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Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Crop Cycle Card Game

Just lately I stopped in at River City Rides, a friends motorcycle store, and i noticed that he was selling a card game on consignment.  The game is called "Crop Cycle".   I thought it looked quite neat.  Not the usual rpg type thing I talk about.  But nonetheless I though I'd pass on the information about it.

Crop cycle was funded thru kickstarter.  Here is the link.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776342422/crop-cycle-2015

Product Description:
Have you ever felt like farming, but weren’t sure if you wanted to experience the stress of unpredictable weather, stiff agricultural competition, and all the other challenges farmer's face? With Crop Cycle: The Game of Competitive Farming you can experience all the fun of farming with none of the drawbacks.
Crop Cycle is a 2-5 player card game that has players navigating through the four seasons as they struggle to plant, protect and harvest their crops for points while preventing their opponents from doing the same. Farming principles merge with accessible and frantic gameplay where fortunes are made and lost at the hands of weather, nature, and competition.
Crop Cycle features artwork from around Convergent Games resident province of Manitoba, with photographs of local agriculture providing the artistic and information basis for this educational and engaging card game. Farming has never been so much fun

Another link regarding the game - http://www.convergentgames.com/games/cropcycle.php




Navigate the seasons in this fast and easy to learn game about farming!


Plant and harvest seasonally appropriate Crops for points. Use Event cards to prevent other players from doing the same. The first to 5 harvest points wins the game!


Whether you have a competitive streak or just enjoy agriculture, you will find something to love in Crop Cycle!






  • 108 Cards
  • Harvest Point Tokens
  • 8 Page Rulebook
  • 2-Piece Game Box

Friday, April 22, 2016

Throw out the pre-planning

Dyson posted this awhile ago.  And it has stuck with me.  The idea of not pre planning is a good thing!
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/the-eastern-shore/

Lately I've been looking at all the Basic Fantasy modules - www.basicfantasy.org and as I stated the next session with the newbs were are probably going to start with "beneath brymassen", which is in the Adventure Anthology.  After that I don't know.  I'm guessing it will be another BF module.  I think what I will do is draw the map like dyson, as the sessions go on.  The only thing I need to fill in is a few specific details like God's, rulers, factions and go from there.  And of course rumours!

So I suppose disregard the previous post.

And I'll keep you posted.

As a side note:  I've been thinking a lot about my giant mega dungeon, and I think what I am going to do is throw out all the maps I drew a few years ago, and start from absolute scratch! Eventually it will be released.  Eventually.  It's funny, working on a big project, it almost depresses you when it takes to much time.  I've often found that with recording album projects that take a long time.  I once worked on a set of records that took two years to complete.  You start to question everything.  What I would like to do, is go back thru what I've written (about 50 pages or so), and pull the best bits as I create the maps.  I know exactly what I did wrong.  I drew all the maps first.  What I think I will do is draw a map, write that section.  And repeat.  The other thing is I believe that I've got a bit better at drawing maps.  I had a random dream the other night that I was actually attempting to draw pictures for it as well.  So I may even start doing that.  I am however no artist, but the idea of doing as much of it by myself as possible appeals to me.  It appeals to the DIY punk ethic.

Right, well its friday!  I hope you are all playing some RPG's this weekend!  May those rolls be 20's and the God's be in your favour.





Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Doing some Character creation this evening.

So since I'll be playing with a host of newbs in a short while I think I'll be doing some character creation this evening.   I've decided the following for the world.

Norse Pantheon, most of the hero's will be followers of Odin.

The first adventure will be located along the coast of Karameiko's, however I doubt I will get to far involved in the actual going's on of Karameikos.  Just use the map at this point and description's of the known world from Isle Of Dread.  Starting point will be a small trading town on the coast called "Autumnshade".

Hopefully we will get to Isle of Dread or Monkey Isle at some point.

All characters will be 2nd level.

I plan use the secondary skills from 2e just for background. Or alternatively the Secondary Skills from BF.

Backgrounds from 5e basic rules.

and trinkets from 5e basic rules.

We will see how it goes!






Sunday, April 10, 2016

Out Of The Abyss - Play Report Session 4?

Not quite sure if we are on session 4 or 5 at this point?  Anyhow, we got our bard back! He was unable to make it to the previous session.  We decided to go and take on a medusa who is living on the outskirts of blingdenstone.  Well first we talked to the ruling gnomish council and let them know about the slim and death in a cavern we found not far from the city.  We basically told them that there was no way we were going to deal with that situation without a army of gnomes and a LOT of gold.

We decided against bringing out NPC helpers with us this time around, so it was the 4 of us and one Ensign Red Shirt Ricky Gnome.  Ricky was actually quite helpful, I think he was basically rolling crits the whole time.

We stumbled into this large cavern, and met up with a fairly large pissed off earth elemental!  And a fight ensues!  Whilst attacking the elemental we also woke up not 1 but 2 gargoyles!  (I have to check the CR on this one, but we are all 4th level here).  After some major heroics from Ravana (our meat basically) and  Tolgrin.  We managed to defeat all 3 of them.  At one point tolgrin jumped off a ledge and did a flying 6d6 punch off a ledge onto the elemental.  Which was quite cool.  Our bard cast a phantasm, and basically toyed with the elemental, trying to get him to fall off the cliff.  Basically a female elemental shaking her thing at him.  Seemed to keep him distracted for awhile.

My cleric, I believe has some reasonable staying power.  He did not suffer any damage whatsoever.

After we almost took down the elemental and the gargoyles, Ravana decided to scout ahead and found a room with a bunch of statues.  Of course it turns out some of them are actual living statues and not just medusa victims.

We got into a fight with them as well, Tolgrin was slamming himself into all of them, and taking major damage.  I looked at the player, and he had a martyr look on his face.  We made a break for it, and Tolgrin threw the "pan of glory" to Ravana, and then died.

Moment of silence.

It appears our DM is a bit pooped out, so we are taking a break from the Abyss and we are going to start playing some Curse Of Strahd, which should be fun.  Neat thing about our group is that we basically have 4 DM's, which is highly unusual.  At some point I will be getting my wife to run a few sessions as well, so that will be a ton of DMs!

We got the Curse of Strahd for Josh's birthday, he was over the top excited as Ravenloft is his fav.

So it appears next session will be new characters and a new DM.  I haven't quite decided what I'll be, but quite possibly another cleric, I quite like them as a player.

We managed to basically spend 4 or so hours fighting.  While it was fun, it got mildly mechanical by the end of the day.  I'm aware that 4th edition used to take quite a long time for fights.  I'm tending to wonder what other's experiences have been with 5th edition and battles?  Do you find it quick? or quicker than 4th?  The few bigger fights I've ran in 5th took a long time.  Longer than any OSR game I've ever run anyways.  I think the last session for Phandelver we spent the whole time fighting some orcs.  (like 2 or so hours).

While I appreciate fighting, just running large battles can be difficult on the brain.

Otherwise, good session, good food, a few laughs.  All good.






Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Political Intrigue

Yes, it's taken me this long to finally start reading Game Of Thrones.  I'm about three quarters of the way thru the first book.  I just finished the part where Ser Gregor may have in fact raided the country side, slaughtering peasants while not wearing any banners.  Basically posing as a random brigand.  Of course the remaining peasants have went to talk to the king, (or in this case the hand of the king, who coincidentally looks a lot like the guy on the left!).  I started thing, DAMN this is an adventure waiting to happen isn't it?  

Let's say we are running Keep On The Borderlands, and there is currently an uneasy true between the Lord of the keep (cultist) and another province to the south of the keep.  What a wonderful way to start out an all out war!  The southern lord sends riders out to raid the countryside, the same thing happens, the peasants come to the lord and state what happened.  The lord of course looks to the PC"s to find out what exactly happened.  Here's where you can throw the twist in.  Maybe the southern lord has a spy within the keep and he knows the going's on of the cultists. He feels now is the time to make a move on the keep.  But in order to do it he must cast suspicion elsewhere.  

This also brings me to another pondering.  Try as I might, I have not found a retro clone copy of Birthright.  From what I gather it was quite cool, but wasn't around for very long.  I tend to wonder why that was?  I remember seeing ad's for it, and thought "hey this looks kinda cool!".  Unfortunately I've never read it.  To find a copy of it nowadays is extremely expensive!  (check this ebay ad).  I did however just find out that it is in fact on drivethrurpg.

Product Description:
A king stands in the hight turret of his castle, squinting at the distant hills. He can just make out the figures of his troops engaging the enemy in battle. As a damp breeze whips at his cloak, he contemplates the war. He has culled the best generals, captains, and troops from his land. His court wizard wields powers that unnerve even the most seasonal warriors. Can the forces he commands hold the enemy at bay? Or will the king awake at dawn to the pounding of battering rams and showers of deadly arrows?

I've often waxed a bit about doing a campaign with mass battles, and the more I think about it, trying to role play political intrigue could also be super cool.  Not to mention Swords & Wizardry has some nice rules for mass combat.

It's something to think about for now.


Monday, April 4, 2016

knock, knock, anyone there?

Hey everybody, I know I've been mildly quiet on the blog latetly.  A lot of "life" has been happening lately, leaving a bit less time for bloggin, rpg stuff in general.  I have a few maps currently on the go that I'm going to try and get to in the next little while.  As well I have a adventure for Crimhuck I've been working on.  It still needs a lot of details however!  The plan is to put it up on the blog in parts as it gets written.

OH and I almost forgot this weekend we are re-convening the adventurers to delve back into the Abyss.  I'm rather excited to be playing my cleric with the tongue that's a bit to big for his mouth!  So there should be a play report come monday.  As usual I'm hoping for a lot of good laughs, and maybe a couple of extra notches carved into my mace.

Reminder... pray to deity, get spells, heal people.