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Oh - one other game I was curious to hear people's thoughts on: Formula D. I'd heard it mentioned here a few times, and I picked it up on a whim. I've played all of once, and it worked pretty well; it seems to distill the "press-your-luck" game down about as far as a game could, kind of like Resistance boils away all the other parts of a hidden role game. We played with 4 cars on the track; I imagine the game must play a fair bit differently as things get more crowded. I'm also curious how things change with different tracks. I'm not overjoyed about the alternative track in the main box (which looks like "Fast and Furious" themed city racing with some random hazards that don't sound fun); I much prefer Formula 1 racing thematically, but I also can imagine how this game would feed off having a variety of tracks available. Any particular tracks anyone can recommend?
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May 3, 2013 00:13
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jmzero posted:Oh - one other game I was curious to hear people's thoughts on: Formula D. It does work well, although I really wish the playtime were shorter; that or it came with a cattle prod for people to speed up their turns. There's not a lot of tracks available right now unless you want to pay mucho $$$ for the old De stuff.
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May 3, 2013 00:15
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Tekopo posted:All of the above? You are devoured!
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May 3, 2013 00:28
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smashthedean posted:Someone should just make an HP Lovecraft expansion for Arabian Nights. Would you like to Rob Great Cthulhu? Seduce Great Cthulhu? Pray to Great Cthulhu? This is probably the equivalent of vaporware, but they were planning on it. quote:Kenneth Hite (@kennethhite) mentioned that he was working on a boardgame design, which I though was pretty cool. As I followed the conversation, he gave away that he was working with Z-Man Games on a reskin of Tales of the Arabian Nights called, if you can freaking believe it, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Unfortunately, googling for "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos" is a pretty difficult thing to do, and it's not mentioned in any wide channels, so...?
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May 3, 2013 00:42
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Would anyone be interested in a Skype/Rails/Dropbox introductory game of 1830? I've been thinking of running one to get more people interested in the genre so let me know if someone is interested.
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May 3, 2013 01:00
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GrandpaPants posted:This is probably the equivalent of vaporware, but they were planning on it. Wow, I would play this game into the ground. Any idea how long ago this was?
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May 3, 2013 01:05
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Tekopo posted:Would anyone be interested in a Skype/Rails/Dropbox introductory game of 1830? I've been thinking of running one to get more people interested in the genre so let me know if someone is interested.
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May 3, 2013 01:35
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Tekopo posted:Would anyone be interested in a Skype/Rails/Dropbox introductory game of 1830? I've been thinking of running one to get more people interested in the genre so let me know if someone is interested. I don't do Skype, but I do Dropbox and have experience with PBEM on various platforms, including Vassal. I'd definitely be interested in learning 1830. I love Steam and Age of Steam and would love to graduate to a more serious similar game.
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May 3, 2013 02:02
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jmzero posted:Oh - one other game I was curious to hear people's thoughts on: Formula D. As an F1/car nerd I love it, I think the gear shifting mechanic with different dice is cool as hell. But with three first time players it seemed to run a bit long on the Monaco track, I can't imagine that the longer alternate one is much better. Edit: also it's unfortunately named for introducing to car people, because you have to explain that it is completely unrelated that other dumb Formula D. Cactrot fucked around with this message at 02:27 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 02:21
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PBEM 1830 via Rails will take months. I'm in the middle of one right now. We update our status in the chat box of boardgaming-online.com's Through The Ages. Anyone care to trump that level of nerdom? edit- vvvvv Yeah I understand, I was replying to the guy who said he didn't Skype. Sessions with some sort of instant communication are pretty manageable. Admin Understudy fucked around with this message at 02:58 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 02:21
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Admin Understudy posted:PBEM 1830 via Rails will take months. I'm in the middle of one right now.
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May 3, 2013 02:39
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smashthedean posted:
I'm sorry, I must have a shoggoth in my eye, there's just no way I could possibly have read this right.
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May 3, 2013 03:17
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Scyther posted:I'm sorry, I must have a shoggoth in my eye, there's just no way I could possibly have read this right.
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May 3, 2013 03:35
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Colon V posted:Technically, it's easy to learn. There's no strategy, so once you know the rules, you're as good at it as you'll ever be! But learning the rules is much harder than mastering the strategy. Oh god. I've just realized that Arkham Horror is literally hard to learn, but easy to master. 
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May 3, 2013 03:44
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Arkham rules fit just fine on 1 A4/letter sized page:  On another topic, anyone got tips for quick scenario setup / storage solution for Earth Reborn map tiles? We got that on the table last night and putting the map together was a nightmare. Game itself is pretty fun though.
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May 3, 2013 04:36
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Yes but how many pages of FAQ? On a non AH related topic I played Dungeon Lords last night with 2 new guys and my wife. My wife managed to clean up the two parties of adveturers in a single turn each year and the new guys also smashed it. I ended up on 3 points at the end of the game. Still got my dungeoning licence I guess, maybe next time I'll have to attract the paladin. dishwasherlove fucked around with this message at 04:54 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 04:51
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To give a high five to Tekopo in a bro's playing complex games while drinking and having fun, one of the most enjoyable drunken boardgame experiences of mine was playing Revolution: THe Dutch Revolt 1568-1648, probably the most complex game I have ever played. It's complex enough that I do not remember, at any length, how the game works at all. Something about influencing armies, victory points that are calculate each turn rather than added together, and absolutely no random anything (I think). Plus, the drat board is gorgeous. 
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May 3, 2013 05:42
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smashthedean posted:Twilight Imperium stuff People already mentioned the Shut Up And Sit Down review, which is definitely worth checking out. I also wrote a long trip report on TI a few pages back which... is pretty terribly written and rambly, but it might give you an idea of how a game goes. You definitely play TI3 because it is so long and epic. It's an all day event with your friends! And crazy stuff happens all the time, no game is ever the same. You can screw your opponents in the political field, or by destroying their ability to trade, or by using action cards to unleash short-lived experimental weaponry that lets you win a battle. And by the end of the game you can be flinging around huge fleets that are capable of irradiating entire planets. One race can research the ability to blow up a sun. The scale and variety of the game pretty much blows everything else out of the water.
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May 3, 2013 07:04
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silvergoose posted:Panic Station has this problem, by what I hear. Games where you have to play counter to your desire to win in order to have fun have serious design problems. This mentality always bugs me because it's only true if you only play games because of competitive mechanics and not theme. Winning isn't everything and there are lots of ways to play games, and games that cater to them. Calling any game problematic because players can take a meta-approach to it and throw away the theme and design intentions to win is really limiting what game designers can do. For instance Mansions of Madness is one of my group's favourite games to play - and offers an experience like no other game in our collection - but it can be the worst if the overlord straight up plays to win from the first turn. We've found it works best if the overlord plays as a sort of DM-lite - focusing more on making a great story than just trying to shut down the players game with the same denial/weapon destroyed cards again and again and again. To take the example of panic station, if you have a group of people prepared to enjoy the paranoia theme of the game and their current game objective it can be great. If your players can't play the objectives of the game without playing an objective they know could crop up later on down the game, well poo poo is so meta by that point that the theme is wasted on them. Basically not everything has to be chess. Not everything has to be about the experience of the one winning player to be well designed. Also woo: Twilight Imperium chat. Here's a time lapse video I shot of me and my friends playing it a couple of years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1P7DUug3Bs Sardine Wit fucked around with this message at 07:32 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 07:28
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Sardine Wit posted:This mentality always bugs me because it's only true if you only play games because of competitive mechanics and not theme. Winning isn't everything and there are lots of ways to play games, and games that cater to them. Can of worms. If a designer wants to make a game about telling stories, they will make a storytelling game, and players will tell stories. If a designer makes a game with victory conditions, then for drat sure people are going to attempt to achieve those victory conditions within the confines of the rules and game mechanics. A while back, The General said probably the best thing I've ever heard with respect to board games: "gently caress house rules. I literally paid somebody else to write the rules." That applies here. If I buy a game, I'm literally buying components and rules by which to use those components. If those rules and components are not enough to properly enjoy the game, then I have been ripped off. I'm flexible. Pictomania does not include creativity, Say Anything does not include humor, Battlestar does not include manipulation, and Dixit does not include friends. But I can infer, by playing the game according to the rules laid out, that such things would positively influence my ability to achieve the victory conditions set by the game. Dungeons and Dragons does not include victory conditions, but it includes storytelling tools enough to convey its nature and encourage me to properly enjoy it as "intended." It's not hard-- if you want somebody to role-play your game, make an RPG. If you want somebody to win your game, make your game winnable. And, like in BSG, Paranoia, Avalon, Ugg-Tect, and many other games, those two sentiments don't have to mutually exclusive. Games like Panic Station, Arkham, and Talisman are just poo poo at the former.
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May 3, 2013 08:39
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cammy14 posted:On another topic, anyone got tips for quick scenario setup / storage solution for Earth Reborn map tiles? We got that on the table last night and putting the map together was a nightmare. Game itself is pretty fun though. Earth Reborn storage solution
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May 3, 2013 08:48
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The problem with Panic Station was that it was hideously, hideously unbalanced when it came out and even if you disregard the whole 'you still win even if you turn infected' thing. It was so badly balanced when it first came out that it completely managed to avoid evoking the entire feel of 'The Thing' by either making it really easy for the humans to win or really easy for the aliens to win: finding the middle ground was nigh on impossible and it made every game a let down because you could never really get to the fun paranoia bit. Also, I honestly feel that expecting people to play a certain way or the game is broken is exclusionary. If you have a group in which everyone is on-board and you fun with Panic Stations and Mansions of Madness, more power to you, but not every group is going to be like that and they might have mixture of competitive people that are not going to be on-board for those games. There are games that are inclusionary of the tastes of a broad range of people (see BSG, which does the same that Panic Station without suffering from the meta-gaming involved) and don't have to be played a certain way in order to make them work, since thanks to good design, playing them competitively is exactly the same thing as playing them thematically.
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May 3, 2013 08:53
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Sardine Wit posted:Not everything has to be about the experience of the one winning player to be well designed. Why yes, obviously what we're saying is that the only good games are non-coop strictly-competitive games designed so that the winning player has as much fun as possible at the expense of the other players having no fun at all. How else could anyone possibly not love Mansions of Madness?
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May 3, 2013 09:07
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So I just got Terra Mystica and Archipelago for my birthday, completely by surprise! How many blowjobs do I owe my partner?  But seriously, I am very tempted to run a PBP for Terra Mystica, would there be interest in that?
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May 3, 2013 11:56
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Tekopo posted:Would anyone be interested in a Skype/Rails/Dropbox introductory game of 1830? I've been thinking of running one to get more people interested in the genre so let me know if someone is interested. Tek, yes for sure. Dropbox 18xx owns hard
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May 3, 2013 13:19
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Scyther posted:But learning the rules is much harder than mastering the strategy. Oh god. I've just realized that Arkham Horror is literally hard to learn, but easy to master. I would argue that the rules to Arkham are not in and of themselves particularly complicated or difficult to learn, it's just that Fantasy Flight has presented them almost as badly as it is humanly possible to do without actually inventing their own language that no one else can read.
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May 3, 2013 13:36
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al-azad posted:Hey, did whoever it was asking get their missing Mage Knight components from WizKids? I got a buttload of missing bits from Wizkids. I was missing about 14 cards and some tokens when I bought a preowned coy at GenCon. They were super cool and sent the missing items with no hassle. I have also got missing/broken components replaced easily by FFG and Greater Than Games
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May 3, 2013 13:58
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malkav11 posted:I would argue that the rules to Arkham are not in and of themselves particularly complicated or difficult to learn, it's just that Fantasy Flight has presented them almost as badly as it is humanly possible to do without actually inventing their own language that no one else can read. It could be worse. It could be White Wolf
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May 3, 2013 13:58
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Tekopo posted:The problem with Panic Station was that it was hideously, hideously unbalanced when it came out and even if you disregard the whole 'you still win even if you turn infected' thing. It was so badly balanced when it first came out that it completely managed to avoid evoking the entire feel of 'The Thing' by either making it really easy for the humans to win or really easy for the aliens to win: finding the middle ground was nigh on impossible and it made every game a let down because you could never really get to the fun paranoia bit. Panic Station is one of our favorite games in our house - but it did have really crappy rules when it came out. A short time later the designer released ones that cleared it up and they are actually rather simple. The main solution to people trying to game the system is we adjusted win conditions a bit. And here they are: 1) The HOST wins if the humans fail to burn the hive for whatever reason. 1a - Anybody that the host INFECTS only wins if the above happens AND they "pay it forward" - They need to infect another human or kill another human to actually earn a spot as a winner otherwise they as a player lose. This makes people less likely to try and get infected. 2) Humans win if the Hive is burned. The only winners among the human team are those that SURVIVE. This will increase paranoia as people aren't willing to pull the old "Shoot us both! That's the only way to be sure!" quip And honestly I wouldn't call the game 'unbalanced' but the Host has a much steeper learning curve. New players are absolutely trash as the host so much that when I introduce the game to new players I secretly slip myself the host card just so I can be sure that they are going to have a good game.
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May 3, 2013 14:02
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Panic Station is one of our favorite games in our house - but it did have really crappy rules when it came out. A short time later the designer released ones that cleared it up and they are actually rather simple. I am inferring that it still does have crappy rules, because here you are saying the ones that it comes with even now need fixing. I played it once and I have no idea which ruleset I was playing, but even on the first play it seemed pretty clear that if it seemed as though people were getting infected, you may as well trade with people all the time.
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May 3, 2013 14:28
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cammy14 posted:On another topic, anyone got tips for quick scenario setup / storage solution for Earth Reborn map tiles? We got that on the table last night and putting the map together was a nightmare. Game itself is pretty fun though.
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May 3, 2013 14:29
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jmzero posted:Oh - one other game I was curious to hear people's thoughts on: Formula D. I prefer Rallyman. And I'm not just saying that because I'm in the credits.
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May 3, 2013 14:38
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echoMateria posted:I'm going to get Earth Reborn on the next shipment as well and this also concerns me. VoodooXT, that link, the "technical specifications to the manufacturer on how to build the vacuum tray", is no help at all. Not sure if this was a joke or something. That's not how to build the vacuum tray, that actually shows where all the pieces go. That being said, if you want something easier to read, someone made a video of how to store everything as intended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrykB9o18eg EDIT: Also to note, the game really isn't that impossible to pack without a solution. It just requires a little bit of common sense. You don't have to pack everything like they say either.
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May 3, 2013 15:06
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Deviant posted:I prefer Rallyman. And I'm not just saying that because I'm in the credits. The description that I'm reading makes it seem very similar, how is it better?
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May 3, 2013 15:29
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Broken Loose posted:I'm flexible. Pictomania does not include creativity, Say Anything does not include humor, Battlestar does not include manipulation, and Dixit does not include friends. But I can infer, by playing the game according to the rules laid out, that such things would positively influence my ability to achieve the victory conditions set by the game. Dungeons and Dragons does not include victory conditions, but it includes storytelling tools enough to convey its nature and encourage me to properly enjoy it as "intended." We actually probably have a similar taste in games. I totally agree about Talisman (ugh), and Panic Station and Arkham are by no means perfect. My only specific gripe with what was said above was that the win conditions 'are' part of the ruleset provided. For me, playing against your game objective in the hope you will 'lose' it and therefore be given a new objective is playing outside the scope of the ruleset. In a pretty extreme example, a solid way to win a game of Dominion would be to wait an hour before you play each turn until your opponent forfeits in frustration, but it's not really the fault of the game designer. It's inappropriate meta-play. I do agree though that this is just semantics though if you have a player sit down and gain an advantage from it regardless.
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May 3, 2013 15:32
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malkav11 posted:I would argue that the rules to Arkham are not in and of themselves particularly complicated or difficult to learn, it's just that Fantasy Flight has presented them almost as badly as it is humanly possible to do without actually inventing their own language that no one else can read. Vlaada Chvatil's Arkham Horror.
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May 3, 2013 15:33
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Vlaada's Arkham Horror would be broken into three separate tutorial sections that build upon each other so there's no way you can read Part B without first reading Part A. And there would be a dummy player that rapidly advances the doom clock and triggers random events because why the hell not?
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May 3, 2013 15:39
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Waiting an hour in dominion until other people quit does not fulfill victory condition because victory conditions for dominion rely on having the most points at the end of the game. Victory conditions of panic station when it came out stated that when infected you won with the host. It's two completely different things. Maybe if the designer had included a disclaimer about needing to play a certain way, but nothing like that was present.
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May 3, 2013 15:49
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I have to give some praise to a new game my group got to the table this past weekend: Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective It is alot like a choose-your-own-adventure type game where you play as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars tasked by Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder and do so in a more efficient manner than the master himself. Its almost more of an RPG than it is a boardgame per se. There are no moving parts i.e. pieces to move around a map, dice to roll, stats to track etc. Each case consists of the casebook with all the locations you can visit for information given to you in a narrative format, a map of London to use as a reference, a directory similar to a phonebook where you can look up anyone related to a case and find out where they live or work in order to know what narrative to read in the case book, and a newspaper relevant to the crime itself where you can sometimes find bits of useful information. It is either a solo or co-op or competitive game. Basically each person takes a turn as the 'Lead Investigator' and chooses a lead to follow. This can be like 'I choose to go to the scene of the crime' or 'I want to question Beatrice Whateverhernameis'. In order to do so, you either must use previously attained information in order to determine where you must go to follow this lead or look up that person in the directory. This will return a location on the London Map which will coincide to an entry in the code book which gets read aloud to everyone at the table. This counts as a lead followed. The information attained by following the lead will then potentially open up further leads to follow (like verifying someone's alibi or visiting an expert to ask about evidence). Once you feel that you've gathered enough information that you feel you can solve the case, you proceed to the end of the case book where you answer four questions specific about the case with each question being worth 25 points if correct. You also answer four bonus questions which are relevant to the case, but are less likely to be easily answered. Consider them 'bonus questions' and are worth 10 points if answered correctly. So from the questions, you can score up to 140 points. Sherlock Holmes scores 100 and you'll compare your score to his to see if you beat the Master. However, the catch is that you also must count the number of leads that you followed in order to solve the case and compare with how many Sherlock took to solve the case. For each lead you took less than him, you score +5 points. For each lead you took more than him, a -5 penalty. Since Sherlock is the Master, you can count on him taking an extremely efficient path to solve the case... it is VERY difficult to even contest him in score. Our first game (1st case of 10 included in the game) was great fun though it took over 2 hours (first game, learning, lots of talking). We scored a measely 35 points after getting hammered for taking like 12 more leads than Sherlock needed! We played cooperatively. We had everyone with their own paper and pen to keep notes with... but I think the game will be better and MUCH more thematic with a board and index cards like you would see in serial detective dramas these days. Make an index card for each suspect / piece of evidence. Everyone having their own page for notes ended up not being very efficient for a cooperative game as not everyone is a good note taker and it can cause disagreements with interpretation. There's lots of reading (obviously) and the theme of Ye Olde London is very well done. I really like games that bring a story to itself and end up being memories that people recollect at future boardgame nights similar to how people reminisce about good books or movies with each other at a social event. Its also why I really enjoy Tales of Arabian Nights and Agents of SMERSH. I picked this game up for like $26 bucks too... seems like a steal so far.
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May 3, 2013 16:03
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quote:Waiting an hour in dominion until other people quit does not fulfill victory condition because victory conditions for dominion rely on having the most points at the end of the game. Well, you could fulfill Dominion game winning conditions by threatening people with a knife: you touch the Province pile, you get cut. I think it's a solid strategy, especially without any expansions or authority figures around. It shouldn't really need to be said, but this is not OK - just as it's not OK to wait an hour for your turn hoping people will quit, even if their quitting does win you the game. I don't remember where I was going with this, but if in-game behavior targeted at winning is "wrong" somehow I think that's at least a negative characteristic. It would be better if the game rules aligned winning with fun (and perhaps thematic, and maybe "basically socially acceptable") play. jmzero fucked around with this message at 16:40 on May 3, 2013 |
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May 3, 2013 16:16
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