Telling stories of brave adventurers

Philosophers, dragons and harems

It was a slow month for my D&D group. The current DM was probably still recovering from the reel of Chinese New Year or something. I can’t blame him; I’m still reeling from my Plants vs Zombies D&D game too. And no one else wanted to be the DM.

So a friend suggested that we meet up to play something else. In particular, he wanted to introduce me to the game of Three Dragon Ante for a long time, so this was good timing. It was a day full of card games. There were 3: Opus Dei, Three Dragon Ante, and Dominion.

Opus Dei

“Opus Dei” when (roughly) translated, means the “work of God”. Each player is a Zeitgeist. Each player has a world. There are human cards laid out. Most are Philosophers. A few are Scientists. Most dreaded are the Fools.

Each round, 12 human cards are laid out. When the human cards run out, a new “sun” (or year) starts, and another 12 human cards are laid out. There are 3 rounds.

Each human card is worth a certain number of points. The goal of each player is to amass the most number of points at the end of 3 rounds. The Philosophers are worth anywhere between 1 to 5 points.

The Greek Philosophers are usually worth a lot of points. You know, since philosophy practically sprung from Greece. Next are the German Philosophers. My friend told me something about Germany being the more aggressive in philosophy in modern times. Or some such.

Scientists have a different scoring mechanism. The number of points for each Scientist is worth the number of Scientists in your world. So if you have 1 Scientist, you have 1 point. If you have 3 Scientists, each Scientist is worth 3 points, so in total, you have 9 points.

The Fools are worth a negative number of points. The card game creator obviously have strong opinions. The Fools are generally individuals whom the creator deemed to have a negative impact upon the world.

Play goes on in a circle. On your turn, you pick 1 playing card from the deck, and decide to play up to 2 playing cards.

There are 3 types of play cards: Sun cards, Earth cards, and Miraculum cards. Sun cards affect all players (or worlds), for example, the self-referential “No other Sun card may be played while this Sun card is in play”. The current Sun card goes off when the new year (or “sun”) starts.

An Earth card affects only your world. For example, all Greeks in your world are worth 1 more point. There are negative ones too, for example, all Germans in your world are worth 1 less point. Which I got from a sabotaging friend…

A Miraculum card usually affects the human cards laid out. For example, move one human exactly 4 steps forward. Why would you want to do this? Because at the end of your turn, you create the front-line human into your world. If the front-line human is a Fool, you scored negative. So you want to move a Greek Philosopher up front.

I like this game.

Three Dragon Ante

The cards describe dragons and their powers. There is a money scoring mechanism, hence the “Ante” part. But it’s not real money.

After the hype that my friends created for me, I thought it’s a good game. I mean it has “dragon” in the name. My friends seem to like it. But I didn’t like it. It played too much like gambling. The flavour for the dragons aren’t strong enough to overpower the ante part. The goal is to possess the largest amount of gold. I think game ends when one player goes bankrupt.

I’m not going to talk much on this. You are encouraged to do research, or play the game to get a better idea. It didn’t really pique my interest.

Dominion

We only got to play 1 round of Dominion. It’s a resource-based game, where each player try to make the best use of his resources based on the available decks. There are 25 different decks of resource cards, and only 10 are in play. So the strategy for each game is different.

This was played at the end of the day, so I was drained. I didn’t have a strategy. Ok, maybe there is. I was telling my friends that the new players are the most fun, because they are the ones most likely to try weird strategies and in this case, cards. 2 of my friends who were relatively new to the game just bought resource cards for the heck of it.

It’s more fun than Three Dragon Ante though.

The goal is to score the most number of victory points. You can do research on the game play rules. There are probably better explanations on other websites.

There is this card that my friends seem to think breaks the game. It’s called the Harem. It’s worth 2 copper and 2 victory points. That means you get to use the card to buy resource cards, and it also counts as 2 victory points at the end of the game. A Harem card costs 6 pieces of copper.

“If you have 3 Harem cards on your hand, you can buy another Harem!”

Don’t think too much on that… it might mess up your life philosophy and beliefs…

Final thoughts

This was the first time I played any of the 3 card games. I like Opus Dei the most. The game mechanic can be separated from the flavour, which makes complete sense to my programming mind. The game mechanic appeals to me. The flavour of bringing philosophy to a game is also interesting. Each human card comes with a paragraph of what that human did. You can probably read the flavour text, not play the game, and it’s still worth your money.

I wouldn’t say Three Dragon Ante sucks, but it didn’t live up to what I thought it would be. I thought it would have more of an RPG flavour to it.

Dominion was fun. I will like to play with the other resource decks and see what strategies and plans I have to come up with.

This had been a nice non-D&D game day.

Shard Saga – Venturing into the volcano part 1

This is the 5th session of Shard Saga. I have to say, my memories of the gameplay are starting to slip away real fast. That was about a couple of weeks back. I really should have written it down… then again, I don’t see anyone writing so detailed a log as I am (with pictures!)… You might want to recap sessions one, two, three and four.

SO,

About a month after the recovery of the clear shard, Lady Sharyn tells you that the Twelve’s study of the shards has revealed that they seem to contain some kind of strange elemental energy. Another source of similar power has been detected inside a previously dormant volcano which has recently become active again.

Cue dramatic music for “Oh $#@&!” moment. To find out about Lady Sharyn, she’s a halfling with a dragonmark (more here).

I think my DM didn’t plan much for pre-battle story. He just wanted us to go to that volcano. We were doing some roleplaying and enquiries and checking if there were skill challenges. Nope. I think this was going through my DM’s mind:

“Just go to the freaking volcano already!”

Being a nice guy, he didn’t say it.

So we finally decided to venture forth into the volcano. And we were still hesitant to enter the volcano.

“Does the opening look natural?”
“No, the sides look smooth enough that it’s man-made.”

["Will you people get in the volcano already!"]

It’s a volcano. We were cautious. Then my impatient DM happily laid out this:

The map is not a D&D product. Can’t remember which game it came from… Then we were told to position ourselves.

The dark squares cannot be moved into. They also block line of sight. We each had a turn to move with nobody on the map except us. Then my DM dumped the first batch of monsters on us.

Then the duergars attacked us.

Duergars are like evil dwarves. I also didn’t know their beards were sharp. They can just wrench clumps of their beard and hurl them at their enemies.

The barbarian injured his duergar enough that something happened…

“OMG he transformed into a giant monster!” said the barbarian.

“Technically, he’s a she.” said the DM.

The avenger got pestered by the tiefling.

There was a priest who cast some irritating spell that dealt ongoing damage. The avenger was hit especially bad, failing saving throws and much damage. The bard had to do some quick thinking and helped the avenger instead, leaving the barbarian and fighter to fend for themselves. Which led to this.

The fighter was dazed. We were trying out another method of tracking statuses.

Then the evil duergar priest came forward, said something about Asmodeus. I remember my DM doing an awesome gruff pronouncement of doom on us.

Taking advantage of the priest’s proclamation, a duergar charged bravely into the fighter’s face and felled the fighter.

We took care of the priest and the rest of the enemies, and then concentrated on helping the fighter.

After the battle, the DM said the door (on the opposite side of the map from where we started) was already opened. Or was it a cave entrance that was dug out? I really can’t remember, and I’m too lazy to email my DM for the details. You’ll just have to hear my side of the story.

So we concluded that there was probably another adventuring party who arrived here before we did. And that was us with Lady Sharyn’s help. Somebody out there had a lot of resources at his/her/their disposal…

You will also notice the lack of any mention of Kepler. Well, I’ll tell you more when I finish telling you this session’s story. There were 3 encounters in all, so there’ll be a part 2 and 3.

Twin Sigils

The sky was dark with thundering clouds. Flashes of lightning lit the battlefield, where scores of soldiers lie dead. The dragon exhaled one more breath of chilling air at the surviving soldiers and extended its wings.

“It’s going to escape!” shouted the captain.

Two robed figures dashed past the captain and pulled back their hoods as they did. Nathan, armed with a dividers in his right hand, followed his twin brother Blake, who’s moving swiftly ahead.

“Pincer attack on the head!” Blake pointed at the already airborne dragon with his dividers in the left hand. Then he jumped and flew towards the dragon’s fleshy part near the chin.

Bracing himself, Nathan jumped after his brother and vanished in mid-air, to appear above the dragon’s mouth. Falling down, he aimed his dividers downwards and plunged the sharp ends onto the dragon’s snout. As he did so, Blake pierced the dragon at the underside of its mouth with his dividers.

The foul beast roared in pain and knocked Nathan off. It reared its head and snapped at Blake, who managed to dodge away from its maw. Then he flew after the falling Nathan.

As Blake caught him, Nathan traced a sigil and sent it glowing red towards the dragon. The brothers spun around once in the air and a glowing white sigil streaked from Blake’s hands following the red sigil.

The twins landed just as the red sigil contacted Nathan’s dividers and the white sigil hit Blake’s dividers.

“Phireohm!” shouted the twins, with their hands extended towards the dragon’s mouth.

Fire exploded from the red sigil, engulfing the mouth of the dragon. Lightning streaked from the clouds to join those erupting from the white sigil. The dragon writhed in pain for a while, struggling to keep aloft, before giving one final roar and fell to the ground in a great ball of crackling flame and lightning.

*****
This is a short story featuring a pair of twins who are math wizards. Phireohm is a spell combining both fire and lightning.

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