Alrighty, BLAM Eye Candy Question.

[Alfrik]

So read and followed the builds of the marvelous game projects over the last near year on the various BLAM Game builds. Some great photos have been posted but the gamer side of me is wondering if the GMs of these great games might give a short paragraph on how their game went and did it play out as they might have suspected or did the game take a sudden unexpected turn?

[uti long smile]

I ran two two games of 7TV - You Only Live Dice. I've run this a number of times before and seen it go either way - and the very nature of the 7TV system is that play swings dramtically back and forth.

This game is a biggie with both sides contolling about 700 Ratings (points). The Heroes were from Department X (super-spy Dr Hugo Solomon and military man General Gordon accompanied by his Extraordinary Agents) while the villains controlled insidious industialist Daedelus Pleasance and his boiler-suited minions and the sinister forces of S.H.I.V.A led by Doctor Mao and his mechanical madams - the Femdroids. They faced off in a volcanic lair in a battle over a launching rocket awaiting a deadly payload of nerve gas.

In the first game Dr Solomon's Heroic Cast won the flank and moved up quicker than any other I have seen - quickly occupying the villains lair and cell block. However the other cast (General Gordon) ran by Thunderchicken suffered from some terrible dice and lost the best part of his force early on. This left the middle of the table open for Grimm and Andy controlling the villains to deliver the nerve-gas payload to the rocket and really punish the heroes in the process. The Heroes managed to capture the two villainous stars, but this was somewhat overshadowed by the rocket launching with its payload.

In the second game, Colin got General Gordon deployed very quickly with some savvy activations and use of Event cards and quickly commanded the middle of the board. However, Dr Solomon's Cast (this time commanded by JimBibbly) probably spread themselves too thinly, losing the advantage of Solomon's Leader ability which resulted in his naval frogmen getting picked off by Femdroids.

Kev and Andy (sorry - I never did catch their forum names) controlled the villains and where ruthless in despatching their opponents, helped by a great run of initiative. Somehow, despite his quick start Colin's forces got mired in the middle of board and got wittled down, not helped by very cunning use of the Reinforcements Event cards to gain the advantage at a critical point.

Hopefully, fun was had by all, but in both games the villains bagged a win.

Maybe the players can chip in too - if for no more reason than to allow me to put faces to forum names

[revford]

The Return of The Son of The Mummy ran a few times on Friday and once more on Sunday.

We've been playing it for a few weeks here so it wasn't a new scenario, but it's always interesting to see how different players approach the game.

People seemed to mostly enjoy shooting and kicking each others Heroes, much more than the Mummies. 

[matakishi]

I ran my CROM game. I started on Saturday with a group of players controlling the heroes and a couple to look after the baddies.
The action began in a small frontier town where Conan, on the trail of a kidnapped Princess Zenobia, had been thrown in jail for brawling. Three of his girlfriends, Red Sonja, Belit and Valeria made their way through the town avoiding the slavers who were on the look out for some prime girl flesh to sell at the eastern markets and staged a rescue attempt aided by Subotai whom they'd collected on the way. Fighting their way through slavers, prison guards and, surprisingly, visiting Serpent men the girls freed Conan against the odds.

The heroes then headed off to intercept the slavers and reclaim Valeria and Belit who'd been carried off previously. They came upon the caravan at night by an oasis and, taking the caravan leaders' horses, raced through the camp slaughtering bandits as they went with happy abandon.

Next stop was Mako's house to enlist the aid of a magician in their quest. As the heroes arrived they saw Mako's house was on fire and being searched by a Serpent Man priest and his scaly hirelings. The reptiles were slaughtered and Mako was rescued along with his Atlantean snake crown that the Serpent Men had been after. Mako directed the party to the tomb of King Kull to retrieve an ancient Atlantean sword that might be able to defeat whatever Nameless Horror Thoth Amon was attempting to summon with the help of the Serpent Men's magic and the sacrifice of Zenobia.

At the tomb Thoth Amon's minions were dispatched and the great sword was found in the barrow. It's grisly undead guardians were destroyed and the triumphant heroes headed south to the jungles of Kush where they fought through waves of beast men and grey apes to find the location of the ancient Dark Citadel.

Gaining entry to the Citadel they found Thoth Amon and his Serpent allies attempting to summon an Elder Thing from an abyssal pit of darkness. Undeterred they surged forward and, in a close run battle of swords and magic, they finally prevailed, rescuing Zenobia and preventing the summoning of the Horror.

Well, that's what should have happened...

In the first encounter the entire party were captured by slavers so Conan remained imprisoned. Score one for the bad guys.
On the second attempt two of the three girls were captured by the slavers and Red Sonja was imprisoned with Conan. Subotai was chased off the board. However, in the interest of continuing the story, I allowed Conan and Sonja to break out of their cell since all the guards were off chasing Subotai. Not a victory as such but better things lay ahead no doubt.

The rescue at the oasis went perfectly and things were looking up. Rescuing Mako was a breeze and confidence was growing.
Gaining entry to Kull's barrow was also quick and painless and smiles were breaking out all round. Then everyone was slaughtered by the undead tomb guardians in an admittedly tense and exciting battle that came down to Belit and a skeleton as the only standing combatants with Belit coming off worse in the end.

Not to worry, I set up the final jungle setting anyway and the heroes slashed their way through foetid jungle to the Dark Citadel where they finally rescued Zenobia and killed Thoth Amon amid applause and congratulations from the onlookers.

I had a great time and I hope everyone else enjoyed it. I think around a dozen people participated in the day's adventure and I'd like to thank them all for their part in making the whole thing such a laugh.

On Sunday I ran the end scenario twice for different sets of players and both time Thoth Amon sacrificed Zenobia and the Horror was summoned. But, again, that didn't really matter as it was always close and everyone had a good time.

Particular thanks to Revford for his unstinting participation and help over the two days, he was a formidable Thoth Amon on the Sunday, cruel, merciless and inventive in his wickedness. Totally brilliant!
The only downside is that I have no photos to share, I was too busy running the game to take any photos this year at all and must rely on the skills of others to capture the day's events.

[Sterling Moose]

Thunderchicken suffered from some terrible dice and lost the best part of his force early on

Some things never change   

[Dewbakuk]

Well, the Deadlands game ran through three times and only in the first game was I worried I'd got it all wrong. In the first game Captain Blood took some early casualties to some GM controlled Indians and struggled to advance which concerned me that I'd made them too powerful but the other games went fine so I think it was just bad dice.

A few things of interest did come up though in all the games. The two cowboy posse players always ended up in the same tile fighting each other even though there were optional routes to the objective. The Indian posse player took down the main bad guy in each game but was then gunned down by the others as they attempted to escape (Revford was the closest to escaping).

Looking back at it, the Indian posse is probably the best one to use but needs careful handling in the final turns. I think they need to have one Indian make a break for it while the rest engage the other players to prevent them shooting the runner.

[oldskoolrebel]

I ran "Shhhhh! We’re huntin wabbits wolves" also known as "The Curious Case of the Hunt at Glen Faol". It's a Seven player game, pitching Sir Godfray Abberline and his monster hunters against the werewolf pack of Glen Faol. The Back ground material for the game can be read here, here and here.

I managed to play test the game once, with a group of friends, before heading down to BLAM. The werewolves decimated the humans. Severely. So for BLAM I reduced the werewolves health. The wolves lost 2 games and managed to win one; but only because the objective of the game was not just to kill your opponents but also to end the game with the highest amount of karma. The werewolves almost got wiped out each game; on reflection it seems that I'd got it right before the play test- the wolves where fine it was just the tactics of the playtesters (who split the humans into three groups) that resulted in an overwhelming defeat for the humans!

I was really surprised with the interest and enjoyment that people got from the game; we where the loudest of the day, plus I managed to run it three times during the Friday- actually come to think of it, the longest 'break' between games was probably 15 minutes. All fantastic stuff 

All the players took the game in the right spirit, and there was much laughing, booing and cheering especially when the karma dice was rolled. The system worked really well, it was really simple, but allowed for a lot of flexibility. Basically the players had to beat a 4 on a dice, which dice they used depended upon their characters skill/weapon choice. Everyone picked up the rules really quickly.


I'm already planning something similar but different for next year!

[Chillwind]

Having played in the great Werewolf game I think the best tactics for both sides is to stay together.

It was very easy for the hunters to pick off any lone werewolves as they had superior numbers and, crucially, ranged weapons (with some silver bullets).

The encounter cards were a great addition as was the Kharma dice and Pool (or Paul Points as they became known).

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable game that everyone really got into.

[Thunderchicken]

Some things never change   

Believe me my friend this was uber bad. Worse than usual.

The War of the Worlds game is inspired by a set of rules written by Shaun at The Bunker.
Each player controls a Martian tripod and in addition the player with the intiative at the begining of each turn also controls the Handling Machine. The simple objective is for each player to get his tripod off the other side of the board and gain as many victory points as possible in the process.
Each turn randomly rolled encounters will appear on the board to combat the tripods. These can be anything from an infantry unit to a heavy off-board naval gun. Each encounter has the potential to damage the tripods which only have limited hit points (as some players unfortunately noted as they watched their machine whirling to destruction).
The dilema of the game is do you stay on the board for as long as possible gaining victory points over your fellow tripods, but in doing so putting your existence in jeapordy? Or, do you simply play it safe by sprinting to the other side of the board picking up a few points in the process.
Most players hang around until their hit points are low then make for the table edge but for some it's already too late and that hidden battery of 12pdrs inflict the death blow.

[Alfrik]

I thought I'd thank all the players that posted their games from BLAM, also inspiring to read about them