Non-video games

[Merus]

This might be worth checking out, because we have players who wing it playing with players that set out a plan from the beginning and crush all comers under their heel.

[Gormongous]

This might be worth checking out, because we have players who wing it playing with players that set out a plan from the beginning and crush all comers under their heel.

 

I guess I didn't quite finish my thought, did I? I mean to say, a player who is a careful planner in Castles of Burgundy will win over a player who is a clever improviser nine times out of ten, but they'll win 48 VP to 45 VP, no matter how much more work they make for themselves, and that can be demoralizing for many. We expect the game to reflect the effort we put into it, but this is a Euro that rewards you for putting in more effort, not for how much more.

[Nachimir]

So there's an Xcom Board Game coming soon:

 

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/08/06/xcom-the-board-game/

 

Not honestly sure if I'm excited about this or not.  I've become increasingly disenchanted with several of the FFG games I own.  While awesome, the setup and teardown times are so onerous that they don't get as much play as simpler stuff.  Plus the amount of time spent making sure you're following all the rules in a new game tends to be on the high side.  On the other hand, I have three local friends who are all Xcom junkies, and I'm sure this would be fantastic with them.

I tend to be disappointed with licensed board games. Game of Thrones is alright, but like a much less graceful version of Cyclades. BSG is fine, but there are loads of simpler hidden role games that have some of the same thrills without having to set up and track a million bits of cardboard. They're all fun enough once, but never make it onto the list of things I really want to play again or own. I think it might be because the designs feel like they're trying to cram in everything and the kitchen sink to reference as much as possible.

It says in the comments the companion app will run on PC. Apparently others from FFG so far have been iOS only, which means they'll be the Atmosfears of 2030.

[undermind9]

It says in the comments the companion app will run on PC. Apparently others from FFG so far have been iOS only, which means they'll be the Atmosfears of 2030.

 

we just played Atmosfear the other month, had to find a you-tube =/

 

i should capture the video before it gets taken down too...otherwise i'll have to sit out and do the voices myself with a digital clock timer

[Spenny]

It says in the comments the companion app will run on PC. Apparently others from FFG so far have been iOS only, which means they'll be the Atmosfears of 2030.

 

Yeah, what will the equivalent of uploading a ripped VHS to youtube be?

 

I also played a round of Atmosfear recently, but where I am it's called Nightmare and we like it that way. We played the Baron Samedi expansion, and, wow, the Baron is something else. Where the gatekeeper is going for the creepy vibe, Baron Samedi is an old dude, trying too hard to sound hip, hard to understand, and wearing pseudo black face. 

[undermind9]

i was never aware of the expansions.  my brothers and i used to play a lot when first got it in the mid 90's...but was replaced with 4-controller n64 technology

 

on related videos - 

the Elizabeth expansion - whereas she transforms from human to the strange bat w/dental gear. Apparently happens with the Witch expansion as well.  pretty neat i think

 

 

Further down the rabbit hole i did not know there was a re-release in 2004.  modern DVD and all, i may have to creep eBay for a decent deal w/low shipping

[tberton]

On Castles of Burgundy: I find that Stefan Feld, like Uwe Rosenberg, is a designer who's got two styles of game, one of which I love and the other of which I couldn't care less about. For Feld, the games of his that I love (In the Year of the Dragon, Rialto, The Spiecherstadt) are simple and elegant, in which every single decision is extremely important and mistakes have clear and obvious consequences. The games I don't care for (Burgundy, Bora Bora, Bruges, Macao) are point-salad games, where there's a million different things going on and each feels equivalent to the others because they all just boil down to victory points in the end. Both styles have elements of the other, but the first group just feels tighter and more interesting to me. Also, In the Year of the Dragon is one of the best board game names ever.

[Dewar]

I got to play a game of Shadowrun: Crossfire at PAX and subsequently bought the game. It's a fairly interesting co-op game for 2-4 players where you each play a runner on a team trying to escape from a completed run. There are several different missions and a bunch of characters to play, as well as an on-going karma/character leveling up system that gives you rewards for playing repeatedly and allowing you to advance to more difficult missions. It seems like a game that could be supported really well with expansion packs (there's already a character expansion and a mission expansion is upcoming.)

 

I do have too worries about it though. First off, the cards (this is an almost entirely card-based game) don't seem like they were made with very good stock. When I can get something like Cards Against Humanity with 200 nice cards for $20, the it feels like 300 smaller cards in this should be at least as good quality for $60. Second, I'm never sure if Catalyst is just going to screw this up. I don't have the best confidence in them as a company.

[tberton]

I do have too worries about it though. First off, the cards (this is an almost entirely card-based game) don't seem like they were made with very good stock. When I can get something like Cards Against Humanity with 200 nice cards for $20, the it feels like 300 smaller cards in this should be at least as good quality for $60. Second, I'm never sure if Catalyst is just going to screw this up. I don't have the best confidence in them as a company.

 

I don't think this is a fair comparison. I haven't played Crossfire, but looking online, the cards seem to have colour art on them. That most likely means that they're a lot more expensive to print than CAH's black and white, text only cards. Expecting them to be the same quality based on size and quantity alone is unreasonable.

[Spenny]

Does anyone have any experience with running a murder mystery night sort of game thing? 

[Merus]

Does anyone have any experience with running a murder mystery night sort of game thing? 

 

I've got some experience with running role-playing games, which are much the same principle except one person already knows the solution. I also have a copy of How To Host A Murder that I bought a few years ago, and now I have enough friends for a dinner party, but they're all experienced enough that the occasionally wobbly nature of the writing will spoil the night. Whatcha need?

[deleted user]

_

[Spenny]

I've got some experience with running role-playing games, which are much the same principle except one person already knows the solution. I also have a copy of How To Host A Murder that I bought a few years ago, and now I have enough friends for a dinner party, but they're all experienced enough that the occasionally wobbly nature of the writing will spoil the night. Whatcha need?

 

The story goes like this; my friend moves into a new house with a real old timey living room. Another friends suggests this makes it the perfect place for a murder mystery night. I have participated in one murder mystery before, it was super shitty. Just bad community theatre with an impossible to get solution.

 

Ideally I want a game, that is played over a few hours, where role play can be encouraged but not fully required, and in general promises to be a good game. I'm starting at zero, I have no idea where to begin and was looking for any resource to get me started.

[Merus]

Right, well for your purposes I'd probably steer you towards the How to Host a Murder games if you're starting from zero. The format of these is that each player (you have exactly 8) has a list of things they've discovered that they have to share, and a list of things they're trying to keep quiet, so you do kind of have to roleplay a bit. You don't have to dress up and do the accent, but you do have to play a character. Murder mystery games generally don't work if people aren't willing to participate.

 

Most people seem to agree that a good murder mystery game has a good mystery at the heart of it; the solution should be solvable, should make sense as a thing that people do, and should be the most sensible explanation of the clues provided. It also needs to work as a game, so players should have some agency and their actions should contribute to the resolution.

 

I'm told the best of How To Host a Murder are The Watersdown Affair, Last Train From Paris and A Matter of Faxe. The big weakness of How To Host a Murder are that they tend to be a bit long, about 4 hours. Many players don't like that the murderer doesn't need to lie through their teeth, either, but if you and your friends are starting from zero this is probably an advantage. If you really like the idea of making one of your players lie the entire night, I can do more research.

[Spenny]

Hey Merus, thanks again for the input on the murder mystery stuff.

 

 

Last weekend I played Twilight Struggle, the Cold War simulating board game, and apparently the best board game ever.

 

The game is genuinely really good. My friend and I stumbled a little bit at the start given it was our first time playing but we got the hang of things pretty quick. The game does a tonne of cool things to represent history and geo-politics through its mechanics. In the early/mid game the only way for the USSR to have any influence in Central and South America is to have Fidel Castro installed as a dictator in Cuba and spread influence from there. You're also balancing the military operations you can (and have to) take against the current defcon number. 

 

It seems like an intimidating game, but the amount of actions you can take is actually a pretty small vocabulary. Game definitely gets a 

[Dewar]

I don't think this is a fair comparison. I haven't played Crossfire, but looking online, the cards seem to have colour art on them. That most likely means that they're a lot more expensive to print than CAH's black and white, text only cards. Expecting them to be the same quality based on size and quantity alone is unreasonable.

 

That's a good point, so I guess a better comparison would be Dominion, which unfortunately means that the point still stands.

 

I was hoping to run a game of this over the weekend, but we ended up sticking mostly to Nidhogg, Starwahl, Sports Friends, Towerfall, Gangbeasts, and Mount Your Friends. Maybe I'll get the chance the weekend after next. We know a couple that's into board games and Shadowrun so it seems a natural fit.

[Irishjohn]

So, I think a friend and I are going to try and get into some board gaming. He's played plenty of them, myself not so much. I'd be down with some wargaming on a board type stuff (Battlelore and Dwarf King's Hold look interesting) but he's less keen. We've basically agreed that we'd both like whatever the current version of Hero Quest is, or as close as we can get. Seems like Descent 2nd Edition is our best bet I suppose.

 

Anyway. Sharing.

[Trip Hazard]

I played Hero Quest for the first time with friends a few weeks ago. Me and my GF were complete newbies, and weren't really sure what to expect, but we had a blast. Our GM was very forgiving and so we stomped through the dungeon. He was also quite critical of the more proscriptive nature of Hero Quest as opposed to D&D which he said was a lot more flexible.

 

On that note, we're now trying to organise a game of D&D. I've signed up to Roll20, 'cos I'd like to learn a bit more about it. Does anybody here use Roll20 and want to help me get into a campaign? I am a total newbie.

[Apelsin]

Yeeaaah, Hero Quest! Used to play it all the time as a kid! In the end we played it every day for about a week until we were all fed up by it.

[Erkki]

I tend to be disappointed with licensed board games. Game of Thrones is alright, but like a much less graceful version of Cyclades.

Ah, Cyclades, only played it once, bought it at an auction recently, almost got people to play it today, but they wanted Tales of Arabian Nights instead (which was fun, though). I really must play it again soon. I never made the comparison to Game of Thrones myself, but in hindsight it seems obvious. And yet the rules are so much more simple -- it was amazing when I was reading the rules today morning to discover that they fit on 6 pages.

[Merus]

I don't use Roll20, but I'm GMing a game of D&D5 right now because our usual GMs both wanted to play. D&D5 is pretty good, as far as I can see - more interesting than 4, less crunchy than 3, and the base game is free which makes it very easy to recommend.

[Hume's Spork]

I have been slowly teaching myself cryptic crosswords, which I guess are a sort of game (if you consider puzzles to be games). I don't know how big they are outside of the UK, but I recommend them for a few reasons.

 

Firstly, when you write an answer you are almost always sure of the answer. For example, if the crossword clue is 'Bird (4)', it could be any number of things. If it's something like 'A hundred endless arguments for a bird (4)' you can guess a bunch of birds and then verify your answer. Because a hundred = C, arguments = rows, take the end off = row, CROW.

 

Secondly, a cryptic gets those brain juices going in a really exciting way. It's like getting a particularly tricky puzzle in Braid and just feeling awesome.

 

Thirdly, with a quick crossword I often fill out 30-70% of the clues almost immediately and then struggle very, very slowly through the rest, or get stuck entirely. Cryptic crosswords unfold a lot more, as the more letters you have the more likely you will be to verify your answer compared with a normal crossword: guessing birds with four blank spaces is harder than with _ _ O _, but even with the addition of a letter the quick crossword could be ROOK as well as CROW, or any other bird that fits. Guessing both ROOK and CROW with the cryptic clue would show CROW to be the correct answer, if you looked at the first part of the clue to verify your guess.

 

I highly recommend them if you're interested - my advice would be to start with an easy one to get accustomed to the basic rules. The Cryptic Crossword app by Teazel is relatively easy, free for the first few packs and most of the clues are of the normal format, so you can churn through them and then spend longer on the harder clues, with more letters!

 

Happy to answer questions if anyone wants to know anything. Caveat: I am still not particularly good at them

 

Edit: ambiguity

[tberton]

Played some Game of Thrones last night. It was awesome.

[Merus]

Cryptics are also fairly common in Australia. David Astle, one of the setters for Fairfax, is particularly notorious for inventive and bizarre clues.

 

A fairly tame (but clever) one from DA: Chicken gutted, prepared, about to feed zoological business? (7-3)

 

The first cryptic clue I ever got, and still my favourite: Feline weapons? (9)

[Merus]

So three sessions in and I quite like D&D5. It feels like the kind of refresh that 3rd edition was, stripping out stuff that seemed useful but really just went too far like magic items and bonuses to rolls. A lot of the +2 bonuses are now 'roll twice, take the best', which is actually not much of an advantage when you run the numbers but boy it feels like a big deal.

 

We shall see how well it scales and whether players enjoy how their character evolves.