MEK OP Game Night: Mage Knight Board Game

One of my very first posts was a lament for the absence of a high-quality "hex-crawl" board game -- that is, a board game that could simulate the experience of taking a medium sized expedition (say a mercenary company with a few dozen adventuring soldiers) and allow them to explore a region of undiscovered territory. Computer games have offered quite a few variations in this theme (including the HoMM series, the Warlords franchise, the original King's Bounty and its remake, and several similar games. Most of these aren't exactly to my taste, with minimal emphasis on simulation and a tendency to reduce combat to the "stack of a hundred dragons" approach that feels much satisfying to me than the kind of detailed and realistic large-scale combat you'd find in Total War or Mount and Blade. A good recent historical entry in the genre was the indie title Expeditions: Conquistador, which provides a simple but satisfying implementation of some of the major logistical choices that a real expedition would face. Even then, its combat was more squad-tactical than operational, with the result that you can end up conquering the Aztec empire with a platoon of barely over a dozen men -- whereas even Cortes needed several hundred Spaniards.

This Saturday for MEK OP, we took a shot at learning the Mage Knight Board Game, a modern-feeling treatment of the same genre as old favorite Magic Realm. "Modern", in this case, means that it replaces most of the old dice-rolling event resolution mechanics with a zero-paperwork deck-building approach that feels more like playing a puzzle game than an RPG.

The world's largest game of solitaire.

The fantasy tropes in the game are fairly predictable and derivative (yep, you're on a map full of rampaging orcs and dragons, and you need to capture castles and delve into dungeons, check), but the puzzle game mechanics with the cards feels uniquely well-designed relative to other similar systems. There's an intensely high level of pressure to optimally use each combination of cards, and a wide range of different permutations for the ways in which they can be used. In some respects it would be a good choice for card-counting poker experts, since being constantly aware of the exact contents of your "deed deck" makes it possible plan out your next five turns like a chess grandmaster. This results in a game that feels diametrically opposed to the randomness of a classical 70's-era hex crawl like Magic Realm, despite the enormous amount of shared thematic DNA.

There are a number of game aspects that can drive a simulationist to the point of despair, if you think about them for too long. There's virtually no possibility of death here, with the worst game situation being set of wounds that require a few turns to discard. In a single night, you can walk through three towns, hire multiple military units who are mysteriously awake at 3:00 am to go on dangerous adventures, and fight two major battles. You can conquer an entire keep single-handed without the need for any army, then travel ten miles to do the same thing again, all within 24 hours. Your character is some kind of empowered hero who can travel day and night without the need for rest -- which is fine in itself, but when you pick up additional units of mere mortals, you can actually use their abilities to move even faster. There's no economic system here, so all your troops work for free. Every dungeon has exactly one resident monster (out of five possible types), every keep has exactly one defender, every starting hero gets to recruit one unit, and every monastery protects exactly one artifact. It's all very neat and precise, which makes the puzzle game enormously predictable and strategically deep, but also makes it hard to lose yourself in a plausible narrative of play.

There's also such an emphasis on iconographic information (rather than note-taking and text) that the game ends up with a huge multi-table footprint full of wasted space. That huge board with 100 numbers at the top of the photo above? That's just to record your experience point totals. In an older RPG-style game with a record sheet, it would require a two-digit number in pencil and an experience table. Here, it takes 700 square centimenters of high-quality cardboard just to display a single token occupying one box with the number you care about.

Overall, it's probably best to think of this as a deck-builder card game with a large number of auxiliary systems, rather than a hex-crawl game with a card-based sub-mechanic. The majority of time invested in this game is going to revolve around trying to figure out how to manage your hand and play cards at the opportune moment. Unlike Magic Realm, where every different hero and map situation requires a radically different style of play (and generates a unique story along the way), Mage Knight is about each player performing a predictable sequence of universal tasks with near-perfect efficiency.

I can't say I dislike a game that has this much strategy under the hood. A good player could run in circles around the level of play we were able to reach on Saturday night, and there's an enormous time and practice investment required to become a skilled player. By the end of the night, everyone was taking ten minutes for each turn, trying to milk every last drop of utility out of a dwindling deck.

I still find myself looking for a combat system that creates a narrative dynamic that resembles some kind of styled approximation of real medieval combat, rather than playing a card-matching minigame. I don't think that this will replace any of my interest in finding a more simulationist treatment of the same topic. I should probably haul out my Fantastic Frontiers rules, and try to take a third stab at writing them up in a coherent form. There are definitely a few features of the rules for Mage Knight that I like enough to steal, such as the reputation track.

By the time we called the game around midnight, we had discovered two cities (the end-game objectives) but were nowhere close to being able to assault one of them with any prospect of success. I'd say that playing this through to the end will take at least six hours, and it might be wise to start early next time I bring it.

Tabletop Wish List

My wife asked me to create a list of games I'm considering purchasing, for the benefit of anyone who asks her what I might want as a gift. Here's a selection of things on my radar. Unfortunately, many of the games I really want are either out of print or too expensive to make a sensible gift. But there are certainly some exceptions I can include. I'll update this list as I acquire games, so it remains current.

Card Games
Star Realms (Expansions: Bases and Battleships, Events, Fleets and Fortresses, Heroes) - This fast and easy game is essentially a PvP variant of Ascension. It comes with a variety of custom decks, but each of them is individually affordable in the $10 to $15 range.

Core Worlds (Expansions: Galactic Orders) -  A more complicated and technical treatment of the same theme, this is also a relatively more expensive game at around $30. It takes much longer to play, and gameplay involves balancing a larger decision matrix than most other card games.

Mini Games
Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures - The game itself looks moderately fun, and the ship miniatures could be reappropriated for a other gaming purposes. Core game is around $25, expansion packs go for $10-15.

Memoir '44 - Looks like a fun WW2 implementation of the Battle Lore-style of simple wargame. Runs around $40.

Modern Euro-style Standards
Small World (+ expansions) - A Euro-style wargame with a light fantasy feel. Used copies are pretty common, will run around $40 new.

Pandemic (+ expansions) - Well-known cooperative game. Relatively inexpensive (around $25), and available at many general-purpose retailers like Target or Walmart.

Eclipse (+ expansions) - A multiplayer area-control game with some obvious Catan similarities, but more directly player conflict and a science fiction theme. Somewhat expensive ($60 or more), maybe better to purchase a used copy.

Stronghold - A medium-complexity castle-siege wargame using wood blocks for pieces. Shouldn't be too expensive, maybe $40 or so. I think it's only available used right now.

Classic Games
Dragon Rage - Given a nicely updated re-release, after decades of being off the market. Hard to find new, should run around $50 used. A traditional asymmetric hex wargame; think OGRE with dragons.

Britannia - A simple historical game that I remember playing back in college, running over a millennium or so of British history. Somewhat expensive in the newer Fantasy Flight edition. The old editions from the 80s are dirt cheap on Ebay ($20 or so), and still playable, although not as impressive as the new one.

SPQR - A nice Roman-era wargame that's hard to find these days. Please don't pay $845 for this on Amazon (the current list price!)

Mega-Sized Games (none of these come cheap)
Mage Knight Board Game - Hybrid deck-builder and 4x game that uses cards for movement and combat actions. Features a build-as-you-go modular giant-hex map like Magic Realm. I already found a used version of this online, but there are two smaller expansions I wouldn't mind having and would make reasonable gifts.

Twilight Imperium - Fantasy Flight's deluxe multiplayer sci-fi wargame, this takes hours to complete and works best with a large group of players.

Runewars - Another Fantasy Flight behemoth with loads of plastic and cardboard pieces. It looks fairly complicated, but supposedly it plays fast like an Axis and Allies clone when you get the hang of it.

Battle of the Five Armies - An adaption of the War of the Ring game to the final battle of the Hobbit, using some of the same game mechanics and game pieces.

Empires in Arms - Out of print for years, but you can still find used versions. Desperately in need of a reprint edition. Also comes in a computer edition.

MEK OP Game Night: WotR with Expansion

This Saturday we amazing had no Warhammer tables going, and so instead we set up for a 4-person War of the Ring showdown. I played Free Peoples for a change this time, and most of the other players had at least some familiarity with the system. I elected to add most of the optional characters and minions (and their dice) from the expansion set, but not any of the optional Fellowship cards or other rules.

As with my past experience, the game fits rather perfectly into a four-hour time slot. The game was resolved by a very narrow margin, driving through Mordor in a single turn due to military pressure, with a final corruption level of 9 at the end of the game. A bad tile draw for hunt damage would have resulted in a loss. Instead, we finished with only the second Free Peoples win I've ever seen. Virtually every member of the Fellowship ended up dead (or for the Merry and Pippin, lost in the wastes north of Mordor), and Minas Tirith went down before the Fellowship had even reached Lorien. Things were getting frantic by the end, and the final turn featured the use of all three elven rings!

And yet somehow I won with a deck
containing only two heroes

Then today (Sunday) my wife and brother-in-law played a few rounds of the DC Deckbuilding Game. That's just what's it's called, which perhaps suggests it's not the most original concept in the word. It's a simple single-resource system with streamlined play relative to other similar games. It probably compares most directly with Ascension, although thematically it seems intended to compete with Marvel's more complicated deckbuilder, Legendary. Overall it had the same basic qualities of other games in the genre, but the art was clean and set-up was easy. My BIL was relatively pleased with the thematic integration of the DC universe, which I gather is based on the New 52 reboot of the primary comic titles. There's probably some sense in which I'd feel more comfortable with a more classic Silver Age implementation of the theme that resembles the stuff I remember from my youth, but that's not likely to ever happen. In any event, all the official comic versions of DC heroes are likely to be washed away by the arrival of the new movies in the next decade, which will create new definitive versions of the familiar roster.

I won both games, as Hawkman each time. But as with most deckbuilders it's mostly a matter of luck to grab an early lead and then simply not doing stupid things to squander it.

Twilight Struggle: Why Is This Ranked #1?

Last week we were only able to stay for a couple hours, but we did get a chance to try out Twilight Struggle (TS) for a few turns of play. When we quit, I (as the US) was ahead by a few points, with a strong position in the Middle East balancing off a stalemate in Asia and a slight disadvantage in Europe. Overall we enjoyed the game. But it came with a high set of expectations: For several years running, this has been the highest ranked board game on BGG, with an enormous number of ratings falling in the 8-10 range. That's out of over 10,000 games total!

Here the Soviets are running rampant in the Arab world, unlike our game.

In many respects, it's pretty implausible candidate for the top slot on the rankings boards:

• It's not really a European-style game except in victory condition mechanics, and virtually all the other top-ten titles are Euros. In many ways it's more like a classic Diplomacy-era wargame from the 60s, a genre that usually has narrow appeal.
• It's exclusively a two-player game, unlike most of the other popular games.
• The production standards are good for its category, but it's still a retro counter-based game in a world of high-chrome releases with figurines and meeples. The card art is of the "grainy vintage photo" variety.
• The gameplay is completely free of social or diplomatic aspects, and enforces a cutthroat aura of (thematically appropriate) paranoia that makes it impossible to play a "friendly game" of TS.
• Good play requires a thorough knowledge of the deck and a certain amount of card-counting, a skill that isn't easily mastered by casual players. (A novice player will be crushed by an experienced one.)
• The theme itself (nuclear brinksmanship) is dry and sobering and free of all but the darkest sort of humor.

But it's remained durably popular, even rising in popularity as it ages (most games fade as players seek novelty). Why?

First, I think it's important not to discount the nostalgia market. There are quite a few aging wargamers who no longer have the time and inclination to cover their entire basement floor with Case Blue maps, but still want to recapture the vibe of 70s-era Avalon Hill gaming. And Twilight Struggle does a good job of playing like people remember the games from that era playing. That's not necessarily the same thing as actually playing like those games, mind you! Instead, this is a game that extracts the aspects of retro wargame play that are most memorable (sustained struggle around a single strategic objective, for example) and creates an entire game of nothing but that kind of element. It's a "good parts" version, as fans of the Princess Bride might say.

Second, it's something directly relevant to the lives of many players. As a theme, it feels relevant to most older players who lived through those events. This is unlike most other wargames, which exist in an inaccessible world of dusty tomes full of military jargon. Even if you don't remember exactly who Gary Powers was, or why he was in a U2 over Soviet territory, the notion that this stuff once made front-page headlines makes it feel instantly immediate. In some sense, the early success of wargames can be traced to ex-WW2 officers wanting to revisit the themes that had been headlines in their early lives. This is the same principle at work.

But the biggest feature that distinguishes TS from other games ranked close to it is the sense of constantly being in a state of crisis management. The uniquely clever twist of this as a card game is that you are often being forced to play cards that hurt you, rather than help you. There's a sense of drama to catastrophe, and the feeling of constantly being on the brink of it. Mitigating harmful effects is a more compelling thematic premise than advancing helpful ones. There are other games that use disaster control as a thematic overlay (Red November, say, or Pandemic), but they still present the threat as being external. In TS, you meet the enemy, and he is you. Just like the real Cold War.

I'm not sure where I'd rank this myself. It's not precisely my style of wargame, with low-level turn-by-turn strategy balanced by the high-level randomness of a few powerful cards. (I tend to prefer high-level strategy to allow long-term planning, with low-level randomness to vary the exact cost of victory in isolated battles.) But I like the idea of a game that is trying not just to kill me, but to force me to slowly strangle myself by means of my own decisions. It feels cunning and devious in a way that other games never attempt to be.

Fall Semester Kickoff

I've been neglecting this blog, partially because I've just gotten too busy to be an organizer, and I've settled back to being a player again. But I thought I'd still provide some highlights from the first weeks of MEK OP:

• Currently our big games have all been Warhammer. We usually have two tables of 40k going at once, and Kyle is finishing another set. So that seems likely to be a focus for the near future. We also have a Rogue Trader RPG campaign on Tuesdays, and for that matter, we also played a round of Death Angel on Saturday (and died horribly on the second floor). So I guess we've pretty much got everyone playing some version of Warhammer now. It's like a virus!

• We have a lot of board games now, and not nearly enough players for them. Yesterday I saw Carcassonne, Memoir 44, Empire Builder, Axis and Allies, my own copy of Conquest of Nerath, Axis and Allies, and all the old Fantasy Flight and casual card game stuff from last year. Vox is still designing his own RPG system too.

• I'm investing in a couple new games that I bought over eBay:
• Twilight Struggle is currently the highest ranked game on the BGG ratings, and so I thought I'd buy a copy to see what all the fuss is about. It's a two-player card-and-map game that simulates political events during the cold war. It's a GMT game (like Space Empires), so it will probably be fairly concise and austere in implementation (as opposed to the chrome-heavy stuff we currently have). Hopefully this can help to build a campus culture for hex and counter style wargames, too.
• Merchant of Venus is a reimplementation of the classic Avalon Hill game by Richard Hamblen. It's a whimsical sci-fi economic game similar to Firefly, but with heavier emphasis on shipping different kinds of goods around the map. Like all Hamblen games it's quite mechanically baroqe and crunchy on the simulation level, like a version of Monopoly written by 80s-era TSR employees. ("Roll on the Vermin Infestation table to see how many rats are raiding your hotel this turn, and all their colors and ages.") It also has a second version of the rules (the "Standard Game"), which is revised for more modern sensibilities.

More Nerath Optional Rules

Since this is a D&D game, it seems odd that the hero units (fighters and mages) never improve as they clear out dungeons. The dungeon-delving portion of the game seems underdeveloped relative to the rules for land and naval battle, even though treasures are a major source of victory points. So adding a system for leveling up heroes seems like a natural candidate for some optional house rules.

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I. Level

Unlike other units in the game, heroes now have a "level" as an additional attribute. Heroes begin at 1st level, and can eventually rise as high as 4th level. Placing chips under heroes no longer indicates the number of units in a stack, but instead the levels gained by that particular hero; a fighter on top of three chips indicates a 4th level hero.

II. Gaining levels

Whenever a group of heroes defeats all monsters in a dungeon, they may go up in level. Take the total number of monsters in the dungeon, and add the amount of any bonus gold gained by killing monsters. If this total is greater than the current level of any surviving heroes of less than 4th level, those heroes each gain one level.

III. Additional hero types

In addition to the two existing heroes (fighters and wizards) there are two new types: rogues and priests. They function just like fighters (2 movement, can fight on ships, etc), except as indicated below. During the set-up at the start of the game, you can swap in rogues for fighters, or priests for wizards, on a 1-for-1 basis.

A rogue costs 2 gold like a fighter; if you don't have a unique miniature of your own, just put a "1 gold" marker under a fighter to indicate it's a rogue. A priest costs 3 gold like a wizard; again, if needed, place a "1 gold" marker under a wizard figure to indicate a priest.

Rogues and priests roll d8 instead of d10 for their attacks, and do not have the First Strike ability. However, they have additional abilities of their own (see below).

IV. Additional dungeon battle steps

At the very beginning of a dungeon battle, before the first round only, make a trap check. The number of traps is equal to the number of monsters in the dungeon. Roll a d8 for each trap, and apply hits before the first round begins. If you have a rogue in your party, you may Disarm Traps by rolling a number of d10 equal to the rogue's level, with any result of 6 or higher being a success. (Use only the highest level rogue.) Subtract the number of successfully disarmed traps from the total, and then apply any other hits from traps as damage.

At the very end of a victorious dungeon battle, you automatically gain one treasure. You make then make a Search & Open Locks check to see if you can find a second treasure. Roll a number of d6 equal to the level of your highest level rogue. If you get at least one 6, you have found a second treasure.

V. Benefits of gaining levels

As fighters gain levels, they gain the ability to absorb multiple points of damage up to their level, representing improved armor and health. This works like the Durable ability for dragons, but provides the ability to absorb up to 4 hits, instead of just 2. You can use red chips placed beside a fighter to represent wounds. After winning a battle, any wounds on a surviving fighter are automatically removed. IMPORTANT: This ability applies ONLY during dungeon or naval battles, not land battles (which are on a much larger scale!)

As wizards gain levels, they gain additional secondary attack dice to roll. For each level a wizard gains, they add another d6 to their attacks. A 4th level wizard would roll one d10 and three d6 attacks, all during the First Strike phase. Note that some monsters may require higher than a 6 to hit, in which case the extra dice have no chance to hit and can be skipped. (Wizards are good at clearing out lots of weak monsters, like the horde of orcs.) This applies during both land and naval battles as well.

As rogues gain levels, they improve their attack dice to reflect flanking and ambushing. At 1st level they roll a d8, at 2nd level a d10, at 3rd level a d12 and at 4th level a d20. (They're good at hitting a single difficult monster with high armor, in contrast to a wizard's area spells.) This applies during both land and naval battles as well.

As priests gain levels, they improve their ability to heal. Instead of rolling an attack in a given round, a priest may roll dice to attempt to heal any wounded fighters. Declare that the priest is attempting to heal during the First Strike phase, and then roll a number of d8 equal to the priest's level, along with the wizards First Strike attacks. Any "hit" for a healing attempt is immediately applied to remove wounds from one or more fighters. IMPORTANT: Like the fighter's extra health, healing can be used ONLY during dungeon or naval battles, not land battles.

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That's it. Having lots of unstacked heroes around makes the board crowded, so it's probably a good idea to keep them off-map and use a marker to indicate the location of an entire party. This also makes heroes very powerful, so it's recommended to limit them to only the provided figures in the game (so you can never have more than six fighters/rogues, or six wizards/clerics).

Fix This Game! : Conquest Of Nerath

This summer we've picked up a few new board games for the collection: an expansion for Firefly, a pocket copy of Ogre (for only $3!), and WotC's Conquest of Nerath (CoN). The latter is something I've been eyeing for a while, as it resembles a deliberate retro throwback to the 80s-era Milton Bradley games, but the price was out of my range. When it hit 40% off, I tossed it into a bulk order from Amazon to have a look.

The game was released in 2011 as part of a string of board game releases with tie-ins to the 4th edition RPG rules, and this board provided the fullest look at the default campaign setting map for 4e. (Perhaps permanently, now that the 4e setting is being unceremoniously orphaned.) It's a standard Risk/A&A map with around 100 map regions, partitioned between four starting kingdoms. Each of them is roughly but not exactly balanced, creating a different strategic situation than the historical setup in Axis and Allies. In particular, there are no "punching bag" players like the USSR, and every nation has equal ability to implement both land and naval strategies.

Before I say anything critical of the design itself, I should point out that the components are all high-quality, with many unique sculpts for each player realms' minis. The box comes with a well-designed plastic divider that makes set-up easy, and everything feels sturdy and durable (aside from some thin cardstock for the card decks). It looks suitably impressive to see all the little armies spread out across the map. And (apropos of something using a D&D license) the game features a set of multicolored polyhedral dice that can be satisfying thrown around in huge handfuls to resolve battles between massive army stacks. Finally, the basic idea of a game that balances dungeon delving and exploration is a nice twist on the classic Risk model of pushing armies around a board, creating a two-linked-games approach reminiscent of the (admittedly better playtested) War of the Rings game. It also keeps the game from dragging out longer than 5 or 6 rounds, since by that point at least one side has done enough dungeon-delving to win.

Unfortunately, the designer of the game (Richard Baker, best known for the TSR-era Birthright setting, and a primary designer for the A&A miniature games) was unexpectedly fired for unknown reasons shortly after CoN was released. This means that the game has mostly been abandoned, with little support from the publisher and virtually no prospect of an expansion or follow-up game. It would have been lovely to see a similar strategy game for a familiar setting like Greyhawk or Faerun. One of Baker's interviews mentioned some prospect of a Dragonlance version, but all that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

It also means that there's little chance of an official resolution to some of the observed balance problems in the game. The rules allow for both a free-for-all and an alliance version. The free-for-all version is somewhat self-balancing, in that everyone tends to gang up on the strongest player. Hidden event and item cards can make it a little difficult to identify exactly who is ahead, but you can't be on the verge of wiping another realm off the map without gaining a lot of attention! The alliance version, though, has produced a lot of objecctions, with some reviewers claiming it favors the evil side (which always gets to move first). Curiously enough, three solo playtests of the game produced exactly the opposite result for me, with the good side pulling ahead and winning cleanly.

What's happening is this: The game allows for both short and long victory conditions. The evil side gets a position advantage from the first move, which leads to a jump in initial victory points that puts them ahead. Then the good side gets a bunch of catch up mechanisms (better event cards, and more access to dungeon loot) to help them fight back into the game. This makes the game almost impossible to balance for all length options. Play a short game, and Evil has a natural edge. Play a long game, and Good can usually make up the difference plus a bit more; a long game usually is won on dungeon loot, given equally skilled players, and Good has better access to more dungeons unless they completely collapse. (Reviewers who failed to discover this probably didn't keep playing until the later turns, I think.) There's a "medium" game that is probably the only alliance-victory version that plays with reasonable balance, but the other two victory conditions each create an imbalance in one direction or another.

As a secondary problem, the game also features several units that feel underpowered relative to the others, and don't have clearly defined roles. It's pretty straightforward to do a statistical analysis of dice outcomes that proves that "fighters" (a basic hero unit) are uniformly superior at equal cost to either siege engines or monsters (the other two primary offensive land units). As a result, virtually no siege engines or monsters will be built by an experienced player, and armies become less diverse as play progresses. This problem only gets worse as the game progresses, as dungeon delving coughs up multiple cards that grand more abilities to heroes.

Richard Baker, on his personal blog, has already recommended reducing the power of dragons -- which are basically flying A&A battleships, for only 5 times the cost of basic infantry! -- by preventing them from ending the turn in the same region. This makes them powerful on the offense as they converge on a target, but forces them to spread out and become vulnerable again on the defense. It's a decent hack for its own sake, but it still doesn't address the main problem of siege engines and monsters feeling underpowered relative to heroes.

I've been contemplating some rules changes to help both of these units and make them viable choices again. On the BGG forums, I've seen some basic recommendations like "give siege engines an extra attack die", but they feel too pedestrian and not strongly flavored from a simulationist standpoint. I feel like in addition to balance, it's also beneficial to give the units specific roles. Here are my short recommendations for making these units useful again. As a side-note, these changes strengthen the advantage in initial armies provided to the evil side, which helps with long-game balance issues (while making short-game balance problems even worse -- but more on that in a bit!)

Conquest of Nerath House Rules
1. Richard Baker's semi-official dragon nerf: All dragons must end the turn in a unique region. If a dragon shares a region with any other dragon(s) at the end of a turn, all additional dragons must be removed until only one remains.

2. Hard counter limit: No additional figures or chips may be used beyond those in the box. Red chips placed under figures count as 3 grey chips, not as 5. (Note that in conjunction with the dragon nerf, this means no realm can ever have more than four dragons on map at once.) If a card provides free units that can't be built, it may be held until those units are available again, even if it says "play immediately".

3. Siege Engine siege-combat attack buff: Any time a siege engine is attacking or defending in the same region as a castle (friendly or enemy), it gains one extra attack die. This means that siege engines would then get 2 dice on the defense, and 3 on the attack.  (Note: This enhances the ability of the Evil side to capture at least one castle by the second turn, which I think is the only way they can get far enough ahead to win a long game.)

4. Infantry / cavalry / artillery synergy rule: For each matched triplet of footsoldier, monster, and siege engine units included in the "Roll Other Damage" step of any land battle (after removing any First Strike losses), you get a "re-roll" -- the opportunity to roll again any one die that initially didn't hit. So if you have 5 footsoldiers, 4 siege engines, and 3 monsters in a battle round, you can re-roll up to 3 of that round's (non-First Strike) attack dice that would otherwise have missed. You only get one chance to re-roll each die, even if you have more re-rolls than misses. (This works like the similar mechanic in War of the Ring.)

5. Warship / elemental synergy rule: As above, but for matched pairs of warships and elementals in a naval battle.

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The counter limit makes it a bit harder to turtle with ridiculous stacks of two dozen footsoldiers, like the Soviets usually do in Axis and Allies. The siege engine rule makes it easier to attack castles, which also shifts the military side of the game toward an offensive bias.

I especially like the last rule, since it reflects the idea that each set of dice rolls is representing some complicated set of tactics on the micro level: siege engines softening up defensive embankments, monsters crashing through the lines to pocket them, and footmen finishing off the encircled pockets. Units work better in cooperation than they do alone, so you want to bring a well-balanced force. I thought about creating a similar fighter/wizard rule, but they seem strong enough as it is!

What about the final situation, when using the short victory conditions that favor the evil realms? I thought of two possible rules. First, you could reverse the order of the 3rd and 4th player. That means that Evil would go 1st and 4th, and Good would go 2nd and 3rd in each turn. As a side benefit, that would allow players on the same time to do their turns simultaneously, reducing downtime.

Alternatively, you could introduce a defender retreat rule, which allows defenders to limit combat to a single round, and then retreat to any friendly adjacent region at the end of the round. Only the attacker would get to roll, and any defender units that are destroyed during retreat would instead by "shattered" and be available to immediately come on as reinforcements for 1 gp each (just like the "Rod of Resurrection" item in the game). This would mitigate the effect of trying to defend against a superior opponent, as happens frequently to Good in the first couple turns.

Thinking Ahead To Next Fall

It's becoming apparent that the semester has drawn to a close without allowing enough time for me to get to any of the major "set piece" battles I intended to do in the Domains at War system in the current Green Pass fantasy campaign. There were actually a couple of possible outcomes (based on how players acquired and responded to information), but none of them will be ready by this weekend, and I'm not even sure who will show up this close to final exams.

So I'm thinking ahead to next fall. Currently, after discussions with club president Peter Cowles, it sounds as if we're planning to split off our activity into a third night (Thursday), with distinct activities each night: RPG sessions on Thursday, anime movies on Friday, and board games on Saturday. There's a part of me that likes the idea of clearing Saturday for board games, since it presents some possibility of letting me try some historical battles (ship battles using miniatures, or my impossible dream scenario of a huge WW2 campaign).

However, this segregation of activities probably will present a deathblow to the idea of an integrated RPG-and-wargame campaign of the sort I want to run. My guess is that this is true not just because the nights will attract different player types, but also because the RPG night is going to be dominated by Pathfinder players, and doing another PFRPG campaign is the path of least resistance.

At the moment, I'm anticipating reverting the Green Pass campaign back to the kind of "simulated" campaign I was doing with Walley last fall. Players will no longer be tracking strategic level production or doing the associated paperwork (which caused confusion for a number of players), but just doing occasional battles using point-buys and pregenerated characters. I'll continue to draw scenarios and personae dramatis  (the various lords and heroes generated by this spring's players) from the campaign documents I've developed, so that they'll extend the existing history. I can probably still run the anticipated finale battle I had planned at some point, with the scenario being arranged around some private roleplaying sessions I've been doing at home with my wife in the capital city of Durnovar. The RPG content I had planned (including a beautifully lethal and massive crypt complex stuffed with ghouls in Balewood!) is probably going to be orphaned.

On question I've had for a while is whether there's any way to integrate other campaigns into my own. I've tried to describe the campaign setting of Proxima as a crossover-friendly (and slightly "gonzo") world where refugees from other magical worlds (including a thinly-fictionalized Earth) can rub shoulders with one another. The TARDIS spell from a couple weeks ago was one example of how to rationalize a crossover mechanic as an in-character domain-level action.

A more difficult question is how to convert characters in a post-3.0 system (d20 OGL, or Pathfinder) into the pre-3.0 system of ACKS. The substantial buffs to abilities, feats, skills, and special class perks would make any character from a post 3.0 world function at the equivalent of 3-4 levels higher than an equivalent classic-era character. Many abilities in one system simply have no equivalent in the other. One of the major complications with the development of the 3.0 era (and 4.0, for that matter!) was the complete eradication of back-compatibility. This is especially galling for someone like me, with a huge library of plug-and-run modules from the 80s (a few of which I've borrowed to flesh out Proxima!), but virtually no content for modern game systems. One of the appealing features of running ACKS has been its strong emphasis on compatibility with 80s-era gaming that feels comfortable and familiar to me.

In any event, I'd very much like to have everyone in the current campaign send me a full list of all their heroes, castles, and lands (with associated statistics), so that I can keep running the world in a way that integrates player-generated content with the stuff I've been creating on the DM side of things (the various villains, dungeons, and chaotic-aligned realms). I'm hoping that even if the RPG night runs a Pathfinder campaign, we can still find ways to overlap some of our activities, and I can develop more of my intended history using point-buy battles using some of the existing heroes as generals and commanders.

Firefly Board Game: First Impressions

Due to the holiday (and my general feeling of being overwhelmed by work and children) there was no official MEK OP event this weekend, although some members were talking about meeting at our FLGS, Three Suns Unlimited. Instead, I stayed home and played some two-person Firefly with my wife.

Firefly is a pseudo-RPG with a strong thematic tie-in to the short-lived TV show of the same name. You control the crew of a tramp freighter which cruises around a small map with a localized star cluster, looking for shipping jobs and performing acts of petty crime on the side. You can upgrade your ships, hire crew, and equip them with new gear. There's no "leveling mechanic", but otherwise it's all standard RPG fare with the standard dice-rolling skill tests, here using a d6. Run quests, get money, buy more loot.

The game has the standard strengths and weaknesses of other games of its type. It does a superb job of matching the feel of the original show, which is an impressive feat given that the show lasted for barely half a season. Virtually every bit of dialogue has been mined for some kind of event card or character profile. Any extra who appeared for 7 seconds is probably in this game on a mercenary card somewhere.

There are a few nice mechanics here. Every time you complete a quest ("job"), you have to make an extra pay-out to your crew. This motivates you to run jobs with the smallest crew possible, and forces you to keep looking for harder jobs to pay your growing crew. The game creates a strong sense of self-pacing, even aside from the incentive of competing with another player.

The most original mechanic is a couple of hostile ships representing the Alliance (law-and-order, trying to catch smugglers and criminals) and the Reavers (psycho space marauders who just want to kill everyone). The two ships move based on decks of cards that you're forced to draw as you move your own ships. Eventually each deck has a card that will teleport one or another of the ships directly onto you, causing lots of nasty effects. This creates an unpredictable timer that tends to go off right as you're about to execute some brilliantly devised scheme, rendering it all for naught.

Whether you like or dislike this kind of random mechanic, it certainly is a faithful representation of the thematic source material. By the end of the game, you'll really feel like a harried freighter captain, abused from all sides by demanding underworld figures and constantly on the run from the law.

There are a number of mechanics missing from the game that I would rather enjoy seeing included. The map is always fixed, and playing every game on the same fixed map starts to feel repetitive. (This is one of the reasons I'd like to design a random-map game of my own, if I ever find the time!) There are underutilized game concepts that feel like they might be vestigial bits of some earlier design of the game: ships have a printed "purchase cost", despite being all identical and coming for free at the start of the game, and the "stash" cargo storage area on your ship is literally referenced by only a single card in the entire game.

The level of randomness in the game is high. Sometimes the dice will reward someone for using an ill-conceived strategy, but punish someone else for playing cautiously. Screaming at bad die roll results or ill-timed event cards is an expected outcome of play.

The production standards for the game are uniformly high. Everything is beautiful, down to the money, and the game sells at a fairly impressive price point below $50. If you have any interest in the old show, it's highly recommended as a nostalgia trip.

ACKS Example: Merchant Ship

The rules for trade arbitrage in ACKS are potentially quite detailed and offer a lot of room to add flavor to an expedition. For passive trading to make a steady profit, there are default estimates of the average profit per month for any ship or caravan. But I want to see how well the detailed system matched up with these default values. So here's an example of the trade arbitrage system in action.

Master Leonhard is a 1st level mage aboard the Wyvern's Spur, a large sailing ship. He's been given responsibility for running a trade route between the docks of Straddleport (a Class II market in Elysion) and the capital city of Durnovar (a Class I market in Winlend). His ship can carry an impressive 30,000 stone of cargo, which amounts to hundreds of "loads" of different cargo. (A load is typically 10 to 100 stones in weight.)

First, let's look at the demand modifiers in the region. These are generated randomly for each market, based on its local environment and other properties. Positive numbers indicate that a good is in high demand and more expensive (sell it here!), and negative numbers indicate that a good is already well supplied and less expensive (buy it here!) The first column is for Durnovar (Class I), and the second is for Straddleport (Class II). The third column, which we don't need, is the Class III market in Green Pass at the military depot of Centerpost.

Generally, a spread in demand creates a reliable profit. At Straddleport, we'd like to buy grain, pottery, precious metals, or ivory, since all of these have a relative spread of at least -2 vs Durnovar. Anything else might turn a profit, but it would be a matter of luck. In Durnovar -- planning ahead for the return trip -- it would be better to buy common wood, salt, hides, spices, or semiprecious stones. The Wyvern's Spur is a peaceful sort of ship with 140 structural hit points, so it will pay 140/10 = 14 gp as a mooring fee every time it stops in harbor.

First we need to figure out how many local Straddleport merchants will sell to Leonhard. We pay a toll of 1d10+10 = 16 gp to enter the market, and discover 2d4+1 = 5 merchants willing to sell goods. Each of them will have 4d6 loads of some single type of merchandise. We can either let them suggest a good to sell to us (probably something they are itching to unload), or we can try to look for a particular type of good. The former gives a random result. The latter approach requires a reaction roll with a 9+ target (or 12+ for rare goods, anything after "mounts" on the list).

Let's see what happens with a random selection. Checking for the type of goods available (a d100 roll) gives 84  (mounts), 1 (grain), 98 (rare goods), 9 (wood), and 38 (hides). A second check for the type of rare good gives 51 (ivory). That's a very nice result, since ivory has a -3 spread and is a costly commodity. The other three are less appealing, since they are in low demand at Durnovar and will probably command lower prices there.

Let's check the grain merchant first. He's offering 4d6 = 13 loads of grain, each weighing 80 stone. The base cost of a load would be 10 gp, but it's modified by (4d4-2)*10% = 80%, so each load costs 8 gp. That's 104 gp to load 1040 stone of grain cargo.

Next let's check the ivory merchant. He's offering 14 loads of ivory, each weighing 8 stones (mammoth tusks are heavy!) The base cost would be 800 gp, but this is modified by (4d4-1)*10% = 80%, or 640 gp each. So it will put us out 8960 gp to buy all 14 loads, which will weigh 112 stone. We can see the massive difference between luxury cargo (expensive and light) and common cargo (cheap and heavy). All the good profit is in the latter.

We still have plenty of room left on our ship, so let's look for passengers and third party contracts. There are 2d4 = 6 passengers expressing an interest. One of them wants to reach a distant city 2400 miles away (this occurs with a check of 19+ on 1d20), probably somewhere near exotic Chukchi in the Beringian isles. This can be lucrative for a ship going that way anyway (he'd potentially pay to charter the whole ship, for up to 3000 gp!), but here it's going to ruin my attempt to use this as an example. The other 5 are going our way.

Each of them will need to pass a 2d6 reaction roll to trust our crew. With a target of 9+, it turns out that none of them regard us as seaworthy. With a higher CHA score, this would be a different story.

Now we look for shipping contracts. There are 2d4+1= 4 contracts available, each for 4d6 loads. The average weight of a load is 70 stone, and for this many loads, it's simplest to just assume they all average out. So there are four contacts available for 8, 9, 15, and 11 loads each, or a total of 43 loads. This will weigh 3010 stone. If we travel about 500 miles (Durnovar is a bit farther than this, actually, but that's a good first estimate), then the value of all the contracts will be 3010/10 = 301 gp. This doesn't require any selling or customs tax at the other end, it's just straight profit.

The ship now contains 3010+1040+112 stone. There's another 200 stone needed for a merchant representative to take care of the shipping contracts. That's a total of 4362 stone, out of a full capacity of 30,000 stone! That leaves a lot of empty space. You can see that there might be some appeal in just carrying around extra cargo in search of a good price. (I guess in ACKS, perishable goods are magically warded against spoilage -- or at least there's no rule giving them an expiration date!)

For now, let's just take the current cargo and set off. The route to Durnovar is around 500-700 miles away. With 144 miles per day of sail movement, this is going to take less than a week, probably more like 4-5 days. Let's just call it a week for simplicity, and to allow for a few days of bad weather.

Arriving in Durnovar costs another 14 gp for mooring, and a 1d6+15 = 21 gp toll. Now we start trying to sell. There are 2d6+2 = 11 merchants here. Do any of them want to buy our ivory? That requires a 12+ on a reaction roll, alas. Even with the +2 demand modifier, that's still hard to get. After rolling 11 times, I get nothing better than an 8, which occurs 4 times. That's good enough to unload the grain (+1 demand, to hit the 9+ target for common goods), at least. So I can sell the 13 loads of grain. Each merchant will buy 6d8 loads, which means they will easily purchase all my grain. Unfortunately, the prevailing price of 4d4+1 is only 80% of the base price, or 8 gp. That's what I paid for the stuff! After a local customs duty of 2d10% = 10%, I'd be selling the loads for a net of 13*8*0.9 = 93.6 gp, a loss of 10 gp. Oh well, I might as well unload the grain before it attracts rats. The price has only a 10% chance per month to change, so there's no sense waiting for that. Unloading it costs another 5 gp for labor.

At least I can collect on the shipping contracts, to pick up a 301 gp check to cover my various fees and the cost of feeding my crew. Otherwise, this trade mission isn't shaping up well.

The bottom line is that I desperately need a character with a CHA or proficiency bonus to make this work. Buying and selling specific luxury goods requires a reaction roll, and that's where all the money in arbitrage is.

At the very least, I can now pick up some additional shipping contracts and head back to Straddleport. Maybe I can talk my high CHA character (Halward the gnomish trickster) into coming along, and then try again!

A bit of good news: A Class I market has better contracts than a Class II market. I can roll 2d6+2 for contracts, resulting in 8. I pass the reaction roll (9+ on 2d6) for 5 of them. Each of them has 6d8 loads, for a total of 22+24+18+18+21 = 103 loads. That will provide 7210 stone of cargo, and earn me 721 gp on delivery. All of them are "going my way".

The same check applies for passengers. There are 2d4+1 = 5 passengers here, and one of them passes the reaction roll. He's also going my way, and will pay 20 gp for the trip. That's another 200 stone of cargo.

 The return trip takes another week of travel, and so, after 2 months, I've completed a full round trip.

Total revenue:  301+94+721+20 = 1136 gp (after customs duty)
Total expenses: 2x14+2x5+14+21 = 75 gp
Crew wages: 2x6x17+2x2x25+2x100 = 504 gp

Net profit: 557 gp
Profit per month: 278.5 gp
Experience: This compares against a xp threshold of 25 gp, so Master Leonhard earns 253.5 xp per month, or 507 gp.

Moral: The estimated profit in the table on page 145 probably assumes that most reaction rolls are successful. With a low CHA characters, this isn't a good assumption. I recommend that instead of just using the default value (of 2600 gp, for a large ship), you roll five 2d6 reaction attempts. For each failure, reduce your monthly profit by 20%. For a character with no bonuses, this will typically yield only about 1 success, for a monthly profit of 520 gp. (Which is still better than I could manage, alas.)

MEK OP Game Night: Isigwold Incursion

Last night's group: Reba playing the gnomes (with Ruthy as a paladin lieutenant), Zac as the elves, and Peter as the giants.

March 14, Caudex Annales 71 AUP

At initial set-up

In response to reports of a small beastman encampment in the Isigwold to the north of the Viadunian Road, three divisions of indigenous natives under the command of local heroes launched a preemptive reconnaissance in force into the forest lands. Scouts reported a small assortment of goblins led by wolfriders. Seeking to set up an ambush for the goblins, a detached group of 10 elven light cavalry sallied forth to picket them in order to entice forward into the foothills. The goblin scouts made no prior contact with either group (aside from one captured as a prisoner!), and rode off at once in enthusiastic pursuit.

The wizard Xangold deployed a wall of smoke to conceal both the storm giants (on the left flank) and the archers (on the right flank), and for the initial round of combat, only the archers fired. Expecting to discover a wizard and the hidden archers, the goblins advanced resolutely into the center of the gorge, smashing apart the unfortunate cavalry and making contact with sturdier gnomish ranks. During the light exchange the smokescreen was pulled back just far enough to shield only the giants, allowing them to wait until the goblins had arrayed themselves into neat lines below the cliff wall. At that point a sequence of three lightning bolts cut through their ranks, shocking them into disorganization and general retreat. A second round of hurled boulders from the giants were sufficient to rout the battlefield. 

Attention turned to the reports of a force of larger-size humanoids along the Isig Coast near Straddleport... (next week?)

Order of Battle - Isigwold Free States

• Elven Division, 3 platoons: Light Cavalry-r, Bowmen, Longbowmen
• Gnomish Division (Spellbinder Elrohir), 3 platoons: Heavy Infantry #1 and #2 (Sir Collier Rolando), Arbalest Platoon
• Arcane Division (Xangold Spectregrasp): 3 storm giants, 2 giant eagles

"r" denotes routed
"x" denotes destroyed

Entering the ravine

Order of Battle - Isigwold Incursion Force

• 1st Smasher Division (Bugbear Sub-Chieftain Phraal), two units: Bugbear Ribcrunchers-x, Goblin Wolfbrawlers-x
• 1st Shrieker Division (Goblin Chieftain Pixyag), six units: Goblin Gutskewers (Light Infantry) #1-x and #2-x, Goblin Eyebleeders (Bowmen)-x, Goblin Nobnockers (Slingers) #1-x and #2-r (Goblin Sub-Chieftain Boglux)

Spoils

2085 gold pieces (348 gp share for each division's leader)

sword +1, +3 vs undead

potion of healing

Note: Half of this gold is claimed directly by soldiers, and would be used to slowly level them up to veteran status if they were human (demi-human races begin already as veterans, so they don't benefit but still take their share). The other half is divided equally between each divisional commander, creating a share of 348 gp for each division.

Experience

For treasure: 1 xp per gp (that is, 348 xp per division) awarded to each division to split between the commander and any of its lieutenants and heroes (you can decide how to divide this among your heroes, if you have more than one of them present)

For leadership: 1575 xp to each division commander

Note: The campaign rules indicate that you should pay 15 gp per week to supply an infantry platoon in the field, or 60 gp to supply a cavalry platoon. (Storm giants cost 48 per week each.) Marching to and from the battlefield should take most of the month (4 weeks), so you can assume that amounts to 60 gp per infantry platoon and 240 gp per cavalry platoon, and 192 per giant. This will roughly cancel out with the small amount of gold claimed from the battle, so you can probably just ignore both the gold and the supply costs if you want, and just assign the experience.

I think the elves should get the sword, since they took more of the risk and the other commanders were both spellcasters. But you can decide that among yourselves if you like.

This is just the campaign equivalent of a nuisance random encounter. If you want serious treasure, find a stronghold and conquer it!

State Of The Realms: March 71 A.U.P.

A short review of recent events:

• Investigators in the Green Pass region have found evidence of a gathering of rival beastman factions to explore the haunted moors north of Balewood Keep in search of something.
• Goblin operations were disrupted, but several other organizations seem to be competing with them.
• Tomb robbers are plundering some of the moor's ruins as well, but act nervous about the area.
• Orcs are planning some kind of concentrated assault force. They were found in close proximity to the goblins, suggesting they may be coordinated with one another, despite different objectives
• The region north of Green Pass is inhabited by a relatively friendly wizard, as well as some rather unfriendly gorgons and troglodytes.

Possible objectives in this region would include:

• Discovering whatever the goblins are after, and getting to it first.
• Continuing to search other areas around Balewood, to see who else is being attracted by the same rumors (another adventuring group was driven off by a more professional group of hobgoblins in the same month!)
• Locating the gathering place of the orc(?) army, and discerning its objectives in time to stop it.
• Cleaning out monster lairs around Green Pass for magical treasure.

Meanwhile, the following incursions into the lands of Elysion have been reported by scouts:

• The Isig Coast (the area surrounding Straddleport): A medium (platoon-scale BR 5d6) force of giant beastmen has been spotted 144 miles from the populated outskirts of Straddleport. It is not marching, but gathering in the field to await future reinforcement. This force will disrupt travel and trade between Straddleport and the inland regions along the River Isigflod for as long as it is present. Spies could be dispatched to investigate it while it camps.

• Isigwold (the home region of current player domains except Xangold's Tower): A medium (platoon-scale BR 5d6) force of normal beastmen has been spotted about 120 miles from the domain of Tallibrick Sheerclift. If not interdicted, it could arrive within two weeks. Scouts might be able to gather more information as the army approaches, or spies could be dispatched to investigate it while it camps.

A Magical Spell For Fantastical Travels In Time And Space

Because Leomund's Tiny Hut + Astral Projection + Quest = TARDIS

This idea is inspired by the depictions of travel between worlds in Lewis' Narnia and Perelandra books, Lynne Reid Banks' Indian in the Cupboard series, and various old TV shows like Quantum Leap and Voyagers -- I mean, aside from the totally obvious acronym reference. It's a way to toss yourself into the timestream and pop out in another world at just the right moment to have a fabulous adventure, guided by the unpredictable predilections of God/time/fate/whatever.

Trans-Astral Remote Deployment Initiation Spell
Divine Ritual 6
Range: Touch
Duration: Until completion of quest
Target: 1 large container (chest, armoire, wardrobe, coffin, etc)
Saving Throw: N/A

This ritual takes an ordinary piece of furniture and converts it into a capsule with the ability to travel through the astral plane, a region of interdimensional space that connects different worlds. The enchantment results in the interior of the capsule growing large enough to comfortably house a dozen or so occupants and their belongings, although they will need to enter carefully one at a time. The interior is a large octagonal room with a control station in the center that has a single lever or switch with only two settings. Throwing the switch will result in the entire object (and its occupants) moving through the astral plane to some unpredictable location on a new world, or travel through time to a different era in the same world, or even both at once. It will typically arrive at an inconspicuous location like an alley or warehouse where it will look out of place, although investing in a quality lock and key for the capsule is still advised!

The location in space and time is selected by whatever deity, power or intelligence is responsible for answering the priest's prayers. Generally the intent of transport is to arrive in a situation that requires external assistance for the resolution of some imminent crisis. The exact nature of the crisis will require local investigation. Once it is adequately resolved, the switch may be reversed to permit the capsule's return. The passage of time will be synchronized in both worlds for as long as the spell is in effect.

Voyagers in an astral capsule are affected by the equivalent of a limited tongues spell for the duration of the adventure which augments their language with an equal number of locally equivalent languages; for example, if they speak can orcish in their own world, they'll gain the common language of orcs in the new one. A crystal ball may be mounted on top of the control station, allowing the occupants to view the region outside the capsule. A matched crystal ball placed in the room where the ritual was originally completed will allow communication between the voyagers and their home world (including sound, if the ball is enchanted with clairaudience). Communication between worlds is otherwise impossible.

While traveling between worlds, an astral capsule produces a wheezing, groaning noise reminiscent of the drawing of a resinous bow across a set of dissonant piano strings.

Adding Mooks To Gold Box Games

I'm a strong believer in the thematic usefulness of an unbalanced adventuring party in RPGs. That is, I think every party should have both junior members (Merry and Pippin) and senior members (Aragorn and Gandalf) with substantial power differentials. This is contrary to the design of most modern games (tabletop or computer), but it solves a range of design problems:

• It provides some weaker characters who need to be protected by the stronger ones, which feels heroic (or if that's not your style, a group of hapless meatshields you can sacrifice to escape, which feels ruthless!)
• It helps to differentiate characters from one another by seniority, to give them more personality
• It contributes to verisimilitude in the sense that it's how any real-world teams would work, with weaker and stronger contributors
• Most importantly, it provides weaker characters who can be injured or die to create a sense of genuine peril and malice, but without risking a total party kill situation

The old Gold Box game Pool of Radiance was unique in allowing you to add low level generic henchman to your party who would actually fight for you (unlike the ones in the Might and Magic series). But later games in the series removed this option. I'm convinced that it's still there hiding somewhere in the code, though. Let's try to use a hex editor to find it! Then we can create custom mooks for the other Gold Box games. This is a critical element of my new project to create a hybrid tabletop/electronic RPG option to allow solo play in my own campaign, so that characters can be moved back and forth into CRPG modules to have their adventures.

I'm using the Gold Box Companion, a nice freeware hex editor by Jhirvonen. It's pretty experimental in that no one really knows much about the internal memory allocation structure of these old games, but with a little experimentation it's usually possible to spot some effects. The GBC has already located (and provided a nice front-end interface for) the bytes that control things like stats, levels, spells, and saving throws. I think I can use this interface to totally overwrite the usual classes and define my own class advancement tables for experience, levels, spell slot availability, thief skills, and throws, so I can implement some custom classes that will be leveled "by hand". (Alas, the spells themselves are hardcoded.)

But we need to find something totally unknown-- the location of the bytes that define hired henchmen, and distinguish them from player characters. The only one actually labeled in the interface is the AI switch, which is near the end of the memory block and controls whether a character is under human control or uses "quickfight" instead.

Let's open a saved game and inspect the characters. First, use the checkboxes in the lower left to screen out all known bytes of data, and also anything boring set to "00". Here's the the array of bytes:

After comparing the memory dump of some PCs and NPCs, there are three sequences that stand out:

The two sequences in red and the third one in blue are always present for every hireling, but never present for any player character. One of them must be it!

The block in blue is clearly controlling the treasure shares claimed by the NPCs after combat ("Warrior takes and hides his shares"). In this example, we can see that the code "5A" tells us that the character will claim a choice of magical items (greedy!) and also a full 5 shares of treasure! If we wanted to make him less greedy, we could change the 5A to a 23 (no magical items claimed), and reduce the shares to 01.

The block in red starts with a "04", which is actually present for player characters as well. It's always equal to the level of the character (the highest level, for multiclass characters). The "FF" bytes don't seem to do anything but might be special flags for some game events, perhaps telling when characters will be removed from the party by certain plot twists.

The most important place to look is that "A5" in the lower line. It determines what type of hireling or NPC you have in your party. In this case, it's identifying this as a "curate" NPC, a fourth-level priest. It seems to be shared by all NPCs that behave the same way, so I think it's specific to an AI behavior pattern or scripting response. Whatever it is, setting it to anything but "00" will tell your computer this character is a mook.

To test this, take one of your regular characters (where this block is "00") and change it to "A5" or anything else. Now you don't have a party of 5 PCs, but a party of 4 PCs and a mook! So you can add another PC to your party! This effectively allows your party to break the six character cap on PCs. You can even change the flag back to "00" when you're done adding more PCs, and run with an oversized group of eight player characters instead. Or you can demote this character permanently to an NPC by setting all the other flags (the "FF" and treasure ones) and turning on the AI switch. Your choice.

Does this code still exist in other Gold Box series games? I haven't found it in all of them yet, but here's where you can find it in the sequel, Curse of the Azure Bonds. Below I'm zooming the new location in the (slightly larger) Azure Bonds memory block:

You can see that the "max-level indicator" of "06" in the top line has been shifted over by one column to make room for something new, but the bottom row is still the same format and now has a "B2" in it. This is the code for the two plot NPCs, Alias and Dragonbait. But I think you could easily change it to anything else, if you wanted to avoid having your hirelings removed from the party by plot events. (Or maybe the "4D" is controlling that, I'm not sure.) The important thing is that it be non-zero, I think, so the game knows this is not a player character. Unfortunately, I have no idea if the "treasure shares" code is still present, or where its storage bytes are located. But maybe by this level, surviving henchmen have become more loyal!

I haven't checked this to see if this ad hoc editing causes any additional weirdness during play; if it does, I'll update the post. For now, it looks like I can continue using henchmen in Azure Bonds, and maybe other sequels as well.

MEK OP Game Night: Xangold's Tower

On Saturday the regular group (with Vox sitting in as one of Peter's heroes) elected to run a short overland adventure into the wilderness in the Isigflod river valley north of Little Darply. This lasted for only about two hours, but provided enough time to demonstrate the daily movement cycle and allow for a few moments of excitement.

The party brought along a cart full of supplies, which is maybe something I should restrict in the future. The requirements of food and water get a bit trivial when you have 100 stones of capacity, and the rules also say that carts can't enter a forest (without trails) which isn't consistent with what happened later in the night. But maybe I'm the only person who likes extensively planning out the logistics of overland travel, and everyone else just wants to handwave provisioning and survival skills.

No battles despite the best efforts of the random encounter table, since apparently my players don't want to have their heroes turned into exquisite bits of stone statuary. (Wusses.) Anyway, here's the official account:

***********************************************************
February 14 to 29, Caudex Annales 71 AUP

Having heard rumors of hospitalities offered at the remote wilderness estate of the Wizard Xangold Spectregrasp, one called "Assassin's-Bane" by those thwarted by his extensive and costly mountainous defenses (and thus called "the Penniless" mostly by himself and in a rueful tone of voice), the heroes of the Isigwold rode forth to the fortress town of Highpoint in Warsden's domain beside the waters of Breslemere. They consisted of the same company which had entered the Balewood, as well as a gnomish trickster associate of Xangold's (named "Average Joe" for reasons that probably involve an excessively long gnomish shaggy-dog story with an unsatisfying punchline). There they traveled south along the road to the holy sisters' convent at Little Darply, and struck off north across the frozen surface of the Bresaway. Keeping to the frozen track of the stream's bed led them to the Isigflod, and they hurried north toward its headwaters, through the deeps of the vale.

Hills rose on the left, and farther to the east the westward spurs of the Great Barrier's spine stuck out of the forest as an ill omen, marking the countless abodes of unnatural creatures that crept in darkness and fed upon one another in the craggy mountain roots. The first week was uneventful due to prudent use of open terrain and the setting of a regular watch. The howls of old Mort the watchdog never turned to sharp barking, and everyone ate cheerfully from the many crates of supplies drawn by the caravan oxen.

Totally not a snake-haired chick.

At the start of the second week, a triad of peculiar herd animals were spotted several hundred yards away, lumbering along the river bed. None of them seemed to be flesh-beasts, but neither did they appear to bear the mark of any gnomish phantasms or dwarven engineering. Instead, they were wrought of finest steel plates and stood 8 feet at the shoulder, or 10 to their tossed horns and snorting muzzles. Experienced lore masters among the party quaked at the sight of these aberrations of nature, recognizing them as mythological beasts beyond the skill of any mortal to face without dread. Even those unfamiliar with the misnomer of "gorgon" understood that they were something best avoided, and diverted course to the forested eastern shore.

Unfortunately the beasts broken into a trot and set their course to intercept the entire team at a point well short of the forest line half a mile away. A brief and furious deliberation resulted in the general consensus that setting up the repeating crossbow in the back of the cart would simple goad them into greater fury, whereas they might be susceptible to subtler forms of deception.

Gnomish trickery was sufficient to construct a near duplicate of the beasts, which broke off in front of them pawing the ground and directing them furiously toward the farther shore to the west. Whether by curiosity or confusion, the gorgon patrol elected to follow their new phantom "scout" back to the river bed, while the party disappeared into the trees.

With the spur bearing Xangold's legendary tower now in view, the party continued without event through the woods and arrived at the tower-- but not alone. A similar party from the uncivilized northlands of the Isigflod valley had also arrived, intent on slaying the terrible monsters that Xangold was reputed to be collecting in the high terrace-labyrinths of his tower. Led by a barbarian in skins, himself attended by a guide and a surly dwarf in chainmail, the rivals sought the immediate surrender of Xangold and the destruction of his perverse collection. They furrowed their hairy brows suspiciously at the description of Xangold as a "friend", and scoffed at the explanation that he was gathering evil beasts solely to rid the world of them.

On loan from Westeros! (by Feralkyn)

Xangold himself descended with characteristic flair from the tower pinnacle with two bodyguards at his side, their feet resting on an enchanted carpet that levitated smoothly above the assembled throng. He greeted everyone warmly, and remained unalarmed by the accusation that he was a sorcerer of the black arts assembling an army of fiends. Asked to demonstrate his intention to ultimately slay the creatures he was collecting, he instead offered to allow the visitors to slay one for themselves, and conjured a great dire wolf from the dungeon. He also gallantly enhanced the barbarian leader with an enlargement spell.

The swollen barbarian smashed the wolf and then turned his gaze on the wizard, his rage kindled by the rush of blood to complete his mission against the tower's lord. He raised his axe to strike down Xangold's company, but found himself dazed by a swirling eruption of light. When his own enhancements had faded and he dwindled back to normal size, he discovered that he and his men had been disarmed (and for good measure, had their bootlaces tied together by the impetuous gnome).

Magus Spectregrasp then invited the more civil guests up into his tower for luncheon and conference. He identified the lair of the gorgons in a ravine to the south, as well as a sizable tunnel infestation of troglodytes to the northeast known for harassing traders, trappers, and explorers in the region. He also explained his strategy for purging the dungeon of evil beasts, for the sake of assembling a company of lawful but fantastical defenders for his realm (or any allies). Everyone was keen on the possibility of him committing storm giants and gold dragons to their future assaults.

Casualties: None
Treasure: None
Experience: I'd rule everyone can split up 3x1600 = 4800 into 8 shares of 600 xp each, for "defeating" the gorgons.

Video/Tabletop Hybrids: A Historical Perspective

Before explaining my latest grand idea, a little history. The first video game console system, the Magnavox Odyssey, was released in 1972. This was the "pre-Pong" era, characterized by games that were basically a single dot bouncing back and forth across a screen with players using paddles to direct its motion. Before Pong, there were no capabilities for games to track a score, and there were certainly no graphics beyond single large dots! The entire game had to be created around a single mechanic, and customized through non-electronic add-ons -- and the Odyssey had a lot of add-ons. Transparent overlay screens were laid on top of the screen to allow the moving dot to illuminate different parts of the image, creating the illusion of motion. Objective cards defined the operations that players were supposed to perform with their moving dots. Scorekeeping poker chips allowed for players to keep track of who was winning, an operation well beyond the capabilities of the console itself. A primitive light-gun could be used to shoot at the dot in various hunting games. The point is that early video games were necessarily a hybrid of physical and electronic components.

Magnavox maintained this philosophy with its later-generation consoles, culminating with the Odyssey2 in 1978. This was a true programmable console with the capability for swapping different cartridge games, rather than just playing the same "game" (some form of Pong) with varying overlays and control schemes. By the time this system was released, it was already being eclipsed by arcades and the Atari 2600, systems with much better graphics, fluid controls, and faster action. But the strategy it used to compete was by going high-brow and trying to boost the physical inserts provided along with the cartridge. This approach culminated in 1981 with the release of Quest for the Rings, the first video game I ever attempted to play.

QftR, in all its glory.

This is seriously the most overproduced game in pretty much all of history, and that includes a lot of collector's editions released today. You can see that it's a video game that has an entire board game wrapped around it. The board game has about 60 pieces, a gold-embossed game manual, a full-color map board, a keyboard overlay, and lots of Escher-esque concept art showing you the graphics the designers probably wished they could cram into the actual cartridge.

The video game itself consisted of several simple Pacman mazes with four different types of fantasy monsters, including a fire-breathing dragon. The game was designed to be a cooperative stealth game. Each player chose a character from one of four classes, and tried to use what we'd today call "aggro management" to steer at least one character to a ring at the opposite side of the maze. To mix things up, the maze walls would sometimes move and shift, and other times be made of lethal lava. It was unique in that era for being a two-player cooperative game and for having characters with totally unique skill sets: a warrior who could kill enemies, a wizard who could stun them, a phantom who could walk through walls to escape, and a changeling who could become invisible to dump aggro. The monsters were also better differentiated than the ghosts in Pacman, with different sizes, speeds, and movement patterns.

I never really succeeded in playing it, partially because the game was difficult even for two players, partially because the control paddles were hideously clunky, partly because I was six years old (!), and partially because it was at a friend's house and I only got to try it a few times. But the idea in abstract principle, a hybrid supergame with one foot in the physical world and another in the electronic one, has continued to be something I want someone to implement for me in a perfected modern form.

While I'm no programmer, one idea I've been contemplating is to merge two existing types of games: a high-level economic system played using an existing strategy game, and a tactical resolution system using an existing video game. For example, a board game like Civilization could be played out normally, but using the arena mode of a low-level strategy engine (like the SSI's Fantasy General) to resolve the outcome of battles. One of my projects a few years back was to unify the economic system from Starfire with the tactical battle system of Space Empires IV, allowing for a solo Starfire game -- a project that was basically superseded by the discovery of Aurora. (But not until after I had sunk a few dozen hours into modding SE4 to work with Starfire tech!)

Currently my latest idea is to combine a sandbox CRPG with the economic system in ACKS, creating a solo RPG with higher level domain management components. This could work with some of the old Gold Box games (or their FRUA reimplementations), as well as with the d20 indie title Knights of the Chalice. Most modern games have too many plot constraints to allow for integration with an outside system, but maybe there are some player-created Neverwinter Nights modules that might work. A major complication is the need for a character hex editor that can import elements (money, characters, magic items, spells) from the economic system back into the computer game. (The Gold Box Companion works OK for basic functions like creating gold or leveling up, but encounters some game breaking bugs with the item creation functions.)

Like all of my grand schemes, I hardly have enough time to implement this one. But I think I'll at least play with the idea in my mind and see where it goes.