Forbidden Psalm is a simple, fast play skirmish game set in a dying post apocalyptic medieval world, or so the description says. Equally suitable for competitive, co-operative or solo play the game is downloadable from Wargames Vault for a reasonable fee as a miniatures agnostic game so you can play with any five figures you have lying around. If you don't have any, there are some printable standees for you to use instead. The game comes with a campaign of ten scenarios involving your party of adventurers carrying out tasks for a mad wizard in exchange for gold. As the campaign develops your characters get better equipped, more skilled or just horribly killed and replaced by new members. Hey the world is ending and life is cheap.
The game scenarios are played on 2' square playing surfaces making for a quick intense game that doesn't require hours to play or take up acres of room. As such its ideal for those with not much time or who are short of space for gaming.
Players design five characters with the recommendation that you select your miniatures and design the character to match them. You may make a single figure a spell caster although that will cost you 5 of your starting 50 gold with which you have to equip your party at the start. Everyone starts with a feat (a special ability they can use) and a flaw (a problem they have to deal with). The game includes a random name generator which has some 'interesting' options. I used five of the twenty four 3d printed figures I got in an advent calendar last Christmas (thanks to the wife!)
The game uses a d20 for all basic tests with generally success needing a roll of 12. Everything is based on one of four stats (Strength, Toughness, Agility and Presence) which can vary between -3 and +3 depending on your character design choices. Weapon damage can be anything from d10 to d4 based on the weapon in use so you will need a set of polyhedral dice to play the game (or a suitable app on your phone).
Scenario one (The Mad Wizards Tea) involves the party being tasked to visit some nearby ruins to get some black fungus for him. Unfortunately it only grows on corpses. Even more unfortunately there are some ghouls in the ruins that are quite attached to their lunch and don't want it being prodded by adventurers.
The game, which takes 6 turns, and took about 20 minutes to play. In solo mode the players figures move and act and then the monsters react using some fairly simple rules. Despite this two of my adventurers failed to survive the first game, although they did pass their death saves at the end of the game and so will be able to take part in the next game. With three pieces of Black Fungus in our possession we were able to report success to the mad wizard and will progress to the next game in the campaign.
No comments:
Post a Comment