Detour to Catan

Our oft-delayed futuristic Shattered Realm campaign took a back seat this weekend to Matthew's swim meet. While his brother was swimming, Nathaniel perused the Starfinder Beginner Box. He created an android mechanic -- going straight to the online Starfinder SRD when the Beginner Box
character creation rules weren't comprehensive enough for him! -- and then proceeded to badger us incessantly about playing. Matthew drafted a (an?) ysoki soldier and, because I had the day off today, we had planned on running through the adventure that's included in the Beginner Box. I woke up with a splitting headache and upset stomach, however, which kept me in bed for most of the day. Amy came to the rescue by joining the boys for a rousing game of Settlers of Catan, which lasted for much of the afternoon while I rested. Still looking forward to giving Starfinder a whirl, once I finally succeed on that Fortitude save...

So they finally got home after all...

...but they speak Portuguese now.

And Venger coming through the portal disguised as a mounted police officer? That was damn cool. We need to see more of this!

KOTOR the Movie!

I've become a bit disillusioned with Star Wars films in recent years. Although I loved the mad dash to get the Death Star plans to Leia -- with a no-holds-barred Vader in hot pursuit! -- at the end of Rogue One, that film and (especially) The Last Jedi left me cold. "Silly fanboy, you're stuck in the un-woke past! We're making grown-up Star Wars films now!" Got the message.

I was genuinely excited, though, to hear that the Knights of the Old Republic video game will be adapted as a movie. It's one of my top five favorite video game RPGs of all time, and likewise one of my favorite Star Wars narratives in any medium. I can't wait to see this story unfold on the big screen. And I may just have to play through the game one more time beforehand!

Essential Images

Click here for some images of the upcoming D&D Essentials Kit. It sure does look nice...

Character Building

I've had some fun building characters using the slimmed-down rules in the Starfinder Beginner Box. I'm sure the full game has a lot more options for feats and whatnot, but the intro set seems to give a pretty good overview of the core classes and how they play. Thus far, I've built a vesk (kind of like the lizardfolk in D&D) soldier (i.e., fighter) patterned after Solomon Kane, as well as a nefarious android technomancer (i.e., wizard). I'll play through the adventure included in the box to get a better feel for the rules and then I'll give the boys an opportunity to play as well. They're already poring over the long list of weapon stats!

Essentials

Click here for some info on upcoming D&D products. One of them is the D&D Essentials Kit. I have to admit, the name brings back some unpleasant memories of Fourth Edition. Late in the run of that ill-fated edition, the D&D design team released a series of books and game aids that constituted the "Essentials" product line. The centerpiece was a pair of digest-sized Player's Handbook-style rulebooks with new builds for core character classes. Fourth Edition had already become so broken that new characters built using only the PHB were woefully underpowered compared to characters built using all of the available materials -- conveniently collated within the D&D Insider app. The Essentials builds were jacked-up so that new or casual players could bring simple but powerful characters to the table. My memory of this line is, essentially (pun intended), the last gasp of a failed experiment. I sincerely hope the new D&D Essentials Kit is a great new introductory set (akin to Paizo's Pathfinder Beginner Box and the super-cool new Starfinder Beginner Box) and not an attempt to monkey around with the beautiful Fifth Edition ruleset.

Artificer Unearthed

A new iteration of the artificer class for Fifth Edition is available for playtesting. I really can't wait to see the final version appear in an official product!

Wonky Hockey

I watched some YouTube clips of Strat-O-Matic's hockey game to get a feel for the rules. Specifically, I was trying to ascertain if the game would function properly with the smaller-than-normal teams that would be necessitated by the limited number of pre-NHL guys in the Hall of Fame. It turns out that the team size is probably not an issue, but I was underwhelmed by the game mechanics. It would be awesome to see legends like Cyclone Taylor and Hobey Baker in action, but the game just doesn't seem as fun, streamlined, and intuitive as Strat-O-Matic's baseball products.

Fantasy Hockey?

Strat-O-Matic is having a sale on their hockey game. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the original (baseball) Strat-O-Matic, so I got to thinking about the prospect of creating an old timers' league using pre-NHL players -- along the lines of my nineteenth-century baseball league. The Strat-O-Matic Hockey All-Time Greats Game includes players I could draw from, but I was curious about whether the Hockey Hall of Fame has enough early players to put at least three full(ish) teams on the ice. I figured that goaltenders would be the limiting factor, but my initial assessment is that the game would include four pre-NHL goalies, as well as perhaps a couple more who spent the majority of their careers in the pre-NHL era. I counted thirty forwards but only nine defensemen. Again, I might get a few more if I elected to include some players who were not exclusively pre-NHL, but I'm not sure exactly how many players I would need for a full team. Today's NHL teams have eighteen skaters and two goaltenders, but teams in much earlier times would have had fewer players. Do the game mechanics, however, require a larger number of players to sequence the line changes and such? That, I don't know...

Starfinder Beginner Box

The Pathfinder Beginner Box is one of the best RPG products I've ever seen, and even though it failed to lure me away from D&D -- Fifth Edition put paid to that prospect -- I have very fond memories of poring over all the gorgeous components of that epic boxed set. Today the Starfinder Beginner Box is available for purchase and I've already placed my order. The boys will probably enjoy trying out a new game system and setting, and at the very least I'll end up with a Flip-Mat and other components that will fit nicely with our sci-fi Shattered Realm campaign.

Tablet Terminated

In May of 2017, the boys and I started up a new Shattered Realm campaign, the first chapter of which was titled "The Lay of the Lost Horn." After that relatively brief introduction to this campaign world, we shifted into the primary storyline, "The Lay of the Emerald Tablet." That narrative wrapped up in August of last year when the heroes managed to reassemble a fabled artifact known as the Emerald Tablet, only to learn that it was a terribe blight upon the world. Destroying the tablet turned out to be no easy task, and was the subject of our most recent storyline, "The Lay of the Five Penitents," which wrapped up this afternoon. It was a conclusion two years in the making! Now we'll shift back (forward?) to our sci-fi Shattered Realm heroes, who have been waiting patiently for the next chapter of their own tale to be told.

Red Stockings

One hundred and fifty years ago today -- on May 4, 1869 -- the Cincinatti Red Stockings played the first professional baseball game in which all the players on the team were paid. Not surprisingly, they wiped out a local semipro team by a score of 45-9. Organized baseball had been around for a quarter-century, but now a team had taken a step that would lead to the first major league in 1871. None of those Red Stockings players are included in my Strat-O-Matic league (brothers Harry and George Wright are Hall of Famers but the set doesn't include stat cards for them), but they're the trailblazers who led the way for Al Spalding, Deacon White, and the first wave of true major leaguers.

Calling All Comics Fans!

As a reminder, today is Free Comic Book Day!

The Dungeon

Well, they won't win any points for creative naming, but The Dungeon is a heckuva product that you can check out in its final week on Kickstarter. I'm a huge fan of Pathfinder and Starfinder Flip-Mats, and this set provides tons of encounter space for the price of just a couple of Flip-Mats. The design isn't as detailed as what you see with the Paizo products, of course, but the sheer variety of maps will be a major asset for our D&D-crazed household. 

Free Comic Book Day 2019

Tell your friends! This Saturday, May 4, is Free Comic Book Day at your friendly local comic book store!

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulu is a version of the critically acclaimed Pandemic but it's set in the universe of H. P. Lovecraft's horror fiction. Players take the role of investigators who travel to iconic Lovecraft locations -- Arkham, Innsmouth, etc. -- in search of clues to seal portals leading to the otherworldly realm of Cthulhu and his brethren. The object of the game is to seal the portal in each of the four towns before the entire region is overrun by evil or all the investigators go insane.

We picked up a copy of Reign last weekend but didn't get a chance to play until this afternoon. Nathaniel played as the Detective (who requires fewer clues to seal a gate) and I played as the Hunter (who excels at killing cultists and monsters). We found ourselves overwhelmed from the get-go and quickly split up so that Nathaniel could focus on closing gates while I set out to eliminate cultist threats wherever they arose. Despite my initial bleak assessment of our situation, Nathaniel managed to close two of the four gates quickly. Only the gates in Innsmouth and Dunwich remained, and after a bit of card-juggling, Nathaniel found himself ready to take care of the latter. I was at Innsmouth, meanwhile, with horrific monsters called shoggoths closing in on my hospital hideout from two different directions. Naturally, my Hunter went insane from the shoggoth incursion, but Nathaniel activated a relic that restored the Hunter's sanity in the nick of time. He closed the gate in Dunwich, and on the next turn I joined him there to hand over all my Innsmouth clues. He then hopped on a bus back to Innsmouth and closed the last gate, thus saving the world!

Grand (Slam) Finale

The first championship game certainly exceeded my expectations. Starters Mickey Welch of the Haymakers and Kid Nichols of the Blue Legs breezed through the first several innings and we were scoreless through four. Baserunners were few and far between, so I was aggressive in using pinch hitters to try to generate more offense. After I lifted Welch for a pinch hitter, Old Hoss Radbourn came into the game and promptly gave up a couple of runs in the fifth. The Haymakers battled back in the sixth, however, and tied the score at 2, only for Radbourn to give one back in the next frame. Now with the Legs leading 3-2 and a chance for more, I pinch hit for the Kid, but the Legs failed to extend their lead. Nichols left the game up 3-2 after seven, only to watch his solid effort get squandered by John Clarkson, who got roughed up for three in the top of the eighth. As a result, the Haymakers led 5-3 going into the bottom of the eighth. The Legs then loaded the bases for Sam Thompson, who promptly smacked the first-ever grand slam in the short history of this league. Radbourn escaped further damage, but now the Haymakers were down by two going into the ninth. Clarkson retired the side in order to seal the championship for the Blue Legs. The final score was 7-5, and a grand slam in the eighth to spark a come-from-behind victory was an amazingly cool turn of events. How many days until spring training for next season? Well, it could be tomorrow!

Haymakers Deliver Body Blow

In the league's first-ever playoff game, the third-place Haymakers -- reeling from three straight losses -- headed to face the Canaries. The Haymakers came ready to play and ripped Tim Keefe for three runs in the top of the first inning, highlighted by Joe Kelley's two-run triple. They would tack on two more runs against Keefe, including catcher Roger Bresnahan's solo homer. In the middle innings, the Canaries began to chip away against Cy Young and managed to get some great relief pitching from Jack Chesbro and Al Spalding. Young, however, gutted out all nine and held on for a 5-4 victory. The Canaries go home, and Haymakers move on to face the power-hitting Blue Legs in the championship game.

Playoff Time!

My old timers have completed the first regular season of their nineteenth-century league. They played only 16 games apiece (I'll probably increase the number of games in future seasons), and it ended up being quite a dogfight. The Blue Legs, led by runaway position player MVP King Kelly, got hot down the stretch and finished in first place at 9-7. Their run differential was dead even, but they led the league with nine homers and 77 runs scored. The Canaries finished second with an 8-8 record and although they scored the fewest runs in the league by far, they also allowed a league-low 62 runs and had a run differential of +4. The once-mighty Haymakers cratered over their last three games and finished 7-9 with a -4 run differential, and their 80 runs allowed were worst in the league -- pretty lousy for a team with Cy Young (this season's pitching MVP) on the staff!

Now the playoffs begin! For this inaugural season, I'm keeping it simple and holding only two games. The third-place team (Haymakers) visits the second-place team (Canaries), with the winner moving on to play the first-place team (Blue Legs) in the championship game. The play-in game forces both of the lower-ranked teams to burn one or more pitchers, while the team that earned first place awaits them with a fully-rested staff. Will the Blue Legs capture the championship, or will one of the underdogs upset them? We'll find out soon!

Playing the Long Game

Druid Cycle game action is nowhere near as fast and furious as it was in years past. (Moving thousands of miles away from the other players definitely didn't help matters!) These days, we keep the stories going with slow-paced email-based adventures featuring the long-running characters played by Tim W, Scott, and Kevin. Scott's and Tim's earliest characters in this world date back to 1993, and Kevin's to 1998, so we've seen these characters evolve over decades of real time and game time alike.

As a result, sometimes we'll have a narrative payoff that's years in the making. We had such a payoff today, when Tim learned that the wife of his character Lwcus had not perished (as Tim and his character have always believed), but had been transformed into an undead revenant -- one that has appeared as a minor character in numerous other Druid Cycle adventures. Now Tim has learned that 'Cerys' and 'Kheru' are one and the same, and a reveal that I'd been planning for at least ten years was finally able to take place!