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Jamesman posted:Looking at this, it seems good, but not great. The map is entirely laid out and really small, there's nothing besides enemies to fill out the board, and the setting doesn't really appeal to me. Also those dice seem really complicated, but maybe it's just because I didn't look into the rules but there are just so many and so many symbols. Just play D&D 4e. Or buy Gamma World if you want it all in one box.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:05
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Oh, wow. I'm trying to imagine how sad that gaming group must be after reading a bunch of these. How has he rated so many games and yet he likes so few? I think he might just not be very good at games. Edit: wtf, he's a game designer?!
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Feb 26, 2015 16:05
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fozzy fosbourne posted:I'd like to redact sharing any opinions with this guy's article and just go back to being the guy who's mildly apathetic towards Agricola Agricola is light as a feather since it is a party game.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:05
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burger time posted:Lorini, have you (or anyone else) played with the techromancer expansion for Argent yet? How good / essential is it? I think I'm gonna pick up the base game now but I'm considering getting the expansion too. I haven't played with it, but I don't think it's essential. It's a "more stuff" expansion with like a bunch of different modules (Technomancy school, some new buildings, scenarios, some new spells for existing schools, etc.). If anything I'd pick it up for the "more stuff," but a lot of it, especially the scenarios, can wait until you're a bit more experienced. You might as well wait to see if you like Argent first, then when you decide that you do, log into CSI and realize that the Technomancer expansion is sold out and the next printing won't be available for many months, if ever. Edit: quote:My first book on the topic of game design is available for purchase now on Amazon. It's titled "Game Design Theory - A New Philosophy for Understanding Games". Someone with less sanity than me check out his youtube videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw76jqF1nkI GrandpaPants fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 16:07
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Sloober posted:I had a really hard time finding the Dungeon Petz expansion so if you like the game you may want to just grab it right away I'll go ahead and grab it then. Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
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Feb 26, 2015 16:10
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Jamesman posted:I like dungeon crawl-type board games. Are there any good recommendations? If you can live without the adversary player controlling the monsters, the D&D Adventure Games (Castle Ravenloft, Wrath Of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt, and the soon-to-be-released Temple Of Elemental Evil) are the most mechanically sound dungeon crawl themed games I've played (apart from Catacombs but that sounds too different from what you're looking for). If not maybe you should consider the possibility that you don't actually want a board game, but rather you want a big pile of expensive miniatures, expensive 3d dungeon terrain, and a RPG ruleset (4E D&D is king as far as tactical combat goes).
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Feb 26, 2015 16:12
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McNerd posted:Speaking of Imperial Assault, how much do you lose out if you play through the campaign missions with a different play group every week? You could play this way, but it'd be a pretty lovely way to play Imperial Assault. The campaign path is fairly rigid, with set story missions that tell a complete arc, and experiencing the campaign as a whole unit is really what gives the game its draw. A large part of the strategy of the game is building your character over the course of the campaign and learning how best to play it with the skill upgrades/item upgrades/other teammates that you've chosen. Having different groups just dropping in and grabbing characters would eliminate a lot of what makes the game unique over, like, any other random minis combat game you could name. I wouldn't say that playing it that way would completely break the game. It'd still be functional as a tactical minis game. But you'd be paying $80 - $100 for the huge stinkin' box, and then only playing a facsimile of what you spent those bux on. Also, if he plans on playing as Imperial every time, he'll have a much firmer grasp on how his "character" plays, and that + experience with the system will lead to an unbalance in skill between the sides. That won't be bad if he pulls his punches, but that would be unsatisfying in its own way. It's not an RPG, and you really shouldn't play Imperial side like a GM. The game works best when both sides are actively trying to win.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:26
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Tekopo posted:Jedit, have you played either of those games and would you elaborate on what makes them not worth buying? I am honestly curious what you disliked about Dungeon Petz especially, beyond vague allusions that 'even Vlaada fans don't like it' (you got mixed up with Tash-Kalar btw, that's the Vlaada that a lot of Vlaada fans don't like). Petz has the problem I always have with Chvatil games: it has at least one more level of weight than it needs, and the fun gets squashed out. The guy I played it with is a Chvatil nut, plays Mage Knight so often with friends they can knock off a three player coop in two hours (he says) and loves Tash Kalar, but he was desperate to table Petz with our game group because his friends wouldn't play it and after the game admitted it was too crufty and he was hoping one of us would buy it from him. I haven't played Argent and it did pique my interest a little when people talked about the innovative mechanics, but once I saw it in action I realised they were talking out of their arses and the game was not really offering anything new. Jedit fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 16:39
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Paper Kaiju posted:I thought peak FFG was Android? Ahh, Android the favorite game of my collection that I never want to play again.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:42
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Aston posted:I think he might just not be very good at games. One doesn't preclude the other, unfortunately. Junta has to come from somewhere, you know… But that's an impressive assortment of “wrong” he's accumulated right there. 
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Feb 26, 2015 16:46
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McNerd posted:Speaking of Imperial Assault, how much do you lose out if you play through the campaign missions with a different play group every week? Is it like Risk Legacy where that totally defeats the purpose of running a campaign? Or like say the Space Alert expansion where it's pretty flexible? I've been playing a campaign with a 5 player group (one of us, the guy who owns the game, is the overlord), and we've had all 5 players there once out of the 4 times we've played so far. We still played 4 characters regardless of how many people showed up. We haven't run into much of an issue other than just making sure folks who aren't going to be there are ok with others making purchase and leveling up decisions. I think this is a good compromise considering that the guy who owns the game has to play the overlord, which is probably not as fun as being a player, and he doesn't have to repeat missions over and over and have to keep track of resetting his leveled up cards separate for whatever group of players. When I played Descent, I got a little burned out on the first few adventures because I was invariably having to start a new campaign with multiple groups of people who eventually ended up giving up on the game before the campaign ended. medchem fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 16:50
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Clockwork Gadget posted:You could play this way, but it'd be a pretty lovely way to play Imperial Assault. The campaign path is fairly rigid, with set story missions that tell a complete arc, and experiencing the campaign as a whole unit is really what gives the game its draw. A large part of the strategy of the game is building your character over the course of the campaign and learning how best to play it with the skill upgrades/item upgrades/other teammates that you've chosen. Having different groups just dropping in and grabbing characters would eliminate a lot of what makes the game unique over, like, any other random minis combat game you could name. Thanks, this is exactly what I was afraid you'd say. I'll send this post to him and let him decide how to handle it. If I recall correctly there were more than 4 heroes to choose from. How bad would it be to split the difference, have 6 Rebel players with their own specific characters, let them tag in when they show up, and then fill them in on what they missed?
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Feb 26, 2015 16:58
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Jedit posted:Petz has the problem I always have with Chvatil games: it has at least one more level of weight than it needs, and the fun gets squashed out. The guy I played it with is a Chvatil nut, plays Mage Knight so often with friends they can knock off a three player coop in two hours (he says) and loves Tash Kalar, but he was desperate to table Petz with our game group because his friends wouldn't play it and after the game admitted it was too crufty and he was hoping one of us would buy it from him. Does your friend like Dungeon Lords? I know it is a different game, but when I get people to play Dungeon Lords and Dungeon Petz, people do consider the latter to be the easiest to play overall. I do agree that it is a weighty game, but I've never been in a situation in which 'the fun got squashed out'. The weird thing about naming Dungeon Petz as too difficult or crufty is that not only I've never had a problem teaching Dungeon Petz, but I have managed to successfully teach both Dungeon Petz AND Dark Alleys to newbies that had never even tried the base game before and so far whoever I taught it to enjoyed it immensely (I make it a point to ask people if they are enjoying themselves/not feeling out of their depth when playing games). This is something that I would never think of doing with the Dungeon Lords expansion. This is partially why I don't get your 'it's too weighty' arguments, because even with the expanded game (that adds like 4 additional actions and quite a bit more complexity) I still don't have an issue with how weighty the game is. There is one point to bring up though: due to how many times I've played Dungeon Petz, I have pretty much memorized most if not all of the rules which aren't straightforward (and I do acknowledge that they are present, although I wouldn't say that the game is 'crufty' because of it). Like Dungeon Lords, it does help to have a 'Game Runner' that manages the state of the board so that other players don't have to worry about it. I guess the game can get bogged down if you don't have someone that has that level of experience. As well as that, the immediate strategy of the game can be hard to get when you first try out the game. One final thing is that the game can be immensely AP-prone, mostly during the 'allocating needs' phase, because once you have a couple of pets that share colours, the number of combinations can be quite high. Overall, Jedit, I just see most of your objections as being very subjective: you consider the game too weighty and feel that this makes it less fun for you. You have a friend that doesn't like it, but likes a lot of other Vlaada games and this translates to 'A lot of Vlaada fans not liking it specifically'. There isn't anything wrong for disliking something, but with a lot of criticism you give it just seems you dislike it because it doesn't match your tastes (or the tastes of your Vlaada-loving friend). Dungeon Lords/Petz are probably my favourite two Vlaada games specifically because they are on the more complex side, and that is something I like. Tekopo fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 17:04
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McNerd posted:Thanks, this is exactly what I was afraid you'd say. I'll send this post to him and let him decide how to handle it. There would be issues with that. Here's a few: Players get items/skills after each mission based on whether they won or lost and how many supply crates they looted over the course of the mission. While you could simply give the remaining characters that didn't play the XP, the maximum amount of gold you get per mission is set regardless of how many players you have. This means you'd either have a group of 6 heroes splitting funds that were already tight for 4 heroes or you'd have to house rule some kind of way to get the extra heroes extra access to the items. The deck of cards that you draw from to determine your available side missions is constructed at the beginning of the campaign, and is a limited-space deck. Each character in the campaign has a character specific side mission, which must be included in that deck. You'd have to figure out how to deal with that. Group construction is super important to the balance of the game. The group is a cohesive unit, and the heroes should be picking skills and buying items that contribute to the group's efficacy. A large part of the campaign, from the Rebel side, is learning how to work together, what weaknesses your group construction has, and trying to learn to alleviate that through tactical play or item/skill builds. It breaks the flow of the game in some serious ways that would be a detriment to the Rebel side. The Imperial player will also be building his "character" with upgrade cards that are tailored to addressing the specific Rebel group he's fighting. Trying to build an Imperial side that can handle all 6 of the characters and their various builds in different combinations is going to both suck and feel completely underwhelming as a strategic experience. Basically, Imperial Assault is not a 2-hour tactical combat scenario game. It is a 16 - 24 hour strategic 4 vs. 1 campaign where battle situations are resolved via tactical combat. You could, theoretically, play the game your friend is suggesting, but it wouldn't be Imperial Assault. It'd be a fractured, frustrating, random, Star Wars-flavored mess of moving dudes on a board and rolling dice. Tell him to get two or three people who he knows are going to be there every week, and run a campaign with them. If that doesn't work then, sadly, I don't think Imperial Assault is a game he should bring to game night. Clockwork Gadget fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 17:17
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That dude that was linked here is one of the biggest dumbasses I've ever read. Not only is his view extremely fringe, it's not illuminating in any way. "The Platonic ideal of a game is a low-weight single-player economic engine." Great, thanks for your opinion. Moving on...
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Feb 26, 2015 17:22
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Jedit posted:I haven't played Argent and it did pique my interest a little when people talked about the innovative mechanics, but once I saw it in action I realised they were talking out of their arses and the game was not really offering anything new. I also think it's productive and helpful to offer opinions on things I haven't tried or have tried incorrectly but lack the humility to cop to it. In other news, apparently Thames/Kosmos is going to reprint Legends of Andor and its expansions. Is this something worth getting excited about? I know that it was an FFG game but literally heard nothing about it since. I think maaaaaybe one post in the thread a while ago. Maybe.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:22
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His review for go is really something: Not really for human consumption. Go has not gone through a "game design process", it's more like we discovered this weird unsolvable math problem. Have fun with that.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:33
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GrandpaPants posted:I also think it's productive and helpful to offer opinions on things I haven't tried or have tried incorrectly but lack the humility to cop to it. I really disliked it, but related to your first point I should mention that I played it only once, with a German copy, and we were playing one of the later scenarios so there's a very real chance something went wrong. It felt like the scenario was a puzzle with only one solution (which we didn't find), and there was brutal punishment for not immediately finding it as whenever you kill something the game comes closer to a loss. It took a really long time to do not much as well. Today an odd BGG auction I won came in - Caylus (King Philip ready to beat somebody with a sceptre edition), including a copy of Puerto Rico in it as well. Do people still enjoy PR or am I many years too late to get use out of it?
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Feb 26, 2015 17:35
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rchandra posted:Do people still enjoy PR or am I many years too late to get use out of it? I never really enjoyed PR, but I think most people who do have moved onto Race For the Galaxy.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:40
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As an antidote to that terrible game designer's point of view, I feel like I should mention that Offworld, an Early Access Steam game, is heavily inspired by economic board games like Power Grid. In the company blog the designer writes out the rules to the game in rulebook form.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:40
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Impermanent posted:As an antidote to that terrible game designer's point of view, I feel like I should mention that Offworld, an Early Access Steam game, is heavily inspired by economic board games like Power Grid. In the company blog the designer writes out the rules to the game in rulebook form. I mentioned this previously and was told that it was 'Civ lite'. Which it's not, but I'm unsure that the thread is ready for videogames that use board game mechanics.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:45
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Yeah it's not really on-topic but it does seem to be an attempt to make an RTS that feels like an economic board game. (I did whine a little in the other thread that most of the people in the OTC thread were comparing it to Catan and Monopoly.)
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Feb 26, 2015 17:47
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Jedit is welcome to his opinions of course, but Argent is not a re-framed Archon, far from it. He might try actually playing the game before criticizing, but that's just a request. I thought mechanically Dungeon Petz was really good, just didn't like the theme. I don't use the experience of one person to generalize about designers, but hey if that's what makes the world go around for you, then who am I to criticize? (World must be getting smaller all the time though....) I bought the expansion for Argent because I was afraid if it didn't, it wouldn't be around when I was ready. Which might be never because my Euro loving friends don't generally enjoy confrontational games (you know just like the confrontation in Archon, oh wait!!) and Argent is both confrontational and somewhat chaotic as a result (just like the chaos in Archon, oh wait!!!). I haven't even opened the expansion yet because I'm still examining all the crap in the regular game and trying to figure out how it's going to work in play. I have four play dates in the next four days so hopefully I can get it to the table during those times.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:50
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fozzy fosbourne posted:I'd like to redact sharing any opinions with this guy's article and just go back to being the guy who's mildly apathetic towards Agricola at first from all of that it just sounds like he's not very good at the games he plays but then he describes Dominion as "basically a collectible card game" which is mindblowingly wrong on like nine different levels and I have a hard time believing this moron designs games when he clearly doesn't actually understand them.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:51
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Countblanc posted:That was a really interesting post, thanks. Do you think those voices exist at all in board games currently? Also, have you ever heard people within the industry talk about criticism and the need for it? Man, now that I say that, what even is "the industry" for board games - Games aren't made by big teams with notable money backing them, and indie designers aren't really personalities in the way indie video game people often are. Does board gaming even have a voice beyond lukewarm reviewers? I don't really have any idea how this works for the board game industry. The few people I do know who work in boardgame related stuff, though, do have extensive knowledge what the general goonsensus would consider to be more or less good taste. It's a small sample size, though, and the people I know aren't designers, they're more on the PR side of things. We get a lot of outsider perspective from game designers like that loon we've been talking about, but also games like Hearthstone and Offworld are good examples of digital games being influenced by board games. Hell, RPGs in general are influenced off of gygaxian D&D roots pretty directly. RPGs are also good example of how you can slavishly copy broken rules for literal decades because videogame designers appear to not have a loving clue about game design in general but whatever. For example, why is it taken for granted that units must miss in tactical combat games? Is that good game design, or is it taken for granted as something that 'should' be there? Why is it fun for a unit to arbitrarily fail to do the one thing you've asked it to do in a round? King's Bounty doesn't feature units missing in combat outside of specific cases, and neither does Age of Wonders, but the majority of tactical games feature this. FTL is particularly bad in this case, and is a lot like Firefly the Board Game in terms of its love of randomness. Many runs on hard difficulties will be impossible based on circumstances outside of your control, but it was hailed as a triumph of roguelike design. I think that a lot of this has to do with why people like chance that dicates outcomes in board games, which is that we like gambling and feeling like we "earned" something by rolling well.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:54
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Lorini posted:I mentioned this previously and was told that it was 'Civ lite'. Which it's not, but I'm unsure that the thread is ready for videogames that use board game mechanics. StashAugustine posted:Yeah it's not really on-topic but it does seem to be an attempt to make an RTS that feels like an economic board game. (I did whine a little in the other thread that most of the people in the OTC thread were comparing it to Catan and Monopoly.) Yeah it's a bit of a step out of our wheelhouse, I just wanted to mention it because it dovetails with what I've been thinking about with regard to how board game design influence video games and vice versa.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:56
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:at first from all of that it just sounds like he's not very good at the games he plays but then he describes Dominion as "basically a collectible card game" which is mindblowingly wrong on like nine different levels and I have a hard time believing this moron designs games when he clearly doesn't actually understand them. Well, how many game design books have you written, SuccinctAndPunchy??? Pretty sure it's not TWO http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-T...ds=keith+burgun http://www.amazon.com/Clockwork-Game-Design-Keith-Burgun/dp/1138798738/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1424969636&sr=8-2&keywords=keith+burgun
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Feb 26, 2015 17:57
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rchandra posted:I really disliked it, but related to your first point I should mention that I played it only once, with a German copy, and we were playing one of the later scenarios so there's a very real chance something went wrong. It felt like the scenario was a puzzle with only one solution (which we didn't find), and there was brutal punishment for not immediately finding it as whenever you kill something the game comes closer to a loss. It took a really long time to do not much as well. I still get use out of PR, even more so than RftG. They have similar mechanics, but RftG just feels "less". Given that neither is a spectacularly weighty game, that stands as a criticism from me. The lack of need for deck knowledge and the open information of Puerto Rico is also a benefit as well. This should be taken as purely opinion, not fact, and only from a single person (though I own both RftG and PR). Anyway, it's an awesome game with a slight racism problem that you ought to get a lot of plays out of. Worth having in your collection.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:01
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Well, how many game design books have you written, SuccinctAndPunchy??? Pretty sure it's not TWO 
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Feb 26, 2015 18:01
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I'm gonna take one for the team and watch all 8 of this Severus Snape knockoff's videos.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:05
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A popular video series that has less than 10k views per vid. Maybe that's popular in the Addam's Family mansion where he lives but out here in the real world that's not great. The dude is fringe, he clearly takes it very seriously but his theories are bad. They have bad foundations and they objectively produce bad results by cutting down acceptable game-design space (and even what are considered games) into a tiny little subset of mechanics and design. He's a dumbo.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:06
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LMAO this duderino has an entire video dedicated to whining about how combos are too hard. edit: proceeds to describe all games in which execution is important as limited to "shallow and rote" interactions. Sorry, fighting gamers, starcraft scene, MOBA players! Your games are all shallow and rote.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:09
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Impermanent posted:LMAO this duderino has an entire video dedicated to whining about how combos are too hard. To be fair all those genres should be single player
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Feb 26, 2015 18:16
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Somehow I missed the Superfight! Kickstarter and wow am I not upset by this fact. Apparently there is a booster in the "play" themed Lootcrate this month which is how I found out about it. Look at this thing I dare you to make it through the whole thing. (Yes this is just a Youtuber and not an official video from the developer, but still, ugh) Skip to 10:19 for exciting real game play! Make a lol-random hero, then argue about who would win in a fight. Sounds totally great!
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Feb 26, 2015 18:17
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I didn't realize until you posted the image who this was. He may be a mod of gamedesign, but his opinions are fairly unpopular there. There's people calling him out on this article (and his past opinions on video games) over there as well. He's just lost in his own world and fights under the pretense of trying to get the world to have "better game design".
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Feb 26, 2015 18:19
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Indolent Bastard posted:Somehow I missed the Superfight! Kickstarter and wow am I not upset by this fact. Oh hey, it's Story War with the space for creative thinking cut down. edit: I think it's safe to say that Keith Burgun just straight up does not like board games that much.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:22
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Also his two games are mobile games, not board games.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:22
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Impermanent posted:LMAO this duderino has an entire video dedicated to whining about how combos are too hard. I don't usually like dismissing people's opinions on the grounds of "You're just bad", but he really is just bad at games.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:23
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rchandra posted:Do people still enjoy PR or am I many years too late to get use out of it? I'm a big fan of Puerto Rico, it clicked for me much more than Race for the Galaxy. I kind of want to make a fan expansion similar to the occupation/minor improvement cards in Agricola, but I'm sure I'll never actually get around to it. Aston fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 18:25
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rchandra posted:Do people still enjoy PR or am I many years too late to get use out of it? People consider it a classic. The beginning moves are pretty much solved now, though, so don't read strategy on it too deeply if you want to uncover them for yourself.
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Feb 26, 2015 18:31
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