The Day Itself! Playing the Mass in the Cauldron

 

Photos by @michaelcwiatrak_art

Well the day finally came! Yesterday we played The Mass in the Cauldron at Top Deck Games in West Philly. Ten players came with their freshest and stinkiest little greenskins (a flexible term, warbands included bears, cyborg orcs on nightmare beasts, cute hooded frog people, and some spectacular spider-riders) and clashed across four games of Cauldron, mutating, foraging, and finding fantastic relics along the way. I am still somewhat dazed after the event, but absolutely thrilled with how it all went. We had folks make the long journey from all over Philly and Jersey and the suburbs, and everyone stuck through all four games until the big finish! 

The calm before the storm

With ten players, we paired up in two games of two and two of three across the four boards. Thankfully Dellon (@whitetigertablecraft) though to add more treasure tokens for the boards with three players. I can only speak to the games that I played in (though I got tidbits from other players) but it really seemed that people were immersed and engaged in the whole undertaking right off the bat. The first game was designed to start a little more slowly, with rolls for special events only on Rounds 3 and 4, and a more generous selection of treasure tokens. Matt (@ierthling) brought his Frog Spam List (and very generously, frog minis for everyone he managed to turn into a frog) and did manage to turn my hero (Tuggles McSpink) into a frog and then kill him in the first game, though thankfully Tuggles made a Full Recovery after the game. 

Warbands started picking up mutations quickly, but as expected the Mass remained treacherous. I wrote a d12 check every time a model moved on the mass- after an initial move, the rule was just 'don't roll a 1'- but the rule added a lot of drama, as models would get quite high up on the Mass, and consequently face a lot of potential falling damage, if they rolled a 1... and this happened more than one might expect. I had my Beast (Wee Little Snax) and Troll (Dongle the Tongue) both fall off the Mass in Game 3. Snax died and dropped a treasure, which Dongle was happily able to grab in the aftermath. 

In Games 2 and 3, the Events started to really come into effect- sphincter-like holes opened in the Mass, swallowing up models and spitting them out mutated, or the whispering wind causing players to lose control of most of their warband for the rest of the game, or extra Creatures of the Mass emerging to defend it from the greedy invaders clambering all over it. Part of me wondered whether losing control of many characters was Not Fun for the folks who ran into it, but it seems everyone took it in stride. 

I also have to say I'm thrilled with how the custom Mutation, Foraging and Treasure tables played out. Players got very into foraging, finding tidbits like a Notorious Nugget (yum), a Throwable Hole, or a Hot Rock (read- radioactive) and Mass Moss. More of the sci-fi treasures started appearing- the Ray Gun, Jump Boots (which some characters had along with the Telekinesis mutation, making for a potent flying threat), or the Turbo Suction Device. 

Also huge thanks to Matt for being willing to do all the experience math and pair players- my brain was simply not up to the task after a few games of Cauldron! 

For the dramatic denouement, we paired all ten players into teams of two. Each team selected two models for the final game. We gathered around the highest board. From the mists of the Cauldron a strange building emerged- blue, tall, and covered with glowing signs for fast-food establishments. (If you go a little ways back on my IG, you'll recognize this building from my  Wanted! Reward 10,000 CR.  board (which is truly a spectacular game, go play it please)). 

Another day-of bit of brilliance was insisting on team names for the final game- we had Team Jump Boots, and Ray Liotta Fanboyz (both models had a Ray Gun) and a few other really great ones. The final game (Race for the Mushroom) was a struggle to get from ground level to the Interdimensional Mushroom token atop the Bizztro Eleganzza restaurant on the Mass. Since players had this very specific goal in mind, there was some strategic selection of models (biased toward speed, Jump Boots, and telekinesis)

The Mushroom atop the Bizztro

The game ended up delightfully unpredictable, with the Mass shaking off many of the models at one point, and three Autoturrets (one deployed by the bear mini) causing a variety of chaos. 

The bear deploys his Autoturret against a frog person

A spider rider clambers up the Bizztro. 

Eventually the spider rider reached the Mushroom, but failed his Brains check and was overwhelmed by the visions of the Mushroom. The Mass shook and lifted off, bearing the Bizztro into space. We paused to read off the dramatic conclusion: 

As the character’s mind struggles in the grasp of the Mushroom, they see a vision telling the story of the Mass. The Mass was lurking below the Cauldron for millennia, awaiting the moment to awaken and return to its star-brethren in the cosmos. It is one of thousands of vast cosmic beings which exist to ferry galactic fast-food establishments around the universe. Having lost its restaurant long ago in the mists of time, the Mass fell into a deep depression and fell into the Cauldron, while Bizztro Eleganzza blipped through time and space in search of its carrier. Sensing the Bizztro drawing near, the Mass awoke from its slumber. Guided by the Interdimensional Mushroom, the Bizztro returned to its rightful place. Now, it is time for the Mass to leave the Cauldron.

Playing in teams was a great way to wrap up the event (I was a husk of a person after three intense games)- thanks Matt for suggesting it. It was absolutely thrilling to see how engaged everyone was in the final game. 

The whole crew- note Jesse's Green Lung shirt (and James in a Castle Rat one too, hidden in back!)

I'm still processing the whole experience but it sure sounds like everyone had a lot of fun (I certainly did). I'm also thrilled to be part of a community of folks who'll get on board with spending an afternoon listening to my nonsense and engaging with this wild little narrative scenario I've dreamed up. Dellon and I are scheming about potentially publishing some of the scenario in future. The whole thing felt incredibly satisfying to do - having read and listened to a lot of info about narrative minis-based gaming, it was a thrill to just do it and have it succeed so well. Huge thanks to everyone who came out and played, and again to Matt for the brilliant editing and help moving the boards. I need to recover for a while, but I definitely want to do something like this again in future!

And now it's probably time to finish that scratch-built Ork Dreadnought I was working on back in June when I decided to put on this event.. that is, after I unpack and organize all the stuff from yesterday.... 

Thanks for reading and more soon! 

The Mass in the Cauldron pt. 9: Creatures of the Mass!

 As of today I'm exactly one week out from the event! Next Saturday is the big day..... so I think things are in a pretty good place in terms of preparation. The last few things are painting up a few more minis and then printing out all the packets. In the spirit of 'work with what you have,' I decided to use these absolutely brilliant Hieronymus Bosch miniatures by Andrew May. I'd backed them on Kickstarter a long time ago, and they'd been sitting unpainted, but they seem perfect for the weird, otherworldly, mutated beings I imagine inhabiting the Mass. Plus, as an art history dork, how could I possibly resist getting these? They felt too special to use for a long time, but I decided now was the moment. 

I have both sets of them (and it sounds like a 3rd set is in the works) so that's a total of 20 weird little guys. Right now I have twelve done, which is probably enough for the event itself, but I might try to jam out a few more this week while I'm in the mode of doing it. 

I'm really happy with the recipe I landed on for the bases- a strange teal housepaint I have left over, followed by black wash, then lime green, pink, and yellow drybrushing. The figures themselves get painted to a reasonable level of detail then drybrushed with ice yellow, which to my eye at least, hides many little errors and clumsy highlights underneath it. 

Very happy with how these look on the boards- I can't wait to see all of this stuff together and mixed up with a bunch of folks Cauldron warbands! 

The Mass in the Cauldron pt. 8- Layout! Graphic whatnot!

 

Quick little post- I've been traveling for the past week, but while sitting in airports, I've been working on layout for the event packet and flyer. I'm definitely not a graphic designer (I say this because I work with Real Graphic Designers) and most of what I make is 3D, but I enjoy the freedom of bashing together text and images now and again, especially when it's something quick and dirty like layout for a game event packet. I made up the flyer above to promote the event and tell folks what to prepare for the event. This one ended up being a much more all-over design, inspired by the layout of the Cauldron rulebook. 

I was thinking about doing this level of dense layout on all of the pages, but I quickly realized that would be a LOT, and kinda a headache to read on the day of the event. So, I decided to run with making a dedicated header for each of the games, and for each of the tables. I'm about 70% of the way through this- just a few more tables to go- but this was a decent compromise. Fundamentally I'd rather spend my time building terrain and painting minis. I don't spend as much work-time on the computer as a lot of folks have to, but I still don't find myself very enthused about spending extra time unless needed. 

Work gives me access to the Adobe Creative Suite, and I'm used to working with these tools for art purposes. I briefly debated doing all of the layout in InDesign, but honestly that's a program I'll only touch if I have to.. I haven't made my peace with it (ask me about putting together a 900-page tenure dossier in InDesign- actually, please don't). 

So I settled on knocking together headers in Photoshop and Illustrator, then just doing the layout in Google Docs (I know, clunky, but that's where I'm writing). A little finagling with font, margins and indents and these are passable for a one-day event. I wanted to keep the instructions for each game to two pages, and I more or less succeeded there. 

I do try to be good about using stuff that's in the public domain for the images I sample- my default is Wikimedia Commons, though I know there are a lot of other good sources out there. I decided to keep this to black and white for graphic simplicity, and also because getting anything printed in color is expensive and a hassle in my world. I like to search for engravings and drawings because they're already simplified graphically. For these headers I didn't run them through posterizing filters, though I'll do that sometimes to get a little more edge/simplicity. Here just tweaking the brightness/contrast is enough. 

Honestly the amount of great old engravings is such a treasure trove for me, and I end up discovering all kinds of neat stuff as I'm poking around. The other fun thing about graphic design-adjacent work is the ability to just tweak and adjust proportions and relationships so quickly and freely. This kind of intuitive fiddling isn't possible in making sculpture (at least usually for me) so it's fun to just be able to adjust immediately and tweak stuff. 

Got a few more of these to get done, but I'm feeling the pressure to get the next round of NPC minis painted- I have exactly two weeks from today to get all of this done. I'm feeling OK about where I am now but no time to dilly-dally. Next up- the Creatures of the Mass NPCs!