Haunted House: Save the Children - No effort and no choices

I stumbled upon Haunted House: Save the Children on one of my regular searched for PnP solitaire games, although it’s not actually a print and play game since it just takes a deck of traditional playing cards, a couple of dice and some way of tracking health points. No construction necessary. 

You are exploring a seriously haunted house, trying to rescue four children or die trying. That’s actually pretty much the entire theme of the game but it doesn’t need to be anymore than that.

Shuffle the deck and go through each card, one at a time. The aces are the four kids you’re trying to save. The queens are gentle spirits who will heal you. Deuces don’t do anything. Everything else is trying to kill you. The dice come in to resolve threes through tens. Roll equal or over or take some damage.

Haunted House:Save the Children commits one of the cardinal sins of game design in my worldview. There are absolutely no choices involved. You flip over a card and do whatever the rules tell you to do. 

Shockingly, this doesn’t offend me that much. That’s because the game didn’t even cost me printer ink. All I had to do was get out some game components I use so much I don’t even actually put them away.

There are a variety of variant rules. They do things like add flavor text and tables of random events and increase the odds of dying horrible. They don’t actually add any choices though :D

Years ago, I picked up a game called Adventurer: Card Game that did the exact same thing. The only difference is that it had thematic illustrations and cost money. Having to pay for the experience, that enraged me to the point that I haven’t forgotten or forgiven an otherwise completely forgettable game.

Yes, being free and construction free actually makes me not mind Haunted House.

Haunted House isn’t a game I can really recommend. If you’re looking for a free game for a mental coffee break, there are plenty of more interesting choices. However, I did have fun being able to try it out without any effort. 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/125740/haunted-house-save-children

Escape of the Dead, better than I remembered

At a very different place in my life, I first discovered and played Escape of the Dead. At the time, I considered it a game whose chief virtues were that it was free PnP that took minimal construction skills and played out in maybe ten minutes. Now, I still think those are some of it’s strongest points but I value those things more :D

Short version: Escape of the Dead is a solitaire dice game where you are trying to fix your car before the zombies break through the walls. It uses a Stone Age-style worker placement where you assign dice to one of three zones. Four dice to spread out over killing zombies, rebuilding your barricade and fixing that darn car.

One of its biggest criticisms is that there is a degenerate strategy where you focus on killing zombies and use the bonus for killing ten zombies to fix the car, until the end where you go all in on repairing the car. And, to be honest, it’s a pretty reliable strategy. There’s still a chance you’ll lose but the odds are in your favor.

At the same time, the game itself is streamlined without any fiddlyness. Each step is easy to understand and flows into the next. And since the zombie spawn rate increases as the car gets closer to being fixed, Escape of the Dead does a good job ratcheting up the tension. In other words, the game is far from perfect but it manages to still be fun.

Over the last few years, I have played a lot more PnP solitaires, particularly short ones as parent breaks. Going to back to Escape or the Dead, I found that it does very well as a mental coffee break. Thematic and with a tense endgame, it does the trick.

When it comes to free PnP games, I freely admit that I have a different standard than I do for published products or PnP files that I’ve paid for. I do cut them more slack. While Escape of the Dead definitely has some flaws, it’s worth both printing out and playing.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/87632/escape-dead-minigame

I hope Lantern is the first spark of what is to come

Lantern was the winner of the Best Game category in Boardgame Geek’s 2019 Roll and Write contest. So, of course I had to print it out and try it out. In fact, I laminated the play sheet because I figured it would see multiple play.

Lantern is, for all intents and purposes, a one-page dungeon crawl. It’s far from the first one-page dungeon crawl I’ve ever seen but it definitely has some touches I like. It’s a solitaire, which actually means I’ll play it more :D

At the start of the game, you roll six dice to create your adventurer. You assign the die to numbers to critical hit, counter attack, magic spell, constitution, and experience, as well as the special campfire area in the middle of the adventure. The first four let you manipulate the dice while experience and the campfire give you a limited way to recharge the abilities.

The sheet has been eight zones. Seven of them are encounters that require a specific combination of dice to defeat, ending in a dragon that requires six of a kind to kill. The other one is the campfire that I already mentioned.

As I mentioned before, there are a surprising number of one-page dungeon crawls out there and there’s some that I haven’t tried yet but I should. But the game that Lantern really reminds me of is Delve. Both games are just sets of encounters that you roll dice to resolve.

Delve is literally Yahtzee with dice combinations as special powers. Lantern, on the other hand, is all about dice manipulation. Of the two, I think I like Lantern better. You have both more control and more difficult choices since you can only use each manipulation a limited number of times and they are also your life points.

Not that I want to disparage Delve. It’s aged pretty well and still gives you a decent dungeon crawl experience in five, ten minutes. Not to mention that I’m pretty sure it’s been an influence on the genre and I’d be surprised if Lantern’s designer never heard of it. However, it’s biggest advantage in a comparison is a lot of extra material has been designed for it, including a scenario generator.

However, from what I’ve read, the current version of Lantern is still a work in progress. It sounds like there are plans to add restrictions and conditions to zones and possibly create whole new adventures. Which is great because I think Lantern has a lot of potential.

So, at the moment, Lantern is a fun little Roll and Write and I can see why it placed so well in the contest. But I am hoping that the best is yet to come.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2202582/wip-lantern-solitaire-adventure-roll-write-game-de

Take a couple minutes to fence in some sheep

My latest foray into Roll and Write, as well as Print and Play, has been 13 Sheep, which is one of the more minimalist Roll and Write I have found. And, yes, with games like Criss Cross or 30 Rails, there is some competition for that. (Not Another One still holds the title though)

13 Sheep is played on a seven by eight grid. There are thirteen sheep which are inside squares and eight or nine bushes in the ‘lines’. You are going to be drawing fences in the grid, trying to enclose groups of sheep. However, the fence shapes you can draw are determined by a die roll, you can’t draw over bushes and you have a limited number of turns before the wolves show up and it’s all over.

Here’s how it goes. Get a sheet. If there’s more than one person playing, make sure everyone has the same sheet. Then roll the die. Each number has a three segment line shape assigned to it and you have to draw that one on your sheet. You can rotate them but you can’t flip them. And, on top of those pesky bushes, you can not cross over an already built fence or draw on a space where a line already is.

You’ve got a timer, the wolf track. You cross off a box with every roll and the first seven rolls are free. However, the last four boxes have numbers in them (6,5,4,1) If you roll that number or higher, the game immediately ends. (Why the row doesn’t just end with the four, I can’t tell you) You then score up each enclosure.  More sheep means more points. Most points wins, unless you’re playing solitaire. In which case, you are your own competition.

13 Sheep is an odd beast for me. The game is, at most, going to last ten die rolls. Maybe just seven. And the dice are going to really control what your options are. At the same time, the game doesn’t play itself. You have to actually make decisions and make the best with what that die gives you. But the die can stomp your plans into the dust and laugh at your tears.

One of the biggest virtues of the game is also its biggest drawback. It is so gosh darn short. It’s only a few minutes so it’s easy for casual play. With just one die, you can fit in a play or two while waiting for your coffee or appetizers. And you can teach it to just about anyone in that time.

But it is also so short. Seven to ten die rolls isn’t enough for luck to flatten itself out. The potential to make clever choices isn’t nearly as great as the power of the random number gods. The power of choice fights against the illusion of choice.

Still, it’s a free PnP game that doesn’t require any kind of cutting or folding. And it is so short that being thrashed by the die doesn’t sting that much. In fact, I've found it has a strong ‘one more time’ effect. So if you’re willing to go in on the game, I don’t think it’ll be a game breaker. It won’t be your new forever game but you’ll have fun with it for a bit.

One concern I had, that the game initially had just two boards, has been assuaged by the designer creating a random board generator. Which can make some weird boards but offers a lot more variety.

At the end of the day, 13 Sheep isn’t a perfect Roll and Write. Ada Lovelace or BentoBlocks do dice-based shape forming better and deeper. And luck beats planning every time. However, I am having fun with it and it might be a game that I include when I send out greeting cards.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274735/13-sheep

What is an abstract anyway?

Okay. Since I am in an abstract set of mind, on to the next topic I’m musing. What actually is an abstract?

When I first started being interested in abstract games, I had a brutally strict definition. A two-player, perfect information game that has no random elements.

Almost immediately, that definition ran into problems. Stratego, for instance, has hidden information. And a game like Blokus can play up to four players. Okay, so we are going to take away perfect information and no random elements and using Total Determination with no player count. That should take care of it.

Then I saw people writing about how games like Ingenious and Qwirkle are abstracts because they have no theme. But wait! You draw a random hand of tiles! It has a definite random element! But having no theme trumps that? Is the definition of abstract just mean no theme? 

Okay. I see the reasoning behind that argument. I mean, that is kind of the actual definition of abstract. But that means that Poker and Rummy are abstracts and, while that can be argued, that’s not really the way that anyone’s mind works. 

We have reached the point where I’m saying ‘I don’t know what an abstract is but I know one when I see one’ And really, every game has some element of abstraction going on. So, it’s more of a degree than a binary yes-no. 

The game that actually really got me thinking about this is Hey, That’s My Fish. It does have a random setup but after that, it’s perfect information all the way. And it has cute little penguins and fish but those could be replaced by plain pawns and numbers. It doesn’t fit the pure definition I had at the beginning but I don’t think anyone would argue it’s an abstract.

So what have we learned? That vague and arbitrarily definitions lead to nebulous answers. Plus, abstracts apparently require a board, have either no or minimal theme, and favor choices over luck.

Looks like I’ll be rolling and writing

In 2017, my understanding of Roll and Write as a concept and as a genre took a huge leap with the GenCan’t Roll and Write contest. Considering the fact that I had already seen that the genre could go past Yahtzee with games like Roll Through the Ages and Zooleretto the Dice Game, I shouldn’t have needed that kick in the bum but apparently I did.

And Boardgame Geek has just finished up a Roll and Write contest. And I just learned that this year’s GenCan’t design contest is another Roll and Write one. The first one released all the entries they got permission to release and I’m hoping that they do the same again this year. In other words, there’s at least one new treasure trove of Roll and Write games to explore. And even if GenCan’t just releases the winner of their contest, it is bound to be a humdinger.

From what I can tell, Roll and Write games have basically exploded over the last few years. Which makes sense from a publishing standpoint. A pad of sheets has to be cheaper than a mounted board, let alone a host of wooden and plastic pieces.

But that same argument applies for me as well. Roll and Write games can be the simplest Print and Play to make. There are a many solid Roll and Writes that I can make myself, either because they are free or get the files for a low price. 

Yes, there are now some Roll and Writes that use cards, not just a play sheet. (Welcome To looks fascinating) And sometimes there are speciality dice that can’t be substituted by a six-sided and a character or sharpie. So it’s not like I’m saying there is no point or value to buying a published version of a Roll and Write.

But there are so many PnP options that, particularly with the option of lamination and dry erase markers, that I am hard pressed to buy published copies. I’m not saying I won’t buy games like Welcome To or such but Roll and Write is an amazing design space to explore within PnP.

First game purchases of 2019

We made out first game purchases for 2019, not counting thrift purchases and PnP files. In past years, I’ve tried to not buy any games. I didn’t make that pledge this year but I still try not to buy much since I have a closet full of games, even after heavy purging.

We bought one of the Gigamic editions of Difference for our five-year-old and a copy of Kingdomino for ourselves. 

Many years ago, I bought a ding-and-dent copy of the Z-Man of Difference and I still like the idea. Take a picture and make one change for each card, so every two cards have two differences. Simple but effective.

I like the Gigamic edition much more. The cards are more than twice as big and the artwork(which is different) is much sharper. The Z-Man edition had 27 cards with two images. The Gigamic has 50 cards with four images. It’s just better in every way.

Kingdomino is a game I’ve been on the cusp of getting for a while. Truth to tell, I’ve been hoping I’d find a thrift copy but I decided to take the plunge. I don’t know for sure yet but I think it has the potential to be _the_ game for work nights after the kiddo is asleep.

So, fairly quiet as far as purchases go. Instead of going wild, we made careful choices that should serve us well.