Otherworld goodies.

OK I'll admit, this is a bit of a showing off post but look what I picked up from round the corner at Otherworld HQ today:

First two adventurers boxed sets and about 2/3rds of the stretch goal goodies.

Inside one of the boxed sets.

So far my favorite extra! Sad I know but I love Familiars. These are tiny.

Perhaps I'll do a bit of a review in  the coming days.

Adventure awaits: Card driven Dungeoneering!

Another little break from all things Oldhammer, today I’d like to share some Old School dungeoneering instead. Some time ago I made my mind up to develop a card driven system for solo/GM-less dungeon bashing. What I came up with was a system of cards, one pack to describe rooms and corridors, one pack to drive events and another to drive encounters. Treasure to be added later.

Each room or corridor section explored triggers the draw of a dungeon card. This gives an interesting description of the area and any contents. It also goes on to indicate if something more is happening as an event, encounter or both could be triggered by the room card.

Adventure cards are only drawn when a dungeon card indicates to do so. They contain descriptions of random events such as traps, weird sightings, sounds and smells, dungeon furniture, loot and plunder or NPC encounters. They may even trigger further monster encounters.

Monster cards are triggered by either Dungeon or Adventure cards each card representing a random number of monsters of a given level.

A little on the design philosophy.

By removing events from the rooms they occur in a greater variety of rooms can occur, not every guard room will now look the same and thanks to the monster cards the guards you find there will vary as much as your monster cards. I really wanted to include the heady unpredictability of old school dungeons so some event cards include random tables making the variety of adventures obtainable even greater.

Some of the cards interact for example a randomly encountered sound may be more meaningful later on if a particular room is reached when certain things will occur only if the sound has been heard. Or perhaps an NPC will be very interested in items found or encounters experiences already or in the future. I have included enough challenges of different sorts to ensure thieves, magicians, fighters and clerics will all be useful if not necessary in your adventure party. Currently the cards exist as a system agnostic version and a Labyrinth Lord/Osric/ADnD version with illustrations pulled off the web. If there is enough interest from people I’ll clean them up put on good legal Illustrations on and post them here for all to use.

To give you an idea what sort of adventure I’ve been having with the cards I present my first little venture into the Chaos of Caverns:

The background art is by William McAusland.

The Battle of Plank Street, a GMs perspective. and a little tactical lesson from history.

It was an utter pleasure to host a battle between two brilliant Oldhammerers on Friday night. That we did it over the internet on our computers hardly seamed to matter, that the other two were typing and only I was talking  was, odd, but worked.

Some of the action.

I have to say it was great, I live in a different town to my gaming mates, have two kids, a very busy wife, well you all know the story, most of you are living it too. not to mention when I do see my gaming mates they ain't all over 3rd ed.  I've been looking for some time for a way to play my fellow oldhammerers, Gaj and Dreamfish are running quite nicely with their turn based system. But I'm afraid I have no patience, I need immediate results to keep my attention.

close up of above to show the detail.

I've checked out many virtual table tops but never found one that fitted the bill, until an ad in Gygax magazine sent me to roll-20.

Long story short it works and we had a blast, Thantsants and Warlord Paul have done a great job writing up the story I actually don't feel I need to. (I'll do one any way with close ups of the fronts of many of the staring minis..) I think it is reasonably fair to say this is the first real time battle between us blogging oldhamerers.



However in this post I'd like to look at some of the finer points of what we call TAKTIKS. I'm reasonably sure Thantsants mentioned he recently (past few years) got back into the hobby and my guess is he hasn't played anywhere near as many games as Warlord Paul. Warlord Paul I think is a bit of a ringer, he regularly goes to club (this may stop once BOJ appears WP!) and I think he knows his military history.

Lets look at this set up before the first turn of the battle of plank street. WP plays the orcs at the top, Thants the dwarves at the bottom.

The flanks of WPs army are his strongest units, yep even that unit of goblin spears due to the champion. His center is weak though not to a fault. He also set up first. Thantsants who admitted to never having played dwarves set up with his missiles on the hill. Not a bad place, but failed to anchor the flank of his line against the wolf boys. The main body of his troops was arrayed to fight the center, not the most important threat, the orc boys on the left most hill. Rookie mistakes I'd say and  the magic amulet played no part in that.

Now ignoring how the battle eventually fought who can tell me what other warlord on what other distant battle field arrayed his troops thus against more disciplined and better equipped foes? (WP no chipping in).

 The toughness and Ld of the dwarves may win out yet though.

Anyway thanks for a great game guys, look forward to finishing it, exploring the region of
Axwoon and Scabbie Rump further and hopefully playing more Oldhammerers at my place.

The field of battle. Virtual Oldhammer fun!

Tonight I'm going to GM what I hope will be the first of many online virtual table top games of Oldhammer at Erny's place. I always found that, although I love club gaming my best experiences were with friends over someones place, that's the feel I hoped to capture with my blog hence the name. I'm really pleased to actually be able to invite people over how ever virtually, shame I can't offer beer and snacks.

Anyway I thought as a bit of fun I'd present the battle ground to you, this is worked up from pdfs and 3d modles and I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. Soon orcs and dwarves will be fighting across this landscape and thats where other oldhammerers come in.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on where this is, why is there a road going through the middle of it? What is the forest on the left? Why are these two forces fighting here? Hopefully soemthing will spark my imagination and we'll have a great story behind this test battle.

The 4 year old general.

After Arthur's exploits playing Goblin Quest I thought now was the time to introduce him to the fun of mass combat.  It just so happens I have been working on a simple system for us to enjoy together. I have long thought the way to get young minds really interested is to simplify the hard bit, the rolling dice and looking up results on tables. No good to just be told the result or struggle to work it out yourself it should be obvious from the dice roll even to a four year old.

To that end I ordered up a bunch of blank dice to add my own symbols to. Each dice represents one warrior and he can with each throw of the dice, defend successfully, attack successfully, both or neither. The chances for each of these outcomes is dependent on the colour dice you use. It allows attacking, defending, wounding and saving all to occur with one dice roll and comparing the result to your opponents. There are a couple of other symbols in there but they are for advanced rules. More on this another time if there is any interest.

On to the game, Arthur quickly got moving his little figures, measuring, rolling, removing casualties. His own casualties were taken hard but I was probably just as bad at fourteen never mind four. He certainly wanted to finish so, oh just read the battle report..

Oldhammer online?

Just a quick post this morning to show the redone goblin spears and orc boys I’ve added to my set of tokens. Thantsants and Warlord Paul are on board and hopefully this Friday well have the first game of what I hope will be a bit of a break through for my ambitions to play Oldhammer with so many of the wonderful Oldhammerers around the world.

Again, I don’t think I can be too clear about this, I’m using photos of my own miniatures for my own personal use.

Orc boys and Gobbo spears face off against stout Dwarven warriors.

So who wants a game of warhammer?

Lets just say I've figured out a way to get my miniatures into a program on the internet. I can move them around as I like either singularly or in groups as I define myself. I can give control of what ever of my miniatures I like to someone else logged into my game. They can log in and play free of charge and only need to be running firefox or chrome. Actually internet explorer will work with a free download.

It is in real time, we can talk and even see each other. You don't have to leave your house. It is quick and I think simple to use.

There is a tape measure.

There are dice.


Who wants a game?  (Well a test game, there are bound to be teething problems.)