Re: (TFT) Dark Games recommendation ?

["John J Hyland" <johnnyboytmm@juno.com>]

-- "John Gfoeller" <johng3110@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've been hearing good things about them.  What *one* game of theirs is most 
representative of their work?

-- John

Welcome back, John,

Allow me to wax longwinded a bit, then I'll return to your question.

Crown of Kings was written in the 80's by a teenage TFT fan, and published last year by his brother at DCG.  It is a nice, well written little adventure, but it has that written in the 80s by a teenage TFT fan feel to it.  Made me a bit nostalgic actually.

A few minor issues:
1- directions are all relative (right left forward back) rather than NSEW, so can get rather confusing.
2- lots of paragraphs dedicated to searches that find nothing, rewarding player persistence to keep looking everywhere allowed until you get to the discovery, rather than character abilities - detect rolls etc.


Island of lost spells is new, and also well done.  It is a labrynth exploration (well an island really) with lots of neat twists, some fun backstory, and a fair amount of non-combat solutions are possible.  I really enjoyed it, reminded me of Security station, a one off with story that was well designed etc.

Issuess:
1- still the emphasis on searching, but NSEW directions are used
2- too much loot if all goes well.  Would totally unbalance ny game if it were used as an in-campaign adventure rather than a one shot.  

Admittedly this may be due to my low magic, low treasure preference more than anything else.



Little Black Book:
    I have not ordered it yet, but in e-mail with DCG they indicate that the searching thing is phased out somewhat, and this is the first in a series of related adventures they are producing (like the Thorze series, but more tightly connected, and if the other DCG adventures are any indication, very likey better done.)



COK is clearly in a class by itself, written a long time ago.  The others are DCG originals.  Personally I LOVED ILS, it was great fun, and definitely brought me back to the days of my youth and security station.  I recommend it.

But since LBB looks to be the first book in their franchise adventure series it is probably the most "representative" of DCG.  However, since I don't yet own it, I cannot recommend it.


I will repeat something I said to the list while you were gone though, Opening the envelope from DCG and pulling out a micro-quest, a map, and a sheet of counters - brought back that decades old "new TFT stuff" thrill.  Worth the price of admission IMO.

Regards,
John

PS.  I am also still on the list.  Just quiet lately as real life interfered and my campaign's been on hiatus since last August.  I also want to mention that the TFT websites maintained by members of this list have been very helpful to me in running my game.  Over 100 of King Marco's hymenopteran counters were put to good use, and the troglidite and giant variants are in use too, as well as a few of the custom spells.  So thanks all for enriching my game.

By the way, to keep all the bugs straight I labeled them with an Alphanumeric code, a letter for bug type and a number to keep them identify them in combat.  So L17 would be Low render number 17.  So as not to let the party infer the number of opponents from the numerical component of the code, I did not start the series at 1 for each type.  The looks of shock and horror on my players faces when the encountered termagent number T301 was priceless.



-- "John Gfoeller" <johng3110@hotmail.com> wrote:
I've been hearing good things about them.  What *one* game of theirs is most 
representative of their work?

-- John


>Lately my connection to anything TFTish
>has come from Dark City Games.  They've got 3 Microquests out that are as
>good as anything Metagaming did.
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