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EverettLO posted:I have to admit, I've always been charmed by Harn since it represents a type of gameplay and a type of grog that has basically gone extinct: the type that thinks medieval fantasy should have heavier focus on the medieval than the fantasy. Presumably the same type who enjoyed the premise behind Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All.
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# ? Apr 25, 2020 17:09 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 21:28 |
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Comstar posted:Against my better judgement, I've backed the Torchbearer 2nd ed kickstarter. I'm only doing it because I really liked the GM world building description rules and it seems to make really clear what an OD&D region should be like. Counters and cards are really helpful to run Torchbearer. The game I am running right now uses the cards for equipment reference, conditions, and conflicts. It's possible without them but our switch to playing online last month has reinforced how much they facilitate the game. We use differently colored glass beads for counters. Another near-essential tool for bookkeeping each person's disposition in conflicts and light source consumption. The Kickstarter's coins seem fancy but not critical. Same for the card holders. A luxury play aid but you can just put the cards flat on the table, no big deal.
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 17:39 |
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Ankh does have a $50 God expansion option and the models look way better than the base ones but after reading the last few pages I'll probably pass on that and Wolfenstein. I did end up investing a bit in Etherfields, please tell me that will be fine....
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 18:04 |
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CODChimera posted:Ankh does have a $50 God expansion option and the models look way better than the base ones but after reading the last few pages I'll probably pass on that and Wolfenstein. Assuming that it actually hits retail and CMON doesn't implode I might pick that expansion up just for the god models.
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# ? Apr 26, 2020 18:13 |
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Posting for a friend who is kickstarting an illustrator-driven 5E bestiary tomorrow:quote:Hey friends, I wanted to let you all know about a new RPG Kickstarter we're launching tomorrow which has already garnered the site's coveted "Projects We Love" badge! EKPHRASTIC BEASTS is an artist-created illustrated bestiary for 5e, offering dozens of completely original monsters from some of today's most exciting weird illustrators. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/janaka/ekphrastic-beasts
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 15:51 |
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CODChimera posted:Ankh does have a $50 God expansion option and the models look way better than the base ones but after reading the last few pages I'll probably pass on that and Wolfenstein. Awaken Realms seems to have a pretty consistent track record. I think Nemesis is done with all their language editions fulfillment and Tainted Grail wave 2 is out soon-ish, plus the new Nemesis kickstarter is launching soon. I'm sure Etherfields will be somewhat delayed due to the pandemic, but from their latest KS updates it seems like production should be starting by the end of the month on a lot of the components.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 21:18 |
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Awaken Realms is rock solid. I can’t think of anything that they haven’t delivered on, and the quality has been good. When they do find quality issues, they fix them at their cost. You pretty much can’t go wrong with them.
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# ? Apr 27, 2020 21:23 |
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Etherfields does feel like their riskiest project simply because there's so much mystery box to it, but I've been really impressed with everything they've done so far and the preview stuff for it has been cool so I'm not super worried.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 01:26 |
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Not strictly TG, but adjacent. The driving force behind early SF/Fantasy fandom was women with typewriters and mimeograph machines. These are their stories in their own words: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forest-path-books/geek-elders-speak-in-our-own-voices
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 08:21 |
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Vidmaster posted:Awaken Realms seems to have a pretty consistent track record. I think Nemesis is done with all their language editions fulfillment and Tainted Grail wave 2 is out soon-ish, plus the new Nemesis kickstarter is launching soon. I'm sure Etherfields will be somewhat delayed due to the pandemic, but from their latest KS updates it seems like production should be starting by the end of the month on a lot of the components. Phew, this is my first KS. Actually I'm pretty interested in Nemesis as well, i'll probably get that. Just don't wanna go too crazy with too many different games... malkav11 posted:Etherfields does feel like their riskiest project simply because there's so much mystery box to it, but I've been really impressed with everything they've done so far and the preview stuff for it has been cool so I'm not super worried. Honestly as long as I get the models I'll be happy because they look incredible so far. I got the creatures pack, thorn night and 5th player and am considering the alternate heroes pack as well. Did anyone else buy any addons? any others that I should really consider? The Moon Monster posted:Assuming that it actually hits retail and CMON doesn't implode I might pick that expansion up just for the god models. Yeah I'd probably do the same, that expansion is the one thing making me want to back. I mean I won't but it's tempting. It must be so easy to spend a lot of money of these projects. CODChimera fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Apr 28, 2020 |
# ? Apr 28, 2020 13:59 |
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CODChimera posted:Just don't wanna go too crazy with too many different games... Ahahahahhahaaaaa.... that's cute.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 14:34 |
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mllaneza posted:Not strictly TG, but adjacent. The driving force behind early SF/Fantasy fandom was women with typewriters and mimeograph machines. These are their stories in their own words: Sounds interesting, but I can't see any information about it on that page, or on the publisher's page, so...
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 18:13 |
Guards of Atlantis 2 is up. Does anyone have any opinions on the game? How does it compare to other MOBA-likes?
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 19:55 |
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Doctor Zero posted:Awaken Realms is rock solid. I can’t think of anything that they haven’t delivered on, and the quality has been good. When they do find quality issues, they fix them at their cost. You pretty much can’t go wrong with them. The game material from them is good but their minis are honestly kinda crummy in my experience. A far cry from their great looking renders. If you're just going to use them as game pieces straight out of the box they're fine, but they're disappointing especially considering they started as a commission painting studio.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 20:21 |
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Paolomania posted:Posting for a friend who is kickstarting an illustrator-driven 5E bestiary tomorrow: This is now live.
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# ? Apr 28, 2020 20:43 |
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GrandpaPants posted:Guards of Atlantis 2 is up. Does anyone have any opinions on the game? How does it compare to other MOBA-likes? So Very Wrong About Games Mark Bigmy is very fond of it. I was gonna give the rule book a read and maybe pledge for a basic package based on his rec.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 00:19 |
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djfooboo posted:So Very Wrong About Games Mark Bigmy is very fond of it. I was gonna give the rule book a read and maybe pledge for a basic package based on his rec. The game is a very evocative of playing DOTA2 and works well mechanically. The author is willfully dense to the extent I am less likely to back the game because of it.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 00:48 |
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:The game is a very evocative of playing DOTA2 and works well mechanically. The author is willfully dense to the extent I am less likely to back the game because of it.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 00:50 |
Cthulhu Dreams posted:The author is willfully dense to the extent I am less likely to back the game because of it. I'm kinda curious what this means.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 00:52 |
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GrandpaPants posted:I'm kinda curious what this means. When confronted about the nature of forgetfulness and the use of player aids, the designer thinks that it is thematic for players to forget to evoke MOBAs : https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2410644/campaign-draft-link/page/2 (scroll to defeldus' post) and when confronted about female character art: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2405213/female-character-design
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 01:57 |
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“The game has incomplete information. And the game expects players to (sometimes) make the wrong calls, based on that incomplete information. Part of that incomplete information is coming from various stats on hero cards that change during the game, making it very very hard (I am yet to see someone to be able to do it) to remember the exact values of every card of every hero at all times. Mistakes that come from not knowing the exact value on a card are expected to happen.” That...doesn’t sound good.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 02:21 |
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It's correct in that it's very thematic to play in such an environment in bronze and silver leagues for those games. But nobody expects to play those games in bronze. In fact, they actually get very angry when they don't advance to platinum.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 02:33 |
Well I guess that saves me some money.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 02:35 |
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ketchup vs catsup posted:“The game has incomplete information. And the game expects players to (sometimes) make the wrong calls, based on that incomplete information. That does sound bad but is weird cos it's not true of the game. There is in fact absolutely no hidden information once you know the game, the only limit to known information is literally just your ability to remember a handful of cards, and every game we played we played with open disclosure of which cards we had purchased /had left etc so that people didn't have to try and remember and it works absolutely fine that way. It's a really really good game, and one of very few team based games that plays nearly the same speed with any number of players and is enhanced with higher player counts. It does a great job of capturing the fun parts of MOBA while abstracting away anything that would slow down the game play. However, because it's perfect information and zero luck, it also means it only really works with players of similar skill levels - otherwise less experienced players will absolutely get destroyed (just like actual mobas), and if you lose it is purely down to player error, which some people can find a bit harsh, and meant it didn't really fly for a couple of people in our group.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 04:50 |
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Kerro posted:That does sound bad but is weird cos it's not true of the game. There is in fact absolutely no hidden information once you know the game, the only limit to known information is literally just your ability to remember a handful of cards, and every game we played we played with open disclosure of which cards we had purchased /had left etc so that people didn't have to try and remember and it works absolutely fine that way. For some completely inexplicable reason the design thinks that makes his game bad. I agree with you - I'd actually go further, I'd say it makes the game BETTER.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 07:41 |
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:For some completely inexplicable reason the design thinks that makes his game bad. I agree with you - I'd actually go further, I'd say it makes the game BETTER. Yes, I'd agree - it means that you can effectively play it as if it were a high level/competitive moba where you always know for certain whether you can get a kill shot at a certain point, whether a player has a defensive power available that you need to draw out, etc. It's super weird to me that the designer doesn't like it given the game they've designed. Losing a match because you'd forgotten that someone's defend card had value 7 rather than value 6 seems.. not fun?
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 07:51 |
The dude also had a real condescending tone in addition to having wrong opinions. Maybe Level 99 will make a moba-like. They have a good sense of design and translate videogames pretty well.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 08:23 |
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ketchup vs catsup posted:“The game has incomplete information. And the game expects players to (sometimes) make the wrong calls, based on that incomplete information. The obvious problem with this is that, in a MOBA, whether players forget a modifier or not, the computer remembers all of them. You might forget that you picked up that "+50% damage taken from fire" debuff a few rounds back, but the game still registers and applies that effect. In a TTRPG, if players forget a card or a modifier or whatever, odds are very good that it just doesn't get applied. That's not "fog of war" or "chaos of battle," that's rules being applied inconsistently. You're right, this is bad game design.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 08:56 |
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GimpInBlack posted:The obvious problem with this is that, in a MOBA, whether players forget a modifier or not, the computer remembers all of them. You might forget that you picked up that "+50% damage taken from fire" debuff a few rounds back, but the game still registers and applies that effect. In a TTRPG, if players forget a card or a modifier or whatever, odds are very good that it just doesn't get applied. That's not "fog of war" or "chaos of battle," that's rules being applied inconsistently. That isn't the actual complaint about Guards II though. Each player has a hand of 5 cards and they will be playing 4 of them per round. Over the course of the game you will upgrade those cards, but your hand size does not increase. The BGG user was complaining that they couldn't keep track of all the stats on everyone cards over the course of the game. So to build on your example a player wouldn't forget to apply their +50% fire damage, instead what may happen is an opponent may not remember that you upgraded into that ability and be surprised when you play it. This is a game with 22 characters and plays up to 10 people with each character having 5 starting cards and 13 upgrade cards. That's 180 unique cards that could be seen in the game and complaining that you can't keep track of all the stats on all those cards after a few plays seems a little ridiculous. Also, the game has simultaneous action selection so you don't get to know what card someone is playing until everyone reveals them, so if you were counting on someone playing a 3 defense card and they play a 4 defense card it's up to you to figure out how to make the most of the action you selected. I imagine that much like a MOBA, high level players that put in hundreds of plays would get to know the decks of every character. I don't think it would be fair to listen to balance advice from a player that download League or Dota a week ago. Is Guards II a perfect game? I do not know, but the people that have been playtesting it for well over a year don't find that users complaint to be valid and do find the game to be amazing.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 15:55 |
I found Battlecon unplayable until they provided the reference cards, so I imagine it's the same here. High skill ceilings are a good thing, but doing so by kneecapping the player isn't exactly the best way to go about it. Like if the difference between a good and bad play is whether or not I took the effort to write info down on a piece of paper, it's not really a matter of skill, but of UI. GrandpaPants fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Apr 29, 2020 |
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 16:44 |
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Everything you just wrote could also apply to large roster fighting video games, and BattleCon, which attempts to replicate those large roster fighting video games. But BattleCon still plays well with prefect information because knowing how to play a unique fighter is way more interesting than losing because you didn't research their frame data/cards beforehand. If learning a character's basic mechanics was all that it took to understand a matchup, then the game is a very shallow game. Basically, "Can I bait out your main offense without taking a hit?" is far more interesting than "I forget that character has a dash." golden bubble fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Apr 29, 2020 |
# ? Apr 29, 2020 16:48 |
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Agreed with that gb said. I think the only equivalent to this might be tracking cooldowns and it's been a while so I forget if that was displayed or player tracked. If it's player tracked, the equivalent would be keeping played cards face down in battlecon while they're in the queue. You should still have the player aid to know they exist and shouldn't be a gotcha.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 17:12 |
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golden bubble posted:Everything you just wrote could also apply to large roster fighting video games, and BattleCon, which attempts to replicate those large roster fighting video games. But BattleCon still plays well with prefect information because knowing how to play a unique fighter is way more interesting than losing because you didn't research their frame data/cards beforehand. If learning a character's basic mechanics was all that it took to understand a matchup, then the game is a very shallow game. In a 1v1 game, sure. There is no way I would play a six player game with that much to keep track of.
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# ? Apr 29, 2020 22:32 |
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Well Frosthaven is the top funded board game now at $12,412,492 and still climbing.
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# ? May 1, 2020 18:42 |
Yeah 3 hours left. I've backed it. I feel like I'd regret not backing the ~Board Game Darling~ sequel. New video with Isaac Childres playing along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bK9gNEpp6I Pity it's 4am and I'm going to bed
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# ? May 1, 2020 19:01 |
In related news, the digital Gloomhaven devs seem to have gone dark (no updates since March 15), so that's sorta disconcerting.
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# ? May 1, 2020 19:07 |
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GrandpaPants posted:In related news, the digital Gloomhaven devs seem to have gone dark (no updates since March 15), so that's sorta disconcerting. Isn't it Asmodee Digital? They just throw stuff out to take the money and run, which made all the moralizing over their TTS takedowns pretty laughable. Even when they are only the publisher and not the developer, they still seem to force the release. On Agricola: BGG Helmer Aslaksen posted:I got a beta key, tried it a few times and posted a lot of bugs. They were all ignored, and the app was just released. So it didn't make any difference that you didn't get a key. :-(
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# ? May 1, 2020 19:23 |
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Infinitum posted:Yeah 3 hours left. I've backed it. I feel like I'd regret not backing the ~Board Game Darling~ sequel. Yeah. I definitely regretted not backing Gloomhaven. I grabbed it too.
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# ? May 1, 2020 19:28 |
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Gloomhaven was so good that...I don't really want any more. It's already the most Gloomhaven I could possibly handle. But if I ever change my mind there is no way Frosthaven won't be at retail.
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# ? May 1, 2020 19:31 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 21:28 |
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GrandpaPants posted:In related news, the digital Gloomhaven devs seem to have gone dark (no updates since March 15), so that's sorta disconcerting. A month and a half under the current circumstances isn't the craziest thing in the world. But yeah, just a "We're here, struggling but here" post would be nice.
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# ? May 1, 2020 19:33 |