Microgames: The Castle by Mayfair Games

Among microgames, those microgames published by Mayfair Games are the most obscure. 

Before the microgame market went bust, Mayfair Games published four microgames (Transylvania, Space Empires, I.C.B.M. and The Castle). 

I have already reviewed Transylvania, a fun little game of vampires and angry villagers.  The Castle, designed by Neil Zimmerer, has a style similar to Transylvania, with minimalist rules and and stylized counters. While Mayfair Games' The Castle shares some superficial similarities with SPI's Deathmaze and TFG's  Valkenburg Castle, two other excellent fantasy microgames, there are some interesting differences. 

The premise of The Castle is outlined above.  This microgame is basically a dungeon-crawl through a castle.  The goal: rescuing and escaping with the princess in order to collect a 1,000 gold piece reward.  This microgame can be played solitaire or competitively.

Like most Mayfair Games microgames, the ruleset is abbreviated.  The Castle rulebook is a slim volume of 8 digest-sized pages, but contains all the rules you need to play this game.

The Castle employs a fold-up mapboard.  The mapboard includes hallways, doors and rooms, through which the characters will travel.  At the top of the mapboard are tables, representing the combat abilities of the monsters appearing thoughout the map, with the associated damage those monsters inflict on the characters.

This microgame includes a sheet of counters, with the top row of counters representing the characters (Wizards, Clerics, Fighters and the Princess), gold counters representing treasure and items, and black counters representing monsters. 

Characters start with the number of hit points indicated on their counter:  6 for Wizards, 8 for Clerics, and 10 for Fighters. 

Monsters, too, start with the number of hit points on their counters: 2 for Bats, 3 for Goblins, 4 for Zombies, 6 for Gargoyles, and so on.

The gold treasure and black monster counters are turned face-down, and one of each is placed randomly in every room on the mapboard.  Thus, each room has a monster and treasure, but at the beginning of the game, you don't know what monsters and treasure occupy each room.

Your rescue attempt is complicated by the fact that the princess is being held in a locked cell.  In order to unlock the cell holding the princess, you must locate two of the six keys that are scattered amongst those face-down treasure counters. 

There are six keys, two of each of three types of keys: A, B, and Skeleton (S) keys.  You need a combination of those keys (AB, AS, BS, or SS) to unlock the cell holding the Princess.  Thus, this game is not simply about following the most direct route to the Princess, you must enter other rooms to locate those keys.

As you investigate the rooms of The Castle, you will encounter monsters.  This game employs a unique combat system: you roll one six-sided die, and that die roll determines the damage inflicted by both the character and the monster.

The number on the die roll represents how much damage the character inflicts upon the monster.  So if you roll a 5, you do 5 damage to the monster.  In order to determine how much damage the monster inflicts upon the character, you must consult the related monster table, printed on the mapboard, like the table above. 

In general, the lower your dice-roll, the more damage the monster will inflict.  For example, if you are battling the Behemoth and roll a 1, you inflict 1 damage to the Behemoth, while the Behemoth inflicts 3 damage on you.

Fantastic Treasures

Fantastic Treasures is a two volume catalogue of magical and mythological items from folklore and legend, printed in 1984 by Mayfair Games, under its Role Aids line of gaming supplements. Role Aids is an uneven line of supplements, with adventures like Evil Ruins and Lich Lords (both are decent) interspersed with less stellar fare.

The Fantastic Treasures catalogue includes several hundred magical items, each one paired to a black and white illustration. Even though Fantastic Treasures is, by definition, derivative, since it uses myth and folklore for its inspiration, it is the presentation of this catalogue that I find appealing. And i'm not just talking about the Boris Vallejo art that graces its two covers.

Paging through the AD&D Monster Manual, you will find most D&D monster descriptions accompanied by an illustration. That is never the case for magic items in the Dungeon Masters Guide. I can recall poring over the 1979 DMG, bewildered by such unfamiliar items as censers, periapts, phylacteries, and scarabs. Without an illustration, and therefore a mental image to draw upon, I found it difficult to describe those magical items to the players.

In contrast, each of the magical items described in Fantastic Treasures is accompanied by an illustration. Admittedly, unlike the mysterious periapts or a phylacteries, I don't need illustrations of thimbles, horseshoes, or boots, to visualize or describe those items. But there is something immediate and meaningful about seeing an artist's depiction of an item, even if you don't end up describing it as illustrated.

While some of you will be familiar with a broad cross-section of myth and folklore, you are bound to find several items in the Fantastic Treasures catalogue that are new to you. The usual suspects are included of course, like cloaks of invisibility, magical pendants and gems, musical instruments and the like, from Greek, Norse, Chinese legends. But some interesting and obscure African, Indian and frontier American items are also included: Paul Bunyon's Axe, anyone?

Perhaps I am drawn to this catalogue due to my own interest in the development of generic item and treasure cards. I appreciate these economical magical item descriptions, paired with perfectly serviceable illustrations. If only they came in card form!

Fantastic Treasures is a one of those gaming supplements that does something just a little bit different. While i've seen other magical item gaming supplements that claim to provide fresh magic items, few of their entries are accompanied by illustrations, and few items are truly campaign-ready, unlike the tried-and-true vanilla items from myth and folklore.

Collecting such a wide range of magical item tropes, and pairing each with an illustration, makes this supplement 'game-night ready'.