Friday, April 28, 2017

A few more PCs painted up...


Hey all!

Well, two more player characters painted up... a human mage, and a dwarf one.  The photo doesn't quite do the dwarf justice... he looks really, really sharp... nicely muted and earthy.

Just waiting on an email from Ed over at Battlevalour and I'll see the end line... unfortunately when I initially ordered I didn't quite have an accurate idea of how I would base figures, so it is a little bit off, and I need a few more:(

Thanks for coming by!

Thursday, April 27, 2017

Some painted Dungeoncrawler familiars, and a nice juicy look at the rules!



Hey all!

Well, as a few people have asked about the rules for my new Dungeoncrawl, I thought I'd share a bit...

But first up, some painted figures!

In the game, one of the magical scrolls you can get is "Summon Familiar."  This allows the user to summon a creature to help them in combat.  It is kept pretty simple; whatever your magic level (d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12) you automatically summon a familiar that is one level lower (so a character with a magic stat of d8 would summon a d6 familiar.)  The familiars major stats (fight, shoot, agility, and magic) are all whatever level they are... so the d4 familiar has d4 as their stat in each category.

The d4 familiar is a war dog, the d6 familiar is a white wolf, the d8 familiar is a bear, and the d10 familiar is a golem.

Anyway, good times!

So I also wanted to touch on the actual rules themselves.  Now, when they are all done I'll likely pop them on the site so people can grab them, but at least I can give a bit of info!

DICE, STATS, AND ROLLING

The game is largely based on opposing die rolls, using a variety of dice; d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12.  Whoever rolls higher, wins.  All attacks of all sorts do one damage.  I am keeping it super simple:)

There are four major stats:

Fight
Shoot
Agility
Magic

To see who wins a physical fight, you roll Fight vs Fight.

To see if someone gets shot, you roll Shoot vs Agility.

To see if someone is hurt by magic, you roll Magic vs Magic.

ROLLING DICE/GETTING HURT

Now, whether or not someone gets HURT by combat or shooting... well, that depends on equipment.

All weapons and armor have a die associated with them.

Once someone has been hit, you then move on to step #2, where you roll the dice of the weapon against the combined dice of all the armor.  If the attacker ends up with a higher number, they do one damage.

So, an attacker with a d8 sword goes after someone wearing d6 leather armor and a d4 leather helm.  It is d8 vs d6 and d4, and whoever rolls highest on any die wins.

Magic, you just get hurt if you lose the magic vs magic roll; there is no armor.

That's the basics of combat.

DOING STUFF

As far as movement and actions, there are Action Points.  Everything costs action points... moving 1 square costs one, attacking costs half of your action points (rounded down) and so on.  There are only a few actions in total.


CLASSES AND RACES


There are two different things that people have to decide as far as their characters; class and race.

There are four classes; warrior, thief, mage, and cleric.

Your class determines your starting stats.

There are also four RACES; human, hobbit, dwarf, and elf.

Your race determines primarily 1) how many Action Points you have, 2) what the maximum level of armor you can wear, and 3) what the maximum level of weapons you can carry is.  A dwarf, for example, can wear up to d10 armor and carry up to a d10 weapon... a hobbit, however, might max out at d6 in each category.  (There ARE some modifications to this depending on your class... for example, warriors up their max armor and weapon by one die.)  There are a few other bits, too... hobbits, for example, get two extra dice levels to their agility, dwarves lose a die of magic, elves get another die on their agility and shooting, and so on

So... you might be a dwarf warrior, who can wear a ton of armor and such, or you could go with a dwarf mage, who might not have a great magic score but could wear heavier armor than most mages.  There is a lot of variety.

THE DUNGEON

Characters have to explore five levels of dungeon.  There is a random generator that generates the dungeon ahead of you, as a mix of tunnels and rooms.  As you go through them, you actually remove the tiles behind your party... basically you will always have one tile behind you and one tile ahead.  The dungeon never gets that large.

As you roll up what comes next, you also roll on an encounter table to see what sorts of monsters lurk there.  You won't ALWAYS find monsters, but they are pretty common.  As you go deeper, you add modifiers to the encounter dice, and lower in the dungeon you start to run into bad guys who you wouldn't have found earlier.  Things get more dangerous.

Now, you can generate hallways (which don't have encounters as often as rooms) or rooms.  Rooms tend to have more bad guys, and each time you hit a room you draw a Narrative Card.  Narrative Cards basically tell a bit of story with the room, and might modify what happens in that room a bit.  For example, there might be a cave in, or you might stumble into a troll den, or you might reach a room with a bit of sunlight.  In game terms, cave ins add a bunch of rock obstacles to the room and may trap the player, troll dens add a big modifier to the encounter dice to tilt the random encounters to being trolls, and sunlight actually makes the monsters less effective.  When a Narrative Card is pulled it never goes back into the deck, and at the end of the dungeon your stack of Narrative Cards tells the "story" of your adventure... so you can look back fondly over your adventure!

On level five of each dungeon you go until you find the Boss (which is on the encounter table.)  That is the end boss.  When you kill him, the dungeon is over!

MONSTERS

As I said, when you have an encounter you roll to see what monsters you find.  Monsters usually appear ahead of you, but can ALSO appear behind, so you DO need to be careful.

Monsters have the same stats as players, with additional stats for "damage" and "armor."  They move in a fairly predictable way, as they have a rough AI.

     "Fighters" (think the regular monsters, like orcs and goblins) will move towards the players and engage the fewest number of players they can.

     "Bruisers" (think ogres and the like) will move towards the players and try to engage the MOST number of players they can.

     "Shooters" (think archers and mages) will try to keep the max distance from the players possible while engaging at range.

EQUIPMENT

Characters can carry a certain amount of equipment/loot; you can carry one piece in each hand, you can wear one thing on your head, one thing on your body, and keep two things aside, in your backpack.

Every group of monsters has a chance of having some loot.

Now, equipment/loot comes in one of four types (decks.)

Common loot is lower level, easier to make stuff... traditionally d6 and below.  So, like, leather armor, daggers, short bows, short swords, etc.

Uncommon loot is higher level, harder-to-make stuff... traditionally d8 and above.  So swords, two handed axes, metal armors, etc.

Rare loot is magical stuff - magical stuff basically has a + to its die.  So a magically short sword might do d6+1 damage.

Quest loot is SPECIAL special stuff, that you ONLY get for killing the End Boss.

There are a few other types of equipment/loot, other than standard weapons/armor.  Items (they can be found in any deck) don't go in a hand or on your body, but can have effects.  Examples would be banadages (for healing wounds) or amulets or whatever.

There are also scrolls.  There is no inherent magic in the game; ALL MAGIC comes from scrolls.  Scrolls can do different things (single target damage, area damage, multiple target damage, shielding, summoning familiars, teleport, etc.)  Basically using magic comes down to a magic vs magic roll.  However, it the player rolls a 1 on their magic roll, the scroll burns out and disappears!  So magic can be very powerful (remember, no armor can save you!) but it can also disappear easily, ESPECIALLY in the hands of an amateur magician (i.e. a guy with a low magic score).

LOOT

When you roll up an encounter, you have a chance of finding equipment/loot.  Before you even fight, you roll this up, and pull (face down) from the appropriate piles, putting them to the side.  If you win the fight, you get the loot!  So you might have a big fight, but you KNOW waiting at the end are two cards from the uncommon deck, and even one from the rare deck... we've found in playtesting that the anticipation is glorious, as you hold your breath as you flip the cards over and divy out the spoils!

OTHER STUFF

There is a bunch of other stuff.  There is an experience system (every kill gives you an experience point, and you can increase your die in a category by spending triple the next level worth of experience... so, going from a d6 fight to a d8 would cost you 24 experience.)  If you are engaged with an enemy in combat, you are PINNED in combat and cannot move, so you want to use your best fighters to pin the most dangerous enemies in place.  There are a few special scrolls that burn out with the first use, such as the Summon Familiar scroll, that brings you a helper to fight with.  There are a few other smaller rules and bits to the game.

There are also some bits we are still playtesting and refining.

But basically, that's it!  It is SUPER super quick, and honestly a good deal of fun:)

Anyway... if anyone has any questions or comments, please do share them!:)

Thanks!

Sunday, April 23, 2017

Some new denizens for the dungeon!


Well, some new baddies showed up in the dungeon today!  First up, above, is my first giant... who is appropriately named, as you can tell...


Next up, a few stands of goblin archers.


Then a few stands of orcs... a stand of berzerkers, and some more orc archers.


And finally, some trolls!  I like the way these guys turned out, honestly...

Anyway... more on the way!:)







Saturday, April 22, 2017

Some current money shots of Dungeoncrawler...


Hey all!

Well, I've gotten some more stuff put together for my new dungeon crawl game, Dungeoncrawler (the name is an homage to a video game a buddy and I worked on!)  I got a few new bits put together (some mushrooms, doors, a bridge-and-crevice piece, some clerics, another statue) so I figured I'd get it all out there and take a few glamour photos!


Here, a human cleric and dwarf berserker take on some goblins.


A thief and a wizard prepare to defend against a horde of orcs crossing a narrow bridge over a bottomless crevice, a group of orc berserkers in the lead...


A heavily armored dwarven warrior an a human warrior are supported by a cleric as they do battle with a pair of massive ogres.


An elven mage, hobbit thief, dwarven cleric, and human warrior fight off the attack of some bellowing orcs, all commanded by a shaman.


 The orc warlord musters his troops at the foot of an ancient statue.

A bunch of Dungeoncrawler heroes painted up


Hey all!

Well, the first group of PCs are all painted up and ready to go!


Here are the warriors... a dwarven berserker, a rough looking northern human warrior, a barbarian, and a heavily armored dwarf warrior.


A couple of thieves... a middle eastern looking fellow, and a hobbit burger.


A pair of wizards... a gray wizard, and an elven looking lady.


Finally, a trio of clerics... a human, a dwarf, and some sort of middle eastern cleric with half his body tattoed.

Anyway... I think they look sharp, for 15s... in person they look fab:)

The next group of bad guys are on the table being worked on, as well as some doors!

Thanks for coming by!

Thursday, April 20, 2017

First Dungeoncrawler playtest!


Hey all!

As promised, here is a bit more from the first playtest of the new Dungeoncrawler playtest!

So, as I said, we took two heroes... I took a human mage, and my buddy took a human warrior.


The first room in the dungeon was a small room, with a few orcs and a few goblins in it.  (Ignore the treasure piles above, they were acting as door placeholders.)


We fought bravely... the warrior tanked the fights as best he could, although a few orcs and goblins made it to the wizard, whose fireball spells did some damage.


Soon the enemies were cut down, and we checked out our loot... a few crappy helmets, but the Ring of Combat was an amazing early-game find!


We continued through the hallways of the dungeon for a bit, with no enemies in sight...


... until we came to another small room a few armored orcs in it!  This was a BEAST of a fight; the mage's fireball spell was KEY in killing the orcs, but they did a bunch of damage.  Their 2d6 worth of armor, combined with the warrior being only armed with a short sword, make this fight tough.


We moved on through the dungeon after we defeated the creatures, turning left into a large room with a big statue in the middle... and smack dab into a HUGE horde of orcs and goblins, with an ogre in support!


Again we let the warrior tank the fight, as the wizard was already hurt from the last fights.  The wizard blasted away with a new magic scroll he had found, a Lighting scroll, which allowed him to hit several opponents at once... focusing on the ogre really beat the massive creature up, and eventually the party was able to bring down their foes.


Our intrepid heroes pick through the loot!


We proceeded on, going through a door on the opposite wall (which isn't in the photos above for some reason?) and bam... another horrible encounter.  This time we had orcs and goblins coming from behind, and more from the front!


Here we panicked a bit... we fled backwards, as the wizard fired off a few shots with his newly-acquired bow... the idea was to get away from the open space and into a more confined space, where the warrior could do most of the heavy lifting.  And the bad guys swamped us, knocking down both heroes health, the ogre in particular hitting hard.


Again the wizard proved hugely helpful, using his lighting spell to blast life off of several guys, and the warrior finished them off!


Soon the ogres and most of the orcs were dead, and there were just the goblins to deal with... and somehow our heroes made it through!


We then went north a bit, finding another empty small room, and then down a corridor... where two more ogres were waiting, and the scurry of feet in the darkness behind us turned out to be some orcs!


The heroes retreated, trying to find a good place to fight from...


... and the ogres leapt on the warrior, beating on him with their clubs.  The wizards lighting scroll did a bunch of damage before burning out, and the warrior was able to survive and finish off the two ogres.


That left the orcs to deal with, who the heroes managed to dispatch as well!


We called the game at that point, having made some significant modifications to the rules and some big changes to several aspects of it.  Taken overall, however, the game REALLY really worked; it was fun and exciting and incredibly well balanced, while being SERIOUSLY intuitive!

Here are our characters at the end... the warrior had a leather helm, a shield, and some plate mail, along with a short sword and a pair of scrolls (fireball and healing) he was holding on to... the wizard had his bow, a newly-found scroll of lighting (the equipment deck was poorly shuffled and still all in one deck, resulting in a LOT of good gear being found when it shouldn't have... but whatever, we were just testing:) ), his ring of combat, and some leather armor and a leather helmet.


So that's it!  I'll have more as we work on the game!

Thanks for coming by!

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Played the first play test of Dungeoncrawler...


Hey all!

Well, a buddy came by tonight, and we took the new Dungeoncrawler game for a spin... and frankly it was a ROUSING success!


Even in it's very early version, with a LOT of work left, it was fun!  My buddy took a warrior, and I took a wizard (although the idea now is that you will ALWAYS take the same party; a warrior, a thief, a wizard, and a cleric.  You get to choose the RACES of each, though.)  We did pretty well, surviving even a few waves of ogres!  But a lot of stuff isn't painted up yet, and the items are still all in one deck instead of four, so we were just testing it all out:)


BTW, here is the current rough mock-up that another friend put together for our cards for the game.  Looks awesome, right?


This was the first room in the dungeon!  It went pretty well:)  Later rooms got trickier, though...

We did a lot of play testing and brainstorming and development.  One thing we are adding is something called Narrative Cards, which you will take with each room (but not the hallways.)  These will be a sort of over-arching story card that will help lend a little... well, story, to the game:)  More info on the rules obviously later.

Anyway, this is just a taste... we took photos of the whole adventure, so I'll put together a post soon!

Thanks for coming by!

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

A whole collection of Vikings and friends!


Hey all!

Well, I stopped by a buddy's house to check out his growing vikings and co. collection.  He was hit by the bug a few months ago, and voila... his wargaming motto is "Go big or go home," I suspect!

So I snapped a few photos.  Unfortunately they are with my iPhone, so I am sorry if the quality is only so so!

At the top you see probably my favorite figures... Ragnar Lothbrok and Co., painted by the esteemed Dave Taylor as a commission!  They look absolutely fantastic... Ragnar in particular looks amazing.



Here is the whole group... Vikings in front and back, then Franks and Saxons in the middle.


Some Viking shield maidens.


The Viking heroes.


Some Viking spearmen, supported by axe men.


Some armored Saxons.


Some more Vikings.


I believe these guys are Saxons.


Some Franks.


More from the Vikings crew!  Jarl Borg, Athelstan, Bjorn, and the seerer.  My buddy wanted to go with some earlier versions of a few people; hence the first season version of Athelstan.


And the whole collection once again!  A few small units of cavalry and basing a few more units and he should have all he will ever need!

Anyway, thanks for coming by and checking them out!