Campaign

[martin goddard]

Version 1 of the campaign will be out  after the weekend. Don't forget that initial versions are not the finished product. The early versions will often undergo changes in light of  play testing.  Thought i better say that to make it clear.

POE finished by end of December 2018???

[Colonel Kilgore]

POE finished by end of December 2018???

Wow - that's ambitious!

The RFCM testing and publishing cycles are getting ever-quicker - well done chaps!

[Colonel Kilgore]

A couple of queries, please, Martin:

a) does the second player (i.e. born later in the year) also start from Square 1, or somewhere else?
b) presumably it is possible, and permissible, to win at the very outset, using 3 of the 4 "owned-at-outset" squares, if the dice are kind?

[martin goddard]

Both good points. I will correct that tomorrow. I was just waiting for someone to spot that.

[Leslie BT]

Sounds like we will be on version 5 or 6 by the next weekend.

[Colonel Kilgore]

We tried the campaign this weekend as a standalone game, just to try out the mechanisms.

As this trial was focused on the campaign itself , we simply diced for the result of each resulting battle. To make it a little more interesting, Young Master Kilgore was deemed better at sea, so he rolled first but got a re-roll if he wanted it before his sister rolled. And conversely for Little Miss Kilgore on land.

In the absence of any other guidelines, both started their turns in box 1. This turned out not to be a problem, as the two play markers soon ended up in very different parts of the map.

We used the map from the draft rules as-is (printed to A4), with (very small) bits of paper that LMK had coloured in to mark who "owned" which square, Blu Tack-ed to hold them down.

The mechanisms worked well, with a clear campaign win after 3 fights due to some good dice-rolling by YMK and judicious use of his 4 initial squares to form that all-important diagonal roll.

One thing which threw us initially until we realised that the diagram on page 7 of version 16 of the draft rules is a 7x7 grid, as opposed to the 8x8 grid of the map: it's implied in the diagram that the three winning squares have to stretch from one map edge to another. This isn't geometrically possible if the spacing rules between squares are respected. And, if it were the case, only certain squares on the map would have any value (as only every other diagonal could be used).

So, my suggestion would be to include in the rules, for illustrative purposes, a wider range of winning permutations using the full 8x8 map grid. For example, 3 diagonally-adjacent squares in the middle of the map constitute a winning configuration, if I've understood the rules correctly?

I can also state with confidence that these rules passed the "can be understood by a 6-year-old" (even if she stormed off in a huff having lost...) test, so no advanced degrees required for this section of the new POE rules at least!

[martin goddard]

Thanks Simon

You are the first person to ever use it, so thanks. When i get the masters back from Les we can fiddle with it.

[martin goddard]

The latest campaign book allows players to make their own maps. If you make a map maybe let me have it and I will do a compendium upon the PP website. 
I am going to find my crayons too.
I suggest the best drawing is done when one sticks the tongue out. Please don't press too hard either, or it will leave a permanent impression on granny's occasional table.