PERILOUS QUEST

Perilous Quest is my current project. It's a solo play dungeon crawl RPG.
It occurred to me that a lot of mythological heroes did their questing alone, not in groups like most RPGs support. So I took a leaf from Castle Ravenloft's book and started playing with the idea of a sort of 'artificial intelligence' system to run the bad guys. It's pretty easy to run the dungeon itself using cards to determine the rooms encountered (much as Warhammer Quest did back in the day) treassures accumulated and the enemies met.

I have been tinkering with the rule system for a while. Basically the core mechanic is this: each skill is associated with one of the character's stats. When you use the skill, you roll a number of D6s equal to the stat and try to roll over a particular score. You can earn bonuses to this roll by taking more ranks in a skill.

I plan to use my existing series of Fantasy Tiles to play the game - obviously I'll need to develop cards for the rooms. I'm also going to use the existing paper craft figures I've been designing for a few years for the various heroes and villains. I'll be doing up some new rooms and new figures as well. The intention is to get the system working and release a 'core game' which will then be supplemented by a range of adventure packs. The Core Game will include a starting adventure - The Underpants of the Orc Lord (no really) and it's easy to randomly create adventures as well.

I'm pretty excited about this one, but there's a lot of work involved so it'll be a while before you see much of it.

GROLG'S FEAST

Grolg's Feast started life as Phoofbum's Feast, a card game about Halfling chefs trying to out cook one another. Then I realised this was boring and that Goblin chefs would cook MUCH more interesting things!

Light from guttering elf-fat lanterns cast a weak and flickering light within the banqueting hall of Grolg the Unspeakably Smelly, high Orc King of Scrundor. It cast weird and fantastic shadows, which danced over the debris scattered over the high table and the army of apprehensive Goblin slaves who scurried to and fro with great steaming dishes piled high with the most revolting delicacies.

         “FOOD!” Bellowed Grolg, “Bring me the next course!”

         A small goblin in an enormous white chef’s hat and huge, waxed moustache dashed up bearing an mighty platter, the lid of which was a Dwarvish shield. With a flourish, the chef whipped off the lid revealing a whole roasted pig on a bed of potatoes, carrots, turnips and hedgehogs, with an apple in it’s mouth. Grolg rammed his fork into the pig, lifted it with one hand and took a huge bite. He spat the steaming flesh out and roared, “It’s undercooked! Take this worthless turnip-head away and roast him! I’ll have him for supper!”

         Two huge orc warriors grabbed the startled chef and dragged him away.

         “MORE FOOD!” bellowed Grolg. The assembled Goblins shuffled nervously, trying not to catch his eye.

In Grolg's Feast, each player is a Goblin Chef trying to impress Grolg the Unfeasibly Smelly, king of Scrundor. To do this you need to produce a three course meal, and score more points than the other chefs. You get Recipe, Ingredient and Special cards to achieve this. Each recipe is worth a certain number of points, and needs certain ingredients. You need to trade with the other chefs to get these ingredients, while all the time playing dirty tricks on them to stop them scoring the big points! The game is very simple (I have taught both my Mother and Sister-in-Law to play - actually it's one of her favourite games!) and pretty quick. The rules are basically done... now it's a matter of art.

Don't hold your breath about this coming out any time soon, there's more than 60 pieces of art required for the cards. I've been using cards without for playtests, but the flavour of the game comes from the disgusting ingredients and recipes so art is essential! Oh well, it'll eventually get done...

Grolg's Feast is also the first appearance of Scrundor, the foul Orcish kingdom which has now ended up being used as an RPG setting and is gradually getting more and more detailed...

Well, here are some cards to keep you entertained until I finish the game...

MARTIAN ZOMBIES

Captain Hank Space guy and the crew of the Space Patrol ship Atom Eagle are in serious trouble – while on a routine patrol near Mars they have picked up a sinister Martian virus which is turning the crew into blood-crazed, purple-haired mindless zombies! Can the surviving crewmen make it to their escape pods in time to warn the Space Patrol on Earth, or will they, too be turned to zombies?

Martian Zombies is the first game I have published. It pits the plucky crew of the Space Patrol ship 'Atom Eagle' against a shambling horde of the undead and can be played either solo or as a two player game. The game uses a hex tile based map which is built up as you play, so no two games are ever exactly alike. The aim for the Survivor player is to get as many of the crew to the escape pods as possible. The zombie player obviously tries to stop him!

The survivor player needs to make use of the various special rooms to get equipment or block the shambling hordes. It takes about twenty minutes or so for a game, and, apart from the game components, all you need is a D6, a D8 and some paper clips.

The rules of the game are simple and quick to learn. Survivors move two hex tiles at a time, zombies move one. When you end up on the same tile both players roll a die - survivors roll a D8, zombies roll a D6. Highest score wins, and you remove the difference in the scores as casualties. Survivors can be turned to zombies if they die! Scattered throughout the ship are various special rooms like the Armoury, Med Bay, Life Support room etc. Each of these will either provide a piece of useful equipment (which will usually give a bonus in combats) or allows you to do something cool like open a hex to vacuum, sucking the undead out! During playtesting we found that imaginative use of the special hexes was especially rewarding and entertaining.

Making the art work for Martian Zombies was really good fun. There's a lot of components in the game - the various different room tiles, four different kinds of survivor figure, the zombie figures, and the various counters. I decided the game needed to use stand-up figures rather than just simple tokens, but, since facing is unimportant to the game, they have the same art on both sides. Obviously, if you don't fancy folding and pasting all those figures, you can just cut them up and use them as flat tokens.

I do have plans for an expansion to Martian Zombies! which will add some radioactive slime beasts to make further use of the radiation rules, along with various new rooms and abilities. 

You can purchase a copy of Martian Zombies from RPGNow.