The next One Page Game (1PG) is nearly completed and should be released in the next days; here below the preview of the cover (still in WIP):
Underworld Stories is a fantasy dungeon crawl: the game includes three different maps with increasing difficulty and plenty of classical hack-and-slash content!
The 1PG deck will be here used at its full potential: generate the map layout (rooms/corrididors), randomize the events and create different encounters.
Hannibal ad Portas is the first title of the One Page Games series: it’s a quick, solitaire historical game where you play the role of Hannibal on his march from Spain to Italy, where he will meet the Roman Army at Cannae (216BC).
One Page Games (1PG) have been designed with the objective of being “light” games in terms of:
Time
Table space
Cost
I’ve found it more and more difficult to find the time to study a full-featured game while often I’ve got a 30 minutes break in the daily routine: 1PG have been designed to fill this small interval. Rules are easy and short enough to provide a quick but interesting gaming session: from this perspective 1PG are great for a flight since they perfectly fit on the small space of a plane seat.
Each 1PG must follow two design rules:
All the components for the game can be placed on a single A4 sheet of paper (no counter, no dice).
The same deck of 18 cards is used by all the games to provide randomness without the need of using dice (while you can play Hannibal ad Portas using two standard dice).
In addition, you will only need a pencil and a rubber.
How Hannibal ad Portas is played ?
The game uses a simple, linear map built with a succession of nodes. Each game turn is composed of four phases:
Planning Phase
Event Check
Combat Phase
Army Advance
In the planning phase you determine how many action points you have at
your disposal, then you decide how to use them to execute the available
actions:
Recruit
Diplomacy
Gather Intelligence
Supply
Promote units
Your army is composed of Infantry, Cavalry and Elephant Units and you
need to manage three critical resources: Supply, Intelligence and
Diplomacy Points.
During Combat you proceed selecting one of the
available Battle Moves (ex. Assault or Flank) that will determine the
casualties: similarly the enemy army will execute one (randomly
determined) move.
Stratagems are also available: those represent special, single-use Battle Tactics.
Xar’Nag are capable of artificially evolve and transform to adapt to any environment: some of them became terrifying killing machines that only the most brave (or crazy) characters will dare to face.
In this new Enemy Sheet you will find one of those behemots, the Flesh Ripper, equipped with four rending claws and a bio-metallic carapace.
This new enemy is suited for RL 3 or 4, and can also be used for the Big Hunt scenario.
Just released, a new Enemy for Blood on the Blade, the Abyssals. Strongly inspired by the Lovecraft’ Deep Ones, the Abyssals are a race of undersea-dwelling humanoids, with a fish head and covered by scale, living in the deep oceans.
Abyssals feature a new type of damage, Bleed. Bleed rules will be probably retrofitted to the main rules in the next update, and I’m sure you will be able to use them for your own creations.
Bleed(X)
A character with a Bleed effect suffers X automatic HPs of damage at the end of each turn until he executes the Special Action “Emergency Bandage”.
Emergency Bandage (Special Action).
Roll 1d6:
(1) Action failed
(2-6) Bandage successful: remove the Bleed marker
This first release of the Abyssals is mainly for BoTB, but they can of course be used also with Blood in Space: I’m planning to release a special scenario where your crew will be facing a rescue mission on a underwater station. Hybrids (Human-Deep One) will also appear on those pages very soon.
I’ve just uploaded the new version of the code for the Character Studio that fixes a ton of micro-problems and some major ones: in detail
The “New Character” menu is now renamed to a more correct “Edit Character” name. This menu opens the Editor and never create a new character (exception: if you reload the page).
A new button has been added to create a brand new PC with no modifiers (no weapons, no XP spent…).
The first section of the Damage Track now has 4 rows to allow the introduction of the required modifiers for a newly created PC.
Fixed the formatting for characters with low HP (7-9), where the second section only has 2 HP of width.
Fixed the code to allow the use of special characters like “, ‘, [ and ( in the names – useful to add nicknames and/or additional infos on the name like (Leader) – yes, this seems a small thing but I’ve realized that the old version was unable to properly manage special characters and it took me two days to fix them.
I will now evaluate the option to introduce a random generator of Enemies, capable of creating for example Mercenaries (combining Traits, Weapons and Armor) or Mutants (adding of course mutations). Your comments/suggestions/critics are always welcome.
Several players asked me about the “classical” characters of the fantasy world, like for example Dwarves and Goblins: Blood on the Blade include more than 70 different enemies but some of the “classical” characters are missing; while is not difficult to create new enemies (have you seen the DYO Monster Toolkit and the Character Editor ?), I’ve started working on some of iconic characters to make possible to have them on the gaming table during this holyday season: the first bunch of characters is available on the PDF
You’ll find here both the RL1 Enemy roster and the rules to use it as a character for Dwarves, Wood Elvers and Halflings.
In addition, you’ll also find the first version of the Goblins Enemy Sheet: I’m planning to add the Goblin riders (using the new mounted rules found on the 2nd edition) in the next iteration of this new addon. Let me know what characters you’ll like to see added, and of course
This new edition of the rules include a lot of new components to improve your gaming sessions:
Mounted Characters rules
New Enemies (Demons, Giants, Elves)
Revised Enemies (Araknos, Lizardmen, Major Undeads)
New Character Advancements
Flasks and Potion rules
Flying and Mounted Enemies
Event Marker activation rules (EM are not any more static)
Larger Loot Tables
New Spells
New Challenge: Boss Fight! (against a single “Boss” Enemy of course)
What about those that already own Blood on the Blade? Very easy:
Customers that bought BoTB in the last 30 days will receive an email to get this new edition for free!
All other customers will receive a great discout voucher to get the new version at an unbeatable price
If you are an existing customer and you’ve not received your voucher, feel free to contact me at zak965@libero.it, including in your email the Order ID on Wargame Vault (you can find it on the email received by Wargame Vault when you bought BoTB or on your Orders info in the Wargame Vault site).
More info on the new content of 2nd Edition in the next days!
CONTENTS
Game Rules
10 Scenarios
19 Enemy Sheets – more than 70 Enemies
1 Sheet of characters for DYO scenario
6 Ready to play Characters
2 Character sheets
6 Table sheets
2 Campaign Rosters
1 Campaign Sheet
32 markers
The Character Editor has now the option to include STR, DEX and CON to better represent the player characters. Magic Users are not (yet) covered by the editor, but most of the standard PC can now be described.