How to build a very simple arena? If you have got some tools for woodworking, you can use them to cut some straight sections made of solid wood and plywood. The result is not pretty elliptical like an arena, but you have got 4 walls, and this could be enough to set your gladiatorial fight. The guy that made it think that these walls can be useful to recreate a fort or a fortified city. Add some paint and some external decoration made of cardboard and you can set various games inside it. It is how to build a cinematography set. To know more go here.

If you think that 1/6 action figures are expensive and that building a scenario for them is something impossible due to space issues, you don’t know the Memento Mori web comic. It is a Roman story made of photos of customised action figures, a lot of them. So you can call it photo story book instead of comic book. It is still in development, even if in the last times I think that new work lacks. However we are speaking of 223 pages at the present. With a cast of 95 figures and lots of extras. Think to the effort, economic and artistic to realise it. Epic!

Read the story of these people made of plastic but with human passions, free on the web on Memento Mori web site.

Ganesha Games releases are at a hectic pace, always more rules are produced that you can lose something. So here some news on the latest productions by GG.

4 Against Darkness is a huge hit with lots of supplements to upgrade your characters. Future books will expand character progression and focus on other types of adventures. All character types in 4AD will progress up to 20th and more level, and there will be more versatile classes. There will be the use of polyhedral dice, one die step per book.

Deeper Dungeons will have rules for expert characters (levels 6 to 9) who will use a D8 for their rolls. Adventures will focus on the exploration of lower level of dungeons, inhabited by more dangerous monsters. Characters are given a list of skills they can gain instead of levelling up.

Four Against the Wild will have rules for veteran characters (levels 10 to 14) who will use a D10 for their rolls. Adventures will focus on outdoor exploration of uncharted wilderness using a hex-based, sandbox terrain and quest generation system. The terrain generation system will work also for lower levels.

Legends of Norindaal will have rules for legendary characters (levels 15 to 20) who will use a D12 for their rolls. Adventures will focus on building strongholds, setting up thieves and wizards’ guilds, gaining political power, waging wars and defending one’s land from invading armies.

Among the Immortals will let characters become immortals and mingle with the many Gods of Norindaal. Characters will use a D20 for their rolls. Level will be reset at 1 but on a whole new tier. In this setting, searching for treasure means collecting bits of divine power that let characters affect reality. The party will explore different dimensions and defend their homeworld from extra dimensional invasions.

And more books are planned with this engine. I’m thinking about one too. In the near future we will have an Arthurian variant, in the less near future we will have a sci-fi variant.

However now we have got two new books: Dark Waters and The Three Rings! Play with them if you want to see more 4AD books.

The first card game by GG is called Fortebraccio. You use your cards to field an army of 12 cards with different kinds of troops on three lines. It was commissioned as a commemorative game for a 600 years ago battle in Perugia. I spoke about it in past posts on the blog when I playtested it:
Cards and comics
Legio Palatina reunion
I suppose that English version will be out before the end of the year.

More on the development of Faustus Furius. My translation is almost ready, so we have to wait only the editing and the illustrator work. The new Ben Hur flick will be out in August. I think that you could race with your chariots at that date.

And keep your money ready for the long announced OGAM supplement in the coming weeks. But this is another story…

Do you remember Ferrum et Gloria? This blog was born as a way to promote this game development. More than 5 years and half ago. In the meantime the blog became a sort of diary of my passions. And in the meantime, with lots of efforts, the first part of the rules was out for Lucca Comics & Games 2014. I’m still involved with the second part. It is not a matter of laziness. I really have got no time to write the rules. It is a long process but it is not impossible. But I’m blocked by work and life. Moreover I bought a new home and the refurbishment is like building a pyramid. It is only 40mq big. Calling it big it is almost a joke, indeed. But the construction work was so full of stress that it absorbed a lot of time, a lot of life. I want to finish what I started. I want to complete my gladiatorial rules. I thought almost all, but I must still playtest something and write on screen the words that explain the rules in a easy and plain way.
Where I am now?

The real name for Ferrum et Gloria 2 is Ferrum et Honor. I defined rules for shooters, dwarves, females, left-handed people, weather, terrain. Now I’m playtesting some things for horsemen, chariots, beasts. Then there will be some other issues but the core of the book is full developed. I wrote half of it too. Only a matter of time. Then the editing phase and next year the effort to produce the English edition. So I wish to release the 2nd Italian book for Lucca C&G 2016 (October), but I expect that it will be realistically realised for Hellana 2017 (March).

In the meantime I’m contributing to the development of a new game, Faustus Furius by Nicholas Wright. It is about chariot races and you can read it in English for late June or July. My Italian edition will be available around September. They are not gladiators but something similar. I hope you will enjoy it. It is only a matter of free time.

4 against darkness is the first game of a series by Ganesha Games. It is a great success and one of the bestsellers in the history of Ganesha Games. Caves of Kobold Slave-Masters is the first supplement, an adventure for characters of 1 and 2 level. More books will be in this format and new different adventures with this engine will be published. One of them is setting in Arthur world, and maybe another one will be a campaign for gladiators. But before this one I have to publish the second part of Ferrum et Gloria.

It is basically a solo play dungeon exploration. No miniatures are needed. All you need is the book, a pencil, two six sided dice, and grid paper. You choose four character types from the classic classes (warrior, wizard, rogue, halfling, dwarf, barbarian, cleric, elf), equip them, and start adventuring in dungeons created by dice rolls and by your choices. When you enter a room, you generate its content on a series of random tables. You will meet monsters, fight them, hopefully defeat them (or decide that discretion is the better part of valour!), you will manage your resources (healing, spells, life points, equipment), grab treasure, dodge traps, find clues, and even accept quests from the monsters you meet. Your characters can level up and become better at what they do, but it will not be easy. You may use miniatures to remember your characters’ marching order if you wish, but that’s it. It is not a roleplaying game. You may run it as a simple cooperative, GM-less game if you want. It is not a game-book or a choose-your-own-adventure book: there is no prose to read or numbered sections to go to, even if it could be something like that in new supplements.

There is also a small competition valid until May 25th, 2016. You have to write up one or more playthrough reports of the game, and publish them on social media (Facebook, Twitter, G+, etc) or on your gaming-related blog. The more reports you write, the more chances you get to win. Unleash your purple prose and tell us about the glorious victories or the rotten luck of your heroes. Post photos of your completed dungeons on Instagram! Use the #4AgainstDarkness hashtag and always add a link to the product page. Make sure that each report includes a link to the product on www.ganeshagames.net and send an email to andreasfiligoi@gmail.com to let him know of it. On the 25th, the day after his birthday, Andrea will put all names in a hat and draw a winner who will get a lifetime subscription to all 4AD products.

Here the report of a long weekend with Andrea in Rome at my new, and still almost empty, house. We rallied a lot of things and events in 4 days. To begin, we held some playtests about next Ganesha games. This one is about mutant apes.

And this one is about that old project that we are developing through these last years. Maybe this one is the final effort. However we are speaking about 2017.

Other things were tested and other ideas were submitted. Diego join us for a couple of half days and this is a moment of relax in a patisserie.

We passed the Friday night at a game shop in the opposite part of Rome. Andrea presented his kind of games with a demo of Advanced Song of Blade and Heroes.

Here the Mjolnir shop and an exposition of Ganesha Games books. They are too much to show, indeed. Free apple pie for everyone. However chatting went from Friday to the first hours of Saturday…

Saturday afternoon was the time for the class on game design. In this photo Andrea seems a priest on a pulpit.

After the lesson, a direct check to the game projects of the people. There are very different ideas and kinds of games, with Andrea and the organisers that are trying to address them to their realisation.

And the Sunday was the time for Romics. But that is another post…

After the overall part in the previous post, here the focus is on wargame relate part of Modena Play.

We stayed two days, the first as visitors and to speak with people. This is true even because we are preparing a new game for Lucca Comics & Games together with another editor here present. The second day we were guests in the space of roleplay editors, so Andrea could run some demos of Advanced Song of Blade and Heroes.

Wargame part is not so historical hardcore oriented as other convention where we go usually. Here there was a WH40K tournament: masses of mega tanks that shoot each other at 10cm distance…

Following, another tournament, with Flames of War: masses of historical tanks that shoot each other at 10cm distance…

Inside the tensile structure there was the two-dimensional wargame section. A place where cardboard pieces are positioned with tweezers.

Wings of War games. The author flew around the tables.

Lego imitators do what Lego have to do: historic Lego sets as Romans or WWII.

At this point Gundam kits is a modelling genre in and of itself.

There were some dioramas with German WWII theme full of details and with mixed settings. Really beautiful things!

More wargames were around. As more boargames and interesting things. This is only a partial report of what you can find in Modena Play. I hope to return here before another 5 years.

The end is nigh! The third Ganesha Games’ kickstarter is almost to its end. I remember you the new edition of MUTANTS AND DEATH RAY GUNS together with the add-on PROJECT SIMIAN ULTRA X. And the 14 new miniatures about mutants for this radioactive age, mostly humanoid apes mixed with flying squirrels.

With $30 you can obtain these 5 miniatures. But if you pledge $60 you can pick up your choice of 15 miniatures on ALL miniatures, EVEN UNLOCKED miniatures!

This one instead is free.

Quick, you have only 20 hours…