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an iksar marauder posted:The more I read about botc the less I like it tbh. Just what social deduction games needed, a kingmaking GM The thing about BOTC is that its very easy to play how you want. The group I've played with it agrees the storyteller does not king make. They make the scenario, they do their active role, but they generally do not influence the outcome of the game very much. We've had games end in 1-2 rounds because the bad guys were outsmarted and found out. Megasabin fucked around with this message at 15:15 on Jul 15, 2022 |
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Jul 15, 2022 14:58
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I'd play BotC in two seconds if anyone I knew had a copy and we had a large enough group together that was interested in it. Feel like these days I've missed the boat on it where before we could get people together to play a filled out session of Captain Sonar or Panic on Wall St, Wavelength etc. without any difficulty. Lately if I get a group together the most I see is ~9 and that's for Civ. Anything less is for shuffling trains, baby.
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Jul 15, 2022 15:11
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MizuZero posted:CitizenKeen, your posts have done more to sell the game to me than anything else I’ve encountered Rockman Reserve posted:Very same, honestly it sounds rad as hell. I think the game got unfairly painted as "Werewolf but lol random" early on and it's a disservice to the game. I get that it's not for everybody. The fact that it's not pure logic and that the fact that there's social deduction and an active moderator turn some people off. I get that it's expensive. I get that getting a group of people together can be hard (though see below). And I get that the way they handled the Kickstarter, letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. If you can get past all of that (and I can see why you couldn't), it's such an amazing experience. FulsomFrank posted:I'd play BotC in two seconds if anyone I knew had a copy and we had a large enough group together that was interested in it. Feel like these days I've missed the boat on it where before we could get people together to play a filled out session of Captain Sonar or Panic on Wall St, Wavelength etc. without any difficulty. Lately if I get a group together the most I see is ~9 and that's for Civ. Anything less is for shuffling trains, baby. Megasabin posted:The thing about BOTC is that its very easy to play how you want. The group I've played with it agrees the storyteller does not king make. They make the scenario, they do their active role, but they generally do not influence the outcome of the game very much. We've had games end in 1-2 rounds because the bad guys were outsmarted and found out.
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Jul 15, 2022 16:29
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CitizenKeen posted:Eh, we never seem to question the privilege of being able to afford Gloomhaven, but a lot of people will never have the money to be able to partake in that experience either. But this thread has a lot more rich loners than it does poor socialites. Being able to get a dozen friends together on a regular basis for board games is absolutely a huge privilege. I have to bust out meeting organising websites in order to get 4-5 people to pick a date for Blades in the Dark, getting 10-12 from a few different friend groups to find a common date seems virtually impossible without it being a major event like a birthday or a stag party etc. That's with me working in education with the summer coming up and free time becoming more readily available. I won't get too in the weeds about "normal friends" or whatever, but I've played with normie friends and friends of friends who couldn't grasp The Crew, Avalon, Concordia etc which I'd say require far less buy in and investment that BotC. All that being said, I'd love to play the game and was hoping I could check it out at UK Games Expo and I am looking at ways to try and organise an online game with friends during the summer. I just don't think whataboutisms regarding other forms of privilege in gaming or taking for granted the ability to have space and time for a gathering of about a dozen people willing to partake in a niche thing regularly really detracts from my argument that the review came from a highly privileged position but never referenced that limitation in the review 🤷♂️
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Jul 15, 2022 16:47
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CitizenKeen posted:
We don't question the privilege of being able to afford any given game because that discussion is way beyond the scope of this thread. There's no way for anyone here to know others wealth, number of games, number of plays, who they are playing with etc so please don't make assumptions about it. Always keep in mind that just like any other thread, there are plenty of people who don't post or if they do they don't indicate how much privilege they have.
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Jul 15, 2022 16:57
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Redundant posted:All that being said, I'd love to play the game and was hoping I could check it out at UK Games Expo and I am looking at ways to try and organise an online game with friends during the summer. I just don't think whataboutisms regarding other forms of privilege in gaming or taking for granted the ability to have space and time for a gathering of about a dozen people willing to partake in a niche thing regularly really detracts from my argument that the review came from a highly privileged position but never referenced that limitation in the review 🤷♂️ But to what extent do reviewers need to, in every review, acknowledge their privilege, for each and every game? (Not to continue my whataboutism but) SUSD mostly only critiques price as a comparison to other games (e.g., this costs X, and it's not really that much better than these games that cost half that). Does every party game that requires 7+ need to acknowledge the position of privilege the reviewer is in that they can host a party? (Genuine question.) If a game is a party game, I don't care how good it is compared to INIS or Feasts of Odin or Brass Birmingham, because it's not competing with those games. It's competing with Two Rooms and Boom and ONUW and games that can play 10+. I guess maybe I need to check my privilege that (pre-Covid) it was easier for me to host parties? If a game is an intense game for two players (e.g, Twilight Struggle), I can't justify it because I don't have that kind of social circle. I'm way more likely to get BotC out than Twilight Struggle. But I don't expect reviews to acknowledge their position of privilege that they can play intense two-player games often. That just seems implied in the "it's an intense two player game", and I just want to know if it's good compared to other intense two player games. Was the problem in combination with the rest of the tone of the SUSD review ("if you care about this hobby" language, implying if you can't host a party you don't care about board gaming, etc.)? Mayveena posted:We don't question the privilege of being able to afford any given game because that discussion is way beyond the scope of this thread. There's no way for anyone here to know others wealth, number of games, number of plays, who they are playing with etc so please don't make assumptions about it. Always keep in mind that just like any other thread, there are plenty of people who don't post or if they do they don't indicate how much privilege they have. CitizenKeen fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Jul 15, 2022 |
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Jul 15, 2022 17:09
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Having friends to play games with, whether I have to ply them with alcohol first or not, is indeed a privilege--I have friends with advanced degrees who think Ganz schön clever requires just wayyy too much explanation to play a game. Sometimes they are also expensive. However, I am not excited to have regular handwringing about it in this thread! Games are information that simultaneously wants to be expensive and wants to be free, so it's a matter of time before whatever it is that Blood on the Clocktower does is improved and/or made more broadly and inexpensively.
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Jul 15, 2022 17:19
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homullus posted:Having friends to play games with, whether I have to ply them with alcohol first or not, is indeed a privilege--I have friends with advanced degrees who think Ganz schön clever requires just wayyy too much explanation to play a game. Sometimes they are also expensive. However, I am not excited to have regular handwringing about it in this thread! Games are information that simultaneously wants to be expensive and wants to be free, so it's a matter of time before whatever it is that Blood on the Clocktower does is improved and/or made more broadly and inexpensively. I've played all of my games with either a print and play set or with the website and wiki. The game is basically free already. All you're paying for with the physical components is the gloss, and only one player really gets to enjoy the gloss.
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Jul 15, 2022 17:32
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CitizenKeen posted:I've played all of my games with either a print and play set or with the website and wiki. The game is basically free already. All you're paying for with the physical components is the gloss, and only one player really gets to enjoy the gloss. Same, my first set was made with an old BSG expansion box, some poker chips furniture felt pads:  There's also the free online tool you can use for games played over discord or other voice/messaging service.
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Jul 15, 2022 18:46
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I played BotC at SHUX 2019 and enjoyed it, but would never buy it. I'd be hesitant to play it again without a professional moderator as well
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Jul 15, 2022 22:30
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BotC sounds like a pretty good social deduction games, but I'll stick to antisocial deduction myself. There are plenty of opportunities to shoot the poo poo with your pals, but never enough to grind your enemies into submission with cold hard logic (or flat out lies).
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Jul 16, 2022 01:56
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Just finished the second adventure in Unlock: Legendary Adventures (Action Story, Robin Hood, and Sherlock), and there is a part where (extremely minor spoilers here) a ministrel sings a song. Absolutely incomprehensible. My gf and I listened to it twice and absolutely could not understand more than like a tenth of the words. Sounded like the singer was polish, singing a song that had been translated to french, in a cadence that had nothing to do with the tune being played, in a big auditorium, using a $10 mic. Absolutely no regrets looking up the solution for that one. Unlock has always had problems with audio clues, both from an accessibility standpoint and just when it comes to sound quality. Whenever there's one of them coming up I inwardly sigh.
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Jul 16, 2022 19:54
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Morpheus posted:Just finished the second adventure in Unlock: Legendary Adventures (Action Story, Robin Hood, and Sherlock), and there is a part where (extremely minor spoilers here) a ministrel sings a song. Absolutely incomprehensible. My gf and I listened to it twice and absolutely could not understand more than like a tenth of the words. Sounded like the singer was polish, singing a song that had been translated to french, in a cadence that had nothing to do with the tune being played, in a big auditorium, using a $10 mic. Absolutely no regrets looking up the solution for that one. We had a very similar problem when we played through the pirate themed unlock. Just instead of a minstrel with a tune, it was someone trying to sound like a parrot. It was so hard to understand and there's definitely a certain point where the creators should have realized that they didn't have the capability of doing it and shouldn't have tried. Or, if they needed to include it, then at least add some loving subtitles, goddamn.
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Jul 16, 2022 20:04
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Morpheus posted:Unlock has always had problems with audio clues, both from an accessibility standpoint and just when it comes to sound quality. Whenever there's one of them coming up I inwardly sigh. Yeah, the audio clues are consistently terrible. My phone (pixel 6) has a perfectly good speaker, and I've tried using headphones... doesn't help - both quality and localization are consistently bad. A few times I've gone back to see if we can "hear it" after we know the answer, quite often it's still pretty sketchy.
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Jul 16, 2022 20:05
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Another Dune game has been announced, bringing the number of Dune board games to about 300,000. There were scant details, but it seems to be a 1v1 game made by the designers of War of the Ring, which actually gives it some promise in my eyes as the link between theme and mechanics in War of the Ring is really amazing. Unfortunately it is also CMON's next kickstarter 
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Jul 17, 2022 03:47
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FirstAidKite posted:We had a very similar problem when we played through the pirate themed unlock. Just instead of a minstrel with a tune, it was someone trying to sound like a parrot. It was so hard to understand and there's definitely a certain point where the creators should have realized that they didn't have the capability of doing it and shouldn't have tried. Or, if they needed to include it, then at least add some loving subtitles, goddamn. I actually mentioned that specific one as an example as one of the first times that I realized it was a real problem, I specifically remember how hard it was to understand wtf was being said. And that was before they started including solution books with the game.
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Jul 17, 2022 04:08
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Radioactive Toy posted:Another Dune game has been announced, bringing the number of Dune board games to about 300,000. There were scant details, but it seems to be a 1v1 game made by the designers of War of the Ring, which actually gives it some promise in my eyes as the link between theme and mechanics in War of the Ring is really amazing. Unfortunately it is also CMON's next kickstarter
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Jul 17, 2022 05:00
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Pants Donkey posted:Did they ever release details on that remake of the 80s game (or I guess re-remake given the 2019 version)? All I heard was it was similar rules but not so slavishly dedicated to the theme that you had a map with regions that could barely fit anyone. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/341165/dune-game-conquest-and-diplomacy
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Jul 17, 2022 06:01
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Recommendation request time! Next month I'll be attending a small boardgame-focused beach retreat with about half a dozen friends. They're all pretty hardcore boardgamers (some more competitive than others), and between us we've played most of the "serious" games that get brought up in this thread. However, I'm looking for something I can bring that will be more of an experience than a board game. Something that can last all week (we'll be there five days) without occupying too much of our more traditional gaming time, or as a one-shot thing that won't be too heavy. That's a pretty nebulous description, but I guess I'm asking because I don't have any great ideas, let alone something that can accommodate eight people. Party games are an option, of course, but we'll probably play some of those anyway. Monikers/Time's Up is a staple with this group. I'm the Boss inevitably escalates into drunken accusations. I should mention that most of the group doesn't enjoy Mafia-style deception games. BSG yes, Werewolf no. Don't Get Got was recommended by SU&SD as a fun social experience that can stretch between multiple sessions without completely taking over an event. Would that work for us, or is there anything similar that might be good? Or something else? I'd love to do an escape room in a box, but those don't generally do well with so many people. I was also thinking of maybe doing a chapter of a Fiasco story each night, but that also may be too many people to stay cohesive. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Jul 17, 2022 17:10
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Monikers. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective would probably work and is “episodic”. Skull seats 6 but you could bring it anyway. Or make up an 8-player version. Wavelength would for the same reason “party flexible” games do. Could also do some roll and writes like Voyages as filler. None of these are episodic except Sherlock.
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Jul 17, 2022 17:26
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I too have a recommendation request. My sister and her family will be coming into town to visit for a few days. There will be 7 of us in all. I know she will have Uno and Phase 10 with her. I need an alternative. Has to be light and can't involve much reading as one of my nieces has severe dyslexia. Light is the keyword here too. Been thinking about the Resistance but not sure how that'll fly. I'm willing to go to the store and buy something I've never played sight unseen to avoid the fate of playing Uno or Phase 10! For nights when we have five (e.g., when my oldest and their oldest hit the bars, leaving the old folks and the underaged niece at home), I plan on pulling out the Crew. I feel pretty good about this option.
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Jul 17, 2022 17:28
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Admiralty Flag posted:I too have a recommendation request. My sister and her family will be coming into town to visit for a few days. There will be 7 of us in all. I know she will have Uno and Phase 10 with her. I need an alternative. Has to be light and can't involve much reading as one of my nieces has severe dyslexia. Light is the keyword here too. Been thinking about the Resistance but not sure how that'll fly. I'm willing to go to the store and buy something I've never played sight unseen to avoid the fate of playing Uno or Phase 10! See above, but: Skull Monikers if that much reading flies Flamme Rouge seats 4-6 Wavelength
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Jul 17, 2022 17:32
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Admiralty Flag posted:I too have a recommendation request. My sister and her family will be coming into town to visit for a few days. There will be 7 of us in all. I know she will have Uno and Phase 10 with her. I need an alternative. Has to be light and can't involve much reading as one of my nieces has severe dyslexia. Light is the keyword here too. Been thinking about the Resistance but not sure how that'll fly. I'm willing to go to the store and buy something I've never played sight unseen to avoid the fate of playing Uno or Phase 10! Take 5/6nimmt and Fool are both excellent high player count card games.
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Jul 17, 2022 17:38
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Admiralty Flag posted:I too have a recommendation request. My sister and her family will be coming into town to visit for a few days. There will be 7 of us in all. I know she will have Uno and Phase 10 with her. I need an alternative. Has to be light and can't involve much reading as one of my nieces has severe dyslexia. Light is the keyword here too. Been thinking about the Resistance but not sure how that'll fly. I'm willing to go to the store and buy something I've never played sight unseen to avoid the fate of playing Uno or Phase 10! Sushi Go Party works great with up to eight players and requires basically no reading. There's a single rule to remember for each card, and there are a limited number of cards that can be in a given session. Also, maybe Concept? No reading to do, it's all pictures. And the player count is a loose recommendation. My group rarely plays with the rules in the box -- we just go around the table rotating "pickers" until we get tired of playing. Personally, I wouldn't play The Crew with any player count other than four. Some missions become extremely difficult with five, and at three the difficulty is variable, but the large hand size is unwieldy.
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Jul 17, 2022 17:40
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WhiteHowler posted:Recommendation request time! If you don't mind splitting your half dozen into 2 groups, you could always try out the Adventure Game series from kosmos. They're 1 to 4 player games that are split into 3 acts with each act averaging about an hour or so of playtime. You're all solving puzzles similar to an escape room but the puzzles are more along the lines of standard adventure game puzzle stuff where you've gotta collect items and use them in the right places. It has hidden collectibles that increase score, it had a turn order so every player is going to get to do stuff, each player will have their own unique characters with their own health and some events differ depending on which character interacts with the event. There are branching paths and endings as well. They're designed so that you can take as long of a break as you want between any of the 3 acts with very little effort needed to save your progress. There are a couple of different games in this series and you could easily be running 2 groups at the same time with their own games and you can just only do 1 act of a game per day. quote:Explore places, combine items, and experience stories in Adventure Games, a series of co-operative games from German publisher KOSMOS. In each of these titles, players are presented with a mysterious story that they must unravel over the course of play. Working together, players explore common areas, talk to people, look for clues, and combine various items to reveal the secret of the story. Depending on what decisions the players make, the course of history changes and there is no going back! https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/57030/series-adventure-games-kosmos/linkeditems/boardgamefamily     
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Jul 17, 2022 17:51
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6 Nimmt is one of my "play this game with family" game go tos.
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Jul 17, 2022 19:33
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WhiteHowler posted:Also, maybe Concept? No reading to do, it's all pictures. And the player count is a loose recommendation. My group rarely plays with the rules in the box -- we just go around the table rotating "pickers" until we get tired of playing. Yeah we've got a ton of miles on Concept over the last few years. Works with a broad range of people, and has great support for people coming in and out, or just watching (and yeah, ignore scoring).
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Jul 17, 2022 19:59
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Admiralty Flag posted:I too have a recommendation request. My sister and her family will be coming into town to visit for a few days. There will be 7 of us in all. I know she will have Uno and Phase 10 with her. I need an alternative. Has to be light and can't involve much reading as one of my nieces has severe dyslexia. Light is the keyword here too. Been thinking about the Resistance but not sure how that'll fly. I'm willing to go to the store and buy something I've never played sight unseen to avoid the fate of playing Uno or Phase 10! also saying Take 5, plus No Thanks
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Jul 17, 2022 21:19
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The best version of No Thanks is the French one
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Jul 17, 2022 22:34
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WhiteHowler posted:However, I'm looking for something I can bring that will be more of an experience than a board game. Something that can last all week (we'll be there five days) without occupying too much of our more traditional gaming time, or as a one-shot thing that won't be too heavy. The Enigma Emporium "Wish You Were Here" postcard puzzles are pretty good, I did a set of them in a group of 7 or 8 people at a game weekend once and they were a fun hour or two. There are 5 postcards, so we had to double up a little, but some of the puzzles were conducive to having multiple people working on them anyway, and easy to pass around. They're mostly cypher-based puzzles with a couple extra steps such as using specialized knowledge or internet research and carefully examining the artwork, so there's some broad appeal for people that aren't particularly interested in cyphers. There's also a story to tease out and a main puzzle to solve at the end.
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Jul 17, 2022 22:42
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Had a 6 player lighter game day. We played: Strike: This game is the lightest of light but a perfect nonsense dice chucker. Insider: unassailable classic for the ages. Just One: another modern classic that does not require introduction Cash & Guns 1st Ed: Fun despite some flaws and randomness, always a hit with this group Medium: The first few rounds went poorly but we warmed up by the end, maybe you need improv exercises to get ready for his game Give Me The Brain 4th Ed: This is one we all played back in the day so we have a soft spot for it. Grimm Masquerade: This game has a lot of stuff for what is a fairly simple luck-based deduction game, but it is nice enough. It was nice to play some games, even if I'd rather play more enriching games, particularly because I don't have to teach so many games in one day 
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Jul 17, 2022 23:38
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I just finalized by Backerkit order for Arcs. Thanks to the thread for teaching me how to get around Kickstarter. On Backerkit I pledged $100 and have to pay $24 for shipping though? Cmon 
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Jul 18, 2022 01:23
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Played a few more rounds of the new Libertalia. Really pleased with it, particularly with using the meaner loot tokens in low player counts, and more positive ones in higher player counts. Still feels like it sticks around just the tiniest bit too long, but that's about the worst thing I could say about it. Also got the BGG Quacks bags, and they are fantastic. Need to find a plano box or organizer of sorts that will work with my super chunky printed chips to cut down on setup time, but it's my most deluxified game for a reason.
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Jul 18, 2022 01:54
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Been playing Stars of Akarios and it's very fun and the parts are very pretty, but holy poo poo is this ever the most poorly edited game I've ever seen. Several scenarios just end without telling you what to do next, we've accidentally ended up on massive mission chains that have no break point by doing stuff like "walking onto a tile" and at least once we hit a mission description that was the same paragraph repeated four times. Ship combat is still fun.
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Jul 18, 2022 18:35
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I got the core game fo Ankh: Gods of Egypt. Gotta arrange some play time but I'm looking forward to it.
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Jul 18, 2022 19:46
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theironjef posted:Been playing Stars of Akarios and it's very fun and the parts are very pretty, but holy poo poo is this ever the most poorly edited game I've ever seen. Several scenarios just end without telling you what to do next, we've accidentally ended up on massive mission chains that have no break point by doing stuff like "walking onto a tile" and at least once we hit a mission description that was the same paragraph repeated four times. Yikes. That seems like a pretty big oversight, writing-wise.
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Jul 18, 2022 20:20
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Grabbed a copy of Spirit Island and Nemesis Lockdown in the last couple of months and both have been pretty good times all round (though I prefer Spirit Island)
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Jul 18, 2022 20:26
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CHOAM posted:Grabbed a copy of Spirit Island and Nemesis Lockdown in the last couple of months and both have been pretty good times all round (though I prefer Spirit Island) Spirit island is great. I have yet to try Nemesis Lockdown, but I got the steam version.
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Jul 18, 2022 20:59
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WhiteHowler posted:Recommendation request time! Games that are more like experiences than games, huh? Maybe something like Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion? (Gloomhaven is huge, Jaws of the Lion is the shorter, once-through version you can get at like Target, and I think it's on sale now for pretty cheap.) Tales of the Arabian Nights or other "story generating" games could be cool. The King's Dilemma was pretty fun, and maybe you could get a copy of something like Risk: Legacy or Seafall? (Risk Legacy is a decent remake of Risk and individual games of it can be pretty short, especially early in the story; you could just play through as much of it as you want and then move on, especially with a week to try it out. Seafall, as I'm told, is pretty crummy as a game, but fun as a story, and you can probably get a copy cheap.) None of those would hold the whole group, but could handle a decent number, and people could swap in and out between sessions.
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Jul 18, 2022 21:01
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I was pretty excited to try out TotAN after enjoying a lot of nominally similar story generators like Eldritch Horror and Arkham 2/3e but goddamn was that a miserable slog of a game when I finally played it.
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Jul 18, 2022 21:08
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