Title: Dungeons & Dragons
Designer(s): Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Dungeons & Dragons has always been known as a pioneer in role-playing games, before the video game industry took the concept and added the visual settings, effects, and other graphic elements we are so used to today. However, there is always that extra element of surprise when you play D&D with just pencils and paper, and this experience was something we were looking for.

Coincidentally, Weiman, a friend of ours, introduced us to a couple of her other friends who used to play D&D quite some time ago. Looking to get back into D&D again, they agreed to help us ease into the game.

SETUP

The thing about D&D is the amount of prep you have to go through before the game starts. Apart from getting your Dungeon Master and finding your team mates, you need to read through your rules and create your characters and setting accordingly. This includes your character name, race, class, back stories, setting, and what not. You don’t need many tools as a participant, just these:

• Character Sheets
• Pencil
• Eraser
• D10
• D20
• 3 D6s

If you’re the Game Master, you need your scenario and dice value criteria for situations where dice need to be rolled.

STORY OF THE GAME

For our setting, our wonderful Dungeon Master a.k.a. Game Master a.k.a. Cedric, created a setting of a Post-Apocalyptic Singapore, at the risk of being overrun by evil care bears. So our band of characters has been called to fight this evil.

​CHARACTERS

​Dr. Grimm

• Elven Mage
• Neutral Evil
• Seems to be obsessed with magic cats and riding Mechs
• Also, not able to carry out any evil side actions just yet
• Played by Weiman

Alessandria “Contacts” Kuasimi 

• Human Warrior
• Chaotic Good
• Apparently has strength rivalling Arnold Schwarznegger
• Cannot see for nuts so she ends up using Echo Location and Blind Telekinesis
• Played by Yours Truly

PLOT TWIST

Like many first timers into D&D, we started late because of prep and not knowing how to react to Cedric’s role playing antics. But as we went along, these were the main things we managed to take away from our first game:

1. For someone with Halfling luck, Willos has horrible rolls. Perhaps it’s because he’s meant to be Chaotic Good but he ends up blowing his signal whistle in dark, dangerous areas just for fun.
2. Gluteus was told it was uncommon for dwarves to become mages, but that didn’t phase him. Instead, he was attempting to electrocute Willos more than a couple of times because of untimely signal whistle usage.
3. Grey Care Bears are only the start. Stay away from Care Bears. And magical cats which resemble the Cheshire cat.

Those aside, it was fun being able to explore role-playing games with that extra dimension of immediate and unpredictable interaction. While you may miss your attack in a video game, rolling a “1” in any of our attack rolls may warrant something which will render you paralysed with stomach-clutching laughter.

Just note that this is a trial scenario, so we may or may not continue with these characters. If I could, I would class my character as a Ranger. Or a Fighter Mystic. Heh.

So far, we have slayed:

• 1 Boa Constrictor
• 1 Grey Care Bear
• And Willos’s signal whistle (kinda)

Our trial session ended quite well, and the beauty of D&D is that with all the information you gather with your own character sheets, you games can stretch for as long as you want.

At the same time, side plots and actions can be twisted into the game – something you can’t have in many video games – so everything is just down to your creativity.

However, we may be looking to have more sessions so please drop a comment if you would like to get episodic commentaries for future D&D hijinks!

Dungeons & Dragons was created by Wizards of the Coast and continues to expand. To find out how you can get started, click here.

Title: Mysterium
Designer(s): Oleksandr Nevskiy, Oleg Sidorenko
Publisher: Libellud

When Mysterium was released, I was intrigued. When they announced a US-version of Mysterium – the version translated to English – I was excited. And when Dave said he bought the game and wanted to test play it, we all said yes.

SETUP

Mysterium may not take a lot of time to play, depending on how your “ghost” fare, but the game trades your Eldritch-Horror-Play-Time for real estate. The visuals of Mysterium rivals Dixit, and for a game with its fundamentals on pictures instead of words, setup is key.

Within each box, you have:

• 1 game screen
• 1 sand timer
• 6 intuition tokens
• 1 clairvoyance track and its 6 level markers
• 6 sleeves
• 15 culprit, weapon, location, ghost, and crow tokens
• 108 psychic and ghost cards
• 5 clock and progress boards
• 84 vision cards

This game requires at least two players, and plays like a partial co-operative with individual points.

Firstly, choose one player to be the “ghost”, while the rest of the players will play the mediums.

The “ghost” gets a screen and sets up accordingly. There’s going to be quite a bit of distribution going on, differing with the number of players as mediums, so I’m not going to go into details here. For a point of reference, here’s what you need to have before you start:

• “Ghost” player behind the screen
• Sand timer next to the Clock board, with the clock hand at “1”
• Each clairvoyant / medium player to have their corresponding sleeve, intuition token, clairvoyance track, and level markers
• Boards and corresponding cards for the culprit, weapon, and location choices face up

(Note: This game takes up a bit of real estate and will require quite a bit of assembly. This post is only my experience with the game, so please consult your instruction manual before you play your game.)
 
STORY OF THE GAME

A murder most foul has happened in between reality and the parallel universe. Stumped by the limited amount of clues, the police initiated a hush operation, engaging specialists from around the world to reach out to the best witness in this crime – the victim.

CHARACTERS

Players: Myself, Max “The Tiger” Loh, Ben “Charsiew Space” Chee, Dave Chua

Each of us take the role of mediums from around the world, making contact with the victim’s ghost to the best of our abilities.
​
This time, we reached out to two ghosts – Dave during the first round, and Ben during the second.

PLOT TWIST

Each of us takes the role of mediums from around the world, making contact with the victim’s ghost to the best of our abilities. The ‘ghost’ distributes image cards to point the medium to the right culprit, location, and weapon.

(In essence, it’s playing Cluedo with Dixit, and with a time limit)

​The longer a medium takes to guess the correct culprit, location, and weapon, the fewer points they earn, which later translates to the amount of cards they’ll be able to seeing before casting their final decision on the real true murderer.

The beauty of this game (apart from its art), is the fact that the “true” answer, like reality, is dependent on the cards the mediums and the ‘ghost’ is dealt with. So ‘ghosts’ can’t exactly sabotage mediums and decide their murderers beforehand.

Dave’s cards were easy to interpret – thanks to a combination of skill and luck. Ben’s cards were trickier, taking us on a bit of a ride because of the cards he was dealt with. Regardless, all of us won both rounds.

Mysterium is a game of beautiful art, thrilling curiosity, and fun that won’t drive you to boredom while waiting for your turn.
​
Our copy of Mysterium was a translated copy from its original designers, Oleksandr Nevisky and Oleg Sidorenko. Originally published by Libellud, you can find out more about this game here.

Title: Dead of Winter
Designer: Jon Gilmour, Isaac Vega
Publisher: Plaid Hat Games

My first encounter with zombies in a board game was with Betrayal at House on the Hill. While it was a change from the House of the Dead arcade game series, it was just a couple of scenarios in a haunt book of 50.
​
When Dead of Winter was featured on Tabletop, it reminded me of a cross between the context of the House of the Dead and the mechanics from Betrayal at House on the Hill. And believe me, I was incredibly happy when I finally got a copy of the game for myself. 

SETUP

It’s one of those box games with loads of counters because there are so many characters to choose from. However, setting up was quite straight forward after playing a round or two:

1. Choose your scenario, and choose if you want to go normal or hardcore
2. Draw your individual player objectives
3. Each player gets four random characters, choose two among the four you have been given
4. Decide which character will be your leader, and place your character and objective cards around your playmat as labelled.
5. Each player gets 5 starter items.
6. Place all playable characters in the colony.
7. Set up your morale and time counter.
8. Set up zombies and other requirements according to the scenario you’ve chosen.
9. Decide your first player marker.
10. Play!

STORY OF THE GAME

We’re a band of survivors in the middle of a snow-struck, zombie-infested town. Forming the last safe haven known as the Colony, we are sent to complete our game-given mission, feed the rest of the survivors, and fight off as many zombies before we all meet our fate in the dead of winter.

CHARACTERS

Players: Myself, Max a.k.a. the Tiger, Dave Chua, Ben a.k.a. CharsiewSpace

Dave decided that we should start with a short scenario first, and we got the scenario, “We Need More Samples”, where with each zombie we kill, we’d have to roll to see if we could get blood samples to find a cure. I started with Sparky the super-awesome Stunt Dog goldie, and Janet Taylor, the Nurse.

Our second scene was, “Raiding Party”, where we had to finish drawing from two location item decks before our time ran out. I started with Olivia the Doctor, and Edward White the Chemist (We lovingly dubbed him Walter White because he could turn meds into weapons). I seem to have an affinity with the characters in bioscience and healthcare during play.

PLOT TWISTS

When playing Dead of Winter, there are a few things to take note of apart from your main objective and individual objective. Those are:

• Feeding the Colony – 1 food counter feeds 2 people. You lose 1 morale for every starvation counter you collect and it accumulates)
• Clearing the Trash – You can only clear 3 trash cards per die, and having more than 10 trash cards in the colony.
• Round Crisis – Every round brings a new crisis on top of our objectives to solve, failing which to do so has certain consequences.
• Crossroads Card – The player on the left of the active player has to take a Crossroads card and activate it if its activation requirement was reached. It gives the game a richer story.
• Overrunning – If a space cannot hold anymore zombies after the zombie phase, the character with the lowest charisma dies. And when a character dies, you lose one morale. You automatically lose once you get zero morale.