Notequest: Expanding the map with Orryn!

In the last couple of days, I've been expanding my map further and adventuring overland with my Gnome Cook, Orryn.

 

 

Notequest: Another look

After playing many dungeons with Four Against Darkness (4AD) over the last few months, I decided to try something a little different. I noticed in my downloaded files section, Notequest, which I had intended to try a lot more. So here we are again. My initial thoughts on the core rules can be seen here, about a year and a half ago.

Four Against Darkness: Adventures of the Forgeshields Volume 2

 

Welcome to another installment of the Forgeshields Adventures! Last time, we saw a couple party members cut down before seeing level 2. Surprisingly, the halfling and elf both made it out alive leaving their guild mates rotting corpses in the dungeon...So it's time to roll up some new characters!

Four Against Darkness: Adventures of The Forgeshields Volume 1

 

Herein lies another start of a guild named "The Forgeshields." It is a record of their adventures using the Four Against Darkness (4AD) rules system and any number of expansions that I feel necessary. So buckle up, and hope for no Medusa!

Let's Play Neon Road, a Micro RPG!

 

"An 80's style solo game." TAKE MY MONEY!

I was born in 1982, so you could say I didn't "grow up" in the 80's, I mean, I was 8 in 1990, still just a pup. I beg to differ though, as my love of 80's pop culture is strong and when I point to what era I'm from, it's firmly established in the 80's. That said, when I saw Neon Road, I knew I had to put up the money to buy it. By the way, this can be purchased on Amazon in print form or DriveThruRPG in PDF format. The book is written by Noah Patterson, well known for his Micro RPG books.

The world of Neon Road is set in alternate 1985. In 1976, nuclear bombs were dropped and the world almost destroyed. Fast forward your Betamax to 1985, now you're struggling to survive in this dystopian world.

Four Against Darkness: The Stump of Elemental Evil Review

 

For Levels 1-4

I finally got around to playing The Stump of Elemental Evil, which I purchased in card format. It is also available in a PDF file. Here's my review!

Creating a Caravan Guard for Talomir Tales

 

I've decided to create a caravan guard character for Talomir Tales Caravanserai, which I can no longer find the link for so we're going into the realm of discontinued rules until they show up in the Rebel Minis archive of Two Hour Wargames. I envision him as a late teens mercenary trying to prove himself. Since he's not a veteran in combat, like a soldier would be, his class will be warrior. As usual, I will be using the GameMaster's Apprentice Fantasy deck for character creation.

Adventure Log Drvar: Month 1, Week 3 All Things Zombie Evolution

Rules used

 

Drvar Rep 5 pep 5 Sav 4 Citizen Star (Pistol P-1)

In our last installment, Drvar was nearly turned into a zombie but, thankfully, his wounds weren't caused by a bite. Maybe he skinned his arm up falling down in the ruckus with the zombie. This introductory encounter is the last of a three week series called "Escape!" After this one, I'll be able to choose between survivor and ganger. The encounter will be at night.

Adventure Log Drvar: Month 1, Week 2 All Things Zombie Evolution

Rules Used

Dear reader, I had intended to keep this campaign going but life intervened and a medical emergency happened. But, finally, life is getting back to normal.

This is the second week of the tutorial encounter. Read on!

Adventure Log Drvar: Month 1, Week 1 All Things Zombie Evolution

Rules Used

Welcome again to another adventure log. Like my fantasy version, I will be keeping track of characters and doing the light bookkeeping required for this game. Sometimes I might get into detail and sometimes not.

I decided to make an area map of my hometown, Otis Orchards, and its outlying areas to adventure in. Most of it takes place in extreme Eastern Washington except for Coeur d'Alene (cor-duh-lane), Idaho. Also, Spokane is pronounced spo-can, just to clarify. Both cities are named after Native American tribes.

For the first month I'll be using the "First 30 days," which consists of three separate encounters. It's kind of like a tutorial and all the work is done for you. In the first month you can't choose to recruit anyone. You can have a gun but I'm choosing to go unarmed. This will be in area map 1, Otis Orchards. Let's do it!

Area Map

Making a Horror Character with GameMaster's Apprentice

 

I'm going to be starting up a new campaign with All Things Zombie - Evolution (ATZE) published by Two Hour Wargames. I did a very short campaign here with three encounters of my choosing. This time, I'm going to start from day 1 of the zombie outbreak and go from there.

Let's build a horror character!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 6 Quest Finale

 

Rules Used

So far it has been a heck of a journey. A lot of battles and a lot of blogging on the quest for the Eternal Father statue. So let us conclude with Shen and Phineas' adventure!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 5 Homeward Bound

Rules Used

We are almost home! This is the last wandering encounter of this quest. Whew, been quite a ride. I will be using this to resolve PEF's: 1-3 Capalan League, 4-5 Goblins, and 6 trolls. I figure the goblins are hot on the trail after killing their chief or king or whatever goblins call their commander in chief for their given tribe (and boy did they get revenge, as you will see soon). There will be five PEF's in this encounter. The dice gods really don't want me to get to the finish line, I guess! The encounter is taking place in the dark.

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 4 The Long Road Home

Rules Used

What did I think about the dungeon delving table? Overall, I thought it was pretty slick. It doesn't take up any space and, since you're not going back through the dungeon, you don't need tiles, cards, or sketching it out. Not that tiles and cards are a bad thing, I just didn't have room playing on my coffee table right now and it speeds things up. Less components equals less set up time. It is truly random so you could have a long dungeon or you could encounter the big bad and his treasure room on the first roll. Both of the dice can be modified with a +1 to get you going through the dungeon faster though.

On with the next encounter, wandering!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 3 Into the Dungeon Bowels!

 

Rules Used

Before we get started, I'd like to talk about a couple of things.

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 2

Rules Used

 

Having a healer is great and all but he is of the Red Sun alignment (the "good guys"), which opens me up to attacks from the Black Moon alignment (the "bad guys") and more negative interaction results. This is not necessarily bad but, I'm committed to the side of good now and can't recruit Black Moon NPCs, such as goblins and orcs...Sad indeed!

Also, I've never had a healer in the group so I will go into detail if I need to heal a character and take a step-by-step approach. With that said, let's get started on the second wandering encounter for this quest!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 4 Epic Quest Part 1

 

Rules Used

A quick note: Not that I need to explain things in a solo game (other than to myself?), I've decided to keep the Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money model for Involuntary encounters. Why? There is a 1-3 chance of a something bad happening, 1 chance at a job, and 2 chances of nothing happening. As written in Caravanserai, your chance of something bad happening at the beginning of the month is 100%. Now, in a post-apocalyptic setting I can see that being the case. It is, indeed, a harsh environment where every day you are fighting for your life.

In a fantasy world, however, I really don't see someone being attacked every month while going about their humdrum lives in between encounters. Sometimes, sure, you're going to be raided by goblins but not always. So with that said, I'm going with the SLGM involuntary encounter table. As I said before, the great thing about Two Hour Wargames is, you can pick and choose from other rule sets. Besides, Talomir Tales Distant Shores doesn't even have involuntary encounters so it's a nice in between.

On with the adventures!

Adventure Log: Shen Month 3

 

Rules Used

In the mail yesterday, I got the above gem. The third book in the Talomir Tales series, Caravanserai. It is, apparently, still available through Amazon as of this date. It might be gone soon as it is being replaced with Warrior Heroes Adventures in Talomir!

Anyhow, I picked these up as it updates the rules slightly, has the tabletop battles (if you want more of a wargame), expands the regions you can adventure in, and includes a city to explore, Brigana. The great thing about THW games is that you can just add whatever or take out what you don't want. So I'm going to add Brigana to Capalan League since Shen is already in that nation. Boom, Brigana now becomes "a city" (couldn't think of a name just yet!) in Capalan League.

There are six sections in a city: The Bazaar, The Docks, Public Area, Poor Area, Government Area, and the Wealthy area. You can enter each area once per month and resolve as many PEF's as you wish. You can take sections of the city away if you want a smaller town, for example: The city Shen is in only has four sections, The Bazaar, Docks, Public Area, and Poor area. I figure the Government area and the Wealthy area are in bigger cities. I'm still playing RAW (rules as written) but just downsizing.

Making a Fantasy Character with GameMaster's Apprentice: Shen

 

Shen

Characters, you can't really play an RPG game without them. I primarily play simple solo games and I like simple characters but I do like a little back story. What's their motivation? What's their back story? What's their personality like? Do they like hot dogs?

I came across this post over on the Two Hour Wargames forums by davidlhsl and, on a whim, bought the GameMaster's Apprentice decks as he highly recommended it. I like card drawing and thought this would be a good fit for my character creation. No rolling dice and no flipping pages in a book, sweet!

Each card has a TON of information on it, as seen here:

This is the fantasy version but each card set has genre specific info on it.

For my uses, I primarily look at names, random events, sensory snippets, belongings, catalyst, location, and the virtue/vice. The difficulty and likely odds could be good. Does Shen like hot dogs? "No!"

Read on if interested...

Adventure Log: Shen Month 2 (continued)

 

Rules Used

Rather than go looking for employment, I decided an Explore encounter would be a decent choice. I am using CrinkleChips' little explore creature table found here in the THW forums. It's a great little tool! Maybe we'll meet some new friends? Or enemies! Or NPCs that just ignore us, which is probably going to happen...Oh it will happen.