Warlords of Scrundor

The kingdom is MINE!

I had an idea for a new game on Thursday night, which I've been working on for the last few days. In it, players take on the roles of ambitious Orc warlords in the foul orcish kingdom of Scrundor, and try to over throw the king, Grolg the Unfeasibly Smelly. The game play is something like talisman, with players moving around a board made up of inner and outer rings, with Grolg's palace at the centre. The difference here being that the board is made up of cards, and these cards can be moved or replaced during the game. Each location has a quest or special ability associated with it which players can attempt to use.
At present, there are 16 unique locations for the inner ring, representing the mountain of Scrundor, eight of which are in play at any one time. The quests here are harder, but the rewards greater. The outer ring has 16 cards in play, from a potential pool of 32. The quests and challenges are easier here, but the rewards are not as great.
Players are rewarded with followers from the four tribes of Scrundor - each of these grants a bonus on a different type of quest. The other types of reward come in the form of gold (used to buy things like followers) and loot cards (which can be anything from a Really BIG Axe to a blessing from the unpronounceable Orc god, Drotzch, or a spell of some kind). There are currently 150 loot cards, although may of these are duplicates.

Well... sounds legit.

I am currently working on the quest cards - some locations just let you draw a quest card instead of having a specific quest printed on them.
All of this is going to be printed out on business cards for play testing before I work on the art. Anyone who wants to contribute art, fell free to email me.

C.O.G.S: Combat Operations in Generic Steampunk.

I've recently been looking for a generic skirmish level Steampunk/Victorian Sci Fi rule set. Then I started getting ideas and decided to just create my own.

The basic idea of C.O.G.S - Combat Operations in Generic Steampunk - is to produce a 28mm skirmish system which is flexible and generic, giving gamers a clean slate to develop their own Steampunk/VSF units, vehicles and heroes. A little like the way GruntZ allows you to create your own 15mm SF units, only with more steam, rivets and exposed gearing. I am aiming for a 'Penny Dreadful' feel - that's a Pulp feel from an era BEFORE the Pulps existed! To this end, Heroes and their Side Kicks are the focus of the game, and can do really epic things, while units are basically just there to fill out the numbers and provide moving scenery. I envision the game being more scenario driven that points based - I already have plans for Nuns defending mission stations against fiendish natives, and frenchmen in diving suits battling giant sharks. 

At present I only have basic rule mechanics in place, and a lot more development to go. The core mechanics have been tested and work pretty nicely, but there's a lot of balancing and tweaking needed.

I am working on a system for designing your own vehicles with a range of power plants, drive trains and sizes.

Although the system is generic, and encourages players to develop units and vehicles, I am considering making some paper craft starter armies with pre-generated rules for those who are not so interested in developing their own.

Some of my own conversions and scratchbuilds will be appearing on Terrain For Hippos over the month of January.

PERILOUS QUEST: Warrior's Quest

I've decided to split Perilous Quest up into a series of starter packs, each based around a single class. This way I can concentrate all my powers upon a single class at a time, and I don't have to complete all of them before releasing the game. It also means that each starter pack can contain an adventure specifically tailored to each class. Once all the starter packs are out I plan to do some generic adventures which can be played by any class, and possibly some expansions which allow things like multi-classing, and creating your own quests.

Currently I am working on the first starter pack: Warrior's Quest which handles (surprisingly!) the warrior class. I've been coming up with skills which suit fighter-type characters, and I've got a fair list, but I'd like to add more so some really unique warriors can be created. I also have to create the weapons list and do some more art.

Things are starting to move a bit quicker now that I've divided the project up into starter packs, so watch this space like the proverbial hawk. I suspect the play testing rules will be ready fairly soon...

Perilous Quest cards

Here's a look at the prototype Perilous Quest card designs.
There are four card types - Monsters, Rooms, Events and Treassures. Since the rules are not really complete as yet, the designs will end up changing, but I wanted to get some sort of idea of how much information would fit on a card, and how clearly it could be read.

The first card there is a Monster Card. Like all monster cards, it's name bar is red. The icon next to this shows it's an Orc card. Some times you need to remove cards or only use certain cards, so the icon up at the top of each card is important. Down the left hand side the monster's stats are listed. At present, all of them are there, but I might change it so that only the important stats which will be involved in quests are listed. From top to bottom we have Strength, Toughness, Dexterity, Intelligence, Perception, Courage, Movement, Defence and hit Points. There are a lot of stats so the vertical layout seems the best way to cram them all in.
The main box lists the monster's behaviours.
The box below this has the monster's weapons or attacks. There are two spaces here, the top is always melee, the second is a ranged attack if available.

The Blue card is a room card. Again,it would have an icon indicating which set it belongs to, but this is just a test card so it's blank. The image shows what the room looks like, and how it faces. The four icons around it (Red for Monsters, Green for Events, Blue for Doors, Yellow for Treasures) match the card colours, and tell you how many of any given thing is present. There's an icon on the picture of the room tile which shows you where the monsters and treassures go, as well as arrows for the doors. The arrow pointing up is the entrance, The arrow at the top, pointing away from the tile is the exit. The blue door icon says there are two doors - this number always includes the way in! Both door and Treasure icons have little locks over them meaning the door and the treassure chest are both locked. There's also a space for rules, but this room doesn't do anything fancy.

The Event card has a green name bar to match the event icon. Event cards basically just have a  big space for the rules. The treassure card is basically the same, but yellow. Both card types will need a bit of tweaking - events will need a space for XP earned by over coming the event (if appropriate - disarming a trap for example) and treasure cards need a sale value so you can sell them for filthy lucre.

I have been playing with a set of Orc monster cards, and a set of Forest room cards to go with the starter adventure I am planning, but the game still needs a lot of work - skill lists mostly.

WIP Haunted Mansion

The first set of fantasy tiles I made were all Orc themed, so recently I decided to have a go at something a little different - a Haunted Mansion set. Here's a little preview of some of the figures and furniture...
Olivia, the creepy little girl with plush golem (also available as a seperate figure), her puppy 'Patches,' a Zombie, and Ludmilla, the Hag. Also Olivia's haunted doll's house.