The cottage part 2, towards insanity

I wrote about my pwn rpg last autumn. It was about the Cottage and you can read first part from here.

What happened in the Cottage?

Basic idea was that characters lives through a tramatic weekend and they begin to fall. The truth about characters will be revealled when the layers are peeled from their minds. Fist they think that they're workers of the hospital. Slowly their own personalities will come out and there you will have  persons with mental issues. So eventually players realise that they were not workers in the hospital, they were the patients.

One of the characters was paranoid being suspicious about everything. Other character was imaginating that she lived in the fantasy world and third one was overly violent and aggressive. From these three first two offered best options to play. Playing aggressive is hard and it is only going into rage if things won't go the way character wants. If I would keep the rpg again I would change these mental disorders into different ones. I didn't use real diagnoses either since I thought I didn't have enough knowledge to do so.. So even the game was happening 1990´s, it was still some kind of fantasy world.

What triggered characters then?

The cottage wasn't empty. Actually characters had a bad luck that there were two robbers in the cottage at the same time. And these robbers had used drugs what made them aggressive so they even fight with each other. Characters didn't see the fight but they found corpse of the other robber from the lake. And at the same time they were facing sabotage so they couldn't escape from the place. Eventually polices arrived into to place but before that players were trying to survive alive what they did more or less.

This kind of surprisemoment can work only in the game what is meant to play during one evening.  Playing campaign with characters like these could be very tiring especially when the characters were written by DM not by players. But this was worth of trying and it was fun evening.

The cottage part 1, the basics

Today I was dungeonmaster in a game called the Cottage. I had made characters beforehand and gave them to players. There were four characters who were working in the mental asylum where they kept prisoners. Employees who were friends with each other needed a break and they had rent a cottage for a weekend. The story started when they left from the city towards countryside.

I wanted to keep system a simple one. There was three skills.. physical (like strength, dexterity), mental (wisdom, intelligence etc.) and effectiveness (like charisma) and I had shared ten points between these to every character.. Like one of the characters was porter and I had given him these stats:

Physical 5

Mental 2

Effectiveness 3

When I asked players to roll the dice they always rolled one six sided dice and added their skill to the result. If it was 8, it was success. If it was 1 it was always fail and something bad happened. Simple system since this game was supposed to last only couple hours. And to be honest we finished it in three hours.

The other characters were nurse, psychologist and psychiatric nurse. Unfortunately there was only three players so one of the written ones was dropped away. This time no one wanted to play psychologist, so she was out of the adventure.

In the beginning all the friends had had a rough week at work and they needed a break desperately. They had morning shift on Friday so they could leave together from work and could travel towards the cottage after buying some food for the weekend. 

I will analyze the plot on the next part then.

Dragonmeet 2016

Dragonmeet is tabletop convention and one of largest its kind in London. I have taken part to it once before, maybe the year was 2013 and now I got a chance to go there again. And definetely it was thrilling to be there once again. So I booked flights and bought a ticket and went for a visit.

There  were a lot of exhibitors in the huge room what was so noisy so that it took a lot of efford to hear what others were saying. At first I simply walked around and looked what the convention was to offer for a random visitor. During the convention I was able to test out a couple of board and card games + I took part into short role-playing game introduction.

First game I tried was made by Cubiko Games. The game itself was called Jamsumo and it was played with 6 sided dies. The idea of the game was simple so even the kids could play it. But still game challenges you since it isn't basing on luck. I also liked the game board very much. It was very well made. I didn't buy it just yet but been thinking if could be a nice game to buy anyways.

The other game I tried was Beastly Bust Up. The game isn't released just yet but we had a possibility to try the game. The idea of teh game was simple. You have several areas and animal fighters fought over them. Rules were simple and game was played through in 15-20 minutes. So perfect game when you need something fast to play through. The game was made by Fat Matador games and I hope they will have it as a kickstarter.

But how about rpg's? Yes... I wasn't able to resist temptation.. and bought some new games to fill my shelves. And of course some new dices! I haven't played these games before but I will tell about them a lot more when I have hosted games to my friends. But here is the short list what I found from Dragonmeet:

• Into the Odd: Steampunk dungeon crawling with magic. Game where you better avoid bad fights and use your brains to gain glory without any harms.
• Cthulhu Drak 0: The horror game where you're playing the poor people from the cities. You have no money nor chances to avoid the striking horrors so survive or face your darker destiny.
• Era Survival: The world has turned into wasteland in 100 years. No one knows where the destroying virus arrived but last survivors tries to make their living somehow. And keep up hope for better future. This game I also teste in Dragonmeet already and found it interesting. It was the main reason why I end up to buy it.
• Adventures in Middle-Earth: Middle-Earth using D&D 5th edition rules! Awesome! I have plenty of adventures to play in Middle-Earth but now system is far more playable than those old ones. I am just waiting to have a Dungeonmaster guide as well. 

My precious what I found from Dragonmeet.

Dread system: Disintegration

Once again I made a rpg with my friends. This time I decided to host another rpg using Dread system. Now we weren't in the deep space, but yet world had changed. Virus had changed people and turned them into living deads, zombies.  And players had to survive on the collapsing worlds. Sounds epic?

Disintegration is premade scenario what I changed some during the game. The orginal versio is freeware so if you want to check it out, just click here. I used premade charactersheets what meant that every character had questions written beforehand. I think premade questions worked well and that way we got rather good group to work together. This time one of the characters was even young kid what brought some difference into the group. The others were the leader, the caretaker, the loner and the sage. And it seemed that every character had different meaning how they developed the surviving. 

Dread system itself worked well for scenario with zombies. The threat was growing the more the group was separated. And some had to sacrifice themselves so that others were able to survive. But there was always a decision, who would survive and he would die for others. Also this time there were heroic dying when one wanted to give a life for others. How sad but how perfectly fitting for one-shot scenario. 

The original game was supposed to  go slower fprward than the game I hosted. But  I think it wouldn't be nice to use dread system on a minicampaign so I wanted to keep game during one evening. So there were more zombie attacks but also other survivals caused problems since everyone aren't nice for others, they only want best for themselves.  So things escalated faster and I also picked things from the backgrounds onf the characters. I think Dread is good for that. When players have thought what their characters are fearing for example, DM can push them towards chaotic moments. And that way you can build rather impulsive game. 

So once again I need to say that I like Dread. But still I will be using another system on my next one-shot rpg. For once we will be throwing dices when players will be facing the Steampunk world.  But I will post about that game on another time. But as a conclusion.. If you love pen and paper rpg's and you love zombies. Try Disintegration. It is well made scenario what is easy to modify if you feel to do so.

Trudvang chronicles

I have usually only followed kickstarter projects but havent supported them. This autumn I made my first decision to support a cool project. I bought Trudvang chronicles. Swedish game publisher Riotmind is about to publish their pen-and-paper rpg in English. How great is that?

I have always loved Finnish and Nordic mythology what is full of giants, spirits, elves, gnomes only to name few of them. And it is said that game should be more saga than pure hack-and-slash and wandering in the deep forests rather than crawling in dungeons. That sounds so... familiar! Don't take me wrong.. I am big fan of D&D but somehow for being to able to play role.playing game what is near our own mythology.. That sounds thrilling.  

As a supporter I took adventurer level. It means I will recieve boks in May 2017 when they are done. Somehow I have always approved more real books than reading PDF-files especially when it comes to games. So this decision wasn't difficult to make. But watch the trailer and enjoy the first view about the game itself. I can't wait to have the books and read them through. When I recieve them I will post more about the game itself.. but  for now their description is enough. You can read it from Kickstarter web page by clicking here. And as you  can see the game was a huge success.

Child of Light part 2

The story has continue and what a story it is! At the same time it is touching, at time I would like to cry a bit but still it is full of hope. So good, so very good! I know that this game isn't open world where you can do all kind of things but at times it is so nice to follow good straighforward story and solve puzzles during it.

First you begin with few skills.

Every time you get level, you can get one new skill.

And all the skills are well explained.

On higher levels you have more options.

At first I was confused with the levelling system but after few levels I realised how it works. Every party member has three skill trees what leads to different kind of skills.  Everytime you reach a level you can pick one of the skills so improving one of the skill pathes. Every skill os explained and at times they give you more health when other times you gain new battle skills or improve the old ones. Simple and effective system. The longer I used it, I started to like it more.

Always getting some when gaining level.

All the party member gains exp even they are not fighting.

Oculis are usefull in many ways.

You can add oculis either to weapone or armor.

You also got more HP and defense and attack bonuses automatically when you levelled up which was informed after gaining levels. And of course you had to fight to gain levels.. playing story further didn't grant you more than good knowledge. Another interesting detail in Child of Light are oculis. You can craft them, combine them to creat even better ones and having new colours.. and each colour and each different kind of oculi has different skill. And it even depended if you added oculi to your armor or weapon. So.. That way all the characters can be even more unique. And that makes it more fascinating.

These small puzzles were cute add to a game.

Every scene is so detailed and well made. Piece of art!

The atmosphere changes during game.

Icy world  looks cold but beautiful.

What I can say? The game has gotten me.. The music is beautiful. The game itself looks stunningly awesome and you can stare the landscapes a long time only watching small details. I have to say that this game is succesfully made and I loved how it tells story of the girl. Not a flirtatious game since everything is based on friendship. So truly refreshing game among many others! So if you haven't try it, you should. At least find the music of the game and listen it.. even the music has own story to tell. And for once you're really playing a heroine, Princess Aurora. So jump in to save Lemuria!