Board Game Review: Mice and Mystics

On  Mice and Mystics...

I just finished two sessions of Mice and Mystics with my wife and 2 young sons. The mechanics and artwork are superb, but there are a LOT of questions left unanswered by the rulebook and adventure book (called the storybook). Learning the game was daunting with the rulebook alone, but fortunately Plaid Hat provides an instructional video on their site: http://plaidhatgames.com .

The game says it's co-op, and suggests everyone at the table is a player with no need for a GM. When playing the game we found that the game runs a LOT smoother, more quickly, and the players have much  better time when it's run by a pseudo-GM... a concept hinted at, but not fleshed out in the rulebook. In the rulebook version, the pseudo-GM reads the "chapter" (adventure) beforehand, but that's all. I added the duties of reading the story text aloud, gradually revealing the map tiles, placing antagonists, and rolling for antagonists. If you want to know exactly how this was done, leave a comment below and I'll elaborate.

Bottom line: I'd say this game is a MUST buy for any lover of co-op games, dungeon crawling, and The Secret of Nimh (It captures the ambiance of the movie perfectly), even with the required initial FAQ hunting, and the steep price to box content ratio of the base set.

Oh... and the outcome of our games? The dice were not kind to us this day, but tomorrow is another day and we will happily brave the fantastic world of Mice and Mystics again! :)


Game on.

Doc

Completing the old: a resolution.

I've said for the last 3 years that it was "going to be my year".
Those of you who know me know that the last 3 years kicked me in the teeth, just like the two prior.
So... I'm not going to announce that this is my year. I'm just going to say that I'm going to fight hard to improve my lot, and deal with the obstacles that come my way as best I can.
Things I want to accomplish:
1. Get Shared Weave Games up online and Over da' Boards on the market.
2. Write my remaining MCITP exams.
3. Keep losing weight until I get back down to my fighting weight.
I've made significant progress on all three already, but they're not done so I'm not resolving anything new until they are.
I guess this is not going to be a year of bringing in the new per se, but more of a year of completing the old. I find I'm very comfortable with that.
Happy new year all! :)
Doc

We Two, Through The Ring of Fire

Man, what a night. I'd had six burritos with refried beans and extra hot tamale sauce, chased by half a two-six of texas whisky and most of a jar of pickled eggs.

Somehow I'd managed to make it to the biffy, and something evil was about to breach the gate I'd inadvertently opened to hell through my tortured bowel, if the gutteral growling from underneath was any indicator.

I heard from the stall beside me, "Sweet jimminy cricket! Are you all right in there?"

That's when most of my innards exited my body, along with three metric tonnes of what felt like molten brimstone. I answered, "Bgaaahhhgg!"

Without missing a beat, you started yelling, "Puuuush! Puuuuuuuush!"

This prompted three others who'd apparently entered while I was otherwise occupied to start yelling the same...

"C'mon! Puuuush! Puuuuuuush!"

I grabbed the stall walls, braced my feet and pushed to beat hell. "Ghaaaarghaaaaghaaaa!"

My bowels answered in kind with a sound not unlike a mighty river throwing a heard of bison into a half-full olympic swimming pool.

In what seemed like an epoch, I emerged from the stall sweating, bleeding, and raggedly breathing. I found you, like a Canadian soldier at the Somme, still at your post when the others had apparently fled.

"Thanks.", said I, and we wandered off to enjoy the rest of the Con'.

"No problem, man, no problem."

Nearing the End of a Long Road

Blinding flashes of insight and inspiration have been happening more often over the last year than they have in a very long time.

I think the one I had today has resulted not only in the final rules edit of OdB, but in the base concept of the third expansion.

The card art is coming along at a nice clip, and I really like the way Ben Hofer has brought my vision to life.

If my gut is correct, my final closed beta session will be next weekend, and I'll be opening it up to open blind testing the week after that.

If there are any local game shop owners in Winnipeg or surrounding areas/towns who want to host for me and become a part of the process, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be announcing times/places/dates as I can arrange.

My First Love: Dungeons and Dragons - Basic Set

Hooee... my mundane life is finally removing its needle-toothed maw from my throat, and I can finally start appreciating the finer things again. My apologies, but when you're a daddy and a husband you must do what you must... like cleaning lip gloss out of cat fur.

Now, like Jules Verne before me, I am going to regale you with tales of a forgotten time. A time when it took only five minutes to roll up a character, and about as long for that character to suffer a horrifying and bloody death... a time when you had to roll 3d6 and place them in the order rolled on your sheet,  not 37d6, dropping the not-sixes, and  placing the totals on your cat's bum if you felt like it...  A time when Elfing, Dwarfing, and Halflingery  were jobs you could be proud of...

"How's Elfing been so far Bob?"

"The pay sucks, but it's starting to look up now that I've gone freelance..."

I'm talking of course about the original Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set... better known as "The Red Box."

There's been a lot of buzz these days about the New D&D Red Box, and it had me travelling back more than twenty-seven years to the first time I set eyes on the game that would forever change my life. Since hearing the name of my sanguine hued first love I've found myself seeing faces I haven't seen in years, and watching the history of role-playing gaming unfold in the annals of my memory as I recall the clumsy, sweaty, sticky seventy-two hour gaming sessions of my youth, and the many games and gamers that blessed my life since that first moment ( http://tinyurl.com/2gn3sd ) .

I was relishing these memories on the drive over to Scipio's house for game design night, and when I arrived I mentioned them in passing as I was removing my chocolaty footwear (don't ask). Scipio, with a twinkle in his eye and a grin on his face only said two words.

"Follow me..."

His basement was unusually un-cluttered, and he brought me to a cabinet that looked to be older than the two of us put together. He said, "This.... was MINE...", and opened his treasure chest to reveal a classic gaming enthusiast's wet dream...

I responded, and I quote: "GHAARG!?"

Original Gamma World...

Star Frontiers...

HOLYSHITSHITSHITSHIT!!! Red Box right through Gold Box...

Scipio said, "Dan's leaving the wedding early so we can play. Let's roll us up some characters old school..."

And that's when I nerdgasmd.

Dan arrived just before 8pm dressed to the nines. Fucker didn't even go home to CHANGE man!  My fingers lightly brushed the cover as I spread the pages open to the character creation section, the familiar bouquet of my first love caressing my nostrils. Only two weeks before I'd found my first set of  dice... the ones that came with the Red Box I'd bought during my first trip to the Local Gaming Shop. I remember it like it was yesterday...

"If you're not going to purchase a product, do so and please leave the store. I don't want you hanging around here stealing anything."

The best part of my week was going to that local gaming shop with a pocket full of money to check out the banquet of games on those shelves... and being kicked out before I could make up my mind. How that mean old bastard remains in business to this day in spite of healthy competition (which he didn't have in those days), I haven't the faintest clue... but I digress.

It took all of five minutes to have three characters created. We decided we'd play through the dungeon in the Dungeon Master's guide, and that Scipio would run it. My character was a slightly above average fighter with an Austrian accent whose name I can't remember (keep reading to find out why). Dan created an exceptionally average Magic User named Hugo Dyck, and Scipio rolled a character that was incredibly weak but juuuuust not-weak enough, according to the rules, to justify rolling up another one. We named him Flimszi.

Scipio read the flavour text meant to introduce us to the world. We headed out from the Gold Dragon Inn, met a farmer who didn't seem too concerned about the monsters in the old Keep, and reached our destination in a confident state of mind.

That's when the 8 attacks per round Carrion Crawler handed our first level ASSES to us on a platter. By the third round Hugo was the only one left standing, and used his sleep spell...  a first level spell that puts 2d8 Hit Dice of living creatures  to sleep without a saving throw, allowing your intrepid band of heroes to merrily butcher their victims in their sleep without having to roll.

We looted the Carrion Crawler's lair, and moved immediately on to the castle. Looking through holes in the wall, we caught sight of ten Kobolds just inside the courtyard. I rushed them and killed one, at which point Scipio rolled morale for them and they all fled. Hooray! We won!

Or did we?

Hugo, the un-armoured Magic user equipped only with daggers, gives chase.  Flimzi and I, being heavily armoured, couldn't keep up. I was yelling in a nearly incomprehensible Austrian accent,"HUGO VAIT! Hugo vhat arrre you doink? Vait forrr us Hugoooo!" 

Holy crap! Hugo scores a hit and kills another Kobold! Hooray! Hooray! Hoo...oooly SHIT! They all turned on Hugo! I started yelling, "Rrrun Hugo! RrrrUN! Oh Hugo no... ohhhh.... ohhh.... oh nooo.... ohhh...."

In a single round the Kobolds did three times more damage to Hugo than he had total hit points.  Zere vere piezes of Hugo everrryvear. And that's when they noticed Flimzi and I and it turned into a Captain Hindgrinder TV dinner with a teabag sans cup.

After the TPK was over Scipio handed the reins over to me. We created three new overwhelmingly average characters and in five minutes we were headed out to find out what became of our other characters. We got to the courtyard seeing nothing more on the way than an assassinated Carrion Crawler and the annoying "I told the last idiots it was a bad idea" farmer.

We again saw the Kobolds through holes in the wall. Scipio's Thief sneaks off to check a hole in the wall that's big enough to offer passage while Dan's professional dwarf and my new Magic User, Ned "The Head" Ryerson fiddle with the door.

Scipio takes a shot and misses, revealing himself to the Kobolds. They promptly kill him, and that's when I cast my sleep spell. Now, Kobolds are 1/4 hit dice creatures so even if I roll a 1, I put four of them to sleep, and I roll two dice. They all fall asleep, we butcher them, drag all of the loot back to town (including all of our former characters' stuff), REST, and gather up Scipio's new character.

Huzzah! We finally made it to the adventure, and we've only had a TPK plus a character death. After fighting a giant bat and attacking some invulnerable crates and barrels for a while, we had to pack up for the night.

During the session we'd all had multiple moments where we laughed 'til we cried, and at that moment I felt what I felt when I first started playing tabletop RPGs... the feeling that's kept me playing them for almost 30 years. True, by today's standards the rules were pretty rough, but wasn't that silliness a part of what made the experience fun when we were kids?

We're thinking of finishing off this dungeon. Let me know if you want me to continue the story of Ned "The Head" and his stalwart companions in a future post, and also tell us a story about a memorable tabletop RPG moment.

'Til next time, share the weave...

Doc

Are Shooters and Sims better RPGs than WoW?

Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig on Twitter) recently wrote an article, "The 12-Year-Old English Kid Who Carried Us To Victory" ( http://bit.ly/afk1Aa ), that indirectly supports my belief that multiplayer First Person Shooters and Flight Sims provide just as much, if not more opportunity for role-playing than MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.


Like is says in my Bio, I’ve been a tabletop RPG gamer for almost 30 years. I’ve been a PC gamer for almost that long. Hell, I remember playing pong when it first came out on that 3000 lb. table-like thing that cost about a gajillion dollars. As such, my first multiplayer experience in the modern PC gamer sense of the word was playing Falcon 3.0 ( http://tinyurl.com/2f6b66w ) back in 1991, with two PCs in separate rooms hooked up via a crossover cable . We shot each other down in “instant action” a few times, but we found ourselves lost for hours playing the campaign missions co-op, not even realizing that sometime during the session we’d slipped into fighter pilot wingman personas. Unfortunately, the pots I’d smoken that night eventually got to me. I lined up my sights with his tail, and gave my spacebar a quick, single tap. My guns went, and I quote, “Digga.”

My friend veered off screaming, “Bogey Bogey Bogey! I’m under fire! Break Right And Engage!”

We flew around looking for the Phantom Bogey for a while, and I was laughing my THC-addled ass off so hard I almost peed. I had to do it as quietly as possible though, because my buddy was in the next room, so what came out of me sounded more like wheezing than laughing. By the time my buddy decided that we’d lost the bogey, I’d stopped laughing and we got back into formation. Then...

Digga. WheezeWHEEZEwheezewheezeWHEEZE....

... we were off looking for the Phantom Bogey again. Cursing, wheezing, flying, rolling, turning, diving. We did an even more thorough search this time, going grid square by grid square, but eventually my buddy signaled the all clear, and we got back into formation.

Digga. WheezeWHEEZEwheezewheezeWHEEZE....

“Holy crap... are you SHOOTING me!?!”


WHEEZEWHEEZEWHEEZEWHEEZEWHEEZEWHEEZE....

“For the love a... flaps stuck, rudder’s busted, landing gear won’t deploy. Gonna try and land this puppy anyway.”

And you know what? The magnificent bastard did. I know because I watched him belly land “that puppy” as I flew upside down into the tower at about Mach 2.

Now while I may have lost mindset and shot friendlies occasionally, I always remembered the immersive role-playing experience I got when playing Falcon 3.0 with my buddy. I tried to recapture it, unsuccessfully, until a little game called X-wing versus Tie Fighter: Balance of Power, and the time me and a bunch of buddies took out a Super Star Destroyer ( http://tinyurl.com/27qe8h4 ).

We’d been talking about getting together and trying it for a week beforehand. We joked around, and even gave each other call signs to go by while in game, although we ended up just going by squadron call signs like Green 5, Gold 3, etc., ala “A New Hope”. On the day-of, we spent the time it took to set up the largest LAN party my experienced LAN party buddy had seen up until that point (it was my first LAN party), and back in those days it was a pain to get everything working. When it was all finally up and running smoothly, our anticipation was palpable. I was Gold 2, a part of the b-wing bomber squadron tasked with taking out the Super Star Destroyer’s shield generators, and wingman to Gold Leader. Gold leader was the role we gave to a buddy we’d called “Coop” since junior high.

When we came out of hyperspace, we could see the Super Star Destroyer in the distance. Some of us started goofing around on the mics (my first experience with voice comms in a PC game, ala what would one day become the Sidewinder voice comms program), and Rogue Leader (played by a buddy of ours who was a little older than us, awesome at the game, and who was an actual Air Force navigation officer) piped up in a calm but authoritative voice:

“Cut the chatter gentlemen, orders in 2.”

Holy shit. My mindset slammed into place, and I WAS Gold 2. I could tell everyone else felt that same chill running down their spine as the thrill of it all washed over them, because the radio became silent as death.

Get ready to make your run Gold squadron. A-wing Rogues with me on space superiority, Green squadron X-wings are on bomber detail. Wait for my order, then break and attack. Squadron leaders copy?”


“Copy that Rogue Leader”


“Copy that Rogue Leader”

When the order was given to break and attack, we were like a well oiled machine. Rogue, flying the fast A-wings hit them first, followed by Green Squadron’s X-wings. Being in the slower B-wings, I began seeing green and red blaster bolts, and the telltale reddish orange blooms as unshielded Tie Fighters were exploding from Rogue and Green squadron’s withering fire. My mindset was firmly in place, but what made the whole experience hit home was what happened on our run at the first shield generator.

Coop’s plan was to fly in as fast and low as possible along the Super Star Destroyer’s hull, and pull up when we were close to the shield generator on the right side, and hit it with torpedo fire. This plan would have been awesome against living gunners firing massive, slow moving turbolasers, but against an insta-targeting computer bot bristling with guns this plan wasn’t so good. Our shields were being peeled faster than bananas at an ice cream stand. And that’s when it happened...

“Guys, my shields are gone! We gotta.... AIIIEEEEEEEEEEE” ***BOOM***....

An explosion to my 10 o’clock, and Coop is cut off mid-scream by a strategically muted mic. Silence again over the comms until Green 3 (My buddy Brian) exclaimed:

“Shit... we lost Coop.”

At that moment, everyone got that chill again, and we actually felt a tug at the ol’ heart strings. We also thought what Coop did was really cool, and we all made the decision unanimously, in unspoken man-telepathy ( http://tinyurl.com/2cbq8xj ), that if the time came, we’d die like that ourselves. Though lady victory favoured us with her smile that day, the cost in computer sprites was high, allowing many of us to die in style. I myself died destroying the second generator in a kamikaze attack.

Since the advent of the high-speed interwebs, I’ve occasionally been able to find these immersive role-playing experiences again. Notably, in Tachyon: The Fringe Base Wars, Delta Force: Land Warrior, Mechwarrior 4, and even more often now in the new popular co-op games like Left 4 Dead, Borderlands, and most recently (for me) in Left 4 Dead 2 realism mode.

I’ve tried 3rd person sprite driven grinding games like WoW, but I wasn’t able to suspend disbelief like I can with first person shooters or sims. I wasn’t able to LOSE myself in the character like I’m able to do during tabletop role-playing or LARPing.

If any of you like to role-play while playing FPSs or sims on computer and would like to play with ol' Doc, my Steam ID is Black_Doc_McGurk. If you have some other kind of online play account and you’d still like to play games with me online, you can direct message me or mention to me in Twitter (@DocDraconis), or send me an e-mail by viewing my profile on the right, and clicking the "Contact" link.

Doc