Points Of View: Dwarven Basing, Witches & Weird Warlocks
August 30, 2019 by warzan
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I’m pretty sure It’s Smith’s who did the old salt and shake.
Packets used to tell the story of how he put it in to stop his salt larder from getting too low.
What you mean off topic? I’m here for the crisp talk.
It was The song on the advert was…. ‘We love Smith’s crisps..They are the greatest’
I remember the singing spuds in one of their adverts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtkfE_OWSzo
Flame War Friday, FTW!!!! I vote for that, bring it on
“cog-leagues” XD
@avernos know’s his stuff and I agree with him yet again. Balloons were actually an invention of the British Press the French had disbanded their Balloon Corps a few years earlier but it was definitely a period idea that would be very cool to see done in some kind of movie.
I think I have a way to do it without your opponent seeing your dice.
Get rid of the dice, use Cards.
Two Decks of Cards without 4 Cards gives you 100 Cards (Remove 1 of each King or something). Then You have 4 or 5 different “casting Sheets” (obviously you can do more with Random Generator programs but for now let’s just do them by hand) each private to the person using them and unique. So a 5 of Hearts can cast a Dragon on one board but not on another board. That way you can’t cheat you just say “I’m casting X” and draw a card from your deck. You then privately check your dealt card against your casting sheet. If you like record each card drawn and at the end of the game you can check for cheating but in all reality you shouldn’t be worrying about that in casual games among friends anyway.
The issue I have with dice is like you said everyone knows that if you roll an 11 you’re not getting a Dragon but if you draw a 7 of Clubs who knows that that is especially with your own unique Casting Board.
Generating the spells could also use cards just allocating certain cards to certain spells or use a custom deck. My personal preference would be to have a whole heap of Poker Chips with marks on them in a bag and draw them out.
Yeah I guess I’d have to vote for you guys doing a “Creator Challenge” or something like that.
As far as the spells themselves you’ve have to actually put the minis on the table rather than use blind tokens.
People won’t really go after the Number 7 they way they will a Dragon.
As for differentiating between Real and Fake well that could just be a token placed face down next to the creature.
I was going to suggest using playing cards.
War and economics – WW2 is often cited as being a major factor in dragging the world out of the grips of the Great Depression in the 30s, but it isn’t something I have studied or even read much about (though still could probably talk about it for hours, so worth avoiding bringing it up in my company). @warzan does have a point on rationing as it was also used to help control inflation and you could argue this was as vital to the war effort as it was to ensure that everyone had the basic essentials to survive.
Not sure if it was done in Britain in WW2, but in the US,soldiers like John Basilone were sent on War Bond tours, in an effort to raise money for the war effort. (It did happen in the UK in WW1, remember seeing pictures tanks being paraded to encourage people to buy war bonds). Debt is a complicated issue, and I would come from a school of thought were I wouldn’t worry too much about it, or the time it takes to pay off.
Other interesting things, there is a school of thought that the success of the Germany and Japanese economies after WW2 was as much to do with the destruction of the political elite and vested interest groups as was the ability to rebuild from the ground up. It is a persuasive argument, but one that would be very, if not impossible to prove empirically.
The lack of investment in the railways during WW2 really did for them in the UK. They were in no position to complete with the roads, especially as a lot of ex-military vehicles especially trucks became available. A similar effect happened after WW1, lots of spare trucks sold to the public = lots of competition in the goods transportation industry = railways could not compete. Really good series on British Railways by Chris Tarrent were he explains this much better than I am. (edit) Also a lot of soldiers learned to drive as well, which played a big part in this as well (imo)
I remember there being an article in Wargames Illustrated about how to make Napoleonic war balloons… pretty sure I have seen others make them from paper mache and a normal balloon! There may also be a company that sells them, or at least sell the basket and crew… but I don’t remember who, or if I am confusing it with the above articles!
Dropping in quickly (have to go from work) I’m with @elessar2590 drop the dice and use cards. But I think it can be done more simple and not take so much space up on the table:
There’s a few things to take into mind, before I start explaining what I have in mind: Each spell is either Chaos, Neutral or Lawful. And you are either geared during Chaos, Neutral or Lawful during the game. And this can shift.
Let’s say our wizard is currently Lvl 2 Chaos and wants to cast Unicorn (which is lawful). On that unicorns card is a number, and that number will tell you what percentage you need to cast. So let’s say unicorns has a starting number of 20. Which means if our wizard is neutral he will have to get 20 or lower to cast it. If he’s lawful 1 the system tells him to add +20 to all lawful creatures he tries to cast (there will be a table or some sort somewhere showing this). If he’s chaos 2 it’s -10 (this is all just examples…I have not done any playtesting or thought about what scale etc. It’s just to explain what I am thinking here).
So…back to our lvl 2 Chaos Wizard casting this unicorn. He will pick up a token that clearly displays that it is chaos (so let’s say it’s red) and has the number 2 on it. Now….on the other side of this token, it has either an I for Illusion or an R for real. Our wizard puts down the token on the Unicorn card, with the two up. The opponent knows he’s trying to cast a Lawful Unicorn, and for the rest of the game we will know that he was a lvl 2 chaos at the time. But no one but the caster will know if it’s an illusion or not.
Next he needs to see if the casting actually succeeds. For this there’s simply a percentage deck. Each player has their own percentage deck (this is important). Maybe it doesn’t need to be from 1-100. Maybe it can be split into 1-10 instead. That way there can be a lot more cards in the deck. But that is something some playtesting will tell. So our wizard draws a card from that deck. If he’s casting it as an illusion, it doesn’t matter what the card says, he will simply place it below the unicorn card. No one knowing what the number is. If he’s casting it as a Real creature, currently he needs 10 or less. If he gets that, he just place that card face down too. If he gets a higher number, he immediately declares the spell a failure.
This way you can’t cheat. Everyone in the end will be able to quickly tell what percentage the creature needed to be cast, from the token and the number on the creature.
Now the downside to this system is the percentage deck will get smaller, which means you will be able to start thinking there’s a higher or lower chance of hitting certain numbers. This can be mitigated somewhat with a deck containing a lot of cards. Also there’s the thought that when one of your creatures die, maybe the percentage card gets shuffled back into the percentage deck, thus (maybe) increasing the changes of you casting a difficult creature later on, or if it was a high number from an illusion creature perhaps…then it might decrease. This is a thing that should be playtested extensively. See how it balances the game. How you can play the odds.
But in the end, with this system, in front of you, you should only have one spell card, a small token and a small percentage card (cause they don’t have to be very big) for each spell you cast. And you don’t need screens or anything.
Will watch the rest of the show when I get home :))
I should point out that the above is purely for casting spells and working in the illusion system. For fighting I would opt for dice (just because I like using them). That goes for Gooey Blob and Fire spreading etc (which on a hexgrid should be dead simpel)
Glad you read and enjoyed my post but a table top version of Chaos literally exists as the Steve Jackson game The Fantasy Trip. Which was originally published in the 70s and republished this year.
Wizard, the magical combat system of The Fantasy Trip, did require a bit of record keeping and it was just pen and paper. You would record the type of spell cast and if you wanted to, you could fake casting a spell if it didn’t have a visible effect. Like say casting a black shadow then creating something inside the shadow. Or pretending to. Or casting a defensive spell on your self that didn’t have a visible effect or, again, pretending to.
I never heard of Chaos but it sounds like fun and remarkably similar to the Melee/Wizard/Fantasy Trip trio of games.
You should immediately go and play chaos and then report back if fantasy trip would be close enough to steal the mechanics for a tabletop version of chaos. I linked the emulator in the weekender last week. But spectrum emulator chaos will find it
@warzan “we barely keep the lights on”
Also @warzan “WE NEED COG FEZES!”
XD I know this feeling so well… excuse while I sort my 9 new old Battletech fiction books XD
LOL
Yeah the choice between FEZ and Lights is a very hard one to make lol
Of course it’s hard… you need light to see and appreciate the fez! 😉
Ataturk banned the wearing of the Fez in Turkey and only allowed the wearing of Western style hats in public. Any found wearing the Fez could have faced the death penalty
For the illusion casting problem the simplest choice would be to split the random roll from the result. The random roll is still for everyone visible but the finishing result will be chosen by the casting player.
It is similar to the concept of throwing a coin. Here the contender chooses the result before the throw and if it fits wins. In my system you choose the result also before the throw but you don’t disclose it but write it down on a token.
So the system works like this:
1. Pick the monster and place it on the table.
1. Choose whether you want to cast an illusion or a physical monster, place a token face down which indicastes on the face which one it will be, next to the monster.
2. Check the complexity of the cast and consult the following table: (can be expanded up and down)
-5 | 7 | s | 14
-4 | 6 | s | 16
-3 | 5 | s | 20
-2 | 4 | s | 25
-1 | 3 | s | 33
0 | 2 | s/d | 50
1 | 3 | d | 66
2 | 4 | d | 75
3 | 5 | d | 80
4 | 6 | d | 84
5 | 7 | d | 86
The first value is the complexity and the second the dice you throw, the third one is whether you want the same number or a different one than what will be thrown in the 4th step. The last value shows the success rates.
3. The caster picks a value that is on the dice to throw (if the dice is 4 that means 1-4) and writes it down on a token togheter with the information if it needs to be s(same) or d(different) and places it face down next to the monster.
4. The caster throws the dice open and writes the value down on another token and places it on the token pill with the other two tokens.
5. If the monster is an illusion you automatically succeeded, nothing more to do.
6. If the monster is physical the caster compares the thrown value to the choosen one and checks if it is same or different. If it is the same and needs to be the same it is a success cast and vice versa for different. If the cast was successful, you go on with the game, if it wasn’t remove the monster.
Now during the game when you reveal the monster type you uncover the two face down token and it will say, whether the monster is an illusion and you can check whether an physical cast was successful by comparing the numbers.
Actually one could reduce the tokens into one by having the caster write something like
‘i4’ (illusion, choosen value is 4) on the face and on the back one would write the dice throw result example: ‘3s’ (the dice threw a 3 and requires the result to be the same).
Next time you do one of these, can you do everyone a favour and make Lloyd go to the toilet first? He just could not keep still.
You know, a Fez could also be a wearable dice cup….
As for show titles, I like “Pointless Views”. How about “The Pre-kender”?
This is obviously, Philosophy Friday
do you guys remember bloodryne game for the PSII when you kill things you pull mana from the victims.
Adding Witches and horror to WW2 on the table top:
first thing @warzan are you excluding Necromancy as that would be great to see your dead forces coming back.
Second great example for not the best film is Lincan vampire hunter where vampires are weaponised in the battle field as bullets won’t kill them. This is as part of there American rival war setting but could be put in to WWW2 easily.
Third witches can have weather effects like mist to erect line of sight and also healing.
Hope this gives food for thought
Make a box with a spot for two D 10s to go in. Make two spots where the will land in after you shake the box(so they don’t shift and move). The shaker looks at his roll. Closes the lid. Casts his spell and then he can reveal it at the appropriate time. BAM! The illusion box. Or whatever you would want to call it. The box of power! I’ve been captivated by that most of my life. ?
cultist conversations
I have an idea for the illusions, have tokens that represent a full spell, tokens for illusions and tokens for a failure, put the tokens in a bag and draw them, if you draw a failure you show it, if you draw a succes or an illusion keep it hidden until the relevant time to reveal it. As an example if you have a 50% chance of an illusion, and 20% chance of complete success, you put 5 illusion tokens, 2 success tokens and 3 failure tokens in the bag and then draw one.
Has anyone read the “Rivers of London” series? It’s abuot a modern cop in the Met who is part of their wizard department. All very low fantasy. in one of the books, the Chief Super who is the head of the department talks about a WW2 raid he took park in which involved him fireballing a Tiger tank. That’s all I could think of during the witch converstation.
I don’t even recall this show to be honest… but I do remember TURN 8!
I’ll see your British World War Two witches and raise you Russian World War Two “Night Witches”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches . Hard. Core.
There’s an RPG based on them here: https://bullypulpitgames.com/games/night-witches/ . I found out about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cfJYUpD5bY .
How about Friday Ruminations or Friday Musing?
Or Gaming/Community insights?