My October Gaming

I didn’t do a lot of gaming in October so I was surprised to see how many games I tried out for the first time last month.

Riot is a card-and-dice game about the London Riots of 2011. And the idea of the game is much more interesting than the actual game play. Gameplay was almost entirely roll dice and do what the dice tell you to do. I’m glad I tried it but because it made me research the event rather than I enjoyed the gameplay.

For a couple years now, I’ve tried to learn a new Roll and Write every month. Largely because there is a lot of free Roll and Write games out there and it’s a format that requires less set up and construction than almost any other. My initial Roll and Write of October was Dice & Divination: Astrology, the demo for that set of games.

In it, you roll three dice. You use the dice to either pick an assigned constellation or fill in that many segments in the chosen constellation. I’m not sure what I think of Astrology as a game. I feel like if I played it enough, I’d find an optimal strategy. But as a dot-to-dot activity, I did have fun.

I liked the original Squire for Hire game, a game where you have to be an adventurer’s caddy and keep their inventory sorted. I wasn’t sure how Squire for Hire Mystic Runes would build on that. Well, it was by adding runes on the inventory cards that could be used to break the rules. I’m not sure how well combining the sets would work but Mystic Runes works fine stand alone.

The other Roll and Write I learned was a game from the 12th R&W Design Contest (and there’s already a 13th one started. I am starting to think there’s always one going on), Dice Spray. It’s a simple fill-in-the-grid game but it looks promising when time is very limited.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, a highlight of my October gaming was learning a review copy of Psychopath, a card game that recreates old school slasher films. While that’s no longer my jam, I liked the mechanics.

Finally, I tried out the narrative solitaire RPG The Artifact. It is a journaling game about a magical item. I’m not quite sure if it actually falls into the RPG camp but I quite enjoyed my play through. 

I didn’t have much gaming time in October but I feel there was some decent variety.