Showing posts with label Geomorphs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geomorphs. Show all posts

Saturday 29 January 2022

Dungeonquest - It's a Classic!

One of my passions is the Games Workshop Bookcase format games of the 1980s.  I am gradually completing my collection and one of the games I absolutely had to have was Dungeonquest.

Dungeonquest (or should I call it Dragon Keep)

Drakborgen was designed by two Swedes Jakob Bond and Dan Glimme and licensed to a range of board game companies.  Games Workshop picked up the license for the UK and sold it as Dungeonquest.

The game is essentially a race to the center of a randomly generated maze where you grab some of the Dragon's hoard and try to get out before the dragon wakes up.  As you generate your path you will encounter variouos obstacles, dead ends, traps, monsters designed to halt your progress or rob you of valuable turns.  

There is a heavy push your luck element to the game and whilst on your way out of the dungeon you won't have to face any of the monsters you encountered getting to the dragon, your path out may have been blocked requiring you to start finding a new path and encountering new monsters and traps.

Man, is this game stacked against you.  I remember playing it once back in the 80s but I didn't remember how hard it is to win.  It's a lot of fun 

It's a component fest with lots of cards and tiles, 4 character models in really cheap hard styrene and plenty of plastic cones which were the defacto stat tracking counter of the day.  The component quality is classic Games Workshop, thin as you like cardboard that just wouldn't fly in todays boardgame market.

Replayability is high because every game will have a different collection of tiles in your path.  Yes, the choice of monsters is limited, but the ingenious combat mechanism means that the monsters react differently and your combat outcome will vary depending on the cards you and the monster play against each other.  

Dungeonquest (1985) Games Workshop

Art was provided by Gary Chalk (creator of the Lone Wolf books) and it is very much of its era.

Re-releases and Immitators

There have been numerous reissues of this game.  It was rereleased in Sweden as Drakborgen Legenden in 2002 and in the 2010s Fantasy Flight teamed up to reissue a few of the Games Workshop bookcase games they chose Dungeonquest alongside Fury of Dracula and Warrior Knights (probably the three best games of the series).

Drakon is another random tile laying dragon heist boardgame which Fantasy Flight re-released back in 2006 as part of their silverline game range.  A super simple game which turns it from being a race to the center to get to the dragon into a race against the other players and avoid the dragon.  I also own this and for a time it was a go-to filler game if our friday night sessions started late or ended early.  It's a quick game and is so easy to pick up for new players.

RPG Inspiration

The tile laying aspect of this game really floats my boat.  I'm a big fan of the dungeonmorphs concept and have created a bunch of my own tiles over the years and even contributed some art to a kickstarter and the davesmapper project.

It would be childs play to use the tiles to map out a random dungeon for use in any role playing game.  Much quicker than the famous Appendix A - Random Dungeon Generator found in the Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG) in my opinion.  I might even have a go myself one day. 

Every year at Dragons Keep Roleplay Club we host a memorial trophy in honour of members who are no longer with us.  One year, I actually went to the trouble of building a 2d cardboard version of the game but with a simplified combat system and character generation which used playing cards.

Saturday 22 January 2022

Dungeonmorphs Vietnam - Junglemorphs 1

In response to the August 2021 RPG Blog Carnival topic "Let's Build a Dungeon" I wrote an article "Where we're going wee don't need walls!" for my friday night club Dragons Keep Roleplay Club 

I opined that the principles of dungeon building could, with a bit of imagination, be used to create any wilderness encounter.

The focus of my attention was an upcoming Savage Worlds: Tour of Darkness campaign set in the steamy jungles of Vietnam sometime during the Vietnam War (1969 to 1972).

In that article I suggested that patrols could be mapped using geomorphs or rather Junglemorphs.  True to my word this weekend I began scratching away at squared paper and came up with the first set of Junglemorphs.

Junglemorphs #1
Download a bigger version here - Junglemorph#1


Thursday 4 February 2021

Zombies!!! - The most fun you can have in a 6" x 9" box

Today we celebrate George A Romero's Birthday with a bit of zombie posting.

My favourite zombie boardgame is Zombies!!!

Zombies!!! (yes the exclamations are part of the title) by Twilight Creations is a very big game for such a tiny box and a tiny price.

Get to the Chopper

The player's objective is to "explore" the town by randomly drawing a then placing a town tile as part of their turn then defeating any zombies which they come into contact with.  When they find the helipad tile they can try to reach it and win the game.

Zombies!!! Boardgame
Zombies!!! Boardgame Town Tiles


The stand out component for me are the town tiles which make up the board.  I think it is the frustrated town planner in me.  These geomorphs depict almost every type of building you are likely to encounter in a small town USA and I confess I have used them in many RPGs to quickly generate a town for my players.

As the board is generated the number of zombies increases with each new tile placed generating more and more for you to deal with.

Players also get to use the good and bad event cards throughout which introduces a Player vs Player element to the game.  These cards can really mess with your day or be the key to success and really ramp up the tension.

Fast Frenetic Fun

Gameplay is fast and simple.  Each player turn consists of the same steps:

  • Draw and place a tile
  • Fight zombies on your space
  • Draw event cards
  • Move an fight zombies
  • Roll and Move the zombies 
  • Discard event cards

If you die at any time you respawn back at the town square so nobody gets ejected from the game because they became zombie lunch.

Expansions Galore

Just like movie franchises, the sign of a popular game is often the number expansions it has.  Zombies is no exception and with 15 editions there is a lot to choose from.  If you want to recreate Dawn of The Dead, then there's Zombies!!! 3 - Mall Walkers.  If you want to explore the sewers then you need  Zombies!!! 6 - Six feet under.  If clowns are your thing then Zombies!!! 7 has you covered.

Zombies!!! 3 - Mall Wakers Zombies!!! 6 - Six Feet Under Zombies!!! 7 - Send in the Clowns

The Board Game Geek community has also created several house rule expansions to add flavour,  My own particular favourite is the addition of weapon cards which greatly enhance the game with ranged attacks.

Give it a go, you won't be dissapointed... you'll be dead!!! 

Tuesday 25 November 2014

Let's Blow this Kid and Go Home!!

Wow, the Dungeonmorphs 2 kickstarter has unlocked THE CITY STRETCH GOAL and with a little bit more we could have, wait for it....

CITY RUINS !!!!!!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO BE LIKE LUKE AND BACK THIS KICKSTARTER

Let's be like Luke and hit that £19K Stretch goal.  I've already upped my pledge level to 3 sets of dice, and if we shoot through £16K everyone gets a...

SECOND BONUS DICE per set!!!!

so if you're a 3 set backer you'll get 6, yes count them, 6 bonus dice.  That's an extra set of dice right there and it will cost you nowt, nish, nada, zero, zilch, nothing.

Come on guys and girls this is just too good an opportunity to pass up.

I want my Ruins!! 

Monday 24 November 2014

Almost There... Almost There...

...as Red Leader would say. 

Over the weekend the Dungeonmorphs 2 kickstarter funded and it's almost unlocked it's second dice set stretch goal, only $1000 bucks to go!

There's still time to jump on board this project and push forward to hit that stretch goal.

If you back at the 2 dice set pledge level you'll have 10 dice (+ 2 bonus dice) to create your villages and cities.  All for a measly $40 ($3 a dice). 

If there are any FLGS stores reading this, you can still grab a retailer bundle on your customers behalf and save even more money.

Dungeonmorphs 2: Cities and Villages
Click the picture to become a backer
Joe will be releasing some proofs of the city dice designs later today, so come on guys, share this with your friends, get them to pledge and we can unlock some AWESOME.



Tuesday 11 November 2014

RPG Mapping in Sketchup Part 5 - Building your City from a 2D image

In my previous videos I shared all the sketchup techniques I use to create 3D buildings in my games.  Now it's time to start building a city from the ground up using a 2D image as a reference. 
This is the image I used in the video

I'm using one of my citymorph sketches but you can use any image which will import into sketchup, just make sure that you have some sort of scale in mind.  If you've not seen the amazing Dungeonmorphs 2 kickstarter which inspired this tutorial check out the link on the right side of the page.

In the next video I'll be finishing off the roofs and showing you how you can turn your models into "components" which allow you to duplicate your buildings or citymorph tiles and expand it even faster.


Related Posts:

Saturday 8 November 2014

RPG Mapping in Sketchup Part 4 - Adding features and Sketchy Styles

In part 4 of my RPG Mapping in Sketchup series I show you how to add smaller features such as chimneys, towers and dormers to existing models. 

I also show you how to make your models look hand drawn using the styles pallette.  This is particularly useful if you are going to use the model in your own player handouts either as maps of the city or as first person point of view scenes.

Sketchup lets you to export your model as a 2D image so you can do further editing in a bitmap editor if you want to add in characters or other elements.




Related Posts:



Thursday 6 November 2014

RPG Mapping in Sketchup Part 3 - The Cross-Gable, Gambrel and Mansard Roof.

The next installment of my short video series on RPG Mapping in Sketchup covers the three other simple roof shapes found in most top down RPG maps.

The Cross-Gable roof is essentially just two gable roofs which intersect, commonly found in "T" "X" and "H" shaped buildings.  The Gambrel (or Dutch style) roof is a common double height roof shape popular for larger buildings like barns and is found all over Europe and the USA.  The Mansard roof is another common double height roof style, the second roof section can be gabled or hipped.




Related Posts:



Tuesday 4 November 2014

RPG Mapping in Sketchup Part 2 - Simple Buildings Walls and Roofs

In this second part of the series I show a quick and easy technique to draw simple buildings with the 3 most common type of roof shapes; the Gable, the Hip and the Double Hip Roof.  Using this technique you can use sketchup to quickly construct models of buildings for use in your own RPG campaigns maps or as scene setting handouts for your players.



In the next part I'll demonstrate techniques to create the Cross Gable, Gambrel and Mansard roof shapes. 

Related Posts:

Part 1 - Unhiding the 3rd Dimension

Friday 31 October 2014

RPG Mapping in Sketchup Pt 1 - Unhiding the 3rd Dimension

As you know I got commissioned by Joe Wetzel for his Dungeonmorphs 2 Cities and Villages dice project on kickstarter, which requires me to make lots of geomorphs with buildings on them.

After a while you look at your collected sketches and think OMG all my buildings look the same.

Sketching out the idea process - not sure if any of these will be in the final product
This is caused mostly by the constraints of making sure the design is legible and that they fit on a 1inch d6.  In search of inspiration I decided to experiment with roof shapes and turning them into 3D buildings using sketchup.  Enjoy...

Thursday 16 October 2014

Delving the Dark with Dungeon Master G

Following on from yesterdays Geomorph related post, I've been following the exploits of the Dungeon Crafting crowd (The DM's Craft, TheDMGInfo and AJ Pickett) on YouTube for a while now and have been especially entertained by The DMG Info's latest series "Delving The Dark".

It's essentially, a video "walk-through" of a dungeon that Gareth has created using his take on DM Scotty's 2.5D tile system.  Each episode describes a single room and its contents.  The descriptions are system neutral and concise and the plot detail offered adds enough spice to keep the viewer and potential DM interested.



Whilst watching Level 1 Area 16/20, Gareth casually dropped that there were at least 5 levels to this dungeon...  Woah, that's gonna be a pretty sweet little series of vids. 

To avoid spoilers, this is definitely one for DMs only and it's a great showcase for how the 2.5D dungeon tiles can be used in your game.

Wednesday 15 October 2014

DIY Tournament Dungeon Boardgame

24 Cheap and easy 2.5D Dungeon Tiles
My RPG club, The Hobbit's Hole, runs an annual memorial tournament in honour of one of its founding members called the Manic Trophy.

This year it's my turn to host the game and I'll be putting on a simple dungeon crawl game.  I'm musing over the rules at the moment but here's my outline: 

PREMISE
My aim is to have a 3 to 5 player competitive dungeon crawl lasting no more than 45 minutes, in the style of the boardgame Dungeon Quest.  Players start on the same tile, like in Drakon, each time they move they reveal a new tile and orient it as they see fit discovering the dungeon as they go.  The final tile holds the great treasure and the Boss Monster.

I'm going to be using a version of the 9 inch cavern geomorph tiles as popularised by YouTubers TheDMGInfo / TheDM'sCraft / DM Kaydons Kastle, where each tile contains an encounter, be it a trap or a monster (or maybe both).  This also gives me a chance to use the cards from the Inkwell Ideas Creature Decks.  

I like the idea of having a finite number of "moves" to a game, everyone has an equal chance the player skill element comes from trying to push your luck or deciding to flee.  I've played  games like Lost Cities which use this sort of "push your luck" mechanic and enjoyed them immensely.

I need quick and dirty "trump" style resolution so I'm going to base everything around a regular deck of playing cards.  Players get to choose their card whereas the DM draws randomly from a deck.

To represent levels of the dungeon the DM deck is divided into 3 stacks; Level 1(cards numbered 2 to 6), Level 2 (cards 7 to J) and Level 3 cards (Q to A).  I have 24 tiles in the game so the first 10 tiles represent Level 1, the next 10 Level 2 and the last 4 are Level 3.

STATS & CHARACTER GENERATION

Looking at the card suit symbols we have:
  • HEARTS - Look like a heart so should represent life force or vitality, these cards are used for all tests of strength and stamina.
  • CLUBS - Look like a tree and sort of like a brain so these represent knowledge and intelligence.
  • DIAMONDS - Looks sharp like a sword so these cards are used to represent Melee combat ability.
     
  • SPADES - Look like an arrowhead so these cards are used for all Missile attacks and Dexterity based skill checks.
  • JOKERS - Each player gets one of these to use during the game to automatically succeed at a challenge or to inflict an instant kill.  However, Jokers cannot be used to defeat the BOSS MONSTER, unused jokers are worth 15 points at the end of the game.
Players get to choose their class and pick up the relevant 2 suits of cards as follows:
  • Warrior - (Strength) and (Melee)
  • Wizard - ♣ (Intelligence) and ♠ (Missile)
  • Thief - ♠ (Dexterity) and ♣ (Intelligence)
  • Ranger - ♠ (Missile) and (Melee)
  • Cleric - ♣ (Intelligence) and (Melee)
Additional Character Classes contributed by Stu Rat
  • Barbarian - (Strength) and ♠ (Dexterity)
  • Bandit - (Strength) and ♣ (Intelligence)
  • Monk - ♣ (Intelligence) and (Strength)
  • Archer -  ♠ (Missile) and (Strength)
  • Warlord - (Melee) and ♣ (Intelligence)
  • Gladiator - (Melee)  and (Strength)
  • Swashbuckler - (Melee) and ♠ (Dexterity)

The first suit is their PRIMARY stat, e.g. Warriors (Strength) and is used to break ties.
ENCOUNTERS

Each time players move onto a new tile they will encounter either a monster, a trap or need to search for a treasure.

MONSTER ENCOUNTER: Players may either FIGHT using (Melee) or ♠ (Missile) or EVADE using ♣ (Intelligence) or (Stamina).  If a player succeeds in a fight the monster is killed and a treasure awarded.  If a player succeeds in evading the player can move to the next tile but the monster remains and no treasure is awarded. 

TRAP ENCOUNTERS: Players may either DISABLE using ♣ (Intelligence) or ♠ (Dexterity) or EVADE using (Strength) or (Melee).  If a trap is disabled it is removed from the game and the player gets a reward otherwise the trap remains.

NO ENCOUNTER:  Empty tiles can be searched by any player using any card. So there is merit in just following the first player and scratching around in the room once they've defeated all the monsters.

As detailed above, players resolve encounters by choosing a card and comparing it with the DMs Card, whichever is higher wins.  Players who fail an encounter must discard an extra card at random from whichever suit they used in the encounter.  In the event of ties a player who used their primary stat always wins, if they used their secondary stat they always lose.
I'm going to decide monster or trap based on a coin flip.  Heads it's a Monster, tails its a Trap, but you could design specific traps for each tile design you have.

TREASURE

Treasures are awarded for defeating monsters, disabling traps or succeeding in search rolls.  They are either drawn randomly from a seperate deck or if you want the rewards to increase in level as the challenges increase you can just award the challenge card.

THE BOSS MONSTER

When the last tile is drawn, the players have reached the end of the dungeon.  Any players who can move their character onto this tile in their next turn can attempt to defeat the boss monster either collectively as a group or try it on their own.  Players are reminded that the boss monster is an instant kill event and failure will result in death.  There's no such thing as a dead Hero in this game.

In either case they choose a card as normal, excluding Jokers.  However, the boss monster gets to  shuffle all the remaining challenge decks together and draws 1 card plus 1 card for each party member in the combat and discards the lowest card.

Players are awarded 2 treasures each for defeating the boss monster.

FLEEING

Players can FLEE the dungeon before drawing a new tile and keep any treasure cards they have amassed so far.  If their route out of the dungeon is blocked by a monster they must discard a card at random as they flee.

TURN ORDER 

Players determine their Initiative order by choosing one card from their hand.  Highest goes first, in the event of ties the player who used a primary stat card wins, all others discard and redraw.

1.  FLEE - Players may decide to flee the dungeon or continue exploring.

2. MOVE - Move through an open exit and reveal the next tile.

3. ENCOUNTER - Each player resolves the encounter as outlined above.

4. NEXT TURN - Play moves to the player with the next highest initiative.

SCORING

Once the boss monster has been defeated (or all players have fled the dungeon) the game is over and scoring occurs.

1.  DEAD players score 1 point for each unused stat card in their hand (+ 15 points for an unused joker).

2.  SURVIVING players score 1 point for each secondary stat card (+ 15 points for an unused joker) + the face value of any primary stat cards remaining + the face value of any treasure rewarded.

3.  The winner is the player with the most points

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Sci-Fi Ship Morphs - Part 5 - Even More Basic Tiles

Here are some more basic tiles for you to fill with your own furniture.

With Doors Without Doors

Daves Mapper

All the tiles for this and previous posts in this series have been uploaded to Davesmapper.com, so go get mapping!

Previous Posts in this Series

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Sci-Fi Ship Morphs Part 4 - More Basic Tiles

Here are some more basic tiles for you to fill with your own furniture.

With DoorsWithout Doors

Daves Mapper

All the tiles for this and previous posts in this series have been uploaded to Davesmapper.com, so go get mapping!

Previous Posts in this Series

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Sci-Fi Ship Morphs Part 3 - Cryo Tubes, Mess Hall, Transporters and Drop-Ship

Continuing the intrepid adventures of SS Morpheus, this week we add:

Cryo-Tubes and Mess Hall

For those deep space missions where you have to go to sleep during the long journey. This also introduces a new basic standard tile.

Without Doors With Doors

Teleporter Bay

Unless you have a shuttle, you need a teleporter to get you planetside.
Teleporter Room

Shuttle

If you're gonna have a shuttle you might as well have a dropship, just remember to shut the doors when you've left.

Dropship / ShuttleShuttle Bay Doors Open

Escape Pods

If you need to evacuate the ship use an escape pod and always come in handy for secret meetings, just don't let the computer lip read what you're saying... 
Escape Pods

Daves Mapper

All the tiles for this and previous posts in this series have been uploaded to Davesmapper.com, so go get mapping!

Previous Posts in this Series

Wednesday 17 April 2013

Sci-Fi Ship Morphs Part 2 - Guns, Guns, Guns

After last weeks effort I noticed that the SS Morpheus would get cut to ribbons in any sort of firefight.  What we need, as Clarence Bodiker would say, is "Guns, Guns, Guns".

Corner Tile Single Ball Turret
Edge Tile Single Ball Turret
Of course if you do get shot up you need a medical bay so the ships doctor can patch you up.

Edge Tile Med Bay
and in the event of your ship being boarded you need some basic corridors to run down.


UPDATE: Tiles have now been uploaded to DavesMapper.com.