Darkest Night

[Manxome]

If you intend to copy things only 11x17 (presumably with zoom), then you don't want the pages formatted for 8.5x11--you want to print the 11x17 pages onto 8.5x11 paper using the "scale to paper size" option in the print dialog to shrink them down. You'll lose some resolution by shrinking and then stretching them (which actually may be problematic; not entirely sure), but you'll end up with the original size.

Anyway, [counturl=120]here[/counturl] are all the printable game components, reformatted to print on 8.5x11 with the fold-and-tape technique.

I had to split the map across multiple pages, so be careful to connect things correctly; if it isn't clear, the village (in the middle) is connected to all other locations, which are connected in a circle around it.

The character cards (Heroes.doc) are single-sided, so you just need to cut them out. They happen to be 3"x5" (except the necromancer, which is 3"x10"), so you may want to tape them onto index cards for ease of use.

Everything else has the back printed next to the front; I think it should be pretty clear what matches to what. The tokens are at the end of Search.doc. I included two versions of the character tokens (one small, one large); use whichever you prefer.

[Orion]

Fuzzy Logic here (the boards crewed my account)

My little brother and I tried this out today. We didn't finish, got to turn 8 (darkness 10)

He played Knight and Rogue, I played Prince and Scholar. It was a lot fo fun, though we only had one key. At least we had picked up a couple of powers.

Bythe way, what happens when the necromancer attacks you? The rules say he can be fought or eluded, but his awareness is unlisted. Pretty much we had him just automatically knock out 1 grace every turn. This made him pretty scary.

Also, once the necromancer catches you, do you have any choice but to run for the monastery? It seems like you move, gaining one secrecy, but he takes it away again immediately, and you're always the closest guy, so it's practically impossible for anyon else to distract him. You're forced to run for the monastery, which of course leads him right to your doorstep...

More observations to come...

[Orion]

It turned out that our first half-game was flawed -- we were convinced that searching cost 1 secrecy, which made the game way harder. That misunderstanding corrected, we played again.

It's a fun game and rather intellectualy challenging.

GAME REPORT

Turns: ~35

Darkness: 30

The Team:

Knight -- Charge (killed stuff), Sprint (kept me alive), Hard Ride (see endgame), Oath of Defense (see endgame)

Wizard -- Lightning , Invisibility, Rune of Nullification, Fiendfire (the Rune was fantastic. The spells merely okay. Incidentally, I haven't drawn any of the other runes yet, but Nullification seems like the best -- I nullified Curses at first --there were 3 early, and it made eit easier to kill them-- but soon switched to Desecrated Ground, as the swamp was desecrated and tough to reach)

Scholar -- Thoroughness, Preparation , Foresight, Research Materials, Ancient Charm, Counterspell (The counterspell came too late in the game to matter, while the Charm helped considerably. Research Materials, particularly combined with Thoroughness, was fantastic -- without finding that early, the game would have gone much, much worse)

Priest -- Benediction, Sanctuary, Blessing of [the starting one], Censure (Censure was fantastic once I got it, making it easy for him to defend the monastery and survive searching nearby. Benediction really didn't help at all. I put the +1 prayer on the Knight to help him heal up faster)

Early game: Kngith ran around all over the place, snuffing blights and then distracting the necro, making some lucky escapes. Wizard Nullified, then nuked a couple blights. Priest repeatedly failed to search, then finally got beat up by the necro. Scholar got research materials, ancient charm from forest.

Mid Game: Priest repeatedly failed to pray. Scholar thorouhgly looted forest, retriving 4 keys andthen the relic. Wizard messed around with Confusion and other blights. Kngiht rested, fought more. Ended up in the castle with the necro in the swamp. Found Oath of Defense. Eventually, we all retreat to monastery. Necrohas about 3 blights everywhere.

Late Game: Kngiht makes Oath of Defense in Village and can't be killed. Priest and Wizard kil blights in the monastery. Scholar digs up keys in mountains, castle, runs home. Knights is also forced to run home. Knight heals up, takes keys, ard rides to swamp, picks up relic, and hard rides back. Heroes win.

[Manxome]

Glad you had fun. Sounds like your game went pretty much as intended; build up power and eliminate key blights in early game, gradually shift resources to keeping the necromancer in check as blights multiply and the darkness increases, and finally a last stand of most or all the heroes to try to kill the necromancer and/or buy the last bit of time you need to collect the relics.

You are correct that searching normally has no cost, except that it takes up your action. The rogue has a power that allows him to spend 1 secrecy to get an extra die while searching, which may have been what threw you off.

It may be helpful to know that the locations with higher search difficulties tend to have more keys. Card-counting shouldn't be necessary to win, but as with most board games, it does help.

1197230224[/unixtime]]Bythe way, what happens when the necromancer attacks you? The rules say he can be fought or eluded, but his awareness is unlisted. Pretty much we had him just automatically knock out 1 grace every turn. This made him pretty scary.

Also, once the necromancer catches you, do you have any choice but to run for the monastery? It seems like you move, gaining one secrecy, but he takes it away again immediately, and you're always the closest guy, so it's practically impossible for anyon else to distract him. You're forced to run for the monastery, which of course leads him right to your doorstep...

The necromancer has an awareness of 6, which should be printed on his character card (above the darkness track). Only marginally less scary than you made him.

If your secrecy falls to zero, then it's very difficult to get away from the necromancer without retreating to the monastery, but there are a few powers that make it possible to gain more than one secrecy in a turn under certain conditions (Contacts [Rogue], Vanish [Rogue], Safe House [Prince], Secret Passage [Prince]), and some that allow movement farther than one space (Hard Ride [Knight], Teleport [Wizard]). Also, if there are multiple heroes with zero secrecy, the necromancer can't follow them both.

However, if the necromancer lands on top of you but you still have some secrecy left, then there's no guarantee the necromancer will chase you if you flee (or even if you stay where you are)--he has to roll higher than your secrecy to track you.

It's somtimes tempting to decide that your secrecy is "good enough for now" and spend your actions on other things, but there are definite benefits to keeping your secrecy high when you don't want to be caught.

On the other hand, sometimes you want your secrecy to be zero in the endgame, so that the necromancer doesn't run away, and so you get an extra chance to attack him each turn.

[Orion]

We played again with Knight, Rogue, Prince, and Priest-- still using the ineluctable necromancer

This time, we didn't ven bother destroying blights early except the ones that really bothered us, we mostly just searched and searched and searched. We had overhwlemingly good die rolls on the search, so we rapidly accumulated powers.

The Prince attracted a lot of attention, but with loyalty and strategy, took care of himself prety well. He got the +prayer blessing at the beginning, and subsequently the +attack blessing. We later moved the +prayer to the knight, because while the prince prayed more often, he usually needed time to refill secrecy anyway.

The Rogue Eavesdropped like crazy, going down to 0 secrecy frequently. Usually, the prince or the knight would already be out of secrecy, so the rogue would be safe.

The Priest also searched a lot, counting on his huge grace and secrecy to protect him. That and making blessings.

The game went pretty smoothlyexcept for an ugly patch in the middle-late game where we realized that neither the priest nor the rogue had a good attack. That made dfending the monastery tough. Luckily, we acquired Chastise (or whatever the priest's attack is called) rebellion and ambush in quick succession.

Observations: Scouts is not a very good power. It costs 2 secrecy, which, in the midgame, can be very difficult to pull off. Plus, by then, we've often searched the spaces near the monastery pretty thoroughly anyway. I imagine other 2 secrecy powers are similarly weak.

Hard Ride for the win, again.

Questions:

True or False: If I attack a blight in the monastery, my net secrecy for the turn is zero?

True or False: a relic can be "dropped off" in the monastery. (I assumed this to be true, but it says this nowhere in the rules. As written, they imply that three heroes, actively carrying relics, must converge on the monastery.)

Clarification/Suggested Addition: If relics can be stored in the monsatery, how about other items?

Flavor: The holy relic cards are 2-sided. While flipping them indicates "claimed" status, it's kinda funny because there's no hidden information. Why not give each relic a name, just for fun?

Random note: I started making up little stories to go along with every play of the game -- justification for new powers, descriptions of successful encounters, etc. This annoys my brother.

[the_taken]

I'll be having this board game played this weekend instead of the regular D&D session. Are you planning to package this?

1197600883[/unixtime]]Random note: I started making up little stories to go along with every play of the game -- justification for new powers, descriptions of successful encounters, etc. This annoys my brother.

Awesome.

[Manxome]

So did you win? And if so, by relics or by combat?

1197600883[/unixtime]]We later moved the +prayer to the knight, because while the prince prayed more often, he usually needed time to refill secrecy anyway.

Remember that the bonus secrecy from the monastery can only raise you up to your default value, which for the Prince is 3.

1197600883[/unixtime]]Observations: Scouts is not a very good power. It costs 2 secrecy, which, in the midgame, can be very difficult to pull off. Plus, by then, we've often searched the spaces near the monastery pretty thoroughly anyway. I imagine other 2 secrecy powers are similarly weak.

You know, I don't think we managed to draw Scouts in any of my test games. You could certainly houserule the cost down to 1 if you think it's necessary, though you could also try searching the areas farther from the Monastery earlier in the game. In particular, the Castle should be a good place to search early, because of the low search difficulty and the higher density of powers.

If not for its cost, Scouts should easily be the best search-related power in the game, because everyone can benefit from it. You need to plan it's use fairly carefully, though.

I believe the only other power that costs 2 secrecy is Safe House, which allows you to immediately recover one of the secrecy you spent and has proven to be very powerful in games where it's come up.

1197600883[/unixtime]]True or False: If I attack a blight in the monastery, my net secrecy for the turn is zero?

Usually, yes. The secrecy from the Monastery can't raise you above your default secrecy (the circled number), so if your secrecy was higher than that at the start of the turn, you'll have a net decrease of one. Also, other things can further alter your secrecy, of course (spies, safe house, holy relic).

1197600883[/unixtime]]True or False: a relic can be "dropped off" in the monastery. (I assumed this to be true, but it says this nowhere in the rules. As written, they imply that three heroes, actively carrying relics, must converge on the monastery.)

Heroes are intended to be able to drop relics in the monastery, though you probably won't usually want to do this. I'll look over the rules and make sure that's included in the next publication.

1197600883[/unixtime]]Clarification/Suggested Addition: If relics can be stored in the monsatery, how about other items?

There's currently no rule to that effect, but I don't see a problem with it.

1197600883[/unixtime]]Flavor: The holy relic cards are 2-sided. While flipping them indicates "claimed" status, it's kinda funny because there's no hidden information. Why not give each relic a name, just for fun?

Certainly a possibility. One playtester actually suggested giving each relic a different special power (rather than all of them being +1 to highest attack die), but that +1 is rather important to the strategy, and I haven't thought of any other effects that would be similar in power.

1197605345[/unixtime]]I'll be having this board game played this weekend instead of the regular D&D session. Are you planning to package this?

Not presently. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

[Orion]

We won, via relics. We got the forest, the mountain, and then the ruins, thanks to the knight hard riding out and back.

I like storing keys in the monastry until needed. If each character drops their keys when they go back eventually someone can gab 3 on their way out the door.

I'm aware that the prince's secrecy is 3. Since heusully has 0 secrecy when he goes back, that's 3 full turns of prayer which is gnerally enough to refill grace, unless -- aha! I'm an idiot! I could be using a turn to cast Inspire and gaining a screcy for it.

[the_taken]

OK. My gaming group all canceled... and requested a Santa Clause inspired game for next week. Very unusual...

Let's see if I can convince my relatives to play.

[Orion]

We played again -- starting a priest, rogue, prince, and scholar.

Early on, the Scholar holed up in the castle, quickly establishing a Forgotten Sanctuary and then collecting no fewer than 5 treasures befor the necromancer kicked him out.

The priest searched ineffectively over and over, while the rogue had only slightly moreluck. The Prince ran around causing trouble and blowing up blights.

eventually, we had a whole bunch of powers, one and a half relics, and decided we were going to kill the necromancer. We set up an Ancient Defense, Counterspell and Resistance in the mountains. The Prince nad Scholar went out, Prince using Strategy, Scholar using find weakness and ancient sword. Meanwhile, the Priest, armed with Blessing of Strength and Miracle, guarded the monastery. The Rogue went out, got pummeled, and rested. Anyway, it was hard to keep up with the Necromancer's 3 blights per turn, but the other players egged me on. After the Scholar died, I re-started as a knight, everyone guarded the monastery but the rogue, and when we found enough keys we repeated our hard ride stunt.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So tonight me and a couple of friends were trying to figure out what to do, and the option of buying a new game came up. I said "I know what we can do" and we headed down to Kinko's. $5 and two hours later (ugh) we finally started playing (one friend had already left to go to work).

The game went pretty well. I played a knight, my girlfriend played a priest, and my friend played a scholar. First round I did a hard ride to the castle with hopes of searching. The necro stayed there, blights started popping up, and I didn't accomplish much. The priest and the scholar hung out in the village searching, stuff happened, the priest went to sleep.

The game ended thusly, in the forest: We had the auto-elude scholar power up. The knight kept killing blights with Oath of +1 attack die and Charge!, while the Scholar managed to get the final key needed to get a relic, and used a combination of the reroll card, the +1 attack ability, and the relic to smack down the necromancer.

So far the scholar was by far the biggest contributer. I'm probably going to try out the wizard next time around.

One question: Does the necromancer really only roll one die, or does he first roll to search and then roll to determine random movement?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Played again. This time we shuffled all of the blights into one deck, which was way more convenient. Characters were Priest, Prince, and Knight ( the noble crowd). The priest is really boring to play (I never really felt useful).

[Manxome]

Yes, the necromancer really only rolls one die for movement. The path numbers are arranged so that he can still get everywhere (eventually) even if he only follows them on low rolls. Though if you want to roll separately to search and to move (on a failed search), the only problem I think you'll run into is that you'll have to house rule how the Rune of Misdirection works (normally it lets you roll twice for his movement and choose one result).

Shuffling all the blights into one deck creates the possibility of some excessively safe/brutal locations, and reduces differentiation between locations, but it'll probably work OK if you can't stand to separate them out. You may still want to keep the Monastery blights separate, though; they're carefully chosen to preserve the concept of the undead not actually entering the Monastery and to prevent players from dying while inside.

The scholar is probably one of the stronger heroes, though all heroes' effectiveness varies depending on what powers they draw and how they're played.

Could you elaborate on your experience as the priest, and maybe say how your expectations differed from the reality?

[Orion]

The Scholar is indeed awesome, although his effectiveness is highly variable. Research Materials is incredibly powerful, and advanced, and getting it early makes a huge difference. The Auto-evade one is also really nice.

Still, substituting the rogue works almost as well for most lineups and strategies.

My experience with the priest differs from Catharz -- I find him *extrememly* strong, though problematic.



Though in the early game he doesn't attack, the priest is a surprisngly effective treasure-searcher. I generally plunk him adjacent to the monastery, where he can help out returning heroes, and avoid the necromancer's notice. With the highest starting grace & secrecy, he has to go rest only EXTREMELY rarely. he Rogue and Scholar search more effectively, but run out of grace faster.

Where the Priest really shines in his advanced powers, almost all of which are extremely powerful. They rock so much (and he has enough difficulty getting treasure) that my rogues and scholars usually ferry unopened treasure chests back to the Priest(especially since I don't like advanced rogue powers)

If he picks up either Censure or Blessing of Might, he can attack with 2 dice, which suddenly makes him WAY more useful. With both, he's a 3-die attacking power house on par with the knight is power and resilience (alternately, he can put the might blessing on the knight...) Any of the advanced blessings are awesome, and Miracle helps a LOT for defending the monastery in the endgame.

That said, there are at least three ways for the prist not to live up to his potential.

-- The priest'sbasic powers are awful, definitely the worst set in the game. Benediction and Intercession are super special-purpose and redundant at that. Sanctuary is good, though I think's it's slightly worse than Foresight, Sprint, etc. the max hp blessing is definitely useful, but it's effects aren't immediately obvious, and the turn he spends casting it at the beginning makes him seem even less effective. If he doesn't get advanced powers quickly, he flounders. (Composure sucks too)

-- He's very skill-intensive. Mircle and Sactuary have costs that make newbies reluctant to use them when they should; he gets better one you learn how to use them. Plus,the proper use of blessings is both critical and nonbvious. Don't put the +prayer blessing on the prince or the rogue, for instance; you will sorely regret it.

-- He's very much a "fourth man." His lack of dependable starting tactics means he can't go out and destroy dangerous blights early on, and he depends on other heroes keeping the necromancer's attention so he can search in peace. It soudns as though Catharz is playing only 3 heroes at a time. In that environment I imagine you'd want all your heroes to be capable of blight-busting, and of dealing with the necromancer's attention, both things I try to have my priest avoid.

ETA: by the way, I thought I ha dposted this already, but my problems with secrecy in the first couple fo games were because I was playing wrong. In those first two, I had searching cost a secrecy, and I had the necromancer puruse on ties -- switching to the correct rules makes the Rogue's Eavesdrop and the Prince's Scouts/Safe House much more reasonable.

[CatharzGodfoot]

So how do ties work? I was under the impression that all values had to be met, not exceeded.

Also, I realized that the reason our games had been way too easy was that we had the necromancer redirecting attacks when he defended.

[Orion]

My understanding is that, unlike every other mechanic in the game, the necromancers pursues a hero if he *exceeds* their secrecy.

[Manxome]

1204099522[/unixtime]]My understanding is that, unlike every other mechanic in the game, the necromancers pursues a hero if he *exceeds* their secrecy.

That's correct, though you can also think of it as the heroes always winning in the event of a tie.

1204087196[/unixtime]]Also, I realized that the reason our games had been way too easy was that we had the necromancer redirecting attacks when he defended.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

[CatharzGodfoot]

1204140032[/unixtime]]

1204087196[/unixtime]]Also, I realized that the reason our games had been way too easy was that we had the necromancer redirecting attacks when he defended.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

I didn't phrase that very well, did I?
When the necromancer attacked a character with 0 secrecy and the character successfully defended (by rolling an attack higher than 6), we had the necromancer destroy a blight. That just makes the game too easy (the necromancer never got past Darkness 11 in both games played like that, making things anticlimactic).

[Manxome]

You were playing correctly, then; you're supposed to be able to cause damage if you win, even when he attacks you.

If you find killing the necromancer is too easy, raise his power from 6 to 7 (this means you can't possibly hurt him without a holy relic or the Find Weakness tactic). I've played several games like this and find it helps a great deal in reducing early-game "lucky" kills, and it'll probably be a standard rule if I get around to publishing another set of revisions.

[Orion]

Umm... his Strength already *is* 7

And I've always played that you have to deliberately attack him to destroy a blight. Forsome reason, I min-interpreted the phrase "sucessful attack."

I kind of like that rule. Admittedly, it does make killing the necromancer essentially impossible, but without it, I think gathering 3 relics would be almost *too* easy.

[Manxome]

1204172368[/unixtime]]Umm... his Strength already *is* 7

Oh. Well, it wasn't when I printed my own original copy. Guess I'm mixing up the chronology.

[CatharzGodfoot]

1203978784[/unixtime]]
Could you elaborate on your experience as the priest, and maybe say how your expectations differed from the reality?

I was mostly trying to play a support role, but it was actually pretty rare that I'd be in the same place as another player. So I spent a lot of time searching, which was moderately effective. I think that the problems came from my inexperience and a disconnect between players.

Once we were playing by the actual rules (except with a more perceptive necromancer) with four people, the utility of a priest (which we didn't have) became a bit more apparent. A 'holy veil' power which allowed the Priest to increase other's secrecy, however, might be nice. Maybe there is one I just didn't notice...


As I was looking over the cards it really became apparent how much work you put into balancing and fleshing this out. Kudos for making a very well balanced game with a good amount of tactical depth and replay value which can be played in about two or three hours.

[Manxome]

Thank you; I'm glad you enjoy the game.

I believe only the Rogue and Prince have powers that can raise secrecy at present (unless you count Teleport, which only gives the same secrecy as a regular move). Heroes actually don't have very many tools to manage secrecy; I think the best strategy is probably to meticulously keep it high until you reach a point in the game where it ceases to be important, which means the Rogue has a harder time using his secrecy-fueled powers than one might expect. Stealth (spend grace instead of secrecy) is a rather handy Rogue power in the endgame, especially if you team up with a Priest.

[Orion]

I love how many subtle flavor points come out the the rules. For example, the power now/ power later curve actually is balanced in the context of this sort of game-- so, for instance, Priests and Scholars get far more benefit from their advanced powers than Rogues and Knights (IME, of course)

Incidentally, we don't worry overmuch about keeping secrecy high-- quite the opposite. If we have a Rogue, he will eavesdrop until he runds out of secrecy. This demands that we have a Knight or Prince holding the necromancer's attention. This means that the Priest can us eSanctuary pretty liberally if desired. Generally we try to have 2 fighting heroes who trade off the necromancers attention between them.

[Manxome]

Amusingly, if the Rogue chooses the Vanish power (basic) and finds a location with zombies, he automatically recovers 4/9 secrecy (on average) per turn, at a cost of 1/9 grace. Not a bad deal.

Having someone hold the necromancer's attention is certainly viable (as is intended), but that player can get beat up pretty fast without some good powers and/or a relic, and it requires a significant investment to get your secrecy high again once it's low. The key thing that you don't want to do (but which newbies may be prone to doing) is to have all the heroes trying to avoid the necromancer but letting their secrecy fall; you end up wasting a lot of time running if you do that.

But giving all heroes time to dig for powers in the early game is also handy, especially if you don't have a Knight. And Rune of Misdirection + all heroes having high secrecy allows you to run the necromancer around in circles in places you don't care about for a substantial portion of the game, which is rather effective.

If you're still finding the game too easy, starting the Darkness a few points higher is an easy way to apply a handicap.