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GrandpaPants posted:Then tell me why this game deserves more than a couple plays before binning it? Just saying "Nuh uh, you're wrong and dumb lol" doesn't do anything to create discussion, but just makes you look like a dick. Explain why this Quite frankly I don't care if you ever play it again. I just don't want other people reading your original post of 'this game is bad' and never trying it. The luck in this game absolutely does not strip all player agency. As I already said, correct plays and strategy do a lot to mitigate the wrinkles the event deck and dice rolls throw at you. The key to this game is rolling with the punches and changing strategy based on the condition of the board. Sometimes this isn't enough and you still lose. So it goes. I can see how that wouldn't be for everyone. Stelas posted:e: Haha, I forgot that one player threw up their hands and quit the game after the first turn because the rulebook was that opaque to them. I can't defend the rulebook, it's terrible. Kaddish fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 14:53
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I ran the Robinson Crusoe PBP and will freely admit I consider it a bad game. The event deck has a tendency to spiral out of control with no real control from the players - you pretty much have to consistently risk ? cards or else starve - while the nature of the game (multiplayer but no actual turns, you just discuss your actions) makes it ludicrously quarterbackable, a problem only exacerbated by a shockingly awful rulebook and a bunch of fiddly upkeep steps every time you do something. It's not bad as a solitaire game but there's way better choices if you have multiple players. e: Haha, I forgot that one player threw up their hands and quit the game after the first turn because the rulebook was that opaque to them.
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Aug 6, 2015 14:53
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Basically if you want a couple people running around in the middle of bumfuck nowhere trying not to die and rolling sadness dice just play Ghost Stories. Or give it all up and become a Hanabi god.
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Aug 6, 2015 14:55
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Andarel posted:Basically if you want a couple people running around in the middle of bumfuck nowhere trying not to die and rolling sadness dice just play e: whoo actual content BonHair posted:Wait, introducing players to COIN games is easy? I've been holding out because of the combination of theme and inaccessibility, but if they're accessible like you say, I will have to get one straight away. Well 'easy' is a relative term. It still takes a good half hour to explain and then it takes a while to get into the groove of things and the people have to actually want to pay attention; but it is actually possible to explain verbally (try teaching someone Empire of the Sun if they haven't read the manual) and once you get into it it's relatively simple to play. I'd reccomend trying out the solitaire mode on VASSAL and seeing if you think you could teach it. StashAugustine fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 15:15
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Kaddish posted:You played a game twice and have a terrible opinion. It's true that luck of the roll and the draw of the event deck can gently caress you in this game. This doesn't detract from the experience for me at all. The rulebook is indeed not the best but the mechanics are just fine. I've played this game -more- than twice and I absolutely know that correct plays/decisions lead to better outcomes. I played it 10+ times before selling it (because its poo poo) and even if you want a co-op where the dice occasionally gently caress you, Ghost Stories is like a million times better. RC is rated so highly on BGG because its ~dripping with theme~ (translated: highly random with some flavour text) Edit: beaten on GS I guess Kaddish posted:The key to this game is rolling with the punches and changing strategy based on the condition of the board. Crusoe has so much terribly implemented variance from the book/? event ordering to the strictly better/worse animals to the adventure cards with benefits that all but guarantee you won't see their 'drawback' to the two loving useless treasures that have absolutely no reason to exist other than as a 'gently caress you' to the players. The dice aren't even the biggest problem with the game. Bubble-T fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 15:23
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Kaddish posted:I'm not sure what balance problem you're referring to specifically. It's true the event deck can be a bit a random, as well as the dice, and some games seem like a breeze while others feel like they're doomed at the start. None of these things make it a bad game, in my opinion. If someone would like a co-op game with perfect information and no luck then this wouldn't be for them I guess. Of course, this would exclude some very excellent games. You sound like such a douche when you talk like this
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Aug 6, 2015 15:31
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With all this stuff about Exploding Kittens, I decided to buy Falling. Game is good. Play as fast as possible.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:31
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StashAugustine posted:Well 'easy' is a relative term. It still takes a good half hour to explain and then it takes a while to get into the groove of things and the people have to actually want to pay attention; but it is actually possible to explain verbally (try teaching someone Empire of the Sun if they haven't read the manual) and once you get into it it's relatively simple to play. I'd reccomend trying out the solitaire mode on VASSAL and seeing if you think you could teach it.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:34
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StashAugustine posted:Basically if you want a couple people running around in the middle of bumfuck nowhere trying not to die and rolling sadness dice just play But yeah, huge co-op fan and got bored of RC after a couple of plays. It's not that bad, but there are so many more interesting games out there even if they aren't quite as "thematic". Magic Realm still the best though. I really want to play Fire in the Lake :<
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Aug 6, 2015 15:36
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Stelas posted:I ran the Robinson Crusoe PBP and will freely admit I consider it a bad game. The event deck has a tendency to spiral out of control with no real control from the players - you pretty much have to consistently risk ? cards or else starve - while the nature of the game (multiplayer but no actual turns, you just discuss your actions) makes it ludicrously quarterbackable, a problem only exacerbated by a shockingly awful rulebook and a bunch of fiddly upkeep steps every time you do something. Was that me, or in addition to me? I thought I stayed to the end, but I may just have been reading the thread after a while. Either way my entire contribution to the game was "yeah, do what the guy who's played it before says". Robinson Crusoe is a loving terrible game.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:39
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Robinson Crusoe isn't great. I tried to convince myself it was for a while, but it's just not. I regret being suckered by the theme and the initial buzz around it that almost every single boardgame gets before people have played a decent amount and dissected the mechanics.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:39
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I really can't stand Ghost Stories any longer - and I never really liked it much in the first place. I've even played it a bunch since it was one of the only co-ops we had at the time. I don't understand how people can grumble about e.g. Robinson Crusoe's die rolling or quarterbackable-ness and junk but not feel the same things about Ghost Stories  It's hard, makes me feel unlucky and regularly hosed over by random draws and rolls, and is otherwise just sort of (subjectively) boring. It's a good example of different strokes for different folks because to me it's a game where the gameplay can be stripped down to: draw cards to see how many steps back, roll dice to see if you take a step forward, congrats if you make it to China otherwise lol.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:42
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Tekopo posted:You can understand the rules all you want but if you don't know the implication of the rules in regards to strategy you are not going to have a good time. deckbuilders.txt right here 
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Aug 6, 2015 15:44
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Mister Sinewave posted:deckbuilders.txt right here Naw, NT and games with rules like it are a different beast. In Dominion, if you buy whatever looks good and someone executes a real strategy and kicks your rear end, you at least felt like you did something, right? You bought stuff, you got some points, you lost, but you could have a good time doing so. In NT, if you put a corp into a big locale without support, you're just gonna lose it without getting anything in return. And then your opponent sends cavalry around your flanks and then you're surrounded and then you lose, having accomplished essentially nothing. It's really important when teaching it to explain "And here's why you don't want to go into these locales without cavalry support" and "here's roughly how to use artillery" and "here's where, if you extend too much, the French will bring on reinforcements and slaughter you".
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Aug 6, 2015 15:50
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Mister Sinewave posted:I really can't stand Ghost Stories any longer - and I never really liked it much in the first place. I've even played it a bunch since it was one of the only co-ops we had at the time. I don't understand how people can grumble about e.g. Robinson Crusoe's die rolling or quarterbackable-ness and junk but not feel the same things about Ghost Stories For one, the rules of Ghost Stories are way more straightforward and the gambling is much more obvious on its face so new players don't really feel like they need to follow what experienced players are saying because otherwise it doesn't make sense. For two, the die roll odds are super predictable and you can actively mess with them unless you're dealing with Black Widow bullshit by picking up tokens, and once you get going you can chain actions and do really fun poo poo with some of the monks. There's enough randomness to make things tense but since you're usually trying to roll a 1-in-3 on 3 dice the odds definitely don't suck. You want to risk big turns that's on you (I've seen quad red rolled to kill a 4-red at least twice but usually it just screws you). And for three, it's like 1/2 to 1/3 as long and the difficulty is pretty stable, you get to see how screwed you are at the start of your turn and usually things get worse slowly rather than just popping up a bunch of bullshit you need to deal with ASAP. Plus the you're hosed over clock is also the game clock so if you're dealing with annoying mooks you're also progressing in the game faster. Plus poo poo like Buddhas and double attacks let you obviously gain ground over the game while there are reasonable Oh poo poo buttons like the Sorcerer. It's not anywhere near solved, it's damned hard, but you kinda need to go into it knowing you're a default level of hosed and you've gotta fight your way out of that. Plus individual consecutive turns reduce quarterbacking as opposed to RC's collective planning because some new BS will pop up each turn to deal with and Red needs to make sure people are where they need to be (and of course everyone wants Red to help 'em out so it's not like he's calling all the shots).
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Aug 6, 2015 15:51
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I also wasn't a fan of RC, though I don't like many co-ops in general(outside of Space Alert and Escape). Played it about 5 times and it never felt like we won or lost because of the decisions we made since we made similar choices each play, it just felt like "oh, the even/adventure decks let us win this time. Wee". Totally unsatisfying game to win since you know a turn or two in advance if you're going to win or lose and just go through the motions to finish, aside from never feeling like what we did really mattered much outside of small efficiencies. And yah, ~dripping with theme~.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:53
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Mister Sinewave posted:I really can't stand Ghost Stories any longer - and I never really liked it much in the first place. I've even played it a bunch since it was one of the only co-ops we had at the time. I don't understand how people can grumble about e.g. Robinson Crusoe's die rolling or quarterbackable-ness and junk but not feel the same things about Ghost Stories You actually shouldn't be rolling too many dice in Ghost Stories, unless you'll immediately lose if you don't. Dice rolls are mostly to see how many tokens you need to burn. It's a game about managing Ghost placement and timing to waste as few actions as possible on actually attacking, so you can spend your actions on guaranteed rewards. Robinson works the opposite way, you should generally roll dice unless you'll immediately lose if you fail an action because adventure cards are about as likely to be good as they are bad and doubling your potential actions is obviously good. So, you flip those cards and see if the game wants you to win. That's the main difference - random things in Ghost Stories vary from "bad" to "very bad" and you generally want to minimise your exposure to them, in Robinson they vary from "very bad" to "very good" and you're encouraged to expose yourself to them. It's a far less controlled player experience. You can still get dice hosed in Ghost Stories and its quarterbackable obviously, I'd never begrudge someone disliking it for those reasons. Doesn't stop it being much better in that class than Crusoe.
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Aug 6, 2015 15:59
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It's funny that ~dripping with theme~ is a high form of praise elsewhere, but it suggests that the theme could be removed and is not intrinsic to the thing at all. Give me a theme alloy, at least. A really good thematic game should require nuclear fission to remove the theme, not a paper towel 
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Aug 6, 2015 16:00
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Plus speeding up the clock and getting hit by a lot of ghosts isn't necessarily bad in GS because if you can deal with them it lets you focus on the actual problems (since win condition is "survive a certain number of ghosts" which isn't necessarily equal to turns) and a bunch of ghosts are just annoying and can give big rewards like the rank 4 guys. Cursers are annoying as hell though and spawning lots of ghosts is usually bad though.fozzy fosbourne posted:It's funny that ~dripping with theme~ is a high form of praise elsewhere, but it suggests that the theme could be removed and is not intrinsic to the thing at all. I think ~dripping with theme~ is the sarcastic version that implies the theme kinda works but they went way overboard at the expense of mechanics and the game kinda turned into a Mediocre Story Generator. Go play Magic Realm then, the real best Thematic Co-Op.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:05
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*gif of a man dropping a cardboard box, theme spills everywhere* "There's got to be a better way!" *Mage Knight spins on to the screen*
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Aug 6, 2015 16:05
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Bubble-T posted:*gif of a man dropping a cardboard box, theme spills everywhere* Mage Knight! It's themaaaaaatic!
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Aug 6, 2015 16:10
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I'm hoping Keyflower is as good as everyone always says cause I dropped some bucks on that reprint Kickstarter.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:11
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I say we just replace the expression with ~themen~? Shall I create a poll y/n?
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Aug 6, 2015 16:12
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Vlaada is the king of theme integrating perfectly with the mechanics, like Space Alert or Dungeon Petz. In most cases (reddit) it's used because like someone said there are some flavor cards in the game and random whacky things can happen that are vaguely related to the theme of the game, even if other parts make sense thematically (Dead of Winter).
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Aug 6, 2015 16:12
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Yeah, Vlaada's really good at it. I'm not super impressed by how a lot of his games play because they always feel like either micro-optimization puzzles or clusterfucks (or both in the case of Galaxy Trucker) but the theme always works real well. And they're usually legit good games across the board. Richard Hamblen is probably the real theme-master but now he's the bg designer equivalent of a crazy hermit who lives in the forest and doesn't answer emails.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:15
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I find I enjoy both theme games and ones with better mechanics, although I'd rather play the former solitaire than with other people. But then again I'm probably just not very good at boardgames. .
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Aug 6, 2015 16:16
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Thematic generally just means "nice components + theme I personally like". Which, in turn, generally just means games that aren't about farming or anime.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:16
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It's also funny that ~dripping with theme~ is typically a dog whistle for people who have a shallow sense of imagination. Everything that is nominally praised for its theme drippings is merely a facade because people specifically need art and pieces with Cthulhu or zombies or space ships. So the art pieces are there but it never inspires much of a feeling. Ironically, despite its attempts there actually is no theme. It could be wholly removed as fizzy posted. Theme alloys: I am probably still on a new game high but Tash Kalar has been the most thematic game I've played in forever. It inspires the feeling of the tense dread of combat, it imagines the scrawling of magical rune shapes that wizards might use, the effects of the cards feel like impressive arcane spells. And they manage to do this with nothing more colored Go pieces with art to show strength. I think space alert and Galaxy trucker are the other games I'd say have good theme alloy. And those use goofy as poo poo art that's just meant to make identification easy. But holy poo poo you're more panicked in those games than you ever are in any zombie game I can think of. Perhaps Vlaada is good at thematic gameplay but people praise him for his mechanical prowess instead. E: ugh this is what happens when I make long posts lol.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:17
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I think a good way of putting it is that Vlaada might be the method actor of board games. Or rather, the teacher of method acting and the players are the students who actually feel their roles. The theme dripping games are more like short bouts of improv.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:21
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Played Robinson Crusoe. Theme is strong but mechanics are bad. Overall that means it is bad, would not recommend.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:23
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Lord Frisk posted:You sound like such a douche when you talk like this You're probably right and there is a reason I follow this thread but rarely post in it. There are a lot of people that cite subjective opinions as objective fact and it annoys me. "This game has this mechanic/too much of this mechanic and is therefore objectively bad" type of stuff. People like all kinds of different things and Robinson Crusoe is definitely a game I would recommend anyone try regardless of the consensus in this thread. I think the thread title is appropriate here. Back to lurking!
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Aug 6, 2015 16:26
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Bubble-T posted:You actually shouldn't be rolling too many dice in Ghost Stories, unless you'll immediately lose if you don't. Dice rolls are mostly to see how many tokens you need to burn. It's a game about managing Ghost placement and timing to waste as few actions as possible on actually attacking, so you can spend your actions on guaranteed rewards. I remember Ignacy posting a blog about how he actually got advice from his holiness Vlaada, who told him that was the exact problem with Robinson Crusoe and how to fix it and he blew off his advice after crying in his hotel room.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:26
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Chill la Chill posted:I think a good way of putting it is that Vlaada might be the method actor of board games. I agree, he has submerged himself completely in the role of a game designer without actually being one.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:27
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Jedit posted:I agree, he has submerged himself completely in the role of a game designer without actually being one. Yeah he won't be a real designer unless he does a hex and counter wargame.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:29
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Jedit posted:I agree, he has submerged himself completely in the role of a game designer without actually being one. I can't wait for Vlaada vs. Vlaada.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:29
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Countblanc posted:Thematic generally just means "nice components + theme I personally like". Which, in turn, generally just means games that aren't about farming or anime. I would argue that anime as hell Tragegy Looper is hella thematic. But personal opinions and junk. Chill la Chill posted:I can't wait for Vlaada vs. Vlaada. Vladda vs. Vladda, the team based game design board game! Compete against your friends to create the perfect Vladda game. I'm sure that it would be like the next Vladda clusterfuck that actually plays well
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Aug 6, 2015 16:32
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Tragedy Looper is definitely hella thematic. Those mechanics pretty much do exactly what the theme'd make you think they do and if you changed the theme nothing would make sense. Code of Nine, another Bakafire game, is interestingly thematic - it didn't feel like the theme worked that well when I was playing, but looking back at it it actually makes a lot of sense. I'm just not sure why the Memory cards apply to everyone. Btw, the Ignacy/Vlaada thing was posted here.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:35
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Jedit posted:I agree, he has submerged himself completely in the role of a game designer without actually being one. Jedit hates vlaada, news at 11. Chomp8645 posted:Played Robinson Crusoe. Theme is strong but mechanics are bad. Overall that means it is bad, would not recommend. I'm genuinely curious why people think the theme is strong in RC. I'm actually sort of curious what actually constitutes theme to various people as well. I find RC to be pretty bland and not all that thematic or engrossing. vvv He's not wrong about there being objectively better decisions you can usually make and experience helping, but the dice really do determine how hosed you are generally, so all that 'skill' is basically tossed out the window by a bad roll. Sloober fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:35
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Kaddish posted:There are a lot of people that cite subjective opinions as objective fact and it annoys me." Kaddish posted:It's true the event deck can be a bit a random, as well as the dice, and some games seem like a breeze while others feel like they're doomed at the start. None of these things make it a bad game, in my opinion. Kaddish posted:I've played this game -more- than twice and I absolutely know that correct plays/decisions lead to better outcomes. OBJECTIVE OPINIONS ONLY PLEASE lol this guy
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Aug 6, 2015 16:37
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Kaddish posted:You're probably right and there is a reason I follow this thread but rarely post in it. There are a lot of people that cite subjective opinions as objective fact and it annoys me. "This game has this mechanic/too much of this mechanic and is therefore objectively bad" type of stuff. People like all kinds of different things and Robinson Crusoe is definitely a game I would recommend anyone try regardless of the consensus in this thread. I think the thread title is appropriate here.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:44
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