by this one, including 2-3 DCC ones I can think of off the top of my head that are now ALSO classics.

I haven’t picked up WFRP 4 yet, but it’s bound to happen eventually.

Shinobigami Modern Ninja Battle Game

The Shinobigami Modern Ninja Battle game final PDF just dropped for Kickstarter backers.  This is VERY late as we were supposed to have the printed book by now according to the original timeline.  SBGMNBG was going to go on my fucked kickstarter list for 2018 but for the fact that they released a playable draft in the original Japanese layout very early after the kickstarter, character sheets and the battle sheet– so you had what you needed to play, absolved them of being considered fucked.   Also, these are the guys that did Tenra Bansho Zero and Ryuutama, so this thing has been worth the wait.

So what the fuck is this game?  Shinobigami is a single session Japanese RPG by the Adventure Planning Service  produced in English by Kotodama Heavy Industries, where you play as a single ninja trying to fulfill their secret goals in some sort of scenario set up by the GM.  The closest games to it that I’ve played are Carolina Death Crawl and Hillfolk, but Shinobigami seems to have more of a board gamey feel to it than those.  There are a number of ’rounds’ and each round all characters and important NPC’s have a ‘scene’ which they control the start of the narrative and setting whether having a discussion or trying to fight someone.  This leads up to a climax scene where the remaining characters may be trying to take out a powerful NPC or free for all to fulfill their characters goals.  Yes, you read that right, RPG PVP, something very difficult to pull off well.

Your character has a bunch of ninja skills that can include stuff like Cooking, Torture or Apparel– all of which can be used to fight people because you are a ninja and everything you do can be deadly as fuck.  Characters also have the obligatory nimpo as well as a very powerful attack that can tear up anything but leaves the character super vulnerable later.

Combat ahhhh– I can’t really comment on it before actually getting stuck in as it’s quite strange, like Ryuutama, using an abstract board.

Needless to say, I’m fired up to run a game.  I hate reading rules on a screen/ipad and was going to wait until the book came out– which you may have to if you aren’t in on the kickstarter, but I may just print the damn thing out and get greased up.

While I think any multi-session or long term ‘story game’ is going to be a bust and end up super tiring and annoying (FATE, Dungeon World, etc.), these single or limited session games like Shinobigami, Feng Shui, Carolina Death Crawl, Tenra Bansho and Hillfolk are cooking with gas.  To me these story games are like going out to eat at a well-appointed restaurant.  You go once in awhile and it’s great but if you go too much it’s just a series of gastrointestinal issues such as sharting in Walmart, needing a manpon at work all day or just lying on the ground with constipation cramps even after drinking pickle juice.  No one wants that, regardless of the mouthfeels when you are bellied up to the slops.  What you want 95% of the time is just a simple home cooked meal and that’s DCC, D&D and it’s ilk, WFRP and Mythras (and yeah, if you can stand it, stuff like Rifts), but for that 5% of the time when you are bored of the lack of innovation in the OSR (imagine that…), or RPG’s in general and want to try something minty fresh– yet Tenra Bansho Zero looks like too much work to cook up–Shinobigami smells like pretty awesome eats.  It also will make Steve uncomfortable on account of the required improv.