Mini-Review: Osprey's Last Days

My particular hard copy arrived after the USPS claimed it was probably lost en route... About a week and a half late, but hey! There wasn't any rush and I got it for maybe 15 bucks or something, so no harm done. A good looking book with great art, nice photos of well-painted minis (mostly Hasslefree, I think?). Simple, although maybe too many stats, is my first thought.

It's fun, and well made, some other people have done it better and more thoroughly. I like that there is some within-team tension, and I like that you don't have to use weird dice (this is my least favorite thing about the Walking Dead game, all the dumb weird dice)

Coulda used some more rules on varieties of zoms, maybe (note: easy enough to hack, on my own) and the effects that non-meshing builds have. For example, there is a rule that your leader  can "Have the Talk" with a member of the crew who doesn't share the same psychological tag as him or her. Well, that's great if you want to keep hiring on gangbangers or something if your leader is a Nice Guy. But! There's really no bad effects from having a team member on board who doesn't fit within the preliminary team-building guidelines. Say you pick up a couple of real bad hombres in the course of play, either through capture or rescue, or whatever... I get the impression this is an eventuality that might occur. Until you "Have The Talk" with them, some morale deficiencies owing to disharmony seems pretty reasonable, until at last they defect and hit the road, or else come around. So: team members who don't share tags with the leader don't follow orders, or maybe loot counters they get don't have full value, or something. It seems like this must have been included in there at one point. A great number of things occurred to me whilst reading that were like O THATS COOL, THEY MUST ADDRESS THAT LATER, but then i got to the end of the thing and that was it.

I guess I like the book as a physical object. The margins seem sort of wide... Like a Freshman English essay? Like, hey man, use a slightly larger font, make the margins smaller, the book slightly shorter, whatever. I felt like even the low price I paid via the sale was sort of paying for a great deal of empty layout. Too much white space in my game books makes me nervous. Frostgrave has that feeling, also, and it's my goto favorite wargame for a good long while, but Frostgrave is nice and tidy and a complete package.

Good Things: it hints that there is a really good game in there, somewhere. And it seems like it was probably much grander in scope than what we are given. The 'DLC model' of releases is fine, I guess. The impression I had is that some of the more fun stuff that was in there must have been advised or edited out. Like "THIS IS TOO COMPLICATED MAN CHOP IT OUT" and then they had to bump the margins larger to account for missing space.

As a comparison, Mantic's The Walking Dead : All Out War has made me feel tense and nervous and (dumb weird dice aside) there is a real feeling of dread that comes through in playing the game. I start that game up and I wish my little people were some other place instead of on that 2x2 or 3x3 board. A very interesting thing is that TWD:AOW presents a 'solo version' of the game within the first few pages of the quick start. I wish that a lot of other pubs put out a product that didn't always make the assumption that you and a couple of friends could get together to play it. TWD:AOW seems to me more limited in scope, justified in its DLC model (Days Gone Bye is kind of a game-changer in terms of dropping custom figure rules), and chock full of zombie-apocalypse horror. On the flipside, I don't like to manage a bunch of cards and tokens and bits and bobs. One bad thing about Last Days is that every action accumulates counters (I guess you can put them on the fig's card instead of on the board) to keep track of ammo use and other conditions.

All in all, a good dame, needs a little polish and some at-the-table hacking but it's nice and neat and great in that it doesn't need a proprietary fig set. You just dig out what you have and use it.

The Lamentable Upper Levels of DunjonCorp Site C

I was toying around with a guitar and an electric organ and Tablesmith. All my creative outlets have DUNGEON on the front, and fuck it, but here's 50 rooms spat out by Tablesmith after I twerked on it last night and went to bed relatively satisfied with what it vomited up.

Each line is a room and the contents in the ostensible 1st level of a DunjonCorp thing. The level is adjustable and it has the same monster list as Kabuki Kaiser's Ruins of the Undercity because I like it, although I'm going to adjust it some (e.g. by adding monsters and mutations and psionics n shit). For some reason (my programming and preferences) the generator makes a lot of traps. Deep breath! Go.

• Corpse renderer - breaks corpses down into 1d10 potions.
• Slime Patches - 1 in 10 is monstrous and/or dormant .
• Strong updraft air.
• This room is trapped with Poisoned Arrow . 1000 current issue gold can be found here.
• Fire - blazing fire in center of room.
• This room is occupied by 12 Jinxkins. Glittering synthshells equivalent to 800 gold can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 15 Kobolds. Potion of Growth can be found here.
• Weapon racks - 4 ancient mono-scimitars, void grenades, or blasters.
• This room is occupied by 3 NPC Adventurers. Scroll: Ward against Magic can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 12 Giant Rats.
• Warpgate to alternate dimension or plane. Circlet of Summoning Ghost can be found here.
• Archway - stepping through transports to Astral/Ethereal/Dreamlands.
• This room is trapped with Ball trap - all PCs in marching order DC 15 Reflex save. 5 Hematite 25gp can be found here.
• This room is trapped with Falling Stones - d6 damage per PC.
• This room is occupied by 3 Snyads.
• 4 Mummified corpses: disturbing them causes Enrages PC or victim for 1d10 turns DC 15 Will save.
• This room is occupied by 8 Brigands.
• This room is occupied by 11 Gibberlings.
• This room is trapped with Negative Energy Glyph - Save or lose 1 energy level.
• Stairway to extra-/para-dimensional section of dungeon.
• This room is trapped with Arrrow trap - unluckiest PC gets Attack with d20+5 1d10 damage. A Weathering Steel choker, worth 600 gold coins can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 14 Gibberlings. Glittering synthshells equivalent to 600 gold can be found here.
• It is dusty, here. The dust is recently disturbed.
• This room is trapped with Ball trap - all PCs in marching order DC 15 Reflex save.
• Weapon racks - 2 ancient mono-scimitars, void grenades, or blasters. Strange alien metal beads worth 200 gold can be found here.
• Magically confined monster - a Nycadaemon.
• This room is trapped with Vacuum chamber - within 5 turns, the breathable air from this area and nearby 3 rooms is evacuated. Triangular coins of an alien material equivalent to 900 gold can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 7 Jinxkins. Apparatus of the Crab can be found here.
• Mouldering Tapestries, worth 643 gp but weigh 1000gp.
• Rotten flesh smell.
• This room is trapped with Floor, collapsing - suddenly, the whole party makes DC 15 to avoid falling into the depths. Ancient bartering tokens equivalent to 400 gold can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 14 Giant Rats. Scroll: Spells (3) can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 2 Fire Beetles.
• This room is occupied by 6 Gibberlings. Triangular coins of an alien material equivalent to 600 gold can be found here.
• It is dim here.
• Weapon racks - 3 ancient mono-scimitars, void grenades, or blasters.
• This room is trapped with Burning Oil Shower - d6 damage plus 1 per round for Level 1 rounds. Strange alien metal beads worth 200 gold can be found here.
• This room is occupied by 11 Giant Rats.
• Archway - stepping through transports to Astral/Ethereal/Dreamlands.
• This room is occupied by 15 Kobolds. Potion of Treasure Finding can be found here.
• This room is trapped with Arrow trap, poisoned unluckiest PC gets Attack with d20+5 1d10 damage and random poison DC 15.
• Fire - blazing fire in center of room.
• Altar to Business/Commerce/Mammon - leaving money causes Ages PC or NPC by 11 years. High Tech: Chemical Sensor Functions on 1-19 in 20 can be found here.
• It is dusty, here. The dust is recently disturbed.
• Corpse renderer - breaks corpses down into 1d10 potions.
• This room is occupied by 2 NPC Adventurers.
• Trash incinerator - receive 5 gold/AL in antique coins for worhtless items.
• Illusionary Ceiling - view the sky outside. Glittering synthshells equivalent to 400 gold can be found here.
• This room is trapped with Earthquake .
• This room is occupied by 10 Gibberlings. Flying Carpet and Scroll: Ward against Elementals can be found here.