After a gap of about five years, a game of Frostgrave felt like a good idea but it would have to be solo. After making some enquiries here, I thought the 3 scenario campaign Dark Alchemy was worth a try. Settling down to organising the scenery, I realised that I had virtually nothing suitable for Frostgrave. So I just laid out a fantasy-esque table (so basically a dungeon). The main purpose of the scenery, I reasoned, is to restrict lines-of-sight and lots of walls did that. What I failed to do was add lots of obstacles to reduce movement. Therefore, it was a fairly easy, supermarket dash for most of the warband. Consequently it wasn’t a particularly good game and it looked pretty horrible.
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The rather unenspiring table for scenario 1
For what it’s worth, this is how it went:
Scenario 1
The warband consisted of Silmar the Summoner supported by an Archer, a Man-at-Arms (actually a woman) and a Knight. Silmar and his selected followers in this scenario are all High Elves.
Silmar and the Man-at-Arms (MaA) both went right and legged it without incident, picking up two treasures and ending at the right hand of the two potential exit doors. Their only slight hiccup was finding that they were at the wrong door but they were able to dash to the other door unmolested.
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Silmar and MaA leg it, collecting treasure en route
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They arrive at the wrong door very quickly
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But are able to scamper along to the right one without hindrance. Job done
The Archer and the Knight went left but were spotted by the Alchemical Monstrosity (represented here by an old Cthulhu creature) whilst picking up a Treasure.
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They managed to push the monstrosity away but the Knight took damage. They then stopped to collect another Treasure and were nearly at their objective.
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However the Knight, dazzled by the promise of Experience Points, turned back to voluntarily fight the Monstrosity.
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This didn’t go well and the Knight only just managed to survive. He broke free but had to abandon his Treasure and give up on his quest for EP. That ended the scenario. All warband members got through and 3 Treasures were taken. No rats appeared and the lack of rough ground to reduce movement meant it was a breeze for all except the Knight and he only had himself to blame because of his greed for EP.
This was when I decided that the scenery issue had to be addressed and what I have most of is a mixture of pre-war British and near future/post-apocalypse stuff. I had an idea of a city, long buried under sand which then became revealed overnight as a result of some cataclysm. I had it buried under sand so that it would be in near-perfect condition when it was revealed again. By the time it was revealed, millennia after it was covered, many stages of development and retrogression had occurred and the world was back in a classic fantasy era. That was all fine and was an acceptable back story. I mentioned it to Mad Lord Snapcase and Vaggers (Vagabond) and it worked for them, Vaggers in particular embraced the idea (see his topic on this subject).
And then, as I was about to set up the scenery for the second scenario I realised a much less complicated explanation for why a warband of fantasy adventurers was suddenly at large in a post-apocalyptic setting already existed and it involved a piece of scenery I made decades ago and have never found a use for -
The Time Portal
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Doug