Tiberius
Explorer
OOtS -- First Impressions
I played my first (and likely only) game of it last weekend. We had five players and chose the characters Roy, Haley,BanjoElan, Vaarsuvius, and Belkar (me). Durkon was left out, and thus became an NPC. We decided to play the short game, having only four dungeon levels.
The Good:
The card art was humorous.
The ability to trade loot for assistance is nice for dealing with the giant monsters.
The Bad:
Xykon's lair takes a needlessly large amount of stuff to enter (per character)
Monsters, once placed, never actually have to be dealt with
Certain characters seem underpowered, whereas others seem a wee bit too mighty.
Trading loot to NPCs for assistance seems too restrictive.
The final point structure seems to favor Roy
The Ugly:
Room artwork is kinda meh. Many rooms seem to be empty corridors, perhaps with some purple squiggle magic runes.
This was my first session, whereas everyone else had played at least once before. All seemed enthused at the prospect. After giving me a quick overview of the rules, we set about setting up the game and dealing out the starting cards. I chose my starting shticks while they worked on the decks of cards. You're presented with four choices, and may take three. I chose Twin Daggers of Doom (giving me +1 on Defense and +3 on Attack rolls), Leaping Attack (giving me and additional +1 on Attack and the ability to attack something in the next room), and Probably Evil (giving me the ability to flip over the card to boost monsters on my level for the rest of the turn). We diced for the first turn, and Roy won. He made his first steps into the dungeon.
When a new room is explored, or an empty room entered, a quantity of monsters are put down by the other players. You get once beastie per level of the dungeon this room occupies and additional ones if the monsters have traits like Leader. This being the first level, Roy only had to contend with one monster. Play proceeded around, with us exploring rooms and finding the staircase down to the next level. I noticed that I wasn't terribly useful for PvE combat; monsters, when first encountered, are considered the attackers and I had a puny +1 Defense. Still, I managed to kill a few here and there, gaining loot and XP.
This brought be to my first problem: loot and XP are pretty much dependent upon killing monsters. Sure, you can steal loot from the other PCs; that has other problems associated with it, to be addressed later. Loot is used to buy the aid of other players and to buy new shticks. XP is used to purchase new shticks. Shticks are abilities that increase your effectiveness and add to your score at the end of the game. Consequently, you need to be able to kill monsters to have any reasonable chance of victory. Belkar's starting weapon meant that I either needed to roll REALLY well on my initial attack, or take a wound and be able to use my somewhat better Attack score on the following round. By that time, the monster would likely have been killed by another party member, who would then get the XP and perhaps the loot. Roy has an easier time of this, as he has a shtick (Great Cleavage) which enables him to gain bonuses to his rolls for each previous creature in the stack he kills. Unsurprisingly, he was racking up the kills and getting the shticks.
Since PvE combat wasn't my forte, I decided to go the PvP route. This choice was made easier by the fact that I'd use my Attack score by default when attacking another player. My attack was +4, and I had received a shtick that gave me an additional +2 (+4, if the other player were resting/lost a turn; this state also gives them a -4 on the roll). Since the game uses d12s for its rolls, that means that I was 50-100% more likely to succeed than on a straight roll. Seems like the other players would be easy pickings, right? Not so. Mechanically, the dice were in my favor. However, the other players had an assortment of "Screw This!" cards, which enabled them to do things like break my weapons, send monsters to attack me, negate my shticks, and other such effects. Never mind the fact that I had waited until everyone else was on a different level, so that my target could not call for help. Let me tell you, it was a whole lot of fun having a character who was nigh-useless in PvE be rendered again useless in the arena for which he was apparently optimized. Since actually playing the game seemed to be a mere formality before my impending defeat, I decided to try to defeat the other players with monsters. If the monsters would have been able to take away all the other players' health, then they would been forced to run for the exit, dropping treasure along the way.
I ran into another problem here. Roy explored a room on level 2, meaning that he would have two monsters to deal with. I had been looking at Thog in my hand ever since the game start, and I now had the opportunity to inflict him upon Roy. I was the second person away from Roy's player, clockwise, so I would place the second monster. So down Thog went. With his nemesis bonus against Roy, he would be nigh-unstoppable (at the moment). Roy, predictably, thugged the first creature with ease. "Now thog squish not-Nale friend!", or so it seemed. Because he was the second creature in the stack, Roy had three choices. Fight as the Attacker, fight as the Defender, or do nothing. I have a problem with option 3. If the monster is right there in the room with you, why is he going to ignore you? It's counterintuitive (and inadequately explained to me in the first place). The only detriment to having an undefeated monster in your room is the inability to grab the treasure that dropped off previous ones. Again I am foiled.
Thus the game dragged on, as we struggled to collect the 10 shticks and 8 pieces of character-appropriate treasure required for a character to enter Xykon's lair. Roy was the first one to enter, and found Xykon almost immediately. He was vastly outclassed, and took a wound. We spent another hour or so getting the requisite materials for the others to go give him a hand, and eventually were able to defeat the lich. I had spent the last few turns outside the dungeon, realizing that just about the only points I was going to get were those derived from my shticks and for being out of the dungeon before other people. Everyone got out, and we tallied points.
You get one point per shtick you have (Roy was the clear winner, even from here), one per person behind you when you left the dungeon, one per level of the dungeon to the person who defeated Xykon, and one per piece of loot you have that has your face on it per face. I had precisely 0 loot with my face on it, which means I got 0 points from the surprisingly large stack of loot in my possession. I find this structure favors Roy a bit too much. He's the local Thugtor, so he will be killing the most monsters (on the whole). Thus, he will have the most shticks. He also has the most combat-related shticks, as he's the thug. Because of this, he's most likely to defeat Xykon, and get those points. Because of all the loot monsters drop (and the fact that he's contractually obligated to provide help when asked), he also ends up getting a bunch of loot from the PCs.
The game just dragged. It took us 4-5 hours to play. Remember, this was the short version. It was a fine novelty at first, but then became quite the bore. If you find a game store that has a copy for play, I'd suggest you do that. Buying the game to play with your friends? Not the best move, IMO.
I'd give it a 2/5. It's not entirely without merit, but it's like 1E in its need for house rules to make the game reasonable.
I played my first (and likely only) game of it last weekend. We had five players and chose the characters Roy, Haley,
The Good:
The card art was humorous.
The ability to trade loot for assistance is nice for dealing with the giant monsters.
The Bad:
Xykon's lair takes a needlessly large amount of stuff to enter (per character)
Monsters, once placed, never actually have to be dealt with
Certain characters seem underpowered, whereas others seem a wee bit too mighty.
Trading loot to NPCs for assistance seems too restrictive.
The final point structure seems to favor Roy
The Ugly:
Room artwork is kinda meh. Many rooms seem to be empty corridors, perhaps with some purple squiggle magic runes.
This was my first session, whereas everyone else had played at least once before. All seemed enthused at the prospect. After giving me a quick overview of the rules, we set about setting up the game and dealing out the starting cards. I chose my starting shticks while they worked on the decks of cards. You're presented with four choices, and may take three. I chose Twin Daggers of Doom (giving me +1 on Defense and +3 on Attack rolls), Leaping Attack (giving me and additional +1 on Attack and the ability to attack something in the next room), and Probably Evil (giving me the ability to flip over the card to boost monsters on my level for the rest of the turn). We diced for the first turn, and Roy won. He made his first steps into the dungeon.
When a new room is explored, or an empty room entered, a quantity of monsters are put down by the other players. You get once beastie per level of the dungeon this room occupies and additional ones if the monsters have traits like Leader. This being the first level, Roy only had to contend with one monster. Play proceeded around, with us exploring rooms and finding the staircase down to the next level. I noticed that I wasn't terribly useful for PvE combat; monsters, when first encountered, are considered the attackers and I had a puny +1 Defense. Still, I managed to kill a few here and there, gaining loot and XP.
This brought be to my first problem: loot and XP are pretty much dependent upon killing monsters. Sure, you can steal loot from the other PCs; that has other problems associated with it, to be addressed later. Loot is used to buy the aid of other players and to buy new shticks. XP is used to purchase new shticks. Shticks are abilities that increase your effectiveness and add to your score at the end of the game. Consequently, you need to be able to kill monsters to have any reasonable chance of victory. Belkar's starting weapon meant that I either needed to roll REALLY well on my initial attack, or take a wound and be able to use my somewhat better Attack score on the following round. By that time, the monster would likely have been killed by another party member, who would then get the XP and perhaps the loot. Roy has an easier time of this, as he has a shtick (Great Cleavage) which enables him to gain bonuses to his rolls for each previous creature in the stack he kills. Unsurprisingly, he was racking up the kills and getting the shticks.
Since PvE combat wasn't my forte, I decided to go the PvP route. This choice was made easier by the fact that I'd use my Attack score by default when attacking another player. My attack was +4, and I had received a shtick that gave me an additional +2 (+4, if the other player were resting/lost a turn; this state also gives them a -4 on the roll). Since the game uses d12s for its rolls, that means that I was 50-100% more likely to succeed than on a straight roll. Seems like the other players would be easy pickings, right? Not so. Mechanically, the dice were in my favor. However, the other players had an assortment of "Screw This!" cards, which enabled them to do things like break my weapons, send monsters to attack me, negate my shticks, and other such effects. Never mind the fact that I had waited until everyone else was on a different level, so that my target could not call for help. Let me tell you, it was a whole lot of fun having a character who was nigh-useless in PvE be rendered again useless in the arena for which he was apparently optimized. Since actually playing the game seemed to be a mere formality before my impending defeat, I decided to try to defeat the other players with monsters. If the monsters would have been able to take away all the other players' health, then they would been forced to run for the exit, dropping treasure along the way.
I ran into another problem here. Roy explored a room on level 2, meaning that he would have two monsters to deal with. I had been looking at Thog in my hand ever since the game start, and I now had the opportunity to inflict him upon Roy. I was the second person away from Roy's player, clockwise, so I would place the second monster. So down Thog went. With his nemesis bonus against Roy, he would be nigh-unstoppable (at the moment). Roy, predictably, thugged the first creature with ease. "Now thog squish not-Nale friend!", or so it seemed. Because he was the second creature in the stack, Roy had three choices. Fight as the Attacker, fight as the Defender, or do nothing. I have a problem with option 3. If the monster is right there in the room with you, why is he going to ignore you? It's counterintuitive (and inadequately explained to me in the first place). The only detriment to having an undefeated monster in your room is the inability to grab the treasure that dropped off previous ones. Again I am foiled.
Thus the game dragged on, as we struggled to collect the 10 shticks and 8 pieces of character-appropriate treasure required for a character to enter Xykon's lair. Roy was the first one to enter, and found Xykon almost immediately. He was vastly outclassed, and took a wound. We spent another hour or so getting the requisite materials for the others to go give him a hand, and eventually were able to defeat the lich. I had spent the last few turns outside the dungeon, realizing that just about the only points I was going to get were those derived from my shticks and for being out of the dungeon before other people. Everyone got out, and we tallied points.
You get one point per shtick you have (Roy was the clear winner, even from here), one per person behind you when you left the dungeon, one per level of the dungeon to the person who defeated Xykon, and one per piece of loot you have that has your face on it per face. I had precisely 0 loot with my face on it, which means I got 0 points from the surprisingly large stack of loot in my possession. I find this structure favors Roy a bit too much. He's the local Thugtor, so he will be killing the most monsters (on the whole). Thus, he will have the most shticks. He also has the most combat-related shticks, as he's the thug. Because of this, he's most likely to defeat Xykon, and get those points. Because of all the loot monsters drop (and the fact that he's contractually obligated to provide help when asked), he also ends up getting a bunch of loot from the PCs.
The game just dragged. It took us 4-5 hours to play. Remember, this was the short version. It was a fine novelty at first, but then became quite the bore. If you find a game store that has a copy for play, I'd suggest you do that. Buying the game to play with your friends? Not the best move, IMO.
I'd give it a 2/5. It's not entirely without merit, but it's like 1E in its need for house rules to make the game reasonable.
