All - after an offhand comment of Kozure's about being unable to find the entry on a certain game session, I was inspired. Please notice the results of this inspiration, over in the sidebar to the left. I've moved "Links" to the top of the page, and added a new "Navigate by Game" section immediately below that. Games are listed alphabetically, and all archived session reports are included, through the end of August. I'll try and keep the list maintained and (somewhat) up to date.
Let me know what you think - useful? not? something else?
Also, new suggested links are always welcome - would throwing one for Board Game Geek be beneficial?
Talk to me.
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Land Ownership in the Efficient German Style
Well the games of choice this week were Löwenherz and Puerto Rico. ????? had bought Löwenherz after being impressed with Domaine. Löwenherz, or “Lionheart” when translated from the German, is essentially an earlier version of Domaine. The principal differences are that the number of land tiles is cut down by three from nine to six in Löwenherz, and the turn mechanic is bid-based, rather than simple draw-or-play. The elder game also uses a different method for scoring areas, and adds “treasure” and “parchment” cards which are good for extra gold and end of game scoring respectively.
Due to its reduced size, Löwenherz feels much more “cramped” by comparison – but as a consequence, domains come into contact with each other quickly. As a result of this, knights, alliances and desertion/traitor cards become important much earlier in the game.
The bidding mechanic is interesting, and lends a social/negotiation aspect to the game which is largely absent from Domaine. Of course, negotiation and social aspects rely very heavily upon the make-up of the gaming group, which is why I imagine it was removed from the revised Domaine. Simply stated, each turn, an action card is turned over which has three actions listed on it. Each player bids for one of the three options with a special bidding card. Since there are only three options, two or more players can compete for the action in a “power trail”, essentially a negotiation of how much one player will pay the other to perform the action; if neither can come to an agreement, or three or more players bid for the same action, there is a “duel” – players secretly bid gold or treasure for the card and the highest bid wins, with the rest keeping their money.
The mediaeval tapestry look of the game board is appealing, but overall the newer Domaine wins in the looks department. A few other minor tweaks (cards for money, altered silver mine rules), combined with the major changes mentioned above makes Löwenherz significantly different from Domaine as to not be simply a “variant”. They play differently, with a few similar mechanics.
Easy won the match easily with a devastating combination of really knight-heavy domains and shrewd bargaining. My attempt at a massive early land grab was subsequently smacked down by a surgical expansion which effectively cut the entire domain in a 1/6 to 5 /6 portion, leaving me with the smallest bit.
As a side note, I thought it was amusing that Löwenherz features a king who is dying (rather than in Domaine, which features a king who is returning from a far-away land) since Richard the Lionhearted of England was famous for being an absentee king and having to deal with squabbling nobles and a prince brother when he returned.
Our second and third games of the night were Puerto Rico, an old favourite which we haven’t played a lot recently. As we’ve become more familiar with mechanics of other German games, we’ve been carefully re-reading and clarifying previous rules, especially the Captain phase shipping rules, which we have played incorrectly previously. Given our collective brainfreeze on the first game of Domaine last week, this is a very good thing.
We were also careful to watch the timing of certain actions, especially with the Settler phase and haciendas, which can make for some confusion, especially with ?????.
The first game felt oddly rushed for some reason, with no one managing to get large buildings completed in time for some reason. Both money and goods seemed in short supply, so much as to elicit a careful recount of components before proceeding. Even colonists were recounted, since the game seemed to be over before anyone was ready. We had no one to blame, though – we had the correct number of everything.
I believe a major factor in the rapid depletion of colonist reserves was the presence of multiple hospices, as well as haciendas, the combination of which can spell a very quick draw from the pool. There also seemed to be more concentration on erecting buildings which had long-term pay-off, rather than actual production buildings. Other than that, none of us could quite account for the odd feeling of our first game.
In the end, Shemp and I tied for first place, with exactly the same amount of victory points and combined goods and doubloons. – 23 victory points and about 12 combined points of goods and doubloons.
The second game felt much more right, with people managing to develop strategies well (confusing Shemp at the same time) with two people building large buildings before Easy brought the boom down by grabbing the Mayor card.
It was a good thing too, because Shemp looked to be pulling away from everyone with not only a harbour and plenty of goods to ship for VP, but also the doubloons to pick up the Custom House in the next building phase. Shemp carried the day with 47 VP, I came in second with 44, and Easy and Hapi brought up the rear with scores that I can’t remember, but were relatively close.
An enjoyable evening, with three solid games (well, two solid games and one shaky one) and some tight races. Also, I tied for first in Puerto Rico for the first time since the first or second time I played. Yay me! I'm usually the bridesmaid for Puerto Rico. One day, I will win, my precious, one day...
Due to its reduced size, Löwenherz feels much more “cramped” by comparison – but as a consequence, domains come into contact with each other quickly. As a result of this, knights, alliances and desertion/traitor cards become important much earlier in the game.
The bidding mechanic is interesting, and lends a social/negotiation aspect to the game which is largely absent from Domaine. Of course, negotiation and social aspects rely very heavily upon the make-up of the gaming group, which is why I imagine it was removed from the revised Domaine. Simply stated, each turn, an action card is turned over which has three actions listed on it. Each player bids for one of the three options with a special bidding card. Since there are only three options, two or more players can compete for the action in a “power trail”, essentially a negotiation of how much one player will pay the other to perform the action; if neither can come to an agreement, or three or more players bid for the same action, there is a “duel” – players secretly bid gold or treasure for the card and the highest bid wins, with the rest keeping their money.
The mediaeval tapestry look of the game board is appealing, but overall the newer Domaine wins in the looks department. A few other minor tweaks (cards for money, altered silver mine rules), combined with the major changes mentioned above makes Löwenherz significantly different from Domaine as to not be simply a “variant”. They play differently, with a few similar mechanics.
Easy won the match easily with a devastating combination of really knight-heavy domains and shrewd bargaining. My attempt at a massive early land grab was subsequently smacked down by a surgical expansion which effectively cut the entire domain in a 1/6 to 5 /6 portion, leaving me with the smallest bit.
As a side note, I thought it was amusing that Löwenherz features a king who is dying (rather than in Domaine, which features a king who is returning from a far-away land) since Richard the Lionhearted of England was famous for being an absentee king and having to deal with squabbling nobles and a prince brother when he returned.
Our second and third games of the night were Puerto Rico, an old favourite which we haven’t played a lot recently. As we’ve become more familiar with mechanics of other German games, we’ve been carefully re-reading and clarifying previous rules, especially the Captain phase shipping rules, which we have played incorrectly previously. Given our collective brainfreeze on the first game of Domaine last week, this is a very good thing.
We were also careful to watch the timing of certain actions, especially with the Settler phase and haciendas, which can make for some confusion, especially with ?????.
The first game felt oddly rushed for some reason, with no one managing to get large buildings completed in time for some reason. Both money and goods seemed in short supply, so much as to elicit a careful recount of components before proceeding. Even colonists were recounted, since the game seemed to be over before anyone was ready. We had no one to blame, though – we had the correct number of everything.
I believe a major factor in the rapid depletion of colonist reserves was the presence of multiple hospices, as well as haciendas, the combination of which can spell a very quick draw from the pool. There also seemed to be more concentration on erecting buildings which had long-term pay-off, rather than actual production buildings. Other than that, none of us could quite account for the odd feeling of our first game.
In the end, Shemp and I tied for first place, with exactly the same amount of victory points and combined goods and doubloons. – 23 victory points and about 12 combined points of goods and doubloons.
The second game felt much more right, with people managing to develop strategies well (confusing Shemp at the same time) with two people building large buildings before Easy brought the boom down by grabbing the Mayor card.
It was a good thing too, because Shemp looked to be pulling away from everyone with not only a harbour and plenty of goods to ship for VP, but also the doubloons to pick up the Custom House in the next building phase. Shemp carried the day with 47 VP, I came in second with 44, and Easy and Hapi brought up the rear with scores that I can’t remember, but were relatively close.
An enjoyable evening, with three solid games (well, two solid games and one shaky one) and some tight races. Also, I tied for first in Puerto Rico for the first time since the first or second time I played. Yay me! I'm usually the bridesmaid for Puerto Rico. One day, I will win, my precious, one day...
Thursday, August 19, 2004
My Castle is My Domain(e)
Note: When I wrote this, there was no evidence of Easy's blog. I pressed publish, and the Blogger website went into paroxyms of refreshing the same page over and over again. When it was finished, I saw my log posted. When I came back, I noted my blog was missing and now Easy's with a much earlier publish time, was present. I have no idea what happened. Here's my blog, for the record.
Well, what’s a games night without a theme? Well, a themeless games night, but beyond that, it’s boring and uninspired. Fortunately, we had Shemp to lend a thought to “Mediaeval” games night. The dinner lasagne didn’t quite fit in, but we had “hearty cheese fritos” to help out.
The night opened with Castle, the game aforementioned. With four players, the gameplay tilts over from the tactical side of things to a little more random in nature. Easy caught on quickly, but not quickly enough to deny Shemp the win.
We then switched to Domaine, which I thought had been reviewed before, but I can’t currently find any mention in our blog. Domaine is a game of expansion and territory enclosure, by one of our favourite game designers, Klaus Teuber. It allows two to four players, with slight modifications for two player play, and the theme is that you are lesser royalty (dukes or counts or what-have-you) trying to divide up the spoils of a kingdom before the king returns from a long journey. This theme makes a lot less sense than its original Germanic predecessor, Lowenherz, where they’re doing the dividing while the king is dying. That’s political correctness for you, I guess.
The board is a well drawn map of what looks like a fantasy kingdom – nine moveable large cardboard squares, arranged into a square with the castle at the centre – with each of the nine squares being divided into around eight to ten by eight to ten (can’t remember the exact number) 2 cm grid by light black lines. Terrain of plain, forest, mines (diamond, bronze, silver and gold), towns and a castle is indicated clearly and with fair quality.
The mechanic is very simple – each player executes one of two actions per turn – play a card by paying gold for it, which allows you to either: 1) erect walls to enclose a “domain”, 2) expand already enclosed domains, 3) place knights which protect your own domain and allow you to expand into others, 4) create alliances which stops either domain from expanding into each other, or 5) cause knights from other domains to “defect” into yours.
A second possible action is to sell a card to the chancery – a temporary holding area - for the second (smaller) value printed on the card – one of only two ways to gain money.
After performing one of the two actions, the player then draws from either the chancery or the draw pile to replenish his or her hand.
Players score points by enclosing forest, towns and the castle (1, 3 and 5 points). Additionally, players can supplement their income by enclosing mines, each type providing one gold piece at the beginning of a turn each. Enclosing three of one type of mine scores 5 points.
Victory is gained by points – either by reaching a maximum dictated by the number of players, or by having the most points when all possible cards have been played. Extra money also counts for points – the player with the most scores 5, the second wealthiest scores 3.
For our first game of Domaine, we misremembered (Bushism) some of the rules, forgetting proper rules for placement of knights and the very important rule of only taking one action per turn. Fortunately, this had the effect of speeding up the game.
I got pretty badly boxed in the first game, but wasn’t doing too badly when ????? leapt ahead into the lead for the win.
The second game, we corrected our misrememberings of the rules and played correctly. I was doing better this time around, but Easy took advantage of a really easy massive land grab late in the game and sealed the win. Domaine is interesting for the need to not only grow your own earnings, but also pay attention and smack down other players who might sneak their way into a massive inheritance.
This technique is henceforth christened “snuclear” or “snuculear” tactics, after Easy and Shemp’s strange, giddy exchange. “Snuclear” apparently involves really, really sneaky tactics, to the point of being nuclear sneaky. Apparently.
The evening was ended with a round of Castle, which started out with a huge siege engine vs. soldier battle and ended with a lot of people trying to kill-the-leader Easy, which didn’t help us in the end. Easy took us down, leaving the rest of us just steps from playing out.
?????'s Rules
Last Night, we played three different games:
Castles
Domaine ?R*
Domaine
*?????'s Rules
I was the only one who hadn't played castles, so I expected to get buried, but the game is pretty easy to pick up despite the large number of cards that you need to get to know (probably because it isn't THAT important to get to know all of them). Shemp got the first win, but we were all close. I was more successful on my second try, getting a squeaker of a win (thanks to a few helpful moves by my unsuspecting opponents). Overall, I thought it was a good game. Pretty light, but fun and seemingly quite replayable (and both games were really close, so the ending was exciting). I did find the concept strange, though: The game simulates a castle seige, complete with soldiers on the ramparts defending against seige engines. However, the actual gameplay doesn't have much to do with it. Players don't take sides, the outcome of the battle is irrelevant. It's just a story which unfolds as players play their cards. Not a problem, exactly... just strange.
Castles:7
Next up was Domaine. Klaus Teuber, fromt he two games I have played of his, seems to make fun games which also seem somehow arbitrary. I think that this quality came through last night as we accidentally played an entire game using incorrect rules...
err... I should say "????? Rules". We played that:
1: Every player had two moves per turn (should be 1)
2: The deserter simply took a knight from the board (the knight is supposed to be stolen)
3: Cards could continue to be drawn from the chancery after the deck ran out.
I'm pretty sure the were other "modifications", but the bottom line is that even though the game played differently, it wasn't broken. I don't imagine too many games could with
Castles
Domaine ?R*
Domaine
*?????'s Rules
I was the only one who hadn't played castles, so I expected to get buried, but the game is pretty easy to pick up despite the large number of cards that you need to get to know (probably because it isn't THAT important to get to know all of them). Shemp got the first win, but we were all close. I was more successful on my second try, getting a squeaker of a win (thanks to a few helpful moves by my unsuspecting opponents). Overall, I thought it was a good game. Pretty light, but fun and seemingly quite replayable (and both games were really close, so the ending was exciting). I did find the concept strange, though: The game simulates a castle seige, complete with soldiers on the ramparts defending against seige engines. However, the actual gameplay doesn't have much to do with it. Players don't take sides, the outcome of the battle is irrelevant. It's just a story which unfolds as players play their cards. Not a problem, exactly... just strange.
Castles:7
Next up was Domaine. Klaus Teuber, fromt he two games I have played of his, seems to make fun games which also seem somehow arbitrary. I think that this quality came through last night as we accidentally played an entire game using incorrect rules...
err... I should say "????? Rules". We played that:
1: Every player had two moves per turn (should be 1)
2: The deserter simply took a knight from the board (the knight is supposed to be stolen)
3: Cards could continue to be drawn from the chancery after the deck ran out.
I'm pretty sure the were other "modifications", but the bottom line is that even though the game played differently, it wasn't broken. I don't imagine too many games could with
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Role Playing Game Systems - A Look Back
I had originally put these comments in another forum, but I thought you gents might be interested as well.
RPG systems.
I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty finicky when it comes to RPG systems. I've designed three (well, the first two got rolled into the third) and I'm pretty happy with the final result. It's still amateursville compared to most complete systems, but I like it better than most.
I'll just run through the systems I've tried and run through the pros and cons of each. For fun, I'll list them in the order that I played them.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
My first ever, at age 10. Was completely at sea, since our DM was 10 as well. I think this is a fair to middling system, but it's popular.
PROS: Great for fantasy play - lots of spells and magic items.
CONS: Poor combat, action and skills systems, even with recent d20 make-over, plus my personal nemesis - hit points.
Star Frontiers
I played maybe three sessions of this game. I can hardly remember anything about it, other than the name of the bad guy Sathars, and that the other alien races seemed interesting.
PROS: Nice diversity of species - humans didn't seem like the be-all and end-all.
CONS: Forgettable
Gamma World
I'm a huge sucker for post-apocalyptic settings, especially in a sort of Mad Max future. This one was different in that the apocalypse happened about 75 years in the future of our time, which made for very interesting lost technologies.
PROS: A whole system for figuring out how to work pre-war gadgetry was a nice touch. The mutation system was extensive and interesting. The game world was pretty neat - my 2nd edition rules had a great map of post-war North America
CONS: Suffered from most of the same problems as D&D, since it was based on the same system.
Middle-Earth Role Playing (MERP)
One of the most complex and detailed RPGs I've played, which sort of fits the whole Tolkein mystique.
PROS: Great diversity of skill advancement and roll modifiers. Fantastically funny critical hit tables. Interesting that critical hits are divided by type of damage.
CONS: Super-kludgy character generation and skill advancement, thought I'll probably revisit it now that I'm not 11 and know a lot more about RPGs in general.
Top Secret
I liked being a superspy, what with the gadgets and the cars and the near-death.
PROS: Nice theme. It was a lot grittier than most RPGs, which meant it was easier to get hurt or die. The luck point mechanic helped out a lot with that.
CONS: Too many tables. When you've got a table for escaping death traps and torture, there's a problem. Also, the background info provided in the basic game set didn't provide a good framework for getting campaigns off the ground, unless you know a lot about world espionage and politics, which I didn't at the age of 12.
Robotech (Palladium RPG system)
Ahhhh... megadamage. A kludgy way to deal with the fact that you've got some things which are small and puny, like humans, and big and mighty, like veritechs.
PROS: set in an interesting and pre-made universe, with lots of depth and variety of enemies, especially with the multiple expansion rule books. Plus, any game where you can fly a veritech and fire off salvoes of AP missles is supa-cool.
CONS: Palladium level-based skill/percentage plus combat systems is clunky, with the need to cross reference a lot of abilities that affect skills, and skills that affect abilities. This is a cross-the-board criticism of Palladium games, not a specific swipe at Robotech.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
PROS: Mutating animals with BIO-E is cool.
CONS: See Robotech critique above.
Call of Cthlulu
Super creepy. Insanity sucks.
PROS: Very atmospheric. Super easy to die. You had to really ROLE-PLAY to stay alive. H.P. Lovecraft world is great to muck about in.
CONS: Sometimes TOO easy to die or go mad.
Star Trek (FASA version)
This was actually the second role-playing game I bought, but when I first got it, I had no idea of how to figure out the character generation system, so it sat on my shelf for several years until I could figure it out. When FASA lost the license, a lot of the modules and supplements went for super-cheap, so I've got a lot of books for this game.
PROS: One of the best character generation systems around - it really feels like a Star Trek character career. I cribbed this system for use in the home-made Aliens RPG mentioned above, then modified it until it wasn't quite as derivative in the Void Angels iteration. Once we got a campaign going, it felt like we had our own ship and familiar cast and crew which made for some fun evenings.
CONS: Action point movement system never really worked. Playing "goody-goody" Fed types can be very limiting, as can the resources available to a big Fed starship. I don't really comment often on manual and module artwork, but FASA had a really poor artist for a lot of the illustration and manual work.
Twilight 2000
More post-apocalyptic goodness - basically role-playing as former soldiers in the wake of WWIII Europe trying to get home to North America. Poor GDW, we barely knew ye.
PROS: Fantastically realistic post-war world. Great character creation system. Excellent volume of supporting modules and supplements. The vehicle guides and attendent colour plate explanations were excellent. Every module that I bought was well thought out and chock-full of great NPCs, settings and plotlines. Just about the grittiest game I can think of - any game where typhus and dystentry is covered as a real danger in the rules just about wins for the blackest sense of doom category (with Wraith: The Oblivion a possible contender)
CONS: Piece of crap combat and ammunition system. The only thing that seemed to make sense was the range and penetration values - damage and ammo were based on some weird burst/grouping method. A combat round took a long long time to resolve. Vehicle combat was better done, with component specific damage, but also a lot of time to figure out.
Star Wars
Everyone knows the Star Wars universe. You can role-play in it.
PROS: Great cinematic feel - very fast paced and very role-playing oriented. Star Wars universe is a fun place to beat on Stormtroopers.
CONS: Sometimes dice-rolling got a bit much. As easy as addition is, adding more than 8 dice slows down the game. Character templates ease character creation, but more options for custom design should be given.
Marvel Superheroes
Also familiar to most.
PROS: Super simple task resolution chart. I stole it, with modifications, for all three of my homemade games because I liked it so much. Super powers and character generation well thought out and fun to play. Surprisingly, this is probably the game that I have fewest beefs with - it's simple, easy to play and goes quickly. Character generation is easy.
CONS: I'm not a huge superhero fan, so this game didn't really have a lot of appeal for me. I don't recall at all the advancement system - which probably means it wasn't anything of interest.
Shadowrun - 1st Edition
This is the best RPG setting ever in my opinion, with the possible exception of Twilight 2000 and the "World of Darkness" series. Cyberpunk meets fantasy, with a lot of other influences thrown in.
PROS: Fantastic - literally and figuratively - game world. Art - layout, graphics and illustrations were fantastic, with the very rare exception of the one FASA artist from Star Trek (I guess they kept him on out of pity or something) who wasn't very good at all. Fortunately, he didn't get many pictures in. Very interesting spell system, which brings us to the cons...
CONS: In its first edition incarnation, Shadowrun had to have the most klugdy ruleset I've ever encountered. It improved in 2nd (and 3rd, I think, though I haven't looked at it) editions, but by that point the damage had been done. Combat was clunky, spells were very interesting but took a while to figure out and opposing skill checks were arcane. I had only the briefest of looks at 2nd Edition rules, but they looked much improved. I'd like to try this one again some day, if only for the game world.
Ninjas and Superspies
Another Palladium offering - Shemp cobbled together elements from this game and Beyond the Supernatural to make a very interesting game world.
PROS: Interesting concept - sorta Hellboy/Buffy idea.
CONS: Palladium system.
Traveller 2300
Picked this up cheap after GDW went under. Like almost all of the GDW games I ever looked at, this had a very "real" feeling universe, with really "alien" aliens that weren't just humans with forehead prosthetics.
I guess for my own games I grabbed elements from a number of games that I found interesting.
From Marvel, I took the task resolution chart.
From Twilight, Star Trek and MERP I grabbed the concept of developing the character from childhood through a career to present times.
I drew inspiration from Traveller 2300's take on the future, if only because it seemed the most likely of the many futures I've seen presented thus far.
From Star Wars I took the cinematic mechanic of FPs, which are very helpful in a high-fatality setting like the Void Angel universe.
The main thing I've learned from three attempts at RPGs (plus one or two others which were never really completely baked) is that the temptation is to make things over complex, when in fact, simplicity while still maintaining the flavour is what makes a game shine. If your game has too many mechanics, it collapses under its own weight - you're spending all your time looking up charts, modifiers and tables.
RPG systems.
I'll be the first to admit I'm pretty finicky when it comes to RPG systems. I've designed three (well, the first two got rolled into the third) and I'm pretty happy with the final result. It's still amateursville compared to most complete systems, but I like it better than most.
I'll just run through the systems I've tried and run through the pros and cons of each. For fun, I'll list them in the order that I played them.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
My first ever, at age 10. Was completely at sea, since our DM was 10 as well. I think this is a fair to middling system, but it's popular.
PROS: Great for fantasy play - lots of spells and magic items.
CONS: Poor combat, action and skills systems, even with recent d20 make-over, plus my personal nemesis - hit points.
Star Frontiers
I played maybe three sessions of this game. I can hardly remember anything about it, other than the name of the bad guy Sathars, and that the other alien races seemed interesting.
PROS: Nice diversity of species - humans didn't seem like the be-all and end-all.
CONS: Forgettable
Gamma World
I'm a huge sucker for post-apocalyptic settings, especially in a sort of Mad Max future. This one was different in that the apocalypse happened about 75 years in the future of our time, which made for very interesting lost technologies.
PROS: A whole system for figuring out how to work pre-war gadgetry was a nice touch. The mutation system was extensive and interesting. The game world was pretty neat - my 2nd edition rules had a great map of post-war North America
CONS: Suffered from most of the same problems as D&D, since it was based on the same system.
Middle-Earth Role Playing (MERP)
One of the most complex and detailed RPGs I've played, which sort of fits the whole Tolkein mystique.
PROS: Great diversity of skill advancement and roll modifiers. Fantastically funny critical hit tables. Interesting that critical hits are divided by type of damage.
CONS: Super-kludgy character generation and skill advancement, thought I'll probably revisit it now that I'm not 11 and know a lot more about RPGs in general.
Top Secret
I liked being a superspy, what with the gadgets and the cars and the near-death.
PROS: Nice theme. It was a lot grittier than most RPGs, which meant it was easier to get hurt or die. The luck point mechanic helped out a lot with that.
CONS: Too many tables. When you've got a table for escaping death traps and torture, there's a problem. Also, the background info provided in the basic game set didn't provide a good framework for getting campaigns off the ground, unless you know a lot about world espionage and politics, which I didn't at the age of 12.
Robotech (Palladium RPG system)
Ahhhh... megadamage. A kludgy way to deal with the fact that you've got some things which are small and puny, like humans, and big and mighty, like veritechs.
PROS: set in an interesting and pre-made universe, with lots of depth and variety of enemies, especially with the multiple expansion rule books. Plus, any game where you can fly a veritech and fire off salvoes of AP missles is supa-cool.
CONS: Palladium level-based skill/percentage plus combat systems is clunky, with the need to cross reference a lot of abilities that affect skills, and skills that affect abilities. This is a cross-the-board criticism of Palladium games, not a specific swipe at Robotech.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
PROS: Mutating animals with BIO-E is cool.
CONS: See Robotech critique above.
Call of Cthlulu
Super creepy. Insanity sucks.
PROS: Very atmospheric. Super easy to die. You had to really ROLE-PLAY to stay alive. H.P. Lovecraft world is great to muck about in.
CONS: Sometimes TOO easy to die or go mad.
Star Trek (FASA version)
This was actually the second role-playing game I bought, but when I first got it, I had no idea of how to figure out the character generation system, so it sat on my shelf for several years until I could figure it out. When FASA lost the license, a lot of the modules and supplements went for super-cheap, so I've got a lot of books for this game.
PROS: One of the best character generation systems around - it really feels like a Star Trek character career. I cribbed this system for use in the home-made Aliens RPG mentioned above, then modified it until it wasn't quite as derivative in the Void Angels iteration. Once we got a campaign going, it felt like we had our own ship and familiar cast and crew which made for some fun evenings.
CONS: Action point movement system never really worked. Playing "goody-goody" Fed types can be very limiting, as can the resources available to a big Fed starship. I don't really comment often on manual and module artwork, but FASA had a really poor artist for a lot of the illustration and manual work.
Twilight 2000
More post-apocalyptic goodness - basically role-playing as former soldiers in the wake of WWIII Europe trying to get home to North America. Poor GDW, we barely knew ye.
PROS: Fantastically realistic post-war world. Great character creation system. Excellent volume of supporting modules and supplements. The vehicle guides and attendent colour plate explanations were excellent. Every module that I bought was well thought out and chock-full of great NPCs, settings and plotlines. Just about the grittiest game I can think of - any game where typhus and dystentry is covered as a real danger in the rules just about wins for the blackest sense of doom category (with Wraith: The Oblivion a possible contender)
CONS: Piece of crap combat and ammunition system. The only thing that seemed to make sense was the range and penetration values - damage and ammo were based on some weird burst/grouping method. A combat round took a long long time to resolve. Vehicle combat was better done, with component specific damage, but also a lot of time to figure out.
Star Wars
Everyone knows the Star Wars universe. You can role-play in it.
PROS: Great cinematic feel - very fast paced and very role-playing oriented. Star Wars universe is a fun place to beat on Stormtroopers.
CONS: Sometimes dice-rolling got a bit much. As easy as addition is, adding more than 8 dice slows down the game. Character templates ease character creation, but more options for custom design should be given.
Marvel Superheroes
Also familiar to most.
PROS: Super simple task resolution chart. I stole it, with modifications, for all three of my homemade games because I liked it so much. Super powers and character generation well thought out and fun to play. Surprisingly, this is probably the game that I have fewest beefs with - it's simple, easy to play and goes quickly. Character generation is easy.
CONS: I'm not a huge superhero fan, so this game didn't really have a lot of appeal for me. I don't recall at all the advancement system - which probably means it wasn't anything of interest.
Shadowrun - 1st Edition
This is the best RPG setting ever in my opinion, with the possible exception of Twilight 2000 and the "World of Darkness" series. Cyberpunk meets fantasy, with a lot of other influences thrown in.
PROS: Fantastic - literally and figuratively - game world. Art - layout, graphics and illustrations were fantastic, with the very rare exception of the one FASA artist from Star Trek (I guess they kept him on out of pity or something) who wasn't very good at all. Fortunately, he didn't get many pictures in. Very interesting spell system, which brings us to the cons...
CONS: In its first edition incarnation, Shadowrun had to have the most klugdy ruleset I've ever encountered. It improved in 2nd (and 3rd, I think, though I haven't looked at it) editions, but by that point the damage had been done. Combat was clunky, spells were very interesting but took a while to figure out and opposing skill checks were arcane. I had only the briefest of looks at 2nd Edition rules, but they looked much improved. I'd like to try this one again some day, if only for the game world.
Ninjas and Superspies
Another Palladium offering - Shemp cobbled together elements from this game and Beyond the Supernatural to make a very interesting game world.
PROS: Interesting concept - sorta Hellboy/Buffy idea.
CONS: Palladium system.
Traveller 2300
Picked this up cheap after GDW went under. Like almost all of the GDW games I ever looked at, this had a very "real" feeling universe, with really "alien" aliens that weren't just humans with forehead prosthetics.
I guess for my own games I grabbed elements from a number of games that I found interesting.
From Marvel, I took the task resolution chart.
From Twilight, Star Trek and MERP I grabbed the concept of developing the character from childhood through a career to present times.
I drew inspiration from Traveller 2300's take on the future, if only because it seemed the most likely of the many futures I've seen presented thus far.
From Star Wars I took the cinematic mechanic of FPs, which are very helpful in a high-fatality setting like the Void Angel universe.
The main thing I've learned from three attempts at RPGs (plus one or two others which were never really completely baked) is that the temptation is to make things over complex, when in fact, simplicity while still maintaining the flavour is what makes a game shine. If your game has too many mechanics, it collapses under its own weight - you're spending all your time looking up charts, modifiers and tables.
Ford - American - Most Def... *
Cryptic and irrelevant titles aside, the choice of games went to Easy this week. He selected an Italian theme and we went with Princes of Florence, Traders of Genoa and Citadels, which though not set in Italy, is designed by an Italian. Complementing the theme was pizza for dinner, "Italiano" dorito chips and pizza-flavoured pringles. In the nice-idea at the time but ending up tasting like fishy spiderweb dust-in-our-mouths-category were "the desserts that shall not be named" but looks like an attempt to be icing sugar-coated bocconne but staler, drier and less appealing. They're called anginetti, and I hope to be acquainted someday with a much better version.
The opener was Princes of Florence. With five people, the game was a bit slower starting than most, with everyone eying various strategies for ensuring they had sufficient professions for endgame, which was frequently the complaint of our first few forays. Tili and Easy vied for polar opposite principality awards, with Tili creating a sprawling complex of parks, forests and buildings and Easy packing in the buildings like sardines, with a lone forest for relief.
In the end, Easy's new strategy of multiple builders + many buildings + two prestige cards won the day, but all of the other players were within 3-6 PP of the leader, so it was by no means a blow out.
I miscalculated on the final two turns, thinking I had one more action than I had. I must remember that buying action cards takes an action, as does completing a work and building. No doing all three in the same turn. Bad prince strategy. Bad!
Traders of Genoa was much quicker this time with a few rules clarifications from Easy, but trading was shrewder as people began to figure out the cost vs. profit margins of many actions. Easy carried the day with a respectable final bankroll of 590 Florins. Once again, a turn miscalculation left me holding a large order and all the goods to fill it in my hand at game end.
Two courtyard rolls accelerated game end by two turns, putting a crimp in the plans of most of us who were concentrating on large orders. Easy ducked under the wire to get his orders in.
Easy's early game strategy of multiple messager jobs and ownership of several key properties netted him a lot of floriny goodness, but the three rapid fire large job orders towards the end didn't hurt either. All my wheeling and dealing netted me 395 Florins, a unfilled large order and six goods laying unused in my warehouse. Unrealized earning potential is always a sad thing.
Everyone seemed to have learned their lessons about not overbidding on certain building actions and knowing their profit margins. This game wasn't as close as Princes of Florence had been, but it was fun nonetheless and we finished in an hour and a half, much shorter than the whined-about three hours that most complain of.
Rounding out the night at just after 10 was Citadels. With a few games under our belt of this game, strategy was much more in evidence. ?????, unfortunately, was a magnet for assasinations,
thievery and hocus pocus. Also a feature of this game was the frequently passed around hand (courtesy of the magician) which went from ????? to Kozure to Easy over the course of three turns. Easy grabbed the hat trick by completely destroying us with a final score of somewhere in the vicintity of 30 points, with the closest follow ons being ten points behind.
So, the night belonged to Easy, in more ways than one. Fun night, with much Simpsons quotation and confusion about speaking (see title).
* For posterity, the meaning of the title related to a discussion of the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. We were discussing the fact that Zaphod was being played by an American. Shemp pointed out that "Ford was American - Most Def." I thought that Shemp meant that Ford was "most definitely" an American (partially right) while Hapi thought he was talking about the former President (not right at all). Evidently Easy didn't understand the relation of any of the three sentence fragments and had to ask for a full-on clarification, which only ended up confusing things, since I don't believe it is generally understood that Most Def is a legitimate name for an American rapper, quite apart from it's apparent similarity to valley-speak. Much hilarity ensued.
The opener was Princes of Florence. With five people, the game was a bit slower starting than most, with everyone eying various strategies for ensuring they had sufficient professions for endgame, which was frequently the complaint of our first few forays. Tili and Easy vied for polar opposite principality awards, with Tili creating a sprawling complex of parks, forests and buildings and Easy packing in the buildings like sardines, with a lone forest for relief.
In the end, Easy's new strategy of multiple builders + many buildings + two prestige cards won the day, but all of the other players were within 3-6 PP of the leader, so it was by no means a blow out.
I miscalculated on the final two turns, thinking I had one more action than I had. I must remember that buying action cards takes an action, as does completing a work and building. No doing all three in the same turn. Bad prince strategy. Bad!
Traders of Genoa was much quicker this time with a few rules clarifications from Easy, but trading was shrewder as people began to figure out the cost vs. profit margins of many actions. Easy carried the day with a respectable final bankroll of 590 Florins. Once again, a turn miscalculation left me holding a large order and all the goods to fill it in my hand at game end.
Two courtyard rolls accelerated game end by two turns, putting a crimp in the plans of most of us who were concentrating on large orders. Easy ducked under the wire to get his orders in.
Easy's early game strategy of multiple messager jobs and ownership of several key properties netted him a lot of floriny goodness, but the three rapid fire large job orders towards the end didn't hurt either. All my wheeling and dealing netted me 395 Florins, a unfilled large order and six goods laying unused in my warehouse. Unrealized earning potential is always a sad thing.
Everyone seemed to have learned their lessons about not overbidding on certain building actions and knowing their profit margins. This game wasn't as close as Princes of Florence had been, but it was fun nonetheless and we finished in an hour and a half, much shorter than the whined-about three hours that most complain of.
Rounding out the night at just after 10 was Citadels. With a few games under our belt of this game, strategy was much more in evidence. ?????, unfortunately, was a magnet for assasinations,
thievery and hocus pocus. Also a feature of this game was the frequently passed around hand (courtesy of the magician) which went from ????? to Kozure to Easy over the course of three turns. Easy grabbed the hat trick by completely destroying us with a final score of somewhere in the vicintity of 30 points, with the closest follow ons being ten points behind.
So, the night belonged to Easy, in more ways than one. Fun night, with much Simpsons quotation and confusion about speaking (see title).
* For posterity, the meaning of the title related to a discussion of the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. We were discussing the fact that Zaphod was being played by an American. Shemp pointed out that "Ford was American - Most Def." I thought that Shemp meant that Ford was "most definitely" an American (partially right) while Hapi thought he was talking about the former President (not right at all). Evidently Easy didn't understand the relation of any of the three sentence fragments and had to ask for a full-on clarification, which only ended up confusing things, since I don't believe it is generally understood that Most Def is a legitimate name for an American rapper, quite apart from it's apparent similarity to valley-speak. Much hilarity ensued.
Labels:
Citadels,
Princes of Florence,
Session,
Traders of Genoa
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Getting Medieval
Last week, we had three players for a new game and an old favourite while Easy was up North w/ the family.
First up was Castle, a card game co-designed by Bruno Faidutti of Citadels fame. Put very simply, it is a game where all players race play all cards out of their hands and draw piles onto the table. Each card has it's own rules regarding where it can be placed, and getting previously played cards returned to your hand is a common occurance.
We played three hands, and I enjoyed each more than the last - it's a good little game, where SYN type gameplay is necessary to win, and momentum seems to shift often and quite rapidly. I think that things would get really wild and woolly with more than 3 players, and I think that would be a good thing, too. Nothing fancy, but very enjoyable. For the record, I think that I won two hands of this, and Kozure one. That's not necessarily indicitave of the play, though. I felt that all of the hands were close to the end, and would play this one again in a second. I'd rank this just slightly higher than however I ranked Bang!, so, give it a 7.
Next, we had a three-player game of Princes of Florence. I always enjoy Princes, but find it to be more fun with four or five players than with three. With more players the bidding process is more competitive, and more profession cards get out into play. I'm not sure I can put my fingers on the reasons why, but the game just seems more interesting with more players, to me anyway. And this is despite the fact that it seems (based on our limited data) that 3 player games tend to be closer.
Anyhow, during this session it came into the last round a three way tie - I had gotten greedy and spent 2 bonus cards in the second last round, which meant I couldn't complete a work in the last round, which meant that I lost. Damn, I shouldn't be such a greedy duck. ????? was slightly ahead at the end of the last round, but Kozure used his Prestige cards (2 of 'em) to secure the win.
I think that I am going to downgrade PoF slightly - it's still a great game, but I haven't been quite as jazzed about it the last few times. Call it an 8.
Edit: I mistakenly thought that Faidutti designed Bang! That's just not true. Emiliano Sciarra designed Bang! Tripped up by a foreign language web site, I was - and I shall be more careful next time, you betcha.
First up was Castle, a card game co-designed by Bruno Faidutti of Citadels fame. Put very simply, it is a game where all players race play all cards out of their hands and draw piles onto the table. Each card has it's own rules regarding where it can be placed, and getting previously played cards returned to your hand is a common occurance.
We played three hands, and I enjoyed each more than the last - it's a good little game, where SYN type gameplay is necessary to win, and momentum seems to shift often and quite rapidly. I think that things would get really wild and woolly with more than 3 players, and I think that would be a good thing, too. Nothing fancy, but very enjoyable. For the record, I think that I won two hands of this, and Kozure one. That's not necessarily indicitave of the play, though. I felt that all of the hands were close to the end, and would play this one again in a second. I'd rank this just slightly higher than however I ranked Bang!, so, give it a 7.
Next, we had a three-player game of Princes of Florence. I always enjoy Princes, but find it to be more fun with four or five players than with three. With more players the bidding process is more competitive, and more profession cards get out into play. I'm not sure I can put my fingers on the reasons why, but the game just seems more interesting with more players, to me anyway. And this is despite the fact that it seems (based on our limited data) that 3 player games tend to be closer.
Anyhow, during this session it came into the last round a three way tie - I had gotten greedy and spent 2 bonus cards in the second last round, which meant I couldn't complete a work in the last round, which meant that I lost. Damn, I shouldn't be such a greedy duck. ????? was slightly ahead at the end of the last round, but Kozure used his Prestige cards (2 of 'em) to secure the win.
I think that I am going to downgrade PoF slightly - it's still a great game, but I haven't been quite as jazzed about it the last few times. Call it an 8.
Edit: I mistakenly thought that Faidutti designed Bang! That's just not true. Emiliano Sciarra designed Bang! Tripped up by a foreign language web site, I was - and I shall be more careful next time, you betcha.
Labels:
Castle,
Faidutti,
Princes of Florence,
Session
In The Name Of Catching Up.
Well, we've fallen behind on the blogging front, and I imagine that generalized WAGS-wide real world business is to blame. No matter, we'll just get caught up here.
TWO Wednesdays ago we tried out Mystery of the Abbey which seems to be influenced in roughly equal parts by Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose (later made into a film) and the board game Clue (also later made into a film). There was, I believe, a game of Zero afterwards, but I had to jet a little early, so I'll leave that part of the evening for someone else to fill in.
Our first round was with 5 players, and I found that it went a little bit slow, as the first time with new games often do. The game consists of passing cards and asking questions to eliminate possible suspects in a murder. There are a few forms of bonus cards, but for the most part, things are pretty straightforward. Points are scored for revealing information about the killer (hooded or not hooded, bearded or cleanshaven, order, rank, etc., etc.), or for revealing their identity. When the killer's identity is revealed, the game ends. In round one Kozure won, by deducing that Father Galbraith was the murderer. Please note: Tili played, and Shemp did not win.
Round two went much more quickly, with me, Shemp, winning by deducing that the killer was once again Father Galbraith (nefarious Franciscans~!~). Please note that this was a 4 player game, with Tili sitting out.
Thoughts:
1) Our games went very quickly, with most people knowing most of the information. I think that in future hands all players would be trying harder to keep things to themselves, either by holding cards back, or by declining to answer questions, as allowed by the rules. I think if that happened, things would be a bit more, say, Intriguing.
2) I like the extent of the different questions possible, and wonder about making things even more difficult by adding characteristics to the existing monks (something that could be done by printing new suspect sheets). I know that Wearing Pants/Pantsless was suggested during our games, and I'm sure there could be others.
3) Fun, slightly strategic game - I actually think it would work well as a party game, much as Clue does, but it does keep things more interesting. Not a knockout in my opinion, but quite solid. Methinks a 6.5, subject to upward revision.
I'm out.
PS - Eco wrote the essay "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt". I come back to it from time to time, and recommend it as worth reading. I'll let y'all fill in the blanks as to why I think that.
TWO Wednesdays ago we tried out Mystery of the Abbey which seems to be influenced in roughly equal parts by Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose (later made into a film) and the board game Clue (also later made into a film). There was, I believe, a game of Zero afterwards, but I had to jet a little early, so I'll leave that part of the evening for someone else to fill in.
Our first round was with 5 players, and I found that it went a little bit slow, as the first time with new games often do. The game consists of passing cards and asking questions to eliminate possible suspects in a murder. There are a few forms of bonus cards, but for the most part, things are pretty straightforward. Points are scored for revealing information about the killer (hooded or not hooded, bearded or cleanshaven, order, rank, etc., etc.), or for revealing their identity. When the killer's identity is revealed, the game ends. In round one Kozure won, by deducing that Father Galbraith was the murderer. Please note: Tili played, and Shemp did not win.
Round two went much more quickly, with me, Shemp, winning by deducing that the killer was once again Father Galbraith (nefarious Franciscans~!~). Please note that this was a 4 player game, with Tili sitting out.
Thoughts:
1) Our games went very quickly, with most people knowing most of the information. I think that in future hands all players would be trying harder to keep things to themselves, either by holding cards back, or by declining to answer questions, as allowed by the rules. I think if that happened, things would be a bit more, say, Intriguing.
2) I like the extent of the different questions possible, and wonder about making things even more difficult by adding characteristics to the existing monks (something that could be done by printing new suspect sheets). I know that Wearing Pants/Pantsless was suggested during our games, and I'm sure there could be others.
3) Fun, slightly strategic game - I actually think it would work well as a party game, much as Clue does, but it does keep things more interesting. Not a knockout in my opinion, but quite solid. Methinks a 6.5, subject to upward revision.
I'm out.
PS - Eco wrote the essay "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt". I come back to it from time to time, and recommend it as worth reading. I'll let y'all fill in the blanks as to why I think that.
Friday, August 06, 2004
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