Kickstarter: Miniature Terrain by THMiniatures

This week, three days before it was scheduled to arrive, my box of THMiniatures terrain arrived. I kickstarted this project because the terrain looked good, fit the main mini wargame my some and I play (Warmachine/Hordes), but could be multi-purposed. I figured this made it a good idea (affordable terrain is hard to find).

Also, this was a Canadian company and Canadian game companies are rare things, so I admit nationalism was also a root cause of my backing their Kickstarter.

I’m lenient on Kickstarters, especially mini-related Kickstarters, because they are unlikely to deliver on time. As long as the creators are keeping me informed as to the delays, I forgive them the delay. I’m careful about who I kickstart, and I’ve focused on companies like Reaper, Dream Pod 9, or Monte Cook Games because they are companies with a proven track record of making things. I felt like this kickstart was a bit of a risk as the company was new, and so I only made a conservative backing.

I’m glad to say THMinatures proved me wrong: they delivered on-time, even a little early in my opinion. They kept us updated, but not overwhelmingly so, throughout the process. Overall, this was a satisfying kickstart.

Now the actual terrain:

All 11 pieces arrived undamaged in a small box and the order was filled correctly. Each piece is a resin, something like the 3-d printing I’ve seen. The logs are a smooth and regular and perhaps too tubular, which might be a material or a design problem or limit. The stone blocks, wooden planks, and rough ground look nicely textured. I haven’t painted material like this, and I’ll report back on its quality.

The pieces are neither bendable nor fragile. They feel well made, and there aren’t any visible bubbles, like you can sometimes get with resin (GW “finecast” I’m looking at you…I’m glad I missed out on that boondoggle).  They are sized to fit minis well and combine well in appearance. The apprentice had fun arranging possible patterns and I think the terrain presents some fun narrative and tactical opportunities.

Here’s the unpainted terrain with a few WarmaHordes figures:

And here’s a few pieces with Reaper models:

Sorry for the lack of gameboard and lightbox, but you can see the terrain fits the range of miniatures and would enhance a table nicely. 

This was a great kickstart and a good product.  I’d recommend THMiniatures as a company to trust. I’ll reserve giving a final “review” until after I’ve had a chance to try painting the pieces, but I'm optimistic about their future. 

Review: Fantasy AGE by Green Ronin

Fantasy AGE is Green Ronin’s new “generic” version of their Dragon Age licenced game. It is 144 page and relatively slim. As such, it isn’t comparable in size to generic games like GURPS or the Cypher System and is perhaps better compared to Savage Worlds or FATE in terms of quantity of content. Another fair comparison might be Dungeon World.

Overall, Fantasy AGE is a satisfactory game.

We played a session of the game, making characters and playing a short adventure which involved a two combat encounters and a bit of intermittent role-playing with dice supports. One session is not the ideal for a real test of a game (three is better), so take this with a pinch of salt: The play went quickly, suffer little mechanical “bog-down” for a new system, I didn’t spend much if any time laboring over the system, and the players had a couple of cool moments. But I also didn’t think the monsters were challenging the PCs, and I felt one or two characters were too universally good at everything. With a few good roles and min/maxing your race, you’d end up with a decent mage who was the equal of most warriors in combat – the Dwarf Mage was a mean melee combatant.  

The game features readily accessible rules and uses a fun dice mechanic – you roll 3d6, with an off-colour die as your “stunt” dice. When you roll doubles, you get a critical effect. This doesn’t just pertain to combat, as spells, exploration, and interaction all have potential stunts. Players and GMs get to choose their stunts, so the system has some depth. In theory, the bell curve of a 3d6 should make players less vulnerable to a cold night of rolling (a problem with linear dice rolls).

But, beyond the dice and stunt system, Fantasy AGE is perhaps too generic. The races are all the usual suspects (elf, dwarf, orc, halfling, etc) and the classes – Mage, Rogue, and Warrior—are different, but don’t carry much detail. There is a background system, but it doesn’t offer much beyond a descriptive quality. The system doesn’t attempt to reward any characterization, and there isn’t much of a setting offered.

The book looks good, is well presented and offers good advice. However, it offers little in the way of monsters and adversaries, and what there is is pretty bland. The monsters aren’t imaginative nor do they feature interesting abilities. Now, in a game this generic, you’d expect goblins, dragons, giants, etc, but a few interesting takes or curve ball monsters make a game distinct in a simple way.

The magic system has range, and I think it could be used to build interesting organizations, but as it is, the spells are there. They’re generic enough that the passing resonance of games like Ars Magica or Mage in the use of language like arcana and rolling for effect and stunt, just makes you think those games have fun magic systems and this system is without texture and nuance.

The players enjoyed the critical stunt process, but wondered if there were better ways to handle things than a chart. It seemed to at least two of the players that you’d start defaulting to certain stunts and ignoring the majority of the chart. I don’t think the charts slowed play, and once players were familiar with it, the game would be pretty quick.

But the major stumbling block is the game gives you Elves and Dwarves and Mages and Rogues, and well, D&D already does that…Unlike Burning Wheel, which gives you Elves and Dwarves, but ramps up the mythopoetics and mechanics to be unlike D&D, Fantasy AGE is generic in the way earlier D&D was. That means you’ve got a lot of work making a setting and presenting something interesting. I suppose if you’re ideologically opposed to D&D, Fantasy AGE might fit your bill, but I think most games who reject the premise of D&D won’t find much in Fantasy AGE.

That said, the game isn’t flawed. If you’re burnt out on D&D or Pathfinder mechanics but want to keep things going in the same generic vein, then this game might work for you. The starting adventure is a good one (a riff on a common horror movie motif).

If I consider the comparisons mentioned in the opening things shake out like this:

Compared to FATE, Fantasy AGE is not a story-driven game. Mechanically, FATE and F/AGE are heading in different directions, but like FATE, there isn’t much in terms of setting to enjoy. You’ll need to work to make the game start off and while FATE gives you a lot of examples, FATE CORE is harder to run “off-the-book” than F/AGE. But, if you AND your players are into giving FATE the full go, I think it has more mileage. On the other hand, F/AGE doesn’t require the kind of investment on the player’s part that games like FATE (and Burning Wheel) require.

Compared to Savage Worlds, F/AGE is a pretty limited package. Savage Worlds will give you a better “off-the-book” experience and offer you more latitude. There’s a better starting adventure in F/AGE, and there’s more work to be done running SW as fantasy (personally, the “language” of Savage Worlds works against using it for Fantasy and Sci-Fi games).

As an aside, the Cypher System rulebook arrived in the mail just as I was prepping to try F/AGE out. The monster’s provided there are so much more fun and variety that it was really glaring. Now, the Cypher book is more than twice as long as F/AGE, so the comparison isn’t entirely fair, but it was quick striking.

I think Fantasy AGE is a satisfactory game. Green Ronin do reliably good work, and this product holds up in terms of quality and presentation. It’s easy to learn, quick to play, but it only offers a generic experience.

Three stars. 

Dungeons and Dragons, Fifth Edition (a run review)

Dungeons and Dragons is a game with baggage. As the earliest major/popular example of a role-playing game is casts a long the over genre. It is the money-maker (however small the pie actually is), and its influence is fairly ubiquitous thanks to video games. The concepts of cooperative play and continuous character improvement are two of the most important innovations in game history. Arguably the success of collectible card games, non-historical war games, and the current tabletop board game phenomenon all owe a debt to D&D.

All this is meant to say one shouldn’t review D&D lightly. Each edition has been met with the gnashing of teeth and the grinding of axes. My thinking is that you should reserve judgement until you’ve given the new system a descent workout, perhaps a year or so. This is what I did with 4e, and while I eventually soured on it in 2010, it did provide the backbone for a very enjoyable 2 year, 5 month campaign which is among the more memorable I’ve run. This review is essentially a DM’s review. I have not played 5e, but I have run it.

By way of background: I started playing D&D in 1988, after some proto-rpg experiences, and then moved on the AD&D, mostly a mix of whatever 1e and 2e material we had, along with some BEMCI material. I played a lot of Rules Cyclopedia D&D and then played 2e through the late 90s until 3e came along in 2000. I ran a lot (and played a little) 3^rd edition. From 2000 to 2006, it was essentially the only game played weekly. Gaming was a bit sporadic in 2006, but again, 3.5 was the game. Like I mentioned above, I felt it necessary to give 4e an honest try, and ran it from 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2014, I ran a mix of different games, including 3.5 and Pathfinder, until 5e came out in 2014.

My group and I have had two 5e campaigns: the first was a play through of the starter set and its adventure “The Lost Mine of Phandelver” (silly name though). Then we switch to a homebrew setting and we’ve been happily playing along a developing series of stories. So far the players are at 6-7 level, and so I won’t be commenting on high level situations until I get there.

My Review of 5e: Fifth edition is a very good game, four stars.  

That’s really the summation of a year of play.

The best parts

Like 4e, 5e is easy to run. There’s less rulebook review than the first 3 editions, DCs are broadly easier to set. The whole “bounded accuracy” idea, which just creates a game with lower numbers of math is great. The game is robust and fun to play while reducing the prevalence of magic items and returning to an ethic of homebrewed ideas and DM interpretation.

The art is more inclusive, and generally well done. The cover on the Monster Manual is great. I’m glad to see artists other than Wayne Reynolds gracing the covers of a major fantasy game. I’ve enjoyed many of his covers, and I think his work on the Eberron books was genius, but he’s gotten a bit omnipresent and the choice of different artists is to be commended. The humorous doodles in the indexes and appendices are wonderful and a welcome change from the seriousness of 4e.

The classes are interesting, but as I’m not playing them, I can’t comment on them too much. I will say that I’ve liked the way characters have leveled. The PHB follows the same pattern as all the PHBs have. The backgrounds are really well done and fun. Character creation is simple and fast. Levels 1 to 3 are fragile and dynamic. Characters between 4 and 7^th level feel hardened and defined. The spell system is good and flexible enough. The majority of classes are interesting from a story perspective. We’ve had multiple fighters, a rogue, barbarians, wizards, a monk, a paladin, a druid in the party and each one has had good hooks to present a game.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide is very good. For a new DM, it offers strong advice and practical tools. The magical items are gold and loads of fun. The treasure tables are awesome. If anything, this stands out as the best contemporary DMG. The 1e DMG is eccentric and inspirational, and the 3e (not the 3.5) DMG was brilliant. All the other DMGs have been lacklustre and unappealing to me. This book provides ideas for an experienced DM and makes prep light.

The Starter Set is great. It’s cheaper than other “starters” and while it lacks the same production quality and goodies of other games starter kits, the content is solid. The adventure, “Lost Mine of Phandelver” is a great adventure, especially for new DMs. We had fun playing it and I thought it developed very well.

The legendary monsters are fun and a good mechanical solution to the problem of outnumbered big villains. I do miss the “elite” monsters of 4e though. 

What’s bad

The cover of the PHB is another bad cover. We haven’t had a good cover on the PHB since 1e, although the unified codex appearance of 3e/3.5e gives that edition a pass. I don’t know why it’s so hard to commission a painting that is clearly dynamic and shows the player characters doing what they do in the game. Also, I'm rather bored with the "plotting/threatening monster/wizard" on the DMG cover. 

Here's a much better image for a DMG: 

It's dynamic and properly reflects the DM's responsibilities to create fun and challenge. 

In all fairness, Paizo’s Pathfinder books demonstrate a much better approach to art, but in all honesty, the graphic designers of 3e were probably on to something with the unified codex appearance of the books. 

The encounter design system is interesting, but needlessly math-heavy and not really effective. 4e did this better and maybe Pathfinder does, too.  The encounter design is so unwieldy, it seems odd, mostly because my biggest “mechanical” gripe with 5e is that it seems adverse to procedural rules, except in adventure design. Many smaller press games, I’m thinking of Burning Wheel games, or Dungeon World, use procedure very well, and I think the downtime rules are a major missed opportunity for adding a bit of procedural clarity to the player’s side of the game, while the DM is burdened with poor encounter design advice. I'm now building encounters like I did in 2e and 3e. 

The inspiration rules are interesting, and provide a way for player’s to manipulate the game a bit, but they aren’t well integrated to the play style of D&D. Games like Fate and Numenera add these features by making them integral, but with D&D, it seems like I’m having to remember the rules even exist. This is possibly a behavioral flaw on my part – two plus decades of habit is difficult to overcome. But, on the other hand, D&D has an established moment in which PCs are rewarded: the procedural moment at the end of the session when XP is handled. I think I'll be houseruling an inspiration procedure similar to Burning Wheel's end of session Artha recounting.  

The Monster Manual is a real mixed bag. Yes, the quality of production is fine and the monsters well-chosen and diverse, but there’s two big problems:

One, the art lacks a sense of presence. Monsters are presented is good written detail, but the visual images place the creatures against a smoky parchment background and there is little sense of motion or intent to the art. Even more maddening is the lack of scale in most pictures. There are images that look small and others that look huge, but the images convey incorrect impressions of the monsters. It’s too bad the art doesn’t show the monster doing something, or including some element for scale.

Two, the monster design is boring. Compared to the 4e Monster Manual, 5e feels like a step backwards, and not in a good way. Most monsters are simply a melee attack and a multi-attack. There’s not much interesting about the creatures and a DM will have to work to make the majority of encounters interesting. Encounters can become static 2e slugfests if things go badly or the DM and players are having off nights. There’s also a lack of depth in the NPCs presented in the back. Many of them are great, but there needed to be clear analogues to the PC classes – there’s no ninja/monk, no wizard, no barbarian analogue for me to just drop into a session. 

While the Monster Manual is a necessary book and the writing is good, the mechanics are a big let-down. The DMG and PHB are full of creative and sometimes imaginative mechanics, but the MM seems oddly devoid of those elements. Given that it is a book of monsters, that’s kind of unforgivable.

The Tiresome parts

Skills are still floating about, and I’m not sure why…Non-weapon Proficiencies would add a bonus in the same way as skills, and so I’m not sure why we’ve kept skills about, especially as everything is supposedly an ability check. So long as you’re including “skills” players will think of them as “skills” and not “proficiencies” and there’ll be a level of dissonance at the table. Either use skills or ditch ‘em, I say.

I’m not really enamored with the large format used by RPG publishers. In fact, I find the standard 8.5x11 book a lazy and unappealing default. Every game book I own that isn’t that size reminds me of how much I don’t like reading these unwieldy tomes. Also, why aren’t the booklets in the Starter Set perfect bound? The reuse value of the booklets is pretty limited as they get bent and torn easily.

The sorcerer is largely undefined and limited in interest.

The warlock is not bad, but always feels boring. I see how its different magic provides a different play experience, but the whole “deal with otherworldly power” doesn’t really do much other than force the character and DM into a Faust story. Any class should be able to do this (and yes, I know you can multi-class), and spell casters should be able to do so as a matter of story, not a mechanical class requirement. Overall, the warlock is a disappointing class to me, both in narrative and mechanical terms. The mechanic could have been folded into the sorcerer class and the room used to provide another nature-based class, like the 4e Warden, which was a great idea all around, or a psychic/divine class, akin to a mentalist or mystic.

Overall, in play I’d give 4 stars overall to fifth edition. It is a very good, fun, but somewhat expensive RPG.

If pressed, I’d give the following stars to the main products:

Starter Set: 4.5 stars

Player’s Handbook: 4 stars

Dungeon Master’s Guide: 4.5 stars

Monster Manual: 3 stars

The Ironforged

Apprentice’s Corner #3

I’ve been working on a setting for 5^th ed: the Torn Worlds. The torn worlds is, well, a torn world. It’s based around a multiverse-wide war between seven armies: the Iron Legion, the Fey, the Abyssal Army, the Celestials, the Savages, the Undead Horde, and the Monstrosities.

The Torn Worlds: Player Options

Here is a take on the soldiers of the Iron Legion:

Ironforged

The bulk of the Iron Legion, fighting alongside golems and massive siege engines, the Ironforged are metal men capable of attaching weapons and specialized objects to enhance their abilities.

All Ironforged have these traits:

Ability score increase- all your abilities except one based on your subrace increase by one.

Age- Ironforged do not age, and that concept is unknown to the Iron Legion.

Alignment- all Ironforged are neutral, but not always true neutral.

Size- all Ironforged are exactly six feet tall; your size is medium.

Darkvision- all Ironforged can see in dim light out to 60 feet and in darkness up to 30 feet.

Construct- Ironforged are immune to disease and poison, are immune to being charmed, frightened, and exhaustion, and do not need air, food, drink, or rest. If a Ironforged takes cold damage its speed is reduced by 5 feet for 1 round.

Fueled- once every 3 days a Ironforged must take a long rest, except you are fully aware. If you do not, your speed is halved and you have disadvantage on attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws until you do.

Metal Body- you have +4 natural armor (unless you’re a Ironforged Heavy). You also cannot wear or Fuse mundane armor and can only use magic armor if it is Fused.

Fusion- Ironforged can fuse items to themselves. It takes one minute to fuse a weapon or tool, five for a magic item or Enhancer, and 10 for an artifact. While a weapon is fused you cannot be disarmed, and with a magic item or artifact you are automatically attuned to it regardless of prerequisites.

Subrace

you must choose a subrace to represent your role in the Legion.

Ironforged Commando- You have +2 Dex, you’re trained in Dex saves, you can choose to automatically succeed on a Dex-related save or check (you can only use this once per day), and your speed is 40 feet

Ironforged Heavy- You have +8 total natural armor, cannot be knocked prone, and shields give you twice the AC bonus, and your speed is 30 feet

Ironforged Juggernaut- You have +2 Con, +6 total natural armor, you’re trained in Con saves, you regenerate HP equal to ½ (minimum 1) your level per round at the beginning of your turn, and your speed is 30 feet

Ironforged Brute- You have +2 Str, you’re trained in Str saves, your bludgeoning attacks have knockback 5 feet (DC= 9+ proficiency bonus+ Str modifier), and your speed is 35 feet

Ironforged Tactician- You have +2 Int, your trained in Int saves, once per day you can identify if the odds of success in combat or on a saving throw (DC 16+ is not in your favor) are in your favor or not, and your speed is 35 feet

Editor's Note: This is a bit overpowered, we suspect. Apparently other races get extra goodies too. Who knows. Use with caution, nerfing, or abandon. 

Review Policy

I’m writing up some game reviews for the site. They’ll fall into two categories: family game reviews and hobby game reviews. I’ll try to get a few done a month until I’ve caught up with this year’s gaming finds and then I’ll review as a we get to try new things.

I’m usually cautious about reviews of games. Many of the reviews you’ll read on-line are reviews of having read the game (this is especially true of RPGs and war games). I personally think reviewers should indicate if the review is either the product of having read, played, or run the game. Reading a game can be combined with experience to offer some ideas, but there’s very little to compare with playing or running a game. Things come out in the wash that don’t appear on paper and ideas that seem odd come to life at the table.

I also think we need to play games multiple times to get a feel for them. A few years ago, I was inspired by the online idea of a “run club.” Each member of the club (our regular gaming group) agree to run a game. We played the game for four or five evening sessions. The duration of the club was based on the observation that you need to play a game, especially a complex board game or a role-playing game, three times, after making characters.

Three times lets you figure out the rules better, overcomes an off night for the group, and allows people to re-jig their characters or strategies to better fit the game. After that, you probably have enough experience to offer an opinion or write a review.

Some other games, maybe major games with lots of history and “baggage,” shouldn’t be reviewed for a while. You should play them many times, seriously, before offering a review. This doesn’t appeal to marketers and it doesn’t appeal to our contemporary media landscape.

We’re still debating our format for the reviews. I’ll flag them as read (maybe previewed?), played, or run (for games I’ve not “played” in, but I have “run” as the game master) and I think we’ll use a five-point scale:

5: a great game, awesome and inclusive of the players

4: a very good game, engaging and fun

3: a good game, fun with replay value

2: a competent and fun game

1: a marginally fun game

0: a deeply unfun experience

Apprentice's Corner: The Xex

Today I give you a monster for 5^th edition of D&D: the xex (z-e-KS)

Invisible in their true form, the only way they can be seen is when they are impersonating another creature, though there is always a slight unnatural difference. Whether it be red eyes, six fingers on one hand, or orange hair, this difference can usually be dismissed. Originating from somewhere in between the Ethereal Plane and the Elemental Chaos, these creatures live to sow chaos, confusion, and mistrust.

Servants of Carnag. Xex serve Carnag, the most powerful of the primordials. He is a huge, hulking humanoid made of raw elemental force, with cruelty not matched by any being in the multiverse, with so extreme savagery it makes the demon lord Baphomet look civilized. He uses Xex as means of preparation for his greatest goal: the destruction of the multiverse.

Manipulative overlords. Xex often mimic people in power to gain influence. Rather than becoming the power behind the throne, they take the throne themselves.

Weak-willed servants. Xex usually seize the minds of those with weak willpower as servants. Those a Xex enslaves remember nothing of their former lives.

Xex

Medium monstrosity (shapechanger), CE

AC: 17   

HP: 66   

Speed: 50 feet   

Languages: common, undercommon, telepathy 60 feet

STR: 13 (+1)  DEX: 15 (+2)   CON 16 (+3)  

INT: 15 (+2)   WIS: 16 (+3)    CHA: 18 (+4)

Defenses: Incorporeal, Invisible

Shapeshifter: Can change shape to any medium or small humanoid, its stats are the same except size, and it loses the incorporeal and invisible traits. 

Actions

Multi-attack: the Xex makes two claw attacks, or the Xex can make one claw attack and one suggestion ability. 

Claws: +7 to hit, 2d4+3 slashing.

Mind Warp (3/day): ranged attack, range 40 feet, 1d6+2 psychic, DC 13 WIS to resist, on a failure, the target is charmed for 5 days, at the end of the 5^th day the target can repeat the save at DC 15 to end the effect, on a failure the effect persists for another 5 days. A charmed creature gains +2 CON, +2 STR, +1 DEX, +2 INT, +2 WIS, and +1 CHA, it gains telepathy 30 feet, Mind Warp, 2 claw attacks (1d6 S), and +3 natural armor, obeys the Xex’s orders, does not remember any other creatures or knowledge of Xex, and believes the Xex to be friendly and that its cause is just and good. If it is not ordered and is alone w/another creature it will use its Mind Warp, and its alignment changes to CE.

Suggestion (DC 16) at will.

Mind Seize (3/day): ranged attack, range 20 feet, DC 10 WIS to resist. On a failure, the target is charmed for 1d6 rounds, a charmed creature follows and obeys the Xex, and does not feel ties to other creatures.

Editorial Observation: This monster's power went through development, but its statistics were all apprentice-designed. The CR for the creature is probably in the 4-6 range, and will need some support to offer a satisfying climactic battle after mystery/conspiracy plotting.  

Kickstarting

Kickstarting, or crowdfunding, is a major force in gaming now. While you can kickstart all manner of things, I’ve stuck to games so far, and mostly to games or supplies related to role-playing games. The Bones and Dwarven Forge kickstarters have increased the aesthetics of my game session and have increased the amount of clutter my hobby takes up.

The RPG community actually started crowdfunding quite a while before Kickstarter and Indiegogo started up. Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design projects used a patron model, based on an idealization of Renaissance artistic patronage, so he should get credit for preparing the RPG community for the mass acceptance of crowdfunding hobby projects.

Now there are dozens (hundreds?) or RPG Kickstarter projects. Some of these have been remarkable success and others rather infamous failures, where backers have lost their money and will never see the product they funded. I’ve been lucky. I’ve kickstarted 21 projects, and almost all have come through. I’m still waiting on a few, only one has stretched on well past its “delivery date” (The Torment: Tides of Numenera video game stretches on past its due date, but will be fulfilled).

Part of the reason I’ve been lucky is that I’ve been circumspect in what I’ve backed. I have not backed single-author, first time projects, with the exception of Monte Cook’s Numenera. In that case, Cook had over a decade of regularly producing major games and supplements and kickstarter was essentially “start-up funds” for his new company. I already had Ptolus, his massive city setting for D&D, so I wasn’t worried about his track record.

Many of the kickstarters I’ve backed have been minor or mid-level companies (there are only two big companies in RPG/Gaming: WOTC and GW, although I could be wrong about Steve Jackson Games). In most cases these kickstarters have been major pre-order campaigns rather than Kickstarter campaigns. It is possible to criticize the kickstarting movement as a kind of pre-sale service, as opposed to a genuine crowdfunding of new initiatives. I think that's become true of gaming. It seems less so in the case of the arts and design end of kickstarting, but the gaming end of things seems to be allowing mid-level companies become more secure and expand. I think this is a good thing. Games Workshop has generally treated its hobbyists badly, and WotC is able to run an unstoppable game in the form of Magic: The Gathering, but it is also capable of mis-managing D&D. The more mid-range private companies we have, the more the hobby grows and stabilizes. 

One has regrets though: I didn’t kickstart The Horror on theOrient Express Call of Cthulhu reprint, and that was a major missed opportunity. Oh well.

I’ll be tracking some of my kickstarters and reviewing them as they go. Currently I have seven still to come kickstarters due over the next year.

Some bloggers, like the tireless Tenkar’s Tavern have done a good job of noting failed and burned kickstarters, so my goal is to be upbeat and positive about the games I’ve kickstarted. So far, I’ve gotten hundreds of hours of fun out of these games. 

Joesky Tax

Transmuter's Knuckle

Wonderous Item, Rare (or less rare, depending on how many transumters you know)

The trasmuter's knuckle is exactly that, a knuckle taken from a transmuter's fingers. The knuckle must be dried and infused with a combination of snake venom and olive oil. Once prepared, the knuckle can be mixed with a substance to provide the effects of an Enhance Ability spell.

To produce a desired effect, you will need to follow the following recipe: 

Bear's Endurance: Crack the knuckle in two and steep it in mixture of stout beer and animal fur for 10 minutes. Drink the beer and fur. The knuckle is know a mundane item. 

Bull's Strength: You must eat the knuckle whole. Chewing may crack teeth, but you are strong. 

Cat's Grace: Grind the knuckle to a fine powder and snort it up your nose. 

Eagle's Splendor: Grind the knuckle to a fine powder and rub it into your hair. When the spell effect ends, you have ground up knuckle bone in your hair, and suffer disadvantage on Charisma checks until you bath, but no one notices this while the spell is active. 

Fox's Cunning: Crack the knuckle in two. Place on half on your tongue, the other half over one eye and allow them to rest for 5 minutes. Swallow the knuckle on your tongue and burn the knuckle from your eye, inhaling the fumes. 

Owl's Wisdom: Grind the knuckle into a fine powder and mix it with chamomile tea. Drink the tea quickly.