First Time Running: Pathfinder 2e Remaster Beginner Box

I've been playing Pathfinder 2e since shortly after it first released, but not felt any particular urge to run it until I got invited to play the Beginner Box adventure, Menace Under Otari, in a streamed game. After a couple of weeks of playing with some complete beginners it dawned on me that I actually know the rules of PF2 reasonably well, and between that and around 15 years of GMing experience, there was no reason I couldn't give it a go myself.

I kicked off with one of the pre-remaster Free RPG Day adventures, A Fistful Of Flowers, an adorable one-shot about a group of leshies out searching for some missing members of their community. That went OK, so I decided to dive in, pick up my own copy of the Beginner Box, and run the adventure at MK-RPG.

What's In The Box?

You get a lot for your money in the box. The two softcover rulebooks cover a lot in a small space.

The hero's handbook has all the basic rules you need for getting started, plus a guide to character creation. This is all heavily cut down from the core rules - the only classes are fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric, and only go up to level 3, while the ancestries include human, elf and dwarf. The actual character creation rules are somewhat altered. While it's possible, using the core rules, to make a character who's completely useless at their key abilities by making really stupid choices, these cut down rules ensure that you get a character with at least a +3 modifier in their class stat who's going to be generally competent at what they do.

Not that you need to use these rules, as there are also pre-made characters in the box - level 1 versions of Valeros the fighter, Merisiel the rogue, Ezren the wizard and Kyra the cleric. These custom character sheets have an additional sheet to explain what everything means, with letter codes for easy reference, have a picture of the arrow symbols PF2 uses to tell you how many actions something takes, and a colour picture of the different dice, which corresponds to the colours of the dice set that's also in the box.

Then there's the reference card. This sums up how dice rolls work, gives you a list of the most common actions like Strike and Stride with their action costs, and has a section to put action and reaction tokens for an easy way to keep track of what you've used on your turn. On the back are descriptions of some of the most common conditions. In short, a handy quick reference of the stuff you need most often without having to hand the book around.

The GM's guide has the adventure Menace Under Otari, as well as some solid advice on GMing generally and how to make your own adventures, and a selection of low level monsters and magic items suitable for level 1-3 characters. It also recommends Troubles In Otari, a set of adventures that directly follow on from Menace Under Otari and should be playable with just the beginner box rulebooks.

There's a set of punched cardboard sheets, which have the aforementioned action and reaction tokens, along with character and monster pawns (plus the little plastic stands to make them stand upright on the battle board). The four iconics are there, plus various ancestry/class combinations for people who chose to use the character creation rules instead, all the monsters you need to run Menace Under Otari and all the other monsters mentioned in the GM's guide. Where there are multiples of the same monster (such as goblins and kobolds) each one has a coloured mark so you can easily keep track of which is which in a fight.

Finally there's a flip-mat, one of Pathfinder's folding battle boards, depicting the Menace Under Otari dungeon. In short, everything I needed to run this adventure was included. I added just two things - a GM screen, and a print-out of the guide to levelling up to level 2 for each character, as we were on a time limit and wanted everyone to be able to level simultaneously and not have to pass the book around.

Running The Game

I was able to get four players for the game. One was my husband who's also experienced in PF2. The others had all played various versions of D&D before but were all new to PF2. With all the basics laid out on the character sheets and the reference cards, I didn't have much explaining to do, and we were able to dive in pretty quick.

The adventure is a fun dungeon crawl in its own right, but where it really shines is in the way it teaches the rules. The first fight is just a straight up fight - nothing special, just a chance to use those Stride, Strike and Cast A Spell actions and get the feel of how the system works. Then comes a skill challenge, where we dig a little into the actions associated with each skill and learn how using equipment can sometimes affect difficulty classes. Each new fight introduces a new concept: conditions, enemies with resistances and weaknesses, enemies who use tactics, etc. and a variety of traps, puzzles and other curios round things out nicely.

By the end of the adventure, the players had a solid grasp on how PF2 works, and I'm pretty sure 2/3 of the new players were sold on the system (the other seemed to be firmly in the 'D&D 5e is the best game ever' camp, but at least he gave it a go.) Just as importantly, the gradual introduction of new mechanics meant that I also learned as we played. The adventure spells everything out very clearly, advising on how certain monsters will use their special abilities. While it can't possibly account for everything players might do, there were only a few moments when I found myself having to think on my feet to come up with a ruling for unusually creative actions.

And by the end we were getting some really fun moments facilitated by the rules. It was great to see effective use of Demoralise to frighten a boss monster, Reposition to throw an enemy off a cliff, and much to my surprise, Deception (plus a magic item) to disguise the fighter as the dead boss monster, leading to a fight with an enemy who literally didn't see them coming.

Having completed this adventure I feel confident in my ability to run PF2, and am thoroughly looking forward to running more of it, both my own adventures and published material.

In short, job done.

Longcon 2024

Longcon is a revival of an older Garrison convention, where the premise is that rather than playing different games in five gaming slots across the weekend, you spend the full weekend playing one long game. An initial attempt to revive it in 2023 didn't work out, but with much more notice for potential players to get it onto the schedule, 2024 went ahead.

This was a very small convention, smaller than any other Garrison convention I've been to. Nevertheless I managed to meet up with a few regulars in the bar on Friday night. We talked about the games, and I explained that I knew almost nothing about the game I was about to play, except that it was based on a TV show I hadn't seen (Justified), but I was pretty sure that we were going to do crime.

Day 1

The game I'd signed up for was Copperhead County, a FITD game that the author calls "a Southern noir game about organized crime and political corruption in a fictional slice of present-day Tennessee". We kicked off with character creation. I picked the Cleaner, supposedly the brains of the operation, although once we'd done stats I was pretty much the designated face. Loretta the Cleaner was joined by Johnny Bob the Brick and Axle the Mover.

The story began with the three of us coming back into town, five years after the raid that destroyed our operation, to attend the funeral of our former boss who died in prison. Like most FITD games we'd all created a few NPCs during character creation, so Loretta's first meeting was with her old friend Milton the bartender, who'd given her a job when she first came to town, still wearing her wedding dress after ditching her fiancé at the altar. It soon became apparent that Copperhead County had become a much worse place since we'd fled the raid, and by the end of the funeral we'd decided that the three of us were going to have to do something about it.

Cut to a few weeks later. We'd managed to make ourselves unpopular with basically everyone except a local biker gang. We'd carved out a bit of space to sell weed, but what Johnny Bob really wanted was a meth lab. Which also meant we needed a meth cook, as you don't want to go messing with meth if you don't know what you're doing.

Johnny Bob had found a meth lab out in the woods run by the Mountain Mafia, and while it was pretty well guarded, we reckoned we could take it. We went in at night, but before we could start, we actually found the meth cook. He was trying to escape, but also wanted to help his sister, who was still imprisoned in the lab, and also revenge on all of them. We were happy to help in exchange for him coming to work for us instead, and in we went.

Loretta set up her sniper rifle, aiming to pick off a few guards while drawing them away from the lab while the others crept round the other side. That didn't exactly happen. Instead there was gunfire from the other side of the site, and Loretta had to go running, pursued by guards. Some of them got taken out by the explosives trap she'd set up in advance, but then it turned out whoever had shot at her had also set up a bunch of land mines.

Several explosions later, the pursuing guards were all dead but Loretta was unconscious with serious burns. Things weren't going well at the other end either, with Johnny taking serious injuries in the gunfight. Axle ended up being the one to save the day, setting two guards on fire and getting out completely unharmed.

Our next mission was a society party, where Loretta entirely failed to roll well on her social skills, Johnny ended up having a rather disturbing encounter in the bathroom, and Axle once again ended up saving the day. Quote of the weekend: "Why does she have so many sex knives?"

Trouble came looking for us after that, with Loretta's ex fiancé showing up trying to blackmail her into going back to him, plus the ongoing developments as we learned someone in the background was very determined to screw over the three of us and take over our operation. We ended with us teaming up with our biker friends for an assault on the Mountain Mafia, who were annoyed about us stealing their meth lab, aided by a rocket launcher Axle had bought off the dark web. Turns out, when all you have is a rocket launcher, every problem looks like a target.

Overall I think Copperhead County is a well put together game, doing a great job of  reworking the Blades in the Dark concept into a modern day real world setting. My character's special abilities felt fun and thematic, the actions were easy to understand and use, and the XP triggers were fun to discuss at the end of each of the three sessions. It's well worth checking out, even if, like me, you never watch this kind of TV show, as the playbook will guide you in how to make the genre work.

To me, its only issue is FITD itself. Particularly when you're a new character, your chances of rolling 6s are low, meaning the chances of things constantly getting worse are high. It's the kind of downward spiral more commonly associated with horror games like Call of Cthulhu, which can make it really difficult to think of yourself as a badass criminal when everything you do ends up blowing up in your face.

So overall I'm thoroughly impressed with Copperhead County, but do expect starting characters to struggle as much here as they do in any other FITD game.

Day 2

While the intentions was to play the same game across five slots, the GM normally only does one day of Garrison conventions and knew there was a chance he wouldn't be able to run on day 2. We'd agreed in advance that if he had to drop out, I'd take over, so on Sunday morning I pulled out the contingency plan: Starforged.

I picked Starforged partly because it requires no preparation beyond some printing, and partly because as a game with a GMless mode, I'd still get to play. So Johnny Bob became Cowboy the hotshot pilot, Axle became Cleric the battlefield medic, and Loretta became Pyro the psionicist. Based on my previous experiences with Starforged I also gave everyone +1 to one stat, and had us all pick a starship module in addition to the one extra asset you get at character creation. In a short game like this it's common for the ship modules to see very little use, which can be disappointing if that's the asset you picked. This way everyone had a path or companion, but we still had some fun stuff for the brief time we did spend on the ship.

Cowboy had picked Courier as his path so it made sense to do a courier mission. He told us we were transporting a case of DNA samples, and we randomly generated the Jovian planet Zephyr, with a toxic atmosphere and constant megastorm. The journey there was pretty quiet, but our descent into atmo rapidly became exciting when we encountered a space pufferfish with mental control powers, which initially took over the ship's AI causing it to do nothing but sing Taylor Swift songs. Its influence rapidly spread across the crew itself, and ultimately we ended up losing control and crashing onto the planet.

From then we had a journey through some caves, meeting a giant spider along the way, before making it to the settlement which rapidly turned out to be some kind of cult to Taylor Swift. We had to take the samples to a professor, but he was out on the research farm, so we asked to borrow a vehicle. They agreed, on the condition that we get it out of the shed ourselves, which first meant clearing out the infestation of acid blooded cave worms.

The journey out to the farm was pretty smooth, and we even got some help from the local wildlife, which by this point we assumed everything was about to go horribly wrong. And it was, as we arrived to realise what they were farming here was people, the case we were carrying was a ruse, and the real DNA samples we were delivering was ourselves.

We fled, fighting off the guards that pursued us, back to the settlement, with Taylor Swift playing from all the enemy vehicles. We took a few injuries, but managed to Shake It Off. We knew there'd be Bad Blood for not finishing the delivery so we threw the case out of the vehicle as we went, and then dived back into the cave systems. We got our ship repaired and took off, smashing straight through the injured space pufferfish which went off like a burst balloon, taking out all the enemy ships as we left atmo and swore never to visit that planet again. Cowboy decided to quit the courier business. But at least we got a nice hover skiff out of it.

Starforged is absolutely the game I would recommend for a situation like this when you don't know how long you're playing for, if at all, or how many players you're going to have. I did no prep and it all just worked. I'm lucky enough to have both the asset deck and the reference guide, which make things a bit smoother at the table. For each player I printed a character sheet, and a double sided page with adventure moves on one side and combat moves on the other, as those are the ones people are regularly referring to. Based on this game, I would also add a single copy of the exploration moves, as we used those quite a lot. For the rest, we passed the reference guide around.

Reflections

This was a great opportunity to play things like FITD games with downtime phases that you normally never get to do in a one-shot, to create a character and then get to stay with them for hours, to play without the pressure to wrap things up in a single session.

There are some minor downsides. With everyone being in one group all weekend you don't get to see much of the other players outside your group, not even at meal times since the games don't have set slots. I did miss some of the social aspect of conventions, and other than the people in my group and those I saw in the bar, I'm not really sure who else was there.

While for that reason I wouldn't want this as my only con, it's a fantastic addition to the usual convention offerings. I'd definitely like to add this to my annual convention schedule and I'm already starting to think about what I could potentially run next year.

Wicker Valley, episode 39: Finale

We had a quick look around Uncle Dwyer's cabin. We found several PS5s - he always did enjoy scalping in every sense of the word. His bookshelves held several first edition copies of Mein Kampf, all of which strangely disintegrated the moment Elizabeth got there them, an autobiography of Donald Trump, and a pretty detailed book on skin removal, which I kept for future reading. Not that I plan on taking up the hobby, but it's always useful to know what my family are up to.

There was nothing else useful though, and we needed to get back to Wicker Valley and get a few hours of sleep before everything went down. Elizabeth had a message from her coven requiring her to meet up with them at lunchtime, which didn't exactly give us much time. On the way, Eddie had a vision, and it wasn't good. A giant gargoyle, perching on the roof of the church, protecting Wicker Valley while the rest of the world was going to ruin around it. Of course, Michael still had the coin of Phylaxis, and it seemed he was talking to both Michael and Eddie now.

I met the others at the museum the next morning, with a big flask of espresso. We needed to find Alabaster, and scrying with our new map of the town seemed like the fastest way. We soon tracked him down to what Michael and Eddie recognised as his mum's house. Time to pay a visit.

First though, Elizabeth's phone was buzzing with messages from her coven asking where she was, so I teleported us to the meeting place. Which was the entrance to the fae court, of course. Which did give me the chance to have a chat with Jeeves, and find out exactly what the terrible weapon the fairies had that was so scary it caused my Uncle Dwyer, not exactly a nervous skin-flaying demon, to allow himself to be possessed by the Darkness. It was Michael.

Of course it was Michael. Michael the chosen one, with his divine protector who'd been teaching him how to fight. I tried to convince Jeeves that the war didn't need to happen now, because we'd already dealt with the demon problem, but that didn't change anything for them. That just meant that they were going to win.

He wanted me to bring Michael over straight away, and made some pretty tempting offers, but as I reminded him, when it comes to temptation, I'm a pro. And I told him how they were being manipulated by the chaos orb, and none of this plan was under their control. He didn't seem to think this changed anything, as stopping the orb would require a child of Merlin to create the magical rings needed to bind it. I had no intention of telling the fae any more than I had already, and just said that I could be extremely resourceful when required. I negotiated us 24 hours to sort things out, and managed to get Elizabeth back as well.

We all met up again outside Alabaster's mum's house, and knocked and asked to see him, but she wouldn't let us in. So I teleported to him, and threw my arms around him, with the intention of teleporting him somewhere more useful to us, but that didn't work, as somehow we ended up right outside his house again, and a moment later he'd gone back inside. Without opening the door.

I wasn't sure what that was all about, but I did know something else. When I'd teleported to him, it wasn't to the house, but one of the old warehouses. We came up with an idea for a trap. I'd do the same thing again, this time taking Michael with me so that Alabaster wouldn't realise I was doing the same thing again, and Elizabeth would be waiting to spring a magical trap when he came back to the house.

Except that didn't happen. I lost Michael somewhere in the teleport and didn't land where I intended. So that plan was a loss. But we had a much better idea of where to actually find Alabaster now, so I texted the others and we met up at the warehouses.

Adam set up outside with his rifle - I think he was still excited about it from shooting those giant centipedes in the Darkness - and me, Elizabeth and Eddie went in. We had tasers, provided by Elizabeth, along with very specific instructions about what part of his anatomy we should aim for. Which I promptly forgot about, deploying my bag of demons instead. Kevin popped out in a little ball of fur, and while I'm not entirely sure what he did to Alabaster, he was certainly enjoying himself.

Meanwhile Elizabeth, who I'd expected to completely lose it at this point, threw herself at Alabaster with her knife. I thought she'd missed for a moment, but then realised she'd actually cut off a bag he had on his belt, which became visible once she'd taken it away from him.

Fortunately Eddie was on the ball and deployed his taser. And with Alabaster temporarily paralysed, I cast the same binding spell we'd been planning on using earlier. I put everything I had into it, and didn't just stop him moving, but managed to bind his nastier magical talents at the same time.

We also found Michael, who'd landed almost on target, in a cupboard. Elizabeth let him out, and I don't know why she felt the need to destroy the door with magical entropy rather than just opening it, but it did have an interesting result when some of the flakes of ash landed on Alabaster and made him scream.

I turned on my full Voice of Temptation and started asking questions. He didn't seem to think much of Elizabeth's requests regarding tasers, but I pointed out that was just what she wanted us to do, and that she had much bigger plans. Especially since I was pretty sure she was a lich now. It didn't take long to establish that a) the chaos orb was inside the bag Elizabeth had taken from Alabaster and b) there was no way to open that bag without being Alabaster. Which was a problem, but so were the horrifying wraiths that the orb was summoning up around us.

Not one of my finer moments. I ran in terror, completely forgetting everything else in that moment, just blindly trying to get away. But then there was the sound of running feet behind me, and a moment later Michael had caught up with me. He held me and kissed me, and suddenly all the fear melted away in the flames dancing in his eyes.

He told me he loved me, and all I could think of was a quote from some old movie. "Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!" And we were going to save the Earth, I realised. We ran back to the others, calling to Elizabeth to give me the bag. She threw it, I caught it, and teleported to the junk yard to shove it into the oubliette.

After that it was just a lot of cleaning up. By the time I got back to the others, the wraiths were already gone and Alabaster was looking defeated. Elizabeth used her entropy power to drain the magic out of him. We didn't know if that was going to be a permanent solution, and in any case we certainly couldn't trust him. But I did happen to know of a demon prison, and I couldn't help thinking Uncle Dwyer would be interested to meet the person at least partly responsible for his recent poor choices. This was not the time for a risky teleport though, so instead we had an extremely awkward drive out to the slate mine.

Then it was back to the fae court to make sure that they were calling off the war, and introduce them to Eddie who was going to be making the binding rings. And between his magical skills and the antimagic of Adam's oubliette, the orb was bound once more.

*****

So that was all five years ago, and a few things have changed around here. Adam's given up the junkyard and has moved into classic car restoration. He's got several projects on the go, and keeps assuring us that one day he will actually finish one. Michael's doing freelance work for him, giving the cars decorative paint jobs.

Elizabeth's moved into Wicker Valley properly at last, and has opened a shop on the high street selling crystals and other new age type stuff. We knew there was a market for it from a previous timeline when Aunty Agnes had a shop here, and she's doing well. Eddie's been travelling, learning as much as he can about his magical heritage, in between keeping the museum up and running. Compared to the demonic fire of my magic and the necromantic chill of Elizabeth's, it's extraordinary to see a talent so perfectly balanced. No wonder he made everything better.

Arthur still drops by to see us, although his family's kept him pretty busy. And talking of family, Robin also came by. Riding his bike, alongside his best friend, who never got killed in this timeline, and his partner and child. Of course he didn't know who any of us were, but it was good to see him happy.

Then of course there's the big change. Last year, after a lot of planning and working out contingencies for all kinds of supernatural mishaps, Michael and me got married. We got the museum licensed for weddings, and held it there. His mum wanted it to be at the church, of course, but I already knew I was inviting Rusty and it's not a good look at a wedding for the bride's brother to spontaneously combust. Elizabeth asked to be a bridesmaid, and wanted to wear a black dress. We compromised on purple.

And I've made one more change - my job. I knew I couldn't work at the Wicker Stop forever, so I've been training as a therapist. If there's one thing this town needs, it's someone who can help with trauma, especially the supernaturally induced kind. I'm told I have a remarkably soothing voice and a real talent for getting clients to open up to me, and should have my accreditation in no time.

But Wicker Valley is still Wicker Valley. We dealt with the chaos orb, but between fairies, demons, witches, and every other kind of what Adam still calls 'weird bollocks', strange things still happen here and people still need help. And when they do, our team is ready.

Wicker Valley, episode 38: Catching up with the uncles

With everything calming down again it was time to follow the problem to its source - my uncles. Michael had tracked down Uncle Dwyer to a remote cabin where you could supposedly book events, although no events seemed to ever take place there. It was an unsettling drive. Even though I don't seem to have any physical problems with the stuff any more, sitting in a van full of anti-demon supplies was still rather uncomfortable. It was quite a relief to arrive.

We scouted out the building, approaching from different sides to see what was going on. I saw my uncle Dwyer, busy about some kind of arcane practice with a magic circle and everything, while Uncle Mac was stuck to a wall and didn't seem to be enjoying it. We regrouped, reported back, and then I teleported into the kitchen to scout inside.

My wings were the now familiar swirl of feathers as I teleported out, but when I arrived inside they were back to the old leathery bat wings. Odd. I'd been warned of something snoring near the back door, and I could hear it inside as well. Two somethings, at least, maybe more. Definitely more, in fact, when I got closer. I had just enough time to take a photo and teleport out.

Hell hounds, we all agreed outside as we looked at the pictures. We were going to have to deal with them, preferably not in a confined space. And there was another issue. The place had been warded. A pretty hefty ward, meant to keep out everything except demons.

We lured the hell hounds outside for an absolutely brutal fight. By the end we were in serious need of patching up, and I even allowed Elizabeth to do some of her spicier healing magic on me, it was that bad. Hopefully that scar will give Eddie something to talk about at parties for years to come. We were also covered in hell hound bits, and we wondered if that would allow the non-demonic team members to bypass the wards.

It didn't. So I went in and dismantled the wards, knowing that this would absolutely alert Uncle Dwyer to our presence, but it had to be done.

You know, I'd never thought about it before, but it turns out that demons can be possessed. Especially if the demon in question is dumb enough to invite the possessing entity inside. Good thing I'd been reading up on banishments in alternate timeline me's grimoire. I kicked that thing right out of him. Uncle Mac made a run for it. I'm not sure what happened to Michael. Passing out and having weird visions isn't unheard of for him recently but this seemed a bit different.

Fortunately Elizabeth managed to locate the evil book that was responsible. My claws did nothing to it, and Michael's magic knife was equally useless. Then we realised that the problem was that we were all still inside the house, which was suppressing anything non-demonic. We all went outside and shredded that book.

So my idiot uncle's been stopped, and dropped off at one of the family's 'secure facilities' to think about what he's done. Which means there's hopefully just one other player left in this game: Alabaster.

Wicker Valley, episode 37: Bugs

We were a bit injured after the centipede fight. I don't what Adam and Elizabeth were up to as they attempted to heal each other, but there seemed to be some kind of argument involved. I ignored them, and called on my magic to heal Eddie.

It wasn't long after we convinced the centipede to leave that Michael showed up. I'm not entirely sure how, but I'm pretty sure he was holding a magic flower and wearing a chainmail shirt he definitely didn't have before. Apparently someone thought it was more important for him to show up to help us in the darkness than to keep him out of it. And now we were sure that the way the darkness siphoned power was at least partly through hurting people. We were going to have to protect as many of the villagers as we could.

The darkness was bigger than it had been on the previous incident, and was covering more of the town than we were expecting. We got into Vanessa and towed the floodlight into the middle of the village to try to lure the creatures away from the people with the lights. Then we had to go into the houses.

We couldn't rescue them all. Some of them were already dead. But some we managed to get to in time, and kill the creatures threatening them before getting them out of the mass of sticky web. I had Elizabeth enchant my claws before we went in and I'm glad she did.

Then Adam and Elizabeth came up with an idea. We were fighting giant bugs, which were attracted by light. Could we make a giant bug zapper?

Eddie, Elizabeth and me took Vanessa to the allotments and got out a lot of copper wire that Adam had in there for some reason. We set up a circle, connected it to the metal fence around the allotments, and began the ritual. Elizabeth acted as the focus, channelling her lightning magic into the fence, while I added my own power and Eddie balanced the flows. Once again nobody caught fire. At least, nobody we didn't want to catch fire. Once the bugs realised what we were doing, they attempted to disrupt things, but Eddie and me fought them off so that Elizabeth could hold her focus.

At last it was coming to an end, and instead of darkness above us we began to see stars. Michael and Adam came back from where they'd been continuing the rescue effort. I had to concentrate on helping Eddie recover from some nasty injuries, so it took me a while to notice that Michael was a bit subdued after the fight. When I did, I then spotted the hole in his chainmail where one of the centipede's stingers must have got through. Even as I was watching, a few more links disintegrated. I managed to convince him to lift up the shirt and let us have a look, and then called on my magic once again to purge the poison out of him. I'd seen some nasty things that day, but that had to be the worst.

Not the worst thing for Elizabeth though.That would be when Alabaster showed up and thanked us for dealing with some of his competition. He didn't stick around long, but it was long enough for Elizabeth to yell at him for killing her. Which Eddie didn't know about, I then realised, and I explained that that's why I keep calling her a lich.

So now we were going to end up having to deal with Alabaster as well as with Uncle Dwyer. We gave Eddie the brief run-down on Alabaster, since that had all happened in a different timeline. The funny thing is, looking back, Alabaster was actually a good influence on me. He really helped me work through some things. This timeline's version of him seems to have taken a different path though. I think we might actually have to kill him.

Wicker Valley, episode 36: Ley Lines

We had some idea what the darkness was now. Basically hoovering up power wherever it touched down. And we'd been tipped off by the fae that it would be a very bad idea if Michael were to end up in its path so he was temporarily relegated to research duty while the rest of us prepared to go in.

We had some idea where it was going to touch down next. A small village with a neighbouring caravan park. I suggested we book a holiday. But there was something else. There was a pattern to the thing's movement. It seemed to be following lines but not entirely straight lines. And it dawned on us that Rusty had been following up on ley lines running into Wicker Valley. It was time to pay my brother a visit.

Rusty was living in Manchester, so we piled into Vanessa and drove down. He'd picked a pretty rough area to live in, and the block of flats didn't smell too great. He had taken the trouble to draw an extra 6 on his front door so that it read 666, and frankly I was annoyed at how much that amused me. We knocked at the door, and got sucked into his real apartment, which was obviously a lot nicer. The others asked me why I didn't have one of those on my home. Honestly it seems a bit pretentious.

Rusty wasn't happy to see us. I think we'd interrupted something. He took us out again to a pub. I ordered what he was having. Thankfully nobody else thought that was a good idea. Demonic beverages can be pretty weird. He invited me to a party with a few of the family, coincidentally at around the time when Wicker Valley might be being engulfed by the darkness, and suggested that we shouldn't interfere if we enjoyed having skin.

That was actually pretty useful, as it narrowed things down to some of my more skin-removing focussed uncles, so I downed my drink, sneezed out a few snowflakes (like I said, demonic beverages can be weird), and we left him to whatever mayhem he was up to. Time to check in on my uncles. Fortunately it's pretty easy to find demons these days as they're all on the internet. Uncle Mac and Uncle Dwyer were both active on social media, posting all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories while claiming that only true friends would share them. Uncle Dwyer had gone unusually silent of late.

First though we had to deal with the imminent touchdown of the darkness in the village. Research had told us that magic weapons would be useful against the creatures within it, as would my own claws, and light would be a valuable defense. Adam got online and rented a portable spotlight, the kind used for late night sports games, while Elizabeth and me enchanted some weapons.

The caravan park was easy enough to deal with. Reporting a severe weather warning convinced the caretaker to get all the other residents off site. Nothing we could do about the village though. Adam set up the spotlight and got ready with a rifle. And down it came.

The spotlight worked well, as did the road flares Adam had brought along. But it did attract one of the creatures - some kind of enormous centipede that wrapped itself around the light. Fortunately with our enchanted weapons we were able to deal with it, although not before taking some significant injuries. That thing was poisonous.

Battle Boards

Most of the games I run don't use battle boards. If I use a map in a game it's more likely to be a Google map than a dungeon map. But with my newfound enthusiasm for Dragonbane, plus my increasing confidence with Pathfinder 2e, battle boards are suddenly a thing I need to look at. So after some exhaustive research, here's my thoughts on what's out there.

Chessex Megamat

The gold standard in battle boards. We've got one at home and I can't even tell you how old it is. The friend whose house we game at keeps his permanently on the gaming table. These things are great, and basically last forever. They're also some of the biggest battle boards around. No fear of running out of space on these things. They won't mind if you spill food on them, and so long as you stick to black and blue markers and stay away from pink and red, they're easy to clean up.

There's only two reasons you'd ever want to use anything else: appearance, and portability. They're functional but not very pretty, and I will outline some more decorative options further down. And being so big, they're not easy to transport. Ours is 34"/86cm long when rolled up, and that's not a good size if you need to take it on a bicycle, or carry it on public transport. So I'll also look at some more portable options.

Loke Book of Battle Mats

If the Chessex mat isn't pretty enough, take a look at the next biggest name in battle boards: Loke. When we want a bit of generic scenery like a forest or a castle ruin but can't be bothered with drawing it all on the megamat, the Giant Book of Battle Mats gets pulled out, we select a suitable page, and off we go. Add a set of static clings, and we have some really pretty battle boards for very little effort. It can get a bit eccentric at time (we have the cyberpunk book, but no static clings, meaning that in our cyberpunk games, it's very fashionable to have a desk in the shape of a horse) but it's really added something to our gaming sessions. While not as massive as the Megamat, when using the double spreads they're a respectable 17x24 grid, and of course if you own more than one you can put them together.

The downside is that they are generic, and if we're running a specific dungeon with a map we're still going to have to break out the markers. The giant books also aren't very portable, being A3 size. The A4 Big Books are far more portable, being a similar size to a typical game book and therefore easy to put in a bag, but then you only get an 12x16 grid.

Surely there must be options that balance portability with space?

Loke Battle Map Board

As well as the books, Loke also offer the same type of board you get in a lot of board games. Heavy cardstock, laminated, 24" by 24" and foldable into four so only 12" square for transport. It lies flat and comes in two designs - plain squares/hexes, and decorated grass/stone. It looks pretty great, and while the patterned version didn't grab me as the design looks a bit too dark for drawing on, the plain version did appeal. Until I realised it wouldn't fit in the bag. 12" square is still a fair bit bigger that a standard RPG hardback.

D&D Adventure Grid

This official D&D battle board was a bit of a surprise. Like the Loke board it's a folding board game type board, except this one folds into six. Folded, it's the same size as a hardback, meaning that unfolded it's going to be around 20x24. It also offers a grass side and a stone side, although the textures are much lighter and easier to draw on. In overall quality it doesn't look as good as Loke, and I own enough 6-fold board games to know it's not going to do as well at lying flat, but you can get it remarkably cheap from some sellers if you're prepared to wait so maybe a good option if you're on a budget.

Pathfinder Flip-mats

Where you find Wizards of the Coast, you of course find Paizo. Their offering to the battle board space is flip mats. There's a bunch of these. Basic is your regular squared board in two shades of beige. There's also a basic terrain version offering water in addition to the usual grass, stone and different stone. These are foldable, because as far as I can tell they're laminated card stock. This does make them less durable than some options, and getting them to lie flat is going to be more of a challenge. But like the D&D board, they fold down to the size of a hardback, and unfold to an impressive 24x30 - or if you can find the Enormous Basic model, 30x46, up there in Megamat territory.

The real reason to buy flip-mats though, is that they make custom ones for specific adventures, thus saving you a lot of drawing. If you're running a specific Pathfinder adventure with a matching flip-mat, it might be worth picking up. But I'm not convinced laminated card stock is a sufficiently durable option for long term use.

Random Laminate

And talking of laminated card stock, there's quite a lot of those on Amazon.

This one from Enhance looks like one of the better options, and also comes with pens, an eraser and a carrying case, but I'm not convinced it lies as flat as their video makes it look. And of course we're back into rolled territory. At 24" it's an easier carry than my 34" Megamat, but at that point you might just as well buy Chessex's smaller 26x24 mat and have all the benefits of durable vinyl.

This one from Tidyboss offers straightening clips to fit along the edge of the mat to hold it flat, which is a nice touch, not least because they acknowledge the tendency of laminate to roll. It includes three 24x36 double sided maps with different terrains, and also includes pens, an eraser, a carrying tube and a set of dice. I actually think it looks pretty cool, and it's nice they thought about the lie flat problem, but somehow I just don't trust the durability, and the video reviews I've seen of this style of map definitely look like sliding those clips on is going to fray the corners. I'd actually consider these for the terrains, given how nice they look, but they're pretty pricy and a couple of Loke giant books will give you a lot more terrain for your money.

There are a few others out there, but ultimately the idea of having to deal with maps that might suddenly curl up, flinging miniatures in all directions, wasn't appealing. Also they have extremely shiny surfaces that leads me to suspect my dry-erase markers might end up getting erased a bit quicker than intended.

Melee Mats

This company seem to be trying to do it all. They've got a PVC rollable map in two sizes that looks a lot like the Chessex Megamat. They've got a folding board that reminds me of the D&D adventure grid. They've got laminated paper like the various Amazon offerings. And most interestingly they've got this box set of reversible boards which also comes with a set of static clings, and where the box itself doubles up as terrain so you can use it as a hill or a castle.

The main reason not to buy these is that if you're outside America, the prices are completely nuts. Probably not worth it unless they sort out some kind of European distribution or you can pick it up while on holiday.

Ergon Games Battle Mat

And finally, the one I actually bought. This silicone game map seemed to check all the boxes. Foldable, but without the issue of creases and bits standing up like the card stock boards. A good size at 24x36. It looked like I'd be able to fold it up, put it in the bag, and unfold it and have it immediately lie flat at the venue. And also I'd be able to draw a map in advance and having it survive the journey, and clean it off when I wanted to. Most importantly, it would arrive in super quick time.

And all of this was true. It folds, lies flat instantly, and doesn't smudge. It feels durable - nothing here to delaminate. The rubbery surface has a bit of grip which stops the miniatures sliding around. The only advertised feature that it doesn't do well is the ability to draw two different maps on each side. While this is technically possible, since one side is a hex grid, you generally won't be able to draw maps for the same game (unless it's something that combines a hex crawl with square grid combat), and also it's kind of transparent, so you can see the map on one side from the other side.

Interestingly, they also do a frosted transparent mat with no grid, intended for putting over printed maps. If you're printing out digital maps, this might be a good purchase for keeping them in place. Maybe it would also work to flatten down those Pathfinder flip-mats and keep them pristine? Something I'll consider for future gaming.

Conclusion

While a combination of the Chessex Megamat and Loke Giant Books is almost certainly the best option for a battle board that never leaves your house, if you're looking for a portable battle mat, the Ergon Games silicone mat is genuinely as good as it claims.