I've recently gotten my hands on a pair of exciting new tabletop items that I'm super excited to use, and I wanted to show them off to you folks!
First of all, and the one I'm the most excited to get to soon, is the solo or coop RPG 'Marching Order' by CrumblingKeep. They're currently in the process of getting a reprint of these books, so for the next little bit it might be hard to get a physical copy, but there are PDF options as well in the meantime.
The physical books here were technically only available in the US, but I managed to ask the creator very nicely if he'd stash one aside for me so I could pay for the shipping to Canada... and it was worth every cent. I'm a sucker for a physical book when it comes to my tabletop gaming, and this is going to have a nice spot on my shelf.
I mean, just look at this dense old-school artwork on these covers! The insides are the same. Tons of great art in here:
The Delver's Guide, containing our quests!
The Rogue's Handbook, containing our rules!
Marching Order has a bit of an... 'Old-school D&D meets Darkest Dungeon meets Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book' vibe to it.
It is as implied by the naming, an old-school dungeon dive, with the main objective simply being to make gold. The game is run using a party of 4, in a setup that is immediately recognizable if you've ever played Darkest Dungeon.
Your team is set up in a spread from the rear-most position to the front. Enemies are front to rear. The image below shows a typical spread.
Each character has a series of moves they can use, and a range that the skill can reach. Enemies and friendlies both count towards range, so someone in the back of the pack with a skill that reaches 3 spaces for example, would only be able to hit their own party.
Our trusty torchbearer for instance has a basic attack of "throw rock" which reaches 3 spaces, so if you're using him, you would be best to stick ol' Torchy in the middle of the team if you want him to reach anything.
There's also qualities and flaws for each character that you get when you buy your rogue. At first there's just one of each, but maybe you get to stack them later... I will have to play it more to find out, as all I've done so far is read the rules and tentatively pick my team.
Which, I guess gives me a good break point to jump into my next purchase. I'll return to showcase an actual bit of gameplay for Marching Order in a few days! For now, that's all I'll say about it. It is super cool and I'm very excited for it!
The second item I got this week came when I got my mail yesterday and had a fun surprise in the form of a Kickstarter reward I'd totally forgotten I'd ordered!
Vault of Magic comes from the fine folks at Kobold Press, and is basically 200 pages packed full of magic weapons, armors, potions, scrolls, and any other thing you could want. It's jam-packed full of awesome shit to add to any D&D campaign!
This is the deluxe cover or limited edition cover or something, as I try my best to get those when I can.
I don't have a lot more to say about this one at this time, as I've only just barely cracked it open and read a handful of the items... but already they're making me want to run a campaign just to give them away so I think in some upcoming worldbuilding for Trothguard (my campaign setting), I'll have to sprinkle some of these into the world and make some quests for when I eventually get a game going again.
That's all from me for today I think. Short update just because I'm excited about these. Marching Order will definitely get a more thorough review very soon, so I'll see you all then!
