We The Free

Well, last week was pretty full-on. The weekdays were taken up by LCA 2010 (Linux Conf Australia), this year held in Wellington, and the weekend was KapCon XIX, one (and probably the biggest) of Wellington’s annual RPG conventions.

Both were awesome. It was my second LCA (last year I went to the one in Hobart), and it was my first KapCon.

The one thing I noticed at LCA, or rather noticed the lack of, was attendance by Linus. He was at last year’s LCA, and he says he tries to make it out to all of them, but unfortunately he didn’t make it out this year (or stayed hidden, which isn’t likely).

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I’m starting to run my RPG soon, so I thought I’d go into Wargames Supply to pick up some figures — most of mine are from wargames like WHFB, 40K, Warzone, and stuff like that so are mostly unsuitable for character figures.

Things certainly have changed, as in the old days, I could rock into somewhere like Mind Games or Pendragon, and pick up any assortment of miniatures designed for RPGs — Ral Partha, Grenadier, and Marauder were available, although from memory Marauder were producing more LotR targeted figures. Now nothing. There are a few random figures available, but they mostly seem to be aimed at a specific game.

So I thought that my options might be to get some D&D ones made by WotC. The only options available were a starter set of what appears to be a collectible figure series — why the fuck they’d do that for an RPG is beyond my comprehension, but so are most things that Wizards do — and a couple of “boosters.” The starter was $40 and had 3 heroes, 1 baddie, and one dragon. So 3 figures I might reasonably expect to find useful. The boosters were $28, of which 2 figures in one of them might have been useful. And they were the worst quality figures I’d ever seen. Very very shoddy crap. There are rumours (that I’ve seen but not read in depth) that Wizards are canning their figures. Part of me thinks it’s a bloody good idea, but there’s a niggling part of me that wonders what (or who) will fill the gap.

Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on eBay, but I like to be able to walk into a shop and have something to play with by the time I walk out.

OK, so the WotC figures weren’t an option as they’d work out to be about $15 a figure, and I’m not prepared to pay that for such low quality mass produced junk. So what are my options?

I had almost given up when I spotted a huge, and I mean fucking ginormous, box set of a board game called Descent: Journeys in the Dark for $157.. A bit pricey I thought, but I’ll have a look. Lifting it off the shelf almost gave me a hernia. Its contents included 20 hero miniatures, and 60 plastic monsters. Eighty furgin’ figures for under $160! That’s less than $2 a figure. Alright, so I have to paint them, but a) they look to be much better quality than the WotC figures, and b) they’re two fuggin’  dollars each. And I get a board game for free.

Yep, I’ll take it. I got me a wheelbarrow and I took it home (after paying for it of course).

I’ve just finished creating a card game. It’s a simple 1-deck, play over lunch time at the kitchen table kind of game. I’m not sure about how many players it’s going to be good for and how my card ratios will play out (ie; too many or too few attack, defense, and goal cards), but playtesting will sort that out.

The gist of it is that you each play mobsters that have to get truck-loads of money onto a Money Train so it can be taken to the launderers. The first person to hit $10 million wins the game.

You will be able to attack other players by stealing their loot, causing their trucks to get lost via “detours”, dob them in to the cops, put out a hit on them, and more. Of course, there will be cards to block these actions too, such as “donut shops” to throw the cops off your trail, corrupt lawyers, and more mobsters.

Currently the deck size is probably suited to 2-4 players, but I’d like to get this to a max of 6 players without making the deck too unwieldy.

I’ll be playtesting it starting this week and over the xmas holidays, so send me an email, post on my BBS, or contact me on Facebook.

What’s old is new.

I’ve been avoiding 4th edition D&D because, well, quite frankly it’s gone down a path that has changed it a lot. Everyone has said it — including the famous Kurt Wiegel — it’s just not recognisable as the D&D brand. The first set of rule books just don’t have the standard tropes we expect in D&D, and in fact, all Tolkienesque fantasy. More has been said about the changes being made to suit computer games.

A lot has been said, and I won’t rehash it, partly because I don’t remember what I hated about it when reading the rulebooks upon their release.

But now the game has changed.

Wizards have announced the next forthcoming campaign setting: Dark Sun.

Perhaps they know how fickle we old coots are, waving our walking sticks at every young slacker that walks across our lawn, but perhaps they also know that we geeks are suckers and will fall for anything if it’s shiny enough or reminds us of our youth. Games Workshop certainly know this better than most. And if Wizards didn’t know it before, this may certainly increase the chance of their enlightenment.

Dark Sun is not being advanced in time like Forgotten Realms. It’s not being reimagined like every show on television. It’s being left intact, released with its original intent. In fact, Wizards are re-releasing Denning’s Prism Pentad series and fully expect players to fully expect the setting to be instantly recognisable.

This is utterly terrible news for those of us who have been avoiding 4th ed as if it were a soggy, leaking rubbish bag.

But it’s also great news for those of us who have really missed playing Dark Sun.