Sunday, June 30, 2013

Magic Realm: Day 1

A Magic Realm game lasts 28 game days.  In order to win, a player must, by the end of those 28 days, achieve his pre-selected victory conditions.  At the start of the game, each player assigns 5 points to their victory conditions.  In the case of my character, the Black Knight, I have assigned one point to Fame, three points to Notoriety, and one point to Gold.

The Black Knight starts the game at the Inn, the haunt of the unpredictable Rogues.  There are seven Rogues, too many for the Black Knight to vanquish single-handed.  Therefore, I use my four actions to travel into the Deep Woods (every Magic Realm character gets two actions per day, plus another two actions if the character stays in the outdoors for the entire day, for a total of four actions).


Normally, I'd have used one of my four actions to hide.  However, this is the first day of the game, so I take the chance that I'd encounter a monster unhidden (that's usually a bad thing).  If I perish on day 1, I can just re-spawn on day 2, losing only one day of adventuring.  At the start of the day, I roll to see which monsters are active: I rolled a 6, so the bats are active.  At the end of my four actions, the monster and treasure indicators are turned over, and we discover that the Deep Woods are the home to the Lair of the Tremendous Dragon as well as a Heavy Spider.  Neither monster appears this turn (I have placed them on the board so you can see which indicators they relate to) since only bats are active.

The Heavy Spider is an easily dispatched opponent of the Black Knight, and is worth a modest amount of Fame and Notoriety.  However, the Tremendous Dragon will make mincemeat of the Black Knight.  The Dragon's Lair contains 7 treasures, which is a nice-sized treasure site, but we're going to forego the opportunity for now, as we have Guards to defeat.

4 comments:

Mitchell F. said...

I'm really enjoying this series so far! I've always wanted to get into Magic Realm, but never had the time. Now I think I will! Good luck to your Black Knight!

Aaron E. Steele said...

Thanks, we'll see whether he can survive and win the game. Based on the proximity of several attractive locales and denizens, I think he has a fair chance of doing so.

CharlesDM said...

I've just discovered your blog, and I'm ecstatic over all of your Magic Realm posts! My brother and I wore out my copy of the game, and I much later purchased a second copy. I did not know there was a digital version, but I'll be downloading it soon. Thank you for such outstanding posts on a wonderful game!

Aaron E. Steele said...

The digital copy makes it so easy to play a game. And you can play it on a network on the internet, so its great for organizing a multi-player game.