Lidl Hobby Drill

Just a quick post to mention to UK readers that Lidl are currently selling a pin vice and drill bit set for under £6.

The forty bits range in size from 0.06 mm to 2.5 mm and there are left and right handed bits for each size!

I can't vouch for quality, but that's a lot of drill bits.

Board Game Night: Wingspan

The MEGAforce was down to just two this week, but we ploughed on and tried Grim's latest game, Wingspan by Stonemaier Games.

The end game

How to Win

The aim of the game is to have the best collection of wild birds, measured by a value given on each bird card, plus a couple of personal goals drawn randomly at the beginning (one of mine was to try and get lots of birds with eggs on their cards at the end of the game, Grim was collecting birds with small wingspans, nominally passerines). There are also changing goals each round for extra points, and some birds have the ability to cache food or 'tuck' other bird cards - presumably they predate them or perhaps mob them and drive them off.

Game Play 

Each turn players take it in turns to either play a bird card in the relevant habitat (costing food, and potentially eggs), collect food (randomly rolled with special dice in the 'bird box/feeder' dice tower) from the forest, lay eggs from the grasslands or draw bird cards from the wetlands. Doing any of these last three actions also triggers abilities that any birds played in that habitat have.

The game is played over four rounds, each consisting of a number of turns, initially eight, reducing by one each round.

Stand outs 

The action economy system is great. Using small cubes to gain actions, but losing one each round really focuses you on your endgame.

The 'bird box/food tray' is a fun addition. Not completely necessary, although you do need to differentiate between food dice available and those which have been claimed, which it does admirably. Fortunately it does fit in the game box simply by separating the tower from the tray.

Minor grumbles

We found the starter deck, designed to help new players learn the game with four pre determined turns of the first round, more of a hinderance than a help. But we've learned that lesson, and we'll probably not use them with future new players.

For a game with an ecological focus, there's a lot of plastic. Plastic eggs, plastic trays for the various components.  There has been a move towards wooden or card components in many games recently, that would have been appropriate here.

And being an American game, the birds are all North American birds, though some birds do have a wider range than just North America. I'd like to see a more international supplement.

*EDIT* apparently there is a European supplement, along with several others.

Overall 

There's more to the game than my brief description, and initially it seemed rather complicated, but by round three we were pretty sure of play and were building strategies. 

I'm certainly looking forward to playing again, hopefully with the rest of MEGAforce, although it did play very well as a two player game.

I'll place this firmly in A Tier, with the understanding that this may move up or down slightly with repeated play.

RPGaDay 2024: Day 31: Game or Gamer you miss.

And now we reach the final entry. It's been a fascinating experience, and I've got a review planned, so check the blog for that one coming soon. Anyway, on to

Day 31: Game or Gamer you Miss 

The choice is easy, in fact, when I read the questions back at the beginning of August, this is the one that convinced me to take part, but it's by far the hardest one to write.

I'd argue that good games never die; as long as the books (or PDFs) exist, it's still possible to play them. 

Fashions change and editions come and go, but as long as there are gamers, we can always play whatever we want. It doesn't matter what the current edition is, as long as the group are happy, play on.

If there's a game that you used to play and miss, get a few people together and give it a go, though beware, you may be remembering it through a haze of nostalgia.

So, good games never die.

But gamers themselves do. 

I've known Dave since Infants school (primary, to you youngsters). We shared many of the same interests, went through three schools together and ended up at the same college. 

We were the kids sitting on the grass reading (usually Science Fiction) while the others played football.

When I tried D&D back in 1977, Dave was the first person I brought along, and he was just as enthusiastic as I was. 

When I talked about the lich mega dungeon, Dave was one of the players. He was part of the team tackling the Halls of Anubis too. He designed and ran wonderfully quirky adventures, his Dervish Dungeons were legendary.

Although university sent us to different cities, we kept in touch with long letters. I remember once sending him a 'pick your path' adventure that I wrote.

He returned the favour by narrating his experiences playing Call of Cthulhu, and as soon as I'd finished my finals, I got my own copy.

Eventually jobs and family meant we saw each other infrequently; he'd moved away to the south coast for his job, and was now married, but occasional meet ups were a whirl of gossip and games.

Over the years we met less and less; we knew he had family problems, but we didn't know how bad things were for him. The now very occasional meetings were good, but looking back, there was an intensity there, a need to grab what fun he could, and always a look back at how much better things had been.

Eventually, he decided to bow out. 

It was some comfort to see how many of his friends turned up to remember him.

We all wish he'd said something directly, or that we'd realised or been there to help, even just to listen. 

I'd give a lot for one more game with Dave.

So long, we miss you.

#RPGaDAY24

If you feel any of this might apply to you or to a friend, please talk.

Good friends will listen, as we would have, and professional help is easily available. Speaking from personal experience, it does help.

RPGaDay 2024: Day 29: Awesome App

Day 29: Awesome App

This one's easy. I only really use one app for RPGs, Roll20.

I'm not nominating it because it's amazing, it more or less does the job and I'm aware that it can do a lot more than I know how to do.

It's simply that we need a way to game online, and it seems to fit the bill. There's a regular cost, but that's unavoidable if I want to play online.

Now the vague rambling bit.

When I stop and think a bit more, I do have a dice rolling app on my phone, which I've not used in many months, and we use Meets for the actual AV side of things (the AV on Roll20 was too slow when we tried).

I also use Inkarnate to draw maps, but there are many other ways of producing maps, including just downloading commercially produced ones.

I'll also mention Obsidian Portal. I've used this off and on since the 4E days and it is a useful way to organise a campaign. I find that it requires a lot of set up though to have enough wiki in place for the players to usefully reference, and if some players interact more with it than others, I end up not sure what to assume with player knowledge. So I end up restating it in session, which sort of negates the reason for using it in the first place.

And now the rant-y bit.

But I know many people use apps much more. DND Beyond is the big one, of course, and it seems as if it's becoming increasingly necessary. I know there's a free version, but it doesn't cover all the options. WotC even advertise it now on the grounds that character generation is too slow and complicated without it. To me, that's like GWs' liquid greenstuff, a condemnation of the original product that its trying to fix, not a selling point for the new thing.

It also looks like the next edition of D&D will rely more heavily on D&D Beyond and VTs, all of which will require subscriptions.

I'm certainly not opposed to paying for content. I buy the books that I think I'll use (OK, and a lot more besides), but I don't want to have to buy everything all over again just to play remotely.

If we've got to the stage where the game requires apps to keep track of all the abilities, then it's getting too complicated* for me.

While I'm channelling my inner Grognard I have another grumble; people relying on the various apps have access to everything they've paid for, and it doesn't always match what's in the books. I like to start a game or campaign stating what books the players can draw from, usually just the Players Handbook. I rule that any other material has to be discussed before its introduced, and online services make it hard for a player to know if its something I've OKed.

Now this isn't a very new thing. 4E had online tools, and as the characters got more powerful, they became increasingly necessary for levelling up. We split the cost between us, but the wizard was using spells from all over, sometimes not very well balanced spells either.

It's not me being a killjoy, it more about me knowing what the heroes are capable of and building suitable challenges.

#RPGaDAY24

* My personal definitions; Complex - involving many details for the benefit of the whole.

Complicated - involving many details just for the sake of it to the detriment of the whole

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 30: Person you'd like to game with

Day 30: person you'd like to game with 

My first thought was Justin Alexander, simply because I think I'd learn a lot from him. But he's all the way over the Atlantic.

My second thought was Ben Aaronovitch. It'd be great to see him run Rivers of London. But I suspect I'd just want to discuss his work.

But more sensibly, and much more enjoyably, I'd like to actually be able to game face to face with my current online group. 

So much of the RPG experience is lost online and I've heard it described thus, "online games are where pacing goes to die".

So yes, especially if I stick to the advice on Day 24, my online group are the people I'd like to game with. Properly, face to face.

#RPGaDAY24

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 28: Great Gamer Gadget

Day 28: Great Gamer Gadget 

Gosh, these are getting tricky.

I'm a bit stumped, because I don't think I really use gadgets*, nor have I played in games where others do.

One thing I wish I did do, is use music. Some kind of music playing device and a playlist, but I've never been organised enough, and there always seems to be something more important to prep. I'm not sure what I'd play, I'm not short of Medieval music for tavern scenes and banquets, but for background? I'd suggest video game music, for atmosphere (I'm a big fan of how well Nintendo did this in many of the Legend of Zelda series), but it can be a distraction if the players recognise the source.

So I'm reaching back to the 4E campaign again. As the characters grew more powerful and gained more abilities (and the monsters did too), combat could take ages. In an attempt to speed up the decision making I used a small egg timer. If a player completed their turn before the sand ran out, they gained a bonus. What it was varied from an Action Point to a draw from a deck of boons. I'm pretty sure that the last piece of cake was once claimed.

We also used the coloured plastic rings from soft drinks bottles to show the various conditions, and there were a lot of conditions in 4E. We even experimented with flight stands, but not very successfully I'm afraid (I repurposed the clix bases from WizKids Heroclix minis with a raised platform for the mini, but they were overlarge on the floor plans and fiddly to use).

But, if I think a bit harder I do use gadgets now. I have metal or plastic gadgets to represent where the PCs and their adversaries are. I also use other gadgets to represent the area the heroes are exploring.

I have a whole series of card and paper gadgets that I refer to for the rules, and even plastic gadgets to generate random numbers.

What I don't use much of is electronic gadgets, but we'll talk about apps tomorrow.

#RPGaDAY24

*Thinking more about this, I don't currently play face to face. My desk is crowded enough with PC, keyboard, phone and notes. There certainly isn't enough room for anything else.

RPGaDAY 2024: Day 27: Marvellous Miniature

Day 27: Marvellous Miniature

 

This is a tricky one, I own a lot of minis (seriously A LOT) and it's hard to choose. I invested heavily in the old WotC prepainted minis for D&D, so as to get just the right mini. Prior to that I had a lovely mix of different fantasy and historical minis. In fact I'd been collecting minis, especially the old Minifigs Mythical Earth range, long before I'd even heard of roleplaying.

More recently, I've gradually been replacing a lot of the early stuff with Reaper Bones minis. They are great for detail, relatively cheap and the soft plastic actually makes them more resistant to knocks and damage.

Of course, a lot of these are unpainted. I periodically have a blitz on them, as I'm sure you can see if you look elsewhere on my blog, and it's my ultimate goal to have a set of minis to provide adventurers and adversaries for roleplay games.

I'm ignoring minis that I use primarily for wargames, though there's some cross over, especially with the minis I use in skirmish games. 

It's would be even more difficult if I included minis that I've seen but don't own, so I'll ignore those too.

So now the rambling bit. I know I don't actually need minis for RPGs. I've certainly run sessions without them, and it's my default when running games like Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green. 

But minis have always been a part of Dungeons and Dragons for me. Right back to the first game I ever played, we used minis, though they were only used in a very general sense to show who was fighting who,  floorplans came a lot later.

Now there are so many options that both players and GMs are spoilt for choice. Indeed, with 3D printing and online services that let you customise a mini, a GM or player should be able to get exactly what they want.

And that idea of custom minis sort of brings me to a conclusion.

The Marvellous Miniature has to be a character mini, villains and monsters just don't get enough table time. 

There may be a 'Wow' moment when a particularly awesome gribbly monster mini is placed on the table, especially if the players haven't seen it before, and as a GM I try and find stuff to impress. 

I remember a Volcanic Dragon and a Dracolich being particularly admired.

So a character. 

And the customisation has to be a feature; the player has to feel that it represents their character.

I've converted and painted quite a few minis over the years, and I could have chosen many of these, from Flosi, my first ever character (an old Asgard Miniatures dwarf thief, no real customisation here, we were just glad to find fantasy minis) to Citronella (a Reaper Miniatures Bonsium dwarf). 

But out of these, Keith's character Francis gets the nomination.

Keith was new to D&D, though he had played in my Delta Green campaign, in fact he started off roleplaying in 'Music of the Night', the Call of Cthulhu scenario I ran with my daughter.

Francis was his first character, a fighter, and he used an axe rather than a sword and carried a crossbow for ranged capability.

I converted a WotC prepainted mini, adding a backpack and swapping the head from Frostgrave sprues, I thought the kettle helmet matched his soldier background. I painted him as the player suggested. It's a simple mini, but it does everything that it needs to.

It's not my best conversion or my best painting, but what makes it really special is that the player passed away during that awful hiatus we all suffered in 2020, and its a way of remembering him.

#RPGaDAY24