The Player Of Games

We finished the Iron Kingdoms game and the final battle was awesome; it took two sessions. The PCs totally eluded and out strategied the bad guys and made it back to the town with the professor and the evil crystal. They boarded the train and headed south, but soon they heard the screeches in the distance that were keeping pace. They realised the train bridge was blocked by rubble and as they cleared it, all the flying creatures the warlock Anyrti had cam raining down upon them.

After a massive battle they prevailed, but they were wounded. They delivered the crystal to the Caspian Academy in Caspia and the game was done. Although a future game was foreshadowed by a massive explosion and screams coming from the academy the next evening.

Our new game (run by Kade) is supernatural detective game using the Fate system. My next game is a return to supers and I’ll use Icons to do it I believe.

Not much gaming to report until yesterday as we went two weeks without. We got back to it yesterday with the third installment of my Iron Kingdoms arc.

The characters managed to get the now completely insane professor and the strange pulsing gem they believe drove him that way back to town. They waited all afternoon for the train to take them south and finally relaxed after it headed off with them aboard; but not for long. Soon they heard strange screeching in the distance that was seemingly getting closer, but it was dark and they couldn’t see what it was that they assumed was trying to catch up with them. Kade the gunmage cut loose the back carriages to get some extra speed and after a while longer they stopped hearing the screeches as they faded into the distance.

Shortly after that they found a boulder on the tracks and had to stop and of course that was when all the various flying horrors of Everblight descended upon them. The fight was their hardest yet and they managed to wipe out 4 harriers, 6 grotesques and a nephilim warrior, leaving them only a seraph and an angelius to fight next week.

Joy!

Obviously the Trencher Infantry Project wasn’t taking up enough of my time. Here is the top half of the tavern I’m building. The bottom floor is made of plaster from my Hirst molds.

I’m finally up to the highlighting stages after shading with ink.

The guys successful bargained their way past the trollkin that had confronted them last session. For 500 Silver Cygnus and the promise of three swords later on, the Skull Rock patrol let the group through, offered to buy other swords or guns the party picked up and even pointed them in the direction of the bandit encampment. After slaughtering the bandits, plundering their ill gotten goods and “rescuing” Doctor Spurlock, the group headed back to give the trolls the second half of their bargain.

Only 100 meters from the bandit’s they found the trolls waiting; they’d watched the fight and were impressed. They gladly took the three swords and offered to buy the other 25 assorted weapons at 50 Silver Cygnus a piece. Unfortunately the trolls said they needed to go back to their village to get enough money. When asked how much they had on them, they replied that they only had the 500 given to them by the group earlier that morning. The group decided to accept the 500 and give all the weapons to the trolls for future favourable consideration, as they didn’t want to waste time going to the troll village.

Having left a patrol of happy trolls behind, they headed back to Gerrit’s Run where they secured passage back to Caspia on the train and settled down to wait the eight hours until it arrived, refueld and then could take them south.

Kade’s game finished last week, so the next 7-10 weeks will be for my Iron Kingdoms game. It didn’t really take much prep time because I’m running them through the same story I’m using with my 7-11th graders every Tuesday afternoon.

The game started at the Riversmet train station where Lt. Phineas Stoutheart and Lt. Cooper Sythe, both Cygnaran and a gun mage and warcaster respectively, were joined by Thorn, a druid and warlock from the Wurmwall Mountains and Bower Bain, an Iosan ranger. They travelled two hours north to the town of Gerrit’s Run where they were to meet Dr. Spurlock (an archaeologist from the Caspian Academy) the next morning. Their mission was to escort Dr. Spurlock and the artifact he had uncovered from an ancient Orgoth temple back to Caspia.

After having dinner at the Dragon’s tooth, the only inn in town, the group was surprised to see a disheveled man burst in through the front doors and begin speaking agitatedly with the barkeeper. It turned out he was a research assistant of the Doctor’s and their group had been ambushed by bandits on the way back to Gerrit’s Run and the Doctor had been kidnapped. Further, almost immediately after the bandit attack, they in turn were attacked by a group of strange look elves with clawed feet.

The group got the ambush survivor to show them the trail they had been ambushed upon and then bid him farewell as they headed out to try and rescue the doctor. Along the way, they noticed the usual nighttime animals, but they seemed a lot more skittish than usual. Eventually they found the ambush site with 20 dead bodies, three of which were the elves that had been described to them.

Finding the trail the bandits had fled from the elves along, the group began to track the Doctor through the thickly wooded hills. In short order they came upon a group of trollkin warriors who have blocked their path and are suggesting that the characters can pay their way past or turn back out of their territory.

The work on the Trencher Infantry and support had ground to halt until Saturday when I finished the leather and started blue-ing the shoulder pads. Long process. Hopefully worth it.

I invented a board game for an After School Activity (ASA) to be done once a week for an hour for 10 weeks for 8-11 year olds. I called it Space Station Hydra and the kids each took on the roll of an AI called a Brain that could control a number of drones around the space station.

Drones can be upgraded to make them faster, tougher and stronger and the Brain itself can also be updgraded to control more drones and a few other nifty in-game advantages. Lastly, they can manufacture more drones, but the numkber they could control at a time started fairly low.

The game was meant to be a strategy game with a bit of conflict, but by about week 5 it was becoming a fully fledged wargame.

These are my take on these villains. I used them in the game and it worked quite well. I’m sure there are better ways to design them though and I’m interested to hear those ideas.