Courtisans - A Medieval Take on Happy Families

My work colleague Stephen (Tik Tok Games) returned from UK Games Expo with this exquisitely produced card game.  I loved it so much I immediately bought it.

Courtisans by Catchup Games (distributed by Hacehette)

A new arrival on the board game scene are Hachette Board Games UK a new division of the all dominating French publishing giant Hahcette.  They have collaborated with a number of smaller games designers to distribute their games just in time for Christmas.

One such title is Courtisans by Catchup Games, a simple card collecting in the style of Happy Families except that in addition to keeping and giving away cards you get to try to influence who is in or out of favour at the Queens banquet.

 

High Production Quality  

As soon as you open the box your eye will be drawn to the tapestry play mat.  Something I've never seen in a game and it is so "on theme" I'm tempted to try something similar for my 2nd favourite card game Citadels.

The playing cards are similarly gorgeous.  It is not often that you see tarot sized cards in a boardgame and this again harks back to medieval times when this was the standard size for all cards.  Printed with a gold spot colour these are beautifully illustrated and the necessary symbols discrete yet clear.

Fast Game Play

The objective is simple, collect as many cards of families who are Esteemed, avoid collecting cards of families who are Fallen from Grace and play cards at the Queens table to influence who is Esteemed and who is Fallen from Grace.  Whichever side of the table has the most cards (Esteemed on top, Fallen below) determines which families in everyone's tableau score positive or negative points.

Every turn you keep a card, give one away to another player and add one to the table.  It is that simple.  However, there are four special card types (for each family) which if you draw them can be played and mix things up.  These are:

• Assassin - denoted by the dagger symbol can be used to kill any card from any family whether they are played in your or another players tableau or at the queens table.
  
  
• Guard - denoted by the shield, the guard cannot be killed by an assassin.
  
  
• Noble  - denoted by the Crown X2 means that they are worth two points instead of one.
  
  
• Spy - denoted by the mask symbol is played face down and only revealed at the end of the game.  They can count towards your positive or negative points or can add to the esteemed or fallen from grace scores at the queens table.

Finally a range of secret mission cards can tip the balance in the end game should you be able to satisfy the win condition.

In Conclusion

Courtesans is a great little 5 player game which is quick to play and can easily fill that dead time whilst you are waiting for players to turn up to your RPG game.  I personally love the intrigue element and there are lots of tactics you can deploy to try to seal your victory at a cost to other players.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour among Thieves

On a rare trip to the cinema I saw the latest Dungeons & Dragons Movie...

It was fantastic 

They pulled it off, and managed to put together a movie which pretty accurately reflects what playing a game is actually like.  Previous incarnations have made the cardinal sin of taking themselves too seriously because they built a world in which there are real consequences and motivations.  This is not D&D.

Let's face it most parties you have every had the honour of joining make up their plans on the spur of the moment.  Most of those plans go south almost immediately and the party scrapes a victory by the skin of their teeth.  This is well portrayed in the character of Edgin (Chris Pine) who even styles himself as the team leader and planner.  Every party needs a tank and Holgar (Michelle Rodriguez) fills this role with aplomb, they even give her a surprise romantic plot twist just to round out her character.

Low level mages are crap and this party's spellcaster is no different Simon the Sorceror (Jussie Smith) plays this to a tee.  Individual player agency even if that sends a plan spiralling into failure is a critically important part of the playing experience.  His triggering the bridge trap even whilst the rules are being explained to him is classic D&D.

The elf druid Doric (Sophia Lillis) is the only character that I struggled with because it was played as a jack of all trades.  This may have been for plot reasons but she felt a little NPC to me.  Talking of NPCs, who can forget the excellent Xenk Yendar (unpronounceable name starting with X... check!) the insufferable super character who cannot be bested in combat as he's too important to the plot to die, even though everyone kind of hates him.

Even the DM makes a sort of appearance as the hand of fate that tips the scales against our characters.  most noticeably in the carefully orchestrated portal painting scene when the frame "accidentally" falls over onto the floor.  So D&D.

Easter Eggs Galore

When you are dealing with a muti-generational fictional universe adored by millions you are going to need to lean on the fan service.  It's why your core audience, the fans, are going put down the cold hard cash to go see your movie.

This is where many of the current crop of properties go astray.  Instead of giving fans what they want the directors writers and producers all want to "subvert expectations" or lean into "representation" in order to chase some ethereal demographic of what they would like their audience to be.  This is so mind numbingly empted headed thinking that it beggars belief.  The first rule of any product is know your audience.

What this team did was mine the massive back catalogue of source material and pull out a few monsters that everyone is familiar with.

Aaracokra, Dragonborn, Rust Monsters, Owl Bears, Displacer Beasts, Gelatinous Cubes, Mimics and of course dragons.  Colour me surprised when up pops Themberchaud the fattest Red Dragon you are every likely to encounter.  He will be familiar to anyone who has had the misfortune to wind up in Gracklestugh the Duergar fortress city of the Underdark.  Last I saw of him he'd slain his jailers and was merrily setting the city on fire.

Familiar spells peppered the action like bullets from a machine gun.  Having a knock down drag out fight between two mages wielding Bigby's Hand was a sight to behold.  

In the run up to release, the internet was wild with complaints about how they should have written this with the characters of the original D&D Cartoon from the 80's.  The producers listened and lo and behold up they pop as contestants in the great games.  Nice. 

Will it Suceed?

Well if the runours are true and it cost $150 Million to make then it needs to turn $300 Million in order to break even.  With the recent debacle over the OGL and the social media backlash, I'm not so sure that it will.  Unlucky timing perhaps because without that cloud hanging over its head it should have been a no brainer choice for every D&D fan out there to go see it.

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Arena of War (iOS)

Bob Dylan sang "Oh the times, they are a changing..." and never a truer word was said about how the advent of tablets has changed the fortunes of boardgame and RPG companies.  As a long time Mac user I'd long since accepted my platform as an afterthought from games companies like Wizards of the Coast when making e versions of their popular products so you can imagine my surprise when bumbling around on the App store I found a new official Dungeons & Dragons game!!  Minutes later the download was done and I was ready to get my dungeon bash on...

NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING...

I'll get this out there at the beginning of this review. If you want a like for like simulacrum of a D&D encounter, this app is not for you as once you're past the initial character generation screens and into your first "tutorial" adventure, your carefully imagined plans of strategic movement go out of the window when you realise that this is ANGRY BIRDS D&D!!. Yes that's right, the only way you interact with your character is by using a bizarre slingshot technique to fire yourself at random monsters dotted around an arena.  However, as this is WotC's first iOS release I'm going to give them the benefit of doubt and delve a little deeper. 

CHARACTER BUILDING & DEVELOPMENT

You get a nice selection of characters to begin with which cover the usual spectrum of races and classes with options to change clothing and gender.  The main thrust of character development is reserved for a system of powers much like 4th Edition D&D.  These powers can be enhanced to increase damage (and oddly HP) and you can swap powers between quests to take full advantage of each new ability or upgrade. 

QUESTS

There are 3 Quest Books to begin with (Baldur's Gate, The Trade Way and Northern Sword Coast) each of which you will unlock as you progress through the game.  You will be also be rewarded with Daily Quests for levels you've already cleared and for two days of the week you get to have a crack at the Undermountain quests (a sort of ranking tournament).  Each quest costs Quest Energy (QE) to join and you have 100 QE to begin with which recharges on a timer system.  You can also use Potions to recharge your QE instantly and each time you level up it automatically recharges to full.

Each Quest is essentially an encounter in a single location comprising of a bunch of monsters which attack you in waves.  The locations are nicely rendered but a little monotonous and reflect the overall theme of the Quest level you are on, so dungeon quests are inside rooms and wilderness quests are in forest glades.  The edges of each location have features like walls, teleportation portals, gas vents or spring traps which you need to utilise (or avoid) in order to maximise your combat potential.

The reward for completing quests varies but essentially is a combination of powers, enhancement scrolls or potions of Quest Energy.

COMBAT

As I mentioned earlier you use the slingshot interface to fire your character into monsters with a charging attack. As soon as you start to drag backwards (ie away from your intended target) a small power bar will start to extend from the circle to indicate how far you will charge. Whilst this is fine when your characters are in the middle of the screen, if they are close to a wall you can end up being restricted in the amount of power you can apply and coming up too short. When using Heroes with a missile attack you need to pull back only slightly, they will then move forward a small amount (or not at all if you're really good) and fire off an arrow, thereby stopping them charging across the room straight into danger.

Although this is a weird (and to be honest a little random) interface it does force you to use a few interesting techniques:  

Ricochet: When you charge (or shoot an opponent) they get pushed back into another hero, enemy or bomb. When it's pushed back into a hero, they suffer an attack of opportunity, if it's another enemy then they both take additional damage; if it's a bomb it explodes damaging anyone in it's blast radius.

Rebound: A variation on the ricochet occurs when an enemy is pushed back into a wall and rebounds into the original attacker who then automatically attacks again.

The real trick in the game is to strategically chain these two techniques together to clear each wave of monsters as efficiently as possible.  On occasion I've manged to wipe an entire waves of enemies with just one move, but it was more luck than any type of strategy.

POWERS

Each basic character comes with two power slots which you get to use during combat to cause effects or heavy damage, additional slots are unlocked as you progress through the game and unlock the Tier 2, 3 and 4 characters.

Powers are ranked from Common (C, C+), Rare (R, R+), Ultra Rare (UR, UR+) to  Legendary (L, L+) and can be enhanced by fusing identical lower level cards to them with the Fuse Power option.  Scrolls or different powers can also be fused, but are less effective.

You can then use the auto equip button to assign the strongest powers to your character and increase their Attack and HP values to take on tougher monsters in higher level quests.  Whilst this is a simple enough mechanism, it is a little obtuse and I have yet to understand how to get the best out of my upgrades.

OVERVIEW

The graphics, animations and interface are all flawlessly rendered and very reminiscent of other WotC products.  The quirky catapult mechanism is fun once you get the hang of it and whilst this will leave most experienced role players left wanting, it is quite a fun use of the D&D brand and has potential to bring younger players into the hobby.  It has some of the iconic elements of D&D such as monsters like the Gelatinous Cube and Beholder, a turn based combat system which feels like initiative and a simplistic system of character progression. 

However, I still yearn for an experience closer to a simulation of an actual game, so come on WotC you've given me a taste of what you can do on iOS, I'm salivating to see some real D&D.

8/10 - Can't wait to see what else you've got in store.

VIDEO REVIEW OF ACTUAL PLAY

You can also check out a video walk through showing some actual game play on my new You tube channel Roleplay Geek TV.

Outrider: My First Print On Demand Experience

I've been buying PDFs from the likes of RPGNow / DriveThruRPG and printing them at home for a few years now, but recently I took the plunge and decided to order my first Print on Demand (PoD) product.  Being based in the UK, I've always been reticent to use the PoD option as the costs have been quite high to have things printed in the US and shipped to the UK, but a couple of things made made me take the plunge.

• I had an interesting conversation with the CEO of OBS, Steve Wieck, via his blog OneBlogShelf, which re-energised my passion for making games.  I've had a few ideas for card games in the past and so this was a great opportunity to try out the PoD option particularly with respect to cards.
•  Another advantage of OBS was that I could convert some of the proceeds from my own product sales into credit with which to purchase the PoD copy of the Outrider cards
• Following the recent launch of DriveThruCards, a One Book Shelf (OBS) site which specialises in printing card games, I discovered Outrider, an auto duelling tabletop game by Dice Fest Games which featutures an innovative movement/manoeuvre mechanism using cards.  I'm a sucker for post apocalyptic road racing games and sook took advantage of the Launch Discount and got the whole PDF + POD Cards for £17.04 including delivery.

What Makes Playing Cards so Special?

I've made my own cards in the past for things like my DM's Decision Deck and My Item Cards and whilst I'm really happy with the results from my own prints there are a few things unique to playing card printing which are pretty insurmountable for the Print-at-Home (PaH) user.

Double Sided Printing - The major advantage of PoD over PaH is that you get access to commercial grade print technology Yes with a little lot of trial and error you can get pretty good results, but you will never match commercial printers which use registration marks for alignment.

Print / Paper Quality - Home printers have come on in leaps and bounds but there is no escaping that with every incremental increase in quality you have an exponential increase in cost.  High grade papers are really pricey and tend to drink ink like a vampires drink blood.  If you want a photo quality result you have to suffer that slightly tacky feel which as you can imagine does not make for good playing cards.  Casino's are very particular about their casino quality cardstock which has a very high opacity preventing stopping people seeing the card values through the substrate.

Cutting - Several cards are usually printed on a single sheet and unlike books are not bound together before guillotining.  I've had some great results at home, but inevitably you do end up with cards either not having precisely the same dimensions or being gaffed in some way.

What You Get

The Outrider download consists of 8 files; the rules, a scenario booklet, a series of optional Terrain Tiles and 5 files of cards, counters and dashboards.  The printed cards which will be delivered to you from the printer consist of:

• 18 x Manouevre cards.
• 8 x Vehicle cards (double sided 16 vehicles in total).
• 8 x Dashboards (double sided 1 for each vehicle).
• 15 x Counter cards (require cutting up before use).
• 3 x Range Cards (double sided single/double fire lanes).
• 1 x Turn Order/Control Loss Reference Card.
• 1 x Lucky/Second Wind car.

A sample of the 54 different cards contained in the deck

I would have preferred to have multiple sets of the manoeuvre cards included in the PoD element rather than the included tokens.  Personally, I find thicker cardstock counters are easier to pick up during play and would have been happy to do a little bit of DIY before being able to play.  Similarly the included Dashboards and Vehicle cards are double sided meaning that you can only play one of each style of vehicle unless you print your own duplicates.  At the end of the day you have all the files necessary in the PDF element so it's not too much of a hassle to print additional cards.

From the point of order it took about 12 days for my order to arrive, which is pretty good considering that it has to be processed, printed and delivered to the UK.  I suspect that if a UK printer/distributer  could be sourced this time lag would be greatly reduced.

A really nice poker style plastic card box was supplied for free (sadly, mine had a little crack in the lid)

The cards come cellophane wrapped, with a nice plastic poker style protective case.  Print quality is superb with a nice glossy finish.  Although the cardstock used was nice enough, it is slightly thinner in weight to regular playing cards.  This may become an issue in the future as I'm not confidentt it will stand up to normal gaming wear and tear from a bunch of hamfisted boardgamers.

How did the costs stack up

As I mentioned before, the discounted price for the PDF and POD Cards was £17.04 (which includes USPS First Class postage to the UK at £6.73) which compares favourably with say a Fantasy Flight Silverline game such as Bruno Faidutti's Citadels.  The cost of postage from the US to the UK is a significant proportion of the price (almost 40%).  This is of course largely out of the hands of either the printer or OBS and is the one issue which needs to be overcome if PoD as a concept will become generally accepted.

Final Thoughts

For me although the cost was comparable to a mass printed card game, the quality of the cardstock was a little dissapointing.  I also hope that the guys at OBS can source some UK based printing companies to add to their cadre of US ones.  This would certainly go a long way to making me choose PoD as a viable alternative to just buying from one of the big games manufacturers.  At the moment it's a bit of a 50/50 choice, which will most likely be decided by how much I lust after a particular game or not.

I have yet to actually play the game, so stay tuned for a follow up review.

Moviewatch: Grabbers

Grabbers is an Irish monster movie, yes you heard right, an Irish monster movie.  Set on the small island of Erin off the Irish coast which unwittingly becomes the new home of a breed of monstrous aliens after a meteor crash lands in the sea.  Alcoholic local policeman Richard Coyle (Coupling) is the unlikely hero who, with the help of straight-laced mainland policewoman Ruth Bradley (Primeval) and a bunch of sozzled locals, uncovers a series of strange deaths and sets about saving the islanders from an unspeakable tentacled horror.

Grabbers - Movie Poster

Director Jon Wright makes excellent use of the small budge, aided by an ensemble cast including Russell Tovey (Being Human) and Bronagh Gallagher (The Commitments) to create a story which literally sucks you in.  He is of course aided by the fantastically picturesque town of Moville (near Derry) and economic use of a well thought-out and well executed CGI monster.

Essentially an Irish Tremors, Grabbers has its truly funny, if  little stereotypical, moments and there's plenty of shocks.  The monster is also quite scary, in a slimy tentacley way and plenty of craic is thrown in for good measure.

Everyone is John

This Friday's game was postponed and a new GM, Thora, stepped up to the plate and offered to run a a one session game called Everyone is John.  I'd never heard of this game but as it was described as a rules light freeform competitive game, it was just up my alley.

John Cleese

The set-up for the game is simple, John is a normal bloke going about his day-to-day existence when he has a schitzophrenic episode and begins to listen to The Voice in his head.  Each player becomes a voice, with their own unique set of skills and obsessions.  However, John can only listen to one voice at a time so the players must bid using willpower to control The Voice and thereby influence what John does.  It's handy if you represent willpower with a bunch of tokens as players can simply reveal how many tokens they have in their hand.  The winning bidder then loses those tokens for the rest of the game.  

John is quite fickle and so control of The Voice only lasts for about 10 minutes or until a player fails a roll, at which time the bidding process starts again. 

SKILLS AND OBSESSIONS

Jon Bon Jovi

Each player is then issued with 6 blank cards upon which they have to write 3 skills and 3 obsessions.  These are then randomly distributed to each player making sure nobody picked their own skills or obsessions.

Skills are used to reduce the difficulty of completing an action and can be actual skills (Boxing, PC Repair, Knowledge: Thermonuclear Devices), special abilities (Hail a cab first time everytime, ) or equipment (Letter Opener, Mobile Phone, Sonic Screwdriver).  Remember, the game is competitive and what you write down goes to your opponents so picking really usefull or powerful skills will most likely work against you.

Obsessions are your victory conditions and are ranked in 3 levels:

Jeanne D'Arc

Level 1 - Easy (pig out on candy, pick your nose on live TV)
Level 2 - Medium (steal a fast car, kiss a celebrity)
Level 3 - Hard (become President of the United States, Go to the Moon)

Each time you complete an obsession you score its Level, the more times you complete them the more points you score.  At the end of the game, the player with the most points is declared the winner.

HOW IT PLAYED FOR US

Our Skills

Can Touch their Nose with Their Tongue	Tune a Guitar	Eat Fire	Can Communicate with a Single Ant
Sonic Screwdriver	Bricklaying	Kung Fu	Summon a mode of Transport by Smoking his Last Cigarette
Can hail a cab first time, every time	Fly a plane	Literary Criticism	Become the Master of the Universe by wearing a traffic cone  on his head and singing "I've got the Power, To Pick up a flower"

Our Obsessions

LVL 1	Cook an Ostrich	Become a Buddhist Monk	Pick Nose on Live TV	Kick an Authority Figure up the Bum and run away like Charlie Chaplin
LVL 2	Steal an Atom Bomb	Stop a Terrorist Bomb from destroying the Eiffel Tower	Steal a Waxwork of Maggie Thatcher from Madame Tussauds	Draw a moustache on a Traffic Warden
LVL 3	Capture a Dinosaur	Discover Australia	Find Evidence that Aliens Exist in Area 51	Make a dog have a white poo

What John Did

John Shuttleworth

John began the game walking through Victoria Station, London when he had his first episode.  He then ran outside the station and hailed a cab telling the driver to head for Madame Tussauds Waxwork Museum.  (BID)  He asked the driver to head instead for London Zoo and if he could stop by some road works on the way.  The taxi driver pulled over to the side of the road and John leap out and grabbed a traffic cone, stuck it on his head and started singing "Ive got the Power... To Pick up a Flower".  He then summoned forth all traffic wardens and got back in the taxi. 

As the taxi sped towards London Zoo, traffic wardens were walking out of side roads in a zombie-like trance.  The taxi driver swerved around them and John opened the window and tried to grab one as they passed but failed.  (BID)  John immediately demanded the taxi head to Madame Tussauds and he tried to use his sonic screwdriver to make the taxi go faster, but unfortunately failed.  (BID)  John abandoned the taxi and whilst smoking his last cigarette, summoned the TARDIS.  As it began to materialise he spotted a nearby Lollipop Woman and kicked her up the bum and ran towards the TARDIS (but unfortunately not like Charlie Chaplin).  The Doctor was suprised that the TARDIS had been so easily summoned but when John asked to go back in time to the Jurrasic era to capture a dinosaur, his curiosity got the better of him.

John Belushi

Arriving in the Jurrasic era, The Doctor agreed to wait in the TARDIS for John to return and watched him walk off into the swamp.  (BID)  John used his Literary Criticism to argue with himself that the Doctor was a fictional character and that the TARDIS was a poorly executed plot device and so could not possibly have transported him back through time.  This clearly meant that the swamp he was in was simply a Jurrasic era exhibit in a Natural History Museum somewhere like Sydney, Australia.  He promptly tore the shirt off his back and waved it around in the air and shouted "I claim this land in the name of Queen and Country and hereby name her Australia!!"...

Conclusion

The players got into the swing of things pretty quickly and it was definitely the most hilariously anarchic and inventive game I've played in a long time.  Most RPGs are not wild fights of fantasy for obvious reasons, but it is good to let your hair down every now and then to play something which demands unbridled creativity.  This game would be great in an after convention/party situation or as we found as a filler game if your regular DM hasn't turned up.

John McEnroe

With slight modification to the pre-amble (Mental Health is a serious issue) and possibly pre-defined skills/goals (to keep the action a little more grounded) this concept could be used quite successfully as an introduction to RPGs for non-gamers.  It encourages problem solving through creativity and imagination and the action is fast paced with only a modicum of dice rolling so should be able to hold most people's attention.

This is definitely going into my GMs Survival Kit and may well get another play quite soon.

The Super Secret Happy Birthday Gary Gygax Giveaway Bundle Extravapalooza!

WOTC reprint
1st Edition Players Handbook

The Secret DM is running a great contest with an awesome prize...

A complete set of WOTCs recently reprinted 1st edition AD&D books!!


and

The chance to have your submission published in a professionally produced digital edition!!


All you have to do is to come up with a 10 room dungeon which evokes the feeling of 1st edition and submit your entry to thesecretdm@gmail.com with the subject line Gygax Contest.

The contest runs until 27th September 2012, so get your designing pens out... I know I will.

2011 in Review

2012 is almost upon us and its time to set some goals, but first I have to review 2011.

2011 Resolutions Progress

Last year saw me start blogging in earnest and for the first time in ages I made some New Year Resolutions:


1.  Take More Notes (5/10) - I'm counting this as a partial success.  I created the Lands of Dual website to act as a repository for session reports and to store all my campaign notes and maps.  I also began using record cards to take notes, but still relied far too heavily on players notes than I would have liked.  This became particularly troublesome when calculating the XP earned by individual PCs so I must come up with a better solution.

2.  Weekly Blog Series (5/10) - Another partial success as I managed to create two of the weekly blog series ideas I spoke of in my original resolutions article.  Unfortunately they petered out within a few articles.

• Monday Motivations - was an attempt to compile a list of mini-backgrounds for fantasy characters along class lines.  I managed to write 12 articles before the juices ran dry.  There's plenty of life left in this series though and I did promise to publish it as a collected series which will clearly need to be expanded upon.
  
  
• Citymorphs - Following in the footsteps of the Geomorphing community I successfully created 29 citymorph tiles over the course of 7 articles.   In retrospect I should probably have reduced the number of morphs per article and eked it out over more posts as the pressure to create 4 morphs per week quickly exhausted my creative juices.  However, I did manage to get them added to Dave's Mapper so you can play with them to your heart's content. 
  
  The focus for Geomorphs seemed to shift towards the Dungeonmorph Dice project founded by Joe "Inkwell Ideas" Wetzel but there were casualties along the way and the inspirational Dyson Logos has apparently gone off line for the forseeable future.
  
  I liked the concept a lot and as my attention drifts away from Fantasy (in the form of my current OSR clone Castles and Crusades) towards Sci-Fi (namely Judge Dredd) I think there are options for this in the future.

This was not theend of the story and a couple of other series ideas sprang forth.

• A to Z of 80s UK RPG - Was an attempt at nostalgically recording my gaming inspirations but stuttered at "I is for ....".  I intend to continue this series as I have written further articles along the line which have yet to see the light of day and it would be a shame to end it after only 8 articles.
   
• Mapping Tools - Was a little 4 part series investigating the state of free cross platform mapping solutions at different scales.  I enjoyed making this series and it led to the discovery of the sweet little tool TILED which I have now used on a number of occasions to construct classic blue style dungeon maps such as The Ruined Tower of The Archmage.

3.  Blog in Advance (3/10) - I have come to the conclusion that scheduled blogging really only works if you have an ongoing series combined with enough inspiration to easily create articles for it in advance.  This lack of inspiration has really been my issue and I don't want to end up with quality suffering for the sake of quantity.

Other Achievements in 2011

Blog Performance

2011 has seen Roleplay-Geek hit the 20,000 pageviews mark (woot) and I've written 96 articles.  I've even tried mobile blogging with limited success, if anyone has any suggestions for free iOS apps for mobile let me know in the usual way. 

 The top 5 articles of the year (by pageviews) are:

1. Minions My OSR take on the one hit wonder (697pv) - High interest in this article probably due to being picked up in Tracy Hurley's Festival of Lights article on the official D&D website.  I must namedrop 4e concepts a bit more...
   
2. Make: 3D Dungeon Tiles Pt 1 - The Design (193pv) - Where I set out the design to produce a cheap as chips and, more importantly, a useable 3D dungeon set.
    
3. Make: 3D Dungeon Tiles Pt 2 - The Build (189pv) - Building the rooms with foamcore.
   
4. RPG Mapping Tools Part 1 - Battle Maps (183pv) - Part one of my 4 part series exploring free cross platform mapping tools.
   
5. UPDATE: RPG Google mapping with MAPLib (159pv) - An update to my article on using MAPLib for your campaign map needs.

Top referrers are of course RPG Bloggers Network  and RPG Blog Alliance, thanks for all the visits guys.

Roleplay Geek Publishing

In April I became an RPG publisher and over the course of the year managed to create a total of 7 products which are currently available for download on RPG Now.  All the advice I gleaned from the various blogs I read forewarned me that this wasn't going to make me a millionaire, but I have enjoyed the experience so far and have been pleasantly surprised with the results so far.

Item	TOTAL SALES	TOTAL EARNINGS
Item Cards - Adventurer's Gear	57	$ 36.68
Item Cards - Potions	44	$ 26.18
Item Cards - Animals	32	$ 18.48
Paper Minis - Animals	28	$ 18.90
GM Aids - Decision Deck	18	$ 25.20
Item Cards - Free Sampler	391	$ 0.00
Paper Minis - Free Fungaloid Lurkers & Brain Vine	130	$ 0.00
Grand Totals	627	$ 124.44

RPG Now is a fantastic way to publish but consequently there are some 15,436 products available to download and standing out from the crowd is extremely difficult. Most of my sales occurred soon after products were added to RPG Now and so featured in the Latest Products list and I haven't worked out a marketing strategy yet.

PDF pricing seems to be a bit hit and miss, Tim Shorts of Gothridge Manor recently wrote a neat article revealing his thoughts and research into pricing his own products.  It doesn't seem to be any easier for the DIY print publisher either, Chris Tregenza has started a new thread on his blog detailing his progress towards making a profit for the 6d6 RPG and I will be watching this with interest.

My philosophy with my PDFs is that I'm producing them for my own games anyway, so the personal effort involved isn't factored into the profit equation.  I'm under no illusion that I'm going to become rich as a result, but if I can gather up a few dollars along the way to buy the odd bit of swag then it's a success.

Miniature Painting

I returned to miniature painting and finally completed my Harlequin Giant Forest Troll and am part way through painting a Ral Partha Djinn and Efreet.  As I get older I have begun to have issues with painting under electric light (or it could be those god awful compact fluorescent bulbs we now have to use) so this restricts the time when I can comfortably paint to a small window on a Saturday morning.  I have a stack of minis which need a bit of colour so I need to ramp up production in 2012.


All in all a mixed year, stay tuned for the New Year Resolutions post.

Fields of Battle: What's in the box?

During several recent trips to my FLGS (Orcs Nest in central London) I have found myself being drawn to Fields of Battle: Miniature Battle Rules for Castles and Crusades.  Unfortunately I like to know what's in the box (or book) before I buy it and scouring the internet for photos drew a blank.  Well here is a box content photo for those of you who may be thinking of making this purchase.

Fields of Battle - Box Contents

As you can see the bulk of the content is made up from cardstock counters, wilderness battlemat sheets and the beautiful papercraft siege engines from Fat Dragon Games. The rules are contained in a slim 48 page book. Potential buyers may be turned off by this plethora of cardstock, particularly if they are intending to use this as a wargame with their own miniatures, but this would be an injustice.

I'll admit that this is probably a niche product, but I see it coming in veru handy as an adjunct to a regular RPG campaign session. I know that in my own games I have written storylines where PCs are involved in mass battle events, either as a group of fighters in a particular unit or in defending a castle from a siege assault.  RPG combat systems don't cope well with this scale of combat yet it is a quintessential part of almost every work in the genre which we use as our inspiration for our games.

The usual cludge is to focus purely on one or two encounters within the battle and your players will have no appreciation of the scale and in many cases will not have any impact on the battle as a whole.  Fields of battle attempts to bridge that gap by introducing a variant of the Siege Engine system which allows your Castles and Crusades PCs to get directly involved in the battle and their players can see the whole battle rather than just the tiny vignette you may have otherwise created for them.

In essence I just can't see myself carting around hundreds of heavy miniatures in order to stage a battle as part of my regular games session, whereas slipping this box into my backpack opens up a whole new scale of combat for my players.

COMPETITION: RGP Products - Tell me what you think and win a Decision Deck

I'd love to say that the life of a fledgling publisher is all good, but to tell you the truth I have no frame of reference.  Put simply I have sales (woot) but no reviews (sigh).  I have no idea what my customers think of my PDFs, how I could improve them, are they useful to you, is there anything missing that you'd expect? 

I need some user feedback.

So, If you've bought any of the first 3 sets of Item Cards; RGP001 - Adventurer's Gear, RGP002 - Potions or RGP003 - Animals or RGP004 Paper Minis Set 1: Animals please feel free to let me know what you think using the comments box below. 

As an incentive I'll send each one of you a complimentary copy of my new GM Aids Decision Deck courtesy of RPG Now/Drive Thru RPG.