Playing Some Guild Ball

Once our local Scrum (month long Steamroller) has finished, I kind of got sucked into Guild Ball again.  This is a fairly odd development, partially because I haven't played the game in roughly 7 months.  Back in July of last year I had to stop all miniature gaming to help my wife through the end of the pregnancy and then birth of my youngest daughter, but before that happened I was a bit upset at the way Guild Ball was played because of how imbalanced things were.

Of course when I stopped gaming, Steamforged released an Errata in July that largely fixed a lot of the problems, and while I was raring to get back into Trolls as soon as I could start gaming again, a few things pulled me into playing Guild Ball and I've really been loving the game all over again.  I figure I'll go through what that was, as well as some of the things I really like about the game in general.

Pulling Me Back In

During the same month of our Warmachine Scrum, a Guild Ball Scrum was also being run, with some playing in both games.  This was handled as promotional event that would allow players who played to get a Lucky model. Since my first team was Brewers and my friend Brian has no intention of playing Masons or Brewers, he was kind enough to give me the model.

Lucky is my first PVC model and Steamforged is making all new teams come in very cheap $50 boxes with 6 PVC models that require no assembly, plus some extra terrain.  They also recently changed the Official Play Document to say that you can now use unpainted PVC models in their tournaments. While I'm pretty good at modeling, it's not really my favorite thing to do, so this kind of setup seems great to me, it's also a great value for starting a new guild.

Another old friend of mine, Kevin plays mini games off and on, but he's not a modeler or painter, so this PVC setup is perfect for him.  After talking about it and him watching us play at the local shop  Kevin ended up buying the Kick Off set which has to be one of the best values in miniature gaming at the moment.

Since he was free to come over on Friday's when my wife would get a girls night out, I could strap my youngest to my chest, have my oldest help roll dice, and get some extra games in each week!  I effectively became Kevin's unofficial Pundit, teaching him the game.

Since I already played Brewers and they're considered a lower tier team, myself and others recommended Kevin start with the Kick Off Masons, which is actually quite a strong team. 

Since then I've basically spent the last three weeks playing only Guild Ball with my gaming night out and then again on Friday's while my wife has her girls night out.  I've gotten double the games in for nearly a month now!

I'm actually good friends with Paul who runs the My Life With Dice YouTube Channel and you can see me play my first game of Pin Vice ever, and my first engineers game in 6+ Months:

Please note, I'm extremely rusty here - many mistakes were made.

Since then, I've been playing some Brewers, Engineers, and I've purchased the last few models to flesh out my Union - getting something akin to Guild A.D.D.

Hobby

One of the nicest thing about Guild Ball is the fact that it's a small model count game that has as much intensity as larger miniature games.  Small model counts plus the fact that you're really only ever painting a model once (ie. no units with duplicate models), it's so easy to get a fully painted force.  This has triggered a kind of OCD for me to immediately paint my Guild Ball models within a few days of purchase.

I'm not a good painter by a long shot, but I truly enjoy playing with fully painted forces, and that's hardly ever the case when I play Warmachine (or when I played 40k or Fantasy).  As such, I really like how achievable it is to play fully painted in Guild Ball.

The game is also nice that you are encouraged to build an optional goal post for your teams that can let you flex your hobby muscles if you wanted. I was excited to finally use my old Bugman's model from Warhammer Fantasy, mostly because it enabled me to put a beautiful Dwarf model I love on the table and actually have it be fun (Dwarfs were miserable to play with and against back in Fantasy). He makes a great Brewers goal post.

My Guilds

The game is also sort of dangerous since it's really not expensive to get into a guild at all, and that was back when everything was metal and starters only came with 3 models.  I started with Brewers with a few Union models added slowly over time, then got a very different team in Engineers to play a more goal scoring game, and then it was "only two more models" (Captain and Mascot) to make a fledgling Union team.

Coming back into the game in the last month, I elected to buy the last few models I wanted to flesh out my Union with Grace and Benediction and getting a captain I'm very excited to play in Blackheart.  Since Brewers are more of a Take-Out team, and Engineers a more Goal-Scoring Football team, the prospect of playing an all 2" Melee team lead by Blackheart that can adapt to whichever game plan I want, but easily do 2 Goals - 2 Take Outs to win is very appealing to me.

Brewers

Engineers

Union

As it is, every model I own besides Lucky is metal, and after assembling the new Grace and Benediction models, I really am looking forward to when I can just buy PVC models from here on out.

Gaming Nirvana

Out of all the options I have to play with in Guild Ball at the moment, I'm spoiled for choice and I'm liking the way things are going. Apparently the game still has some balance issues with Thresher and Farmers, and Corsair Fishermen are still a bugbear in the meta - but supposedly an errata is coming soon.  I've not played against either of those things yet though, and I'm not good enough to expect to win against competitive players so I just look forward to playing and learning in the near term.

Plus with my Hooch Hauler finally arriving, and with two local players getting the new God Tear early access/beta set, I've got a LOT of really interesting gaming time coming up in the weeks and months ahead.

I hope to put up some more content for each of the games I'm playing shortly.

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Pocket PC - The Forgotten Era Of Handheld Video Gaming?

Fr Mark Higgins writes- 

Back in the early 2000s I was an owner of a Pocket PC, I managed to persuade my grandparents to buy me one when I was about 16, I owned, to begin with an HP Jornada 525, later on I had a NEC Pocket Gear 2060, then I had an Axim X5, before finally settling with an HP IPAQ 2495, this probably spans the years of 2002 to 2007, so that's a lot of devices in a short space of time.

Anyway, the reason I had so many of these things was because as a 16 or 17 year old I managed to find my way into reviewing games for Pocket PCs at a website now long defunct called PDArcade.com, in fact, eventually I more or less ran the news side of the site by the time I was 20. The site was pretty popular back in the day and we made a lot through ad revenues and I got a share of the pot.

Anyway, sites like PDArcade existed because PDAs were a major platform, albeit a niche one, for video games. There were other websites dedicated to PDA gaming reviews such as pocketgamer.org, forums dedicated to discussing Pocket PC gaming like, if I recall, pocketmatrix.com, and even Pocket PCs particularly marketed as gaming Pocket PCs, such as, I think some of the ASUS models. Peripherals existed like control pads to make gaming even easier.

And then, of course, there were software companies, often producing really, really impressive titles. PDA gaming, developer side of things, was a return to the days of 8-bit because games, that were selling 10000s of copies were being made by tiny teams of programmers. PDA game development also was a work of real creativity because often Pocket PCs did not have that much storage space. Some companies really excelled at being able to produce games that looked amazing, perhaps at times reaching close to game boy advance and they did so without the size of game going beyond 20mb.

 There was also a thriving emulation scene and at the end of its era the top Pocket PCs were able to play, without problems, all 8 bit, 16 bit and even 32 bit systems- that's quite something, considering that we are talking 2007 being able to play PS1 games released only 5 years previously- it would be like today playing a PS3 game on an iPhone using the hardware of the iPhone.

Perhaps if there is interest I will post some more on this subject, because I might well be one of the closet experts out there on it. I must have reviewed close to a hundred games for Pocket PC and played even more. The pictures in this article give you an idea of the kind of thing you could find on Pocket PC. 

Prices varied and top rate games reached up to $30 I think, but generally a top tier title would be something like $14.99. The place to buy games were the now defunct websites handango.com pocketgear.com and of course directly from the developers. Usually you bought the game on PC and then transferred it over to your PDA but it was technically possible to to everything from the PDA. 

There was a lot of innovation, creativity and excellence in the short lived Pocket PC gaming system. Of course there were ports and a lot of the pictures show this, but alongside ports, developers pushed the limits of the system. Some memorable and excellent companies producing high quality were Hexacto, Ziosoft, PDAmill, Momentum games, Crimson fire, eSoft Interactive and many more.

Well Sir? Are Your Sappers Done ?

Yes sir! Ready as ordered. You may commence your battle sir.

 No more marking off one third of my table. The trials have been done and done, a decision has been made, tested, tested again, and again, confirmed, and finally carried out.

4'x4' or 9x9 5" squares with a narrow border

If/when I want a larger table for a special game or to test a convention game at home, I'll add a temporary extension.

Now for a game or three!

We Are Back RPG - Republic Of PC Games With More Games With Installation...

The Dark Untold Story Of PUBG Sanhok Map

SANHOK, unlike other PUBG maps, is 4×4 km wide consisting of the jungles and mountains. But there is a dark story behind this jungle map. Many PUBG players have complained of seeing a ghost or spiritual activities in this horror map. The story behind this map is more terrifying.

    It was the ancient time when kings ruled their kingdoms. The island of Sanhok was ruled by a cruel king. As per their traditions and rituals the first daughter of the villagers, when reached the age of 14, would be sacrificed in the name of GOD. They were killed in a cave such that their blood was allowed to drop in the cave and then their dead bodies were buried in ruins. ( In the game both the cave and ruins are present. Also one can notice the water full of blood inside the cave)

               They kept doing it until one day the king had died suddenly. The reason was unknown. One of the king's man became the next king only to die the same way the earlier king had died.

                     The villagers believed that the ghost of the girls who were sacrificed was the reason behind the death of the kings. It was very terrifying for them.

                      They made dolls of the girls who were sacrificed because they hoped that the ghost would be stuck in the dolls and would not kill them. In the real game, the dolls can be found in many locations. Also, many horror sightings were seen by many players.

     Some images of horror sightings are given below :

       

          

               Having no king to rule, the civilians were divided into two groups. One supporting the ritual and the other one opposing the ritual. The ironic thing is that the supporting group thought that the paranormal activities are because GOD is angry with the opposing group and the opposing group thought that the paranormal activities are because of the supporting group.

      The role of PUBG players on this island is either the ritual supporting or the opposing group. Which group in your opinion is correct? Answer us by leaving a comment below. 

       

    Note : 

         ▪ The name 'Sanhok' has been derived from the combination of the Thai word for 'fun' pronounced as sah-nook and the Filipino word for chicken pronounced as 'mah-nook'.

       ▪ There is no strong proof that this story for Sanhok is true but according to many players and some evidence of horror, activities increases the trueness of this story.

Back? Well, I Never Actually Went Away.

Free Counter

Blimey, been a long time since I looked at this, lots has happened, both in life and in wargaming.
Anyway, I will be re-visiting this blog. Maybe not as much as I did seven (7!!) years ago, but I feel now it would be fun to do a bit from time to time.
The main reason for not keeping this blog up was that I'd pretty much run out of puff, so, hopefully now I should be able to capitalise on having had a long break to come up with a few things that some folk might be interested in.

Nazis for Big COC currently on the workbench

DevCorner: FreeDink Sound Design Replacements

FreeDink is older than some kids that downloaded open source games on their own by now. The two main cornerstones of the game are: low resolution, twisted humor. One really cool thing about FreeDink is that you can play it in a browser.

Anyway, I worked on replacing some sounds years ago and just recently the same bug bit me again and I made replacements for all sounds that didn't have free versions of themselves yet.

For creation, I remixed a *lot* of freesound.org sounds and uploaded all the remixes right back there. The attribution feature of Freesound is quite cool, especially if very different sounds are made (see screenshot above).

However, I underestimated how much effort it takes to test them and to give some clarity to myself as well as share the process with the world, I made a video showing the steps taken for testing sounds:

I could not have done it without the excellent documentation and progress report.

I will continue testing and hopefully, soon all the audio will be fully free on this um... cult classic™!

Dev's Corner is a featured article series focusing on tutorials and tips for game developers operating on a Libre Software environment.

This post was retrieved from freegamer.blogspot.com.

Storium Basics: Creating A Character / Applying For Games

Welcome back to Storium Basics. This series of articles is designed to help new players understand Storium in general, and be able to get started on Storium games. For those looking for more, see my more advanced article series, Storium Theory.

Today, we're taking a look at the first thing a player will need to do to get involved in a game: creating a character.

Once you've found a game that you'd like to join, whether through the Browse Games feature, the forums, or some other method, what should you expect to happen, and what should you do?

First, a bit about how narrators set things up:

The system a lot of narrators - myself included - will use for open invitation games is to take applications up until about the end of the default two week application period, then look over all the applications and choose the ones they feel will work best for their game. They'll certainly comment on applications before that point and will let you know if the character just outright doesn't work, but you often won't hear a definitive yes or no until the application period nears its end.

There are exceptions, of course - sometimes your character is just so clearly right for the game that they take it right away, or of course sometimes you're specifically invited to a game—but that's how that style works.

Note that some narrators also use the "Open Lobby" feature of Storium or forum topics to let players discuss character options and ask questions in a place specifically set aside for the game as well - I tend to just take applications, myself, but a lot of narrators love using that feature and if one does, you should certainly feel free to ask questions there! Even if they don't, you can usually ask questions via private messaging. Make sure that you understand the world and the game concepts if you're fuzzy on anything.

Remember, though - whether you are talking to the narrator in the Open Lobby, on the forums, through private messaging, or through any other method, do not construe the narrator saying that it is all right to apply with a particular character as the narrator saying that they will definitely approve a particular character. Narrators will often be willing to help you work through applying for a character or iron out a character idea, but until they actually hit "approve" on your character application, you do not have their approval.

Now...how do you actually apply?

I look at Storium applications as…kind of a job application, honestly. A fun one, but still, the idea as a narrator is to pick out people you're willing to be writing with for potentially several months to a year - these games can last a while, even if they sound short to begin with. You want to get a cast of characters that seems like it can work together, and do your best to pick a group of players that seems like it can gel pretty well.

It's in your interest as a player applying for games to look at things from that perspective too. You need to sell both your character and yourself - your character as an interesting element for the story, and yourself as a player who will be active, reliable, and easy to work with.

So, here are a few things I've found can help you be more likely to be accepted for a game:

• Provide a character picture.
• Narrators like to see those—it helps show that you've thought about the character more, and honestly just gives a good "at a glance" for the character's appearance and general mood or theme. 
• Don't worry about getting this exact, necessarily - you don't need to go build your character in an art program or get it commissioned or anything. 
• There was a good forum topic a while back where someone - I forget who - said that he looked at it as kind of "casting the part" as though this were a movie or some such - he looked less for an exact appearance match and more for a picture that fit the general mood and tone of the character.
• If you cannot provide a picture for your character - for instance, one player I play with is blind and therefore cannot - then just make sure to state that you could not in your comments along with the application. Narrators will generally be understanding, but it's important to let them know that there was a reason.
• Card art isn't as required, generally, but do pay attention if the narrator specifically asks for it. Narrators don't like having their instructions ignored.
• Take some time on the background - you don't have to (in fact, you shouldn't) spell out every detail of a character's life, but there should still be a perception that you know, in general, who the character is.
• Involve your character in the world. 
• If the narrator calls out particular kingdoms or locations or tribes or what-have-you, consider having your character be from one of those places, or having run into people from those places. 
• If he mentions events, particularly disastrous ones, consider having those events influence your character's background.
• Above all, try to fit your character into the game's world and the game's tone or mood, or be ready to explain why your character can still fit the game despite the differences. Characters that clash with the game's tone or world can sometimes work, but they will make narrators skittish - it is on you to explain how your character can still fit the game.
• A lot of players will submit characters they played elsewhere, and that's totally fine - I've done it myself with old MUX characters or tabletop characters - but make sure to make that character fit into the story's world all the same, likely with the above methods.
• You don't have to be perfect (though there are some sticklers for grammar rules on Storium that will say otherwise), but do take the time to do what you can to make your writing clear. 
• In particular, split your background up into paragraphs (and when you do, hit enter twice to clearly separate them - believe me, it makes it so much clearer). It makes it easier to read, and narrators like to know that they're going to have an easy time reading your posts.
• Take a little extra time with your app - and with your writing on Storium in general. Again, you don't have to be perfect. Just make it clear that you do care about your writing.
• Put things into your background that the narrator can use. You don't have to spell them out as bullet points or anything, but characters that provide the narrator with possibilities are more exciting than those who just are what they are. 
• Leave some mystery in there, or imply that a person that hurt you was involved with some evil force or another the narrator established in the game description.
• Narrators, by and large, love to have little cues that they can find in a character's description or background. It helps them involve the character more in the story, and make the story about the characters, rather than about events that the characters happen to be involved in.
• This is a good thing to use comments for as well - when you submit your character and that little box comes up with additional comments, take the time to just briefly talk about some ideas for how the character might tie in to the story, or call out bits in your application that you've intentionally left open for the narrator to use.
• Take a look at the other existing apps and try to make your character feel different. 
• If other people are choosing a particular nature, strength, weakness, or subplot, it's a good idea to pick a different one. Storium may not have a tactical need to have different "classes" in your party, but narrators like to have characters that are different from each other. 
• Work on differentiating Strengths, Weaknesses, and Subplots as well. A game with three people who all have Agile as their Strength card is simply not as fun to read as a game where those three people have different Strength cards. There are definitely story possibilities with overlap, but most narrators I've seen will prefer characters that differ over those that are similar.
• Write your character as someone who can and will get involved with the story and the other characters. 
• Characters who feel like they'll want to be separate from the rest of the group a lot of the time (loners, "I work alone" types), or those who feel like they won't care about the story or will actively act against the story (for instance, a totally sensible character in a slasher flick game, who won't go to explore the creepy old house) will make the narrator nervous. 
• Remember: You are writing a character for this story. Your character doesn't have to be fated to be a hero or something like that. He doesn't have to be thrilled about what he's going to be doing. But, deep down at the very least, he should be the sort of person that will pursue the activities the story demands.
• If your character appears to be the sort of person who would run screaming in the other direction from the events of the story or otherwise avoid participating in it, take the time in comments to tell the narrator how you'd like to tie the character to the story more firmly - or at least to give the narrator a few ideas for how it might happen. As above, it is on you to explain why a character that doesn't seem to fit can actually fit.
• Pick the starting cards for your character based on what you want to see come up in the story for that character - not just based on what sounds right for the character. You need to pick starting cards that feel like things that would be interesting to you - things you are going to want to play. 
• This tends to matter most for Weakness cards, but can also be a factor in choosing a Strength or Subplot. Pick something that interests you and that you want to see as part of the story.
• I've seen players pick stuff because it "sounded right" or because it was who the character was before the tale, not thinking about where their character's story was quickly going to go and how they actually wanted to portray the character, and it always becomes something frustrating for the player then.
• Finally, for yourself, try to build a good reputation in general. Narrators can, and do, look at your play history. If they see interesting characters, story participation, group interaction, a good attitude, and completed games, they'll look forward to the possibilities presented by having you in their game.

Narrators aren't professionals and we all work a little differently, and nothing's a guarantee, but the above should generally help you be more likely to be accepted to games, and just help you have more fun and help others have more fun when you're in them.

If you would like to know more about character creation and applying for games in Storium, here are a few of my Storium Theory articles on that topic:

• Writing Good Strengths and Weaknesses
• Play Within the World: Making Characters "Fit In"
• People, People Who Need People
• Uniqueness of Ability
• Uniqueness of Cards
• Support the Story
• Building Character
• Choose Cards You Want to Play
• Build Towards Something

If I Could Impose On A Moment Of Your Time?

As you all know DreamForge is embarking on a new path, new releases in a new format.

Although the Kickstarter platform has a lot of advantages, it only makes sense to put your best foot forward and provide your customers with the items they desire.

To that end, I have created a very short survey to get all of your feedback, not just about the StuG and Shadokesh, but about DreamForge and the general direction you would like to see.

Please... Take a moment and let your voice be heard.

SURVEY LINK

Thank you so very much for your time!

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Ishar: Trophy RPG

A minotaur takes apart my party while I hit him occasionally for 2 hit points.

           

Aside from its graphics and sound, which I began my first entry by praising, Ishar feels like a "lite" version of every game that inspired it. It's like it took a bunch of other RPGs but only copied their most superficial features. It has the character attributes, skills, and leveling of a lot of RPGs, but not with any depth or complexity. It has the switches and keys of a game like Dungeon Master but none of the challenging puzzles. It has a combat system that looks something like Might and Magic III or Eye of the Beholder, but it doesn't really get it right. It's like a movie with great cinematography but bad acting and not much of a plot.

I don't know how to judge its combat system. Either the developers screwed up or they deliberately did something different but in doing so introduced new problems. On the surface, it adopts a Dungeon Master convention of giving each character an attack button and having them trade attacks with enemies in real time. It even does one better by mapping the attacks to the function keys. The problem is that there's no cool-down, so it hardly makes sense to have all your characters attack. In fact, it makes the most sense to have the character with the best combat skills attack exclusively, keeping the others up front only as meat shields, to spread out the damage taken from enemies. The attacking character has to eat more often to regain stamina, but otherwise there's no downside.

I'm not sure I understand the little combat formation grid that you can activate on the right side of the screen. Each character has a unique symbol, and you can arrange those symbols on a 5 x 5 grid to make ranks and formations. It's not a bad idea, but I don't think the game really makes full use of it. Characters not in the front rank can neither hit nor get hit in melee combat, but beyond that, I don't see where the specific position and arrangement matter. Someone correct me if you know more.

             

This arrangement doesn't seem to do anything different than putting one character anywhere in the front rank and the other characters anywhere in the other four ranks.

            

The worst part about combat is how the game treats missile weapons and spells. If a character is equipped by a missile weapon, hitting the attack key doesn't launch it; it brings up a cursor so that you can click on the specific enemy that you want to target. Why is this extra step necessary? Melee weapons don't target specific enemies. If combat paused while you made your selection, that would be one thing, but instead enemies continue to attack while you take your hand off the keyboard and move it to the mouse to point at a specific enemy and click.

Spells are even worse. To cast one, even in combat, you have to click the "Action" button, then "Cast Spell," then the name of the spell, and then target it, all while enemies are pounding away.

            

Casting takes too much time to do in combat.

         

Both missile weapons and spells are a god-send, however, when you encounter the occasional enemy who refuses to advance. I wasted a lot of hours trying to melee a minotaur guarding a bridge with a morningstar in each hand. After several full-party deaths, I realized I could stand a square away and pelt him with arrows (albeit expensive ones), "Magic Missile" spells, and daggers until he finally collapsed.

A lot of spells are defensive or healing spells, and party members are useful for their other skills, including "Lockpicking," "First Aid," and "Languages." But you need far fewer than the four companions you can choose to go on the adventure.

As for the innovations with NPC interactions, they've mostly been annoying. The one time I tried to kick an NPC out of my party, the other characters voted to overrule me and keep him. Meanwhile, NPCs that I want to retain have a way of disappearing in the middle of the night, with all the expensive stuff I've bought for them, when we stay at inns.

         

Coward.

        

I broke off the last entry by suggesting that I was going to try to map the island, which I estimated at 100 x 400 and concluded was "big but not unmappable." That's the problem with doing multiplication in your head. I had calculated it at 4,000 squares, which is the same size as a dungeon of 10 levels of 20 x 20. In fact, 100 x 400 is actually equal to 40,000--not Fate: Gates of Dawn, but still a few too many to map unless you really love the experience. 

Upon studying the map in more detail, I realized that a map might be superfluous anyway. Kendoria is a large place--much longer east-west than north-south--but it's mostly made up of small islands interconnected by bridges. It doesn't take a lot of effort to comprehensively explore an island. You just run around its perimeter and crisscross the interior a few times.

            

Kendoria is less a "land" than an archipelago.

        

The game begins on the furthest-west island, which is divided into Fragonir to the north and Angarahn to the south. Fragonir had the village on the docks, while Angarahn had the other village I explored last time. Between the two of them, they have a strength trainer and an agility trainer, but I still haven't felt flush enough to use them. Angarahn has some encounters with orcs that seem to respawn. Enemies typically leave bags of a few hundred gold when they die, but it costs about 1,500 gold pieces to have a meal and a night's sleep at a tavern.

East across the bridge from Angarahn is a large island with Lotharia on the west and Fimnuirh to the east. Lotharia has a small village to its north with a spell trainer. There were several encounters with werewolves or maybe bears, probably bears because later I fought somethings that looked more like werewolves. Fimnuirh is a huge, empty area where I keep getting attacked by something that I can't see. I suspect that this is the "invisible lizard man" named Brozl that I learned about in an NPC's hut. The NPC told me that to kill him, I would need to use a Mental Vision Helmet, wherever that comes from. I'll need to kill Brozl because he has some magic rings that "protect from the dragon's fire."

           

I have no idea what race this NPC is.

         

There was an interesting encounter in Lotharia with a floating head calling himself "Azalghorm the Spirit," the messenger of the "Silmarilian Gods." He told me that we "could attempt" three quests, all of which would help us "when you finally have to face [the] evil Krogh." He said the quests were called "The Magician's Talisman," "The Exhausted Witch," and gaining possession of all of the rune tablets. I have no bead on the first two quests, but I found one rune tablet on a pedestal in Lotharia and the other on a pedestal in the dungeon.

          

The main quest turns into sub-quests.

          

East from Fragonir and north from Lotharia is a small area called Osthirod. There were some encounters with tall, powerful werewolves plus a hut where a "medium" offered to give me medical advice for 1,000 gold pieces. I took a screenshot of some kind of tall sentinel in armor blocking access to some part of the area, but I neglected to mark where it was.

Most of my NPC companions were killed by the bears and werewolves, plus some bandits that I met in Osthirod's neighboring nation of Rhudgast. I replaced them with a weird monk named "Unknown," a warrior named Fragorn, and a priest named Kiriela, who I found standing around the wilderness of Fragonir. Soon afterwards, Fragorn disappeared when we stayed at a tavern for the night, so I replaced him with a terribly effective "spy" named Nasheer. Unknown is kind of useless except for his "Magic Missile" spell and Kiriela is useless except for her "Healing I" spell. Golnal is just useless, but the party wouldn't let me kick him out. Aramir remains the best melee fighter.

          

Who's your god? Hugh Hefner?

        

Osthirod and Rhudgast occupy the same island, separated by a large, impenetrable thatch of forest. You have to cross between them on a small strip of land to the south. A pathway leads north from this strip of land to a dungeon entrance--the first in the game. There wasn't much of a transition as I entered the dungeon, and it was small enough that I suspect it exists on the same scale as the outdoor map and could be mapped on the same piece of paper with it.

           

The dungeon had some keys and levers but no puzzles.

          

The dungeon was small and to-the-point. There were some doors I had to find keys to open and some barriers I had to lower with a lever. Monsters included skeletons, giant spiders, and some behemoth that took a couple of reloads.

           

The photographer didn't make it.

        

The rewards for the dungeon were a few treasure chests, an empty flask, and a rune tablet.

          

Primitive cultures. They're always placing rune tablets on a pedestal.

             

All geography ultimately funnels to the land of Aragarth, on the far eastern side of the Osthirod/Rhudgast island. A bridge leads from Aragarth to what is essentially the second half of the game, and this is where I got bottlenecked for a time by a minotaur, until I learned how to kill him from a distance. On the other side of this bridge, I found the land of Silmartil, a much less hospitable place than the western lands. After I died at the hands of some barbarians, I decided I'd better do another loop around the lands I'd already explored and grind a bit.

I mostly need to start spending some money. I've been very stingy. My characters would probably do better with some more armor (so far, I've only found leather), helms, and shields, and everyone could train a few points in strength or agility perhaps. I need to stockpile more rations to restore Aramir's stamina, since every attack reduces it by 1%. If the dungeon respawns, that might be an easy way to earn both experience and wealth.

              

This is probably the key to character development.

         

Aramir is Level 6 now, everyone else either 3 or 4. I guess leveling affects maximum health and stamina, but as far as I can tell, skills are fixed from the beginning. (Unless they increase when you pay for attribute increases.) I'd probably do well to try to find better party members, but then again maybe I should be grateful that I have four of them who seem to get along and don't bail on me at night.

To recap, Ishar is a pleasant enough game, but one that doesn't grip me with its mechanics or its story. At least it's pretty to look at.

Time so far: 6 hours