EPSILON GAMING FOR GEEKS
BEAstie-ary
example beastie
The slithering menace, the Blind Terror Snake!
beastie-ary
BASE SIZES
Beasties do not have a facing, they point all directions.
Beastie Single Attacc Example
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For example, the Blind Terror Snake has the single Attacc: '?: Wizards.'
This means that during his turn, the Blind Terror Snake will attempt to cast his Terror Zappy at the nearest Wizard. If there are no Wizards, the snake targets his Zappy at random. The Acidy Feat will only come into play only when the snake is attacked in Choppy Combat.
Beasties have the same STATS as Duckventurers with a couple of notable additions -
Each Beastie that the Duckventurers will encounter has a Type, which doesn't do much except group them together to form more coherent Rooms of stuff in Quests. It makes sense that a Room with one little rattie probably has more infestations of the rodent variety. The dread and fell Beasties of the Duckingdom are grouped alphabetically by Type (T) of Beastie, and then alphabetically within that.
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They have a Size (SZ) Stat which shows how many spaces on the board their base takes up.
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They have a meme-friendly Attacc (A) Stat which governs how they run around and kill stuff ... mainly Duckventurers. This can become tricky as it is simulating Beasties moving and attacking as if controlled by a Giant Duck in the Sky. The <Target> is the Class of Duckventurer that the Beastie will attack first. If no targets of that Class are available, or if the <Target> is 'All,' the Beastie will target another Duckventurer at random.
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Attacc can be -
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C - Choppy: <Target>
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S - Shooty: <Target>
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? - Special: <Target> (Zappies, Feats, Items etc.)
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... or a combination of all of them. Most Beasties only have a single Attacc.
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For their Action, C Beasties will immediately move maximum distance - usually 4 spaces - towards their target enemy and make 1 Attack.
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For their Action, S Beasties will immediately shoot their weapon at their target enemy, once.
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For their Action, ? Beasties will cast their Zappy or use their Feat against their target enemy. If the Feat or Zappy requires closer proximity to the target, the Beastie will move 4 spaces towards the target and then use their Feat or Zappy. Note that some Feats are passive and only have an effect when someone attacks the Beastie. For example, the Blind Terror Snake's Acidy Feat only activates when it is damaged, squirting a golden shower of acidy goodness over its attacker (giggle).
If a Beastie has multiple Attaccs and targets, things get more complicated. The first Attacc in their list is their main attack and the attack they will focus on, if a suitable target presents itself. Subsequent Attaccs activate if the target of the first Attacc is slain or runs away.
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Some unique Beasties and DBOIDs (Dark Bosses of Impending Doom) have a string of all three, plus other Special Rules, as listed in their Beastie-ary entry and on their cards. In super-complex cases we just give up with these mysterious code-words and write what happens on the card. Sometimes I just don't understand your freaky moon-language. These Beasties are monster-tough and need to be approached with care.
Beastie Multiple Attacc Example
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For example, the Mad Warp Rhino has a multiple Attacc: '?: Wizards, C: Priests.
This means that during his turn, the Rhino will attempt to cast his Warp-O Spell at the nearest Wizard. If there are no Wizards, the Rhino will charge the nearest Priest and attack in Choppy Combat. If the Rhino has gutted all the Priests like dead fish, it randomizes other Choppy Combat attacks.
BEASTIE-ARY HACK
Here's where the ultra-slick, over-produced, multi-million dollar hyphen-ated production values of Duck Wars all comes crashing down, as the entire production team is one old man and an 8-year-old, one of whom works and one of whom ha to attend primary school. You figure out which!
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If you take another look at the Blind Terror Snake example card above, you can see the kinda sexy card look we are going for, with cool parchment background, Sam writing the blurb and illustrating, it looks GREAT within our limited graphic design skills. BUT - we want people other than ourselves playing Duck Wars, there are about a MILLION Beasties and more on the way, vomited forth from the Small One's mind.
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So during the time when we are putting together individual cards for each Beastie, I have opened up the spreadsheet where we crunch the numbers, sharing it with the Whole Wide World (great film, by the way, with Vincent d'Onofrio as Robert E. Howard, and an amazingly young Renee Zellweger. Awesome stuff).
This is the canonical list of Beasties currently used in Duck Wars, the cards are reproductions with fluff. You can (hopefully) already sense the tone of Duck Wars, so let your imagination sing ... or send us an email ... if you need clarifications. All of the starter Quest Duckgeon Rooms that we are developing utilise this list alone, and please, feel free to design your own Rooms! As this is live, you might even see me bouncing around inside it, late at night, while I labour away until some beneficent bestows on us production $$$. I have done the same thing with Funkards, Snares and Duckventurers just to get all our stuff OUT THERE!
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Enjoy! Quack!
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Oooh, one last thing, every Beastie has a Type, and the Type letters stand for -
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A is for Animal. Everyone together now, children!
C is for Creep. These are kinda like mutants, with malformed bitz.
D are for evil, nefarious worshippers of Duckthulhu.
DE are Demons. 'Nuff said.
G are Ghosts, who are generally immaterial and cannot be attacked directly.
GU are Guardians, the mightiest of Duckthulhu's ancient warriors who are now petrified golems.
H are Hybrids, aka chimerae, any spliced critter like a Manticore or a Vast Goose Ogre.
M are Men. Beware, for all Men are evil. And really overpowered in a land of Ducks.
O are Oozes, in the hallowed and venerable D&D sense of the term. Who doesn't love an Ooze?
P are Pods, attacky plants that spray nasty things.
S are Spawn, in the Cthulhu sense of the word. Gibbering senseless things with too many eyes and tentacles.
UN are Unique. Generally BOIDs.
V are Vermin. Eee-eee-eee!
BEASTIE TYPES
A is for Animal. A-a-animal.
Blind Terror Snake
Heading 1
Cobalt Blaze Sheep
Mad Warp Rhino
Primitive Butcher Serpent
Demons (666-666-666, call now!)
Jazzhands Zappy Demon
Half-beast, half other beast, half a third beast. HYBRIDS!
Grumbly Tumbly Manticore
