An old obsession ...

 ... Ogre!

I had the urge to play the venerable hex-and-counter sci-fi tank wargame at game night last week, so I brought my Classic Counters and two maps from the Designer's Edition: The original orange from the basic Ogre game, and the green from the GEV expansion. I also brought plenty of terrain overlays for when attacks accidentally or intentionally damage forest or town hexes.

Since it had been awhile since we'd played, I thought we would warm up with a destroy the command post game using the original rules. With three of us there for game night, I played the defender against two Mark IIIs attacking. Long story short, I could not slow them down enough to prevent them from obliterating most of my army (and the CP), and the cybertanks dodged out of range of my artillery to escape. 

We then set up the green map for a game of raid, with a Mark IV and six GEVs attacking, and a lone Mark V defending (but with two rolls on the reinforcements table). Two of us ran the defense, and the third split his hovercraft away from his Ogre to tear up some real estate. Unfortunately for the GEVs, I had some reinforcements come in nearby and take out most of his armor. The rest tried to close in on my CP, but were driven off (they did kill one of the Mobile Command Posts, however).

Over on the west side of the map (we were at the north end looking south), the attacking cybertank took out the other MCP and some unfortunate reinforcements in that area--until my partner used all six of the Mark V's missiles to destroy the Mark IV's missile racks. A turn or two later, the watchdog took out the attacker's main and secondary batteries, so the Mark IV turned tail.

The fleeing Ogre still had plenty of movement even after losing 39 tread units (two hexes, three on the road). Therefore, we defenders were unable to slow it down enough to capture or kill, but it was still a victory for the locals! 

It was enjoyable playing this classic wargame, and we are playing again this week. Should be fun.

My latest obsession ...

 Shadowdark!

After hearing good things about it on the you-tubes, I picked up a hardbound copy of the Shadowdark RPG from its publisher, The Arcane Library. 

Shadowdark uses modern mechanics (such as d20 difficulty checks and advantage/disadvantage) to provide an old-school experience (dungeon crawls and emergent narrative). Part of that OSR vibe is that characters don't get experience for defeating bad guys, just for finding treasure. This mechanic inspires out-of-the-box thinking instead of just trying to kill everything that moves.

The writing is concise and reminds me of the Holmes Basic rulebook--sections are one or two pages, and concepts explained in a few paragraphs. Part of that is character creation: Roll 3d6 in order for each stat, pick an ancestry and class, roll for starting money, and you have a PC in under 10 minutes.

My gaming group is mostly wargamers, but they've expressed willingness to try out this D&D-type experience, so I hope to have a scenario prepped for them soon. I'd like to eventually turn it into a West Marches-style sandbox campaign, but for now I just want to run a dungeon crawl.

Has anyone played this RPG? Does it sound like something you would be willing to try? If my description of Shadowdark sparks your interest, you can get the Quickstart Set for free. Let me know what you think!