“Okay so my Orc warrior attacks with a +6 lightning bow which does double damage to your water element, however it only takes two-thirds of the damage due to its bonuses on the lunar cycle.. Oh and you have the emerald chalice? Okay, well add 3 but take away a penalty of four leaving….”
video: Golem Arcana: What's Inside The Box
No, not a word problem you would find on an SAT (though how awesome right!), but just another day in the life of a tabletop RPG gamer. While a blast to play, sometimes a simple understanding of calculus is needed to get character scores correctly. We have all dreamed of a day when you could just put it in a computer and let it do the math for you based on your moves. While some character generators have eased the math system down a tad, I have yet to see anything really substantial. So imagine my surprise when I was asked to review Golem Arcana. I expected another tabletop game with nice looking pieces, but to my surprise was introduced to the TDI pen and was really impressed with its features.
This is Golem Arcana from Harebrained Schemes
I had to go to the website golemarcana.com to read all of the neat features the TDI (Tabletop Digital Interface) stylus does and how it interacts with an app for your Tablet or Smartphone, and I think it can be summed up like this. WOW. Here is some of the awesomeness this stylus/app combo does.
Tap the golem, tap the board and the stylus submits information to the app calculates any moves and penalties that may occur. It does all the math for you.
The app manages all of the data, so for example, when making an attack it calculates all of the necessary components (line of sight for example) and again, does all the math (or as the website refers to it ‘acting as a sort of referee’).
Secret quests or battles happen randomly on the app. However you play your battle can affect other scenarios in the world.
Are you kidding me? Why haven’t I been playing this already? It’s like I can tabletop RPG with people all over the world!! Now that I was able to get a look at all of the mechanics and get myself into a shopping frenzy, I wanted to see what the factions and pieces looked like. There are too many exciting pieces to post here, so what I did was gather some images of sets for you to review as well as other figure and expansion sets that are out there.
Cool huh? So according to the website there appear to be four major factions of Golems. The Durani, The Gudanna, The Urukal, and The Zikia. Each faction has a unique look and feel that can fit with your style of play. For example, The Zikia appear to be earth elemental types that could harness the brute power of nature, while The Gudanna look like your monsters of old wearing freakishly nightmarish armor. No matter what your tastes, the detail on each figure is amazing. All of these elaborate figures rest on a base unit that stores all of the digital information. Thinking of building your army? golemarcana.com has a list of figures, with their special abilities that you can look up to determine which figures are a must add to your army. There are other such characters as Golem Knights and Ancient Ones, but they are not collectible figures, but are used through the app to enhance your Golems.
I did not know anything about this game going into it (shout out to TJ for asking me to look into this for an article!). I have seen it briefly, but just kind of bypassed it in my travels. I feel that this was an epic failure on my part. After researching all of this, I have come to the conclusion that I am a moron for not playing this. So now the strategy is to get some much needed fundage together so that I can join the war raging on Eretsu. Wish me luck as you may see me on the battlefields sooner than later!