My Aunt's Dice

During the second lockdown I painted two dice.

I found them going through my aunt’s things after she died a couple of years ago.

When I started to paint the dots, I noticed that one of the dice had one dot on two sides, two dots on two sides and three dots on two sides.

So I have a D3 now.

I wonder why my aunt, who worked as a French and history teacher and wasn’t very enthusiastic about games, had a D3.

Playing Das Schwarze Auge after 37 Years

For some time I have been locking for a set of RPG rules to play with my children and simple enough, so they could play it by themselves.

I prepared a GURPS adventure for them during our last vacation in Greece, but got lost in the complexity of the rule system. I still have a notebook filled with monster stats and stains of Greek coffee. Who else would sit next to a swimming pool writing down advantages, disadvantages, skills and attributes for a troll and a slime monster? Nevertheless GURPS is still my favourite system and I hope to play the adventure one day.

My daughter started to play D&D with her friends at school, the 5th edition, but their GM disappeared and she can’t be bothered to read the basic rules (180 pages).

So I remembered Das Schwarze Auge, the first German role playing game, published in 1984. It is also the first RPG I ever played. DSA1 is similar to Tunnels & Trolls and basic D&D (the red box).

The rules and some adventures have been re-released recently, both as printed versions and PDFs available through DriveThroughRPG.

The game is well written and has a lot of charm. It has the level of complexity I was looking for. It is a great game to play with children and I think my children would also be able to play it on their own.

I was looking for a simple dungeon to do a test run, but finally decided to write one myself as I couldn’t find anything simple enough.

We played our first game on a Sunday morning during the second Covid-19 lockdown while it was snowing outside. It was a beautiful bright day.

Character creation in DSA1 is random. Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín ended up with two adventurers and an elf. Spells have funny names like BALSAMSALBUNDE-Heile, Wunde! and FLIM-FLAM-FUNKEL-Bring Licht ins Dunkel! and elves are magical creatures who know seven spells from the start.

I told the adventure party that they were walking around the streets of Havena, the classic DSA city, when a pickpocket the size of a child stole their money and ran away. They followed him down a cellar.

To my great surprise they attacked three sleeping pirates in room 2, wanted to talk to a rat in room 4 and when they finally found the goblin thief under a bed in room 6, who tried to defend himself with a kitchen knife, they negotiated with him, so that he could keep their money and they could leave the dungeon unharmed.

This was my best role playing session ever. I haven’t had so much fun in a long time.

Happy New Year!

The first of January my wife cried listening to Angela Merkel’s New Year’s speech. I guess 2020 was a bit exhausting.

I miss my friends, going to restaurants, gaming conventions, playing Badminton, I miss traveling and, although I’m an introvert person, I miss seeing people who are neither family nor close friends.

What stresses me most is that somebody around me might get sick or even die if I’m not careful enough. These days even going to the supermarket can be a threat to your life. That’s difficult to understand if you grew up in Germany after WWII.

We probably have several weeks of homeschooling ahead of us. It’s hard for children not to be able to see their friends. And it’s hard for families to be stuck together all the time. Nevertheless I’m glad that schools are closed now. I hope it helps fighting the virus.

I’m looking forward to Spring and Summer …

It’s the time of year to look back and make plans and this is a gaming blog, of course.

In 2020 I wanted to finish all of my old hobby projects (some of them I had started more than ten years ago) and I made a great effort to do so.

This is a picture of my desk. The palm trees and mud huts still need some work, but I’m pleased about how far I got.

Also I’m happy that I played a couple of strategy games with my children last year.

My plan for 2021 is to paint a small tabletop army for my children to play with, to improve my painting skills this way and to take the miniatures on the road, to play Dragon Rampant or something like that with a friend if that’s possible.

I have been thinking about a theme for this army for some time, dark ages or colonial, orcs or humans, Spanish or British, dinosaurs or pangolins, but it doesn’t really matter.

In 2020 I enjoyed reading your blogs a lot and having little conversations about the hobby in the comment sections of our blogs. I would like to thank you for this. It made life a bit more cheerful in otherwise stressful times.

Happy New Year!

Karl

Q&A with Bob Cordery about The Portable Wargame

Dear Robert Cordery,

I'm interested in "The Portable Wargame" and have a few questions about it.

I would like to play the game using hexagons.
How many hexagons do I need to play the game?

Karl,

The rules are written for square and hex grids, and I suggest a minimum of 8 x 8 squares or 9 x 8 hexes. You can use a larger grid, and I’ve fought games with a 6 x 9 hexed grid, but 8 x 8/9 x 8 are what the rules were originally written for.

>> And how many figures do you need on each side?

Sides are made up of units (aka bases), and most players mount their figures on multi figure bases ... so there is no pre-set number of figures. I recommend each player has 10 to 12 unit/bases. (Some players use blocks of wood for units.)

>> To play ancient battles do I need the book "Developing The Portable Wargame" or are the main rules sufficient?

To play Ancient battles, then I’d recommend the rules in DTPW. You don’t need the first book in the series to fight wargames, but you might find it useful to read TPW at some point.

>> It would probably be easy to transfer DBA army lists to your game, wouldn't it?

The DBA armies should work with the PW Ancient rules.

>> What is the difference between "The Portable Colonial Wargame" and "When Empires Clash!"?

WHEN EMPIRES CLASH! is a forerunner of TPCW, but is a different set of rules with different mechanisms. That said, the Army Lists in WEC! are useable with the PW rules.

>> Is your book "The Portable Colonial Wargame" also a standalone game?

All my books are stand alone, although quite a few people have bought all of them and ‘mix and match’ from them to meet their particular requirements. For example, I know someone who uses the basic 19th century rules for PW with the naval rules from Gridded Naval Wargames and the campaign rules from PCW.

>> I thought "The Portable Wargame" was your core rulebook and the other books were supplements.

Does "The Portable Wargame" have a historical theme as well or is it a generic wargame?

The PW book was originally intended to be a ‘one off’, and contained a brief history of gridded wargames and several explanatory chapters about the different types of grids available, lines of sight, basing models, solo play etc. There were also two sets of basis rules, one for the 19th century and one for the early/mid 20th century.

The PW rules are generic BUT are designed so that the mechanisms can be adapted for specific historical periods or to meet individual players’ requirements. The DPW shows this as it contains Ancient rules, more detailed mid 20th century, and Air Combat rules. It also has chapters about different ways the rules can be adapted, an example of a mini-campaign, and some examples of Army Lists (including balanced and unbalanced forces).

PCW has two sets of rules for those who want quick games with a few figures and longer games with more figures, a more developed campaign system, and a terrain generator.

PNW has four sets of rules, one that is really very basic and three for different levels of command (brigade, divisional, and corps-level battles). It also looks a different types of card-driven move mechanisms, as well as unit and commander grading.

>> Is it possible to play ancient naval battles with "Gridded Naval Wargames“?

The GNW rules are designed to be used with steam-powered, iron & steel warships BUT I know that several players have adapted them for earlier periods, including ancient naval warfare where ramming was the main method of combat.

I hope that this has been helpful.

All the best,

Bob

>> Thanks a lot. This has been very helpful.
All the best,
Karl

PS
I got your books The Portable Wargame, Developing the Portable Wargame and The Portable Colonial Wargame on Lulu.

I'm looking forward to reading them and trying out your game.

Fimo Monster Rampant

The moment I finished painting Joaquín’s Fimo monster, I was eager to use it in a tabletop game. So last time I was in Dortmund before the second lockdown, I went to Krüger’s house with Joaquín and Hendrik to play Dragon Rampant.

My sons played an elven army.

Heavy Riders (Leader) / 2 Heavy Foot / Heavy Foot (Wizardling) / Heavy Missiles / Scouts

Krüger played Orcs & Goblins. I played the Fimo monster as a greater warbeast.

Bellicose Foot (Leader + Terrifically Shiny Armour) / Bellicose Foot / Light Riders / Light Missiles / Greater Warbeast

The map shows the initial deployment of the two armies. We used toy ladybugs as objectives.

The Fimo monster moved forward quickly and attacked the elven scouts, destroyed them and then destroyed a unit of spears with the help of some goblin wolf riders.

This made the elven warlock angry. He cast a fire ball and "neutralised" the greater warbeast, as my son expressed himself. (I don’t know where he picked up this verb.)

Well. I was so much focussed on playing the Fimo monster that I can’t say much else about the game.

Fortunately Hendrik also wrote a battle report:

Wir haben Elfen gegen Orks gespielt. Der Magier hat überlebt. Der Magier hat den Molch besiegt und die Wölfe vertrieben. Die Speerträger wurden zwei Mal in die Schildkrötenformation gestellt. Die Pferdereiter haben die Pfeilundbogenorks eliminiert. Zum Schluss wurde es Gleichstand.

The game ended in a tie.

This map shows how the battlefield looked at the end.

Fimo Monster

My youngest son made a monster out of polymer clay.

He tried to sculpt a crocodile, but I think his miniature looks more like an eastern newt.

I painted it using Foundry paints and varnished it with Polyurethane Gloss Varnish by Vallejo.

Now I want to use it as a Greater Warbeast in Dragon Rampant ...

Things on my Desk

Another mud hut.

An unfinished palm tree.

Sixteen hoplites and five mercenary commanders from Foundry’s World of the Greeks range, which is my favourite miniature range, and Gladius, an old Citadel miniature.