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Gutter Owl posted:That would be Archipelago, the game that portrayed natives like this: This is not true. If you just download a pdf of the game's rulebook you'll see that all of this drama about Archipelago is based on exagaration and hearsay. In Archipelago, each player uses meeples of his color (red, blue, green & yellow) for all his/her citizens, no matter if they are European colonists or natives that join them later. There is only a single black mapple in the game and it is used to track rebellion, the number of people rebelling in the colonies versus the total population of the colonies, which acts as the general morale track for everyone involved. That guy there with war paints on, sticking his tongue out, is the symbol used on negative things that progresses that rebellion marker, it does not signify the natives but instead signifies the people rebelling against mainland contol from both colonists an natives that live in and outside of the colonies. One of the secret player goals is seperatist, who aims to max out on rebellion to separate his/her whole colony from the mainland to win. The rulebook never calls that artwork as a sybol of natives, it actually has many cool artworks of people, of all skin colors to boot. echoMateria fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 05:17
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cyberia posted:Is Euphoria: Build A Better Dystopia any good for 2-3 players? I really like the theme but it's recommended for 4-5 players on BGG and I don't want to get it if I'm never going to be able to play it properly. I had fun playing it with three; I haven't tried it with two.
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Jul 29, 2014 05:24
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echoMateria posted:This is not true. If you just download a pdf of the game's rulebook you'll see that all of this drama about Archipelago is based on exagaration and hearsay.
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Jul 29, 2014 05:38
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echoMateria posted:This is not true. If you just download a pdf of the game's rulebook you'll see that all of this drama about Archipelago is based on exagaration and hearsay. The rulebook does has less racist looking images, but they're not as prominent as the black meeple chasing the white meeple or the ridiculous "native" image. That's not hearsay or exaggeration, they literally chose those things to be integral mechanics that can't be skipped over or dismissed. I love Archipelago, but drat I wish it wasn't so culturally lovely. One question about Archipelago. Are the ropes on the player aids / cards supposed to be sailing knots or nooses? I had assumed they were nooses in a reference to the fate of many games, but I'm not sure. As for Europhia with two players, you won't get to see everything it offers, but it's still a good game. There's less tension about bumping a faction up, because you can usually tell what the other player has. The tunnels probably won't get built unless you really try. That said, the game remains tight, and the two players will bump into each other in placing their stars. It also plays very quickly. My girlfriend and I get in 60 minute games of it no problem, which is great.
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Jul 29, 2014 05:51
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cyberia posted:Is Euphoria: Build A Better Dystopia any good for 2-3 players? I really like the theme but it's recommended for 4-5 players on BGG and I don't want to get it if I'm never going to be able to play it properly. I've played it with 2 and up to 4. I really enjoy the theme and playstyle of the game. i can not recommend it enough. Plus the maker of the game writes a great blog that he updates constantly and seems to genuinely enjoy talking with people and answering questions. Hell i even did some, read a lot, of playtesting for his Tuscany expansion on Kickstarter. Unbelievably stoked for that game + viticulture(the base game)
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Jul 29, 2014 07:22
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echoMateria posted:This is not true. If you just download a pdf of the game's rulebook you'll see that all of this drama about Archipelago is based on exagaration and hearsay. The grotesque, exaggerated savage doesn't represent all the natives, just the ones you don't like. Namely the ones who have a problem with you coming over and telling them that you own their island now, and they work for you.  I'm familiar with Archipelago. I've read the rules The rebellion symbol is still an annoying caricature, and completely goddamn unnecessary.
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Jul 29, 2014 08:23
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Jabor posted:As someone with Māori ancestry, there's actually something pretty wrong with using Māori as the cultural representatives of all the indigenous people of Polynesia. The fourth image when GISing "maori haka":  Reality is so loving racist and full of stereotypes. No wonder you don't want anything to do with it.
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Jul 29, 2014 08:31
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But maori's haka don't they?
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Jul 29, 2014 08:33
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Edit: Deleted because this derail is getting ridiculous and I'm not helping.
gutterdaughter fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 08:54
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Jedit posted:The fourth image when GISing "maori haka": Please stop. It is OK to like things without being moronically defensive about every last aspect of them.
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Jul 29, 2014 09:03
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Let's bump that topic. I see a few rethemes of card games like Coup and Love Letter floating around. Do any of you guys have experience with actually printing those bad boys out? How do you go about printing a high quality card, both front and back? Do you do it at home, ask a shop to do it, or order them online? A prime example of something I want to do can be found here: http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1552867/love-letter An idea for printing the box would be pretty ace as well.
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Jul 29, 2014 10:44
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Shadow225 posted:Let's bump that topic. I printed out copies of Coup and Love Letter; but I just stuck the fronts in a card sleeve with an old magic card. I don't think you would be able to print something high quality directly on card stock at home without a specialized printer. You could print it out on sticker paper and paste it on after but that wouldn't look very nice and would be annoyingly thick. Print shops might have a problem with Coup and Loveletter for copyright reasons; your best might be to find one of those online places that prints custom cards. Bubble-T posted:Please stop. It is OK to like things without being moronically defensive about every last aspect of them. People are way to quick to see racism everywhere and its annoying some times. Rutibex fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 13:21
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Rutibex posted:People are way to quick to see racism everywhere and its annoying some times. If anyone is overly sensitive in boardgaming it's the people who say this. The hobby is in general pretty tone deaf yet I see very little criticism - most boardgamers (myself included) seem to take it as just one of those things even if we acknowledge that it's there. Puerto Rico is still ranked #4 at BGG but as soon as a reviewer suggests that maybe an aspect of some game isn't particularly culturally sensitive there's plenty of people popping up to complain about the PC police as though their little brown discs won't be allowed on the plantations any more.
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Jul 29, 2014 13:39
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Rutibex posted:People are Fixed that for you. I mean look board games are a great hobby, and generally speaking can be played with anyone, but when a game introduces "Natives" as a game element to be manipulated, it behooves you to give it a once over and acknowledge, yeah this is probably racist. Same thing with that Lewis and Clark game using Indians as a resource, or hell even the Underground Railroad game. All of these are great games, and some approach their subject matter with more sensitivity (Underground Railroad) than others. You aren't bad or racist for enjoying these games, but when someone denies they may have sensitive/problematic themes and fails to acknowledge it, that is quite a bit more suspect.
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Jul 29, 2014 13:52
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Bubble-T posted:If anyone is overly sensitive in boardgaming it's the people who say this. The hobby is in general pretty tone deaf yet I see very little criticism - most boardgamers (myself included) seem to take it as just one of those things even if we acknowledge that it's there. Puerto Rico is still ranked #4 at BGG but as soon as a reviewer suggests that maybe an aspect of some game isn't particularly culturally sensitive there's plenty of people popping up to complain about the PC police as though their little brown discs won't be allowed on the plantations any more. There is a certain amount of PC fatigue that sets in after a while and creates a backlash. There are so many groups and sub-groups and cultures and whatever that you need to be "sensitive" to it's exhausting. There is more than enough violence and famine and poverty in the world to care about; if some tribesman from a culture with less than 750,000 members is offended by his portrayal in an obscure designer boardgame is not high on the list of things I give a drat about any more.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:08
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Rutibex posted:There is a certain amount of PC fatigue that sets in after a while and creates a backlash. There are so many groups and sub-groups and cultures and whatever that you need to be "sensitive" to it's exhausting. There is more than enough violence and famine and poverty in the world to care about; if some tribesman from a culture with less than 750,000 members is offended by his portrayal in an obscure designer boardgame is not high on the list of things I give a drat about any more. Yes there are tons of groups and subgroups one should be sensitive to. Look if you are happy ignoring problematic themes in games and other media, that is entirely your prerogative; however, you shouldn't minimize those who point out those issues by calling them annoying or saying they are "too quick" to point it out. Ignore it, and move on. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On a completely unrelated note, what is a good introductory, coop game with a fantasy theme? I have a friend who is looking to get into board games and the competitive games will probably make him shy away, but he loves generic fantasy stuff like orcs, goblins, wizards and knights. I was thinking Castle Panic or Shadows over Camelot.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:31
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Madmarker posted:
Lord of the Rings LCG.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:35
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Rutibex posted:if some tribesman from a culture with less than 750,000 members is offended by his portrayal in an obscure designer boardgame is not high on the list of things I give a drat about any more. Yeah, gently caress minorities. If I'm not offended, they shouldn't be either. Here's a list of reasons why it's not so easy being white and male...
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Jul 29, 2014 14:39
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The End posted:Yeah, gently caress minorities. If I'm not offended, they shouldn't be either. Here's a list of reasons why it's not so easy being white and male... If a group of Maori told me it offended them and contributed to some kind of harmful negative stereotype of them I would be right there with them. When it's white guilt ridden busybodies trying to self censor everyone else for what they imagine the Maori might think I don't care.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:45
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Jabor posted:As someone with Māori ancestry, there's actually something pretty wrong with using Māori as the cultural representatives of all the indigenous people of Polynesia. Here's one. Infer the rest and kindly shut the gently caress up. EDIT: Not just Rubitex. Please for the love of god move on from this poo poo. The oblivious folk are clearly never going to get it, the devil's advocates are going to keep on advocating and games are going to go undiscussed. Here, I'll start: Played Game of Thrones for the first time in ages again last week. That game is fun as hell and brings theme with both barrels. I love Diplomacy, but can't imagine ever choosing Diplo over GoT, even if Diplo has way better balance. The influence track is an awesome mechanism. The End fucked around with this message at 14:51 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 14:47
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Rutibex posted:There is a certain amount of PC fatigue that sets in after a while and creates a backlash. There are so many groups and sub-groups and cultures and whatever that you need to be "sensitive" to it's exhausting. There is more than enough violence and famine and poverty in the world to care about; if some tribesman from a culture with less than 750,000 members is offended by his portrayal in an obscure designer boardgame is not high on the list of things I give a drat about any more. Who ever asked you to care? Nobody. Show me the post expecting anything at all from you. Yet here you are expending energy on a post about it while simultaneously complaining that other people are fatiguing you. Anyway I'll stop now, it's unfortunate that the only other recent boardgame thing I have to talk about is the one disappointing thing in Tash-Kalar: One of the two alternate decks has pretty gratuitous female art, the other has no women at all, and my wife's pretty much immediate reaction was to put them back in the box and go back to the decks where "at least they're wearing clothes". Vlaada's own post about them says that the artist was instructed to bring out the 'female' and 'male' sides of the respective decks. I wish he hadn't, coming from his other games the art style was the last thing I expected to be offputting 
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Jul 29, 2014 15:03
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Man, I feel really left out right now. None of the board games in my collection are even remotely controversial. There is nary a racist or sexist image to be found. The best I could do is call some of the Kemet upgrades "white power tiles".
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Jul 29, 2014 15:08
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Chomp8645 posted:Man, I feel really left out right now. None of the board games in my collection are even remotely controversial. There is nary a racist or sexist image to be found. The best I could do is call some of the Kemet upgrades "white power tiles". The new tiles in Ta-Seti will be black, so feel free to start the argument over which is superior. (Answer: black and white, unite and fight [blue and red]!)
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Jul 29, 2014 15:11
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Chomp8645 posted:Man, I feel really left out right now. None of the board games in my collection are even remotely controversial. There is nary a racist or sexist image to be found. The best I could do is call some of the Kemet upgrades "white power tiles". Heh, it is kind of hilarious that the "White" power tiles are religion and slaves in that game. Jedit posted:The new tiles in Ta-Seti will be black, so feel free to start the argument over which is superior. I didn't know they were releasing another expansion for Kemet.......................well, there goes some more of my money. Madmarker fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Jul 29, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 15:11
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Bubble-T posted:Anyway I'll stop now, it's unfortunate that the only other recent boardgame thing I have to talk about is the one disappointing thing in Tash-Kalar: One of the two alternate decks has pretty gratuitous female art, the other has no women at all, and my wife's pretty much immediate reaction was to put them back in the box and go back to the decks where "at least they're wearing clothes". The Sylvan deck is pretty lovely, but aren't several of the Imperial cards various badass women? I could be remembering wrong.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:15
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Somberbrero posted:The Sylvan deck is pretty lovely, but aren't several of the Imperial cards various badass women? I could be remembering wrong. They're still pretty generic female fantasy - young thin and pretty looking. Not terrible, but not particularly varied beyond whether they're wearing plate mail or not. I guess at least we determined that my wife's line is somewhere between "the women are a bit homogenous compared to the men" and "why is this tree spirit showing me her boobs?" The game itself is excellent of course which makes this all more annoying.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:34
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Somberbrero posted:The Sylvan deck is pretty lovely, but aren't several of the Imperial cards various badass women? I could be remembering wrong. Yeah. The Sylvan deck is the only problem in the game. I understand they are supposed to be forest nymphs and all of that but cards like the Naiad are just boobs and more boobs. It's also the hardest deck to play so I try to play it a lot so I can unlock it's awesome potential. It was a big turn off for my gf when I put it on the table;but, thankfuly the game play is so awesome we both have moved on, after conversations about the topic. She loves to destroy me playing the yellow deck. One of these days I'll get good at green.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:38
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Whenever one group of people subjugates and oppresses another, they tell themselves that the oppressed group is actually made up of dangerous wild folk, as opposed to regular people trying to live their lives and defend themselves. It's a lie to justify their actions. It annoys me when board games reinforce this bullshit lie by making local populations look like dangerous wild folk. Rutibex posted:There are so many groups and sub-groups and cultures and whatever that you need to be "sensitive" to it's exhausting. Lol.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:59
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Tammany Hall is great because they rank white people against other white people, while simultaneously saying they're all pawns to even better (richer) white people. And then the chief of police beats them all up, I dunno. Anyway, a game I've had my eye on is Imperial Settlers, which is apparently 51st State remade or something so that each player has their own deck of cards to draw from. I liked 51st State well enough, but I felt that games sorta devolved into similar affairs, as after 4-5 games or so I noticed that I kept playing the same cards and making the same plays, regardless of who I was playing. Hopefully with 4 different factions/civilizations/whatever, I will at least play the same cards of 4 different flavors. If anyone's going to GenCon (doubly so if they've played 51st State/New Era), I'd appreciate a trip report.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:59
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Archipelago is a weird 'one step forward two steps back" thing. It doesn't blatantly ignore the racism involved in colonial history, but as some result it also leads to exposing a casual racism involving the theme. I also suspect that the designer is a loving loon when he added in a scenario for Earth Reborn that had a necrophiliac necromancer with irritable-bowel syndrome (that does come into effect during game) create pregnant zombies. In a way though, at least Archipelago does actually address that "hey, this era had slaves and angry natives and colonists were dicks." Woohoo progress? On another note, BattleCON remains to be loving brilliant, but still keeps being exhausting after each match. I guess I'm thinking too hard about what to play since playing "sub-optimally" is kind of a thing you want to do anyways since predictability is not a good idea. Mage Wars remains to be a game I absolutely treasure in my collection. Its 'deck' building is the best in CCGs, and the mechanic of pulling cards from a binder is incredibly evocative of summoning spells from a tome or something. Just a really drat cool game, even if its playtime can get absurd.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:39
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Rutibex posted:There are so many groups and sub-groups and cultures and whatever that you need to be "sensitive" to it's exhausting.
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Jul 29, 2014 17:32
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Poison Mushroom posted:"Man, now I've got to remember that there's different KINDS of black people?" You know, whether you're in the right or not you're being pretty drat obnoxious with this drive by posting. At least the other guy actually tries to explains his point when he argues. You just throw up a single mocking line. If you must insist on continuing this annoying derail you should at least bother to put forth a real argument instead of just mocking the other guy with one liners. Of course the best idea is just to stop derailing the thread.
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Jul 29, 2014 17:38
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Trynant posted:Mage Wars remains to be a game I absolutely treasure in my collection. Its 'deck' building is the best in CCGs, and the mechanic of pulling cards from a binder is incredibly evocative of summoning spells from a tome or something. Just a really drat cool game, even if its playtime can get absurd. I've looked at Mage Wars a lot and it seems like it would legitimately be a great alternative to MtG to get my wizard dual fix on. Does it play as well as it seems like it would? I've heard lots of positive things about it but I don't know anyone in the area that actually plays it.
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Jul 29, 2014 17:39
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Mice and Mystics
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Jul 29, 2014 17:44
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S.J. posted:I've looked at Mage Wars a lot and it seems like it would legitimately be a great alternative to MtG to get my wizard dual fix on. Does it play as well as it seems like it would? I've heard lots of positive things about it but I don't know anyone in the area that actually plays it. Pros: Excellent game with plenty of really cool deckbuilding. I do not regret having it and all of the expansions in my collection. Cons: It is hard to play it with new people. It has a steep learning curve with dozens of key words. Not only that, but handing a new player a premade spellbook can cause huge delays. In most card games, a player needs to know just the 5 cards in their hand at any given time. In Mage Wars, new players are expected to know the entire book right away. Game times aren't horrifically long with two experienced players who are more aggressive. But if you are both players who mull over their cards for 5 minutes at a time every turn and then turtle in your respective corners, the game can take a really long time. I suggest playing the 'teaching game' with someone a few times before jumping into the full game. Make the suggested teaching spellbook, then add some cards behind a divider to make it a full legal spellbook. Then, after you have played a few learning games, the new player knows the first 'half' of the cards pretty well. Then you can play a full game where the second half can be used, and all of the cards should be mostly self explanatory at that point.
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Jul 29, 2014 17:47
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Chomp8645 posted:You know, whether you're in the right or not you're being pretty drat obnoxious with this drive by posting. At least the other guy actually tries to explains his point when he argues. You just throw up a single mocking line. If you must insist on continuing this annoying derail you should at least bother to put forth a real argument instead of just mocking the other guy with one liners. You're right, back to more important things. What do you all think about Talisman Fluxx? Has anyone been able to find a store selling Pictomania? All I've been able to find is the German version.
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Jul 29, 2014 17:51
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We played (most of) our first game of Tales of the Arabian Nights last night, and it really reminded me of The Yawhg, a short group storytelling game for PC. Unlike Tales, The Yawhg basically has 6 rounds and a final special round as a conclusion to your character's story – there's no "winner". This structure seems like a much better fit for Tales, considering how random it is. Has anyone experimented with house rules in that vein for it? Saying "we play for 15 rounds" is easy enough, but there doesn't seem like there's a simple way to queue up a final special round with any particular significance guaranteed.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:20
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Gort posted:Mice and Mystics Mice and Mystics also totally has reductive stereotypes of mice and/or mystics.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:26
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homullus posted:Mice and Mystics also totally has reductive stereotypes of mice and/or mystics. Well sure - they got reduced from knights.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:27
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Gort posted:Well sure - they got reduced from knights. I hate how when I'm trying to enjoy Mice and Mystics someone feels compelled to bring up cats. I don't want to think about cats. I don't want to make this a derail about cats, though, so maybe we could talk about domesticated animals that catch mice, in general.
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Jul 29, 2014 18:31
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