The Alfred Effect

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 3 – Mid-Campaign Recap

Posted on August 5, 2020September 3, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

The Adventure Continues Our second session went much more smoothly as I was able to pin down some of the rules that had been causing headaches previously. Special shout-out to the Shadowrun 6th Edition Chummers Facebook group for all of the support. This session saw our group continuing their shoot out with the gangers who had captured the NPC-in-distress, Erika Hoffman. With Rude providing cover fire from the rooftop of the store, Yu was able to lead Zipfile and Frostburn across the street to engage the gangers more directly. A combination of sniper fire, Yu’s pop-shots, some epic ice spells

Field Commander Alexander and Peloponnesian War

Getting Started with Solitaire Wargames

Posted on July 27, 2020July 31, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

My very first wargaming purchase was Warzone: Mutant Chronicles back when I was in ninth grade. I had just recently moved to a town that had a dedicated game store, something that was a completely new experience to me. My eyes were naturally drawn to the wall of shelves holding a cornucopia of Games Workshop offerings: Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40k, Necromunda, Epic 40k, Warhammer Quest, and more. I pined over those sets for weeks, but they cost much more than I could afford and just felt out of reach. The store owner noticed my obsession and gradually steered me

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 2 – First Session

Posted on July 24, 2020August 25, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

First Session With our starter set characters setup and tool cards distributed, we kicked off our first session of Shadowrun: Sixth World. Starting off our playthough, the Elder Minion will be running three of the pre-generated player characters and I will be running the fourth as well as handling gamemaster duties. As a reminder, we will be starting with the adventure from the beginner box set entitled “Battle Royale”. Something that really struck me as we got setup for this session was the organization of the pregenerated character packets. The booklets for each character contain the character sheet

Shadowrun Sixth World Part 1 – Setup

Posted on July 20, 2020August 25, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Background Shadowrun: Sixth World is a science fantasy roleplaying game set in the year 2080. The sixth edition of the game is published by Catalyst Game Labs and was released in 2019. Shadowrun as a setting has long intrigued me. The mix of cyberpunk and fantasy elements makes for a truly unique setting. My first exposure to the world was via the Sega Genesis game, released in 1994. The local card and comic book store had a selection of NES, SNES, and Genesis games for rent and was always a better deal than the video store because you could keep

Dungeon Fantasy RPG Part 4 – Campaign Wrap-up

Posted on July 16, 2020July 20, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

The Final Battle Approaches Our fourth, and final, session of Dungeon Fantasy RPG kicked off with a brief foray to finish exploring the last few rooms from a side passage before the group set off towards the final unexplored route. The adventure was doing a great job of establishing the latent threat, but we were starting to tire of some of the encounters and decided to skip past a few to focus on what had to be the final encounter. The culmination of the adventure was a solid combat session that tested the limits of the group without pushing things

Family Game Night – Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Posted on July 11, 2020July 19, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

This week we kicked off our Star Wars: Imperial Assault campaign for family boardgame night and it was a blast. The heroes managed to complete the initial mission, “Aftermath”, with the last player action of the last turn of the game. Our time spent playing Descent allowed us to get up and running pretty quickly with very little rules review. This is especially helpful for us as our youngest is always more eager to play that to learn new rules, so we were able to dive right in quickly. There are a number of refinements to the basic gameplay and

Dungeon Fantasy RPG Part 3 – Mid-Campaign Recap

Posted on July 9, 2020July 16, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

The Adventure Continues We kicked off our second session by introducing a new character to the group, the gnome thief Puddin’ Noddington. The Elder Minion was now managing three characters, but was eager to jump back in to the story. This session featured a number of new mechanics that we haven’t worked with before in addition to some exciting combat. There were opportunities to test against some of Puddin’s thief skills along with encountering the effects of disease and magic curses. Even our combats were learning experiences as we continued to become more familiar with the tactical rules elements. New

Family Game Night – Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Posted on July 6, 2020July 19, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

As my kids have gotten older, they’ve always wanted to try out some of the board games that I’ve picked up over the years. One in particular, Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition, has always sparked their imagination as well as being a game that I have long wished to play. The big box full of tiles, miniatures, and cards has always had an allure that even I couldn’t pass up. A few months ago, my wife and I decided the minions were old enough for us to give it a go. And boy has it been a ride.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG Part 2 – First Session

Posted on June 29, 2020July 16, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

First Session With the Elder Minion’s two characters picked out and the adventure prepped, we kicked off our first session of the Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game. Starting off our playthough, the Elder Minion will be running two player characters and I will be gamemastering. As a reminder, we will be starting with the adventure from the core set entitled “I Smell a Rat” with the action taking place in Nordlond, mini-campaign setting outlined in the Hall of Judgment sourcebook. Campaign Backstory To keep things simple, we established that Sir Yvor Gryffyn (Human Knight) and Llandor the Gray (Elven Scout)

Dungeon Fantasy RPG Part 1 – Setup

Posted on June 28, 2020August 4, 2020 by Alfred Bonnabel

Background Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is a streamlined version of the classic GURPS rule set by Steve Jackson Games with a focus on the fantasy dungeon crawl genre. While GURPS has long been known to be a rule system with the flexibility to cover a wide range of genres, it hasn’t always been known for dungeon crawls. The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line of supplements were released to focus on this genre, but still required investment into the core GURPS rulebooks and other supplements, such as GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Magic, to take full advantage. Enter the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game