Styles

2021-06-24

Strategy & Sorcery: A board game for Dragonlance characters

Inspired by the in-universe tabletop games Khas and Wizards & Warriors, I wanted to provide something chess-like for my players (mostly mage ones).

Thus, Strategy & Sorcery.

Strategy & Sorcery

The game can either be played with two players (each being with their pieces on opposite sides), or three players (each begin with their pieces on sides opposite to the two others --- in other words no player starting side can touch another player's).

The board is a circular one, composed of three outer rings, and one central hexagonal-shaped board of hexagons.


The outer rings correspond to the phases of each moon, Solinari (with 36 boxes), Lunitari (with 28 boxes) and Nuitari (with 8 boxes). Each moon is represented as a colored marble, and will move in their related rings, each time their player starts its turn.

The hexagonal board (currently an hexagon composed of smaller hexagonal boxes, whose side's size is equal to 7 boxes) is the battlemap, where the pieces of the players will be set.

Each player must choose a color, place the marble in its starting point, then its pieces.

Among the pieces, there are two towers, two knights, two priestesses, two enchantresses, two assassins and the strategist, plus a certain number of soldiers. Each piece has its own move, its attack, and its vulnerability. The strategist is the less mobile, and its attack is the weaker, but spells are cast from its position.

The player can also cast spells, spending from a limited pool of ingots (suitably colored), these spells being able to affect either the board, the moons, or even the pieces, as long as the target is within range of the strategist.

A player loses when their strategist is removed from the board.

The last player remaining on the board wins.

It is quite possible to end in a status quo, with either two, or even three, players remaining on the board, if all the remaining players agree on it, or if the same pattern of movement is repeated once by every remaining player.

D&D5 Rules

There's no way I can create a tabletop of fantasy pieces in 5 minutes. But I can write rules that enable a D&D5 characters to play the game:

  • Each player starts with a number of board points equal to 5, plus their Intelligence bonus, plus their proficiency bonus
  • Each round, a player can attack by rolling Investigation or Arcana (player's choice)
  • The player with the lesser result loses 1 board point, and an additional 1 board point if they scored a natural 1, and an additional one for each 20 rolled by their opponents.

A player with zero or less board points loses their strategist.

If at any moment, all the remaining players are at 2 or less hit points, then it is considered a stalemate for the remaining players.

Else, the last player remaining on the board wins the game.

Conclusion

For the Test of one of my mage players, I needed a chess-style game where they would try to win against the "ghost" of an old mage, to get access to specific informatio.

But I needed this to not be chess, and instead being a fantasy/dragonlance-themed chess-like game. And having one with D&D-style fantasy pieces, being biased toward mages, and the moon of Krynn is the way to go, at least for me.

Feel free to use, adapt, comment, and propose alternatives.

I'm actually interested both in real game rules, as well as alternative D&D5 rules for a fast mental combat between characters.

P.S.:

By the way, this is loosely inspired by chess, but also the Khas and the Wizards & Warriors games. If  you want to know more about them, I advise you to read:

Amber & Ashes (Margaret Weis): Where and Death Knight spends a lot of time over a Khas board, until the heroes arrive to save... a Khas piece.

Brothers Majere (Kevin Stein): Where Raistlin and a mysterious noblewoman called Shavas, play a game called Wizards & Warriors, while trying to outsmart each other.

😊

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