Unique scrolls in fantasy RPGs

I never was too keen on generic magic items, to the point that I ended up running a low-magic fantasy campaign specifically to get away from them. Ring of invisibility, bracers of defense, wand of paralysis...it all struck me as way too goofy. Same with scrolls — the charm of fantasy falls flat when I describe how the wizened mage hands the characters a scroll of water walking. Eh.

The obvious solution is to come up with unique names for spells, magic items, potions and scrolls. Which I've resolved to do, starting with scrolls. In particular, I like the idea that they're part of some larger body of research or some school of magic. So it's not a magic missile scroll, it's Vendamyr's Annotations on the Application of Force. A piddly light scroll becomes Deleterio's Bright Idea. Protection from evil becomes A Survey of the Nether Voids and Their Denizens, by the Arch-Wizard Foclis. And so on.

Not all generic names are bad. Renaming just a few injects a lot of character into my milieu, and it also has a powerfully beneficial effect on my creativity.

Play report: Song of Blades & Heroes

I downloaded Ganesha Games' Song of Blades & Heroes last month with much anticipation. Here, I thought, was the miniatures game I was looking for: fast, rules-lite and beholden to no particular manufacturer of miniatures. I could paw through my miniatures collection, scrape together a motley handful and create a warband in 10 minutes flat.

All these expectation were exceeded in my first game, which took place last weekend at Chicagoland Games. I met up with Brian, a friend and fellow player in ChicagoWiz's Dark Ages AD&D game. Brian was in the same boat as me: he wanted a super casual minis game that retained a bit of tactical appeal. Like me, he had tried Mordheim but found it lacking.

Anyway, we were joined by Tim, who had actually played Song of Blades & Heroes before (and boasted some keen custom miniatures to boot). We played two games: the first with about 8 models per side, the second with about 15 models per side (it was a two-vs-one game where Brian and I teamed up to take on Tim).


In the game, players take turns activating miniatures one at a time, generally using them to move, shoot and attack where appropriate. To activate a figure, players roll between 1 and 3d6. Each dice that rolls at or higher than the figure's Quality value (one of only two stats for each figure! simplicity!) grants one action. BUT if a player ever rolls two failures on a single activation, his turn is over. This means that if you get greedy and try to squeeze too many actions out of a low Quality figure, your turn can end prematurely — leaving one whole flank exposed, as happened in my game against Brian.


So there's some risk — and some tactical decision-making — that goes along with activating your troops. Do you roll three dice for your lizardman warchief, knowing that if he fails your turn will be over? Or do you play it safe and roll one dice, knowing that you will only be able to do one thing with your guy?

Beyond activation, combat is a simple d6 roll with each figure's combat score added to the result. A few other modifiers get thrown in as well, stuff that's pretty familiar to anyone who's ever played D&D 3.x. If you double your opponent's score, he dies. If you beat him without doubling, a couple other cool effects can happen.

In any case, the sheer speed of the game and the fact that you can use a huge variety of miniatures won me over. I daresay this game would be an excellent wargame option for folks seeking to add a little strategy into their D&D campaigns. And it's perfect for my beer and pretzels miniatures crowd.

Heroclix, possibly the ultimate beer and pretzels game

We had all the fixings of a great evening last weekend: beer, ribs cooking in the oven, potato salad in the refrigerator — and 300 assorted Heroclix figures, kindly donated by my friend Bob.

I had invited six friends (a mix of tabletop and console gamers) over to feast on ribs and play Heroclix into the wee hours. I had to get rid of those Heroclix, and fast — the boxes and bags were piled all over my man room, so the idea was that I would let the players comb over the figures and put together an assortment of heroes and villains, which they would then take home and keep.

Anyway, the night was a rousing success. Four of the players had never played Heroclix before (which for the uninitiated is the click-base miniatures game from WizKids). You play the game on a grid map, and each character has a "combat dial" representing various super powers, most of which make perfect sense from a comics perspective. For example, Wolverine has a claws, Rhino can charge into combat, and Hulk gets more powerful as he takes damage.

The games were great, with a lot of the zany, laugh-out-loud moments I remember from playing Heroclix in college. It's a simple game with a lot of depth; all the different powers mean that it's possible to chain up various effects in the game. Plus there are objects on the board that you can use to smash other characters (like the classic example last weekend of Rhino smashing Beta Ray Bill with a dumpster, ouch).

I used to play Heroclix a lot in college (and a lot of my buddies were even more "into" the game than me, often playing in weekly tournaments for prizes, etc). Since I moved to Chicago it's become just one of the games on my shelf when we get together for game nights. But now that I've successfully distributed Bob's old collection, I'm expecting to play a lot more frequently this summer.

[Chicagoland gamers] Unload your leftover stuff at the Warchest

I just got wind of a miniatures swap meet that's going down June 12 at Trinity College in Deerfield, Ill., just outside Chicago. Check out the details here. Admission is free, and if you happen to be a wargamer with a basement full of stuff to sell, you can rent a table for $20 and sell your wares all day long.

I'll stop by to browse — not that I need any more miniatures or anything.

Huge lot of Dungeon Crawl Classics on Tanga

Tanga.com is offering up 11 separate Dungeon Crawl Classics modules from Goodman Games for the bargain price of $31.99 + shipping. They're written for modern editions of D&D, but that's never stopped me before. This deal's only good until the end of today, May 21.

A horribly imbalanced game of DBA with 20mm soft plastic figures

I got together with a friend last week to play my first game of De Bellis Antiquitatis, the well-known ancient/medieval wargame commonly abbreviated as DBA. We liked the game, but we fielded very, very imbalanced armies consisting of the entirety of my 20mm-scale Hundred Years War collection, with each player using half of the figures...hardly a strategic army; more like a mishmash. Our game stagnated at some points for sure.

I've played a lot of wargames in my day, but they've mostly been single-figure affairs, where each guy stands on his own base and attacks separately, etc. DBA uses stands of figures representing hundreds of even thousands of combatants, enabling players to fight out some really big battles.


The problem with our game is that I had painted up way too many sword-and-shield infantry (known in the game as "blades"). These guys are elite troops, and most of the English and French army lists from the Hundred Years' War give each side no more than 2 or 3 of these units, because they represent dismounted knights. The bulk of the army is supposed to be composed of basic spearmen, longbowmen and mounted cavalry.

So we had waaay too many blades on each side, which resulted in the game turning into a massive slugfest in the center of the table. Again, this was because we were using only what I had painted up. I'm sure the next time we play, we'll be able to assemble much more balanced (and historical) armies from my collection.

I leave you with these two images, showing the downfall of a battalion of stalwart English longbowmen to a group of thundering knights. The game actually has rules that make longbowmen potent against mounted knights, but we misread them and the bows were slaughtered. That was the beginning of the end of the game for me, although I made my opponent pay dearly for his victory.

Painting with Fire — RIP Frank Frazetta

I watched "Painting with Fire," the documentary about Frank Frazetta's life and career, and resolved to one day visit his museum in Pennsylvania. Sadly that pending visit now won't include a handshake with the artist himself. Frank died today of a stroke, according to various sources.

The website of the Frank Frazetta Museum has some interview footage of Frank from March 2010, which is pretty amazing considering his frail health lately.