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Many cthulhu stories end in victories. The question is how much players should expect to give up. Negative points for not maintaining day to day routines while investigating a mystery could allow players to feel punished and pushing players to continually weigh long and short term bonuses can result in a tense game where victories feel narrowly won. Kinda like Agricola, but more so.
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Aug 21, 2015 23:58
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Scyther posted:That's a bit generous, you've still got companies like Flying Frog peddling absolute unapologetic Ameritrash with a capital "trash". Sure, but you can just call those games "poo poo games" and it's just as apt without trying to divide everything into two unhelpful circles of an increasingly overlapping Venn diagram. My experience with Power Grid is that despite being "Euro" as gently caress the actual gameplay is extremely staid and without any real interesting challenge or tension, nothing that really makes it a game so much as an optimization exercise that takes two hours to go through, meanwhile Argent looks "Ameritrash" as hell with its faux anime artwork everywhere and zillion components and plastic mana crystals and yet it's actually got some fairly robust gameplay backing it up.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:03
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I think Candyland is the ultimate mythos game. You have no real choices, and you're completely meaningless to the game universe. It was written before you even started playing.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:03
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Impermanent posted:There hasn't been a real cthulu game actually dealing with the themes of understanding your personal insignificance against an uncaring universe. (Or terror that a distant relative may not be white.) Just area control games and slow burning yahtzee clones. I still say Tragedy Looper is the best Cthulhu game on the market. "A supernatural force from outside time and space decides to gently caress with you for some inscrutable alien reason. You must skirt the knife edge of failure and mind-shattering tragedy, under constant reminders of your limited scope and frail mortality. And should you manage to succeed against the weight of inevitability itself, your reward is that you get to live. Not triumph, not vanquish evil. You just get to live, burdened with the crushing knowledge that this could happen again the moment this Dread God gets bored."
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Aug 22, 2015 00:08
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Lord Frisk posted:I think Candyland is the ultimate mythos game. You have no real choices, and you're completely meaningless to the game universe. It was written before you even started playing. My buddy described Candyland as a children's introduction to bureaucracy.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:08
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Impermanent posted:I don't really get why nerds think that cthulu or zombies or space marines whatever is better theme. They are simply specific groups of made up names applied to games they live in. House on haunted Hill or whatever could be reskinned as a slasher film or about a mafia group splintering. I thought we all agreed that Arkham Horror did evoke the existential horror theme - just not the way it wanted. The frustrating meta game of trying to understand the universe as the madness slowly grows is thematic as hell.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:13
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Lord Frisk posted:I think Candyland is the ultimate mythos game. You have no real choices, and you're completely meaningless to the game universe. It was written before you even started playing. 
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Aug 22, 2015 00:30
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Tendales posted:Has anyone heard anything substantive about the M.U.L.E. boardgame that got shown off at Spiel? Nothing substantive. I'll be checking it out at Spiel and if it's half decent (and for sale) I'll be buying it. Also the original MULE was on the Atari 400/800, so someone on BGG is about to get a pwning.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:56
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The original MULE was such a sad story about the designer. First 90% of the people who had it had pirated it, he got very little money from it. He later became she and then committed suicide. I just wish that his/her life had gone better, the game deserved much more than he (at the time) got. I'm not getting it, as I like Offworld Trading Company the computer game as a 2015 implementation of the ideas she had.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:32
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Kai Tave posted:Sure, but you can just call those games "poo poo games" and it's just as apt without trying to divide everything into two unhelpful circles of an increasingly overlapping Venn diagram. My experience with Power Grid is that despite being "Euro" as gently caress the actual gameplay is extremely staid and without any real interesting challenge or tension, nothing that really makes it a game so much as an optimization exercise that takes two hours to go through, meanwhile Argent looks "Ameritrash" as hell with its faux anime artwork everywhere and zillion components and plastic mana crystals and yet it's actually got some fairly robust gameplay backing it up. Yeah. Is Tigris and Euphrates a Euro? Is Twilight Struggle Ameritrash? Does Tigris and Euphrates have in much in common with 7 Wonders? Does Twilight Struggle have much in common with Shadows of Brimstone? Is Taj Mahal like Russian Railroads? What's Acquire? Chicago Express? Mage Knight? Kemet? Chaos in the Old World? Container, Kingdom Builder, Space Alert, Metropolys, Modern Art, Stephenson's Rocket, Dominant Species, Cuba Libre, Wind Sir Das Volk, Tamany Hall, Innovation, Glory to Rome, Keyflower, Eminent Domain, Hanabi, Tragedy Looper, Skull, Pax Porfiriana, Netrunner, Impulse, Puzzle Strike, Ra, etc .. Most of these games are rather different from each other, while simultaneously being pretty different from say something like Lords of Waterdeep or Eldritch Horror. I think to be interesting these days, a game needs to be strictly not just a euro or ameritrash
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Aug 22, 2015 02:01
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fozzy fosbourne posted:I think to be interesting these days, a game needs to be strictly not just a euro or ameritrash Pretty much. As much as this thread will bag on stuff like Exploding Kittens and Zombie Game #84635-09, I think a lot of board game designers have recognized that they don't have to sacrifice good rules for cool theme/components and vice versa and that it's to their benefit to at least take a stab at both. Of course there are still lovely games but there are always going to be lovely games, and you can't just dismiss a game out of hand anymore because "oh, it looks like they blew all their budget on plastic spaceships and punchboard tokens, must be a reskinned Candyland" or "wow, yet another game about using cubes to make more cubes." I still wish that someone, somewhere, would make a genuinely good, widely-marketed zombie board game (not counting reskinning Pandemic) just so someone could finally say they'd done it.
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Aug 22, 2015 02:15
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Mall and city of horror are genuinely good, just not that well known
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Aug 22, 2015 03:07
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Big McHuge posted:I'm in Michigan and my friends host weekly game nights at their place in Livonia. It's a pretty open group and we usually have 3 or 4 games running. I sometimes bake cakes and often times criticize the bad games that people continually play because they are "fun". Fuckin heathens. Man I wish I had a group this big in the middle of the mitten where it's a wasteland of gamers where I live. I have 4 people that maybe sometimes can play for like 3 hours once a month.
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Aug 22, 2015 03:24
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Rad Valtar posted:Man I wish I had a group this big in the middle of the mitten where it's a wasteland of gamers where I live. I have 4 people that maybe sometimes can play for like 3 hours once a month. If it counts, I'm in Lansing a fair amount. Where is the middle you're from?
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Aug 22, 2015 03:40
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Kai Tave posted:Pretty much. As much as this thread will bag on stuff like Exploding Kittens and Zombie Game #84635-09, I think a lot of board game designers have recognized that they don't have to sacrifice good rules for cool theme/components and vice versa and that it's to their benefit to at least take a stab at both. Of course there are still lovely games but there are always going to be lovely games, and you can't just dismiss a game out of hand anymore because "oh, it looks like they blew all their budget on plastic spaceships and punchboard tokens, must be a reskinned Candyland" or "wow, yet another game about using cubes to make more cubes." I don't see how this makes those terms useless. The exploding kittens and zombie #1385 are still purely random monkey cheese Ameritrash which perfectly shows your point (that it isn't, or shouldn't be, a zero sum game between mechanics and assets anymore.) There still exist pure one or the other and you might as well call them what they are.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:45
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Lot more Michigan goons than I expected. If anyone wants to braid each others hair, talk about boys and play Mage Knight in West Michigan, look me up
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Aug 22, 2015 04:52
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Lord Frisk posted:If it counts, I'm in Lansing a fair amount. Where is the middle you're from? About an hour north in a town called Alma.
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Aug 22, 2015 04:54
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What is this from?
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Aug 22, 2015 05:38
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The End posted:Mall and city of horror are genuinely good, just not that well known City of Horror is legit the best zombie game there is. that's faint praise, but it's an amazing game with 6.
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Aug 22, 2015 07:19
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Chill la Chill posted:I don't see how this makes those terms useless. The exploding kittens and zombie #1385 are still purely random monkey cheese Ameritrash which perfectly shows your point (that it isn't, or shouldn't be, a zero sum game between mechanics and assets anymore.) There still exist pure one or the other and you might as well call them what they are. My point is that Ameritrash and Eurogame are increasingly bad terms to describe things with because they come preloaded with a number of assumptions which are increasingly inaccurate and the equivalent of a hobby in-joke. "lovely games for idiots with too much money" works just as well and is more on point (and maybe you're thinking this seems overly antagonistic but Exploding Kittens is legitimately that bad so).
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Aug 22, 2015 07:25
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S.T.C.A. posted:What is this from? http://existentialcomics.com/comic/58 Phone posting, gonna pretend that link works. Board Shames: I have an unnatural obsession with card games but still never played Dominion. Edit for the now: a genre that consistently showcases man's inhumanity towards man leading to cascading societal collapse is begging for an Agricola reskin. thuly fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 07:30
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Why are there no televised Bunny Bunny Moose Moose championships. That would be the best! Add in an overenthusiastic speaker and it's perfect.
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Aug 22, 2015 08:18
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Lorini posted:The original MULE was such a sad story about the designer. First 90% of the people who had it had pirated it, he got very little money from it. He later became she and then committed suicide. Really? Wiki says lung cancer.
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Aug 22, 2015 09:10
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Lord Frisk posted:Probably saturated, but worth a shot. Got a copy of GMTs Empire of the Sun and wanna upgrade it? Have it on your to-buy list? Sucker for fancy dice? Dig these:
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Aug 22, 2015 11:50
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Jedit posted:Really? Wiki says lung cancer. Ok you're right, I apologize. I'm getting too old I guess.
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Aug 22, 2015 13:30
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fozzy fosbourne posted:Yeah. I think Kemet sticks out as an example of a really good game where the theme is really neat and makes the game more enticing to play while being pretty much 100% arbitrary. You could easily make Kemet into a modern warfare-themed game or--quelle horreur!--a too-generic Euro. The opposite end would be Twilight Struggle where a significant portion of game mechanics are part of the theme.
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Aug 22, 2015 13:54
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Impermanent posted:Many cthulhu stories end in victories. The question is how much players should expect to give up. Negative points for not maintaining day to day routines while investigating a mystery could allow players to feel punished and pushing players to continually weigh long and short term bonuses can result in a tense game where victories feel narrowly won. Kinda like Agricola, but more so. High Frontier is close to a Cthulhu game. Basic movement is tense and your crew are constantly swallowed by the nothingness of space. Lovecraft basically just anthropomorphized deep space anyway. And the board looks like a hellish dimensional portal; Eklund stared at it too long until he finally succumbed to libertarianism.
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Aug 22, 2015 16:29
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eSports Chaebol posted:I think Kemet sticks out as an example of a really good game where the theme is really neat and makes the game more enticing to play while being pretty much 100% arbitrary. You could easily make Kemet into a modern warfare-themed game or--quelle horreur!--a too-generic Euro. The opposite end would be Twilight Struggle where a significant portion of game mechanics are part of the theme. This kind of goes back to the discussion here about theme from a week ago or so. I guess it depends on what's considered "theme." Take X-Wing for example, it would be pretty easy to put it in a modern setting (it already exists!). But I don't think that really says anything substantial about whether the game lacks a strong theme (like dogfighting). The setting and visual style can be easily changed, but the ideas, concepts, and feelings that the game conveys would stay the same. It seems like in general, some discussion about board games refers to "theme" where the term "theming" might be more appropriate. As in, "this is a pirate themed restaurant" or "an Irish pub." Twilight Struggle is Cold War themed and has Cold War themes, haha 
fozzy fosbourne fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Aug 22, 2015 |
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Aug 22, 2015 17:09
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That's a great point. There's a huge difference between "this game has setting elements of X" and "this game evokes the feelings and mood associated with X."
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Aug 22, 2015 17:35
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This is why I've been using the terms theme and setting to differentiate.
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Aug 22, 2015 17:37
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PerniciousKnid posted:High Frontier is close to a Cthulhu game. Basic movement is tense and your crew are constantly swallowed by the nothingness of space. Lovecraft basically just anthropomorphized deep space anyway. And the board looks like a hellish dimensional portal; Eklund stared at it too long until he finally succumbed to libertarianism. I poo poo you not, I was looking at the high frontier kickstarter with a few friends at the end of the week before crashing and I think yesterday morning when I woke up I had the tail end of some random dream and it looked like my ceiling had the high-frontier-esque tangle of lines on it and that poo poo was weird as hell. So, verifying.
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Aug 22, 2015 17:38
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Speaking games with both good rules and theme, I played my third game of Argent last Tuesday and simply didn't have the free time/energy to write up a trip report. The new-ish lady who's been coming to board game nights who specifically requested to play it took the game handily, walking away with 7 votes at the end of the game while this time I came in last with only 2. So remember how I've been saying that our games so far have been almost pacifistic with very little in the way of attacking going on? Yeah, that didn't happen this game. The final round was a clusterfuck of sorcerers blasting people, hurricanes, plagues, and other assorted wizardly shenanigans until the last Bell Tower card was drawn with seven students still in the infirmary. It was a three player game and we managed to clock in at about 2.5 hours so our time is still hovering around 45 minutes per player which I'm happy with. Game still takes up too much space but what are you gonna do? Once again Influence Points were key, only the eventual winner picked up on this herself and for the bulk of the game she and I were jostling for IP supremacy. She had snagged the chalice treasure that lets you crank out 2 IP for free every round and if you ever get a chance to buy or draft that treasure then you should absolutely do so. It came down to the two of us neck and neck in the final round, she pulled ahead to 25 IP and I just managed to match her by defaulting to a 1 IP reward instead of the room's reward on my last mage...but when you're tied with someone else for IP, the person who breaks the tie is the person who got there first which was her. That ultimately led to her snagging three voters, which means I was within a hairsbreadth of winning. Once again, Influence Points are super loving important. I experimented with some B-side tiles this time, namely the Infirmary, Catacombs, and the one that gives money/mana. Having tiles that give their reward instantly is interesting and B-side Infirmary seems more interesting than the A-side in general. I don't know how I feel about Catacombs B-side yet, especially on a smaller school layout where it's the only standard way to get IP besides defaulting.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:31
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In Patchwork, does the 7x7 bonus tile grant you 7 more coins each time you pass the button income marker or just 7 points at the end of the game? I assume the later, but want to be sure.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:34
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We've been playing it as 7 points at the end, I think that's what the books says to do.
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Aug 22, 2015 18:50
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Forbidden Stars trip report -- Round 2 The analysis paralysis is real folks. The game does a great job of splitting up turns so there's dozens of little choices. I cannot say you enough to about how bad AP can affect this process. It destroys the flow and compiles like a motherfucker. Our 4p game today took 5 hours - could have easily shaved an hour if we put Dr. Thinksalot on a clock.
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Aug 22, 2015 21:01
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Kai Tave posted:Argent Kai Tave stop talking about Argent I can't afford it right now  .
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Aug 23, 2015 00:01
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Gutter Owl posted:I still say Tragedy Looper is the best Cthulhu game on the market. Rerelease it as Cthulhu Time and put a picture by John Kovalic of Cthulhu in MC Hammer pants and it will basically print money.
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Aug 23, 2015 00:12
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Trasson posted:Kai Tave stop talking about Argent I can't afford it right now It's really good, like I was kind of worried when I first started cracking into it thinking "man there is no way people are gonna want to play this more at once" but so far among at least a subset of the local board game group it seems to be a confirmed hit. I've yet to play a full 5-player game but I really want to, I think that might be a bit too much to ask from the rest of the crew though. I also haven't busted out the expansion yet but I might give that a try later, maybe just mess with a few of the less complex knobs and levers like the Bell Tower deck. This coming Tuesday is gonna be all about Dark Moon though. I've been practicing explaining it since it's a relatively simple game mechanically but it has all sorts of different ways to interact with things (your normal set of actions, your actions while in quarantine, your actions when revealed as an infected, resolving challenges as a group, voting, the suspicious activity track) that I'm wondering something...when you guys teach a new game for the first time do you find it works better to try and explain everything all at once or to leave some explanations for when they crop up in the course of play? I don't want anyone to feel bushwhacked by rules they didn't see coming, but I also don't think the best way to teach a game is to vomit forth a steady rattle of explanations for 15 minutes that are sure to only half stick.
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Aug 23, 2015 00:19
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The Mantis posted:Forbidden Stars trip report -- Round 2 There are lots of little choices that can add up which is as satisfying as it is frustrating. With three players, it took us about 3.5 to 4 hours and there wasn't that much APing afaict. The minis quality is good too which is a plus. It is hard to catch up if you're put into a position where your grasp on planets is netting little resources though
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Aug 23, 2015 00:42
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Got Dark Moon to the table. It was mostly a flop because one of the infected had no idea what to do, but at least it was a 45 minute flop and not a 3 hour one. If anyone is familiar with the game, I had some questions... - When you resolve a Complication task (where you are not rolling dice), do you still move the dice from the "spent" area to the "available" area? - The recon character Luba can reroll dice on her turn. Can she reroll a Lone Wolf attempt?
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Aug 23, 2015 04:38
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