Playing Crokinole - Have I been following the rules?

My Crokinole Board

One thing I learned at OwlCon this year was that I was not playing Crokinole 100% correctly. I was not sure where the issue came from so I spent some time trying to figure things out. The three rules I was not playing correctly were:

1. the ability to do a combo shot to hit an opponents piece. I have been playing that the first piece touched must be an opponents piece.
2. the rule that when your opponent has no pieces on the board your shot must land at least touching the 15 point (center) circle.
3. that you move pieces down to the lower score, not up to the higher when they are on the line.

Number 3 was plain and simple me not remembering correctly, and just going with what I thought was right. No excuses there, I was just doing it wrong. Number 1 and number 2 though are interesting. I had recently read the rules about shooting when the board did not have an opponents piece and it did not say anything about number 2. We were trying to decide if it was legal to try and land your piece behind a post so that your opponent has no shot.

I went back to my source for rules at the website of the guys who made my game board. Here is what I found out looking for these rules in particular. On number 1, the rules clearly state that:

Relay and carrom shots are allowed, but if an opponent's disc is not touched, then all of your discs that have been touched are removed to the ditch. This includes any of your discs that may have landed in the 20 hole. You are not required to strike an opponent's disc first.

Not sure how I missed that one. I am getting the impression that I didn't read the rules closely enough. On number 2 though, I don't find anything in the core rules of the game which states the shot must touch the 15 point line. However, there is a variant (common in tournaments) which states that:

Any free shot (there are no opponent's discs on the board) must come to rest entirely within the 15 circle or be removed from play. Any other discs you strike are unaffected. That is, if your access to the 15 circle is blocked by your discs, you may carrom your other discs toward the 20 hole, but your shooter disc must remain in the 15 circle or be removed. This rules is used in most tournaments.

I think this is a good alternate rule, even if it is not part of the official rules. The game really is not any fun if someone tries to just park pieces where they cannot be hit. I don't think it matches the spirit of the game. I would play though that as long as it is partially in the 15 point zone it will count. If it is not, the piece is removed to the ditch.

I checked a couple of other sites and the rules seem pretty consistent, I just needed to read more closely. I don't feel to bad though since there was another guy standing with us at OwlCon watching, and he had similar misconceptions about the rules. Looking forward to playing the right way!

OwlCon Day 1 Recap

Had a good time today at OwlCon in Houston. Owlcon is not a large convention, but it is very well run and always offers a lot of gaming opportunities. I played a couple of games today and did a bit of painting. Not a bad way to spend the day at all.

A wise old mouse

Started off the morning at the Reaper Paint & Take booth where participants choose a free miniature from a selection of Reaper miniatures and use supplied paints to paint it up. You can get advice on how to paint, and it is in general good fun. I chose to paint up a small mouse, which looks like it would be perfect for the Mouse Guard RPG. I am thinking that it will also make an awesome figure for Song of Blades and Heroes. I chose what appears to be some sort of mouse mage or druid. He has an acorn staff and is smoking a pipe. I was able to add a few highlights to him, and I think he turned out well.

After painting, and bit of looking around in the vendor area, I sat down to have some lunch with Jeff from my game group (who also joined me at the painting area). Jeff published the 6 Arrows blog, and is responsible for recording all of our weekly game sessions. Lucky for us we ate while most people were still gaming, and we avoided the long lines.

Next up was a game or 3 of Crokinole. Playing Crokinole at OwlCon means playing against Tony Elam. Tony is Houston's resident Crokinole Master, and he offers a prize to any person who can beat him or score the most points against him. Typically, the winner has simply been able to score more points than anyone else. He is very good. Jeff sat down to play him first, and fared quite well. He lasted 4 rounds before being defeated. He gave up his seat after one game, and I was destroyed in a single round. Tony beat me 120 to 0 in that first game. Everyone has the option to play two games though and I did. I didn't win the second game either, but I was able to score 25 points on him. Turns out that 25 points was enough to be today's winner. I got to select from a set of games, mostly older RPG stuff, as a prize. I chose the board game Seismic, by Atlas Games. Looks to be a pretty simple little path building game.

My battleship is in position

When 3 o'clock rolled around it was time for my main event of the day, Uncharted Seas. This is a fantasy naval miniatures game published by Spartan Games. I have had the game for a long while, but never had the chance to play. When I arrived I was able to select from a number of fleets and choose to use the Iron Dwarves. I own an Iron Dwarves fleet, though they are unpainted, and I welcomed the chance to see how they played. You can check out some pictures of the game, and the awesome models we go to use, on Picasa. As for the game? I am very happy to report that except for some minor damage, I came through the event unscathed. I was the only player out of 8 to not loose any ships. I wiped out 3 frigate squads, part of two cruiser squads and sunk one of my opponents battleships. It was a good game for me. The game itself is so fun to play, and easy to learn that I cannot understand why I have not plyed sooner. The game is not expensive to get started with, about $45 online, and plays very quickly. I need to convince others to play.

OwlCon does not disappoint when it comes to providing a fun atmosphere for gaming. This year was no exception. The Uncharted Sea's game especially was well run. We had 8 players, and everything ran smooth as silk. There were not arguments, not disagreements, no hurt feelings, it just worked. Great experience that has me really excited about playing the game more. I am also very interested in the two other games from Spartan, Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars. All three games share the same basic mechanics, so learning one helps to learn the others.

Overall, it was a great first day. I am back again in the morning for a couple of more games.

Headed to OwlCon

I am heading to the local game convention at Rice University tomorrow. I have gone for the past five years, and OwlCon is always a good time. It is always my goal to play games that I might not otherwise get a chance to play. However, this year I am actually preregistered for two events, both games that I actually own.

Tomorrow I will be playing Uncharted Sea's from Spartan Games. I actually have a bunch of miniatures, and the rule books, but have not had the chance to play. I am bringing my, sadly, unpainted Iron Dwarves miniatures with me tomorrow so perhaps they will see some action. The game is a fantasy naval combat game. Spartan seems to have done a good job of creating a simple, fast play game. I am looking forward to this game quite a lot.

Sunday morning I will be playing a game that I own the rules for, but have not played, Song of Drums and Shakos. This game is in the Song of Blades and Heroes line of miniatures skirmish games from Ganesha Games. I have a number of the games in the line, and picked this one up because I really want to get into some historical miniatures gaming. I tried Flames of War, but it was a bit too much for me. The Napoleonic Era is not one I am overly familiar with, so it seemed like a good choice. The game itself is super simple, but places a good amount of emphasis on making good command decisions. I have played a fair bit of the fantasy game Song of Blades and Heroes on which this is based. Looking forward to this as well.

I am planning to get in on a game (or two) of Warlord tomorrow and well as play Tony Elam in some Crokinole. Should be a good time. Pictures and updates later this weekend.

Game Night Recap: Back to 4e

Due to some "staffing issues" we decided to put our Savage Worlds game on hold and swap back to 4th edition D&D this week. Not sure how many weeks this will last but I expect we will finish up the adventure we are playing before moving on again. It was not quite as difficult to switch back to 4e mode as I had anticipated, but the amount of prep time is just huge when compared to Savage Worlds. I spent a few evenings writing up some notes on what would be happening, and got some names and places down on paper. That was not too bad, and likely not more than I would have had to do for SW. However, then I had to plan out the encounters. This really takes way to long in D&D. My basic procedure is:

1. Pick a Theme (monster type, basic environment)
2. Draw up the map, and consider what to add in from a terrain standpoint.
3. Search through the various books, or use online tools to find monster types I like.
4. Modify the monsters to fit my needs. I often make Minions out of normal creatures and change the HP's of big monsters to help shorten combat a bit. Lots of little changes.
5. Download copies of the monsters from the Adventure Tools for import into inCombat via iPlay4e.
6. Print copies of the monster sheets for power reference at the table (I find the paper easier than the PC for tracking powers, but the PC easier for Init and Status tracking).

Overall, this takes me about 45 - 60 minutes per encounter. This is especially true now that the party is more advanced in level. This is just way too long. Perhaps I need a better system, it would certainly save time to switch back to all paper, but I fell that combat runs smoother with the PC helping.

Who will win?

Anyway, we got a late start tonight, and rushed though some of the potential roleplaying bits to try and get to some combat. The party has journeyed to the Feywild and are locked in battle with a group of Eladrin and two huge treants. It should be a challenging encounter for the party, one I think they will have to work together on to be successful. I am not sure they have faced two huge creatures like this.

The adventure we are playing started off as the published Tear of Ioun adventure from Dungeon Magazine. The adventure reads pretty good, but I messed up some of the bits early on, and then got bored with where the story was going. I decided to change it up a lot, and shorten the over all adventure. I still had enough to work with and making modifications has not been difficult. We should wrap this adventure up in 3 or 4 more sessions. I think after that I will be done with D&D for a while. I am very interested in running a game of Grimm, or a Hellfrost based Savage Worlds game, or give another try to Warhammer Fantasy.

The recording for tonights session should be up on 6arrows.com sometime next week. Most of us will be at the OwlCon game convention at Rice University this weekend.

Related articles

• Running Savage Worlds (blogger.seanabrady.net)
• Super Savage - Session 3 Game Recap (blogger.seanabrady.net)
• Super Savage - Weekly Game Recap (blogger.seanabrady.net)

Organizing the Bits - Warhammer FRP

WFRP 3 Shelf

The 3rd edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is not your typical RPG. It is not just an assortment of books, instead it comes with cards, markers, card board stand ups, and more. No question, the game has a lot of bits. The recent release of the hard cover books for the game has given me the opportunity to reorganize all of the bits for the game in a way that I think will be far more useful. Prior to the release of the Players Guide, I had my cards for the game arranged in binders for easy scanning. Since the players guide has the text of all of the cards printed in the book I have decided to remove the cards from the binders and shrink my storage back into the core set boxes. I currently own 2 core sets and one of each of the expansions. I did not buy the GM or players vaults though. I keep the books on a shelf next to the components, but everything else fits in the two core set boxes and a home made tray. I have plenty of expansion room for the foreseeable future.

I thought I would walk through my storage setup for the game, and describe a bit about why I am doing it the way I am.

GM's Tray

Homemade GM Tray

I picked up a nice wooden silverware tray on sale at Target one day thinking it would be a good way to organize the cards, dice and other bits needed while I was running a game. Turns out I was right, it is perfect. I used a bit of foam core to create some extra dividers, and some spare index cards to create some labels. The tray has all of my wound, miscast, insanity and condition cards available at my finger tips. I also have 4 sections divided up for dice storage. Some extra containers near the back store counters and stance trackers. I also have all of my mutation, talent, focus and reputation cards stored in this tray. This is a nice way to keep things organized, especially if you do not need to travel with the game.

Core Set Box #1

This box containers the majority of the cards needed for game play. With the release of the books and the "lite" character sheet I have decided to store my cards unsleeved. I have sleeves for use in game as needed, but storing thim this way is much easier for me. I have four large plastic boxes which store 1) Action Cards, 2) DM Reference Cards (including from the Creature Vault), 3) Spell Cards amd 4) Blessing cards. They fit well with plenty of room for expansions. I have three small paper boxes for use on the table which contain stress/fatigue tokens, tracking tokens & corruption tokens. The box is rounded out with all of the large party and career type cards. I have not gotten them all organized yet, but will be using some 4x6 photo albums to keep them in good shape.

Core Set Box #2

This box holds the rest of the game components. I have divided up the various monster, npc and pc standups into trays and boxes by types. This works well for monsters as I have them divided up by type and can quickly find undead or chaos or whatever I need. I also have the adventure specific components divided up into plastic bags.

While I was at Michael's grabbing some of the stuff used to organize all of the bits I picked up a new tray with some felt and paint and built a dice tray for use with Warhammer. I chose a purple color that looked a lot more Tzeentch'y before I painted it on, but I think it still looks nice. Cannot beat the $2 I spent for it though.

Homemade dice tray

I recorded a short video overview of the setup as well to give you a closer look at how it is all organized (mostly to try out my new camera).

Healing in RPG's

I am starting to prep for the finish of my game groups modified 4th Edition D&D Tear of Ioun adventure. It is kind of hard to get back into the flow of 4e after playing and running Savage Worlds for the past couple of months.

One of the issues I had in planning encounters for the current party is trying to create encounters that are challenging enough for a party that can heal pretty much all damage to itself at least once over (if not more). Access to healing, especially magical healing, is one part of D&D that really hurts the game for me. I think that this access to healing actually bled over into our Savage Worlds game as our party seems unusually able to heal all damage to the party. That is not something I have seen in previous SW games.

I am working my way through all of the adventures and material available for the 3rd edition in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP), and thinking (way) back to when I played first edition. In WFRP it seems like from the very first time you have an encounter you are wounded to some degree. There just isn't enough healing to fully heal an entire party. In the third edition of the game players not only have to face standard wounds but also critical wounds, disease, fatigue, stress and other corruptions and mutations. Some of these can be healed, and some of these cannot be healed. It is a dangerous world, and WFRP is a game that captures that danger and helps you to feel that getting smacked with a sword, no matter how solid your armor, is going to hurt. I like the fact that if you have some healing droughts (potions) you can only use one per day. All of this adds up to a party that needs to pick the right fights, build up and develop not just strength but skill, and over all leads to a better game experience.

I am considering what I can do in the wrap up to the Tears 4e game to make combat a bit more dangerous. The obvious choice is to simply create an environment where I can kill the Cleric quickly, but I would prefer to do something more subtle. Will be spending some time with the various monster guides hoping to come up with something clever.

My gaming group tends to fight first and talk later. It is access to healing that makes it this way I think. There is no consequence for just jumping into the fight. We have D&D to thank for that. As I re-read the WFRP material, mostly because of the release of the new Guides, I am reminded why it is my favorite RPG setting. I am also reminded why 3rd edition is my favorite, if you fight the wrong fight you will be dead.

Related articles

• Running Savage Worlds (blogger.seanabrady.net)
• Super Savage - Weekly Game Recap (blogger.seanabrady.net)
• Reckless Dice - WFRP 3e Podcast

   

Super Savage - Session 3 Game Recap

Last Wednesday we got together for session 3 of our Savage Worlds supers game. You can hear the audio, complete with the sounds of playing children in the background, over on 6arrows. The party disembarked from our boat in Evansville this time and after some brief haggling to sell our way cool electric boat (for a paltry $120) we made our way into town.

Frank started scouting the town for some adult entertainment when he heard a loud bell chime. The townsfolk all a started to make their way towards the town square, where we found the town's "leader", a guy named Badass,  collecting his food and money tax from the towns people. He had collected quite a large amount of food, and really didn't look all that badass. I wen straight up to him, and offered to take it off his hands. I was hoping to use my Intimidate skill, but the conflict devolved into combat before I had a chance. Badass was pretty easy to take down, especially with the help of a number of exploding dice. However, taking him down really just made him mad. He grew from not so badass, to a two story badass. He hit me, as I was a convenient target, and threw me back into the crowd. A round later though he exploded due to being infected with disease (an interesting power from another party member).

With badass nothing more than soup in the square, I set about trying to take over the town as best possible. I found the nicest house in town and helped myself to a warm shower. I am sure it felt wonderful. The party continued to search for our enhanced transportation by following a mystery bracelet we obtained right after the start of the adventure. We were lead to a house. The house apparently was once home to a family that died of a mysterious disease. That turns out to have just been a rumor to keep people away. We took a ride down an elevator disguised as a shower and into a hideout of a person named Demon. He is a tech wiz who appears to be running an underground movement against the alien invaders. He has been leading us around, and we are well rewarded with an airplane for our efforts in finding him. He wants us to get help from other super heroes to defeat the aliens.

One interesting thing we uncovered was how we came to be here. Apparently, back in our own tim e we we each captured by super heroes. They used some sort of matter stasis device, and stored us in an alternate universe. When we were freed in this time all that was done was to release us from our prisons. It was decided that our inability to take orders from anyone would be a good thing against the aliens. Though I am thinking maybe we can setup some sort of world sharing arrangement. I guess we will have to wait and see.