Challenge Rating

Recently, my job has me attending some training courses on self-empowerment. At the course, the following question was asked: “What really motivates you?”

And my answer: “A challenge.”

I suffer a bit from apathetic geniusness (and narcissism, obviously). I discovered at an early age that I was able to input minimal effort and get an above average result. School didn’t challenge me. If I don’t need to try hard, why try hard? What’s there to prove? Is getting an A over a B worth all the stress and effort? Is even a B over a C worth it? I still, to this day, follow the Pareto principle in many facets of my life. That’s just a fancy way of saying I’m lazy.

So what does this have to do with gaming? Well, for me, everything. Gaming challenges me. It engages me. It makes me try harder. Why?

Well, over the next few weeks, I’m going to investigate this by throwing my thoughts out onto the interweb and see what the tubes throw back.

My first thoughts on the matter will deal with the portrayal of combat in role playing games.

Thanks to the blunderbuss for inspiring the first topic.

Stay tuned.

-j

Will the cathedral roof collapse again?

Previously, I commented on The Pillars of the Earth (I suggest reading it first here). Now I will be taking a look at the expansion set.  I am aware of a card only expansion in Spielbox Magazine, though I believe this is only for the german version (though I speak under correction).  Today’s expansion, however, comes in a nice box (not a magazine) and all the expansion bits fit conveniently into the original box.

So what does the expansion add?  Firstly a new piece of board. It allows 2 more players, pushing up the number of players from 4 to 6. And like most expansions it has to add cards: event, privilege, craftsmen and resource cards.  Actually the expansion only adds one resource card.  They get used a lot.  They get shuffled a lot.  Why are there no small card sleeves?  Why?

The board (which looks suspiciously like somewhere near Hempshire, UK) adds four new master builder locations and also a new worker location. Fancy sending your workers off on the crusades for a few victory points? Luckily the workers return before next round without so much as a manky foot, so that they can go crusading again.

The extra master builder locations allow for an extra privilege card at Shiring and tax collection (the opposite of taxation i.e. one gains taxes gold rolled instead of losing it) at the cunningly named Tax Collector location.  The France location allows the use of the inspiration card.  This card is the same every round and it allows the holder to copy any craftsmen you or any other player have but with one less production.  Lastly, one can sell resources at the Coast for one more gold than they could be sold for at the market.

So what are good strategies? Rock and Metal! Course metal is scarce and granite requires loads of sculptor (1 granite to 2 victory points) craftsmen.  If you can grab every sculptor in the game and have enough granite you cannot lose.  But as was mentioned in an earlier post, the most annoying thing about this game is that people take the stuff you have been eyeing. Bye bye sculptors.  Bye bye metal.  I must now somehow get victory points from wood and sand. Luckily all is not lost. Victory points on the board itself is actually not such a bad idea, especially if the good craftsmen are taken. And one can copy one craftsman with the inspiration card. Ultimately this game comes down to hoping your opponents don’t take the cards you think you need to gain victory points.

Chicks dig it

So why should you play Pillars of the Earth?  The most compelling reason: Chicks dig it. Nuff said. (Apologies to the females for being used as a shameless marketing ploy.)

Until next time: Play more games with girls.

println(“foo”);

Critical Failure

My early-in-the-week weekly post will be late this week.

;_;

The Pillars of the Earth

Last week I was hit by a bug. Usually this is not a problem but this bug turned me into a zombie (at least for a bit). Now the craving to moan for brains has almost gone (almost) and I feel fit enough to give my comments on yet another board game. But first another aside. A month ago i realised that I was posting about one board game every week…and only getting/playing one new board game (sometimes two) per month. The math says I will soon run out of board games. Luckily I still have a few left and I will burn that bridge when I get to it. On to the board game.

Today’s board game is based on a historical novel by Ken Follett of the same name: The Pillars of the Earth. In the beginning of 12th century, the cathedral is being built at Kingsbridge, England.  The aim of the game: help build the cathedral and take all the credit for it. Not sound like much fun?  It could have been called the putting together the giant space badger of wazzoo and it still would be a fun game to play (granted, the flavour of the game would be ever so slightly different).

The rules say there are seven rounds in the game, though I only count six. At the end of each round, a piece of the cathedral is placed on the board.  When all six pieces of the cathedral are placed, the cathedral is finished and the game ends. Is it just me or does the little cathedral give a sense of accomplishment at the end of the game? Maybe I was just too busy enjoying victory.

Each player has their own work force of master builders, craftsmen and master builders.  Workers gather resources and craftsment convert those resources to victory points.  Master builders are the overseers, managers (and general suck-ups-to-authority) of the whole lot with many uses including hiring new workers or craftsmen and buying and selling resources (and sucking up to the king or archbishop).

Each round is made up of three phases: Resouce gathering (worker placement), Master builder placement and finally resolving the placements on the board.

During resource gathering phase players may “buy” resource cards by paying the amount of workers indicated on the resource card. The workers themselves are placed in the correct resource area i.e. “Gravel Pit” for sand, “Quarry” for granite or “Forest” for wood. For this round, those workers are dedicated to resource collection and can do nothing else. (Though they are returned before the start of the next round).

Also during this phase, there are two craftsmen which can be bought by the players instead of grabbing a resource card.  Unfortunatly these craftsmen cost gold.  Players keep track of gold at the bottom of the board (roll up long sleeves please).  If a player ever runs out of gold, and must pay gold (like the kings taxes), the player must pay in victory points instead (one victory point per two gold). Having more gold is important but usually at the cost of victory points. And so it is important to strike a balance between gold and victory points produced.  It should also be noted that each round, the craftsmen available become more efficient at converting resources to victory points which means having gold to pay for them is a good idea.  However, there is always the chance that other players will nab that craftsmen you were looking for. Hey! That guy was mine!

Any left over workers for this phase are placed at the “Wool Mill” (any game with sheeps is a good game, right?) which produces 1 gold per worker. Handy for increasing ones gold reserves but at the cost of resources.

The master builder placement phase is like a completely different game: Three master builders per player are placed in a bag.  Then the first player hauls them out one at a time.  The first master builder revealed costs 7 gold to place (the price for going first) the second costs 6, third costs 5 and so forth.  A player can choose to either pay the cost and place the master builder OR pass i.e. not pay the cost and leave the master builder for later (free) placement.  This adds alot of randomness to the game and hurts quite alot if your master builders only arrive after all the preferable placements are taken.

Master builder placements are marked with little circles on the board.  Some areas allow for more than one master builder.  Most only allow one.  Its first come, first serve. Placements give the following: Exemption from events bestowed by the Archbishop (or get one free resource from the Market.  Got to love the Archbishop), privilage cards at Kingsbridge (These are mostly people that help out in some way for instance Jack allows 6 craftsmen instead of 5), extra victory points at Kingsbridge Priory, tax exemption at the Kings Court (and a free metal resource if you are the first there. Sucking up to the king is good especially since he may demand from 2 to 5 gold (roll one funky dice) in taxes a turn), free craftsmen at Shiring, more workers from Shiring Castle (though only for the next turn), ability to buy and sell resources at the market place (stocks are limited especially if the Archbishop gives some away) and finally the advantage of being the first player in the next turn.

In the final phase, resolving all 14 locations may seem like quite a daunting task, though this actually goes quite fast. Especially if one follows the board layout, resolving items in a clockwise fashion.  It is very handy to know that the Wool Mill will resolve before the Kings Court i.e. one gains money before one has to pay taxes.

The most important location is 13: Building the cathedral.  This is where players use craftsmen to convert resources collected (cute little cubes) into victory points, taking into account that only 5 of the little resource cubes can be carried over to the next turn.  And each craftsmen can only do conversions indicated on their card.  For instance the mason in the picture below converts one granite to one victory point twice per turn.  The mason is also bogged down with an additional rule:  He needs a Mortar Mixer craftsman or he does not function.

Only by taking into account all these variables, balancing gold and victory points and beating ones opponents to the good craftsmen (and other placements), can one hope to achieve victory. The replayability of the game is surprisingly high.  And with an expansion that adds another board to the game, it becomes even better.  More on that another time.

Until next time: Watch out for falling cathedral roofs.

println(“foo”);

role or roll playing?

this post lead me to some interesting ponderings……..you get those that role play and you get those that roll play…….those that roll play when building their characters spend most of their time finding a way to “break” the system i.e. number optimisation of the extreme nature….they then spend 5 minutes – if not less – deciding on the finer details of their character, finer details such as looks, personality and motivation……now when in a fight these are the people you want to have your back, but after awhile each of their characters – people that roll play have a high character turnover due to the never ending quest of brokenness – pretty much begins to resemble the other and it seems that the role playing experience is lost

those who role play however; might not always be the best in a fight, but they do make the experience of playing more fun – even if it is only because of the arguments about why they didn’t take action x in the fight……….i think that the difference in the two types of players can be picked up in the why method……those who role play will follow the chain of why’s until they build a sufficiently strong history that clearly indicates the characters motivation whereas; those who roll play would maybe bother with one why……..both types of players want to create an interesting character, but they go about it in different ways, the question is how do you satisfy both desires?

at this moment the rest of the my train of thought has left the station without me………so it seems that the completed ponder will wait till another time.

The end of awesome

I’m going to be putting my monk side project on hold for a little while. So, this post will be the last on the subject for the time being. Perhaps when we start selling t-shirts with funny witticisms taken from our blog posts, I would be able to afford to spend more time on developing the class fully. Hopefully, there are other homebrewers out on the interweb that have found my writings helpful. Now on to today’s discussion:

My writings on the d20 monk class have proven to be moderately popular, bringing a number of readers from the search engines. However, based on the search queries used to reach tenletter, I can see that some visitors left the blog with their questions still unanswered. I hope to answer some of those questions today.

power leveling a monk from 18 to 20

It is my personal opinion that the GM is always in control of the level progression of the player characters, whether that control be exerted by the rate of xp hand out or arbitrary leveling up to tie in with story or the GM’s whims. Power leveling, from the point of view of the player is impossible. Power gaming a character is a different story. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to  even cope in a mid- to high-level game with a 3.x monk, let alone power game one. That’s kind of why I started my little project.

add fighter and monk levels unarmed damage

Before I multiclass, I always ask myself why I am doing it. When I first started playing 3rd ed., I multiclassed into whatever made story and roleplay sense to me. Later, it was about optimizing and creating interesting builds. As I understand it, this searcher is looking to build an unarmed warrior of sorts. However, the searcher may have realised that the core fighter or core monk as unarmed warriors do not bring enough to the party. The standard 3.x fighter is also another ‘weak’ class (maybe I’ll write a bit about improving the fighter another time) and combining the monk and fighter is probably not going to fulfill the players expectations. I would advise that the searcher instead look at the Psionic Warrior (Expanded Psionics Handbook), Fist of the Forest (Complete Champion)* or Frostrager prestige (Frostburn) classes for  interesting unarmed combatant options.

I’ll be off on a training course on Monday and Tuesday next week, so I’ll be missing my normal early week post. Until later,

-j

* Both Trash and I made some crazy builds around this class. Hopefully we can find our notes and post them in the near future. I remember Trash had a monk base, whereas I had a ranger/barbarian/fighter/x/y/z build.

“It starts…” – Mufasa

Howdy howdy everybody,

This is my first post of hopefully many :p

I’ll be blogging about old school games and the good morals they brought with them and other such random stuffs.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

World End?

I think foo may be sick this day… or the zombie apocalypse has come to the Western Cape of South Africa without the rest of us knowing about it yet. So, he’ll be missing his normal Wednesday morning post today.

How to make a friend

Spell Name: Charm Person

Components Required: Verbal and somatic

Spell Effect: A Charm Person spell convinces the subject that you are a friend, no matter what your prior relationship may be.

Test Subject: Random passerby.

Test Method: Choosing a random passerby, I will ask a simple question: “Would you like to be my friend?”, while holding both arms out for a hug.  This will act as the verbal and somatic components of the spell.  A positive response should signify that the spell is a success.

Results: My target, a female, appeared to have a counterspell of some sort, with a material component that looked like a small red can.  The resulting gas cloud was both painful and blinding.  My spell appears to have failed, but hers seems to have been very successful.  I wonder what level she is?

****

More can be found here.

We are

If you look near the top of the page, you’ll see a link just below the banner, called about us. It’s a brief little bit about the four bloggers here. In the future, I’ll be missing a few of my weekly posts, but only to use that time to make changes or updates to the blog as a whole. I shall keep you posted.