Effort Is Anathema - The Casual LP Thread - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Effort Is Anathema - The Casual LP Thread

Falconier111: Jul 18, 2012; S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

Are board game LPs kosher here? I did a writeup for Star Wars LIFE for the Fatal and Friends thread that basically turned into a screenshot LP, and I figure it might be appropriate here.

# ¿ May 9, 2021 03:22

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 18:54

Falconier111: Jul 18, 2012; S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

Xerophyte posted:

We also had a bunch of honest-to-goodness boardgame LPs: Risk, multiple runs of Diplomacy, Gloomhaven, Railroad Ink, I think Axis and Allies at some point...

But, uh, you probably want to use https://lpix.org/sslptest/ and link to a test post for the updates. Long screenshot LP posts directly in the casual thread may be seen as uncasual.

Ehhnn... I�ll break it up into a few parts and spread the posts across a couple days so I don�t clog up the thread. I covered the whole game in one post that took me a day and a half to put together, it wasn�t exactly a professional production, but it is a few thousand words long and that might be a bit much.

E: I checked the length, the entire review is about half as long as one of those BnB updates, so that sounds about right.

Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 04:34 on May 9, 2021

# ¿ May 9, 2021 04:23

Falconier111: Jul 18, 2012; S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

The Game of Life: Star Wars: A Jedi's Path: Pt. 1

Before we begin, I want to make a few things clear:

This game came out in 2002. Attack of the Clones had just been released and Episode III was years away. As far as Star Wars goes, this thing is practically a time capsule; if you care about Legends, just reading the flavor text on the cards is a nostalga trip.
As far as I�m aware, this game has been out of print for 15 years at least and the only people who�ll ever see it are collectors willing to drop $70 on a used boardgame. No one cares about this game. Except me. And, hopefully, by the end of the review, you.
I was a HUGE Star Wars fan when I was a kid; I was neck-deep in Legends back when they called it the Expanded Universe. I�ve since mellowed out but I still care about this probably more than I should, so get ready for a lot of Wookieepedia links.
The box art implies the game includes material from the original trilogy as well as the prequels. The box art lies. Aside from some of the art this game is set entirely in Jedi times.
This post was originally written for the Fatal & Friends thread, where tabletop RPGs go to die by vivisection. This review was a border case there, but it honestly works better as an LP, so here you go.

If you aren�t familiar with the Game of LIFE�, it�s a member of that second tier of classic board game, not as famous as Monopoly or the like but a step above Catan or Carcassonne. Players compete to live the most picture-perfect suburban American life possible, passing through various life stages while trying to make as much money as possible; the richest person wins, because no matter how happy their life was, the most important thing to someone on their deathbed is the size of their bank account. It plays like most boardgames that send you along a winding track, but its big mechanical distinction is the LIFE� tile: you draw these every time you land on certain spaces and try to gather as many of them as possible, then flip them over once everyone�s done to discover what #lifegoals each player accomplished and how much money they earned off them because that�s why you do interesting things. As you can guess from the box, this game borrows its basic ruleset, except it then throws out half of it. But we�ll get to that.

So, here are two pictures of the board, one without feelies and one with them installed (in that order). The game comes bundled with a few plastic figurines you insert at various points on the board, and every one of them is annoying. Seriously, every time I set this game up I think that I lost one of them or damaged the board trying to install them. I usually go without, but hey, you get the full treatment. Like standard LIFE, this thing uses a spinner instead of dice or something, wedging it uncomfortably over the starting area where it�s easy to spin it too hard and send its components flying out into someone�s tokens.

You get four little strips of cardboard to pick between represent your character: three Jedi from the prequels and poor Chewbacca, who apparently got lost. You just slot your choice into a little plastic stand and go. Unlike in LIFE classic, you don�t use money because Jedi avoid earthly attachments. Instead, the game revolves around replacement LIFE tiles that represent each one of four skills a Jedi can be expected to have: Fighting (combat), Intuition (using the Force, Luke), Energy (using force push or lifting X-wings or whatever), and Logic (which should have no place in Star Wars but here we are). You can also pick up Dark Side tiles throughout the game, but we�ll get to that.

A quick shot of the board; you�ve probably seen most of this before. You play a turn by spinning the spinner, going that many spaces (stopping if you hit a red space), doing what the space tells you, and adjusting your skill tiles appropriately before ending your turn. Some spaces tell you to gain or lose skill tokens, some let you spin again, some let you switch out skills, some make you draw cards, and some make you engage another player in a Jedi Challenge (both players spin and add one skill; whoever has the highest total gets a free skill token). However, this game has two special space types.

The first (above) are Trials; whenever you run into one you spin against the given skill difficulty and take some penalty if you fail. These only show up at the beginning and right at the end. The other are Dark Side spaces. Occasionally, you�ll run across a shortcut branching off the main track with black spaces ending in a red space; you take these if you want to be a Sith Lord (you can be a Sith Lord in this game). Every time you land on a space along a Dark Side track, you take a Dark Side token in exchange for getting unusually powerful bonuses; you do have to keep in mind that some spaces (marked Redemption) will take away one Dark Side token and a skill token (or give a free skill to good Jedi children), so you can find it biting you in the rear end later. This will become a theme.

We also get four decks of cards. The first two, Lessons and Missions, are simply skill challenges; spin and add the relevant skill, if it�s at or more than the target number you pass. The only mechanical differences are that Lessons are less risky than Missions and Missions start showing up a lot later. Every card in this game (not just Lessons and Missions) has at least a sentence or two of flavor text, and if you�re like me, you�ll recognize a lot of names and phrases. As far as I can tell, half the Lesson flavor text and all of the missions draw from Legends somehow; just in these cards two of the Lessons reference Corellian Jedi and part of the Jedi Code, while the Mission cards reference Dathomir, force-witches, Onderon, Adegan crystals, and Mandalorians. Like I said, nostalgia trip.

The first third. Next time, we'll finish the rules and actually start playing this in this Let's Play.

Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 03:56 on May 11, 2021

# ¿ May 9, 2021 17:31

Falconier111: Jul 18, 2012; S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

By popular demand posted:

Chewie looks so tiny when his figure is at the same height as a human. no budget for a bigger piece of cardboard?

It�s an optical illusion. I didn�t line up the bottom of his cutout with everybody else�s.

The production values are pretty weird, though. Everything looks really good, like somebody put a lot of thought and effort into designing it, but it�s all built with cheap materials. The budget may really have run out.

# ¿ May 10, 2021 04:08

Falconier111: Jul 18, 2012; S T A R M E T A L C A S T E

Here's the rest of the Start Wars Life LP, including the actual LP. I gave a similar treatment to the lovely Chicago Monopoly I found lying around the house if anyone's interested.

Covski posted:

Is there a place I can find that? I'm curious.

# ¿ May 11, 2021 03:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Effort Is Anathema - The Casual LP Thread