The ‘7 Ages’ Reclamation Project

Among the games played at the Gathering, we played 7 Ages. In fact we did Ages V and VI (in about 4.5 hours? I think), which was a good clip, and nice because in all of our prior games we mostly did the early game (usually Age II through the Dark Ages). There was discussion about the games sharp points, and how to fix it.

Interestingly, this took a few tracks.

• Given that 7 Ages exists and is a published game, how could it be made better?
• If you were going to design this type of game — a long experience game players control multiple empires (“Rise and Fall” style) over the course of an afternoon to a weekend –. from scratch, what would you include? What would you leave out? As I’ve said before, Civilization does not compress, you couldn’t turn this into a two hour game, but you could certainly trim it.
• I should just punt on this whole discussion and see if I can’t convince Tom Lehmann to design it, and then wait and see what the answer is.

The second question led to a long discussion about rules and esoteric systems. Does 7 Ages need its combat system? Well, it needs something. But the combat system could often be grossly simplified at little loss. 90%+ of the combats were basically “Both sides draw a card and shove all in” (and in Age II this would be higher). Is it worth having system(s) that are mostly ignored?

I think so. Magic Realm and Lords of the Sierra Madre both have systems that you can usually ignore, but when they matter they provide odd results. I called these “entangled systems” but if the 7 Ages combat system isn’t really entangled with anything. You have losses but troops never defect, or suffer PTSD, or settle down. Cards can cause this to happen, but the combat doesn’t.

So while I was (two weeks ago), pro “7 Ages combat” now I’m thinking that nope, it can be replaced. I have no idea what that replacement should be, apart from “awesome” (a noble, yet useless, design principle). Honestly I wonder if removing the map and units is the way to go (in the total redesign).

So, while I think about it, some low-level fixes to make 7 Ages better.

• Setup — Selecting a starting age and time is great, and we allow players to mulligan opening hands until they have at least 2+ valid empires for that known age. This gets all players to a good start. The point of the game is to play, not sit around wishing you’d drawn an empire.
• During “Start Empire” — Any empire can spend $5 of their starting money for a free maneuver, unless they already get one (or more). (Rationale — speed the game up, more fun. And the free maneuver empires really do score much faster).
• A player selecting Trade and Progress may either ignore a dark ages (even if they lose) or copy an innovation (blue technology) from another empire in trade range. (Rationale — For the latter, there are too many chains of “You need X to play Y to play Z” blue chains, especially in the latter ages, and this means that once they start appearing the game they will naturally spread. The Internet requires something like 4 pre-cursors, most of which are only on a handful of cards). Also, Trade and Progress feels a bit underpowered as an action.
• If the last unit is off the board, the player can Discard Empire for free. (That may actually be a rule, but we weren’t sure).
• Some card fixes, but we hadn’t really hammered them out except for the following:
  • The obvious one is “Bad Augury” (Cancel an opponents “Start Empire”) which is plain old take-that and sets a player way back. I think that saying that this can only cancel a players 3rd (or later) empire is reasonable.
  • I think we removed the “Renaissance/Printing Press” precursor for something (or rather, said that it was needed in Age IV, but not Age V). It seemed silly.

A Dark Day in the Realm

The Witch, Pilgrim and Captain had teamed up to go into the Borderlands to the Vault. There was a Demon and two vipers lurked in the Vault, and also the rotting corpse of the Sorcerer. The Witch had been cursed by the Imp to Ill Health, so she couldn’t rest. For a spell caster, this was devastating, so she’d offered her services to any group that could get her to the Chapel, but that required going through the Borderlands.

And the Borderlands contained the Lost City, which meant that (in addition to the aforementioned monsters), there were already Dragons present, and possibly other things.

The Pilgrim had the cloak of mist so he had an extra hide. The Captain had gotten the Living Sword, so while he couldn’t deal with tremendous (or heavy and armored monsters) by himself, the vipers were slow enough to pose no threat. At least, not a single viper.

It was a good plan. Certainly better than the original Druid’s plan, which involved risking his life on a single hide roll.

A 1/6 chance of death in Magic Realm is closer to 50/50. That Druid died on day 3.

But this plan was good, The Witch and Captain recorded “Follow Pilgrim” and the Pilgrim recorded.

Hide — Hide — Hide — Move — Move. We’d end on the Shrine hidden. If nothing untoward happened, the Witch would absorb the demon’s essence and the pilgram and captain would each ambush a viper.

No risk combat. If another monster appeared we could decide to risk it or just leave on the next turn. But that wasn’t a massive risk, because the Pilgrim had cast Peace with Nature. Most of the chits would not trigger.

The monster roll meant the Shrine’s guardian (the Troll) would appear. The Vault and Shrine were on the same space. That put a wrinkle into things. Failing all three hide rolls put a massive wrinkle on them.

New plan — panic!

Second plan — The Witch lured the Tremendous Troll. It was slow, so she could cast her spell and absorb it. The Captain lured a snake and the Demon and the Pilgrim lured a snake. The Demon’s curse thankfully only hit the Captain, rusting all his armor (ugh), so the Witch was free to absorb the troll. The captain and Pilgrim killed their vipers (as planned) and then the Captain had to dodge the Demon which was on him, hoping the Troll could grab the Demon.

Nope. The demon killed the captain and next turn grabbed hold of the troll, which meant that the result was a forgone conclusion. The Pilgrim ran away to avoid seeing the horrific final death.

Chance of failing three hide rolls = 11/36 ** 3 = 2.9%

Chance of failing three hide rolls and having a monster appear = 3% * 1/3 = 1%

So, it was about fifty-fifty.

One of the faster games of Magic Realm (for me, anyway).

The Magician’s Final Day

As the Magician spent the last day of the month meditating to prepare his Remedy spell (which would be used to lift the disgusting curse he’d gotten the prior day), the sounds of Dragons — plural — announced a problem.

He was hidden, but casting a spell would alert the Dragons to his presence. On a normal day, he’d just run away. But today wasn’t normal. Tonight he needed to cast a spell to finish his triumphant month in the Realm.

It was time for a risk. The Magician snapped the Withered Claw in half and asked for a wish, despite knowing a twinned curse would come. There was a risk since he could lose all his magic, but he Wished for Strength and the curse had no effect — he couldn’t be more disgusting than he already was. That was why he needed to cast Remedy in the first place.

The Magician quietly Transformed one Dragon, using his final purple essence in the process. If he transformed it into a squirrel (say), then he could quickly stab the other Dragon and kill it — thanks to his wish. Then the magician would finish off the squirrel (or not) and cast Remedy in peace. A triumphant end.

Sadly, the transformation turned the Dragon into … a lion.

(Lions are basically faster Dragons).

The Magician did kill the (untransformed) Dragon but that used up the wish and he did not escape from the Lion.

In hindsight, I should have cast Remedy on Round 1 to remove the curse. I would have become unhidden, but I could have used my purple magic (which I spent on the Transformation) to power the flying carpet and escape before melee in Round 2.

I missed that option. And honestly, once the wish roll worked I had something like a 75% chance to kill both Dragons and then remove a curse in the final night of a combat.

On a side note — I’m watching The Magicians on Netflix and (apart from being totally unrelated to Magic Realm) its pretty good. I liked the first book by Lev Grossman, but haven’t really gotten into the second. Probably read it during my beach trip later this year.

Got in another game of Magic Realm

That seems to be standard for the TaoLing and I during a long weekend (he has Monday off of school, and some appointments, so I’m taking Monday off, too. My arm was twisted).

It was an interesting setup: Wood’s Girl, Druid, Elf and Wizard. The Girl and the Elf both took Peace with Nature as their starting spell, and the first turn the Druid enchanted a wood and both characters cast their spell, so suddenly 3/4 of the characters did not summon monsters (except from treasure chits).

But the treasure chits were brutal. The Wood’s Girl died to the Demon (she could have run away, but we had a mental error and didn’t notice until later). (Since it was early, the TaoLing took the White Knight as a replacement). The Druid should have had an easy time with the Imp, but he got hit with a Wither curse, which fatigued something like eight or nine of his chits, including his auto-kill. He managed to kill the Imp, but multiple Dragon’s had shown up so he had to regroup. The Wizard took a risk going for the Alter in a Cavern and got murdered by a Demon for his trouble. (No replacement).

The Elf had a slow start, he went to the Cairns but left after the Spider showed up, then went to the Altar and worked around the Demon, but for little gain). Eventually he sold the White Knight some information for gold, and then went off and cast Persuasion (his other spell) to befriend the King’s Guards, whom he hired in the last week.

This let him go back to the Cairns (since the Guardsmen could lure Tremendous Spider and actually kill it, which they did), and I got a few more treasure, then raced to the Wizard’s resting spot and killed the Winged Demon and managed to loot a treasure right as the game ended. The combined gain from the final kill and treasure meant I eked out a score of +1 VP. The White Knight wound up with zero, but then realized that not selling a few things would mean losing 1-2 gold VP but gaining more fame/notoriety. Since he’d looted a ton of stuff, he ended up with around 5 VP.

The Druid had managed to learn 5 spells, because he had to (he’d put Spells as VP condition) and lucked out because he got the Good Book, which had Exorcise, and he had a source of White Magic. The net result meant that the 3-4 curses the Druid took could be easily removed. We’ve started to realize that reading runes is something non-spell casters should probably do a bit more of, at least if they have a source of the right color magic. The Druid really missed his gold requirement, and ended with -20 points in Gold, so finished negative (but not as much as you might expect).

We may very well play another game this weekend (since the set is out).

Hot off the presses

Dec 10th — White Knight Promises to invigorate local economy. “I’ve made a huge discovery,” he claims.

Dec 12th — Rumors swirling that Holy Grail recovered by White Knight in the Caverns.

Dec 16th — WK missing, presumed dead.

Dec 20th — “Woodsgirl and Dwarf announce treasure hunting partnership, head for vault in deep woods”

Dec 22nd — Swordsman sells Holy Grail to Order. “He’s a great guy,” says leader.

Dec 27th — “Woodsgirl says ‘He’s no Happy, he’s Greedy Dwarf,’ breaks up the band.”

Dec 29th — “Dwarf found dead. Bats again.”

Dec 31st — Swordsman indicted for conspiracy to commit ‘Murder by Bat.’

So, after the Woodsgirl and Dwarf teamed up to the find and loot the vault, the Dwarf basically yahtzee’d and the turn order prevented WG from searching at all (after a few turns of “Dwarf goes — monsters prowl — block hex” The characters could kill the blockers, but next turn it would happen again. Finally, the WG got a turn and found nothing, the Dwarf having already taking the vast majority of the treasure. She wandered off. The swordsman (who had raced over to the White Knight’s corpse just as the body was cooling and picked up the Grail and raced back to sell it) was nearby and showed up at the vault. His plan was to move in and searching three times to get the last treasure or two (He’d go first and watch the dwarf to discover the location). But since bats were moving, if he went in second he’d hit the bats. Or he could go in first, the bats would pounce and block the dwarf. The swordsman couldn’t find the vaule, but he could run away and come back to collect all the dead dwarf’s stuff. Which is pretty much what happened.

The TaoLing was mad, but he would have failed his hide roll anyway.

The game was played over two sessions, about 4 hours total (in the second session if you die you don’t get a new character). We the started a second game today, hence the new Month. This time I went Wizard + Sorcerer and TaoLing is White Knight + Wood’s Girl.

Jan 1st — “Another month, another band of brash adventurers!” (“Where do they find these fools,” asks elderly skeptic?)

Jan 2nd — Borderlands are where it’s happening!

(Three of the four characters went into the Borderlands, the sorcerer enchanting it for good measure).

Jan 3rd — Borderlands property values collapse after troll infestation discovered.

Jan 7th — Wizard discovers Dark Altar.

Jan 8th — “Sorcerer announces economic stimulus package, hires some Bashkars.”

(First time I’ve found those guys).

Jan 9th — Wizard killed by Demon.

The Wizard situation was tough. The Altar was at the back end of the cliffs, two mountain spaces away. I could rush to the last space, and likely die if either the troll or demon appeared. Or I could go Hide-Hide-Move-Move to go one space at a time. I chose the latter, when the former would have worked. On the first turn, nothing happened, on the second turn I failed both hides and the demon appeared. I survived the first spell, but that means he’d gotten me. Neither of my spells did the required damage, so I died.

(More to come)

 

The Magic Realm Daily Newsletter Headlines

Some headlines and selected pull quotes. Please attribute Magic Realm Press.

Dec 1st — “New Batch of adventurers promise glory and gold for all!”

Dec 3rd — “Body of young Amazon found in the Deep Woods, autopsy reveals bats to blame!”

Dec 4th — “Noble Pilgrim rids world of horrific troll!”

Dec 5th — “Pilgrim killed by ‘massive swarm of bats,’ Swordsman says.”

Claiming to have witnessed the encounter, the Swordsman said that the beloved Pilgrim, who just a day earlier slayed a might troll, was attacked by a ‘massive swarm,’ of bats. Biologists at MR University are now investigating if the Pilgrims actions upset the Deep Woods ecosystem. “Perhaps trolls keep the bat population in check,” speculated an un-named graduate student ….

Dec 7th — “Area wizard summons ‘impressive’ lightning bolt before being clubbed to death.”

Man this is a brutal game (in general, and this one in particular). After the third death we called it a night, and we’ll resume tomorrow.

 

Random thoughts on Magic Realm

Since every treasure appears in each game, the designer can plan for interactions between them. So you can have two treasures that are a key and chest, or map and destination. Whereas if you had a “Key” card in a game like Runebound or Talisman that only was useful if you drew another (specific) treasure, it would be a dead draw. It still could be, if your map to the Lost City got drawn a) on the other side of the board and b) the week after it was looted, but it may not be. And a few cards are likely to be out, since the Scholar won’t show up most games.

Some scenario games do this by having generic cards in the game and having the scenario define the meaning, or you could have a game with “core” cards (always the same thing) and “rare” cards (the few rare cards in the main deck let you draw from another, larger, deck). I do think Magic Realm’s consistent treasures allow for some nice features, and may even be needed to balance (somewhat) the characters, but I think a “core/rare” card deck may be more interesting. (Even strat-o-matic has a rare-events table! In a recent solitaire play a batted ball struck the mound).

Our games take 4-5h, with some setup (we’ve been leaving it out over the holiday between games). That’s two players, two characters each. Although our last game took <4 hours with setup and teardown, that’s because 3 characters died the second week and we didn’t restart, so the last two weeks took almost no time.

There are some clunky combats where one character is immune or useless. That doesn’t bother me — although I may eventually try the Advanced Combat rules — but I imagine that polarizes opinions about the game. Some characters are totally untroubled by situations that would destroy other characters. Since not all characters are equal, why should all monsters be?

I’ve finally won a game, with the Berserker. Selling the Sacred Grail to the Order for 50 Fame is huge, although I would have won without that bonus. I now see how slaughtering or hiring the Order — so that the leader is not available to buy the Grail — is one way to mess with people. Interestingly, the super amazing Amazon (see below) only squeaked by with +1 VP, but just one gold shy of a few more VP.

Right now I think both MK and MR can be played three ways: Co-operatively, Competitively but without PVP, Full competition. (There’s no distinction in the rules, but you could simply disallow PVP).

I found the following quote by the Designer (Richard Hamblen) describing his four requirements: Variety, Detail, Creating a Fantastic World, and Surprise. Surprise relates to my prior thoughts, in particular:

“A game that entertains like fantasy each time it is played must therefore be able to surprise its players with unforeseen developments even after they have played it many times and have become familiar with its mechanics.”

Full marks for that.

Magic Realm has a large number of house rules? I’m playing a few:

• You can sell stuff at the end of the game (instead of having to take time to rush back to sell stuff). Better experience (no having to rush back to the valleys in the last few turns) and makes sense. (You could just sell it tomorrow). You can’t sell it and get the Fame/Notoriety Bonus for possessing it. Either/or.
• Watchful Natives (so if you attack a group it can attack you back right away) and a ban on attacking friendly (and possibly even neutral) natives without a Casus Belli. The “Sell your stuff to them, kill them, and loot your stuff back” strategy is powerful and a-thematic. Exact rules TBD, but probably Protected Natives I (barring campaigns) from the variant list.
• I’ve proposed a house rule to prevent you from being able to freely fling minions/controlled monsters at attacks/traps that curse instead of wound.
• Right now I’m playing the character restarts (after death) have to bid on less VP per full week passed. (So, 4 points instead of 5 if one week has passed, etc). That seems better for learning games, but in my current game the information revealed after dying in a week was valuable in character selection. So that’s why experienced players increase the VP requirements for restarts.
• The Knights’ Adjustment — (Both Knights start “Friendly” instead of “Allied” with the relevant groups).
• I might play with serious wounds (if you take a wound that would exactly kill you based on your vulnerability), you don’t die but take a die roll (2d6, higher) of wounds. Also probably good for learning games.
• I think I’m going to add caches, since it makes sense (you hide stuff to find later, instead of just abandoning it).

Characters played so far, in rough order of number of plays: White Knight (often), Berserker, Wood’s Girl, Amazon, Elf, Black Knight, Captain, Witch.

Spells Cast: Absorb Essence (on the Octopus), Broomstick, Control Bats, Make Whole, Peace with Nature, Talk to Wise Bird (wise, my ass). The TaoLing collapsed a roof.

Most amazing Combo (TaoLing): Belt of Strength combined with Garb of speed to turn any of the Amazon’s fight** chit into a T3 attack, which can basically kill anything. (I think Bats and the Octopus are still faster). Makes a Berserker feel inadequate, truly. Controlling six bats was pretty good, though.

Things I wish I’d known my first time and suggestions for new players.

• Think of monster numbers as “Seconds.” Faster is better. (A T3 attack takes 3 seconds to resolve, so it goes before a H4 attack. If it’s attacking a H4/4 monster, your attack (T3) is faster than the monster’s maneuver (4) … so it hits. If it was an H4/3 monster, your attack is not faster than the mosnter’s defense, so you have to match maneuvers to hit.
• Solitaire (with a single character) is challenging, but two or three characters teaming up can do amazing things.
• Technically you could just deal out the Treasures within treasures, then shuffle the six site cards in the great treasures and start. Just deal out treasures into locations as needed. (Ditto spells). Start playing and finish setup as you go. That reminds me of a mantra I may not have mentioned on this site (at least, not recently)

“Game First, Rules Later” — I’m personally one of those people who don’t mind getting a rule wrong or not knowing everything before I start. Here I Stand I learned despite an excruciating 2 hour rules explination. When the Bridge Club started, I showed up late. The club president (good guy, but over-enthusiastic) had corralled the new players and spent an hour explaining the game. Since I was late, the VP gave me five minutes and tossed me into a deal.

I don’t think any of the others showed up next week. (I would have, since I’m a gamer…)

The point of this is that if you are a “Rules First, Game Later” type  (instead of “GF;RL”) then MR is going to be much more difficult for you to get into.

I suspect I could teach MR and be started in 15 minutes before starting, using the following ideas:

1. Praise the Maker, have the game setup before hand or do it while you explain. Pick your character from the lesser (easy) offerings. No Enchant phases or Hiring, but maybe an odd spell. Everyone puts one point in each (non-spell) VP category (or just ignore VPs and say that whoever gets the best story wins). Let them take Amazon, Berserker, White Knight, Woods Girl. I disagree with Steve McKnight (at my peril) by thinking that you should avoid giving new players the Dwarf and swordsman, because players won’t enjoy them as much (and the Swordsman’s bonus won’t work as well with the modified game).
2. When explaining rules, only broad strokes, no minutiae.
3. Go over the daytime phases (Move, Hide, Search, Trade,Rest, Alert,Follow). Cover prowling and blocking.
4. Don’t spend more than a minute on combat. Just explain harm/vulnerability and undercutting vs matching. Don’t elaborate. Skip it for a few days. (Try to get your character into a reasonable combat and go over it slowly).
5. Have multiple copies of useful charts.
6. Play your turns normally, but new players get benefits.
   • For the first week let them free-form actions (as per Timeless Jewel). Point out situations where a player may be blocked or is walking into a deathtrap.
   • Second week have them write down their actions after their activation draw (so they don’t get to see their hide/search rolls, but do know which monsters are prowling, and their current locations).
   • Third week write down actions after monster roll but before activation draws (so they have to worry about prowls from other players moving monsters).
   • Fourth week normal.
   • If they are thinking about going to fight something (especially in week 1), let them play out a combat to see, then cancel it when they die horribly. This also teaches the combat rules.
7. Mention spying and information secrecy when it first comes up.
8. By all means, don’t feel compelled to play four weeks, but if you are playing a shorter game make sure you’ve gone to ‘normal’ turn order before the end.
9. Maybe show a spell (from one of the artifacts/spell books) and explain how reading runes works.  Awakened spells are fun, because anyone can cast them. Maybe seed the deck with only generally useful spells, discarding weird/useless spells.  The first time it comes up you can go over spells quickly, and just summarize what it can do.

 

The presumably final realm game of the Thanksgiving weekend & Colony

Saw the following things happen:

• The Witch’s familiar (which cannot be attacked or targeted by spells or monsters) almost died when he happened to be watching the Wizard at an underground Shrine when a demon appeared and the Wizard collapsed the entire roof on everyone. He tendered his letter of resignation at that point.
• The Amazon died the same night while scavenging at a temple when the Winged Demon appeared and rent her asunder (failed hide roll combined with the only monster roll … 5% chance, so not too unlikely).
• The Witch almost absconded with the heaviest treasure in the game, despite not being able to carry more than a few trinkets, but she ran out of time.

A few rules questions based on this are being debated. I hope.

Also got in two games of Colony, which works much better multiplayer (IMO). Still not great, but acceptable.

Puzzlement and Wonder, Comparing Mage Knight and Magic Realm, Pt 2

(If this were a book I’d throw a colon in there. ‘Tis all the rage in publishing).

As I mentioned, Mage Knight & Magic Realm have little in common except theme. Thematically they aren’t even close, Tolkeinesque fantasy versus a high power-gaming bash fest.. While exploring the Realm I pondered the differences between them.

I call the first the Combinatorics of World-Building.

Enter a Dungeon in Mage Knight and what will you face? A brown monster. No exceptions.

You can analyze how many you can defeat and weigh that risk versus the 2/3rds shot at an artifact and 1/3rd shot at a spell. A simple enumeration will do. Can you defeat the Gargoyle? the Shadow? the Hydra? Medusa? Crypt Worm? Etc? You can’t? Check again. Have you missed some trick?

A puzzle, to be sure, but a well defined puzzle. One monster, one reward — each have a parameter. You may get the one monster you can’t beat. You may get the easy monster. You may get the Horn of Wrath, or your choice of two dud artifacts to choose from (I’m looking at you, Banner of Fortitude and Banner of Courage), but there you go. You knew the risk/reward ratio.

There are 8 brown monsters, 30-ish artifacts and 30-ish spells, but the numbers don’t multiply. You can assign an approximate value to the artifacts and calculate what percentage of the monsters you can defeat, and solve.

Now Imagine that each artifact had a small box on the bottom that modified the rules in the combat when you gained them. Most of them don’t do much, but you may go down and face a Whatever and draw your artifact and peer at the bottom and it says “The narrow walls prevent ranged attacks….” and your plans are out the door.

What if every card did that? If you face a Crypt Worm, you weren’t going range attack anyway, but if you faced a Medusa, you most definitely planned on it. If you’ve played two dozen games of Mage Knight, you’ve likely faced every brown creature in a dungeon setting. But with combined effects — No way I’d have encountered all the combinations in my 300+ games.

I’m a fan of combinatorics.

I’ve already seen several interactions messing with people in Magic Realm, and that’s before you even get into players deliberately messing with you. You search for a treasure and get it, but boom! Curse. You start to buy something and boom — there’s a modifier that makes a combat likely to break out right away! These aren’t even interactions, just single cards, but the systems do interact. In my current game, I searched and found the black book, which provided black mana. The sudden influx of mana turned on a spell I had inert and — boom, I’m suddenly a giant octopus.

Now, I’d planned on being a giant octopus later that day, so no big deal. But if I’d been planning to try to hire some helpers it would have seriously cramped my style.

The book of learning has an example of the Elf controlling all six bats with magic, a feat the author says he’s never seen in 200+ games but happened in a solo game he set up to demonstrate, with no cheating. Amusingly, I did it in my first game with the elf. But it does take some lucky chit interactions and some lucky rolls, as well as having the Control Bats spell.

I like my puzzles, but have I been surprised in the last hundred games of Mage Knight? Not that I recall. Nor possibly the hundred before that.

Can I be surprised by Chess? Yes. The unexpected move. The deep brilliance. These are usually based — again — on some combination (Chess even uses that phrase). Mage Knight has that; the core of the game is manipulating your hand of card to get the most oomph. So I’m not sure why it doesn’t surprise me that much. Then again hundreds of games is a lot. It may be that you always (always!) control your hand of cards. No monster shows up that says “Oh, discard one card before combat.”

To be fair to Mage Knight, The Realm extracts a high price for surprise. Gameplay suffers under randomness. You see ‘unfair’ results. Nobody would say that Mage Knight is less fair, I think.

Unfairness has its charm, in a way.

I like puzzles, but I also like puzzles where you can’t enumerate the possible outcomes. (Even with full knowledge). Approximation and intuition are skills like any other. I don’t care for Tales of the Arabian Knights and I’m not sure it’s a game, but its a hell of Story-telling engine. Combine that potential with something that gives me some actual decisions — even if the results could just be “lose a turn” — and I’m intrigued.

Magic Realm drips with combinations — Each map hex has a few chits that define what’s there. While you build the map in MK, once a tile is up its fully known. Until you know the chits on a tile in Magic Realm, it might contain treasures, or dragons, or spiders, or an Octopus Garden. (Also, the tiles can be flipped over, so its not as static as you think).

You play your twelve chits, but only two points of effort per combat round. Your items can combine. You may have one thing you can’t use at all, but if you get that second (rare) thing you’ll wield a powerful combination. Any Mage Knight can cast any spell. Any Mage Knight can get use any other’s skill, although Goldyx will get Goldyx’s skills the most often.

In Magic Realm, the White Knight will have a tough time learning spells the Witch can learn. (I’d say never, but …)

Jay Richardson has a review comparing Magic Realm to RPGs that’s worth checking out. One interesting (to me) point he makes is: Because the characters don’t level up, this makes the game less grindy and more interesting. That’s a novel point. You get better be looting good stuff, or working together with others. An interesting dynamic.

OK, so combinatorics. What else?

Magic Realm contains more hidden information (and randomness).

Part of that was discussed before — you have face down chits and monsters that can appear and disappear, and the treasures are put into piles but that’s really not that different than randomly drawing them (like in MK). But the hidden information causes a novel effect.

In Magic Realm, you make (some) decisions with incomplete or even wrong information. You plan your turn and then roll for monsters. This gives you — in effect — a huge fog of war effect. Do you hide before you move? Well, there may have been no monsters prowling the Deep Woods this turn. Was your hide wasted?

There aren’t any monsters on your path, but other players may move and monsters may follow.

You have to decide on much less information. But each sub system you base your decision on is understandable. Most characters fail to hide 11/36th of the time. The monsters appear on a known system (if you know the chits). Knowledgeable players can quickly determine if a monster is safe or deadly or risky (I can do this for simple battles, now). You can guess the price range an item will cost you, based on your relationship with the seller. You go first 1/n times (n= number of players, ignoring hired helpers) at which point the game state will match.

Each of these systems are calculable, but the overall impact provides remarkable breadth. From a game play perspective there’s a lot of “Why this” but it has a certain logic. The rules read weird, but feel right. In the real world if you were hiding from monsters, could you ever be certain you were successfully hidden?

Only in the negative and only too late.

I was trying to think of an example. Consider a game of chess where you wrote down your move and only then did your opponent reveal his prior move. (You’d have to cover White’s first turn advantage, perhaps they wrote down two moves and the opponent got to pick after he wrote his first move, and you’d have to deal with issues of failed pawn captures, etc).

This game would most definitely not be chess, even though it used a lot of the mechanisms of chess. You could make theoretically horrible chess moves that could work quite well.

Chess feels like chess, not because knights move two in one direction then one in an orthogonal one, or because of castling or en passant. To be sure, Chess has all that but if you switched how the pieces move you’d be a smilar game (like Chinese Chess). Chess feels like chess because it is a complete information game with alternating moves. Chinese Chess and Shogi feel closer to chess than my invented game which uses the exact same rules, but doesn’t reveal the moves right away.

Magic Realm feels like my chess analogy, a little. You don’t see your opponents move until after you’ve declared yours. In order to simulate this, MR uses lots of charts and randomness. At it’s heart, Mage Knight feels like a ruthless rush to exploit a world, and Magic Realm feels like avoiding the onrushing of a ruthless world.

Exploring the Realm, Part II

When last we left our intrepid quad-ro of adventurers, they were halfway through the month.

On one side of the board the Amazon met up with the Elf and they bypassed the Tremendous Troll to go to the Vault. The Amazon used the the keys to loot the chest and open the vault. Another monster roll brought bats, and the Elf took control of them. The Elf and Amazon searched the vault and found a few other treasure-within-treasure site. At this point one single clearing held half of the game’s treasure.

The elf then did the following: Order all 6 bats to search four times each every day, then re-cast control of them. By my reading of the rule the bats could give anything to the elf that they can’t carry (since you only need a move chit to carry stuff between clearings). The bats rolled two dice, but were immune to curses in the Crypt of the Night or Enchanted Meadow. The elf had to spend actions to rest (and sometimes alert) a magic chit to recast the spell each night, but since he had the dragon necklace, it wasn’t an onerous cost to get practically a full week’s worth of searching.

And then the Elf got the Tremendous Warhorse.

The Elf’s Moving Van

Suddenly the Elf could now carry everything he looted and would be basically immune to small beasties. With that the Elf took a few more turns and loaded up a truly impressive haul. The Jade Shield, Silver Breastplate, Gold Helmet, Bane Sword, Truesteel Sword, and a few other treasures. The Amazon wasn’t getting left out either, getting the Golden Icon, Sacred Grail, and the Enchanted Meadow’s Pony, which basically doubles all the Amazon’s move actions.

(Rules question — You can do that to do one phase MM to start a mountain move and a pony phase MM to finish it, right?)

At this point the Elf followed the Amazon and they hightailed it back … the Elf planned to trade the armor (and Bane Sword) to the Berserker in exchange for the great treasures he looted from the pool. After getting hit with the Flowers of Rest the Berserker had quite a haul. But I had forgotten one point.

If I rolled a ‘3’ to summon the octopus, it would also let the axe goblins already on the tile prowl … and move to fight me. Dealing with an Octopus with a fodder — survivable. Adding in six goblins? Not so much.

Ruh roh!

Thus ended the berserker. He actually managed to kill the Octopus first (since the rogue lured it), but too many goblins. At that point I didn’t bother to start a new character and we just finished out the game. The Elf and Amazon high-tailed it back to the Chapel, where the Elf sold the Golden Icon for 100 gold and the Sacred Grail for 50 fame.

Delivery for you, sir!

At this point we headed back to the borderlands but the Elf broke away to slaughter the realm’s guards (who had no real hope once their leader was slaughter, as he was the only one who could deal with the Elf’s warhorse). As a bonus, the friendly woodfolk appeared, so I could sell everything on the final turn. (I think I’ll play the house rule that you can sell everything for gold at the end of the game from now on).

As for the Captain, he’d wandered alone and found not much of anything except danger. In his defense, he survived. But he had a pretty terrible score. The Elf and Amazon both almost won, ending with -1 point each. (If I — as the Elf — had put 2 VPs into gold and 1 into Great Treasures instead of vice versa, I’d have won with 12 points.

And after that we cleaned up (but left the game set up for another game, which has already borne some strange fruit).