Friday Filler: Holi: Festival of Colours

Celebrated as the Festival of Colours, Love, and Spring, Holi is the Hindu festival that both celebrates the eternal and divine love of the deities Radha and Krishna and commemorates the victory of Vishnu as Narasimha over Hiranyakashipu. It is notable outside of India as the festival in which richly coloured ‘gulaal’ powder is flung by the celebrants resulting in street scenes that are a riot of colour. It is also the theme of Holi: Festival of Colours, a board game from Floodgate Games, in which the players will try and outscore each other by placing more of their colour on the board, grabbing sweets, and hitting each other with their colour. It combines area control mechanics with elements of hand management and pattern building, the result being a colourful, abstract design that has a very physical, vertical presence at the table. It is designed for two to four players, plays in about half an hour, and is designed for players aged thirteen and up. That said, younger players who plenty of experience with board games should have no difficulties learning to play Holi: Festival of Colours.

The components to Holi: Festival of Colours really begin with its Courtyard Tower. This is a three-level tower with each level consisting of a clear plastic tray with a six-by-six grid of spaces. The Courtyard Tower requires construction for each play. It does wobble slightly, but is sturdy enough. The other components consist of four Helper Cards, twenty-four Sweets Tokens, a Score Tracker and four Score Markers, twenty-one Rivalry Cards, fifty-two Colour Cards in four colours, one-hundred Colour Tokens, four Player Markers, and the First Player Marker. All of the Sweets Tokens, Colour Tokens, and the frame for Courtyard Tower are done in rich, vibrant colours. Colour Cards show the pattern of spaces in a three-by-three grid that Colour Tokens will land on when thrown. The Rivalry Cards are bonus cards. For example, ‘Sweet Tooth’ scores extra points for each Sweets Tokens and ‘Snack’ forces a player to give up a Sweets Token if another player scores a Direct Hit on him.

To set up, the Courtyard Tower is put together and Sweets Tokens are placed on the ground and middle levels. Each player receives the Colour Tokens and Colour Cards in his colour and a Helper Card. Two or three Rivalry Cards are revealed. These affect scoring or add a new rule to game, often radically changing how the game is played. It is suggested that the Rivalry Cards be omitted for a simpler play experience.

On his turn, a player can take between one and three actions, in any order. The mandatory action is the ‘Throw Colour’ action, whilst the others are Move and Climb. For the Throw Colour action, the player chooses one of his Colour Cards—he always has three in his hand and plays it. Each Colour Card indicates the point where the player’s Marker is located and then the pattern where the Colour Tokens will fall when he throws him. The player can rotate the Colour Card to fit the pattern onto the board. If a Colour Token lands on another player’s Marker, then a Direct Hit is achieved. This scores the player a point and the Colour Token which lands on the other player’s Marker goes into the other player’s supply of Colour Tokens. Colour Tokens in another player’s supply will score the scoring player further points. This can only happen when the players have their Markers on the same level.

Alternatively, a player can simply expend the Colour Card to place a Colour Token anywhere on the level. This includes on a Sweets Token, but not on another player’s Marker.

The ‘Move’ action enables a player to move his marker to anywhere on the level. This can be anywhere, including on Colour Tokens, which are returned to the player’s supply. If they belong to another player, they go into the moving player’s supply and will score the other player points at the end of the game.

The third option is ‘Climb Up’. When a player’s Marker is surrounded on all four orthogonal sides, the player can choose to move up to the same space on the next level up. Once a player has moved to an upper level, he cannot move down. Once on an upper level, when a player does a Throw Action, if there is no Colour Token in the squares in the corresponding squares on the levels below, then the Colour Token will fall to the level until it lands on an empty square. This means that a Colour Token can fall from the top level to the ground level.

Play continues like this until each player is unable to do the Throw Colour action and have run out of their Colour Tokens. This triggers the end of the game. Each player score points for the Colour Tokens he has on the three levels of the Courtyard Tower, the higher the level, the more points scored; Colour Tokens in other players’ Colour Supply; and lastly for each player who has a fewer number of Sweets Tokens than he does.

Physically, Holi: Festival of Colours is a very nice-looking game. The Player Markers are bright and cheerful and eye-catching. The rules are easy to understand and the components are of a sturdy quality, though the Courtyard Tower does wobble a bit despite its sturdiness. It remains to be seen if the Courtyard Tower will stand up to too much taking apart and putting together necessary for each play. The artwork is excellent and the cover of the box is stunning.

Holi: Festival of Colours is simple to learn and play. It is perhaps a little fiddly to play between levels, especially when working out where Colour Tokens will land when they fall from another level and if there is another token below. The game does include a ‘Take That’ element in that another player’s Marker can be targeted with a Direct Hit, but this is very much a minor part of play. The Rivalry Cards do add a much-needed element of randomness to the game in scoring and rules, though it is a pity that they are used for all of the players rather than each player being able to draw his own and keep them secret until the end.

From its box artwork to its Courtyard Tower, Holi: Festival of Colours is eye-catching. That it takes a little known—at least in the West—Hindu festival and turns it into a pleasingly light, but physically impressive and tactile game, is an indication of the skill of the designer and publisher. Game play is solid rather than spectacular, but Holi: Festival of Colours is a decent game, not so light as to be less enjoyable for experienced gamers, but not too difficult for family or casual players. Overall, Holi: Festival of Colours an impressively lovely looking game, with easy to understand and playable rules, with a playing time that suits a filler.

Friday Fantasy: Voyage to Ambershine Isle

Isolated by nature and isolated by attitude and elitism, Ambershine Isle is known across the realm of Aashiyana for its illustrious academies and guilds, its power and influence which spreads far and wide—especially when it comes to the arts, and thus for its discerning critics and aesthetes whose opinions and tastes have the capacity to make an artist or a performer into one of the greats or cast him into obscurity. Every three years, Ambershine Isle holds the ‘Festival of Ambitions’, a magnificent gala which attracts the ambitious and the aspiring from across the realm, hoping to be picked from amongst the throngs and be recognised for their skill and their talent. Some are fortunate enough to have had their potential has already been noted by the isle’s academies and guilds and so been offered a magical invitation to Ambershine Isle. Others will have to make their own way there—whether one of the would-be artistes, or simply a merchant or grifter, wanting to take advantage of the ‘Festival of Ambitions’. However, the route to Ambershine Isle is not easy, leading across a series of atolls which only seasonally connect the mainland with the Isle and with the upcoming festival, is jammed with slowing moving carriages and crowds undertaking what is a pilgrimage to the arts, only further impeded by the tortuously complex bureaucracy at the gates to Ambershine Isle. There is another route though—across the Steaming Sea, but it takes a special ship to be able to withstand its corrosive waters and a special crew (or set of passengers) to hold off the dangerous aquatic monsters and pirates to be found in and on those waters. The Dreamer is that ship and those passengers are the Player Characters.

This is the set-up for Voyage to Ambershine Isle, the inaugural scenario for the Aashiyana Campaign setting—Aashiyana being the Urdu word for home—from PanicNot!, a collective of creators based in Mumbai. Designed to be both run using Dungeons & Dragons & Fifth Edition and ‘Systems Agnostic’, both scenario and setting are inspired by inspired by South Asian—and specifically Indian—culture, with Voyage to Ambershine Isle being written for First Level characters and intended to be played in a session or two. Over the course of the adventure’s three acts, the Player Characters will get to know Captain Wannaba and his wife, First Mate Mistress Wannafi, the owners of The Dreamer, meet the passengers, deal with stowaways, face some of the Steaming Sea’s deadly wildlife, and get involved in one or two of the schemes of the passengers aboard the vessel.

Voyage to Ambershine Isle begins slowly, but quickly gets the action going. After an opportunity for the Player Characters and the NPCs to introduce themselves, discuss their future plans, and perhaps pick up a hint or two as the secrets and motives of others, The Dreamer—a converted garbage barge sitting in a mithral hull to withstand the corrosive waters of the Steaming Sea—lurches as its hits something—hard! As the captain and his wife attempt to bring the vessel under control, they call for help, tasks made all the more difficult by a horde of Steamed Crabs which scuttle aboard at the same time. The crustaceans seem particularly drawn to below decks and following in their wake into the cramped corridors and quarters, the Player Characters have opportunities for both combat in the close confines and the discovery or two of secrets belonging to both crew and passengers as they check the various cabins, quarters, and other spaces below deck. Eventually, the Player Characters will discover the cause of The Dreamer lurching—the hull has been pierced and plugged by a Giant Mithral Crab! The Player Characters are free to handle this encounter in any way they like and it is nicely explained, going over the various options and outcomes. This can involve combat or roleplaying, though there is an optimal solution to the situation.

Once the situation below has been sorted, the Game Master has two options, or routes, for the scenario’s third act. ‘Route A’ is the shorter of the two, intended to bring Voyage to Ambershine Isle to close if the playing group is short of time, perhaps if the Game Master is running it as a convention scenario. It is very much a case of ‘wham-bam and we are done’ with little in the way of Player Character input and so is the least satisfying. ‘Route B’ is the longer of the two, and sees the Player Characters involved with a passenger complaint—a theft. The situation is not too difficult to resolve and may benefit from the Player Characters’ investigations below deck earlier in the scenario. Again, the encounter is nicely explained and gives options for the outcome, one of which would be to run the first option, ‘Route A’ as the scenario’s big climax if things go really wrong—really wrong! Once the dust has settled, culprits apprehended, secrets revealed, and perhaps a mighty monster defeated (perhaps), the Player Characters will have arrived on the shores of Ambershine Isle.

In addition to the advice on managing the encounters in the first and second acts, the Game Master is given further support for Voyage to Ambershine Isle with a series of appendices. These provide the stats for all of the NPCs and monsters—motivations for each is given earlier in the text, deck plans for The Dreamer, descriptions of the magic items and loot to found in the adventure, a big set of URLs for links to ‘GM Resources’ to help her run the scenario, and a table of trinkets to be found aboard the ship. The list of Game Master resources is particularly useful if the Game Master has never run a combat or a roleplaying adventure set at sea before, but includes links to general advice also.

Voyage to Ambershine Isle is not badly laid out and it makes good use of its art, as well as sporting the rather fetching painting of a Dutch Ship by Utagawa Yoshitomi. The scenario needs a tighter edit in places, but is otherwise well written and easy to understand.

The main issue with Voyage to Ambershine Isle is its brevity. It is too short to really get a feel of the Aashiyana setting and what makes it different from any other campaign other than it being from a collective of Mumbai-based authors. This is not necessarily to criticise the adventure itself, which though short, is action-packed and has plenty of opportunities for both roleplaying and investigation. Perhaps the best way to showcase the Aashiyana setting would have included some pre-generated Player Characters, each with their own motivations for wanting to go to Ambershine Isle and attend the ‘Festival of Ambitions’. As a short, sea-based adventure, Voyage to Ambershine Isle is pretty good and easily adapted to the setting of the Game Master’s choice, the encounter advice very much helping with that. For example, 50 Fathoms for Savage Worlds would be a suitable setting for it.

As the first scenario from new publisher PanicNot!, Voyage to Ambershine Isle is a short, but exciting combination of roleplaying, investigation, and combat, backed up with solid support for the Game Master. As an introduction to the Aashiyana setting Voyage to Ambershine Isle is underwritten and needs something more to really entice either Game Master or her players.

Unique & Exotic, Truly...

At first glance it is difficult to work out exactly what Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land is. The lack of a blurb means that the potential buyer will be without a clue and even after he has read inside the book’s front he will know no more than that it is a ‘Campaign Setting’. What Yoon-Suin is, is explained in the book’s opening travelogue, ‘The Journal of Laxmi Ghuptra Dahl - Being an account of a traveller in distant places’. This details his journeys in the Yellow City, the great metropolis at the mouth of the God River ruled by the haughty Slug-men, home to unknown numbers of ancient libraries, temples to a thousand gods, opium dens supplied by the seventeen cartels, tea houses, and Crab-men Fighting Stables—the only free Crab-men are to be found in the Topaz Isles that stretch across the Gulf of Morays to the south of the Yellow City. From its location at the mouth of the God River, the Yellow City merges into the thick forests of the Lahag, beyond which lies the rich plains of the Hundred Kingdoms, whilst the God River leads deep inland to the wild borderlands of the Druk Yul whose upper reaches are said to be home to dragons!

From this description, along with the map included at the front of the book, Yoon-Suin suggests that it is campaign setting based on medieval India, roughly encompassing the length of the river Ganges as far north as the Himalayas, whilst also taking in large swathes of both Bengal and the Bay of Bengal to the South and Southwest. Now this would be interesting for the roleplaying hobby in general, let alone the Old School Renaissance, for campaign material set in, or based on, India, is rare indeed. Yet Yoon-Suin is not a straight adaptation of medieval India with its rich cultural, martial, and religious traditions and customs. Instead the author of Yoon-Suin is inspired by them to create a unique setting. Further, Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land is not a campaign setting, at least not on the traditional sense. There is no detailed breakdown or description of the setting given that essentially sets Yoon-Suin in stone, but rather the supplement presents table after table as a means to generate and then run a campaign across each of the different regions. So whilst there will be a very many number of elements that are common from one Yoon-Suin campaign to the next—the least of which are four mysteries that are left up to the GM to decide—their exact combination will vary from campaign to campaign. The author, David McGrogan of the Monsters and Manuals blog, describes it as thus… “...[T]here is no single Yoon-Suin, and no Yoon-Suin is ever the same as any other - nor the same way twice.”

In terms of characters, Yoon-Suin presents four Races—Crab-man, Dwarves, Humans, and Slug man. The Crab-man is a sentient crab, strong and tough, typically used in manual labour or trained and kept in a Crab-man fighting stable, but cannot read or speak or manipulate magical items. It can understand spoken languages and can communicate in rudimentary terms. In game terms, the Crab-man has its own quite simple Crab-man Class. Dwarves are warriors or adventurers (fighters or thieves) whose people have been forced to flee their homeland, the Mountains of the Moon, for reasons that they cannot agree upon. Humans are free to take any Class, whilst the Slug-man is either a holy-man or magician (cleric or wizard). Notably in the Yellow City—and in many of the Hundred Kingdoms—there is a strict hierarchy. The Slug-men rule—merchants, crime families, sages, poets, tax collectors, bureaucrats, etc.—whilst the Crab-men are held in slavery. This means that if one is taken as a Player Character, then another Player Character must be selected as his master. In between there is the possibility that even Humans are slaves.

Of course this does not mean that a player could not play a Race or Class from a traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy setting. There would have to be a good reason why such a character would be in such an isolated land as Yoon-Suin, but for a group of adventurers to this strange new land, the supplement suggests that it can be run as a ‘foreigners fresh off the boat’ campaign a la Tékumel: Empire of the Petal Throne. That said, the Dwarves do feel slightly out of place given the exoticism of the other two options in terms of Races and even then, the inclusion of the Crab-man adds relatively little given their lack of capacity for communication or character growth.

Yoon-Suin includes some sixty or so monsters, of which the majority are new. Even interlopers from traditional Dungeons & Dragons are given their own Purple Land spin, so the Kenku are tricksters who can have crow, kingfisher, or peacock heads; the Mi-go are carnivorous white ape-like creatures that prey upon yaks and their herders; Nymphs may be beautiful, but their frost or water natures means that their chosen lovers typically drown or freeze; and the Ogre Mages are found trading far and wide, but are bound to the haunted city of Syr Darya. The remainder are a fantastic mix of strange demons, spirits, the undead, and more, such the Masan, long-shadowed child vampires that like to deceive; the Ice Ghost, the tortured, screaming soul of someone who died in an avalanche or snowstorm; Figments, imp-like spirits born of the hallucinations of opium eaters; Baital, hostile and manipulative spirits that inhabit and animate corpses whilst sometimes posing as demigods; Mountain Witches who appear as nubile, young women to enslave men, whilst women can see what they are; and self-Mummified Monks who may help or hinder depending on their Alignment. In places some of these monsters do feel slightly underwritten, but what really is a shame about them is that none of them are illustrated when so many of them are begging for this treatment.

The bulk of Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land is devoted to four identically structured chapters, each one devoted to a different region, in turn, ‘The Yellow City and The Topaz Isles’, ‘The Hundred Kingdoms and Láhág’, ‘Lamarakh and Lower Druk Yul’, and ‘The Mountains of the Moon and Sughd’. So for ‘The Yellow City and The Topaz Isles’, the chapter opens with tables for creating the Player Characters’ Social Circle, such as a shrine, Crab-man fighting stable, noble house, tea shop/opium den, exploring guild, philosophical society, and so on. In many cases each table is prefaced by a paragraph or two describing the role of the place or thing or person given options in the table, just enough information to spur the DM’s creative processes. There are tables for establishing a conflict between one or more of these locations as well as tables that develop each of the location types. Other tables add Yellow City Personages, General Rumours and Hooks, Yellow City Rumours, Random Locations and Locations ‘Round the Yellow City, and Neighbourhoods. Even more tables detail the outskirts of the Yellow City , adding Lairs, personages, and so on and so on. All of these are designed to be used to help the DM create places, relationships, rumours, and hooks around which to build a campaign, but there are also eighteen more fully described locations/encounters that be dropped into a hex on the DM’s map with little need for modification. Lastly, Adventuring in the Old Town presents a set of tables to create encounters and places in Old Town, the abandoned and decrepit region of Yellow City that is ripe for exploration.

Then in turn, Yoon-Suin does the same for each of other regions, though with some variation. Thus ‘The Hundred Kingdoms and Láhág’ begins with tables for creating each one of the Hundred Kingdoms, its assets and issues, and the Player Characters’ Social Circle, and so on and so on. What this means is that Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land contains an awful lot of tables—and that sounds dull. This though could not be further from the truth, for these tables are rich in content and ideas, let alone the twenty or so more fully described locations/encounters per chapter that are but ready to play. The tables enable the DM to mix and match ideas that can be used to lay the foundations of a campaign and then develop it further as the campaign progresses. Of course, there is nothing to stop the DM from forgoing the dice and simply using the content of the tables as inspiration.

Rounding out Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land is a set of appendices. These provide further details on various aspects of life and society in Yoon-Suin, including poisons, opium, specialist teas, conducting trade, a set of rough and ready psionics rules, fortune telling, typical Dungeons & Dragons monsters to be found in Yoon-Suin, useful worms, arachnids, and insects—used as labour in Yoon-Suin and beyond, magical tattoos, and more. So need to know the particular opium that a gang specialises in smuggling or a shop serves? Then there is an appendix for that, detailing the opium’s colour, effect, and how it is administered, for example Blue Opium is a depressant that is crushed and made into a tea, which might deaden fear or pain or the mind against illusions or slows the flow of the blood to slow the spread of poison. There are six colours of opium and they all have varying effects. Specialist teas have a similar effect. Two of the more interesting appendices actually describe the Yellow City Trade Tongue and other languages that add to the cultural flavour of Yoon-Suin, whilst Appendix N of course lists the books, music, and games that form the supplement’s inspiration.

As a physical object, Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land is an oddity. Its bright pink cover is slightly overshadowed by its landscape rather than the traditional portrait format. The book is cleanly laid out and in general well-written, but its maps are somewhat lacking. The pen and ink drawn maps feel suited to the setting and general milieu, but are too small, whereas the hex maps of each are are just indistinct and difficult to read. Yoon-Suin is lightly illustrated by Matthew Adams. Now Reviews from R’lyeh is not necessarily a fan of Adams’ style, which can often veer into being scratchy doodles, but here they pleasing capture the exoticism of the setting.

As rich and as detailed as Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land undoubtedly is, it does suffer from a certain inaccessibility, both its exoticism and its lack of upfront explanation, contributing greatly to that, let alone the odd format or the weirdness that puts it well outside of the traditional Dungeons & Dragons-style campaign. Of all of these issues, it is the lack of upfront explanation that really makes it inaccessible, which is a shame given the richness of the supplement’s content once past this hurdle. Another way that this could have been addressed is by including a set of tables for handling the set-up and beginning of the ‘foreigners off the boat’ campaign that is suggested as the default. That might have eased both players and their characters into the setting without overwhelming either with the culture shock. Other than that, if there is anything missing from Yoon-Suin, then perhaps a table of weapons native to the area and some native magical items would have been worthy inclusions.

Behind the vibrantly pink cover of Yoon-Suin hides a campaign setting rich in ideas and inspiration, waiting to be plucked and given flesh by the GM. Weird and fantastic, alien and exotic, but also accessible—once the presentation issues have been overcome—and original, Yoon-Suin - The Purple Land is a thoroughly impressive toolkit and a brilliant addition to the Old School Renaissance.