Playing the Oddball Options

For the past 20+ years, I’ve praised my friend Chuck Kallenbach for his part in Decipher’s Lord of the Rings TCG’s “noise” rule and 50/50 light/dark deck build. Someone brought the game up today, and I remembered what a pleasure it was play. To see in what ways different people addressed those in deck builds. I remember in particular a kick-ass band of dwarves deck a friend put together.

What I probably haven’t said is that I like to build decks that abuse the spirit of any TCG, mainly for the challenge of making an off-kilter deck work, partly just as recalcitrance, somewhat for surprise at the table.

In Thunder Castle’s Highlander, the build was “Casper, the Asthmatic Tax Accountant,” using every non-combat card I could to avoid an actual sword fight. (Thunder Castle’s members-only cards thwarted pretty much every deck that didn’t include them, making convention tournaments pointless, but this one was fun in casual play.)

In Chaosium’s Mythos it was “The Pass/Fail Education,” playing “Pass and End the Round” cards early each turn, to cycle through & find what I needed while leaving other players flat-footed. (Happily, Chaosium later printed a card to prevent that card’s abuse.) But my favorite build to play in that was “The Sorcerer John Henry,” based on the “Exploited Coal Miner” character. It used “Carter’s Clock” Item and “Create Time Warp” spell to return to the “Castle of the Great Ones on Kadath” during the battle phase each turn, so as to dump spell after spell on the table without Sanity loss. All because a friend remarked that it was nigh impossible to use magic to any effect in the game. This TSJH deck was a somewhat slow one get up and running, and it frequently lost to other decks for that reason, but when it had time to get the gears in place, it dominated the game.

 

In Vampire: The Eternal Struggle it was a friend’s deck I was in awe of, something he called “Little Princes,” built around a plethora of 1-point Caitiff cards, a buttload of political cards they got into play before anyone else had enough votes to stop them, and a hand grenade or two for when they got caught in a dark alley by an older vampire, to sacrifice their own lives so as to put the other into torpor.

In the Lord of the Rings TCG Chuck helped design, I built a deck I called “Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em,” eschewing other fellowship members, to run just Aragorn and Frodo as party hoppers dashing from elven haven to haven, drinking up the wine and smoking up the pipeweed, then ducking out when the duo’s pursuers arrived. For flavor, the deck also included some smoking Gimli cards and Gandalf cards (they certainly weren’t efficient for achieving victory conditions). The dark half of the deck was all Uruk Hai, again inefficient, just so I could call that part “old Red Eye.”

Since those days in the late 90’s early 00’s, with TSR’s demise and life in general dispersing colleagues and friends across the US, I’ve not played much face-to-face with trading card games, so there’s not been the impetus to deep dive into oddball options in newer ones. But for nostalgia’s sake, I’m not really interested in doing so.

Nowadays I’m more apt to play a solo RPG or board game, not necessarily by necessity, but because the solo field is fascinating. Fortunately, tonight I’ve come upon some solo player’s rules for playing Mythos this way, and it’s time to give it a try. I hope to find something similar for V:TES, because absent those old friends, I do amuse myself.

11 Years and Counting

 

Kinda hard to believe this was 11 years ago, or in some ways that it was only 11 years ago. It was my first self-published card game, Invasion of the Saucer People. A Kickstarter paid to replace this retro stock art with new illustrations by an old friend and GDW colleague, Bradley K. McDevitt.

In the 11 years since, a lot of very kind people have encouraged and supported that one-man publishing hobby, resulting in …

  • 8 more card games and 2 booster packs;
  • 3 roleplaying games with 45 supplements;
  • a bunch of fanged smiley doubledice;
  • 7 Halloween anthologies:
  • 22 books of poetry and fiction by other writers; and
  • a novel in sonnets by yours truly.

With that support, 20 of the RPG titles are DriveThruRPG Best Sellers at one level or another, as are 2 of the card games on DriveThruCards.

I suck at business, so it mainly just pays for art. But I love to write and design, to see other people enjoy it, and to maybe help them publish something of their own. It’s been a good 11 years so far, with no sign of stopping. Thank you for your part in making it happen.

BNHP Dragon Dice RPG will be at Gen Con

5″ x 7″ postcard size (125 mm x 175 mm)

SFR, Inc, publishers of the Dragon Dice battle game (designed by yours truly), today received copies of the Bookmark HP Dragon Dice RPG (also by yours truly) from their printer, in time for Gen Con!

As you can see in the photo, to adapt BNHP rules to the unique dice of the tabletop game, I had to use a large postcard size, effectively two bookmarks worth of content side-by-side.

The SFR folks say that they’ll have a special bundle deal at Gen Con, of the RPG with other Dragon Dice products. Further details to follow as I learn more.

And with the Gen Con purchase, I’m including a free code for the print-and-play PDF on DriveThruRPG.

You may be aware that the D6xD6 RPG rules (free here) included a Dragon Dice setting chapter adapting the former to the latter. But this is the first standalone RPG for the world of Esfah, specifically using the full range of dice from that game.

The Dragon Dice battle game was the crowning achievement of my years at TSR, a project into which I poured heart and soul, and I’ve been gratified to see it live and grow over the decades since, in the hands of SFR. Obviously since retirement I’ve also poured heart and soul into my new RPGs; it’s a great feeling to see the original hand-in-hand with the latest of those.

Here’s a big thank you to SFR, Inc. for encouraging the project. It’s much appreciated.

Treasures of Forgotten Dungeons

If you’re a tabletop gamer with much of a collection, you know how easily small boxed games & card games can be overlooked & forgotten on the shelves. I even have a couple of fancy wooden cases—the kind with glass photo frames on the top & sides—to store the best, & still end up forgetting the excellent little games inside. Big boxed games just draw so much attention.

An Aside: 

It’s a problem that faces publishers, too, & particularly small-press POD publishers. Especially at brick-and-mortar stores.

When I first started designing card games a bit over a dozen years ago, I went to some retailers I’ve been friends with, to ask about stocking the things on their shelves. (Two reasons: to increase my own exposure, but also because brick-and-mortar felt left out of Kickstarters, which sold directly to consumers.)

They were happy to take them to small cons, but (1) in-store couldn’t afford to rob any display case space from trading card games like Magic: The Gathering & Pokemon, with their sales of individual cards, & (2) couldn’t risk putting card games on the shelves elsewhere, because of “shrinkage” (i.e. shoplifting).

They said, “Publish each of your card games in a big box that’ll take up room on the shelf. Stick in a score pad, counters, or whatever to justify all the empty space, & bump up the price. Then I can sell them. Or just don’t design card games.”

So for me, POD online it is.

But back to the topic of card decks getting lost on your own game shelves. The problem is even worse for single-sheet things like Postcard Dungeons—and that’s a cryin’ shame.

Postcard Dungeons started out as just that, a solo strategy dice game representing a dungeon on an oversized postcard. The game design is genius, & the presentation excellent. Since that first dungeon, the line has expanded into multiplayer & sci-fi, & has added some variant designs from world domination ala Risk to a coin-based Postcard Cthulhu.

But I forget the whole group of them sitting there on my shelf, sandwiched between some small-box games, even though they’re stored in a clear cellophane bag.

I’m not sure how to rectify that. With the card games I could maybe get a shadowbox as a wall-mounted mini game shelf. Maybe keep a tiny ring-binder for flat games like this one. Because they deserve to be revisited from time to time.

Here’s the publisher’s website: postcardgames.com