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I made a board game! It is called Hungry Hungry Horrors..

 

I had to make it for a course on game design, and settled on the design really quickly. Players are abominations of science in a lab, and the hazmat team is on the way, so they have to mutate and grab parts (cards) so that they can survive the longest when the hazmat team arrives with flamethrowers. I really like it; I'm going to try and develop it further and maybe Kickstart it if I think it might make money.

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Well, I received my print-and-play commission of the 1979 Dune board game from this guy today and my feelings are... mixed. Some components (the unit counters, the cards) are shockingly beautiful, well-made and overall of high quality. Others (the board, the combat dials, the rulebook) are something I could have done given half an hour in our media lab. I'm looking for ways to improve the latter, with proper linchpins for the dials and a cloth-tape backing for the board, but all in all it's been a very qualified success for me.

 

At a minimum, you still have a really amazing board game with a theme that is way better than that Twilight Imperium knock-off!

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At a minimum, you still have a really amazing board game with a theme that is way better than that Twilight Imperium knock-off!

 

Yeah, I'm trying to shake off my little-boy-with-a-broken-toy feeling. Some parts of the game are just stunning and the game itself is great.

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Ah, here's the boardgame thread!

 

I'm getting that itch for something new, even though I bought a pretty big haul a few months back and recently backed the Catacombs kickstarter and I don't even play my games as much as I'd like lately. I keep thinking "well, maybe if I get <game> we'll all want to meet up and play it all the time!"

 

We never do. 

 

I'm eyeing Tash Kalar and Mage Knight so fuckin hard though.

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I played Shadows Over Camelot last weekend. One round, it's a fairly lengthy game. Initial impressions were basically "holy crap that's a poorly written rulebook". The flow of the game is pretty simple, your characters have a small handful of moves (usually one or two) they can make in a turn, and the turn itself is a very concise two phase affair. The rulebook instead wants to define all the victory and loss conditions before they get into this turn flow which makes it read as a front loaded mess. After the game my friends and I concluded we were happy to have played it once, because we'll have a lot more fun the next time. 

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Anyone played Innovation: Echoes or whatever the expansion is called? From the one or two games I've played with the expansion, it doesn't really improve the game: the original game is messy enough (usually I play where there's at least one newbie playing) and more complexity doesn't help, IMHO. I like some of the new cards, though.

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I played Shadows Over Camelot last weekend. One round, it's a fairly lengthy game. Initial impressions were basically "holy crap that's a poorly written rulebook". The flow of the game is pretty simple, your characters have a small handful of moves (usually one or two) they can make in a turn, and the turn itself is a very concise two phase affair. The rulebook instead wants to define all the victory and loss conditions before they get into this turn flow which makes it read as a front loaded mess. After the game my friends and I concluded we were happy to have played it once, because we'll have a lot more fun the next time.

It can be a pretty quick game once everyone understands what's going on. Unfortunately, it also gets a bit samey and too easy to predict once you've played 20 or 30 games. Still a really great time though. I'll always remember sitting in the board game room at the third PAX and playing it for two days straight.

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You're totes correct about the play length Dewar. Our game wrapped up not too late due to a very effective traitor. If I can get 10 good plays out of the game, I'll be content. It's a very pretty game too, miniatures are awesome!

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I'm blown away that it's free.

(Also I love reading RPG rulebooks and the like, so I look forward to reading this.)

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Well, they learnt their lesson about the OGL didn't they. They're jettisoning 4th Ed entirely because people didn't like it much, and they weren't allowed to publish fixed versions of it building on the core rules, so they just went off and made their own games.

 

And now Pathfinder has taken a massive, massive chunk of the tabletop market, and there are still no 4th edition computer games

 

why

 

the system would be perfect for this

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Oh man, just brought over One Night Ultimate Werewolf over to a friend's fancy dinner part full of non-gamers and it blew the lid off the night. Any respect in which it is not the perfect hidden-role game is made up for by a session taking ten minutes, tops.

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I once ran a game of Werewolf with no werewolves. Me and whoever I'd chosen to be knocked out just chose an arbitrary person to be eaten each night. Watching the village debate was fantastic.

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A faster paced Werewolf sounds awesome for more casual groups, or even serious gamers sometimes (though I do love the multi-stage nature of original).  I'll have to pick up a copy of the One Night version.

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A faster paced Werewolf sounds awesome for more casual groups, or even serious gamers sometimes (though I do love the multi-stage nature of original).  I'll have to pick up a copy of the One Night version.

 

I currently have three hidden-traitor games: Battlestar GalacticaResistance: Avalon, and now One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Each has something to recommend them, because the spin-up is different for each, but ONUW is unique for having no spin-up at all. It's the last round of Resistance every game, with everything on the table and everything to lose.

 

I'll give an example five-man game from last night. This is almost an exact transcript of our third or fourth game last night. The available roles were:

Two werewolves (know each other, villagers need to vote to kill at least one to win the game)

Seer (can look at another player's card or two from the pool during the night)

Robber (steals a player's card and gives them their own during the night)

Troublemaker (trades two other players' cards during the night)

Drunk (replaces their card with one from the center pool during the night without looking at it)

Tanner (wins the game if killed)

Villager (don't know shit)

 

Everyone closes their eyes, the roles get read out, and everyone wakes up.

 

Gorm: Okay guys, we have three minutes to work this out. I'll start. I'm the troublemaker and I switched your cards, Carl and Annie.

Carl: No, you didn't, because I'm the troublemaker and I switched your card with Annie!

Gorm: Are you sure about that?

Carl: I'm sure I'm sure, you werewolf.

Gorm: Okay, got it. You're right, I was a werewolf, but now I'm whatever Annie was.

Annie: What!

Gorm: And Sally's the other werewolf. We can kill either of them.

Sally: Gorm! What the fuck?

Gorm: Sorry I'm not sorry. Werewolf.

Annie: Wait, wait. We haven't heard from Sandy. Sandy, what are you?

Sandy: I'm the drunk! I don't know who I am now! Gorm's a werewolf!

Carl: What?

Gorm: You're not the drunk.

Sandy: I'm not the drunk! I'm the robber! You're a werewolf!

Gorm: You're the tanner.

Carl: You're the tanner.

Sally: You're the tanner.

Sandy: Shut up! Werewolves, all of you!

Annie: Anyway...

Sandy: I just want to die so bad!

Gorm: Anyway, we should kill Annie.

Annie: Why?!

Gorm: Because you're a werewolf. Blame Carl.

Annie: I think Carl's lying.

Sally: I also think Carl's lying.

Carl: Why would I lie?

Sandy: Because you're the troublemaker, werewolf!

Gorm: Ten seconds left! Final arguments?

Sally: Not a werewolf.

Annie: Not a werewolf.

SandyKill me!

Carl: Wait, what was Annie's original role?

 

The buzzer goes off and everyone points. Three votes for Annie, one vote for me, one vote for Carl. Annie was killed, but was a werewolf, so the villagers (me and Carl) win.

 

Every goddamn session was like this. There's no reason for people not to commit a hundred percent to whatever their version of events is because they only have a handful of minutes in which to commit. And no matter how people get screwed over (say, a robber, a troublemaker, and a drunk all in play) the game takes ten minutes at the absolute most (we had it down to five minutes by the third hour of play) so there's always another chance to win. Two people who had to get up at five in the morning today kept playing until eleven by their own request.

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Okay, that completely sold me on the game.  I'll have to see if I can find it locally today or tomorrow.  Hopefully going to get in some tabletop time on Saturday (though half the times the plans for these fall through, so I never fully bank on it).  One of the design elements I despise in tabletop games is when the game drives a player out of action for too long (either by elimination, taking action from them, losing turns, whatever).  It's the biggest drawback in some of the hidden traitor games I've played.  I don't even care about winning or losing tabletop games, as long as there are interesting or entertaining actions I can continue to take even if it becomes clear that I'm reaching an unwinnable state. 

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Okay, that completely sold me on the game.  I'll have to see if I can find it locally today or tomorrow.  Hopefully going to get in some tabletop time on Saturday (though half the times the plans for these fall through, so I never fully bank on it).  One of the design elements I despise in tabletop games is when the game drives a player out of action for too long (either by elimination, taking action from them, losing turns, whatever).  It's the biggest drawback in some of the hidden traitor games I've played.  I don't even care about winning or losing tabletop games, as long as there are interesting or entertaining actions I can continue to take even if it becomes clear that I'm reaching an unwinnable state. 

 

Yeah, I only have a couple of player-elimination games, all of which are either old-school (Dune and/or Rex) or short (King of Tokyo). The problem with Battlestar (which I think is otherwise almost a perfect game) and its younger sibling Resistance is not elimination, but being marginalized. Too often, you say the wrong thing or overplay your hand too early, everyone pins you down, and you're out of the conversation for the rest of the game.

 

ONUW doesn't really have that, because of the extreme time compression. Worst case scenario, the first thing you say pins you down as a werewolf, the villagers vote to kill you after ten seconds of debate, and the game is over. Start a new game! Or something even more interesting could happen, like during one of our last games where I was on my third cider and not terribly lucid and lied about being the robber just after someone else had definitively proven that they were the robber. I got really flustered, but overall kept my mouth shut, and then watched as my group decided at the very last minute that I was too good of a liar to do something so obvious and that I was really the tanner trying to get killed. There's no time to establish a pattern of behavior, so it's all about your vague knowledge of your friends and quasi-logical snap judgments.

 

There's also a free phone app from the game company (Bezier Games, I think? I only know that because Béziers was the first city sacked by the Albigensian Crusade) that does all the housekeeping, which is nice because in bigger Resistance games I'll burn out my voice announcing all the roles. Jeez, I'm so obviously in love.

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I don't play board games and have only a passing familiarity with games like Resistance and Shadows over Camelot (most of which has been derived from watching videos on YouTube), but Werewolf sounds almost exactly like a game I used to play in high school/college all the time, Mafia.  In fact now that I look at the Wikipedia page more, it seems to be a commercial version of exactly that.  So in a roundabout way I also endorse it because it was a ton of fun.

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Yeah, I only have a couple of player-elimination games, all of which are either old-school (Dune and/or Rex) or short (King of Tokyo). The problem with Battlestar (which I think is otherwise almost a perfect game) and its younger sibling Resistance is not elimination, but being marginalized. Too often, you say the wrong thing or overplay your hand too early, everyone pins you down, and you're out of the conversation for the rest of the game.

 

Gah, yeah, being marginalized in a game is worse than being eliminated.  At least if you are eliminated, you can go do something else, particularly if their other people out of the game or just hanging out.  But being marginalized means that you have a social obligation to remain in the game even though there is little you can do to derive any enjoyment from it.  It's just bad for everyone.  Games that can do that bug me even when I'm still in the game, as seeing someone else clearly being frustrated saps my enjoyment. 

 

 

 Jeez, I'm so obviously in love.

 

I love it when a tabletop game gets its hooks into me deep.  Hasn't happened in a long while.  Arkham Horror, as broken as it can be, is probably one of the last ones.  And a lot of that had to do with the group I played with and their willingness to roleplay characters, even (or especially) if that roleplay created chaos. 

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At least Resistance tends to be over quickly if you do get marginalised.

 

(I played an excellent game last night, in which the last mission was the decider. The spies managed to deceive us into including one in the final five people, and they would have won, but he screwed up and accidentally voted for the mission to pass).

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(I played an excellent game last night, in which the last mission was the decider. The spies managed to deceive us into including one in the final five people, and they would have won, but he screwed up and accidentally voted for the mission to pass).

 

My favorite flub in Resistance was when I, as moderator, accidentally handed my traitor friend two success cards on the third mission. He sheepishly had to ask for a failure card, which let him screw that mission over but meant he sat out the rest of the game. I now hand out success and failure cards face up, to be sure.

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Haha, that's great!

Like SAM I used to play Mafia sometimes in my teens, but it was mostly a bust since people often never really got into it. They would just sit around and go "I'll vote for this person to die, I guess". 

 

Having a bit more structure as in these games would go a long way to cure that I feel, especially having a character that wants to die :P That'll make things a lot more interesting!

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Yeah, I've played Werewolf with a group who just enjoy the theatre of it and do hardly any debating. It kinda sucks.

 

The first round problem in Werewolf is also awful, because the village pretty much has to choose someone at random. I've seen a few approaches to it, one where a group go round introducing themselves with "Hello, my name is [such and such], and I'm not a werewolf". The most entertaining I've seen is simply that the last player to touch their own nose is lynched.

 

The Hunter and The Lovers are fun mods. Lovers are nominated secretly at the start, acknowledge each other while everyone else has their eyes closed, and can reveal their cards to each other if they want. In the event of a werewolf-human tryst, they become a third team trying to take out everyone else. If either dies, the other suicides. The Hunter (also secret) has a gun, and when they're killed (by any means) they can choose one other person to take with them. With both together, I've seen some spectacular chain reaction kills.

 

My favorite flub in Resistance was when I, as moderator, accidentally handed my traitor friend two success cards on the third mission. He sheepishly had to ask for a failure card, which let him screw that mission over but meant he sat out the rest of the game. I now hand out success and failure cards face up, to be sure.

 

Hah! :)

 

That is brilliant. I'd have said "You've given me two identical cards" without specifying, but I guess it wouldn't make much of a difference to the outcome. You could argue that regardless of your side, you were keeping to the spirit of the game, but it probably wouldn't wash with any of the groups I've played with.

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Yeah, I've played Werewolf with a group who just enjoy the theatre of it and do hardly any debating. It kinda sucks.

 

The first round problem in Werewolf is also awful, because the village pretty much has to choose someone at random.

 

The problem with our group was not that people were "role-playing" too much. It was the opposite. People just seemed generally disinterested or just confused as to what they were actually supposed to be doing. We basically didn't get past the "first round problem" as you call it until at least three or four people had already been killed.

 

I suppose that this could be attributed to factors such as group size and the players came from two or three different groups of friends who did not know all of the other players very well, if at all, but it sort of killed this kind of game for me. At least the more free-form camp fire version.

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