It's a free PnP about brewing beer. What more can you want?

GenCan't Roll and Write Library - Six Sided Stout

In Six Sided Stout, you are a home brewer brewing up a stout for a beer contest. It's designed as a solitaire game but, for reasons I'll go into, I suspect it will be the more fun as a multi-player.

The centerpiece of the game is the beer grid, a six by six grid of diamonds with an open space in the middle that contains water. You will be filling the diamonds in with malt, hops and yeast that you gather throughout the game.

The game lasts ten turns and on each turn, you can do one of two things. Go to the market or roast malt.

The market is where you get your malt and hops and yeast. You don't start with anything but a blank grid. To buy malt, you roll two dice and place them in your pale malt storage. To buy hops, you roll two dice, divide by two and then immediately write that many hops in on the grid, one per square. Yeast, same deal but you divide by three _and_ yeast must either touch the water in the middle or another yeast.

Roasting is simply moving two dice worth of malt from pale to caramel or from caramel to chocolate. And you can move malt onto the grid after any market or roasting action.

There are some restrictions. Because everyone is trying to get ingredients, you can't go after the same ingredient at the market two turns in a row and you can only roast two turns in a row. All the ingredients on the grid have to be connected. And you will score zero points if you don't have all three ingredients.

But you also get some special powers in the form of experts. There are four, one-use experts who can let you roll three dice and take the best two at market. One for each game ingredient and one who can work for any of the three ingredients. 

(I'm not sure why a home brewer knows and has easy access to all these guys. I bet there's a story involved. Maybe you actually work professionally at a brewery and your work is also your hobby. If that's the case, I bet the other home brewers hate your guts)

After ten turns, you score your grid. It's actually pretty interesting. Each malt is scored based on its roast, with pale being only worth one but chocolate worth five. Hops' score is based on the malt it is touching with the paler roast being worth more. Yeast is based on the malt it's touching, multiplied by the yeast's contact with water. (Which means it could be zero)

Six Sided Stout is a very quick playing game, seeing as how it's only ten rounds. At the same time, it has a surprisingly high number of decisions. Even by solitaire standards, it's very much putting a puzzle together but the pieces are going to be different every game.

The one thing I do wish was that there was some kind of rating for scores. While I can always try to improve on my last score, it would be nice to have a yard stick. I can understand why there isn't because both yeast and hops add some real deviance in scoring.

And that's why I think Six Sided Stout would be best played as a multi-player game. Yeah, there would be no interaction but you would have other people to compete with. Yeah, there could be some serious point deviance but it's a short enough game that it would still be fun.

In the current incarnation, there are two boards per sheet. I am thinking of blowing it up so there's one board on a single sheet to make it easier to play with dry erase markers.

While I do wish there was a better way to measure how well I'm doing (although keeping track of my score will eventually do that), I like the process of playing Six Sided Stout. 

Drawing a line across London

GenCan't Roll and Write Library: Holmes and Watson: Adventures in the Fog

The theme of Holmes and Watson was what made me decide to to try this game out next. I do love me some Sherlock Holmes and I view him as one of the great serial characters who can be done well with a variety of interpretations.

Of course, the theme's only role is to give the designer a reason to use a Victorian map of London. The game is really about drawing a path across the board, connecting  symbols. 

Like many of the games in this library, the game consists of a board, along with a writing tool and some dice that you have to supply yourself. Print out the board and you're ready.

The board shows a map of London with a matrix of dots and symbols on the streets. Like the Crayon Train games, H&W is dot-to-dot with strategy. In a nutshell, you are drawing a line across the streets of London, trying to pass through the different symbols to collect sets. You have to stick to the streets and you can never double back.

The active player rolls n+1 dice (n being the number of players, don'tcha know) and there's then a dice draft. Not an amazing level of player interaction but at least there is some. The dice actions are draw a segment, draw two segments, draw segments to reach a fingerprint, draw segments to reach a magnifying glass, and draw segments to reach an eye. Sixes are special and nasty. Those are Moriarty and force you to cross out three symbols on your path.

When someone solves their ninth mystery/completes their ninth set, the game ends. Points are based on the different kinds of sets and most points wins.

H&W feels like it could use at least one more draft. The black-and-white version of the board has references to cards, which clearly no longer a part of the game. There is also a purse mechanic that lets you collect coins to turn into symbols that's easy to figure out (good use of iconography) but isn't mentioned in the rules.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this is an adaptation of a non-PnP game that the designer is working on.

All that said, I had fun with H&W. It isn't brilliant and it isn't innovative but it's simple and it works. And, let's be clear. Balanced and clean play, particularly in a game that lasts ten minutes, is strong. The theme is non-existent but the map, which could have been totally abstract, is nice to look at.

In fact, if I make a solitaire binder, which is on my list of things to do in August, H&W will be in it. It is a game I will reach for if I feel like some quick solitaire.

Rat-a-Tat Cat - the little card game that just keeps going

Rat-a-Tat Cat has been my mind as of late. Part of that is because I saw some kids playing it at a recent gaming event. Part of it is because I looked through the rules of Play Nine to see if it's a game I'd be interested in and the rules reminded me of it. 

That's because both Rat-a-Tat Cat and Play Nine harken back to the traditional card game Golf. (In fact, Play Nine is basically Golf with golf themed cards) In all three games, you have a tableau of cards face down and you swap out cards from either the draw pile or the discard pile, trying to get the lowest total value

Rat-a-Tat Cat actually breaks from the mold more. It's simpler with only four cards and a simpler (and kind of more brutal) scoring system since you don't cancel out pairs. Plus, it has action cards. 

Has it really been twelve years since I wrote a review of Rat-a-Tat Cat? Sweet Garfield and Heathcliff, it has. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/75341/flexible-filler-2-6 My word, my sense of short games has changed since I wrote that.

The game has been in my collection for quite a while and I have played it a fair bit over the years. And, as much as I dislike the term filler, I have really Rat-a-Tat Cat to fill time. The vast majority of my games have been played waiting for people to show up or waiting for food to show up or squeezing in one last game in the night.

As I talk about in the review I wrote so long ago with thicker and darker hair, one of the keys is that you can end the game whenever you want. You can play as many rounds as you feel like and a round ends when someone knocks. Which could be the kiss of death in a game of any weight but is actually a virtue in this light, little game.

Compared to Golf, Rat-a-Tat Cat is both lighter and more random. You have a tableau of four cards compared to eight. You have those action cards. Heck, you have extra nine-value cards which messes with the odds.

But I'm pretty sure it's been close to twenty years since I've played Golf. And Rat-a-Tat Cat, I've been a fair number of plays of it over the last twelve years. It's a simple card game with silly art but it has kept on delivering. 

I don't go looking for games with the goal of filling time. I do like short games but I want them to have depth and interesting decisions. Rat-a-Tat Cat isn't the kind of game that I look for. But it has kept delivering.

Of course, you also have to take into account that it is a children's game. As a game for grown ups, it works. But Rat-a-Tat Cat is pretty brilliant for the under ten set. Simple rules that still makes them think. Push your luck with a decent amount of control.

I don't need another game like Rat-a-Tat Cat. It has kept on doing what I need it to do.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3837/rat-tat-cat

Duck Tales, all about family

I was just young enough to have watched the original Duck Tales. By the time most of the Disney Afternoon came out, I was too busy to watch those shows. (A dear friend of mine has said that DVR fixed television and he's right.)

At the time, I didn't know who Carl Barks or Don Rosa were. I didn't know the rich heritage of comic books cartoon was drawing from. But I really liked it and it helped shape my idea of who Uncle Scrooge and the three nephews were.

To be honest, I have yet to really read the Duck comic books but I now have a much better idea of what they are like. And Donald Duck, with his short fuse and his determination, has become my favorite Disney character.

So, when I heard a new version of Duck Tales was coming out, I was interested, and when I heard that David Tenant, who was my favorite new Doctor, would be Scrooge, I was excited. 

I've now watched the pilot/first episode.

I think when you reimagine a property, it's dangerous to be too slavishly close to the original work and I also think it's dangerous to disrespect the original work. It's important to get a new audience but to also remember why the original work had an audience in the first place.

Let's face it, the core concept of Duck Tales is a family that adventures together. The new show pushes that idea even further into forefront. Well, at least in the first story. But there are signs that they are going to keep that up.

Famously, Roy Disney didn't want any of the big names (Mickey, Goofy, etc) to be in TV cartoons. (Obviously, that didn't last long) But that did mean Donald was limited to a couple appearances and his role was taken by his polar opposite, Launchpad McQuack.

The reimagining has Donald a main character and it looks like both his relationship with his uncle and with his nephews are his defining characteristic. He still has a hair trigger temper, the worst luck imaginable and the stoppable determination. But instead of pairing his fierce love for his nephews with a desire to murder the little brats, he's a total helicopter parent.

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At the end of the first story, we have a wham line of Dewie realizing that his mom also adventures with Uncle Scrooge. This is after we have learned that Donald has raised his nephews since they were in diapers and he has an old grudge against Uncle Scrooge. 

It's pretty obvious something happened to her under Scrooge's watch. Which also explains why Donald is so overprotective of the nephews. 

Thats a lot of heavy drama.

The original Duck Tales helped reshape the TV cartoon landscape but the world of cartoons has changed over twenty years. Fortunately, it looks like Disney has considered those changes in the reimaging. 

I was thrilled to get more David Tennant but now I'm looking forward to the actual tales of the new Duck Tales.

A hungry, hungry caterpillar game for all ages

GenCan't Roll and Write Library - Canterpillar Feast 

Okay. Let me get this out of the way. Canterpillar Feast uses the strategic bingo mechanic of Take It Easy. Everyone has their own player board and everyone gets the same options.

That's not a bad thing. It's a family of games that I really like and one that I have been able to use with a wide variety of groups.

In Canterpillar Feast, you are hungry, hungry caterpillars munching on leaves. Every one has a branch with ten leaves on it, numbered two to six and eight to twelve. Each leaf has nine empty boxes on it and a ladybug. The tree that the branch is on has nine knot holes.

You'll take turns being the active player. The active player rolls four dice and then chooses one to discard. Everyone then chooses two of the dice to add together. That's the leaf that you'll be eating this turn and the number on the last die is the number of boxes you'll be filling in.

Here's the kicker. You have to fill in that number of boxes. If you'd go over, you can't use that combination of dice. And if you can't fill in any boxes (and, as the game goes on, that will happen), you fill in a knot hole. When someone fills in their last knot hole, the game's over.

In addition, if you're the first person to complete a particular leaf, you get to circle the ladybug on that leaf. The farther on the edge of the bell curve, the more spots they have. The two and the twelve have six spots and six and eight have two.

When the game's over, you get ten points for every completed leaf, points equal to the number of spots on your circled ladybugs, and negative points equal to the number of empty boxes on your leaves. Whoever has the most points, wins.

I played Canterpillar Feast as a solitaire game, which is how I'll probably test drive all the games I try in the GenCan't library. And I think that is probably the weakest way to play the game.

Playing by myself, I was able to optimize every roll. Someone else choosing which die to discard would definitely add tension. Same thing about actually having to compete for ladybugs. On top of that, the game ending when anyone fills in all their knot holes also keeps things tense.

In general, having played a lot of games like Canterpillar Feast, I would call it a solid game, not brilliant but not disappointing. One thing that gives it an edge is that it's free and easy PnP. 

However, the biggest takeaway for me is actually the theme. The theme takes an abstract number and odds cruncher and turns into a cute game with a kid-engaging theme. It's gone on the large stack of potential games when our toddler gets a little older and I've already shared with friends with older kids.

Dipping my toe in the GenCan't library

GenCan't Roll and Write Library - Pippi and the Murmuring Desert

Pippi and the Murmuring Desert ended up being the first game I tried out in the GenCan't Roll and Write Library. Laziness played a part in that decision, since the whole thing is just one page and doesn't require any colored dice. It also looks like one of the simplest games in the library.

Unfortunately, I also had a feeling it wouldn't be that good a game. 

In Pippi and the Murmuring Desert, you are traveling through a desert, trying to reach a medicine woman in a mountain valley and then take the medicine to your papa on the other side. 

Each turn consists of surveying the nearby landscape, thus creating the map, and then moving.

There is an additional feature that you also only have so much water. Every time you don't move, you drink some of your water. Your pawn is actually a die and that's how you keep track of your water. I've seen that done before but I still like it. It is a simple but effective way of tracking.

So here's where the problem comes in. On your travel turn, you wrote two dice and consult the chart. That shows you what two directions you are allowed travel. But, in the best of circumstances, there is an obvious choice. If you roll doubles, you don't have a choice. And, what felt like all to often, both directions could end blocked and you really had no choice.

 

So I ultimately ended up making no actual choices and was forced to do what the dice told me to. That's a major problem in my book.

Sorry, Craig Froehle, the game has some fundamental problems.

Interestingly enough, I did have some fun playing the game. That's because it really, really reminded me of the first scenario in the old and much criticized Avalon Hill game Outdoor Survival. 

Contrary to popular myth, most of the scenarios in Outdoor Survival actually give you a measure of control and agency. However, the initial, lost in the woods without a map or compass basically consists of wandering around the woods, waiting to die of starvation or thirst or horrible accidents. In multi-player games, the winner is whoever dies last.

It's been years since I last played Outdoor Survival and I've actually gotten rid of my copy so I doubt I'll play it again. But it was a gaming experience that i will probably never forget. 

Pippi and the Murmuring Desert is actually a lot more survivable than Outdoor Survival (the board is a fraction of the size) but wandering lost in the desert while running out of water did remind me of the older game. Frankly, being able to relive that experience with one sheet of paper and three dice is all I need.  

Evaluating Roll and Write games

While I have had an interest in PnP Roll and Write games for years, the Spiel Press kicked my interest in them up a couple notches. Then GenCan't basically dropped a library of them in my lap :D 

So as someone who is currently interested in casual games and whose interest in PnP has just been increasing, I have a feeling that I will be exploring this particular medium for the next few months.

So I have asked myself what am I looking for in a PnP Roll and Write Game, other than fun? I decided that the three most important elements are interesting choices, interesting mechanics (innovative is too loaded a term) and interaction.

Interesting choices is the most important thing that I am looking for. Because, quite frankly, I have played some games like this that actually haven't had any choices. Just roll the dice and see what happens. I want to have some agency in the game and some control over what happens.

I realize that this is a really basic requirement. However, since I have seen it not met, it is definitely one that I think needs to be addressed.

Mechanics, that comes down to this. A lot of the Roll and Write games I've seen harken back to Yahtzee and Take It Easy. And that's not a knock. Yahtzee is a very strong engine and I adore Take It Easy. However, seeing the game that breaks out of those frameworks is really cool.

Interaction is related to that. Both Yahtzee and Take It Easy are literally multi-player solitaire, unless you're playing by yourself. In that case, they're literally solitaire. Again, that's not a knock. We are talking about games that I have really enjoyed and had an easy time getting other folks to enjoy. For instance, I've had a lot of success with Wurfel Bingo.

However, interaction and direct conflict would definitely add some spice. I already have a nice selection of Roll and Write Games that are multi-player solitaire. Having something that I can print out and then go head-to-head would add additional options and audiences to the PnP library.

I have started to go through the GenCan't library and I'll probably blog my thoughts about them. It will be interesting to see how far I go through the library and what I discover.