Return to Ravingspire

You know how you work on something in secret for ever and then its time to release it and you can't really wrap your head around showing it to anyone, even though you're super proud of it? That's kind of what its like to work on Ravingspire. We make fantastic art and we work through unique gameplay ideas but we keep things close to the chest until we can make sure our choices of manufacturing are  ready for launch and their quality is good. We've launched the Kickstarter so I can FINALLY start showing off what we've done and what we're doing. Problem is, there's so much at this point I almost don't even know where to start!

Well I guess, how about with the dope 1980's commercial we made for the game?

You can tell we miss those old TSR commercials.There was one for like D&D, Marvel Super Heroes, and Indiana Jones RPG all in one mashed up commercial with tons of silhouettes and smoke machine going on. That one was great.

Anyway, we're finally going to release Return to Ravingspire on Kickstarter on April 16th! I'm super psyched about it, because this game is gorgeous and really fun to play. Even the box is awesome. Its an embossed leatherette-wrapped wooden book-shaped box, and really looks and opens like a stout book. Its made of wood too so won't be falling apart and need to be held together with rubber bands after just a couple plays like most boardgame boxes.  Plus if its stored on a bookcase instead of hidden away in the boardgame closet (and the fact that its solo-able) there's a much better chance of folk playing it over and over. How many games have I bought for $50+ only to have played them once or twice before they get lost in the boardgame closet? Too many! We're hoping the decorative nature of the box helps keep this game on display and accessable.

But anyway what about the gameplay? Is it cool? Let me tell you that YES, it is cool! We've combined dice-battling with a choose-your-path style story-heavy adventure game, and I think it works really well. We made big colorful illustrated Tower Cards with storylines on them that each give two options for the Party to follow. One of those options is almost always fight the pictured level guardian head-on, but the second option can get crazy. It involves escaping through a portal into another dimension for a short jaunt and then returning to the tower after a short time. We put in a whole separate book of adventures in there that I think is really unique to boardgaming these days.

Also I've come to dislike having piles of chits everywhere when I play boardgames. The number of tiny ziploc bags I've had to buy just to keep track of sanity tokens over the years borders on ridiculous. So we've made tracking the Fight, Skill, and Charm values in combat into a single board that also contains the player progress and doom trackers. Just move it up and down the tracks as you roll the dice. Its straightforward and keeps things a lot tidier than piles of chits. I'm pretty happy with it.

Also one thing I really love is tactical skirmish combat, but that's difficult to emulate in a quick-play adventure game without the gameplay getting bogged down in maps with grids on them and 5-foot steps. So on that same combat tracker we've put a Marching Order diagram. Where the players can decide whether they want to have their heroes take the front/melee position (usually more dangerous but first choice of loot) or whether they want to hang back and fight with ranged weaponry (usually less dangerous but second choice of loot). Each Tower card will show whether the Hero in that position will take more or less damage, based on the monster they're fighting.

We knew this added a bit of complexity to the fights, but its a simple +1/-1 damage modifier and I think it really adds some fun to the game and helps me envision what kind of attitude the Hero I'm playing has when they're exploring.

Oh my gosh there's way too much to talk about all at once on the development of this game. I put tutorial videos up on the Kickstarter and I'll throw them on Youtube as well. I'll talk more about the game over the next few weeks as the Kickstarter goes on, but if you've got any questions on why we did what we did in the game give a shout and I'll holla back! :)

Lego Heroica

RETRO GAMING!

I learned a short time ago that Lego actually released an rpg-themed boardgame back in 2011 called Lego Heroica, but it was discontinued just a year or two after release because it didn't sell at all. When I was told this I did not believe it, because I both consider myself to have a finger on the pulse of all things D&D, and I can't image Lego actually making a marketing mistake these days as Lego-enthusiasts will pretty much buy anything. Yet this guy (who we'll call Charles) would not be discouraged in convincing me of this attempt on Lego's part to cash in on the Geek and Sundry-style D&D mania that was going on (remember how good Geek and Sundry was in the early 2010s?), and he actually hunted down copies of three of the four main sets on ebay for us to check out. So we opened them up, built and combined all the various maps from the itsy-bitsy lego chits, and commenced  questing.

Holy smokes was this game fun. The rules were much more intricate compared to what I expected. Clearly someone put some major love into this over in Lego-Land. Its too bad it wasn't marketed well, because its pretty damn fun to play, especially if you're a kid just getting into gaming. Or a drunk adult.

All melee combat occurs with the same dice, and the same chances to hit and be hit by creatures, regardless of what they are or your character class. But the meaner monsters hit harder, which is pretty much the only difference between minions and bosses. However one face of the special attack/movement die has a shield on it, and if rolled it activates the special power that each character class has. Depending on your class it could be activated when you roll to move (as a ranged attack) or during combat (as a melee attack).

The Wizard, for example, moves and attacks in melee like everyone else. However if he rolls the shield during his movement phase, he can Magic Missile any monster within 3 spaces (even around corners). But if he rolls the shield during combat it just represents a successful hit as normal. On the other hand if the Barbarian rolls a shield during combat he can hit and kill all monsters within melee range around him, but if he rolls it during movement phase he can just move full distance, no special power.

Its intricate enough to keep your interest, but easy enough for kids to learn and play. It would be quite a gateway into D&D for any gamer parents, its just too bad its made by Lego and therefore was marked up 6000% upon release, and is even more expensive now on the black market.

All in all though Lego Heroica gets 4 pointy-lego-bits-hidden-in-the-carpet out of 5!
And I don't even really like Legos. ;)

What else can I say, its just easy fun. 
Game on!

ReaverQuest

So we've been working on a card battle game for a while now that would be both fast-paced and super portable. While I love Ravingspire because it can be played solo, we wanted something in the same genre but just a quick game one could play between flights, or when waiting for everyone to show up to D&D night. We took the concept of the showdown with Foes that Ravingspire has and make a quick-play fighting game between fierce warriors. And its available on Amazon right now!

In a far off world of Swords and Sorcery the cyclopean Tower of Ravingspire looms over a mystic battlefield. Mighty warriors of the realm, known as Reavers, sojourn to this desolate valley to battle for dominance in an annual combat known as the Reaverquest. These warriors must fight with all their skill and cunning, as the seeping magic of the Tower may alter the very battlefield they fight on at a moment’s notice!

Reaverquest is a fast-paced card battle game of brawling and swordplay set in the Sword and Sorcery world of Ravingspire. For 2-3 Players.

While we could've Kickstartered it to garner more eyes on it and try to generate pre-sales before launch, I still prefer to think of Kickstarter as a place a creator goes when they don't have the financing to produce the idea they want to make into reality, and needs other people to commit to the idea. Reaverquest is a compact enough game (size of a deck of cards) that we were able to work with our manufacturers and fund it ourselves! And we're really happy with it.

You can find the rules and tutorial videos on BoardgameGeek or ReaverQuest.com!

Game on!

 

Chronomega Kickstarter Launched!

w00t! The Kickstarter for our upcoming sci-fi 2001 Space Odyssey-style board game (with just a touch of Starship Troopers), Chronomega, just launched!

 The year is 2137. The crew and equipment of the V.O.R.P.A.L. (Voyaging Outer Research Project - Advanced Launch) Time-Space Research Station, Chronomega One, have been emergency-ejected into outer space! You play one of the surviving scientists who must collect pieces of floating research tech and combine them into Electromagnetic-, Gravity-, and Time-bending tools to help bring Chronomega One back under control. You have no idea which member of the crew is responsible for the emergency protocol lock-down and crew ejection, so you can’t trust any of them! For 2-6 players.

Would you like to know more?

Chronomega Teaser

Here's a teaser video of our sci-fi boardgame that is coming to Kickstarter next week. It has a murderous space station, time-manipulation research, transparent card-combos, and heroic scientists. We're pretty excited about it.

CHRONOMEGA! 

Check out CHRONOMEGA May 9th on Kickstarter!

Escape from Fireball Island! at GameholeCon

Okay, I know I haven't updated in a month, but we were shipping Ravingspire around the world and things were re-donkulously busy! Still, that's no excuse. You want to have a blog? Then update the blog. Them's the facts jack. So now I'm back! And last weekend was glorious Gamehole Con! I completely re-wrote and ran Escape from Fireball Island for the Con for two different groups of players, and it was an absolute blast both times.

The adventure is a 1930's pulp AD&D game I wrote loosely based on the Fireball Island boardgame from 1983.

Amelia Earhart is flying a group of famous figures from Miami to London, but as she crosses the Bermuda Triangle, she is forced to crash land on a mysterious volcanic island. Much dino-battling, lizardman-negotiating, trap-dodging, atlantean puzzle-solving, and jewel-gathering ensues!

Ravingspire - Wave 1 is Shipping!

Ravingspire Wave 1 is shipping!

Some of you may be aware that Vorpal Chainsword Games launched a Kickstarter last April to fund Ravingspire - Assault on the Tower of Madness, to be released to backers in October 2016 (November 2016 for retail). The backer support we received from folks for the game was overwhelming, and we demolished our initial funding goal and deluxe set stretch goals in very short order. It was a wild ride and humbling experience to say the least.

The Tome of Ravingspire!

Well now the hallowed month of October has come, and I'm pleased to say that we've worked extremely hard over the last six months to make sure we're shipping not only the deluxe game set on time, but also the otherworldly card pack expansion set stretch goals the backers earned! Already the Wave 1 backers are contacting me letting me know how pleased they are with the game. I couldn't be happier.

Ravingspire with painted minis and 16" Lazy Susan Tower upgrade!

I want to say thank you to everyone who helped us bring this game to life. I hope that all of you who end up exploring the Tower go as absolutely and utterly mad about it as I have (in the most pleasant way possible, of course).

Game on!

2e AD&D Funfest - Revengeance of the Chronostone: Escape from Fireball Island!

I run an annual RPG game for my old high school and college buddies at a mini convention I put on, called ScanCon. The game is usually some kind of one-shot mashup rpg I've come up with that I'm thinking about running at a convention or two the following year. Often they involve nostalgic 80's themes, like He-Man, Tron, or Johnny Mnemonic. I run these games using 3.5e or 5e D&D rulesets, because they're so pick-up game-friendly.

Not this time, though. This year I decided to not only have the players re-create the first D&D character they ever played, I also wanted to run the game in the first D&D edition we ever experienced: the dreaded 2nd edition AD&D!

Mini Wizards and Warriors

No, this post isn't about the incredibly difficult but fantastic NES game Wizards and Warriors, though in retrospect it probably should be. I loved that game.

Really I just wanted to post up some pics of a couple Reaper Bones minis I've been painting up to use with Frostgrave and RAVINGSPIRE! In this case it's a Wizard ("Marcus the Runelord") and a Warrior ("The Crimson Reaver").

Now just 147 more Reaper Bones minis to go.

Paint on!

How Deck-builders won me over

Now, I'm not a complex man. Like any hot-blooded American I like red meat, cold beer, and boardgames that involve warriors battling it out for gold and glory. But I also like a little complexity to my warriors, and prefer a boardgame where the characters level up over the course of game. So you'd think games like Talisman would always fit the bill perfectly. In Talisman you travel around the map, battle monsters, pick up gold and magic items, gain Strength and Craft, and eventually make your way to the inner circle through the Valley of Fire. There you try and win the Crown of Command so you can rule the land of Talisman under an Iron Fist for the rest of time. What's not to like?

Now Ramond Cameron is a hobbyist who knows how to adventure. 3-D Talisman! Check Ray's stuff out here.

Secret Dimensions

I'll admit it, I've been lax on game-blogging. Not only that, I've been turning down game invites and haven't been painting as much as I'd like. But I have a good reason! I've been secretly working every evening on the greatest boardgame ever to grace the halls of humanity. Its something I've worked on in complete secrecy, because if established game designers learned of the majesty of our deck-building boardgame mechanism they would steal it from us in a heartbeat. That's right, I said us! I have secret partners in this project. Artists, photographers, marketing agents. Partners based around the world working to create the finest Sword and Sorcery game ever to grace tabletops of the world, ever since the majesty that was Dark Tower.

Unfortunately, I can tell you nothing about it. But we're close to actual publication, so I'm using it as an excuse for seeming like such a half-gamer lately. I do have a little teaser page for it that shows a little bit of the card artwork though. You can check it out here if you're interested:

Ravingspire

Assault on the Tower of Madness!

Deck Building 2: Shadowrunning

Holy crap you guys, Deck-Building games CAN be fun!

As suggested we might do in the last post, our game group got together this week and cracked open that Shadowrun: Crossfire game I had bought at GenCon last year but never played. After handing the instructions over to poor SirLeo27 (our resident rules-rememberer) and demanding he teach us the game immediately, we decided to also crack open some beers and seek out a tutorial video on how the game is played. BoardGameGeek is a good website for such boardgame tutorials, though for some reason half of them are always in French. I guess the French like reviewing board games for some reason. Sacre' Bleu! Anyway, we found a tutorial vid by "Not Bored" that did the job well enough and got to playing Shadowrun: Crossdressers.

And against all odds, Shadowrun:CrossWorldz was a lot of fun and not too hard to learn. Too many rules to explain in a blogpost for sure, but well worth the half-drunk effort we put into learning the rules before playing. In a nutshell you always start with a simple starter deck and then "buy" black market cards as you defeat enemies and earn money, so you don't have to learn what every card does before you play. Since there's only 6 black market cards out for purchase at a time, you can scan them over and buy the best one at that moment. No need for an excel database of power-ups and combos for this game. You get what is drawn, and that's it. As I have a penchant for cyberpunk, I loved it and didn't even mind all the Elves that Shadowrun spreads all over the otherwise awesome dystopian future setting. Mostly because it made up for it with endless cards featuring Katanas and Trenchcoats.

Shadowrun: Crossfire, recommended for those who want to stick it to the Corpers and their chipped-out choobs!

Game on, Chummer!

Deck-Builders and TableTop

For nerds like me, you all know that the latest episode of TableTop came out this week, and features the heroic Marvel-themed deck-building game: Legendary.

Now, I'm not a deck-builder kind of guy these days. Yeah, back in the early 90's I was bit by the Magic: The Gathering bug as hard as any dorky teen, but soon became annoyed with the power-creep in the card releases, and realized I was just being milked for my paper route money by Wizards o' the Coast. The "most-expensive-card-wins" rule effect of Magic left me with a sour taste in my mouth for deck-builders, so I never really give them a chance after that.

In the first segment of the above episode of TableTop, Wil Wheaton acknowledges that he experienced that very same Magic:The Gathering (of your money) realization and subsequent recoil from deck-building games. But he then goes on to clarify how deck-building games have come so far since then. Such that they aren't about buying individual cards anymore, and everyone playing is at an even level. Plus many of them are now co-operative games, which we all know is the best kind of game because friendship and reasons.

I am relieved to see that there is a DC-themed version. Gotta stay loyal, after all.

I think maybe I should give deck-building games a try, and to actually open that copy of Shadowrun:Crossfire I bought at GenCon last year during the annual purchasing frenzy one goes through in that most glorious of dealer halls. (I grabbed and bought it before I realized it was a deck-building game, as my uncontrollable lust for anything Cyberpunk-related blinded me to the actual description of the game mechanics on the back of the box at the time).

The GenCon Dealer Hall. Such a glorious place where rational purchasing decisions fly right out the window.

So I guess its about time I get my deck-building Game On!

Kingdom Builder

I always like it when a new Tabletop episode comes out and is about a game I can wholeheartedly recommend. Kingdom Builder is one of those games. Its not flashy or complex like Arkham horror, but its a refined boardgame that one can play with regular muggles. Its a game that is simple enough to introduce to family members, but interestingly nuanced enough to engage even the most ardent fan of Axis and Allies.

However, they kind of mucked up the rules a little on this episode, so don't go into this episode thinking its going to explain the rules perfectly well. Its not, and Wheaton even says so. But it does show the simplicity of the game, and how much fun it is (and really, how quick it plays). Plus, screwing up the rules with your friends is one of the primary benefits of inviting people over to game!

TableTopDay 2015 - Fireball Island!

So today (11Apr2015) is International TableTop Day! For this year's festivities, The good Dr. Mrs. Chainsword and I met some friends from the game group down at the Friendly Local Gaming Store, I'm Board! (of Madison, WI). And we brought along the epically Kinetic and nostalgia-inducing boardgame of fast 3-D action:

FIREBALL ISLAND

by Milton Bradley

Dead of Winter on TableTop!

While I love the Geek and Sundry show TableTop (on Youtube), its rare that one of the episodes features a boardgame that both:

1) I haven't yet played
and
2) I really want to learn how to play.

In this case they play a relatively new boardgame that I actually own, but haven't put in the effort to be able to both learn the rules and explain them to others. That's the slow step in my boardgaming nowadays, having enough excitement about a game to be able to teach the rules to others. I mean, once everyone knows how to play Shadows of Brimstone, then that's a guaranteed good time so you might as well play that, right?

Well, last GenCon I got a badge to get into the Dealer Hall an hour early thanks to my homey Chad Delp, and went into a rabid buying frenzy. There I picked up the game Dead of Winter, because the reddits said it was so great and I was in a serious buying furvor. However, I also picked up about six other games (including the aforementioned Shadows of Brimstone), so even though I cracked Dead of Winter open and perused the rules and components, I never really put in the time to learn the game well enough to suggest it to my friends. Fortunately for me, this week's episode of Tabletop features Dead of Winter, and does a pretty good job explaining the basics of the rules, so now the game is a real option for game night for peeps that've watched the episode!



So thank you, Wil Wheaton, for continuing to make TableTop an awesome show and helping diversify my gaming, despite my laziness.

Game on!

Hellbat break

Things are going well with the upcoming Vorpal Chainsword podcast, however the editing and page building doesn't leave as much time for painting. But sometimes you've just got to stop, take a breath, relax, and paint up some demon serpents. For your mental health. I took a break from podcast prep last night to paint up some Hellbats from the Shadows of Brimstone boardgame.

Here's some quick glamour shots of the newly-painted flying snake-things.

Digital Talisman

As any modern board-gamer knows, boardgame cleanup can be a real pain in the ass. When you were a kid the most complex cleanup boardgame you likely owned was Monopoly, and that cleanup was no problem because no one wants to play that game anyway. But for the advanced gamers out there, for the 8-year olds who saw "For ages 12 and Up" on the side of the box and were undismayed, there was a boardgame of epic fun that you could play with your more studious friends. This is a great game, with tons of expansions available, and was my first foray into a boardgame with lots of cleanup. That boardgame was Talisman.

Shadows of Brimstone: Fixed Map, Hellbats, and Fog Machines

Played another game of Shadows of Brimstone with the game crew the other day. This time I decided to try one of the 'fixed map' adventures, and utilize my recently-constructed mini dry ice fog machine. So before they came over I had the whole map set up and ready to go. I remember almost nothing from the game itself (too much creativity juice beforehand), but I got a few pretty cool pics of it on my phone, so it must've been a lot of fun.

Shadows of Brimstone: Stop the Ritual

Gamin' DIY Accessories: The Boardgame Buddy!

A while back I was I was ranting about the amount of chits and cards that modern-day boardgames from Fantasy Flight Games and Flying Frog Productions were using. In an attempt to get me to shut up about it, Mary picked up a cheap rotating plastic spice rack one day to help me organize my decks of cards during gameplay. After playing with it a bit, we added some improvements to the system and created the ultimate FFG/FFP boardgaming accessory, which we call:

The BoardGame Buddy!