“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” – Reg, Life of Brian

Rome, to hear it told, was a pretty busy place, what with being the center of western civilization and all. People had loci to go, populus to see, and res to do. That’s where the players of Roman Taxi come in. They’re not the movers and shakers, they’re the ones who get the upper crust to wherever they need to be to do their moving and shaking. They’re Roman chariot taxi drivers.

The object of the game is to make the most points from transporting people around town.

Two to five players start the game with a Passenger card in their chariot – your current client – and a Taxi token. One board shows the town and its surrounding streets, a maze of multicolored spaces flowing between buildings.

"This . . . is the city."

The other is preprinted with rows for cards: Three Travel cards and an Event fit in each one. The big board is seeded with additional Passengers to pick up when the current fare gets out or, if one has the entrepreneurial spirit, to double up one’s chariot occupancy and make better time. Then again, it may just spell twice the failure rate.

Taking turns, players draw a face-up Travel card to make headway through the crowded city streets. Spaces in the road are various colors, and the driver must move to the next space that matches his Travel card’s color. He can turn down side streets if it helps, but U-turns only happen at intersections or with special Travel cards. Passengers are transported to important purple buildings dotting the town, but pulling up to the curb demands a card that matches the space outside your destination. Without one you might end up circling the block, hoping it’s sitting face-up on the board on your next pass. Travel cards don’t replenish until the row is empty, meaning someone has to eventually take the Event card at the end of that line, and these are usually unpleasant for the driver forced to take it.

These snafus pile up. For every turn a fare rides in a chariot his card gets a minute counter. These VIPs have places to be, and if you can’t get them there post haste your bottom line suffers. They patiently ride things out for a while, but they stiff you for half what you’re owed or hop out and take their chances hoofing it depending on how far over their printed time limit you go. Only an efficiently executed trip earns full payment.

As clients are picked up and delivered, new ones pop up among the purple buildings. The game ends soon after the Passenger deck is empty, and the driver with the most money wins.

The game has the best of intentions where graphic design is concerned, but it’s also one of the sore spots. The box and boards are all sturdy and the latter are mounted. The whole thing is quite colorful, but interpreting the board means adjusting to the sensory overload of the rainbow-hued path system, and there are a couple of spots where it takes a moment to reassure yourself you’re doing it right. The cards are simple (the text is hard to read when printed on the blue-card backgrounds), but the real buzzkill here are the Taxi tokens. Little wooden triangles, something like flattened pyramids, these have a dab of paint on the end to indicate their facing when placed on the board.

They don't know if they're coming or going; they're just roamin'

On the blue pawn it’s really tough to see and on the black it’s impossible to tell it’s even there, but in every case they don’t fit the board spaces well at all. It’s an inelegant way to mark your position and direction of travel, though it’s also hard to imagine a replacement that works better given the narrow lanes of the playing surface. There’s certainly no way for two pieces to be on the same space at once (if that’s even allowed – the rules don’t specify).

There are plenty of “you can’t do that” moves and areas to frustrate drivers. Game play is solid and boasts some strategy regarding grabbing fares, selecting Travel cards, and holding up traffic on the one-way streets (again, assuming opponents cannot pass through you). The Event cards, however, the ones meant to jazz things up . . . don’t. They’re pretty anemic, it turns out, and mostly revolve around getting more points. A couple have to do with movement or adding a minute to your fare, but since part of the strategy centers on who gets (or is forced to take) these cards, the results ought to be a bit more critical. As it stands it’s just a bit of a nuisance, not a game-changer.

The fares are fun to read; they’re a good mix of tongue-in-cheek descriptions, in-jokes, and lighthearted presentations of real-life figures from the period. No one’s going to learn a lot of meaningful Roman history from playing but it’s an interesting jumping off point given the designers make use of less-well-known personalities. The mechanics are as inviting to the older gamers as they are to the younger generation, so it can hit the family game table and still please hoi polloi. Eagle-eyed veterans are going to zero in on the flaws, however, and should find the halfhearted Events deck the weak point that keeps the action in Roman Taxi from being a real standout.

You know those tables you see at game gatherings where everyone is in rapt attention to what’s going on, and sometimes a roar of laughter goes up from that group? Stop by and there’s a good chance Donkey It’s a Kick! is being played.

Game play is pretty straightforward. There are plastic pucks in the middle of the table for all but one person. Everyone begins with a hand of four cards and the dealer puts the rest of the deck in front of him. When he’s ready he starts drawing cards. If he likes what he pulls he substitutes it for one of his four hand cards; otherwise he discards what he drew. Regardless, the castoff goes onto the table between him and the player to his left. That player draws from this smaller pile to draft cards just as the dealer did.

In this fashion the cards make their way around the table and into (or through) everyone’s hands. The cards are like a standard deck except 1s replace aces and the two jokers are wild. When someone has four of a kind (four 10s, four kings, etc.), he grabs one of the disks. That’s the signal for everyone else to try to snatch one as well, but like a game of musical chairs someone is left without a puck. That unfortunate soul has earned the D in “donkey.” It’s perfectly acceptable to fake a grab for a puck – if anyone falls for this ploy, the first person to touch a disk is penalized with a letter just the same.

To make things worse, the game adds in a Kicker every round. A card from this deck changes things up a bit. It might affect the play of the game, distract the players, or alter the triggering condition for success. Perhaps the players must get four of the same color. They may be required to hum a tune throughout the round as chosen by the dealer. It could be physical, like grabbing the disk with your chin. Or it might be as simple as forcing everyone to announce which number card they pass. Failure to do so means the perpetrator gets another letter – he could end up with two strikes in one turn, or two players might both get penalized.

Once someone has earned all the letters in “DONKEY” he becomes a Donkey; he can no longer win the game. (This barring other unforeseen circumstances – donkeys may become players again in this unpredictable little dance.) He keeps on playing, though, because his new mission is to be as big a distraction to the remaining contenders as possible. If he gets four of a kind he shows his hand and announces “Donkey!” with the usual resulting chaos amid the table, but he himself can’t grab a puck. He can’t touch his fellow players, but anyone tricked into speaking to him is turned into a Donkey as well.

When all but two players have become Donkeys there’s a Showdown. Each person gets half the deck, deals his opponent four cards, and they play without a Kicker to get four of a kind and win one last puck.

Donkey is graphically pleasing, but then there’s not much to illustrate here – the cards are bright and easy to read, and that’s the most important thing when trying to sort through them to find your match. The score sheets are kind of stacked up in the box (the next printing is supposed to have a pad); these show a row for players’ names across the top and the word “donkey,” one letter per line, running down the left side. The rules say to give everyone their own sheet even though there’s space for four people on one sheet. (Perhaps they expect you to play four games – in which case you’d still only need to put your name at the top once.) It’s a bit of an extravagance when you could just use scrap paper (bring your own pen in any case) or even simply remember who has what (assuming you trust your opponents to tell you).

The insert tries to keep everything in place, but it’s still easy for things to rattle around loose or even get under the cardboard. (The reprint is also supposed to switch to a plastic insert.) The most notable feature by far, though, are the pucks. About two and a half inches across and three-quarters of an inch thick, these aptly named items are made of sturdy plastic and are fun to stack, clatter, slide, spin, roll from player to player, play table hockey, and occasionally use in a game of Donkey It’s a Kick! It would be nice if the cards were as unyielding – they get quite a workout as they circumnavigate the table – but they hold up pretty well considering, and some card sleeves might alleviate the worst of it if the players are willing to trade slippery for sturdy.

If your pregnant wife has ever gone into labor in the middle of the night and you were left to look for your car keys and cell phone in a pile of stuff on your desk in the dark so you could get to the hospital, you have a pretty good idea what it’s like to start flipping through a deck of cards in Donkey to make four of a kind. The grunts of frustration and clenched-teeth curses flow into that metaphor pretty seamlessly as well. There’s no shortage of crazy card-snapping games on the market, but the addition of the cleverly coined Kickers keeps things fresh not just one round after another but one game to the next. You aren’t likely to see all the cards in just a game or two, and even then many of them require creative input from the players when they come up. Furthermore, expansions are planned to add Kickers to your set.

This is one of those games your friends go to great lengths to tell you how much they disliked . . . then when you show up the next week, demand to know why you didn’t bring that crazy Donkey game again this time. While it’s too adrenalin-fueled for most players to keep at this the whole night, it straddles the line between card game and party game (then again, it also straddles the line between controlled chaos and a bloodsport). This makes Donkey It’s a Kick!a good choice whether it’s a session with gung-ho gamers or just a soiree with friends or family and their casual interest in the brutal world of donkey-kicking.

I came across this article the other day. I’ve been playing desktop computer games since I was around 6 or 7 years old.

Jeff Vogel

Of course, back then they weren’t really home computer games, my Dad would let me play the games they had on the mainframes in his office. Funny part was, back then most people hadn’t really even played many stand up video games, but here I was playing these little shoot’em games on a green screen monitor, with only arrow keys and the space bar for a trigger. Best part was, since it was all mainframe stuff, it was networked across the country to other offices, and it was multi-player!

I’d sit there for hours playing these couple games he had access to, one was ‘Rats’ the other was a vampire type game.

So, I’ve seen computer gaming from its wee, baby beginnings. And, what confuses me a bit about the rant that Jeff Vogel is making is that… I thought almost any reasonably successful video game studio usually had the practice of re-using their engine code. Heck, I know that they were doing it back when I would purchase games on cassette tape for my Vic-20. Sure those games were no where near as intense on the programming side as even the most inane shovel-ware that you can find for $5 in Best Buy these days. But, still, I know the industry has been using a code re-use model for a very long time.

I would have to sit and think real hard to days when it wasn’t common for major games not to tout the engine that they were using as part of the marketing.

Maybe I am missing Jeff’s point here, but it seems that there is some other point that he wants us to gain from his writings. Since, from my perspective, it looks as if he is just looking for someone to pat him on the back for doing what I know people have been doing in the game industry since 1988.

I’ve been wrong in the past, but… this one just made my brain go into an odd spin.

What are some of your first video gaming memories? Do you ever get hung up on what specific video engine that a particular game uses?

By Andy Vetromile
Like any dutiful geek, I’ve got my favorites, and when it comes to comic books it’s The Invincible Iron Man that will always hold the warmest spot in my heart. There was something about Shell-head that just struck the right chords for me. Perhaps it was the fact that, underneath that metallic skin, he could be anybody. He wasn’t bitten by irradiated animals or dunked in goo or the fulfillment of a prophecy, just a dude smart enough to build hisself some sweet gear. He had repulsor beams at his fingertips (literally, depending on the model – how cool is a model for every occasion?). All heroes thrust their chests out, but when IM did it, his unibeam cut through bank vaults. He could fly. He had the time and date on the inside of his mask. He could electrocute you…

…ah. Here’s a point. I’ll hop on.

I don’t want to spoil it for you, those of you gearing up for the movie version when it comes out in two thousand and >cough-cough<, but Tony Stark, the genius who built and wears the armor, did it because a piece of shrapnel was slowly working its way toward his heart. The chestplate was a sort of portable iron lung, which meant he had to keep it powered up to stay alive. I’m not so blind that I cannot see and accept the cruel (you’ll pardon the expression) irony of the situation. Like Ultra-Man (“Should the light in his chest go out, he will never rise again”) and comparable cool personages in the business, this plot device was played for tension. Run out of power, and you run out of superpowers…and heart beats.

What kind of engineering is that? Sure, it’s selfless of him to fight the good fight, but for heaven’s sake he bench-presses train cars; flies through space and plunges through oceans; bends I-beams. Yet at least once every issue, Stark’s pathetic form came home from fighting the Mandarin or the Crimson Dynamo, flew erratically into his private offices, and crawled like a drunken hobo across the plush carpeting to reach a damn electrical socket. Not some sort of superscience transformer, mind you, with Tesla coils and bells and whistles. No, the same kind of thing you plug your Mr. Coffee into. Obviously privacy benefits one’s secret identity, but in a pinch you could just stop off in an abandoned junk yard (maybe Stark didn’t want to get nailed for theft of services…ah, the price of conscience).

All this crap fit into the suit because it was transistorized (any technological advancement is a good excuse for a new hero, right? So where’s Intestinal Camera Man?). But even after tossing around power enough to send Marty McFly through time, Iron Man’s survival came down to house current. Count yourself lucky, my friend; I can’t run my razor and a hair dryer at the same time without blowing a fuse. Why not build a slightly larger capacitor, guy? You seem pretty “vincible” to me. But I respect your willingness to put others ahead of yourself.

Imagine my relief when Iron Man passed the 100-issues mark, and the character changed. Stark, first the victim of shrapnel and then an artificial heart, found his body accepting the new organ – and he started truly unloading on the bad guys. He was once again the Invincible Iron Man, and he found ever more creative ways to use his equipment to stomp villains. In a fight, he wasn’t being slapped silly by an Asian man with peculiar taste in jewelry as the needle dropped toward “empty,” he was bringin’ it.

And so we come to Jedi.

We waited, what, 16 years for the newest Star Wars flick? Apparently it took that long for technology to catch up to George, to bring his vision to life as he wanted (and indeed, he’s still not 100% okay with it). That’s fine, mind you, he can do wonders with his CGI toys, and being true to his vision – I wouldn’t stand in the way of that for all the merchandising rights. I have a vision, too. Admittedly mine is limited to pesto-parmesan ham sandwiches and widespread acceptance of my fashion sense, but they’re my ambitions, right or wrong.

Alas, creating practically everything in the movie with special effects turned out to be annoying and distracting. It would be nice to listen to the conversations between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn, but I’m too busy staring at the glorious landscapes Lucas allows to dominate every scene. The ships floating past in the background could crash into our heroes and it could not divert my attention more. Characters, story (there was one, yes?), dialogue…everything here takes a backseat to George’s digitally rendered wonderland. What does Naboo export that’s so all-fired important the Trade Federation blockades them? Pretty, scenic pictures for the galaxy’s burgeoning jigsaw puzzle concession? Just E-mail them as attachments…oh, wait. They jammed communications…it all becomes clear now. Maybe they mentioned it and I missed it because a B-wing or L-wing or tomato-wing was gliding in for a landing.

But this blockade does rate hot Jedi action (wokka-chicka-wok-chowww). The council sends Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor, whose name is really fun to say when you roll the Rs with an angry Scottish brogue) and Qui-Gon Jinn (the always underutilized Liam Neeson, and how impressed was I to find out I got his character’s name right?) to “talk” to the feds. One cannot help but think sending Jedi for this task is a lot like putting Harry Callahan on traffic patrol in Compton: Yes, it’s his job, but really it’s a tacit admission that you think things are about to go south on you in a big way and someone’s fixing to lose a lot of ass. You can send Arnie the Terminator to “guard” John Connor, but he still sees blowing up a city block as part of the job description.

What, honestly, are the requirements for becoming a Jedi? They warn Luke not to leave to save his friends from Vader in Episode V because he’s “not ready,” but when he returns in Episode VI, they tell him his training is complete if all he does is go face Vader. Th’ hell? Instead of waving his hand in front of Yoda’s face (“You will make up your damn mind”), Luke goes back for another beating, and I just know his insurance can’t cover an endless supply of artificial hands. They waffle three or four times about that Lloyd kid in Episode I (would that Lucas did the same), and finally give him the green light when Obi-Wan is able to sneak the brat in under some sort of grandfathered Jedi mentor clause.

But oh, when the Jedi fight…well, they aren’t CGI. Okay, I admit, I don’t know that that’s strictly true. I’m sure some of it is fancy effects, but watching Ray Park do flips and spins in midair, you know there’s a reason the man is in the film. We got 20 years of Jedi Lite, but now they’ve come into their own and the invincible is back. We’re seeing the knights in their heyday. When the job’s really tough they send two guys. They close the blast doors and the lightsaber keeps melting the door. Oh, mama.

Perhaps Lucas is too close to the action to realize what poetry he has in his own movie, but with Park moving like a ballerina as he beats the stew out of Neeson and McGregor, it’s high time someone told him the personal message of the Star Wars saga has always outweighed the flash and sizzle. We want to see what happens to the characters. Their pain is our pain, their joy is our joy, your script is our crap. I can’t identify with a probe or a hovering cargo craft. Just like Iron Man, I identify with the man inside – and when he’s up, I’m up, and I remember where the invincible comes from.

Say, you don’t think they’re going to use CGI in the Iron Man flick, do you?

Controversy is the spice of TV movies.  And as everyone knows: “The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness, the spice is vital to space travel.”  One need look no further than Apollo 13 to see that this 1982 TV movie made it possible for Tom Hanks to travel into space.

I distinctly remember this movie from when it came out because it meshed so nicely with the anti D&D right-wing fundamentalism movement of the time.  This is a review of the movie, not of the era – but it is worth mentioning that the film itself does not blame gaming for what happens to Robbie, the protagonist.

PLOT:

Robbie is transferring to a new college after an incident at his previous college led to academic issues.  It seems that Robbie had some problems with time management at the old school.  Sadly, by the time the film is over Robbie will have issues with reality management.

Meanwhile, a group of gamers are trying to organize a new campaign for the upcoming semester.  They are a motley group led by boy-genius Jay Jay Brockway, who has a talking parrot.  The hot female gamer (a standard in any gaming group) is Kate Finch.  The stud who always gets the girl (another standard member of your basic archetypal game group) is Daniel.  What this group desperately needs is the “gets way too into the game and talks about himself in character” member of the group.

Robbie meets Jay Jay. Jay Jay is not a jet-plane. Nor is he a pilot, despite his WWI flight-gear.

Quicker than you can say “Wizard of Light,” Robbie is in the game.  All’s fine for a while.  Robbie seems to be hitting the books, exercising, eating and having a good time.  Nothing wrong with that.

But then Jay Jay starts feeling out of place and decides to kill himself.  (This is handled in such a light-hearted way you can’t help but wince if you know the “true” story behind this tale.)  Jay Jay’s solution is to go out to the old caverns to do it.  But when he goes there he realizes that the place is such fun that instead of suicide, he could setup a live-action RPG session.

These are the miniatures used in "M&M." What scale is that - 1977 Star Wars action figure size?

(They don’t dwell on it in the movie very much, but this is essentially a power-play by Jay Jay to force his way into the GM seat.  So instead of playing by 1000 candles in Daniel’s room, they end up LARPing by flashlight by trespassing in a cave.)

How can they even read their stats when the lights are this dim? (I had to seriously crank up the contrast here.)

The cave is all fun until Robbie starts to lose it and thinks that a real monster is after him.  (Probably not work that Mr. Hanks still includes in his reel.)

"By order of the town council" - Seriously? The town council sealed the caverns? Is that really in their power?

Oh, and Robbie and Kate have been having a great relationship (including nookie) when suddenly Robbie becomes celibate.  (Because his Cleric is celibate.)  Considering that Kate is a totally hot gamer, this can’t be a sign of strong mental stability…

Darkness is cheaper to film, apparently. There are convenience store security videos with better camera work.

It is only a short time before Robbie disappears.  The authorities think he’s been murdered by his gaming friends, or that he’s become lost in the dangerous cavern.  It is up to the rest of the game group to figure out the mystery and save Robbie.

The Scooby gang discusses the case of the missing Robbie.

Robbie left a clue – a hand-made map of a maze with the words “The Great Hall, The Two Towers.”  Somehow the intrepid gamers realize the meaning of this coded message and race off to save Robbie from a fate exactly equal to death.

If I bought a module with this map - I'd be totally pissed off.

In the end, Robbie lives – but will his life ever be the same as it was?

The MST3K Factor:

Did you ever play with the “Caption This” software that they used to use over at the Sci-Fi channel’s website?  This film would produce wonderful results there.  It might be good fodder for a night’s friendly banter, but I’d recommend utilizing it as part of a double-feature, and have this one go first.  I prefer my MST3K films to be less sappy than this.

The Action Factor:

No.  There isn’t any.  You’d be MUCH better off with the Dungeons & Dragons Cartoons than this film if you crave action.

Casting Couch:

Director: Steven Hilliard Stern – went on to direct such TV classics as “The Park is Mine” and “City Dump: The story of the 1951 CCNY basketball scandal.”

Robbie: Tom Hanks – continued to make movies for nearly 10 years after this, including such hits as Turner & Hooch andJoe Versus the Volcano.

Kate: Wendy Crewson – the clear break-out star of the film, she is the true star of the beloved Santa Clause movies.

Jay Jay: Chris Makepeace – Whatever happened to Chris Makepeace?  He was one of many people who overcame being Canadian to become a movie star.  Are the rumors that he tried to pay Adam Baldwin to be his real bodyguard to blame?  Or is it the curse of the Dillon brothers?  Who can say?  Not me.  I just hope that he fares better in the 21st century than the McKenzie brothers have.

Daniel : Daniel Wallace – The rumors that Daniel was thus called because Mr. Wallace couldn’t remember his name are untrue.  The character was called this because Mr. Wallace could not remember his character’s name.  Distinctions like that are what this film is all about.

Gorvil: Kevin Peter Hall – Yes, the actor who went on to play the Predator and Harry was in this film.  (Note to self: Predator is a better gaming movie than this one.)  His massive 7’2″ frame play the un-animated Orc stand-in.  (Now there is a gaming point for discussion – I’d argue that the Gorvil was an Orc stand-in.  Others might argue that it more resembled a D&DTroglodyte.  Either way – we’d all lose if we had to see the movie to make our points.)

Historical Importance:

Mazes & Monsters comes from a dark time in the history of gaming.  Oh, sure you might think that the current (1Q 2007) preponderance of video games and the closing of many gaming companies is a bit of a drag – but there was a time when people thought that playing RPGs was a fast-track to hell.  Why?  Mostly because people are idiots.

From the people who brought you “Rock & Roll is Satanic” came the tales of cultists who had learned their craft by playing D&D.  Click Here for a link to a 1988 article that may horrify non-gamers, but leaves most informed people staring at the article in disbelief.

The famous Dark Dungeons bible tract includes the same kind of belief – that the magic in the game is real.  Who can forget the chapter in the Malleus Maleficarum (the witch-hunter’s guide) on how magicians and witches use polyhedral dice and THAC0 in their never ending campaign against all that is good?

Oh, Jack Chick. Are you really a Chick?

And a part of that decade’s mythic anti-D&D stories included a tale known as “The Steam Tunnel Incident.“  I won’t recount the tale here (it is a sad story), but it might suffice to say that gaming was blamed for something that turned out to have a lot more to do with drugs, suicidal tendencies and repressed homosexual feelings.  But the version most people hear is that a group of college gamers got lost in some steam tunnels while LARPing.

That’s probably what Rona Jaffe heard about that made her think of writing the book upon which this film purports to be based.   Maybe.  Or it could be that she saw this totally awesome commercial for D&D the game:

Her movie’s version of gaming made at least as little sense as you’d think a movie about gaming from someone who doesn’t game would make.  Does that make sense?

Check out this link to hear two characters explain why reaching 9th level is so great.  (Keep in mind that according to Jack Chick you get real magical powers at 8th level, not 9.)

But, another weird historical aspect of the film is the location of its ungripping, actionless climax.  Yes, back in 1988 you could just park your VW right in front of the World Trade Center and run inside.  Despite the furor about the dangers of D&D it turned out that the real danger wasn’t kids playing games, but religious extremism.  Irony, you are a complete bastard.

No, the Two Towers wasn't a reference to the Peter Jackson film! In 1982 you could just park in the lobby.

Gaming Relevance:

None.  I mean that.  Except that they show some people playing what is supposed to be an RPG – you’re really not going to learn anything about gaming from this film.  At all.

Lessons Learned:

In the early 1980s you could get a movie made about anything.  Sure there was a hit book behind this – but what if they’d taken the money the used to make this film and instead they’d produced a film that was enjoyable.  Wow, think what the world might be like today!

SUMMARY:

I found this movie in the bargain bin for $2.99.  I hope somebody buys something off my website so I can get that money back!

The haunting ending you'll never forget...

Negatives about Mazes & Monsters – The Movie:

• It was made.
• I watched it.
• I can’t get a refund on my time.

Positives about D&D – The Movie:

• The box looks cool.
• (There is neither Dragon nor Maze in the film – Buyer Be Warned)
  

As the title might suggest, Descent doesn’t have you fighting foes in starships or sylvan glades. You’re going down into the bowels of the Earth and you’re not coming back until you or your formidable enemies go down.

The heroes’ objective is to complete their mission in the underworld; the overlord player’s is to drain them of “conquest tokens,” plunging the defeated team (and the usual “big chunk of the rest of the world”) into darkness.

The players have a wide variety of heroes from which to choose, each with its own statistics and special abilities. Skills in combat and magic and so on provide you with cards from a corresponding deck, though not all give you “skills” in the traditional sense. You might, for example, get a familiar with mystical abilities when drawing from the magic skills deck.

Armed thusly, the team ventures into the underground cavern, uncovering the layout as they go. Rooms, corridors, and passageways of varying sizes are snapped together, all connected with jigsaw-cut edges. If the endless permutations thereof weren’t enough, board elements like teleporters, obstacles like rune-locked rooms, and encounters that might spring surprises, good or bad, on curious characters throw even more curves. A scenario (available from the book, the players’ imaginations, or FFG’s on-line scenario generator) dictates not only the blueprints but what lies in wait. Certain monsters abide in particular rooms, but don’t barge into play until their rest is disturbed (read: a hero opens the door to that section). It wouldn’t be much of a fantasy game without fabulous treasure; dotted about the dungeon, some is useful combat gear while the rest is money to be spent in town.

Attacks are adjudicated by custom colored dice that dictate distance (if it’s a ranged attack it may peter out before it reaches your target) and the damage done. Special black dice, lightning “surges” on the roll, and exhausting one’s fatigue points can also boost attacks. For example, a hero skilled with a particular weapon might get an extra point of damage for every pair of surge symbols he gets. The party gains further advantages from special orders: If you take the Dodge maneuver, for instance, your opponent may have to reroll an attack, changing a hit to a miss.

When the adventuring party has done all the damage they can do, the overlord gets his turn. Although he doesn’t enjoy same perks (no dice surges for him), he does get a whole deck of cards to himself, filled with extra units, ways to hurt players, and traps to spring. His minions have their own stats, powers, and effects (flying critters, breath weapons, magical fear effects), and secrecy is more his friend than yours. He’s limited by the cards he can “pay” for with threat tokens, the mastermind’s currency.

Either the heroes succeed in their mission – to save someone, maybe, or find an important artifact, or just kill a really tough monster – or the overlord vexes the party enough to take all their conquest tokens (the coin of the realm for do-gooders). In the former case the good guys win; in the latter, darkness reigns supreme.

Using mechanics borrowed from Doom, the company has created a fantasy version that nevertheless holds up its end. Although so much of it is taken from the parent game, it has a feel all its own, with different monsters, more character individuality, additional strategy, and plenty of variety. Heroes aren’t cookie-cutter versions of the same man four times; you have advantages and disadvantages, and winning means learning how to use them to best effect. You have to balance your fatigue expenditures, time your special orders, and equip the right gear at the right time. The villain also has lots of upsets and wrenches in his deck that can turn a good plan into a hopeless mess for the good guys. It may seem like a rock-paper-scissors effect, figuring out whether good or evil has the advantage, but there’s so much for everyone to juggle the whole thing comes out surprisingly even.

It also takes longer than Doom, so you’d best set aside a late night or a full afternoon to accommodate the three- or four-hour running time (which balloons out severely your first couple of games). Being able to travel to town and trade goods and services during a mission is an odd mechanic, one that makes thematic sense for hero healing or even resurrection, but training? It’s a hefty box with an equally daunting price tag, but you’re really getting what you pay for. There are countless high-quality miniatures for both sides (each hero has a specific figure, with detail enough to pick yours out of a crowd), stacks of counters, and lots of cards. The map pieces provided are top of the line and offer endless variations, so customizing the game for everything from number of participants to play time available is at your discretion. To avoid the obvious play on words, Descent is more than just “decent” – it’s the complete package.

Published by Wizards of the Coast
Designed by Bruce Glassco and Rob Daviau
Edited by Brian Campbell and Cal Moore
Art, graphics by Peter Whitley, Kate Irwin, Rob Daviau, Trish Yochum, Christopher Moeller, and Scott Okumura
Rules, 2 haunt books, 44 room tiles, entrance hall, 6 plastic figures, 6 two-sided characters cards, 30 plastic clips, 8 dice, turn/damage track, 13 omen cards, 22 item cards, 45 event cards, 291 tokens (large monsters, monsters, event and room, item, trait roll), $39.95

Comparisons to Zombies!!! and other (mostly Twilight Encounters, Inc.-related games) are inevitable, but if you’re looking for a horror game, Betrayal at House on the Hill at least compares favorably.

The object of the game is to be the first person or team to achieve their objectives.

Does that mean it’s a team game? Well, yes and no. You start out as a single party, each player using his own character to comb through the old mansion in search of equipment and clues that will help you beat the haunted home in which you find yourselves trapped. Somewhere along the way, though, the evil that dwells here is going to reach a critical mass, and when it does it will pervert one of the hunters.

From that point, the traitor has to do in his companions (or bring about an apocalypse that will do the dirty work for him, or…), and the survivors (up to this point, anyhoo) have to stop his dastardly plans or at least get the front door open.

The game starts in a long hallway that recalls the Bates Motel, with doors and stairs and such leading off in all directions. Everyone gets a figurine that depicts their in-game persona, and these move through new and unexplored passages that turn up new rooms, areas, and transit points. (There are six character pieces to play, but in a clever little move each one is two-sided and the illustrations just vague enough that they all pull double duty, giving you different people with different skills to work with and keep things fresh). The rooms are all on tiles, thick cardstock pieces blindly flipped up from a deck to create a new layout for each game.

Rooms may provide new items or even companions, but it’s also a good bet you’ll stumble over threats and challenges. Each trial is compared to one of your statistics, and you roll dice equal to that stat. The six-sided dice are different, having zero, one, or two pips per side to get your totals. Succeed and you may get new goods, card draws, or perhaps just safe passage. Some rooms, though, provide the dreaded omens.

Omens aren’t bad in their effects – not at first, in any case – but when one of these is drawn, rolling less than the current number of omen cards in play turns someone at random into a traitor and the endgame is underway. You may become (or have to stop) the zombie lord, for example, or have to fight/control a swarm of rats. Both sides look into their booklet – one for the bad guy, one for the heroes’ team – and see what the code tells you to do in order to see daylight or bring about the darkness. There are 50 different stories, so you won’t run out too quickly.

It’s another of those pricey new Avalon Hill boxed sets, but the components are plentiful and all top-notch. The figurines are way nifty, the card stock and illustrations clean and crisp, and the box even has little cardboard separators that form “pockets” inside the box to store bits and pieces (assuming you don’t need someone to point this function out to you…ahem). There’s an awful lot of punching out for the buyer to do, so be ready to do a bit of grunt work when you first crack the cover. The characters have a little disk that shows their skill sets, and small plastic sliders are used to record these. They can go up or down in the course of a game, and eventually the friction of all these changes may wear down the graphics (with a few uses it doesn’t seem to do a lot of damage).

While it’s tough to create a really horrific atmosphere just sitting around a table, House on the Hill makes a gutsy effort. The cards are written to be read aloud, making the players narrate their adventures with creepy dialogue. The omens are spooky, there are creepy little graphics (do you really want to know what made all those little scratches?), and the cards make reference to each other in clever ways that make it all that much more surreal.

It’s not really a new idea, or a terribly original execution, but Betrayal at House on the Hill is a well-made, handsome boxed set with a good bit of replay value, and is at least as worthy as its competitors for the gamers’ dollars.

Games and geomorphic maps: They just seem to go together. Board games – everything from WizWar to RoboRally – use them to create their playing surfaces, and to some extent the same holds true for roleplaying games. A few adventure modules and supplements over the years have made use of them, but few have made it the product’s raison d’etre. Goodman Games thinks it sees some value in offering just such a selection inDungeon Crawl Classics #9: Dungeon Geomorphs.

As the title suggests, the book contains a series of geomorphic maps. Every page has four such insets, and each has eight connections, two per side, that are the same for all the maps. One segment butts up against another and all the passageways attach at the same spots. They line up best side to side and end to end, but graphically minded folks will find other compositions.

If a tile doesn’t precisely serve your purpose, fuss with the photocopy (kind of a waste just to cut the book up) and make all the changes you need to an individual bit. It’s a simple matter to mark out one exit (or add a wall, or fill in and eliminate a room, etc.) with a thick black marker. Add a few notes in the margins (if your slice-and-dice session leaves any) or put a number in each room keyed to your adventure outline and you’re good to go.

The sections are grouped by subject matter, so to speak, though the distinctions can be argued. There’s a section of caves, for example, another for temples, pages of mazes, and so on. Often the four pieces on one page, especially if there’s a unifying theme like “the castle,” fit together as one larger piece if desired.

Graphically, the supplement is a pretty simple one. There are only three pieces of art to speak of (front and back covers, plus the frontispiece); while the last two are fairly unremarkable the front cover is actually an enjoyable bit of artistic whimsy.

The maps themselves aren’t exactly masterpieces, but they’re expected to serve a pretty utilitarian function. The problem is they may not be all that easy to use. If it’s a GM’s aid, a set of building blocks he uses while designing the adventure, then they’re a good jolt to the creative cells. But can you really drag a loose set of these things to the gaming table like a hand of cards? If you paste them to backing boards and cut them out, they can be easily reused, but that’s a lot of work. If the dungeon isn’t a simple parallel layout (i.e., “three tiles across, four down”), a referee cutting and pasting them together as a map for his own reference may have several tunnel sections spilling about like an awkward octopus.

Are they any use to the players? The players don’t build the dungeon, and the maps are too small for miniatures combat. On the other hand, the book rightly points out that copies can be used to make maps as handouts for the team. Some alterations, or even just ripping the vital corners off the edges, give it that annoying, can’t-quite-read-it treasure map look.

After the “how to use this book” portion, the rest of the book is maps (so that’s 120 segments for those keeping score). The insides of the covers have extra, blank maps that are supposed to let the referee make custom maps, but they used non-photocopy blue ink (or something close) for the images, and that makes anything but the solid edges hard to copy or make out. A shame since in theory the pieces could be enlarged 400% during copying and the maps would then be big enough for the aforementioned miniatures. As it is, even the black and white images that make up the interior suffer the vagaries of current enlargement technology.

For anyone who doesn’t believe there’s still any cachet to having the d20 logo on the cover of their book, talk to Goodman Games. This book has it, even though the interior lacks anything that might be considered D&D specific. Even the introduction is labeled as Open Gaming Content (feel free to use it), but it’s just instruction on using the geomorphs, which are not OGC.

It would be conceited to think every hobbyist out there has a computer, so it may be unfair to suggest this is the sort of thing that would better serve its audience through on-line .pdf files. But the book itself expects consumers will use at least a copying machine, making the inexpensive Dungeon Crawl Classics #9: Dungeon Geomorphs a nice idea that, in practice, has limited utility.

Mead® Marble Composition Book, Quadrille and College-Ruled
Printed by MeadWestvaco Corporation
100 Pages, 7 1/2 x 9 3/4, $3.35 list price
Product #09000

An RPG at its best can be a gestalt experience providing the players with an ambulatory mental experience that not only entertains, but also evokes the Aristotelian elements of drama while providing the players a vicarious sense of accomplishment. Players may rejoice as their characters achieve the impossible in a game held together with dice, paper, some simple rules and their limitless imaginations. Tools that can improve the efficiency of the players and the GM can help steer a game toward that pleasant destination, and I recently came across a product so intuitive and amazingly useful to gamers that I marveled that I hadn’t thought of it myself.

Mead now produces a composition book which has the pages split such that the top half of each page is quarter-inch graph paper and the bottom half is college-ruled line paper. The product lists at $3.35, but I found the street price consistently lower. The book is built like the rest of their “marble” composition line: cloth spine, hard cardboard outer cover, soft white paper pages inside with a sewn binding, and blue inking. However, seeing this book’s outer cover with its white and black display transfixed me. I can’t remember a time when I was so enchanted with a product without having even used it. Its gaming applications were immediately obvious to me.

From a GM’s perspective, the Quad/College composition book makes a perfect idea journal. It is small enough to carry tucked inside other notebooks for quick retrieval. The top half of each page is a perfect place to map out mazes, tunnels, cities, or other game locales. The bottom half has plenty of room to write notes, character sketches, or treasure descriptions.

A player would probably find the product equally useful. This is especially true for a designated chronicler or cartographer. While the grid is not large enough to map a large dungeon, it can easily handle subdivisions of such a place and provide ample descriptions to help the players negotiate their way back out again. And, of course, the product is useful for non-fantasy RPGs as well. Star systems, ship designs, military bases and urban neighborhoods can all be handled more efficiently with this clever composition book.

The product isn’t flawless. Mead’s composition books don’t have perforated pages, so removing a page is messy. It would be nice if they offered eighth-inch graph paper as well as the quarter-inch version. The weight of the paper used in the book is light enough that markers can bleed through, messing up the back of the page. Yet this book’s usefulness far outweighs these flaws for players or GMs.

I wish this product had been available when I was doing my most regular gaming as a player, but it wasn’t. Mead only released this product in July of 2004, so it is fairly new. They also released a similar product in 2002 that would be of use to many gamers – a comp book with the top-half of each page blank for illustrations (product #09920). But, it is the graph version that struck me as most universally useful to RPG enthusiasts.

I contacted Mead’s consumer relations department and was told that many times the office supply stores will only stock up on these products during the beginning of the school year, so the products won’t be available for much of the year without special ordering. In fact, Mead doesn’t even carry the product on its own web site. However, I did find that OfficeDepot.com carries it, and it can be looked up by product number on their webpage.