Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
Review: “Conquest of Nerath” D&D Boardgame
Today we see the release of Conquest of Nerath, the newest D&D board game from Wizards of the Coast. Unlike the last two D&D board games from WotC, Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon, which focused on heroes and dungeon crawling this new game is a take on large scale strategy board gaming along the lines of games like Risk or Axis & Allies. At the same time the game includes heroes that can fight alongside your larger armies and delve into dungeons to uncover powerful treasure that will help your armies attain victory over the other factions.
Conquest of Nerath is meant for play between 2, 3, or 4 players and can be played in a short game that will last around 2 hours or longer games that can go on for much longer (4+ hours). The game is quick to learn, plays well, and is incredibly fun. It appeals to fans of classic strategy board games while bringing familiar fantasy elements to the genre which is traditionally modern/historic.
Rules of the Game
The game Conquest of Nerath involves four factions battling over a map of two continents and one central island, including the Dark Empire of Karkoth (warlocks and undead), the Vailin Alliance (elves), the Iron Circle (goblins and orcs), and the Nerathan League (humans and dwarves). Every game starts with each faction having control of their assigned territories with a set number of starting units, so set up is quick and easy and doesn’t involve random region selection or placing of units from player to player. If you’re playing with four players then each player controls one faction, but if you’re playing with two or three players then each player will control an alliance of factions battling the other players. [Read the rest of this article]
Let’s Talk About Superhero Movies
I know a few people who are getting sick of superhero and comic book movies, and with good reason considering this year’s offering of Thor, X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, and Captain America to name a few. Back when I was young you could still consider superhero movies to be a new thing, but here in 2011 we have more comic book movies than I could have ever dreamed possible as an adolescent. You’ll notice I use the terms “superhero” and “comic book” interchangeably here, but that is simply for ease of use – rest assured I am well aware of the inherent differences and that there are non-comic book superhero movies and non-superhero comic book movies.
Ever since 1989, when I saw the first Tim Burton Batman movie in theaters at an extremely young age, I have been hooked on superhero movies. Around that same time I became interested in comic books, but it wasn’t until highschool and college that I started actually reading more than single issues of titles like Batman or Uncanny X-Men. Due to this odd mixture of nerducation I have a decently even nostalgia for both the film versions of superheroes and their original, printed inspirations. I know that the Joker didn’t actually kill Bruce Wayne’s parents, but I didn’t know it the first time I saw the movie and still enjoy it even after learning “the truth”. Now when I go to see a movie like Thor or Green Lantern if I’m not already intimately aware of the source material I will take a decent amount of time to educate myself so that I can approach the movie from both perspectives and have a deeper understanding of both what has inspired the movie and also what has changed in order for them to make this material into a movie.
I’m Getting Sick of Origin Stories
When it comes to many superhero movie franchises, you can generally predict that at least 1/4 of the first film is going to be dedicated to the origin story of the main character(s). In some cases, like with the Punisher movie, you can consider the entire film to be origin story. In the case of Punisher, I didn’t mind this so much but I was disappointed that the main actor changed to the second movie which created a disconnect in my mind. The same is true of the Incredible Hulk movies, though I feel Ed Norton did a good job making the change in actor painless, and though the movie effectively retold the origin story briefly at the beginning it wasn’t blatant about it and still treated itself like a good sequel to the first movie. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Planar Modification
Last week my first appearance ever on the Tome Show podcast was posted (on my Birthday, no less!) and the topic that I was very pleased to be invited in on was Planar Advice for 4th Edition. Thank you to Jeff for the invite, and if you haven’t listened to this episode or if the Tome Show in general then you should head over to his website and check it out!
For the Planar Uninitiated
While recording the show, Jeff brought up an interesting point that I hadn’t considered with regards to the 4th Edition D&D planes. If you’re not familiar with the 4E planes, allow me to give you a very brief introduction. The material world has two mirror planes, the Shadowfell that is a darker reflection focusing on death and the Feywild which is a brighter reflection and focuses on life. I greatly enjoy both of these planes because they both thrive on the abundance of either death or life and particularly the Feywild introduces the concept that the abundance of life (killer vegetation, tricksy faeries, etc) can be equally as dangerous as anything found in the other planes.
Below the material world and its reflections is a plane called the Elemental Chaos that represents unbridled creation and destruction and is the domain of primordial creatures, while above is the plane known as the Astral Sea that closely resembles the common conception of “heaven” and is the domain of divine entities. If the Shadowfell and Feywild are death and life, then the Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea are chaos and order, and you can practically guess what alignment creatures might be inclined towards depending on which plane they originated from (if 4E still used the classic D&D alignment scale, that is).
The Planes as Afterlife
Back to the interesting idea that I mentioned, while recording the episode Jeff summarized the 4E planes as the afterlife of living beings in D&D. The Shadowfell is where all souls pass on their journey after death, the Astral Sea is where divine servants ascend if they are worthy, and the Elemental Chaos (specifically the Abyss) is where souls might end up if they’re captured by demons or if they serve one of the gods that happens live outside of the Astral Sea. I was intrigued by this view of the planes, but I quickly jumped on the fact that the Feywild as written doesn’t entirely mesh with the overall idea.
That’s exactly why I suggested modifying the planes to fit into this greater concept. After all, if you have a big picture idea such as “the planes are the afterlife” then this is precisely the kind of creativity that can make campaigns memorable. Why not use the Feywild as the afterlife of elves, Eladrin, and other fey creatures in your game world? I’m sure that in some of the material for 4th Edition there are regions in the Feywild where elves can go after death, but I’m talking about making this concept a larger part of your game world.
Imagine if all Elves, Eladrin, and Drow in your game world experienced a completely different afterlife from other races that involved their passage directly into the Feywild. For starters you could use the religions from Eberron where elves worship elven heroes of legend, but then imagine if it were common practice to journey into the Fey plane to visit and consult your ancestors. Beyond that, what kinds of benefits or advantages would these races get from being outside of the Raven Queen’s dominion? Maybe Elves and Eladrin are largely immune to corruption from Devils and Demons and thus have less to fear from Orcus or Asmodeus. This could lead to armies of devils and demons invading the Feywild in search of souls and a way to circumvent this immunity.
Don’t be Afraid to Mess with the Planes
Just with the simple act of bringing the Feywild into line with the other planes with regards to the afterlife we can come up with a handful of compelling ideas that will set your game apart from others and distinguish your game world from what is presented in the 4E books. We could develop the idea further by adapting the Elemental Chaos to be more of an afterlife than just the Abyss, possibly even taking it to the point of introducing the Primordials as a bigger influence in the game world. Since 4th Edition launched I’ve been curious what a game world would look like where divine characters were evenly split between following the gods and following primordials. Perhaps the Dawn War ended in more of a stalemate than the divine victory that 4th Edition assumes. The ways this simple change to history might impact every aspect of the game world are astounding.
Along the same lines as the afterlife discussion, you could modify the planes so that they are all reflections of the material world. This would mean that locations on your map would have an impact on the Elemental Chaos and the Astral Sea as well, but it also changes some of the big picture concepts introduced in those two realms and would probably require some more in depth consideration while developing the idea.
Lastly I’ll suggest an idea that I’ve been dying to try out in a campaign, eliminating one or more of the planes altogether! Particularly if you’re not a fan of one plane or another, imagine what would happen to the cosmology if the Feywild or even the Astral Sea were destroyed in some catastrophic planar disaster. You could have a world where the gods are homeless and stranded in the material world! Many of these concepts may already exist in one of the plethora of published campaign settings out there, so if that’s the case please let me know because I’d love to check it out!
Click here for the rest of the Architect DM Series.
Review: Battle Tag (by Ubisoft)
The odds are that you haven’t heard of the game Battle Tag that was released by Ubisoft in November of last year. How do I know that? Because so far it has only had what must be called a “soft release” and is only available through Ubisoft’s online store or in stores in Canada and Texas. Aside from some attention garnered at E3 2010, there’s not many ways you would have heard about this game. What’s surprising about this is that Battle Tag is far and away the best laser tag game I’ve ever played and may even be one of the best back yard experiences I’ve had in my entire life.
I found out about this game because my wife and our friend Joshx0rfz heard about it from a mutual friend and immediately decided it would be perfect for my birthday party last weekend. They kept it a secret from me, but through some hints I had an idea of what was going to happen, but Battle Tag was way beyond anything I expected. The key element that sets this game apart from other back yard battle games is that Battle Tag requires you to use computer software hooked up to a Ubiconnect antenna. The included software lets you name players, set up teams, and change many of the elements of the game such as health, ammunition, rules for each game such as Free For All or Team Frag, and even set the beam power depending on if you’re playing indoor, outdoor, in bright light, or in the dark.
With a company like Ubisoft behind the game, I was not surprised to find that the software made the game feel more like all of our favorite FPS games than a simple game of laser tag in our back yard. In addition to the software and the ability to customize the details of the game, it also incorporates small plastic boxes for home bases and reload stations which you tap to the bottom of your gun to respawn or to reload your gun. In addition there are eight different game types out of the box that includes one or two which involve shooting the Ubiconnect antenna or tagging specific bases as a part of scoring for that match. For our first outing with the game we stuck almost entirely to the Team Frag game type, but once I got home and looked at the different variations I decided that we definitely need to try them all.
Specs and Details
The one major downside to Battle Tag is without a doubt the cost, but when you consider how much you would spend on playing laser tag at an arena or paying for paintball equipment and course time to me it still comes out ahead. Battle Tag costs roughly $60 per player and the current software handles up to 8 players so the investment you’re looking at to get the most out of the game is steep at around $500. The two player starter set costs $130 and includes two vests, two guns, one CD of the Battle Tag software, one Ubiconnect antenna, two bases, and two ammo boxes. There is a single vest and gun expansion as well as a med-kit and two extra bases expansion but both appear to be sold out (from everywhere, unfortunately) at the moment. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Creating Histories – Part 2
Last week in my first post tackling the subject of creating histories for an RPG world I discussed relatively “meta” and experimental concepts. This week I’d like to get down to some specifics and hopefully address the concept a bit more directly. The exact question/suggestion that inspired this topic was worded as, “In my homebrew, creating histories in specific territories is a challenge – particularly linking them to the whole world.”
While last week I talked about letting your players help design your game’s/territory’s history and using your previous campaigns to build history, but today I’m going to discuss some ideas about creating histories for a new game world without relying on players to help you out.
Don’t Worry About Creating Less History
For a little bit of guidance, I asked Dave (the Game, my first DM, most likely the biggest influence on me as a DM) what advice he would give on this topic. His answer was, “Don’t build too much in advance, build it during play based on the needs of the story and the characters.” For me this advice is spot on because one of the biggest road blocks a DM can hit when planning a campaign is feeling like they are under-planning and that they are not prepared enough for their own game. There is no rule that says you have to have ‘X’ amount of back story prepared for a game or that you must have fully fleshed out histories for every single city and region that is on your map.
Don’t let getting stumped on creating a history for your game stop you from planning for the ‘present’ that the players are going to experience. If you feel like you’re starting an adventure without enough history of your game world planned, then the odds are you’re doing it right. This advice is the root behind my suggestion in the first post for letting your players help you design the backstory of your game. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Creating Histories – Part 1
World building can be one of the most intimidating tasks for DMs and GMs when it comes to running their own RPG campaign. No matter how much advice you read or receive from your friends, creating a world of your own or modifying someone else’s world can still feel incredibly daunting even for people who are experienced at running their own games.
In my last solicitation for questions and suggestions to discuss in this series on twitter, clampclontoller said this, “In my homebrew, creating histories in specific territories is a challenge – particularly linking them to the whole world.“ Since this is an issue that I’ve struggled with many times myself, it feels like a good topic worth exploring here!
It Gets Easier with Time
The first thing I would like to mention with regards to developing a history for your game world is that it gets easier. There are two sides to this statement, the first is that you will inevitably get better at developing history as you plan and run your game and learn what your regular players react to or ignore out of the history that you created. The second, and for me it was quite mind blowing when I first realized it, is that as you run and play in your game world you and the players are creating the history. The more you play, the more past there is to explore moving forward in the game.
For me this happened entirely by accident. I ran my first two D&D campaigns in college and while they took place in entirely separate areas with different stories and characters, in the back of my mind I had placed both games on the same campaign map but separated by a large sea. As the second game progressed, a handful of similar elements began to creep into the game that the same players never even noticed that tied both games together. Fast forward to six years later when Dave and I began planning our 4th Edition D&D campaigns where we discussed Dave’s dislike for large scale world building and I offered up my college game world for him and I to both run in. Dave took the game world shortly after where I’d left it off and developed it as he saw fit, and I took my game world hundreds of years in the future (after Dave’s as yet unplayed campaign, using a mysterious gap in history to account for it) and ran with it. [Read the rest of this article]
Boardgaming Resurgence
Just over a year ago our group of friends was heavily into the deck building game Dominion. It was relatively new but had been out long enough to have three quick expansions and we really couldn’t get enough of it. Some days we would play game after game for hours on end. As should be expected, we eventually burned out from that pace. After that I found myself not playing tabletop board/card games much for the next several months with the exception of finally playing Race for the Galaxy for the first time and playing Castle Ravenloft many times after its release. Thankfully, over the last two months I have noticed an extreme increase in the amount of board games that my friends and I have been playing and I want to share a few of the stand out games we’ve been enjoying.
My Two Favorites
7 Wonders was a game that I fell in love with the very first time I set eyes on it. First off I’ve taken numerous ancient history classes related to architecture and so the flavor of the game including the Colossus of Rhodes and the Mausoleum of Halikarnassus immediately hooked me. Beyond that I really enjoy the game because it uses a card drafting mechanic but avoids many of the common deck building mechanics that have become incredibly popular since Dominion took off. Don’t take that to mean 7 Wonders is a deck building game, it is actually a game where you draft a collect cards in front of you around the wonder you’re playing as.
Depending on which structure/nation you’ve chosen you have different advancements you can choose from that allow you to excel at some of the specific focuses in the game. For instance, the Colossus of Rhodes can amass more military than other wonders and at a quicker pace, and as it was the first wonder I played the game with it was a tactic I could quickly latch on to and make good use of. If you haven’t tried this game yet and you enjoy tabletop card games (or board games with card-based mechanics) it is without a doubt my top recommendation. Another great advantage is that the game easily handles up to 7 players in one game and the play time is almost always between 30 and 45 minutes. [Read the rest of this article]
The Architect DM: Traps, Hazards, & Terrain
Once again I solicited on my twitter account (@Bartoneus) asking what aspects of location design in RPGs people have problems with, and I’d like to thank everyone that responded this afternoon. I will be addressing many of the topics you guys asked about in the future, but for today’s post I chose DigitalDraco’s comment: “I always want to include more interesting terrain effects, hazards & the like but they tend to seem added-on.” This topic immediately struck me as one that I’ve struggled with in the past and one that I believe many other people have had issues with as well.
The great thing about traps, hazards, and terrain effects are that they can be direct personifications of the environment that metaphorically (and sometimes quite literally) bring the world around your characters to life. First the best idea is to clarify some definitions that I feel are pretty widely acknowledged. Traps are typically intentionally malicious effects that were orchestrated by a foreign will or entity for a specific purpose. Hazards and terrain are generally considered to be natural but they can just as easily cross over into the realm of traps in the same way that traps can cause hazards and changes in terrain. Focusing on and playing up this potential inter-relationship of traps and hazards/terrain is my first recommendation for creating interesting locations that include these elements.
Connectivity Breeds Realism
What I mean by the above title is that tying elements of your design together can justify all of those elements even when they relate to very little beyond themselves. This is a direct suggestion focusing on the last part of DigitalDraco’s statement, “but they tend to seem added-on“. If you have added one element to a location and it seems added-on, try adding another element that relates directly to the first and you might find that instead of both of them feeling added-on, they start to create a new definition of the location you’re designing. I also recommend treating the main topics of this post as a set of guidelines when adding elements into encounters, if the first thing you’ve added is clearly a trap, the secondary element you add will probably fit better if it is a hazard or a terrain effect. If you’ve added a hazard, the secondary element may work best as a trap or a hazard. [Read the rest of this article]
Unboxing – The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond Boxed Set
We were extremely fortunate to get an early copy of the upcoming D&D boxed set called The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond to unbox and show you all today. It comes packaged in a thin box the same size as the Red Box starter set and comes with a very sturdy 127 page paperback Campaign Guide, a 31 page Encounter Book, two sheets of cardboard tokens, one poster with a map of gloomwrought on one side and an encounter map on the other, and a Despair deck of 30 cards.
The Books
The first thing that I noticed within the boxed set is the size of the Campaign Guide. Though it is a paperback (the cover is a very nice quality card stock) at 127 pages it is only 30 pages short of the smaller hardcover books that Wizards of the Coast has put out for 4th Edition (Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide & Eberron Player’s Guide for example). Inside of the book you get the first 12 pages dedicated to running and playing D&D in the setting of the realm of the dead, including some ideas for adventures to have there and the new rules for the included Despair Deck. Following that you get 50 pages all about the so called “City of Midnight”, Gloomwrought, including pretty much all that you could want when running a game that involves the city. This part of the book includes the various factions within the city, in depth descriptions of the various quarters and districts that make it up, and picture references to the larger city map that is included in the box set.
Next the book presents us with 30 pages on the areas of the Shadowfell around Gloomwrought, titled “Beyond the Walls”, which includes places such as the Oblivion Bog, Dead Man’s Cross, and the Darkreach Mountains. Perhaps most importantly there is a section detailing the realm of Letherna where the most powerful entity of the Shadowfell, the Raven Queen, dwells and attracts the souls of the dead. I was very happy with every section of the book that I read, the content and writing reminds me of the Plane Above and Plane Below books which are some of my favorites since the release of 4th Edition and will be my go-to books for campaign and adventure planning for years to come. I am extremely pleased with a book of this caliber about the Shadowfell, especially in the light of the Ravenloft setting being shelved, because this book provides me with a lot content along the same lines as what I would expect from Ravenloft (but it just FEELS different when it has the word Ravenloft on the cover). [Read the rest of this article]
Review: Nightfall (Card Game)
Nightfall is a new deck-building card game from Alderac Entertainment Group that is set in a dark world of vampires and werewolves. The game supports between 2 and 5 players and takes roughly 45 minutes to an hour to play. The basic set for the game comes with over 300 cards that include minions you can recruit into your deck, actions that you can play during your turn and other player’s turn, several types of wound cards representing different types of damage taken (bite, burn, and bleed), and draft cards that are used during the game’s set up.
Gameplay
The game of Nightfall includes several interesting mechanics that create a different style of gameplay from other deck-building games I’ve played. During the set up of the game each player drafts cards (choosing one and passing the rest to the next player) to determine two unique cards that will be available only that player will be able to purchase through the course of the game, and the rest of the cards form common piles that every player can purchase from. In this way players are given a chance to set themselves up with specific advantages, define the style of deck they will build, and determine the cards that will be available to every player for the entire game. [Read the rest of this article]
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