This week we took a break from Star Wars to try a hybrid game our GM has been conjuring up. It consisted of lite role playing elements, the use of Magic The Gathering cards for combat and rekindling an old but massively awesome D & D campaign. Our characters are unnamed for the purpose of seeing whether or not this style of game will work. I play the role of the son of Samuel Ryndrales who is a noble, powerful and illustrious Monk. Edward Teach and JD are also with me.
Our characters are students at the College of Magic (which was taboo not to far into this world's past and probably still is). We're notified that the Master of Dark Arts has gone missing. Our instructor wastes no time and approaches us about seeking him out. First he needs to test our strength so combat starts! The battle is 3 vs 1, it ends quickly and easily. He determines that we're ready to see the Headmaster. The Headmaster is no different in wanting to determine our skill. A battle between the Headmaster, Instructor and us starts. Combat lasts longer even though they're out-matched numerically. By time it's finished we're victorious with no losses on our side.
After the Headmaster regains his composure he tasks us with locating the Master. Our only lead is to head north several days until we come to a canyon. So we set out on an uneventful trip until we arrive just outside our destination. There we encounter a savage and hideous beast that attacks us! The battle is fierce with both sides taking a lot of damage. I land the last strike to finish off the creature whilst only suffering JD falling. We help him back up and in front of us stands a figure wearing a black robe.
It pulls back the hood to reveal that it's a skeleton (I really wish we would have stopped at S-Mart on the way here!). "Come join me nephew" the skeleton beckons. That says it all, here stands before us the Master of Dark Arts and my Uncle. I make him an offer, we will duel and the one who falls will join the victor.
With the offer accepted the final battle starts. As to be expected of the Master of Dark Arts, he's a strong opponent. Things look bleak as he manages hold us at bay until I see an opening. I cast a fire blast spell that sends him staggering back. Almost immediately the skeleton goes rigid and crumbles into dust. A gust of wind takes the cloud of necrotic matter and flies back to town.
Back at town we find my uncle and confront him after he's finished instructing a class. First of all he no longer looks like a liche and secondly, he has no memory of the incident. We tell him what happened and he reveals that it's the family curse. With that note we end the session.
End Comments:
The setting of the whole adventure was a short continuation of a long standing D & D campaign. Key characters and backgrounds were also part of it. To keep things short, I really love that setting since both GM and Players helped build it together so this was a real treat. Perhaps if our readers are good I will someday write about those stories here.
As far as the hybrid system of role playing and using Magic Cards for combat. I think it worked really well and enjoyed it (I really like Magic to begin with). We had a semi-random assortment of cards to start from and built our decks accordingly (maximum of 30 cards including lands). I don't have any technical suggestions at this point but it would be really nice if we could incorporate more role playing elements with the cards, even have character stats affect the cards in some way. For instance, having a wizard character be limited to the amount of spell cards he can have in his deck just as you are limited the spells in your book. Or having character levels affect the size of your deck, etc.
You could even expand the hybrid idea even farther and use an RTS computer game to help determine the outcome of a massive battle using armies.
All in all, I had a lot of fun with this game and hope that we can not only try this again but experiment and implement more rpg elements with the cards and deck building.
Ok, so I've been waiting days to comment on this.
ReplyDeleteI have rules for more character stats, they were just too complex for the time we had. And yes, the idea was that the poor card selection (26 commons) and 30 card deck size was to reflect the low level. We'll really need some of the new card packs to really get into it (i.e. Archenemy, etc).
I was really hoping to see you turn the last fight into a two on two instead of a three on one though.
Pretty much, you basically just got a taste for the idea and the setting behind it. There's a LOT more going on in my head.