Manaburst Actual Play, Session 3 (Final Session)

ByDankelzahn

On the 16th of December we had what wound up being our last game of Manaburst. It wasn’t intended as such at the time but between holiday scheduling and the fact that the system and/or world wasn’t working for most of the players we recently decided to call the game.The session it self did answer a small number of questions but also raised many more. It’s revealed all of the constructs around the palace were apparently going through the motions of their jobs but not doing any real work – chefs cutting at empty cutting boards or servants carrying empty trays around. After the guards are dealt with the servant the group was following leads us to what appear to be the royal apartments. In four separate suits were what appeared to be the royal family, each tucked into their beds but clearly long dead.

A more thorough investigation followed and turned up some minor clues but nothing definitive. However we did eventually find the throne room and the king- and queen-bots located there. After talking to them (they were the first constructs to actually speak to us other than Failure) Failure tried to machine meld with the king and found what appeared to be a prison for the king’s consciousness, soul, or something of the like. He tried to break down the prison to free the king but that only succeeded in destroying the construct and suddenly all of the constructs turned aggressive.

We made a fighting retreat through a hidden passage in the throne room and escaped through the sewers, eventually making it out of the palace grounds. The game was called with the intent to pick back up heading to one of the nearby towns we found out about while investigating, though that won’t happen now.

It was an unsatisfying conclusion to the campaign, but moving on was probably a good idea. The system didn’t gel right for most of the players and some of them felt the setting was a little to over the top. But Manaburst was meant as an experiment to see how well the Everway-style worked for us and we found out it didn’t. It was just too ambiguous for us and strayed a bit too far from traditional task resolution systems. But now we know and can tailor future games around that.

2007: A Blarg Odyssey

ByDankelzahn

Another year has come and gone and the blog has stuck around – a feat that comes somewhat as a surprise to me. I’m more than a bit of a dabbler and tend to find new things to do quickly but somehow managed to keep up with posting. Between battle reports, my RPG campaigns, and painting I’ve got more than enough material to talk about. Unfortunately that’s proving to be a double-edged sword.

This year – especially toward the last few months – I’ve found myself committing to more “columns” than I can keep up with. The Ternon Crag Dispatch was originally intended to run weekly with our campaign night at the local gaming store. I’ve still been pretty good about getting out a monthly Painting WIP post, but I haven’t been able to do any other painting articles lately. There’s also the threads on my recent rpg campaigns, but doing one of those after every session has been taxing. And finally although it’s not part of this blog I’ve been neglecting Diminutive Denizens in favor of writing things here.

Last month I decided to try to re-work my schedule a bit to open it up. First thing is that I’m going to to is drop to a RPG session write-up after every 2 sessions or so. Since we’re gaming about every other week this means once a month. That combined with my monthly Painting WIP posts puts me at about 2 posts per month. That should leave me time to do the occasional write up on RPG theory or miniature painting techniques as well as get back to battle reports. We’ll just have to wait and see if practice matches up with theory…

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Miniature Throughput for the Holidays

ByDankelzahn
Fell Caller
Trollkin Fell Caller

Part of what I’ve been working on the past couple months have been miniatures for other people, so I couldn’t post progress at the end of November without giving away what I was working on. But now that the holidays are past I can actually talk about what I’ve been painting again.

November was about as bad as expected for miniature throughput. I picked up a full unit of Idrian Skirmishers and am glad I made that decision. I’ve played the a couple of times with Kreoss and once with the Testament of Menoth now and have been happy with them together – Protection of Menoth makes them very survivable and Pathfinder, Coordination, and Intercept give them a nice tactical flexibility. I want to paint these guys but have a lot on my plate at the moment. And since their UA has just been announced I’ll likely postpone the models until I can do the UA along with them.

Nephilim Soldier
Nephilim Soldier

I also went to an event at Fantasy Books and Games over in Illinois in November and won some store credit. Unfortunately they didn’t have a lot of stock in and I don’t go out there often enough to warrant saving it so I wound up buying Bosun Grogspar. I’m not sure how often I’ll use him but at least he should be fun to paint up.

On the upside I was finally able to get a handful of miniatures done for the month. I finished up my Nephilim Soldier and Kell Bailoch for myself as well as a Totem Hunter and a Reinholdt model I’ll be handing off to their respective owners. ย  But that still left me 7 models in the hole for the month – and an even dozen in the hole cumulatively – but what are you going to do?

Browncoat Kell
Browncoat Kell

When December rolled around, things looked promising for my throughput. The only model that came out that I wanted to pick up was a Raek, which meant I had a chance to get ahead. I started the month finishing a couple more gift miniatures – Morvahna and a Fell Caller – then decided to try and paint my Reindeer. It took right up through the 31st but I was finally able to complete all 5 of my Raptors, putting me up 6 models for the month and cutting my running deficit in half.

Morvahna
Morvahna

Looking forward I’m going to try to do my Blighted Legionnaires in January, as well as one or two more individual models if I get time. I really need to get the unit done – I’m already looking at picking up Lady Aiyana & Master Holt and a box of Incubi later in the month. I have some assembly that I want to get done as well. My Raek is still in its blister and I need to get the Neren the Scary I mentioned being asked to do a couple months ago based and primed so I can start on that as well.

WIP shots have been hard to come by lately – this update just has some finished shots. I haven’t had time to stop and take pictures as I paint and all of my current WIPs have either not had any progress made on them since last posting (Alahel) or are completed and will be up on my web site soon. I did get a mini tripod for my camera for Christmas so I’ll try and make more of an effort to take WIP pictures in January.

The Unforeseen Consequences of Rock

ByDankelzahn

Well, since Luke and Chad have both already mentioned something about it (granted Luke’s was a previous jam session) I guess I should go ahead and throw down as well. Last night was the world debut of Unforeseen Consequences, who rocked out in Stockholm before touring around Europe for a few hours. Baby-faced front man Mic Stabbington provided the ear-splitting vocals. Saultydog laid down the rhythm and Fuente provided the bass grove while Nathan Implosio (damn you character limits!) kept time with his furious drumming of fury.

Unfortunately the tour was cut short before it reached international fame when Mic’s blaring rendition of Sabotage kept his wife from going to sleep upstairs.

WHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!! *cough* *wheeze*

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Ternon Crag Dispatch, Issue 1

ByDankelzahn

Death Soars over the Marches!

Until recently the rumors of miners spotting reptilian creatures flying overhead have been dismissed as conjecture, but now we know them to be fact. These creatures have been seen en masse north of the Crag, around the Scarleforth Lake and along the Hawksmire River.

We at the Dispatch doubt the rumors that these creatures are in fact dragons. Everyone knows that dragons are massive creatures with wingspans that would block out the sun. However even though the creatures seen have appeared much smaller in size, what they lack in size they make up for in quantity and destruction.

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Return to the Bloodstone Marches

ByDankelzahn

Call to Arms: Bloodstone Marches MapStarting December 19th a dozen of the local Hordes players, myself included, will be starting up another Call to Arms campaign set in the Bloodstone Marches at one of the local gaming stores. Saultydog and Prorpger will also be joining in on this one, and that combined with Manaburst may wind up meaning we don’t get back to our initial campaign. We’ll have to wait and see if we get a chance to finish it up some time in the future.

As for the new campaign, we learned some lessons based on how the first attempt went and have made a couple minor rule tweaks to try and help even things out a bit. These changes should help us finish the campaign before the first tour of the 2008 Call to Arms league starts while while also combating the “snowball effect” that can help one person run away with the lead. So with the following changes, the Legion of Everblight prepares to conquerer the Bloodstone Marches. ๐Ÿ™‚

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Manaburst Actual Play, Session 2

ByDankelzahn

Session Date: 12/02/2007
Gamemaster: Prorpger

First, a few notes. My fiancee wound up coming down with a migraine on game night so we did a minor ret-con. Instead of NPCing her character, we just decided that she hadn’t appeared on the weird sphere with the rest of us. Also Luke, who directed the rock opera known as Renegade Horizon, was able to sit in for a session so he and Chad came up with a character concept real quick ahead of time. Presto change-o, start session 2.

* * * * *

After the initial shock passes the players all head in different directions and when they meet on the far side of the sphere a few minutes later confirm that it was in fact as small as they had initially though. However on the far side they do find an odd mechanical device, completely out of place in this hand-drawn world.

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Foodmachine St. Louis, 2007

ByDankelzahn

Creamed CornLast year one our local Privateer Press Pressgangers and his friend in Indianapolis got together and devised a competition between our two cities to collect canned goods for our local food pantries, with the city donating the most cans per player to take ownership of the Harvestthrall Trophy.

This event, dubbed “Foodmachine,” featured interesting twists on the typical Warmachine rules to help encouraging food donation – in addition to having the entry fee replaced with a required can donation by donating additional cans during a match a player could have a number of effects on the game such as generating extra Focus points and re-rolling his or his opponent’s dice.

After the success of the event Privateer Press provided coverage of that event in No Quarter Magazine and promote the second year of the event nationally. In 2007 the Foodmachine event, organized on the Harvestthrall web site, featured nearly fifty competing local communities across the globe.

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Manaburst Actual Play, Session 1

ByDankelzahn

Session Date: 11/18/2007
Gamemaster: Proprger

On Sunday, November 18th, we had our second session of Manaburst. I’ve decided to split up the commentary and actual play content into separate posts. This will be the first Actual Play post of the campaign.

The game opened with Feral arriving in the city of Frostmourn – the sphere’s namesake – on a wagon she had hitched a ride on. Unlike the other settlements in the sphere which barely qualified as villages Frostmourn itself was a large walled city far larger than any other she had been to. After being dropped off a the gate Feral began exploring the city in search of the caravan heading off-world she was supposed to join.

As Feral wandered through the city, the world froze around her. The crowded streets were suddenly still and even the birds above had paused mid-flight. Although she recognized the onset of one of her prophetic visions, Feral was surprised with the speed at which this one had come on. As the color quickly drained from the world she unconsciously held her breath as she waited to see what her vision would show her.

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Manaburst, the RPG

ByDankelzahn

Ever since I read The Long Road Home, an Everway Actual Play thread over on rpg.net, I’ve been interested in the Everway setting. There’s something about adventuring in the setting – jumping from fantastic local to fantastic local – that appeals to me. I think it’s because I tend to take a visual approach to gaming; I find the idea of hopping from floating island to floating island across an endless sky then traveling to a volcanic landscape to dodge lava bursts fascinating.

In the past my problem with Everway was twofold. One was getting a hold of the Everway rulebook, long out of print. The second was training myself to be able to do task resolution based on the draw of a fate deck. That seems contradictory based on the visual way I tend to think, but my problem is that a picture can be taken so many different ways that picking one seems difficult to me. That also felt too arbitrary to me. “This card means success because I say it does” just doesn’t feel right.

I had pretty much realized I wouldn’t get a chance to play Everway, then I found Vi et Armis.

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