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Author Topic: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas  (Read 3005 times)

Offline Red Kop

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 53
Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« on: August 19, 2018, 10:40:07 PM »
Hi guys,

Thought I would ask some advice on here.

Each year my gaming group try to have a Christmas weekend of gaming, with a large special themed game set out for a fair few players.

This year we have decided to play Frostgrave, but I didn't want it to be a simple "get the treasure off the table" game - I want to come up with something a little different but wont stretch or break the rules.

My early thoughts are for people to come into the day with a newly created warband, play a couple of small games in which they can level up their wizards, improve their warbands, get some sweet gear and then finish up the day with a bigger game involving all the players.

We are expecting to have around 8-9 players on the day.

I'd like to make up two small scenarios which can cope with up to 4 players a game (although ideally 2-3 players) followed up by a large game which can involve everybody.

My initial thought is to make Santa the big bad for the end game - with defeating him being the way to win the final game. However I also want the results of the smaller games to have some bearing in terms of the bigger game.

I was wondering if anybody could offer some suggestions or ideas for scenarios that sound like they fit the theme and any house rules or suggestions which would make a large game of Frostgrave (8+ players) work well?

Thanks all.

RK


Offline Pendrake

  • Librarian
  • Posts: 150
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #1 on: August 20, 2018, 03:08:36 AM »
Reaper Minis makes snow goons that could be useful.

How about Santa Claus as the random flyover element that drops presents? (Instead of being the BBG.) An Alternative BBG could be an abominable snowman (but not a big Yeti creature, instead a huge Ice Golem borrowing rules from constructs)

Presents become treasure objective markers. Some of them can turn out to be lumps of coal once opened.

In the final game Santa could also drop ‘Elves’ (counts as another apprentice?) or ‘Reindeer’ (Rangifers) which could help or hinder warbands.
Pendrake

Offline giles the zog

  • Scientist
  • Posts: 400
    • The Lost City of Carcosa
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #2 on: August 20, 2018, 08:16:19 AM »
Copplestone did a pack of Santa and helper, and evil snowmen.
They could be a trigger for a Xmas themed scenario.

Come to think of it I should also be thinking about a similar set up.
Wandering stars, for whom is reserved, the blackness, the darkness forever.

https://thelostcityofcarcosa.com

Offline LiamFrostfang

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 670
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #3 on: August 20, 2018, 08:43:25 AM »
 8) santa with elves an rangifiers  AND the ice golems...yall are on to sumfin na!!!!

Offline CPalmer

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Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2018, 01:40:27 PM »
We did a Christmas Frostgrave games last year for our December Campaign session.

Here are a couple links you might find useful:

Here's my Santa themed warband:  http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2016/06/santa-themed-enchanter-warband-for.html

Here's the Christmas game we did last year: http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2017/12/frostgrave-campaign-17-game-12-red-sled.html

Here's some "A Christmas Story" themed treasures I did: http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2017/11/a-group-of-christmas-story-themed.html

This year for our December Ghost Archipelago game I'm thinking of doing a "Christmas Island" theme game with Jimmy Buffet themed treasures.  8)
"I have wrought my simple plan,
if I give one hour's joy,
to the boy who's half a man,
or the man who's half a boy!"
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Offline Brandlin

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 851
    • Brandlin
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2018, 02:14:27 PM »
I think I would play a number of "regular" games with 2-3 players each to get their warbands levelled up and some 'gear' as you suggest. Make each of the games christmas themed with figures etc. and each of the 'treasures' being a wrapped christmas present. Put in more treasures than usual.

Tell the players that in these games there are more treasures than usual because they are finding things presents that were stolen from santa by a naughty elf and thrown from his sleigh when the elf used it as a get away vehicle. Make sure you throw in plenty of 'random' encounters with 'naughty elves' that are trying to recover the treasures too!

Then bring all the players together in one final game. Tell them they have to work together in the teams they were competing with in the earlier games. (so if players A and B played against each other in the earlier games, they now have to play together as Team AB agaisnt teams CD and EF etc). This way all the teams should start the final game with roughly the same number of treasures, even though each player may have a differing amount.

The objective is now to start at the edges of the board with all the treasures they collected earlier, and race to santa's sleigh (an objective in the middle of the board) to give santa back his treasures/gifts.

Tell them that whichever team places the most treasures in santa's sleigh will go to the top of his 'nice list' and be rewarded by santa with an extra special treasure. And whoever hands back the lowest number of treasures will be at the bottom of his 'naughty list' and will have all their treasures taken away. Any player handing in a treasure will also receive say 25 xp!

The competitive dynamic should mean that teams start to play against other teams. Santa is only concerned about who gives him a treasure, so stealing a treasure from another team to hand over becomes a viable strategy. And alliances between teams should come into play and be encouraged.

Likewise there should be tension within each team as some players will have more treasures than others and they will get pressure to hand over more treasures. You might even see teams break up as they double cross each other.

You should make it clear that santa has no idea how many treasures were stolen or recovered in the earlier games. So players need to make a judgement based on how many treasures they think they should hand over to get a reward and how many they should try to keep (after all these treasures are useful warband gear!).

You should make the board bigger to accomodate the number of players and make getting to the centre a little more than a 2 turn dash to the middle. I would also make santa's reward somehting very well worth getting (judge this based on your players)

I think i would also add quite a number of random ('naughty elf') creatures to help the mayhem along by still stealing the treasures. If they kill a soldier carrying a treasure the elf will destroy the treasure on its next action. Elves can also attack santa's sleigh and destroy treasures already handed over so players would need to protect the sleigh if they have handed in treasures, but may chose to side with a creature to attack the sleigh if they are doing badly.

If you wanted to really complicate things you could have all santa's reindeer wandering around that also need to be herded back and attached to the sleigh and protected at all costs. Each reindeer returned would give extra xp and count as two treasures ... but the naughty elves can attack and kill reindeer too.



I enjoy turning the tables and getting players to think about who is on who's side and what strategies they might have throughout a game with some simple tweaks to the objectives.... It can turn a well known and understood game into a completely different and memorable experience


Hope all that helps.



« Last Edit: August 20, 2018, 02:29:07 PM by Brandlin »

Offline Bloggard

  • Scatterbrained Genius
  • Posts: 3458
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #6 on: August 20, 2018, 02:22:59 PM »
I could see something happening with the smaller (wooden?) Christmas baubles and magicians up to no good ...

Offline Brandlin

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 851
    • Brandlin
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2018, 02:39:56 PM »
... and any house rules or suggestions which would make a large game of Frostgrave (8+ players) work well?

I've run a few larger games (though not frostgrave) and the three necessities are ...
1. Pace
2. Organisation
3. Communication

Pace - in an 2 player game you are inactive around 1/2 the time. (less really because you might be in combat even though you are not the active player). but in an 8 player game you are inactive 7/8ths of the time. You need to keep the game moving along and not allowing slow play from some to cause boredom or disaffection in others. Keep the mood light and fast paced.

Organisation - keeping track of who activates next and which part of the turn you are in helps keep people engaged. Consider making large turn markers and maybe a magnetic board that you can place player markers on to show activation sequences. Things that are simple to remember with 2 players become easily confused and misremembered when you have 8.  If you use something like the scenario I suggested above I would also have a running scoreboard on a white board that a Gm can show the current scores at a glance - that way it is easy for players to see who is 'winning' and whether they want to form new allegiances, double cross and change sides etc.

Communication - encourage players to talk to each other, create a game dynamic where talking to and planning how to gang up on each other (or the common enemy) is as much a part of the fun as dice rolling or figure moving. That way the periods of "inactivity" (see Pace above) are filled with meaningful engagement with the game rathe than simply 'waiting your turn'.


Offline tyrionhalfman

  • Mad Scientist
  • Posts: 994
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2018, 08:05:13 PM »
How about Santa as the Lich Lord, with his Elves as Cultists. The warbands could be raiding the North Pole to steal his ‘treasures’.

Offline Jimmyg

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 59
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2018, 09:25:43 PM »
We did a Christmas game last year. Random monsters were all elves or reindeer with Santa's grotto in the centre.
Warbands had to collect a door key to get into the grotto and inside they would find a number of treasure tokens and a giant Santa sack. On opening the sack a d20 was rolled and results as follows.
1-5 = 100gc
6-10= 100gc + 50xp
11-15 = 250gc and a real Chocolate Santa to eat
16 - 18 = a reindeer fart that makes the player character sick and he immediately leaves the board but can rejoin warband unharmed in next game
19 - 20 = character is sucked into the sack and never seen again.

The grotto is guarded by killer Rudolfs one on each corner that attack as soon as a character gets within 2" .

When first player opens the grotto door they get a chocolate Santa but Santa claws appears.
All players roll a d20 lowest score gets to place Santa claws anywhere within 6 inches of the groto but no closer than 3 inches of any character.

When players get the key they also get a chocolate santa
And when players pick up treasure outside of the groto they get a chocolate coin as well as the normal treasure rules applying.

If anyone kills Santa claws they get a selection box and 50gc +50xp

Hope that helps get your imagination flowing.

Offline Pendrake

  • Librarian
  • Posts: 150
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2018, 03:37:50 AM »
I wonder if there is a way to substitute some of the standard spells with some things with more ...holiday feeling... (Unbeknownst to the players; they cast... they learn...). All this supported by custom built spell markers where possible:

Wizard Casts..............Wizard Gets
Wall of Fog ............... Wall of Tinsel
Force Bolt ................ ? ?
Wall of Fire .............. Burning Yule Log


Please @everyone feel free ^ to revise and extend the list if you can think of more ideas.

Offline Weezbeez37

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 75
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2018, 04:26:29 AM »
This brings up some nostalgia for me cause last December another member from our lovely Lead Adventure Forum here @Suber started a Topic: Never too late to start a Frostgrave warband (or two), in which he built a beautiful Santa Klaus warband and an opposing warband featuring the Grinch with his Gnolls and a wonderful background tale to set the tone for the Story of Christmas.

I chimed in with an idea for a mini 3 part campaign where the evil wizard (Jack Frost) along with his captain/apprentice (The Grinch) and Gnoll minions decided to steal away all of the presents from ol' Klaus and robbing Christmas from the rest of the world.

You can read more about it on his thread as well as viewing all the pretty pictures but a few things I would like to elaborate on for the campaign.

Part 1: I had envisioned this part to be similar to the Thaw of the Lich Lord Campaign scenario 7 Lair of the Ghoul King except instead of the Ghoul King it should be the Lich Lord (Jack Frost) along with the Grinch and his Gnoll minions.

Part 2: This part of the campaign was ment to follow the Into the Breeding Pits, Dungeon setup (my thoughts were to it being similar to the Moving Maze scenario but that's because I have a bunch of dungeon terrain but if you don't have dungeon terrain feel free to run the scenario how you wish with the terrain that you have)

Part 3: this was the most straight forward scenario and feel free to run it however you want.

Anywho there's my ideas for your Frostgrave Christmas Bash. I look forward to hearing what you will do and as a must take many pictures.

Hopefully this helps
Weez
« Last Edit: August 21, 2018, 04:33:17 AM by Weezbeez37 »

Offline Red Kop

  • Bookworm
  • Posts: 53
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #12 on: August 21, 2018, 09:49:31 AM »
Thanks for all the replies guys,

Plenty of ideas to take on board.

We'd obviously be looking to run it around Christmas but we are wanting to get the ball rolling on some ideas to give the organisers some time to play test and iron out any kinks in the scenarios that we come up.

We've played some 4 player games of Frostgrave in the past and the waiting time for that has been too long on occasion so I think that would be the big thing to try and minimalise in the large game at the end.

Some great ideas in regards to treasures and I'm liking the team game suggestion by Brandlin.

CPalmer: I know your gaming group has set the standard for large multiplayer games so I'll definately be looking through your blog for some ideas.

Please keep the suggestions coming - I appreciate all your ideas.


Offline CPalmer

  • Scientist
  • Posts: 332
  • Rules Author, Dealer In Antiquities, Mad Scientist
    • My Blog: One More Gaming Project
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2018, 03:39:23 PM »
Thanks for all the replies guys,

CPalmer: I know your gaming group has set the standard for large multiplayer games so I'll definately be looking through your blog for some ideas.

Thank you!   

Enjoy browsing all you want.  :)   And I'll be happy to answer any specific questions that may arise.   

    When playing games with a lot of players, we use a bag containing numbered poker chips for order of treasure placement, entry location choosing, and initiative.  The chips are numbered equalling the number of players, and the bag is passed around with everyone drawing a chip to determine activation order.   Whoever went last on the current turn gets to draw first for the next turn.   For spells that help initiative, we let the player draw two chips and keep whichever one they want, dropping the spare back into the bag.
   We also try to keep as many people activating as possible.  If player one is at one end of the table, and player 2 is at the other end, there's no reason they both can't do their wizard phase, etc. at the same time.   Even players sitting close to each other can sometime co-activate if they just agree beforehand that neither is going to mess with the other. It's often easy to tell when this will work and when it won't depending on how the game is flowing. 

Offline Ultravanillasmurf

  • Galactic Brain
  • Posts: 9305
    • Ultravanillasmurf
Re: Help needed with some Christmasy Frostgrave ideas
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2018, 07:28:28 AM »
Copplestone did a pack of Santa and helper, and evil snowmen.
Snowmen