ZBP: Wulfsburg and a Knight’s Pledge

I spent the first six months of this year steadily working through the original quests of Zombicide: Black Plague. Win or lose, it was great fun playing the different Survivors and trying out equipment. The only problem: I was having trouble waiting for a greater selection of Survivors!

July: I received a large box with my Wulfsburg expansion and a hoard of extras. I couldn’t believe that people had been whining about how long it took to get this. People were saying they would never support the company again and that they would have been better keeping their money and buying Wulfsburg in a retail store. Okay – some people got Wulfsburg after retail shops did – but for the price of the Wulsfburg expansion, I got ALL THIS, plus dice and a nifty dice tower:

ZBP: Wulfsburg & Knight pledge extras

Okay, the doors are extra, but you should get the point – it was worth the wait. (By the way – the doors look great on the table, and I’ve also been using them for D&D. With all the cards I’ve got, I wish I had a card holder set too.)

The quality of the figures and parts is still excellent. The SIZE of the new abominations is incredible. One of the first things I did was buy a plastic box to keep figures in. Now everything else for the game fits in the original Zombicide: Black Plague box. I’ve got a fabric shopping bag with long handle to carry the two boxes around.

 

A box of 197 figures!

The extra survivors are great fun to use and add a lot more variety to game-play. Some skills are much more useful than others. We choose survivors at random for a game. (If I’m playing two survivors I randomly take three cards and pick the two of those that I want to play.) The new equipment is great – interesting and diverse. The “magic items” just can’t be discarded – you’ll want to hang on to them until you reach the right danger level. (Eg: Storm Bow, range 1-3, 3 dice, hit 3+, 1 damage. Roll 6 and +1 die.) The new cards about double what you started with and this means it can take a lot more searching to find torches and dragon bile. This is balanced by weapons that can either light dragon bile or be discarded for dragon fire. There’s also a vault artefact (Heavy crossbow) and a magic weapon (Vampire crossbow) that do 3 damage.

 

The rats sure grow big around here!

We finished the last two Wulfsburg quests on Sunday, with one restart. I felt the Wulfsburg quests weren’t as well balanced as the originals and we found some to be easy/medium rather than medium/hard difficulty. That could simply be the randomness of the game and my spawn deck.

We haven’t tried any of the alternate Necromancers (two standard Necros on the board at one time is dangerous enough so far), and my spawn deck currently includes nearly all NPCs, all wolfz, and 2 cards each of Ablobination & Abominarat. I think we have reached a stage where I could throw in an Alpha and Minotaur/Troll. Using all the NPCs makes for an easy game, since most of your spawns (regardless of danger level) become walkers, so I feel those cards need to be balanced with wolfz and abominations.

 

Who’s got the Dragon Bile???

I’m really looking forward to painting the abominations. I also want to try a game where we throw a bit of everything into the spawn deck and just see what happens. I think we’ll play through the two campaigns next, then maybe go back to some of the original quests and make them harder with extra spawn cards.

Overall, this has been a fantastic kickstarter. I’m thrilled with the quality of the product, the amount of stuff I received and the game play itself. Thank you CMoN and Guillotine Games!

MERP Campaign & Resources

My MERP Campaign work is pretty much finished. I’ve customised the 2nd edition MERP rules to suit the way I’d like the game to run, and completed my tables for character creation and campaign play. I’m now in the process of converting ICE’s LOR (Lord of the Rings Adventure Game) adventures into MERP adventures. My aim would be to use the first two LOR modules as the start of my MERP Campaign.

Here’s my campaign adventure plan so far – leading from Bree to Rivendell, then around most of Rhudaur:

LR-0 Dawn Comes Early, LR-1 Darker Than Darkness, <Rivendell>, The Loons of Long Fell (1^st level), Hillmen of the Trollshaws – The Trolls Watch-Tower (Low level), Trolls of the Misty Mountains – The Dwarves of Duildin Hill (1^st – 2^nd), Trolls of the Misty Mountains – The Village of Garkash Hill (2^nd – 3^rd), Phantom of the Northern Marshes – The Phantom of the Woods (1^st – 2^nd), Phantom of the Northern Marshes – The Riddle of Ridorthu (2^nd – 3^rd), Dark Mage of Rhudaur – Before the Snow Falls & Beseiged, Hillmen of the Trollshaws – The Tale of Mong-Finn & Miffli (Mdm level), Hillmen of the Trollshaws – The Rescue of Alquawen (Mdm level).

The LOR system is like a simpler version of MERP – it uses a smaller set of skills than MERP (LOR skills are like the MERP skill categories), a simpler set of races/classes and rolls are all using 2d6. Most MERP products come with a guide for converting LOR Characters to MERP, but it’s mostly along the lines of “work out what level your character would be and assign DP’s for each level to the skill categories determined by the LOR bonuses”. What I really like about the LOR modules is the way they are written – lots of detail about what the characters see, or can learn/interact with through skill rolls. The first adventure is designed for players who haven’t played LOR (or many RPGs) before and is great for the GM to lead them through the basics of skill use, combat and general role-playing.

Most of my conversion requires converting the LOR skill roll results to MERP Static Maneuver results. When it comes to creatures/NPCs, I’m just making my own NPC’s using MERP rules, or adding the relevant MERP creature stats. The adventures also have a lot of maps and visual aids and I’ve been able to use a lot of them to make floor-plans or game play maps. (I recently learned that one of my graphics programs can overlay a grid on an image, and I found another program that takes large images and break them up into A4 sheets for printing!) I made up four new characters using my rules and I’m play-testing my conversions – going nicely so far!

I also decided that with all these things that I’ve developed, it would be worth adding a new page to my blog that lists internet resources that I’ve found helpful and also made some of my RPG files available to others who may find them useful. So far it’s mostly MERP materials – character sheets, tables, etc – but I’ll add Greyhawk material (D&D and Hero Lab) as I find it or finish it.

 

Middle-Earth Role Playing – Returning to an old favourite

What I read, and the movies I watch, often influence what game system I pay attention to. For example, last year over a weekend my wife and I watched all three Hobbit films. Since then I’ve been wanting to go back to my M.E.R.P. (Middle-Earth Role Playing) material. At that time I did little more than collecting some more RPG material and sketching out a basic outline for a new campaign.

Over the last few weeks I’ve actually sat down and fleshed out my ideas, building a folder with some well developed information for starting characters and GM reference material to guide the campaign the way I want. I’m not actually expecting to run a game any time soon (the last MERP campaign I ran was 20 years ago), but my version of OCD means that I enjoy the planning and preparation; even if there’s no sign I’m going to use it. (I’m playing in a Pathfinder D&D campaign currently that shows no sign of ending, but I’ve already detailed what would be my next character up to 15^th level – race, class, feats, etc.)

If you aren’t familiar with MERP, then here are the basics of the RPG:

ICE (Iron Crown Enterprises) released the game in 1984, as simplified version of their Rolemaster RPG. Players choose from Dwarves, Elves (Noldor, Sindar, Silvan), Half-Elves, Humans (15 ethnicities) and Hobbits, as races, with six base professions – Warrior, Scout, Ranger, Mage, Animist, Bard. It’s a skill-based 1-100 (or percentile) system. Your race gives you a number of points in specific skills, and each level in your profession gives points in skill categories. Each player chooses how to assign their skill points, and can transfer them to other categories under certain restrictions, which allows for considerable customisation. Most classes have access to spells. Actions are made as a d% roll, adding the appropriate skill bonus, subtracting any penalty for difficulty (if say, picking locks or moving stealthily) or deducting an opponents DB (defensive bonus) in combat. The final result is checked against the relevant table and damage, or the measure of success/failure is determined. Most actions (especially combat) have critical success and fumble tables – well detailed and lots of fun to use. Creatures and other campaign detail is based on the wealth of J.J.R. Tolkien’s works, and there are dozens of source books, campaign guides, and adventure modules to cover the length and breadth of Middle Earth. The material references different time periods, allowing games to be run in pretty much any part of the Third Age.

Most of a MERP Character Sheet (1st level Dunedain Ranger)

It’s also very easy to use the Rolemaster material to expand or enhance the game. For example – MERP has nine combat tables – for weapon types, spell and creature attacks. My Rolemaster “Arms Law” book has forty-two tables for individual weapons/attacks, as well as expanded critical and fumble tables.

My new “campaign guide” is 18 pages long (so far) – mostly giving the required info for the races and professions I’ll use. I’ve decided to restrict player races to a subset; only using six of the human ethnicities (Beorning, Dunedain, Dunlending, Eriadoran, Gondorian, Rohirrim), but all of the non-human. They will begin as 0-level adolescents or apprentices – only gaining the skills that their race assigns and no profession level skills (for 1^st level) until the end of the first adventure. I’m allowing all six base classes, and also six of the optional classes (Burglar, Conjurer, Explorer, Rogue, Shape-changer, Wizard) – I’d love to see someone run a character that turns into a bear! I’ve created my own tables for starting ages, and height/weight for each race. (Based on the d20 tables, customised with the detail given in MERP.) I’ve tweaked Ability/Stat bonuses, the experience/level table and how characters gained XP. The MERP way of characters individually gaining experience from taking damage, casting spells, succeeding in manoeuvres, dealing criticals and defeating opponents gets quite messy to track and I greatly simplified things. I’ve got longer and more detailed equipment/goods & services tables – expanded using some Rolemaster material. I drew on both the Core Rulebook and “Creatures of Middle Earth” to make a two-page creature table with all the detail that I would require for combats, focussing on lower level creatures/monsters, and using the rules to detail a large variety of 1^st to 5^th level Orc opponents. (Building Orcs and Trolls in MERP is similar to adding Class levels to monsters in d20, so I’m much more comfortable mucking around with NPC’s/creatures than 20 years ago!)

My campaign will start in Bree, probably about 3015 Third Age. This is after the events of the Hobbit (2941 TA), and Bilbo’s 111^th birthday party (3001 TA), when Gandalf has been regularly checking on Frodo, and he and Aragorn are searching for Gollum. If you have only seen the LotR movies, you won’t know that 17 years pass between Bilbo’s famous birthday party and when Frodo leaves the Shire with the Ring (3018 TA). The characters will meet Gandalf, and go to Rivendell early in the campaign. I plan to have them spend most of their early levels in Arnor (Rhudaur and Arthedain), and then probably bring them across the Misty Mountains. I’d like to get them involved indirectly with the happenings from LotR – following events in the background rather than the main story – eventually bringing them south to Rohan and Gondor to fight against Sauron’s forces.

I’ve still got some playing around to do with this – detailing encounters and creature stats for the initial Bree adventure (a player Scout character, or a friendly NPC, has been wrongfully accused of theft and jailed). Then I plan to list a number of published adventures I have in a suitable order to get the campaign progressing. After that… I should go back to some painting, convert some more 2nd ed Greyhawk monsters to PF Hero Lab, and I have a Gamma World RPG to do some work on. There’s always another project and not enough time!

 

Game Review: Zombicide – Black Plague

First post for the 2016! I didn’t do much painting during my holidays, but I did play the new Zombicide: Black Plague game.

I’m one of many who supported this Kickstarter by “Cool Mini or Not” (with Guillotine Games) and I don’t think anyone was surprised when they beat their target. (Four million dollars received, with a $125,000 goal.) I think they have some great games and a very good reputation by now.

So far, four out of six games have been won. The first loss was in the Quest #0 – the tutorial. One of my mates was firing a crossbow at zombies and missed – hitting me twice for 4 damage. Dead! He re-rolled (plenty of bolts) and missed twice again – still dead! The objective was to reach the exit with all survivors – so that was a group loss. (We restarted and didn’t let him near a crossbow.)

Black Plague is very similar to the original Zombicide – essentially the rules are the same for actions, combat, and zombie behaviour. It’s a fantasy version of the “modern-day” original.

Dashboard, with “Baldric” the Wizard

First off – the game board and pieces are excellent quality. Very thick card stock. Colours, images, etc are wonderful like in the original and the zombie figures are all different sculpts. The new “dashboard” for survivors is excellent – meaning survivor cards can be smaller, you can see all your cards better than before, and the slightly flexible pegs (I don’t see these breaking, and they give you spares) make marking your wound status and skills much easier and clearer than in the original. You shouldn’t lose the built-in experience tracker and it’s not going to damage your survivor card.

Differences: Each survivor has three wounds, not 2. Ranged combat doesn’t automatically hit survivors first – you only hit a survivor if you roll a miss. Each survivor can potentially hold 8 equipment cards, up from 5. (Basically two hands, a body slot and a five-card backpack.) Many of the skills are the same, but there are many variations or new skills. (Total 80 skills!) For example, “Bloodlust: Combat – As 1 action, move up to 2 zones to a zone containing a zombie and get a free combat action.” Fatties spawn on their own!

Necromancers: Necromancers have 1 wound and 1 action just like walkers. (There’s only 1 in the basic game.) When one spawns you immediately put down a necromancer spawn zone and draw a spawn card to see what friends he brought with him. Then – he RUNS AWAY from the survivors. Necromancers try to escape – moving to the closest spawn zone that isn’t where they arrived. If you kill one before he escapes you remove a spawn zone and it doesn’t have to be the one where he arrived. This can give some control over where zombie will spawn, but if a Necromancer escapes and there are six spawn zones on the board that’s instant game loss.

So close…

Above is the end of the second game that was lost. We had cleared a path through to the exit chamber and could have had everyone out in two turns. What defeated us was our initial thought of concentrating zombie spawns in one area. This made it easy to move around without running into many zombies until we were ready to, and our first “Dragon Fire” (3 damage, kill everything in one zone) scored 19 experience: 1 Abomination, 3 Fatties, 2 Runners and 9 Walkers. The first necromancer spawn had been in a building and as we killed necromancers we removed the outer spawn zones. This rapidly became a problem as each new Necromancer escaped the board the following turn. The moral of the story: keep at least two spawn zones well apart from each other!

Too many zombies knocking on your door? Throw out a flask of Dragon Bile.

…and follow it up with a Torch!

It’s a fun game that makes you think and plan. It doesn’t play out the same way as the original – yes, it’s quite similar, but there are enough differences to make it distinct. If you have played the original a lot, then nearly all of the strategy that you have learned from that will apply to Black Plague. Overall, I’m very impressed with it from all aspects – components, rules, & game-play.

I’m looking forward to getting some of the extra survivors to try some of the new skills, and alternate necromancers! I plan to paint all the survivors (they’ll be great in my D&D games) but I don’t know if I really want to paint the dozens of zombies.

 

 

Working through the PC game shelf

Or…  “What PC Games I’m NOT playing“…

I spent four weeks of my Christmas Holidays playing World of Warcraft – I did wander into the Mists of Pandaria, but spent most of my time doing Cataclysm content. I followed that up with a run through of the single player campaign of MS Freelancer. This was the fourth time I’ve played the game and I still enjoy it. I like to try different ways of doing things, seeing if I can get somewhere to get a ship or weapons I didn’t have before, and I’m always trying to do better than my “Battleships killed: 3” record on my 3rd play through. (I only got 2 this time, but that’s still better than the 1 of the 1st & 2nd run-through.) I did manage to spend half my time in Bretonia flying a Kusari Light Fighter!

Over the years I’ve built up a collection of games that people have given me, or I’ve bought at a discount and they’ve gone onto a shelf or into my computer draw. I decided to pick something from this collection and try it out. My computer system really needs a major update and so playing older games means that my system shouldn’t have trouble running them at higher graphics standards. Of course, this also means that the graphics of any such game may not be very impressive any more! It is fun when I read the system requirements and they want 64MB RAM, a 1GHz processor, and a 128MB Graphics card.

I started with something I’d heard a lot about… BioShock. “A first-person shooter experience unlike any other.” (They were right!)

BIOSHOCK (Irrational Games / 2K Games) came out in 2007. This is probably the newest on my game shelf, but I was disgusted to find that I spend longer installing and loading the game than playing it. It installed fine, but I don’t like loading screens that don’t tell you how long its going to take or how much is left to load. I wasn’t happy with sitting through a long load for a short intro sequence then a swim to a lighthouse… and another loading screen.

I really, really hope that the quality of the graphics (absolutely crap), the difficulty with movement (easy to move, hard to stop moving), and the sound quality (I had subtitles on or I’d never have known that some of the noises were people talking to me) directly relate to the fact that my graphics card barely meets the minimum system requirements. I’ve seen much better quality graphics run on my system with much older games. Unlike a few others I tried in the last few days, I’ll keep this and might try it again when I have a new computer.

Take 2: UNREAL  (Epic MegaGames / Digital Extremes, 1998)

This installed fairly quickly and ran well. I played for a while but was mostly unimpressed. Keyboard control left a bit to be desired, but at least it’s customisable. I have Quake II (1997) that I played a lot a long while ago, and (from what I recall) that had better graphics and was more interesting.

Take 3: DEUS EX  (Ion Storm / Eidos Interactive, 2000)

Easy install, controls and settings seemed good. Started the “training” introduction and again, wasn’t impressed. The graphics were pretty basic and I wasn’t getting into the style of the hacking/devices for opening doors. It seemed like it might go somewhere interesting, but a few things with the game-play were getting annoying. I don’t think this one’s for me. Didn’t grab my attention enough to want to try playing the proper game. I also had Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003) on my shelf, but I’m not even going to try that.

Take 4: ROME: TOTAL WAR  (Creative Assembly / Activision, 2004)

From what I’ve read this is my type of game…. but, thwarted! Slow start – three discs to install (while I painted at least), then start… opening screen then a nice message saying to remove the CD, close the game, re-insert CD and start game again… no luck! Treid that a few times and still the same error message. I wasn’t in the mood to uninstall and go through a complete install all over again… so that’s another game I’m not playing. I do have Medieval (Total War) somewhere, so I might try that instead.

There’s still a dozen or so games on my shelf. I’ve ended up to two sets of discs for Morrowind (Elder Scrolls III), so that might be what I’ll try next.

D&D Campaign Diary updated…

Hooray – I finally spent some time to transfer most of my “diary” onto my blog. (D&D, 3rd edition)

Nearly everything, from the first adventure my group has played (June 2003) up to the “war” against the Giants (2011-2014), has been added to the Campaign page. The giants saga was a conversion to 3rd edition that I did – the original modules are 1st edition – mostly based on the Silver Anniversary edition of “Against the Giants“, with material from “GDQ Queen of the Spiders“.

Mid last year, we started on “Expedition to the Demonweb Pits” and I’ve yet to add that into the diary online. We haven’t played this year, but its time to get together again and they can have their first foray into the demonweb itself.

So this is it, we’re going to die! (Game Review)

It’s always fun when I get to use one of my favourite quotes. (Arthur Dent, from “The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”)

It’s quite remarkable in a game when you have a player prepared to die in the hope that the other players might win. Co-operative games don’t always mean that players co-operate. In Zombicide, unlike most other zombie themed games, it isn’t every man-for-himself and generally every-one sticks close together and thinks about what they are doing and how it will effect other players. It’s also a game where charging out and killing everything because you have a shot-gun with extra ammo is NOT a good idea.

ZOMBICIDE:

Last weekend a group of five of us got together and played two games of this. It was the first time I’ve played this game; the others have played a number of missions together previously.

Game One: By the end of what I think was only the first turn, we had one player declaring that we were all dead and there was no way to win. As it turned out, three people died in the next two turns and that left the last two of us running through (different) buildings trying to avoid zombies and get out the other end of the building. We managed to collect four of the seven objective tokens and I was the last to die. That’s my figure (purple) in the car…

“Today is a good day to die…”

Game Two: This time I died first and early on. The other four players got a police car, spent time searching for weapons and driving up and down the street mowing down zombies until able to open doors safely and send people in to recover objective tokens. Then we got back down near one of the “spawn” points, grabbed the last two tokens and won the game! I still say “we” because even though my character died and I was mostly moving zombies, I was still part of the discussion on tactics and suggestions and part of the team – it was a TEAM win, not an INDIVIDUAL one.

Gameplay:

Each player gets a Survivor card, a figure that matches the survivor picture, and one piece of equipment. Starting equipment is mostly frying pans, but there’s an axe, crowbar and a pistol too. Each turn consists of firstly the Players Phase: each player takes their allowed actions in clockwise order. Then Zombie Phase: attack or move every zombie on the board, and lastly taking a “zombie” card for each “spawn point” to see if zombies (and what type) appear. When you start the game, you choose one player to act first. You pass a “first player” token around (clockwise) at the end of each turn, so that a different player acts first in each new turn.

Each player starts with three actions and a skill. An action can be: move (one “zone”), open a door (if you have the skill or equipment to do so), reorganise your limited inventory, ranged combat, melee combat, get in/out of a car, make noise (purposefully!) or search. You can only search once (in a building or car), other actions can be done more than once. Searching means you take an equipment card – often cans of food, but also ammo, shotguns, pistols, rifles, axes, machetes, etc. Skills include: free combat or move actions, damage bonuses in combat, re-rolls, being able to avoid damage, or get bonuses with certain equipment. Some actions make noise – you place a token each time.

For each zombie that you kill, you gain 1 experience. 7 experience puts you at Yellow Danger level and gives you another skill. 19 is Orange level and you choose 1 of 2 more skills, 43 (the highest) is red level and you pick 1 of 3 skills. Skills available depend on the character card. Image shows a character from the game, with some equipment. The danger level is very important. The number of zombies (and type) that spawn at the end of each turn increase according the highest danger level of each survivor still in the game. So you don’t want one player to race ahead of all the other players!

Each time you open a door to a previously “sealed” building, you take a zombie card for EACH room in the building and spawn zombies according to the current danger level. This means opening doors early in the game gets you less zombies and less powerful zombie types, than later in the game. Of course, if you have a large building, this can mean a lot of zombies when the characters are still “weak” or under-equipped, but you can only search for equipment IN a building.

The Zombies come in four types. Walkers, Runners, Fatties and (generally) a single Abomination. Walkers, Fatties & Abomination: They get 1 action: Attack or Move. Runners get 2 actions. Any zombie in the same zone as a character attacks and causes 1 damage. (You die if you take 2 damage. Look at the image with my character in the car again, there are about 20 zombies in my zone and about the same in the next zone.) It takes 1 damage to kill a Walker or Runner, 2 damage to kill a Fatty, and 3 for an Abomination.

Weapons: Each has a range (0 to 3 zones away), the number of dice (d6) you roll when you attack, and the number you need to score a hit. Most weapons cause 1 or 2 damage to a single target. With enough actions (or skill bonuses) you may be able to hit and kill multiple zombies. You can’t wound zombies – so you MUST have a 2 damage weapon to kill a Fatty. cars only do 1 damage, but you get an attack roll against every zombie in the zone you drive in!

The game mechanics are quite simple. There’s no dice rolling for the zombies – they simply move (firstly) towards any survivor they can see, or else towards the greatest source of noise, by the shortest available path. As a player, you have to work together and think about what others can or want to do. You have to watch where the zombies are – you really want to kill any in an adjacent zone – not give them a chance to move close. In later stages of the game, if you can’t place a required zombie, ALL zombies of that type get a immediate free action – so even a slow moving walker can suddenly be on top of you. You have to balance out killing zombies, with hiding or searching for better equipment. You need to protect each other and try to keep your survivors at similar danger levels. It’s a lot of fun, but/and it gets intense!

It’s a great game – play it if you have a chance. You don’t have to be a “zombie” fan, but if you are you’ll probably enjoy it a bit more.

The facts:

This is a collaborative game by Guillotine Games, for 1-6 players of age 13+. Each game will be very different and can last from 30 minutes to a number of hours, depending on the type of mission chosen and the number of players. The website has great images of all the game components – boards, cards, characters & figures – and you can download the rules, missions and F.A.Q. – all free.

You need a basic pack to play (Season 1 or 2), which costs around $90. There are a lot of expansion packs that include more game tiles, zombie figures, more types of zombies, more survivors, etc.

The car in the image shown didn’t come with the original game – this was just a model car that’s the right size. Everything else pictured is actual game product. We had more than one expansion pack, so we can have a lot more zombies than the basic game, and a greater choice of survivors.

The basic survivor cards are all the typical characters you see in zombie movies. The “promo” survivor cards are based on people/characters from TV and movies, such as: Simon Pegg in “Shaun of the Dead”, Shaun Connery from “Entrapment” (or James Bond), Beyonce in “Austin Powers”, John Cleese, Chuck Norris, Jack Nicholson, Jason Statham, Kurt Russel, etc.

Games

What games do I play?

Currently – Dungeons and Dragons RPG (D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder), Kings of War (a Miniature battle war-game), World of Warcraft (online game, MMORPG), Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC), and a varied scattering of board, card and computer games.

I also write adventures (primarily for D&D), wrote (and run) a Play-by-email fantasy game, and I’m working on my own d20 version of a Gamma World RPG (combining elements from both 4th and 6th editions).

What have I played? (or still have the game/rulebooks, and expect to play again)

RPG’s – In particular I’ve played all versions of D&D (up to and including 3.5/Pathfinder), Star Wars, M.E.R.P. (Middle Earth Role-Playing), Call of Cthulhu, Champions, Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, Shadowrun, and Gamma World.

Computer Games – Neverwinter Nights, Warcraft, WoW, Diablo, Portal, Age of Empires, Descent, Dawn of War, Civilization, Freelancer, Quake, Starcraft, Torchlight, Doom, Alone in the Dark, Nethack…

Board Games – Hero Quest, Warhammer Quest, Dungeon Quest, Talisman, Car Wars, The Lonely Mountain, Carcassonne, Sequence…

Card Games – Flux, Munchkin, Chez Geek, Unexploded Cow, Kill Dr Lucky, Mille Bornes, Frag, Spellfire, Illuminati, Magic (the gathering), Falling…

and the more traditional card games like 500, Crazy Whist, Canasta, Rummy… etc.