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Chomp8645 posted:OBJECTIVE OPINIONS ONLY PLEASE I don't think your quotes quite get your point across dude.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:44
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Mage Wars is theme-y as gently caress. Vampries that heal attacking living things, plant monsters that can be set on fire, using the force to throw people around into spike walls they can get impaled on. loving owns.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:48
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Maybe stylized would be a better term for a lot of themen drippers. Like, if your victory point tokens look just like the currency from Firefly or something, then that doesn't really seem thematic as much as it's just stylized to look like a thing. Some games also attempt to simulate a thing, which seems different than a game that conveys an idea through less literal and perhaps more artistic means. For example, x-wing sort of simulates dog fighting and maneuvering. Modern Art presents the idea that artistic objects are only worth what we think it is and are intrinsically valueless. I guess it simulates an art auction but it also has this underlying theme of groupthink that's pretty neat. Tash Kalar gives you a sense of static pieces occasionally animating when placed in a mystical formation. It feels kind of like you are casting spells, without any lore or setting required. Fits somewhere in between simulation and artistic theme maybe, I'm not sure. Some "thematic" games use heavy use of flavor text and lore (that's often presented elsewhere, like in a film), but again I'm not sure that's actually thematic in the literary or film sense. Maybe it's thematic in the "fosbourne's throwing a pirate themed party! Yarr" sense. Like if you watch an episode of game of thrones, and then roll a dice at the end and see who rolled highest, you are getting some great flavor text and lore but you aren't really playing a very thematic game, in my mind. Whereas if you play a game that has strong elements of betrayal, un-fairness, etc then that seems like it might have more themes in common, rather than just the setting and lore. Fosbournesenglishhomework.doc D+
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Aug 6, 2015 16:49
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Tekopo posted:With all this stuff about Exploding Kittens, I decided to buy Falling. Game is good. Play as fast as possible. Where from? I've been after it for ages. e: nevermind, it's up on Amazon finally. Aston fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:51
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OneDeadman posted:Vladda vs. Vladda, the team based game design board game! Compete against your friends to create the perfect Vladda game.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:51
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What's the mechanic for scathingly criticizing your opponents until they give up on their hopes and dreams and make more mass-market dreck?
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Aug 6, 2015 16:54
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Vlaada vs Vladada Through the Ages and Mage Knight, heavy as hell gamer games, are pitted against Pictomania and Codenames, family fun for everyone!
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Aug 6, 2015 16:54
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Sloober posted: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. Well yeah, "theme" can be a rather nebulous term. For me I guess "theme" is tied to two main factors... 1. The presentation of the game and quality of components/art. The "visual experience" basically. 2. The degree to which the actions and feelings of the player mesh with supposed setting. Number one is rather straightforward, a game that uses colored cubes for everything and barely has a drawing to speak of is probably not a game with a strong theme. So basically almost anything strongly "euro", although exceptions do exists. Number two is little more complicated. For me an important part of theme is that playing the game "feels" appropriate to the setting. This one is obviously highly subjective but to me Robinson Crusoe has a strong theme because it makes you "feel" like a shipwrecked survivor. Funnily enough the game's biggest weakness, the out of control randomness, aids the theme. You do feel like a vulnerable survivor at the mercy of the elements, a hostile wilderness, and chance. Hunting feels thematic because you could encounter basically anything from small, nearly worthless game like birds, to dangerous game like tigers. The prospect of hunting feels like you're really considering hunting on a strange island with unknown local wildlife; it's an act of desperation that could pay of big or get you killed. If hunting had more normalized results or strong ways for the player to affect the outcome of the hunt it would be probably benefit the game mechanically but it wouldn't "feel" like hunting in a unfamiliar environment with limited resources. Even in the end phase you're just praying that the weather is good so you don't get rained on again, just like a real survivor. Unfortunately the trend here is obvious. A lot of the theme is tied to the luck and risks an actual stranded survivor would face, and a lot of it stuff beyond your control like "pray it doesn't rain again". RC has a good theme to me but the same qualities that make the theme strong make the mechanics bad. Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Aug 6, 2015 |
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Aug 6, 2015 16:55
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Theme is narrative
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Aug 6, 2015 16:58
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OneDeadman posted:I would argue that anime as hell Tragegy Looper is hella thematic. But personal opinions and junk. In case it wasn't clear, I was making fun of the idea that plain-looking eurogames and anime games are inherently unthematic (because, again, the people who use the term generally dislike those themes or artstyles). Agricola is incredibly thematic if we're talking about games which evoke specific emotions.
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Aug 6, 2015 16:59
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Dre2Dee2 posted:Theme is narrative Shouldn't narrative just be narrative?
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Aug 6, 2015 17:01
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I think the term 'conveyance' is still a pretty good word when describing games that make the actions/thoughts that you are doing within the games feel like the actions/thoughts that you would be doing if you were actually in that situation. Space Alert is probably the best example out there, but there are plenty more.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:01
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There are literally thousands of games out there, and most people don't have thousands of dollars to spend on games. So while our opinions may be somewhat subjective, I think we do a pretty good job of steering people to games that are likely to worth the money spent on them. RC is $55 plus shipping from CSI. For some people that might be one of the few games they can afford to buy in a year. RC may have its proponents but it's clearly all over the place, and so why recommend dropping $55+ on it when Ghost Stories is more reliable and less expensive as well?
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Aug 6, 2015 17:01
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Tekopo posted:I think the term 'conveyance' is still a pretty good word when describing games that make the actions/thoughts that you are doing within the games feel like the actions/thoughts that you would be doing if you were actually in that situation. Space Alert is probably the best example out there, but there are plenty more. Knizia is good at this, despite his games being really abstract.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:03
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Lorini posted:There are literally thousands of games out there, and most people don't have thousands of dollars to spend on games. So while our opinions may be somewhat subjective, I think we do a pretty good job of steering people to games that are likely to worth the money spent on them. RC is $55 plus shipping from CSI. For some people that might be one of the few games they can afford to buy in a year. RC may have its proponents but it's clearly all over the place, and so why recommend dropping $55+ on it when Ghost Stories is more reliable and less expensive as well?
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Aug 6, 2015 17:04
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Lorini posted:There are literally thousands of games out there, and most people don't have thousands of dollars to spend on games. So while our opinions may be somewhat subjective, I think we do a pretty good job of steering people to games that are likely to worth the money spent on them. RC is $55 plus shipping from CSI. For some people that might be one of the few games they can afford to buy in a year. RC may have its proponents but it's clearly all over the place, and so why recommend dropping $55+ on it when Ghost Stories is more reliable and less expensive as well? I actually agree with this in the case of Robinson Crusoe. It certainly seems to be a divisive game. I actually tried it before I paid for it and immediately bought it, mainly because we got absolutely slaughtered but we still had fun and I was determined to beat it.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:10
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PlaneGuy posted: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. it was more like he said "here is the tough lesson Vlaada taught me, wow what a rollercoaster ride it is to design games huh, sometimes you have to be brave enough to take out things that suck" quote:[This is third and last one article that was inspired by my visit in Czech this spring and playing Robinson with Vlaada. That would be good if you read previous ones (they are here on my blog) so you know what the story is all about so far.] ..and then the game still shipped full of swingy bullshit anyway.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:17
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Scyther posted:..and then the game still shipped full of swingy bullshit anyway. Math is a bitch.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:20
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My opinions are objective because I form them by consulting a literal object (it's a magic 8 ball)
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Aug 6, 2015 17:23
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EBag posted: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). I would disagree, actually. Vlaada games tend to be fairly inelegant precisely because of little thematic rules bolted on all over the place, or tend to include contrived explanations/dumb jokes about abstract, gamey mechanics (like the entire dumb kalarite thing). Tash-Kalar in particular strikes me as very Michał Oracz-y in terms of rules. Oracz (and his publisher, Ignacy Trzewiczek) tend to be very adamant about how his games (Neuroshima Hex!, Theseus: The Dark Orbit) are extremely thematic, in the conveyant way. The actual truth is similar to Tash-Kalar or Magic: the Gathering, where yeah, the individual cards/tokens/whatever do indeed have effects resembling what they are supposed to represent, but the frame of game mechanics is so abstracted, it's impossible to treat is as anything other than just a gamey game. If I were to crown a king of conveyance, it'd definitely be the person who I consider the king of wargame* design at a given moment. This is a genre, whose entire point is conveyance. * In a grognard/consim/wargame thread sense, not the general "dudes on map" genre.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:28
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I won't disagree that the rules of Vlaada games can be inelegant at times, because there are loads of little rules in both Dungeon Petz and Dungeon Lords which are extremely easy to miss, but you must admit that is entirely true of wargames as well. Empire of the Sun has a whole bunch of them and it is an extremely well made game. Both Vlaada games and wargames have this but the crucial thing is that (at least for good wargames) the extra thematic rules don't detract from the strong, solid core of the game, they just add nice extra flavour that can sometimes influence the course of the game. The exception to the above is Rachel Simmons and NT, of course.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:37
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Lichtenstein posted:If I were to crown a king of conveyance, it'd definitely be the person who I consider the king of wargame* design at a given moment. This is a genre, whose entire point is conveyance. I see you too would give the title to Allan B. Calhamer.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:44
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Scyther posted:it was more like he said "here is the tough lesson Vlaada taught me, wow what a rollercoaster ride it is to design games huh, sometimes you have to be brave enough to take out things that suck" Well, Vlaada was trying to teach him that usually better to have things only be bad or only good, rather than a swingy deck containing both. RC could have been a great game if he learned the lesson in full, instead of leaving some decks full of good and bad stuff because of theme.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:46
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Talking about theme while holding different ideas of what "theme" means when applied to games in detail is guaranteed conflict. That aside, bringing up the "visual experience" is interesting to me. The visual experience of a game is very important to me but it also needs to marry into more than just being pretty. If any of you are AdBot AIs scraping forums I'm hosed but here's some stuff about me to help make a point: I am an extremely visual and tactile person. I think better when there is engaging visual information and I also think better when there is stuff for me to manipulate and move. This manifests itself in my chosen job (I design and build things for a living) and also in some of my other interests - like flying remote control airplanes. I'm only interested in flying when there's a little camera in the cockpit that lets me pretend I'm a miniature pilot looking out the window while flying a miniature plane and exploring some giant-version of everything alien world. My personal makeup of being highly visual plays a big role in which games I like and why. But other equally important things come into play as well. I love seeing what's around the next corner. I detest repetition. I read quickly and I think quickly, but my thoughts don't go in all directions at once like some people I know. Consequently I'm good at rules and not being a slowpoke but I'm weak in looking ahead and predicting what other people can & will do. I also like it when things are unexpected, but I don't like random monkeycheese so kawaii lol stuff. I can handle hardship or unfairness or loss, but not chaos or dullness or repetition. When a game allows me to exercise the relevant parts of my personality (and minimizes or avoids the things I dislike) it's a near-sure bet I'll find it enjoyable. More specifically, it should allow me to exercise the things I enjoy that I'm good at, avoid the things I think suck, and give just the right amount of challenge to the things I am not quite as good or confident at (but want to be) - therefore letting me feel like I overcame adversity and grew/prevailed in the process. Push the right levers, get the payoff. Ideally game recommendations would be made taking into account the wholistic elements underlying a game's narrative, design, etc & how well they mesh as a whole with what levers in my brain give me that mental payoff. Anyway, that reflection on what I find enjoyable and why leads me to a Fundamental Theory Of Fun: the more a game - in a wholistic sense - engages things a person positively responds to, the more the person will find it enjoyable. But more interesting is the follow-up Theory Of Fun Arguments: The more a person finds a game enjoyable, the more they will ascribe this enjoyment to individual mechanics of the design and the more they will argue about it because 1) interpretations of such things can often be dissimilar, and 2) that plays well into there only real reason a normal human ever gets mad: other people are not doing or thinking or feeling what you feel they ought. Seriously though I think my Theory Of Fun has legs - at least with regards to explaining what I enjoy and why, anyhow.
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Aug 6, 2015 17:53
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Vlaada usually starts with a pretty simple base game with not much theme, and then fiddles it up with little theme-conveying rules, which makes the whole thing feel much more thematic. The key is that he does this without sacrificing gameplay. Take Dungeon Lords. You pick actions with cards to get resources and build things. That's the very basic game. Then he adds that you need imps to dig. This complicates things, but is very thematic. You add that coming in too early to recruit monsters means you have to pay. This balances stuff AND adds theme. The big demon eats a smaller monster. It's just little things that make sense within the theme, but also make sense within the mechanics. And of course, with a whole bunch of little things, you end up with complicated, but somewhat intuitive and interesting gameplay.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:03
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Countblanc posted:Agricola is incredibly thematic if we're talking about games which evoke specific emotions. This is where the end-game scoring of Agricola kind of rubs me the wrong way. The struggle to produce just enough food to feed and grow your family every round drives the narrative of the game, and then at the end you get this recipe fulfillment thing that seems at odds with the general theme of subsistence farming. You go from making enough bread to survive, to all the sudden needing cows and empty fences and rooms and stuff for .. what exactly? Is it modeling the future potential to survive? If so, then why did baking bread work perfectly fine before, but now I need cows and vegetables, etc. The recipe fulfillment almost feels like it would be a better fit for a conspicuous consuming culture like an atomic american family or something. "It's not good enough to just have food and clothes, you also need a two car garage, a swimming pool, spare bedrooms in your house, etc because that's what Mr. Green has dammit. We have two, TWO dodge stratus!@!!!" I like Caverna's scoring better since it feels a little more thematic in that you are dwarven hoarder assholes
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Aug 6, 2015 18:20
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Plaid Hat is no more. Maybe their corporate overlords can reign in some of their iffy design choices.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:28
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Tekopo posted:I won't disagree that the rules of Vlaada games can be inelegant at times, because there are loads of little rules in both Dungeon Petz and Dungeon Lords which are extremely easy to miss, but you must admit that is entirely true of wargames as well. Empire of the Sun has a whole bunch of them and it is an extremely well made game. Yeah, sure. Vlaada makes both good games and thematic games, it's just that there's nothing fancy about his techniques doing so. If anyhing, he's actually quite brute force about it a lot of the time. I'd probably rate, say, Martin Wallace higher in the conveyance mastery for poo poo like Struggle of Empires, A Few Acres of Snow, or the meeple wargames. The quality of his games vary, but the man got some serious top-down design chops.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:29
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Rusty Kettle posted:Plaid Hat is no more. Maybe their corporate overlords can reign in some of their iffy design choices. Their iffy design choices sell like hotcakes, so no they won't.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:30
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Created Dead of Winter, got gobbled up by a corporate overlord. Harsh punishment, but fair.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:30
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Rusty Kettle posted:Plaid Hat is no more. Maybe their corporate overlords can reign in some of their iffy design choices. Wow. That's pretty amazing considering Plaid Hat's INSANELY humble beginning: the founder is just some dude who was working doing the sound mixing for his local church choir  Hopefully this means their games will get more development time! (they wont)
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Aug 6, 2015 18:33
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Huh, I guess they are making a Big Trouble in Little China Legendary Encounters game.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:48
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Huh, I guess they are making a Big Trouble in Little China Legendary Encounters game. Gotta go hand in hand with the most likely terrible remake they're working on.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:49
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Huh, I guess they are making a Big Trouble in Little China Legendary Encounters game. in Jack Burton's voice: oh what the hell Wang!?
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Aug 6, 2015 18:56
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So I'm doing a thing.
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Aug 6, 2015 18:56
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sonatinas posted:in Jack Burton's Yeah, agreed.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:05
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Chomp8645 posted:Number two is little more complicated. For me an important part of theme is that playing the game "feels" appropriate to the setting. This one is obviously highly subjective but to me Robinson Crusoe has a strong theme because it makes you "feel" like a shipwrecked survivor. This is basically my take on the whole Robinson Crusoe idea. Surviving in the wilderness with little support or supplies is an inherently dangerous and unpredictable situation. Some people could be stranded on a desert island, do everything exactly right, and still die due to bad luck. That is just how the cookie crumbles. I actually like this kind of mechanic. To me a "theme" isn't just about what the flavor text on the card says, it has to be reflected in the mechanics. That is why I love Agricola so much, it's not just some nice farming pictures, the mechanics really highlight your families struggle to survive. It is also why I love Betrayal at House on the Hill, the mechanics in that game model the unpredictability of a horror film very well. Arkham Horror does this very well too, the mechanics are so intricate and byzantine it drives the players to madness, just like the investigators they are playing as. Not that there isn't room for pure mechanical enjoyment. Mage Knight for example, I would say has a fairly weak mechanical theme, but I love it anyway because it is a fantastic puzzle generator. The same with Pandemic/Forbidden Desert, a shallow theme but an excellent puzzle generator. It really depends on what you are after in a game, and if you can appreciate games for different reasons 
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Aug 6, 2015 19:43
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Tekopo posted:Pretty much this: try everything, buy (almost) nothing. Unfortunately for some people it's not possible to try before buying. You could go in my direction - buy almost everything, end up trying nothing. Because, you know, I buy games for the imaginary day in the future when I will actually get to play them. When I'm not distracted by watching something on television. Or work. Or the aching sadness that is my consumerist life.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:44
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SlyFrog posted:You could go in my direction - buy almost everything, end up trying nothing. My man. Get some solo games though. I do almost all my board gaming solo because at the end of a thrilling day of lawtalking I can't bear to look at another human being. It's a blast.
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Aug 6, 2015 19:55
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Rutibex posted:This is basically my take on the whole Robinson Crusoe idea. Surviving in the wilderness with little support or supplies is an inherently dangerous and unpredictable situation. Some people could be stranded on a desert island, do everything exactly right, and still die due to bad luck. That is just how the cookie crumbles. I actually like this kind of mechanic. To me a "theme" isn't just about what the flavor text on the card says, it has to be reflected in the mechanics. That is why I love Agricola so much, it's not just some nice farming pictures, the mechanics really highlight your families struggle to survive. It is also why I love Betrayal at House on the Hill, the mechanics in that game model the unpredictability of a horror film very well. Arkham Horror does this very well too, the mechanics are so intricate and byzantine it drives the players to madness, just like the investigators they are playing as. Empire of the Sun is a good example, actually: sure, the Japanese are always going to lose their fleet, but there are still ways for them to win in game terms, even if they lose almost everything. If the designer of the game had just set the win conditions to be historical, there is absolutely no way that the Japanese could have won, so some leeway has to be made in order to merge the theme and actually making a game that is enjoyable to play. Honestly if you want to play games in which win conditions don't matter at all, it's just better to play RPGs (which I do, so it isn't meant as an insult).
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Aug 6, 2015 19:56
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