Happy 50th birthday Dungeons & Dragons! How Dungeons & Dragons has grown since Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson traded notes about ideas for their fantasy roleplaying game back in the 1970s. Now the game pioneered by Gygax, Arneson, and a handful of friends back in 1974 has grown into a game enjoyed by millions of players worldwide.
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A new way to play at your Friendly Local Games Store!
We are handing over to Kris for a dive in to our plans for this fun new initiative.
Hi Gang! We have a variety of projects this month including some Battletech, Shadows of Brimstone, Star Wars: Legion, and Renee lent Bronwyn one of her games, so we’ll see what she thought of it. I also wanted to do an Artist Spotlight this month on a talented new addition to the Sentry Box, Andrew. He’s completed several beautiful projects and I wanted to showcase them.
Continue readingHi Gang, Sue here again with an update on what the staff have been up to this month. We had a really nice mix of miniature projects this month, with Chad working on his Frontier Town, Kris working on some Warhammer Fantasy undead miniatures, Uncle Mike working on some D&D miniatures, and I continued working on the Heroquest Heroes. As for Board games, Renee takes us through some really fun looking board games this month.
Continue readingHi Gang, Sue here again with an update on what the staff have been up to this month. Kris and I took on a couple of iconic characters for Star Wars: Legion. Our Battletech nights continue to be a hit with staff and customers alike. Additionally, as Stampede approaches, we are working on an Old West Diorama for the Historical Dept. I’ll also be sharing pics of the whole thing in a future Blog when it is finished. Lastly, but certainly not least-ly, Renee played just a tonne of great looking board games. I’m truly blown away by how beautiful they are. So we’ll see what she thought about all of them.
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In celebration of Free RPG Day, let’s talk about the game I currently cannot get enough of, Fabula Ultima. Fabula Ultima is a self-branded TTJRPG that focuses on player creativity, character relationships, and most excitingly, shared narrative control between the GM and players. Drawing heavy inspiration from the Japanese TTRPG Ryuutama (often described as Hayao Miyazaki’s Oregon Trail), this TTRPG styles itself in the legacy of classic Japanese console role playing games (think video games like Final Fantasy, Chronotrigger, Dragon Quest, and so on) and the grand, world-saving narratives they’re known for. In Fabula Ultima, that’s a world you make together when you sit down to play. This shared creativity not only allows for less GM prep and less worry about GM railroading, but more than that, it serves to create a strong, personalized narrative of saving a magical world, your world, and the tight-knit character bonds that empower you to save it. Now to be honest, I don’t really play a lot of those video games, but that freeing focus on shared narrative control and how it immerses you in a grand epic to rival even the most dramatic RPG narratives keeps me well and truly hooked.
So I already mentioned that you make the game world with the other folks at your table when you sit down to play, but what does that look like? Is that it? (It isn’t, but one step at a time.) This game has no fixed or “canonical” setting by design. Instead, in your first session, you create a world in one of three subgenres of fantasy, according to eight pillars that unite the worlds of Fabula Ultima. Now, those pillars are pretty intuitive if you’re at all familiar with the video game genre Fabula Ultima draws inspiration from (the world is old, magical, and dangerous, your heroes are remarkable, unique, and fundamentally good-hearted, etc.), but the kind of fantasy you pick flavours your journeys a little more distinctly. When you pick between High Fantasy, Tech Fantasy, and Natural Fantasy, you’re not only fleshing out further details of your particular fantasy world, but setting up expectations for the kinds of characters you’ll be making and what their bonds may look like. That’s especially important, given that your characters’ bonds and traits also determine some of the ways you’ll be invoking the game’s Fabula points. Fabula points are players’ primary opportunities to directly impact the game world beyond creation, and are earned from things like fumbling checks, reaching 0 hp and surrendering, or encountering your game’s villain. They let you draw on the power of your character’s traits and bonds to reroll or improve the checks you make, but even bigger than that, they also enable you to freely add story elements or change existing ones. Now, if its already something established, it can’t directly contradict anything previously said, and you need to ask the person in charge of that story element for permission (i.e. if you want to add a detail to the backstory of a GM controlled NPC, you need to ask the GM), so it’s not all-powerful. But, if you find an ancient artifact, and want to spend a point to say that your character knows someone who can help and where they are, so long as that doesn’t contradict anything, you get to go ahead and add that to the map! The best part, though, is that spending your fabula points is the main way you get to level up! In this way, you get to consistently add imaginative plot-twists in your favour, and even cooler, you’re actively incentivized to do so. You can hoard points for “when you really need it”, but do you really want to put off levelling up like that? Together, these systems create a constant cycle of rewarding taking risks and challenges, and then empowering every player to add to the world and letting the fate shine through their character and further encourage that character’s growth.
This is all beautifully facilitated by an approach to running the game focused more on reaction and action, rather than any kind of planned plot. The GM, instead of following an adventure outline, will often be tracking various hazards or story elements through the use of clocks, which should be a familiar tool to anyone who’s played a number of Powered by the Apocalypse games, like Monster of the Week or Blades in the Dark. Essentially, a clock is a kind of tracker towards some goal or danger, but is notably not tied to any kind of specific approach or solution. What this means is that you as the GM don’t have to know what’s going to happen next, because you’re finding that out together as you play.
As the person most often excited by different RPGs in my friend group, I naturally end up as the de facto forever GM, but I’m also way too bogged down in other responsibilities to create a new adventure myself. At the same time, I want to ensure that I can give my players something new and respond to all the creative ideas they come up with. I don’t want to learn a new adventure module just to have my player come up with a really cool idea that the adventure writer didn’t think of first, and have to throw out a solid chunk of what I’ve prepped. Fabula Ultima excites me so much because I know that I’ll get to sit down to create something with my players, while also being able to engage with and present a crunchy yet not too unfamiliar system.
Now, there is so, so much more to say about this beautiful game, like how the mandatory and expressive multiclassing allows you to make creative character builds to fill out any character concept, how checks are intuitively handled by utilizing two of four different attributes instead of one of a laundry list of skills, or even just how the graphical design of the book somehow feels exactly like every RPG I’ve played, but instead, I’ll just let you know that you could already be trying it for free. Fabula Ultima was highlighted in a previous Free RPG Day, and as such, you can try it out for free by downloading the quickstart, Press Start, right the Fabula Ultima website! You can even “load your save” and get the world you make in the quickstart up to speed with the full game if you decide to pick it up later. The game’s publisher Need Games is also participating in Free RPG Day this year with a free one-shot for their new the new Terror Target Gemini RPG, based on the film Yojimbo, with copies available to pick up for free in the store if you stop by tomorrow (June 22nd). We can’t wait to see you come try it out!
– Amelia
What better way to celebrate Free RPG Day than with some free RPGs you can come play at your favourite friendly local game store. If you’re looking for ideas of new games to bring to your table or something to play with your group as you check out our event space, then look no further. These games can be picked up for free online to supplement the delightful goodies we’ll be giving away to folks who stop by tomorrow in store. Without further ado, here’s four games you absolutely need to check out (for free!).
1. Durf
Durf is a charming, rules-lite dungeon-fantasy game, taking inspiration from inventive games like Knave, Into The Odd, and Troika, and isn’t much longer than a single pamphlet, at only 12 pages. The core mechanic of rolling a d20 to hit a target number will be familiar with most RPG players, but where Durf really lets its inspirations shine is in how intuitively it tracks inventory and just how risky combat is. What I find especially interesting is the game’s stress mechanic. When your character pushes themself for an advantage or casts a spell, you take stress, which fills up an inventory slot. Therefore, If your character is heavily armoured, and lugging around a great deal of equipment, they’ll be much more limited to use magic or exert themself, meaning you need to think carefully about how you equip your character. While the game is entirely complete and ready for your next campaign as is, it’s also released under the creative commons license, so there’s a whole host of community made content for it, including other rules and adventures to get you started. Now, I honestly don’t want to say too much about this one, because well, it’s twelve pages. Any time spent here could instead be spent just reading the game and therefore getting closer to playing Durf! Go read it already!
2. Crash Pandas (and GS Howitt’s Other One Page Games)
Crash Pandas is a one page RPG that lets you step into the paws of a small band of raccoons attempting to drive a car and make a name for yourselves in the world of L.A. Street racing. This game was of course made by G.S. Howitt, who you may know of as one of the lead designers of Rowan, Rook, & Decard. or more likely, as the guy who made Honey Heist, that game where you play as a band of criminal bears stealing honey. Now why not just pick Honey Heist to show off? Most people who’ve spread out into rules-lite indie RPGs have at least heard of everyone’s favourite bear/villain mastermind heist game. Everybody loves Honey Heist. And that’s precisely why we’re talking about street-racing raccoons instead. Any time you and your fluffy friends approach a challenge in your dragster, you each secretly choose an action to try and all take at the same time. This could mean that you send the car crashing directly into a wall or masterfully ducking between obstacles (but probably crashing). Even better, you get to play that all out with little toy cars on whatever map you draw to represent the situation. Now, you could just use generic tokens or whatever, but given the playfulness of roleplaying a raccoon in a fake beard and glasses wielding a lead pipe failing desperately to drive a car that’s rattling itself apart, do you really want to pick the boring option? Even if Crash Pandas doesn’t appeal to you in particular (no idea why it wouldn’t, but hey, it’s your table), I’d take a look at GS Howitt’s other games, like the Witch is Dead, where you play as a group of a witch’s familiars seeking revenge on her murderer, or Hostile Work Environment, his latest one page game that has you surviving the new merger at your office firm while your superiors sadistically hunt you for sport. It’s really quite a treasure trove (of free RPGs).
3. Exclusion Zone Botanist
Do you like drawing plants? Do you like drawing freaky sci-fi plants using real plant classification terminology? Do you like doing all that while trying desperately to not get corrupted and transform into freaky sci-fi plant life yourself? Do you want to engage with your favourite hobby without the hassle of scheduling four of your busiest friends? Yes? Then you need to play this solo drawing RPG. See, your electronics don’t work in the Exclusion Zone, so the only way to document the plants of this strange, mutating landscape you’ve been dropped into is to draw it with a physical pencil and paper. Each round marks an hour, in which you’ll explore a new hex of the map, hopefully see some strange new to document, and then check to see if the forest mutates you along with it. For every hour that passes, that risk gets ever higher, so you need to carefully budget your time and the risk you take on. While you do that though, you’ll be finding flora of all shapes and sizes, with features ranging from strange glows and razor-sharp leaves to barely heard, unintelligible whispers. It even comes with the EZB Plant Discovery Guide, expanding the plants you can discover from the original brochure-sized game out to include things like caustic berries dissolving other life around it, teeth-covered vines ensnaring prey, or even time manipulation in the area around the plant. I strongly recommend you play with the EZB Plant Discovery Guide, and I recommend you play it right now! Because it’s free!
4. The Hollows
The Hollows is the newest game from Rowan, Rook, & Decard, which is all about intense fights against nightmarish bosses in a rotting, gothic world. In it, you take on the role of a hunter, a sort of cursed entity implanted with a seed of a Hollow, the same corruption turning other depraved souls into a terrifying creature with its very own pocket dimension, blighting the land. It’s only your role as a hunter, assisted by your two archetypal weapons making up the two halves of your class and promising you false, toxic fantasies of power, that keeps you from turning into one of the very abominations you destroy. If you think that sounds like Bloodborne or any other Soulsborne game, you’re right! The Hollows takes direct inspiration from games in that vein, focused on presenting crunchy, engaging combat against a massive, intimidating beast. These terrors you fight literally take centre-stage, as combat is played on a circular grid with your enemy always at the centre. If they shift to face you, you can suddenly find yourself in the line of fire, so you’ll always need to be careful of your positioning in relation to the monster while you space yourself out to maximize your offensive as well as your ability to support your teammates. If you want a dark, mechanically satisfying boss rush of an RPG, well then stop by tomorrow to pick up a free copy of the quickstart from our store! Even if we happen to run out of copies before you come in, you can pick up a pdf of the quickstart adventure The Sins Of Grisham Priory for free on the game’s backerkit page through the publisher’s website. Happy hunting!
Whether you’re playing these or another favourite RPG of yours, we’d love to see you come play at our store, and while you’re here, don’t forget to pick up some goodies from Free RPG Day! There’s a wide variety of stuff we’re giving away tomorrow (June 22nd), but supplies are limited, so make sure you come in early. See you soon, and happy Free RPG Day!
– Amelia
Hi gang, this month our staff took a lot of pictures for you! Our staff have gotten up to a lot of fun stuff this month including miniature painting and games featuring big, stompy mechs, D&D, a diorama, and a variety of board games. I personally love all the creativity and love that has gone into this month’s entries from all the kitbashing to the diorama. Without further ado, let’s take a look!
Continue readingHi guys! Sue here again with an update on what the staff have been up to for the past month, and it’s been an active month! We have a wide variety this month including a couple of miniatures, a bunch of board games and even an update from a D&D campaign!
Continue readingIt’s been a bit of a slower month game wise here at the store, with a lot of people working on bigger projects. But we did have a handful of games. Every Thursday we have Battletech here at the store and Dan got some great pics of that, as well Dan and Chloe started a D&D campaign. There continues to be strong interest in Legions Imperalis and Uncle Mike painted a bunch of terrain for that. Anyway, without further ado, here is what people thought about their projects this month:
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