Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Not an actual review of Elfs

I just finished reading Elfs and look at their thinking about writing a review of it. However, I really just want to comment on one mechanic.

In Elfs, you play nasty little elves who engage in a lot of potty humor and depraved sexual behavior. Frankly, that sounds like regular dungeons and dragons in high school and freshman year in college. In other words, I am not sure that you need a system that describes the way a lot of people already play role playing games. Is it really satire if you're just describing regular behavior?

OK, to be fair, The point of the game is to do this intentionally and explore the meta game behind playing characters where you are is more important then success. Which isn't really a surprise. The designer, Ron Edwards, has kind of made a point of exploring meta game.

The most significant exploration of the meta game and by far the most interesting to me is the concept of Dumb Luck. It's a special stat that you use the _player_ and the _character_ have different goals. It's a fascinating idea that really mixes up the idea of getting in your character's skin.

In fact, it is actually the reverse of bleed. Bleed is when what happens to the characters emotionally affects the players. In Elfs, the rules make it perfectly clear that the characters are just there to dance for the players' amusement.

While this is interesting and I'm pretty sure I can find examples of games I've played where you could argue there is anti-bleed (Toon or the Parsely system might be examples of that), this isn't what draws me into role playing games. Elfs doesn't interest me as a game I want to play. I also am not sure how it works as satire when it basically has you play the way plenty of people legitimately play fantasy RPGs.

With all that said, if it had been a Three Stooges RPG, I might have been more interested. 

Monday, August 28, 2017

Boy meets girl, girl leaves boy, boy gains super powers

By reading Just For One Day, I've now actually finished the first tape in the Indie Megamix Mixtape. Which means that I still have two more to read :D

Of course, when I first started reading through the micro RPGs in the collection (about a year ago... really?), I knew that I was going to take my time and try not to binge on them. If I did that, I would end up getting burnt out quickly and I wouldn't be able to judge each game on its own merits.

(One thing that has happened as I've read them is that I've gotten more aware and interested on the actual songs that inspired the games. I wonder would it would be like to actually make a mixtape of the songs. And I wonder if they would be good to have around for emergency games of Ribbon Drive. Kind of defeats the purpose of that game, I know, but it's still tempting)

Just For One Day is a game for three players. Two of them play a couple (romantic or otherwise, although the structure really seems to be geared towards romantic) while the third player plays the world.

The mechanics center around seven cards that you make at the start of the game, each one having some kind of trait that either helps or should help hold the relationship together. As the game goes on, they may get reversed but every scene will be tied to them.

The game has three stages, using the deck each time. The first stage is establishing the relationship. The second is having the relationship fall apart. Then, the character who was left gains super powers and develops a neurotic Superman-Lois Lane relationship with the other player.

Okay. Which of those stages is at least a little bit surprising?

Really, by the standards of RPGs, a romantic drama getting hijacked by super powers isn't that weird. I mean, the game before this one is about undead Mesopotamian kings playing rock music. By that yardstick, Just For One Day doesn't even register.

Still, the theme of Just for One Day is the most interesting part for me. For one thing, I like superheroes. For another thing, I like that you build up to it, developing and destroying the relationship before super powers come in. Although the mechanic of returning to the same concepts in every stage has potential.

While I'd rather play Breaking The Ice, I will give Just For One Day credit for examining how a relationship falls apart.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Reiner Knizia's Decathlon still has legs

GenCan't has let me revisit Reiner Knizia's Decathlon. It's actually been an interesting experience since I have played a lot of both light dice games and print-and-plays since I last played the Decathlon.

The Decathlon is a well known Print and Play. Part of that is definitely because it's by a well known designer. Part of it is because it's easy to make. Print out a page and grab some dice. But part of it is because the Decathlon is a decent, although not brilliant, game. 

As the name flat out states, you play out the ten events of the Olympic Decathlon. The twist is that each game is it's own distinct dice mini-game. And both the strengths and weaknesses of the game are tied to that.

On the one hand, most light dice games are repetitive. You're doing thats same thing over and over again. In the Decathlon, the events are just different enough that you have to adjust your thinking for each event. That gives the game a distinct feel, even after all these years.

And you have a limited number of rerolls in each game. That both keeps the game moving along and keeps the tension high. There is weight to every roll you make.you have to decide how far you want to push your luck.

On the other hand, lets be honest. None of the mini games are strong enough to stand on their own. No one is going to sit down and say let's play a few rounds of the 400 meter dash. The overall game is and has to be greater than the sum of its parts.

(Moving on to neutral elements)

The Decathlon has the odd quality of being pretty dry and pretty thematic at the same time. If the theme was fixing ten parts of a space ship or fighting ten battles of Alexander the Great or operating ten different rail lines, it wouldn't work nearly as well. The Olympic Decathlon gives it a unifying theme that makes each mini-game flow together. But it's still pretty dry.

The Decathlon is also a bit longer than most light dice games. I'd pull out Cinq-O or Zombie Dice if we wanted a quick, low thought activity. The Decathlon is just long enough and (maybe) just complicated enough that it's more of a planned game rather than a spontaneous one.

All in all, Reiner Knizia's Decathlon still holds up. I'll admit some of its value comes from the fact that the files are free and it costs almost nothing in time and materials to make. But that alone doesn't make a game worth playing. It also has tension and interesting decisions to make. It's not perfect and I wouldn't want to play it every week. But it is a game I'd play again.

Thursday, August 24, 2017

2017: the first year I went to GenCan't

Another GenCon has come and gone and, as had been the case since I moved to the other side of the country, I didn't go. This year, however, I found out about GenCan't so I got to celebrate the weekend anyway.

(Incidentally, almost all of my friends who went to GenCon for shopping and open gaming have stopped going. It has become too crowded for them. So I just heard from my friends who went for business reasons and for the spectacle. So I got a much happier description of the con :D)

As I've mentioned about seven times in this blog, I found out about GenCan't through the Roll and Write contest. Which has been a lot of fun. There are some games in that library I could see being published and doing well. I probably won't play them all but I definitely try some more.

However, I have gotten to have some other fun with GenCan't, participating in one of the MegaKaruba games and the unofficial Knizia Decathlon tournament.

Many years ago, I swear I read how Alan Moon ran a game of Take It Easy with over a hundred players at a convention. Now, of course, I can't find a citation of that event. However, I love the idea that   number of boards limits the number of players who can play a 'bingo with strategy' game. So MegaKaruba was something I really dug.

Of course, while it is a game I've thought of picking up, I don't actually own a copy. So I made a set of pieces with pencil, straight edge, glue, card stock and a paper cutter. I used matching pairs of dice for the explorers (one pip) and temples (counting down from five to two as the values decreased)

This was my first experience with Karuba and it was a crazy, silly way to try out the game, the moves live-streamed so that folks around the world could play the same game. I don't know how many folks outside the US played (or how many folks played period) but it was a fun time. Memorable introduction.

On the other hand, between being someone who is a Knizia fan and has had in interest in PnP, I'm no stranger to Reiner Knizia's Decathlon. However ever, this was the first time I played competitively, instead of solitaire. That definitely added some excitement to the game. Plus, I somehow won the tournament. Honestly, it gave me a whole new appreciation for the game.

Yes, going to GenCon would have been a bigger, possibly overwhelming experience. GenCan't can't compare to that. However, I got access to a library of PnP games that are fun and will probably push me to finally making a binder of solitaire games. I got to try out a new game and play with a bunch of people and even win a tournament.

Most importantly, I got to participate. I wasn't able to make it to the biggest convention of the year (or the one fighting with Essen for that title)  but I was still able to be a part of the weekend. And that felt really good.

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Gene splicing dinosaurs all by yourself

GenCan't Roll and Write Library - Jurassico

Since there are over forty games in the library, I have realized that I probably won't get through them all. So I've decided that I should make sure that I get in the finalists and the winner. I'm not going to save the best for last.

In Jurassico, you are commercial geneticists who are working on bringing the dinosaurs back. Amusingly, the winner of the contest, Welcome to Dino World, is about running a dinosaur amusement park. So I can see playing the two games back to back :D

Jurassico is designed as a solitaire game with a built in, robot opponent. I can see playing it multi-player but you will always need the robot to really keep the pressure on.

You are working on bringing back five different dinosaurs species. You do this by filling in the numbers on five color-coded columns. Each round, you roll five dice (red, yellow, green, white and blue) and make pairs with one die left over. 

You can cross off the sum of a pair from the column that matches one of the colors of the dice in the pair. The white and the blue are the bottom six numbers of 2d6, the green and yellow are the top and red is the even numbers. You also get some genetic meddling that lets you alter each color in some way twice in the game.

The fifth die? That goes to your competition, Embryonic, who are trying to make the same dinosaurs. You just check off a box in their unnumbered columns. They have fewer boxes than you in each column AND you check them off at the start of the game. The number depends on how difficult you want the game to be.

Whoever finishes a dinosaur species first gets two billion bucks. If the other side later completes that dinosaur, they get one billion. If you get to six billion first, you win. If Embryonic does, you lose.

Out of all the games I've played so far in the library, Jurassico may be the mechanically simplest. However, it's a very tight, tense game within that simplicity. The die rolls give you some legitimate choices, particularly with the genetic meddling thrown in.

However, what is absolutely key to the game is your competition, the robot company Embryonic. Even at easy level, it keeps the pressure on you and it is genuinely difficult to beat. The robot player just takes the game to the next level.

Even if I were to play Jurassico multi-player, I would keep Embryonic in the game. I would just have each player check off different boxes in Embryonic.

I'm not normally a solitaire player (although the GenCan't Library is definitely testing that :D) and when I do play a solitaire game, I want a fairly short one. I just use them for mental breathers, as oppose to an evening's activities. From that standpoint, Jurassico is a great game for me and I know I'll be pulling it out regularly.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Talking? We haven't tried that before

Session Nine of the Late Lurkers

This was the session where we got all the stuff for our first fetch quest, the components we need to cure the druid of lycanthrope. It was also the first session with a new player who promises to completely change the party dynamics. But in a good way :)

The two big scenes in the session were a straight up fight with an ogre zombie in an old battle field (where we got the jawbone of a horse slain in battle needed for the cure) and an encounter with a cult of some kind of elder god.

The first was fun because we really had to get tactical against a monster who could potentially drop party members in a hit. For the second week in a row :D

However, the significant event was out encounter with the cultists. And not just because it hinted at Lovecraftian horrors (and as a Call of Cthulhu lover, I like that)

Ulric, the new guy and the warlock who might turn out to be evil, has a much higher charisma than almost anyone else in the party. We do have an occasionally played bard but he's a skald whose motto is literally 'I advocate violence' 

(To be fair, not only has the DM not implemented alignments, I am really not prepared to describe any of the characters as good. Loyal to the jarl is as good as it's going to get. Ulric is just a different flavor than the rest of us)

He managed to talk our way OUT of that fight (as opposed to our dwarf cleric who does the opposite) Since we were outnumbered, that may have been a good thing. Particularly since the DM said that afterwards. And we didn't even desecrate their sacrificed member in the name of looting afterwards.

Yes, we've reached the point where we are really asking ourselves what is our moral compass. And since we are in a fantasy ninth century Norse culture, that might not be all that altruistic or nice. But keep in mind, this is fun. 

When we started the campaign via Roll20, we focused on the mechanical side of the game. We were learning how to use the interface and, with sessions being two to three hours long, that really meant that combat was the centerpiece. And I was cool with that being what would we get.

Instead, characters are developing. And I wonder if we will be pushing more towards more and more of a sandbox environment with the players setting the goals.


Friday, August 18, 2017

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. 

Thursday, August 17, 2017

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.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

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.

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.

Spoiler

Spoiler

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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.

Monday, August 14, 2017

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.  

Friday, August 11, 2017

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.

A disappointing trip back to Solo Tower Hack

Some years ago, when my PnP experiences tended to focus on super simple builds, I tried out a very simple dungeon crawl called Solo Tower Hack. All it took was one page, a pencil, a chart and a couple of dice.

Since I've been having fun with Roll and Write games, I decided to revisit it.

What I discovered is a game where you basically roll the dice and do what they tell you to do. The dice determine what's in each room, where the stairs are and how the fights go. Really, the only real virtues the game has is that it is beyond light on ink and, if you were playing it in a cubicle, you'd look like you were working on a spreadsheet as long as you hid the dice.

Other than the novelty of how minimal you can make fighting your way through a generic fantasy tower, Solo Tower Hack doesn't have much to say for itself.

Truth to tell, since then, I have played a much better one-page, dice driven dungeon crawl. Delve the Dice Game is a much better Roll and Write dungeon crawl in almost every way. 

I'm planning on doing a longer revisit of Delve but it's basically controlling an adventuring party via Yahtzee to fight different groups of monsters. You have actual choices and a lot more flavor.

I have played other one-sheet, PnP, Roll and Write solitaire games that have you basically go on an adventure. For such a crazy specific description, there are a number of them out there. Other ones that stuck in my head include the D6 Shooters and Utopia Engine. Delve stands out for by having a variety of adventures and embracing the pseudo D&D theme.

While neither solitaire or dungeon crawls are my thing, solitaire roll-and-write games are nice for me when I'm between groups and don't have a lot of down time. Delve does the trick well enough I'm really thinking about exploring how far it's come since I looked at it long ago.

Solo Tower Hack, on the other hand, is pretty much a time waster. If I had seen it in the early 80s, I'd probably would have spent some time playing it with a pad of graph paper. Frankly, it feels like something from the early 80s, something I'd have found in the back of a gaming magazine. The fact that it's from 2007 is kind of shocking.

With that in mind, I feel like Solo Tower Hack shows how much farther you can go with even free minimalist PnP. I don't just mean visually (the empty graph is clearly a choice) but mechanically. Above all else, it helps me appreciate other games.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

I discover GenCan't, the unconvention

From a couple different sources, including Cheapass Games newsletter, I came across GenCan't, the blog for all the folks who are _not_ going to GenCon. I have heard of Virtual Conventions but this is the first time I've seen an Unconvention.

GenCan't includes different contests and and articles and even a few game days at game stores that aren't in Indianapolis. But what really led me there was this year's Roll and Write contest, which gave me access to over thirty Roll and Write PnP games.

Which, frankly, is quite the bonanza. 

Really, when you think about it, if you are going to have a PnP contest where the games are accessible for the largest audience, this is the way to do it. No construction, just print and add dice and pencils. And it looks like the designers really explored a lot of different ideas and mechanics.

As of my writing this, they are still adding games to their library, presumably as the designers give the site permission. And we haven't even gotten the actual winner yet. Fun!

While the Roll-and-Write library is my biggest interest in GenCan't, the whole idea of it is neat. Let's face it, a lot of us can't go to GenCon. The site creates a fun sense of solidarity, one that is even international.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Would I go on a Tiny Epic Quest?

At this point, I have played three out of the five games in the Tiny Epic line. Ironically, two of them are the ones that I don't own, although I did play Tiny Epic Defender via PnP so you could say that I owned it that way.

As the name implies, one of the selling points of the line is that they come in small boxes. For me, small storage space and small footprint and relatively short playing time are all appealing.

But I still stand by my mantra that a small game or a short game still has to measure up. I will admit that I will give the game points for being good for it size but what I am really looking for is a game that's just plain good.

Tiny Epic Quest, at least at first blush, felt like it was definitely good for the size of the game and the length of the game but I'm not sure it's just plain good. Frankly, that's because it's a genre I don't play a lot of.

For some reason, I tend to think of Adventure Games, where you control a hero with stats exploring the countryside as a subsection of Dungeon Crawls, even though the other way around makes more sense. Adventure Games tend to have less discrete actions while some Dungeon Crawls have you play out every step.

Tiny Epic Quest has you send three heroes around a map made up of cards. They explore temples, learn magic and fight goblins. Each round has a day where you move around and a night where you have your adventures.

The mechanics for the night are pretty simple but interesting. The active player rolls the five dice that come with the game. Any goblin heads get passed around and give each person who gets one a point of damage. Any power symbols get passed around in the same way and give people power points. Magic raises the magic level, required for learning magic. And everyone gets to uses scrolls, torches and punches to further their adventures.

When it's your turn, you can choose to rest or roll the dice. So, the game ends up being a push-your-luck game with some resource management (hit points are a resource after all)

To be honest, when I think about it, it's kind of an odd central mechanism for an adventure game. At least in my very limited experience. And, intellectually, I can't help but wonder if it's a little too random. However, I did have fun when I played it and I would play it again.

My real question is: would I actually buy it?

That's actually a rather interesting question. On the one hand, I know that there are deeper and more interesting games about tramping around a magical land and exploring rules and fighting monsters. On the other hand, that's not the kind of game I play a lot and one that takes up a small spot on the game shelf and plays fairly quickly is desirable.

So, maybe.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Everyone unleashes evil undead at some point, right?

When we had the eighth session in what the DM has nicknamed the Late Lurkers since we play after everyone's kids have gone to bed, only three players were able to make it.

There are now seven of us players in the game, although the two new players haven't actually had a session with the rest of us. The DM's whole goal adding players was to avoid having sessions like this :P Well, at least by playing on Roll20, no one had to actually drive to someone's house to find folks missing. (And, in the defense of two players, they gave definite no's ahead of time)

So we ended up having a side quest in the middle of our fetch quest. Although this side quest might end up having repercussions that last far longer than our fetch quest.

Short version: the three of us stumbled upon the tomb of a elven king. It helped that the entrance had been cleared by some now dead tomb raiders. We weathered some encounters with a lion, skeletons and grey oozes without too many serious problems.

Then we opened up the tomb of the king and unleashed the mummy that he had become. Three second level characters against a CR 3 monster isn't an instant kill but we were clearly outmatched and our healing couldn't keep up with his damage. Fortunately, the dwarf cleric had his daughter's ring (we found it in a hidden fountain) which make the mummy think the dearf was her. He convinced the mummy to leave us alone and leave. We were hoping the lion we had left alive would do enough damage to the mummy that we could take him in a second bout but the lion ran away.

So, we ended with a royal tomb's worth of treasure but we had unleashed a relatively powerful undead onto the countryside. 

Mechanically, this session let us explore ideals, bonds and flaws. Basically, we knew opening the king's tomb was clearly a bad idea but of course we wanted to. Looking at our character aspects, which reflected the pseudo Viking culture we were a part of, glory and treasure were too big a driving force.

Storywise, it's fun to push a character's flaws. Yeah, we were a bunch of greedy idiots but that made things a lot more interesting. And this side quest which we played because we were missing too many players may actually create an ongoing villain who could be a part of the game for a while.

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Struggling to find something nice to say about Catan Dice

As near as I can tell, I actually haven't written about the Catan Dice Game, other than taking playing it solitaire back when I had an android phone. Which is odd, because I was pretty sure that I had. Well, if I did, it would have been close to ten years ago.

Okay, short version. The Catan Dice Game is really, when you get down to it, Yahtzee that uses a Catan map for a score sheet. You build roads and villages and cities and knights, albeit in a specific order. The five resources are on the rather nice dice, plus gold. Two gold make a wild and the knights each serve as one-time resources.

And I ultimately found the game dull, even disappointing. I actually enjoy Yahtzee and games like Take It Easy that are genuinely multi-player solitaire. But, for me, the heart and selling point Catan franchise is the heavy player interaction. 

It also doesn't help that, since then, I have played dice games like the Zooloretto dice game and the Bohnanza dice game that used mechanics from their parent games and felt like I was playing games from their franchises. The Catan Dice Game just doesn't measure up to that comparison.

I do have two caveats.

First of all, I play it a lot back when I had an Android phone. It was fun as a way of fidgeting. 

Second of all, I understand Klaus Teuber actually originally designed a more complicated and interactive game and his publishers insisted on the simpler version. (Since the dice game has sold very well, I can't even say they were wrong.) Since the initial release, which is when I got my copy, variance have been released and some are even now included in the game.

So if you want to accuse me of not giving the game a fair shake, that's reasonable. It has clearly come a ways since that first edition.

I was tempted to buy a copy again when I saw it on clearance the other day. The original base game was pretty meh for me but I do like the dice and maybe some of the variants would make them sing.