Posts filed under 'Board Games'
A few minutes after I arrived home from work on Tuesday, a knock on the door announced the arrival of a UPS delivery. Even though the box clearly indicated that it came from Santa, I couldn’t bring myself to wait till 25 December. I tore right into it. In fact, I’d been expecting it. My mysterious Santa has been hinting to me (through posts on this blog and in my BGG mailbox) that something was on the way, a nice touch which really added to the fun.
Check out the wonderful contents. My Boardgamegeek Secret Santa gave me two wonderful games—both Modern Art and YINSH!
I’ve wanted to give Modern Art a try since I first heard of it, in part because it gets such overwhelmingly positive press and in part because its mechanic is completely different from anything else I’ve ever played. Boardgame geek I may be, but I’ve never played an auction game. I’m eager to see what it will be like. I also suspect that, in contrast to the more “genre” games I often favor, this one will be easier to break out with less geeky friends, so it may get more play that some of the games that are gathering dust in my closet.
I got DVONN (a GIPF project game) a few years ago (in expectation of an extended vacation with family who are otherwise sort of unfun). I loved it, and I’ve shared it with several friends who enjoyed it quite a bit too. Unsurprisingly, the friends who like it tend to be chess and go players, delighting in the abstract strategic and mathematical elements of the game
In addition to enjoying DVONN’s gameplay, I took great pleasure in the pieces themselves. They’re elegantly simple, but the aesthetics—color, texture, weight, and shape—delight the senses. (In fact, my daughter loves playing what she calls “the Circle Game.” She’s two, so this mostly means stacking, sorting, and placing the discs, and telling me exactly where I should put mine.)
I expected nothing less from YINSH, and I’m not disappointed. The game only arrived yesterday, and it’s a sort that doesn’t interest my wife much. (Although my daughter and I “played” it once, using a ruleset similar to the Circle Game.) But I did get to read the rules and fiddle with the pieces. I love that the rules are so simple and straightforward that, when I find a willing opponent, we’ll be playing within a minute or two. I love that the game is so complex that we’ll be playing for hours. Combining go, othello (reversi), and connect four, YINSH should be tremendously satisfying.
I have yet to get my gift package out to my BoardGameGeek target, so I’ll have more to say about the whole process soon. So far, though, it’s been fantastic. So . . .
Oh great Secret Santa, thank you!
November 29th, 2007
Just a quick note to say that I received my “Secret Santa Target” from BoardGameGeek.com. Since my target happens to have a domestic shipping address, I’ve opted to have the gifts I’ll give him shipped to me. That way, I’ll be able to ensure nice packaging and preserve anonymity. (Oh, I’ll reveal myself eventually . . . but not till after the holidays are over.)
My wife has participated in similar Internet-moderated swaps, but this will be a first for me. I’m pleased to say that I’ve already benefited. Perusing my target’s wish list has inspired me to add a few games I’d never heard about to my own list.
November 27th, 2007
That wonderful resource and community Board Game Geek is running a board-game Secret Santa program. The rules are simple: You get the contact information of a participant somewhere in the world, and it’s your job to send that person a game, ideally one from his or her wish list, by Christmas. At the same time, someone else will get your name, and you can expect to receive a game-based holiday package of your own.
This sounds grand to me, so I just finished signing up. The only problem: waiting till late November to find out whom I’ll be “spoiling.”
October 17th, 2007
If we gamers consider ourselves Homo ludens—humans who play—we can’t ignore that we have subspecies. Many call themselves “gamers,” but most mean something more specific. What distinguishes Homo ludens from people who don’t call themselves gamers, what unites us, is the perceived geek-factor of the games we play.
Within our geeky species, though, we’ve got varieties so distinct from one another that they can hardly be considered the same animal.
- Homo ludens sangoculi
Those whose eyes begin to bleed after avoiding blinking for five hours during an important raid. In other words, video gamers.
- Homo ludens terataleae
Those who play with monstrous dice. In other words, tabletop roleplaying gamers.
- Homo ludens con-concilii
Those whose definition of “diplomacy” is almost the exact opposite of Webster’s. In other words, board gamers.
- Homo ludens shovelens
Those who shuffle. In other words, card gamers. This subspecies is broad enough to encompass such infraspecies as homo ludens shovelens economica (trading card gamers).
No taxonomy is perfect. As with life taxonomy, the borders are blurry and subject to change. Unlike life taxonomy, in which separate subspecies rarely mate outside of unusual circumstances, Homo ludens is basically engaged in one enormous, non-stop orgy of crossbreeding. In common with Douglas Adams’s Hagunenonns of Vicissitus Three*, Homo ludens is a super-evolutionary being that morphs from one life form to another several times over lunch.
Despite that, though, most gamers do seem to wind up identifying more as one particular subspecies than any other, at least for a given time. For instance, although many MMO players also play roleplaying games, the vast majority of WoW players seem to be Homo ludens sangoculi, and many have never touched a icosohedron in their lives. A quick survey of gaming blogs supports this hypothesis. There are many video game blogs, many roleplaying game blogs, and so on. But there are very few blogs that embrace both kinds of games.
I enjoy different varieties of games with equal fervor. Surely, I’m not the only Homo ludens ecclecticus, right? Who else is out there? And what other subspecies belong in the taxonomy?
*If you don’t know about the Hagunennons, do get your hands on a copy of the original The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC radio production. It has quite a few gems that didn’t survive to the many later versions of the property that will absolutely tickle a fan of the setting.
October 16th, 2007
Another game I picked up during my vacation in Vermont was the Catan Card Game (Amazon
, Board Game Geek). My wife and I hoped it would give us the feel of the Settlers Of Catan Board Game
for two players.
We already have Starship Catan
, a two-player board game that uses a modified version of the resource mechanics from the original board game to fuel a space-exploration themed game. It’s great fun actually physically upgrading your ship with laser guns, engines, and probes, but it takes a while to set up.
I hoped the card game might make for quicker setup, hoped it would stay true to the original setting, and if nothing else give us an interesting taste of how a board game could be reinterpreted as a card game.
I’m happy to say that the Catan Card Game is a grand hit, at least with us. Setup isn’t instant, since the game comprises about six or seven different (small) decks, but once both players understand the rules, it plays fast and fun!
I have to admit, I have so far lost every single game to my wife. (Basically, she absolutely PWNs my ass in competitive tabletop games.) That hasn’t detracted from the fun of the play.
In the card game, each player is given a set of nine starting cards with which to build his or her “principality.” One of the nine cards is the player’s initial settlement, two are roads, and the remaining six are resource nodes, each displaying a single die. As in Starship Catan, resource accumulation is tracked by turning the resource node cards so the number of resources “stored” on that card (o, 1, 2, or 3) is placed at the bottom. A single card can’t ever hold more than three of its resources.
Players spend these resources to build roads (to separate settlements), new settlements (adding two new resource nodes for each settlmenet built), and buildings, as well as to upgrade settlement to cities (which can accomodate four buildings instead of two). Each of these is represented by a card, and as new places are built, the player’s principality grows—horizontally for new settlements, vertically for new buildings.
Although you can always build a road, settlement, or city if you can afford it (and cards of the appropriate sort remain), in order to construct a building, you have to draw it from one of the four decks of face-down cards. Also in these decks are action cards that let you bend the basic mechanics (by destroying your opponent’s buildings, for example, or defending against certain threats). The buildings themselves add victory points, increase resource production, defend against threats, and grant their owners other benefits.
Finally, the game is affected by “events.” When the resource die is rolled, an event die is also rolled. It may indicate an attack of raiders (who steal resources), a free resource to both players, or a draw from the final deck of the game, the “event cards.” These cards are almost always interesting and occasionally catastrophic.
Players may also field armies of knights (the mechanics of armies depend mostly on comparing each player’s knights’ total “strength”).
The game has ample complexity, with lots of room for entertaining emergent situations and challenges, but play itself is just plain fun. Strategy from game to game varies depending on the cards you happen to draw—and, of course, the luck of resource production.
I’m also pleased to say that the game keeps players moving along at a reasonably even pace. Oh, yes, my wife beat me every time, but never by so much that I ever gave up any hope of catching up (except maybe in the last turn or two). Unlike with the dreaded Monopoly, the game never devolved to an agonizing and unending pillaging by one player of another. Every turn, each player had some hope of advancing.
We’ve since acquired (but have not tired) the Catan Card Game Expansion Set
. It basically contains six different expansions that can be added to the game, giving each play a very different feel. I also noted from a quick scan of the rulebook that it supports a sort of tournament play where players can build their own decks. I’m unlikely to ever give that a serious try, but adding dragons or barbarians to the game seems just plain fun, and I can’t wait to give it a try.
September 20th, 2007
A wave of toys washes across the floors of several rooms in our house when, at high toy-tide, our daughter diligently unpacks the chests and shelves filled with her favorite things. At first glance, these waves may seem chaotic, but look closer. S— has arranged her “people” (mostly Fischer-Price Little People, with a couple of Weebles and her beloved Purple Man DDR figure mixed in) in a graceful fractal arcing from one corner of the coffee table to another. Each is facing the same way, and they’re all “watching” a pile of toy birds “sleeping” on the sofa in a pile that alternates bird and blanket, a sort of impromptu toy napoleon.
On the other side of the room, I pick up a discarded toy cow—or maybe it’s not discarded. “No!” wails my toddler, “It’s talking to the otter!” I look down. Sure enough, the cow was positioned face-to-face with a toy otter. I was unwise to interrupt their conversation.
When S— goes to sleep, the toy-tide recedes. Plastic teacups go back on shelves in the toy kitchen, stuffed animals assemble in the toy chest, and the sofa transforms once again into a place to sit rather than a stage.
Among all these toys, though, there aren’t any that qualify as “games.” Oh, she plays games of pretend with them, and as I posted in the first part of this series, I hope this will lead to a lifetime love of roleplaying games. But she doesn’t have any games proper.
For the most part, manufacturers don’t make too many games for toddlers. Crazed parents will hand over thousands of hard-earned dollars for toys stamped “educational” on their packaging, but the littlest kids just don’t play games. Only after about a year of life to do they even have enough perception, language, and motor skills to start imitating what they see their parents and friends do for fun.
But on one rainy day on my recent vacation, I got to see four kids aged two to four (my daughter on the young end) playing actual, commercial games. These games are actually targeted at older kids, and in fact not one was played strictly according to the Rules. But then, what game ever is?
The three games they played were:
The fishing game—purchased by the parents of one kid because the nearby pond permitted fishing, so they thought they’d bring the fun indoors—proved thoroghly entertaining. On, only one kid (the youngest) had anything approaching the motor skills to actually catch a fish by the official method, but all of them (even the skilled one) had a grand time carefully inserting the hook into the mouths of fish as they passed. Or simply grabbing a fish of an appealing color. In the end, though, they treated the game more as a toy which had a skill element than a real game.
The homemade fishing game that I brought over—which my wife made from wooden dowels, rare earth magnets, string, paper, and paperclips—proved much more popular. Sure, we had only two rods, and the “fish” were pictures and bits of greeting cards. But the fun of fishing for a picture of my daughter or a reindeer with a magnet dangling from a string was something the girls were better able to do, was more relaxing, and was much more rewarding (”I got a horse!” “I got S—!”)
They treated the Peanut Butter & Jelly card game as a toy instead of a game, too. Instead of trying to build a particular sandwich, the kids just shouted out when one dad would call, “Who wants peanut butter?” or “Who wants bacon?” The littlest kid wanted them all, of course, but in the end the girls assembled some remarkable sandwiches. My daughter decided to treat her sandwich (meticulously free of meat products, coincidentally; maybe she’s picked up on our family’s vegetarianism without understanding it) as a toy and pretended to eat it for several minutes after the other girls put theirs away.
Zingo! came the closest to being played as a game. Basically “bingo with pictures,” the game drops two sturdy tiles with images that may match the squares on each kids cards. The girls each took one card for themselves and one for their dolls, and they happily laid matching tiles on pictures as they showed up. The precocious youngest girl quickly memorized both sides of her cards (the green side apparently leads to less “competition,” but both sides have images), and we laughed as she flipped each card over whenever a chip with a picture she remembered on the other side came up, dumping any that she’d placed on the front.
None of the girls played to win. None of them felt the slightest bit of competitiveness (which,
really, is a fine thing; toddler competitiveness can get ugly fast and is expressed mostly through
whining). But they did sort of play to fill their cards.
The youngest recommended age for these three games is four, and the girls definitely weren’t ready to play them as proper games. But as a gamer myself, and a doting father, I had a grand time watching them experiment with the beginnings of gaming.
After the last sandwich card and Zingo! tile was put away, they reverted to their favorite kind of game: roleplaying games. The oldest decided she was a teacher, and the other three—and their dolls—happily assembled as pupils and did what she told them. Or did something else. No one really minded, as everyone was having fun.
September 7th, 2007
Three other families from my home area vacationed in the same spot we did earlier this month. One couple came with us to the game store, and they and another couple settled down with us the night before their departure for a little gaming fun.
The group settled on the recent acquisition Zombies!!!
Overall, I liked the game pretty well. I enjoy almost any board game that supports a shifting setting (in this case thanks to tiles, the playing of which is part of each player’s turn). I also admire the mechanics that support the creeping dread of slow-moving zombies while the more agile and stronger player characters can nonetheless only hope to survive by outrunning the endless stream of undead.
I say “endless,” but we quickly ran out of zombie figures and had to fake them with other counters. For a six-player gam, the basic box just doesn’t have enough pieces.
Unfortunately, I found some aspects of the game actively interfered with the fun:
- With six players at least, you had to wait a long time before you could do anything. This in itself isn’t a big deal, but if you were in a disadvantageous position—far from the helipad, perhaps, or simply far from the action—this could turn into a fifteen- or twenty-minute wait while you struggled to get back into position to do anything.
- Because of the long delay and lack of progress when you couldn’t move, it rarely seemed worthwhile to go pick up items (they show up on cards you draw, but you have to move to certain locations to actually “get” them) unless you happened to be right by the target location already.
- Having a skateboard (which increases your speed) is extraordinarily desireable.
- It’s possible to do such mean things to other players that you can absolutely destroy any hope they have of winning. I understand that, as endgame approaches, desperate measures are called for, but certain cards (such as the one that lets you move a player back to the starting point) effectively kill that player, forcing them into the cycle of sitting and waiting for a chance to do anything at all.
- Dying goes from being a very minor inconvenience near the beginning to a difficult challenge in the middle and a cause to completely give up in the end.
- The rules are ambiguous enough on a couple of key points that another edit after a playtest was in order.
Ultimately, I’m enthusiastic about the game, but I do strongly feel it needs some tweaks to make it truly fun. I’ll be poking around the web for rules variants before we tackle it again.
A note about how the game played for the less gamey participants: The owner of the game (let’s call him Tom) isn’t the best rules reader and assumed the game would be quick to play. Instead, it turned into three or four hours of undead creeping. The less geeky couple (Mark and Karen) seemed to have a good time. Mark’s a pretty hardcore WoW player, but he seemed a bit put off by the realization of fantastic themes on a game board.
Karen avoids WoW (and I’ve heard grumbles from her that sound decidedly like she’s starting to resent Mark’s playing), but she likes genre fiction well enough. And she’s so socially adept that she didn’t give off any obvious hint that she was bored. I got a vibe, though, that made me think she’d have been happier with another game or activity.
In other words, Zombies!!! is a reasonably fun game, with the potential for even greater fun. But it’s not one to try to bring new fans to our hobby!
August 30th, 2007
No, I don’t know why Heroes Kingdom spells its name that way. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the store as a fun spot to visit on our vacation in Vermont. We stayed about half an hour away from St. Albans, and friends staying in a nearby cabin decided to visit the town one evening. They spotted the store, but because it was closed couldn’t investigate.
So we all went together a couple of days later.
Truth to tell, I haven’t spent much time in game stores, despite my passion for the hobby. Online prices always beat brick-and-mortar prices, and online information is good enough that it hasn’t seemed worth the time to me. But now, even though I won’t be back to St. Albans for a year, thanks to this store I have resolved to make time. We would up spending a total of about two hours there.
The RPG section leaves a lot to be desired. It sits on two smallish shelves and features about 95% D20 books. The board game section is small, too, but it had some good offerings. Descent
tempted me, but I resisted for now. My friend grabbed Zombies!!! 
I picked up both the board game–inspired Settlers of Catan Card Game and Deluxe Illuminati (which has nothing to do with board games).
The store focuses on collectible games. Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures
and DC HeroClix figures
(and many other collectible figure games) lined the shelves. Magic The Gathering
and other collectible card games were also well represented. My other friend managed to snag some booster packs of WizKid’s Pirates at Ocean’s Edge
, her passion and something she’s had trouble finding lately.
Other shelves were laden with action figures (which mean nothing to me) and Warhammer
materials.
Best of all, though, my two-year-old had a grand time. The back room, normally used for gaming, had a stash of pieces of various board games, including some oriented toward kids. She played with an odd collection of a bus, a dragon, and some other bits and pieces while we grownups looked around.
My daughter has already developed something of a dice fetish, so she and I spent some time looking at the broad display of colorful polyhedrons. After we left, I kept wishing I’d gone ahead and bought some of the unusual barrel dice they had for sale. As luck would have it, we justified a return trip a couple of days later, and I did snag a set. Since I mostly play GURPS, I don’t have a great justification for the purchase, but they’re fun, interesting, and different.
And they’re tempting me to go out and buy Serenity Role Playing Game (Serenity)
, partly because I love the setting, partly because I’d like to try the game, and partly because it will give me an excuse to bring out these funky fellows.
August 29th, 2007
Just a quick mention of an episode of the Heroscape ScapeTalk podcast featuring a twenty-minute interview with Heroscape designers Chris Nelson and Craig Van Ness. If you enjoy the game and you’re interested in hearing some thoughts from two key designers, be sure to check it out. They mostly talk about the upcoming Heroscape Marvel Edition, but there are a few other useful details in there . . . and a funny quiz.
July 27th, 2007
Today, Tobold wrote about what may be the death of turn-based strategy games, pointing out that even though technical limitations don’t force game developers to opt for a turn-based model, in some cases a turn-based model can offer greater depth of play.
Attempts to move tabletop gaming online have mostly failed. For instance, I ran a campaign in Neverwinter Nights that didn’t work for two key reasons. First, it took an enormous amount of time for me to create the game world between sessions. Even if I’d had more and more time to practice developing the world with the provided toolset, I’m sure I would always be spending more time creating scenarios than running them.
Second, as soon as combat began, the players were hopelessly outgunned. I kept lowering and lowering the difficulty of the fights in the game, but the players couldn’t keep up. Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games are designed to simulate combat to some degree of accuracy, but the all depend on a turn-based model.
Sure, this means a few seconds of battle can take an hour to play out. Sure, in a real fight people don’t have time to make such decisions. But it allows people pretend they actually have combat skills. No one’s ever penalized for not remembering a keyboard shortcut and losing because her war-hardened combat veteran character forgot to raise her shield at the right moment.
(Neverwinter Nights actually was a turn-based game, though by default set to simulate real-time action. In a multi-playered, game-mastered game, though, allowing all players to pause was impractical. It simulated D&D reasonably well for the solo campaign, but failed for group play.)
Porting board games to computers has been more successful simply because no one’s trying to change the rules. No one wants to play speed-Monopoly, with button-mashing magnates making a Trump-like killing in the real-estate market simply because they can roll their dice the fastest. (Okay, maybe that’d be fun, but only in a weird way.)
But something breaks down with roleplaying games. Computer RPGs are an almost completely different genre than tabletop RPGs, even if they’re built around the same ruleset.
I asked before (in the context of voice chat) about non-MMO online roleplaying. But I’m thinking about it even more, now, ’cause I’ve got a friend from college who wants to start a campaign up again.
How can I get the tabletop roleplaying experience with remote players? Now that video conferencing is effectively free, we can at least talk to one another. And I’ve mentioned Gametable before, which provides a shared map and die rolling.
But are there any tools that really take advantage of web-connected computers to simulate the game itself while still giving the richness of turn-based play? Any tools that can handle the intricate interplay of a multi-character fight—with positioning, fancy moves, conditions that persist from turn to turn, all the number crunching—while still giving the players freedom to choose at (at least moderate) leisure their characters’ next actions? If so, I very much want to hear about them!
Has anyone successfully moved a tabletop campaign online? If so, what tools did you use? If it failed, what didn’t work?
July 26th, 2007
Previous Posts
A few minutes after I arrived home from work on Tuesday, a knock on the door announced the arrival of a UPS delivery. Even though the box clearly indicated that it came from Santa, I couldn’t bring myself to wait till 25 December. I tore right into it. In fact, I’d been expecting it. My mysterious Santa has been hinting to me (through posts on this blog and in my BGG mailbox) that something was on the way, a nice touch which really added to the fun.
