What's happening in the land of Ris?

 So it's been a while... I got more weary after my last post and have been vegetating a bit. However, things are also kinda busy in my world so I thought I'd give a general babble about what's happening in terms of hobbies and what's not.

TTRPGs

There's been a number of developments in terms of what I'm up to with regards to TTRPGs. 

• My longest running homebrew D&D game with the South Africans have come to a bit of a halt. We completed 59 sessions from 2021 until now and, while we've had some breaks, they haven't been sufficient. People are fatigued and I decided that it would be better to put the game on indefinite hiatus. This also gives me the opportunity to rest more (see below on what I'm up to to why this statement is funny).

• My homebrew game with the North Americans is going on session 18. What I find interesting is that I'm the one who wants to move the current thread along and they're like "no, we want to use the next session to talk about things that has happened so far". Which is awesome. I am not complaining.
  
  
• I'm planning on running two different oneshots at our local gaming convention in October - one for the Fantasy AGE system and the other for Tales of the Valiant. I have the "stories" basically formulating in my mind and spent a huge amount of time on creating character sheets... and I'm not done yet. I'm also practicing the oneshots on my friends and will be running the ToV one in May. Should be fun.
  
  A bit more on the idea we have. A group of us are essentially going to have two tables running games on both days of the convention. The games will only be two-and-a-half hours in length - thirty minutes to familiarise players with the system and each other and then two hours on the actual playing. We're going to be showing off games like Fantasy AGE, Tales of the Valiant, Daggerheart, Realms of Pugmire, and others. 
  
  
  
  
  
• I'm also running two games with the same group of people on Saturdays. We're playing a Phandelver and Below D&D campaign, but on days when not everyone can come, we mess around with Fantasy AGE trying to familiarise ourselves with it.

Computer Gaming

• I'm slowly, very very slowly, playing Mass Effect again. And by slowly, I mean 'I have gotten to the Citadel for the first time and haven't touched the game in like a week afterwards' kind of slowly. I constantly try not to be sucked in by how amazing the game was build and the world constructed. I try to remind myself how hurt I was and how painful the end is going to be. And then I see a cutscene and it's like "Oooohhh..... prettty!" I be dumbass, yes.
  
  
• I'm also losing time in Stranded: Alien Dawn which has recently been acquired by Paradox Interactive... it doesn't immediately bother me but I have to wonder how many million DLCs they'd be able to get out of a game like that. 
  
  
• Aska is also a game I play quite regularly. I know there's a lot of micromanaging that you need to do, but it's relaxing. It's got all the makings of a settlement builder and survival game all meshed up into one. It ticks all the boxes in my mind as something that I want to play without thinking too hard.
  
  
• And then finally there's Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. A game I shouldn't enjoy because I don't know anything about the stats and guns and whatnots. But somehow, even though I am terrible at the game, I find myself enjoying what I can do. I've had to restart several times in the campaign because I inevitably run out of money and working mechs, but it's still fun. I get the same enjoyment out of it that I got from Battletech and I miss just as badly. haha.

Writing

I've picked up writing again, albeit very very VERY slowly. I have a Mass Effect fanfic that I'm posting for the first time which actually came into existence over a decade ago. For any of you who followed Shattered Reality on FanFiction.com, the story I'm posting now is the one that inspired and is referred to in that one. You can read both without being spoiled by the other, so if you are interested in Mass Effect fanfics the Shattered Reality story was finished and is beefy. 

TV / Streaming

I don't really watch any shows all that much. I've never been big at watching series unless it's something that really catches my attention. I'm happy to see that The Last of Us is back with a second season. Having played the games and enjoying the story, I'm happy to see how they translate that into a different medium. I was a little worried that Bella Ramsey wasn't going to seem older in the second season, but so far I'm on board. 

Board Games / Card Games

I'm still playing Arkham Horror at least twice a month. We've worked through a number of campaigns and it's been a lot of fun. I've been asked to teach others how to play the game at a board-gaming event. So naturally I decided to pull my friends in because I am not keen on doing stuff like that alone, haha. That's happening on Sunday this weekend. (If you are in the area and interested, send me a message and I'll give you details or link you up with people that have the details).

In Conclusion...

So I'm not inactive. If anything, I'm quite busy and keep myself at that level a bit too much. That said, I'm enjoying myself thoroughly, so I can't complain about things that help my mental health and give me joy. 

Outside of the hobby world, things are a bit rough. At least I have things I can take shelter in.

RPG Babble: Colostle

It's no secret that I'm a sucker for a good story. In the TTRPG realm, this seems to also translate into a compelling setting.

But the problem, I find, is that there are so many games to play, but so many problems in playing them. Getting people together, getting a date and a time sorted, getting prepped and ready to run. All of these things can become stumbling blocks when it comes to actually playing the game. It gets worse when it is a new game because then there's also the fact that everyone has to learn the game and might not be in the frame of mind to do so.

Which is where solo-gaming has become my escape. Like with computer games where I tend to gravitate to the single-player ones, TTRPGs/card/board games that can be run by my onesy gets attention. Then the only obstacle I have is me. Which, if I were honest, is still an obstacle, but less so than two or three other people with their individual hindrances.

So let me get back to my first statements: I'm a sucker for a good story and a compelling setting. I've only recently started dipping my toes into solo-RPGs, but I've found one that is simple, easy to play and pretty compelling.

The world of Colostle is a fantasy/medieval world set within a massive castle - each room filled with mountains, forests, even bodies of water like lakes, rivers and oceans. The Roomlands are filled with adventures, things to explore, places to navigate through and cities to visit. You play an adventurer in these lands who documents their adventures in a journal.

How does it work? 

You choose a class which determines your capabilities at exploration and combat. You're given a calling - an inciting incident or goal that you're striving towards - and you can decide on the personality of your character. 

Each day, or period of time, you draw a number of cards from a shuffled deck. This is the exploration phase and each card is something you encounter in that period. This can be a simple as finding something to hunt or gargoyles grabbing you and taking you to a different location. The cards also might show opportunities to combat creatures or Rooks (the only "creatures" who hold magic in the Roomlands that have the look of castle towers with arms and legs). Combat against Rooks are always avoidable, but then you lose out on what treasure or goodies the Rook might contain.

Having concluded the Exploration and Combat phase, you then take up your notebook and document the events of that cycle. This can be done by hand or electronically, in a notebook or pdf. How you do that is entirely up to you.

What I like about Colostle is that is inspires creativity. There's a lot of flexibility in the game by design. Things are open to interpretation and even if you were to pull the same or similar cards, it doesn't mean that the results are going to be the same. It's not a difficult game to learn and you can fall into it almost immediately with little setup required.

Card game babble: Arkham Horror LCG

 For the past couple of months, I've been part of a trio of friends who play Arkham Horror LCG (the living card game) on the weekends. As I fell into the lore and the story and the mechanics, I felt myself being consumed by this game - enough so that I've decided to make the financial commitment to get the game for myself.

What's it about?

Each player takes on the role of an investigator who is thrown into various scenarios that need to be uncovered and resolved. For those familiar with the Cthulu mythos (be it the books, other games, etc.), you'll know you're in for a tangled web of crazy cultists, monsters and a sleeping ancient one (or ones... who knows?). 

What do you get?

The first box, gives you the rules to play the game, the tokens, the cards (of course) and a booklet with the first three-part story, or three scenarios, to get your feet wet. You're given five investigators - each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses - and decks that you can either build yourself or trust the initial assembly as given in the book by the creators. 

As someone who has never played a deck-builder game before my venture with my friends, this is an awesome help.

How does it work?

I'm not going to go into the exact round order and phase order because I will confuse myself and, in turn, confuse you and make this game inaccessible. But I am going to ramble about some things in the game.

The scenarios each have an agenda deck and an act deck. The agenda deck shows you the bad thing that is happening and what needs to happen in the game to make it worse. The act deck shows you what you need to do to try and keep the bad thing from happening - usually this objective is something like gathering a certain amount of clues or discovering a particular area.

Each investigator gets three actions on their turn which they can use to investigate, draw a card, fight, evade, get a resource, etc. There's a really handy card with each investigator pack that lists the phases of play as well as all the actions an investigator can do. I think this is a wonderful addition.

Each investigator has statistics for Willpower, Intelligence, Strength, and Agility and will, through the game make tests based off of these four stats. You can add to the skill check by playing cards or having other investigators who are with you in that particular location give you a card to enhance the skill. 

Then you draw from the chaos baggie! The chaos bag contains chaos tokens which are either numerical modifiers or pictures which means something unique in each scenario. This is a very interesting mechanic for me as the 'auto fail' token seems to be magnetically attracted to my fingers whenever I try to pull a token out of the bag *harrumph*.

The bad of the game

Arkham Horror: The revised core edition has a lot going for it. But the truth is, it is only a taster. To truly appreciate the depth of this game, you're going to have to play a campaign, which is more money that needs to be spent. 

The mini-campaign provided only consists of three scenarios, that's about... four hours of gameplay. Granted you can play multiple times with different investigators, there's flexibility in things not ending the same way every time, but it's still only just a taste. A full campaign has between six to eight scenarios packed into it. That's a lot of hours of gameplay with each scenario having multiple endings and so the branching out of the game is huge... but expensive. Well, at least in South Africa it's expensive. 

I guess it brings the whole debate of what you're paying for. The quality is excellent, the game is well written and thought out. There's a lot of replayability and you're definitely going to want to infect someone else with this addiction so there's that. But it's still an investment.

What to get?

If you're also interested in getting this game, be careful. You'll see that there are a multitude of options out there and you have to do a little homework.

Arkham Horror The Card Game was originally released in a blue box (below).

Don't buy this one.

Then came the revised core edition.

Buy this one.

Note 'campaign expansion'.

You'll note that the cover is the full picture, not cut off by blue. It's the better one to buy. So get the revised core edition.

As I said, in it, you'll find the five investigators cards, the chaos tokens and other tokens, and the mini-campaign. Now, if you want to buy more campaigns be aware that they were initially sold in little bite-sized packets, but now you can get each campaign in one box. BUT, if you want more investigators and investigator cards, you may need to consider also buying the Investigator box for that campaign.

Yeah, that's part of the bad stuff, right there.

In summary...

... do I regret my choice? No. Do I think it's a bit of a money scheme? Yes.

But I also know that I thoroughly enjoy this game and am going to play the stuffing out of it. Especially because you can play this game solo. And that really wins it for me.

TTRPG Babble: Delve - A Solo Map-drawing Game

I've been quietly stalking some youtube channels who talk about solo-ttrpg games and stumbled over a map-drawing game called Delve. 

The premise is fairly simple: You're part of a dwarven settlement who has been sent to delve deep into the depths of a mountain to find a special type of crystal. As you explore your mountain, you draw cards that indicate what you find - resources, trade goods, remnants of former civilizations, natural formations, etc. Then you can build your own rooms - all of which needs to be drawn in, of course.

The size of the map is determined by what paper you have to work with (or not, you could always add more pages to broaden/lengthen your mountain).

The game requires a set of cards, a piece of paper, pencil and eraser. That's it. Oh, and candles if you're playing during loadshedding in South Africa, but that's not a design feature. ;)

In my second play through (which has been far more successful than the first one), I've yet to discover the void crystal, but I have stumbled over two sleeping dragons, a magma flow, an underwater lake, a dormant volcanic shaft and built a slew of different buildings. Giving me a map that looks like this:

So far, I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Card Game Babble: Gloom

I love card and board games. I don't come from a family of gamers and, though I've been one for years, it's mostly been a solitary experience. As such, I've only been exposed to card games and board games in the last couple of years. So I know precious little of them. I only began buying some in my early twenties. The problem being that you actually need to have people to play against or with (in co-op games) - who knew?!

Still, I will share some of my favourites every now and again and this time Gloom is it.

In Gloom, you're given a family of... colourful characters. Your goal: To make them as miserable as possible before killing them off.

The problem being that your opponents have the same fate in mind for their families. This will not do as the game is won by the player whose family has the lowest self-worth points in the end. And so your fiendish opponents will do their level best to ensure that your family lead happy, successful lives.

Let the misery commence.

What you get:

• Character cards
• Untimely Death cards
• Modifier cards
• Event cards

Character cards are simple enough to explain. Each player gets five cards representing the members of his family. On the back of each character card is a tombstone. Once your character kicks the bucket, the card gets turned tombstone side up

 

 Untimely Death cards are full of ways your character can die. Maybe they were consumed from within or drowned by a duck (I always thought ducks were evil...) or maybe they disappeared in a fog. Just hope no one plays the dreaded 'Died without Cares' on one of your family members. In this game, no one likes a happy corpse



Modifier cards are the memorable moments in the lives of your family that make them happy or sad. Weddings, funerals, being honoured or loathed, each card comes with "self-worth" points which can be situated  on three different spots positions (high, mid, low) on the left side of the card which will be what you use to determine the winner at the end. While it may be easy just to pile the negativity onto your own and the good vibes onto others, these cards sometime come with special effects that may leave you hesitant on whether you really want to put them down. In fact, it might actually be a good move to play a negative self-word card on an opponent's character as it might result in them losing all those awful cards they've been hoarding up to use on you!


Event cards have immediate effect once played. While they end up in the discard pile in the end - as opposed to adding some much needed self-worth issues to your family members - they can play a crucial role in the game such as resurrecting an opponent's character, switching modifier cards from one player to another or cancelling an action as it's played out.

How the game is played crash course:

Essentially players are given turns to draw cards and to sow devastation with the ones they already have. Modifiers are placed over the family members showing positive or negative self-worth points and sometimes with special effects that the player needs to adhere to. What is important with the modifier cards isn't how many are placed on a character, but what is visible from above. Therefore the self-worth points of one card can be completely or partially cancelled out depending on what gets placed over it.

The game stops the moment a player's family has been completely eradicated. All the values that are visible on a character stack are counted and all the members' points are tallied to come to a final score.

What I like:

Gloom has a decidedly twisted sense of humour best likened to the Adams Family. What could have been a rather depressing game is instead filled with a constant sense of amusement as you cause havoc among your own family members and those of your opponents'. It's been a long time since I've seen a player pout about one of his characters having a good day.

The card design is really well thought out. With your cards being mostly transparent, you still see the image of your character regardless of how many modifiers are played onto it. It just keeps you in tune with the idea that it's a family member down there who's being so very miserable. As opposed to just a stack of overly negative cards piled one onto another.

The game game is rather easy to get into. The rules don't appear overly complicated. As easy as it is to make people miserable in life, the same basically applies to the game. This leaves the gamer with very little to worry about in terms of complexity. Easy to learn, quick to get into, fast fun right away.

What I dislike:

I felt they could have spent a little more time on formulating their instructions. Not everything is clearly stated and there are still some things I play "my way" simply because I couldn't quite make out how it's supposed to be done. It's not that the instructions are numerous or contradictory. It is simply that the few instructions they do have could have been better worded.

While most cards are clear to understand, there are some unclear event cards that I don't use in the game simply because I don't understand what you're meant to do with them.  One could chalk something like that up to a language barrier, however when an English friend is just as baffled as I am, I think it's safe to say that that's not the problem.

Getting hold of the game was a problem. The few gaming stores I could know of in South Africa that imports board and card games didn't buy any goods from Atlas and getting the games from overseas is... bloody expensive to say the least. I ended up buying the game through Amazon.co.uk and have it delivered to my brother in London who then later sent it down in a package with some other stuff. I know it's not a bash against the game itself so much as evil logistics, but still. I didn't like it. ;)

In the end...

I think Gloom is a game many would enjoy. I'd recommend getting three or four people together (it is a 2-4 people game, though expansions do include more families).

Have fun making people miserable!