Minimalist game packing

December is proving to be a busy month, full of traveling. More than that, I’m not going to be around any gamers during the weeks I’ll be away from home and luggage space is particularly tight.

So I am going super light as far as games are concerned. 

In addition to a deck of cards, which is pretty a default for me, I’m taking a tiny, hard plastic case that is just big enough to fit four games from the Pack O Games line. Yeah, I’m going that small.

And I’ll admit that I also am only taking four so it won’t be as expensive if something happens and I have to replace them :D

So, here’s what I’ve packed:

HUE: It’s not my favorite of the games in the series nor one of the best but it is _the_ most accessible. Teach it and play it in ten minutes while still having interesting choices.

GEM: On the other hand, I do think GEM is one of the best games. It manages to pack a solid auction game in a tiny package. By having both the money and auctioned gems tight, the game is definitely tense and one bad choice can sink you.

SHH: I’m not big into either word games or cooperative games but I think SHH, which is both, is a game that will really click for non-gamers. The fact that it is the prettiest game in the series also makes it an easy sell.

DIG: Slot number four was a tough call. I almost went with BUS since I think it is a very clever and ambitious pick-up-and-deliver game. However, DIG is cuter (non-gamers, remember) and easier to teach. And still a good pick-up-and-deliver game.

In other words, when I knew I would have to go super minimal, I chose games that I knew would work.

Why I am keeping Through the Desert

Many years ago, a friend told me that he considered me the Through the Desert guy. For three years running, when he’d run into me at GenCon, Through the Desert would be in my bag and he’d somehow be there when I’d pull it out for a group game.

It has been a surprisingly long time since my last play of Through the Desert. However, it is a game that I have absolutely no intention of getting rid of my collection. I both really enjoy it and I think it’s a great example of a multi-player abstract.

Not that I thought of it as an abstract when I first got it. No, not because it had a theme but because it had a random set up. For the me of ten or so years ago, an abstract meant no hidden information and no random elements. Games like Qwirkle or Ingenious need not apply.

I’ve lightened up on the subject. Being told over and over that Ingenious is an abstract will have the effect :P

Back in the day, I read that Through the Desert was Go for multiple players. Since then, I spent three or four years trying to play Go seriously (which isn’t nearly long enough and I hope to revisit it again someday) and that’s pretty ridiculous. Other than placing stones (or camels) on the board, the games don’t resemble each other. And it’s not even useful as a teaching tool. I can make an argument for Monopoly being like Catan to convince someone to try Catan. I don’t see myself getting a serious Go player to try Through the Desert with this argument :D

Which isn’t some kind of flaw in Through the Desert. Go is like a fundamental building block of the concept of board game. I’ve heard serious Go players scorn Chess as a serious game. Through the Desert is a strong, fun, accessible game. Just because it doesn’t recreate the hydrogen atom doesn’t make it bad.

What is a major problem in for me is that I am quite color blind and it uses eleven different colors if you have a five-player game. Good lord, that’s rough. And I somehow still managed to learn and teach and play the game. That’s how good it is. I did that despite the color issue!

Still, that makes it harder for me to get on the table. And when that table might have cats with batty paws, that’s an additional issue. But I know I will play it again!

MASHed: much better than I expected... and maybe too real

I hadn’t planned on reading MASHed. Because, well, I assumed it was based on the TV show. And I really liked the TV show when it was first being aired (and would probably still like it now) but I’m not interested in playing a game based on it.

However, what I discovered when I started looking at MASHed was that it was focused on being a historical recreation. Mind you, I don’t think it would have been developed without the tv show. I mean, I don’t know if I’d have any clue that MASH units even existed without the show.

So... this is a game that has a focus on a real historical event, a war that was recent enough that people who experienced it are still around to remember it. And it doesn’t focus on combat but what happens after the combat is over... at least for the folks who have to go under the knife.

I’ll be honest. MASHed has some of the highest bleed potential I have seen in an RPG. (Bleed: when people start getting feels from the game) The only game I have looked at that is more extreme is the Grey Ranks, which is listed as an inspiration. And I think MASHed might be more extreme for American audiences since it is easier for us to relate to. I know I’m being super self-centered but MASHed is about Americans. 

And I’m now curious about Korean MASH units. Was there something about that war (The front moving back and forth a lot? Having a larger number of civilian doctors? Was there a larger number?) that made its medical units unusual? Or is it just that Richard Hooker wrote a popular book?

(My son’s grandpa (hi dad!) has made the argument helicopters made rapid transportation easier than WW II. And Vietnam was much more defuse and probably had faster helicopters. But neither of us know much details about those wars so those are just guesses)

So I went from having no interest in MASHed and only owning it thanks to Bundle or Holding to actively reading it and cross referencing parts of it. That said, I don’t know if I’d _play_ MASHed. To play it without trivializing the subject might be too traumatic.

Collaborative world building, it’s a thing

I was listening to Matt Colville, who I listen to very erratically, and he commented on how world building is a DM’s thing and how the players investment in how they have drama in that world.

However, I have been in campaigns where the DM assigned world building to the players. You, you’re playing an elf? Okay, you get decide what elves are like in our world. It shares the work and lets players get more invested in the world.

Oh, in the game did end up having an over arcing story. The DM just tailored it to the players’ interests after he learned what they were.

However, what really came to my mind was the games where the whole point is for everyone to work together to create the world. Games are where everyone gets to take part in the world building.

My first experience doing that was... man, 1997. If there were any world building games out at the time, we didn’t know it. We just each took a piece and developed it. We ended up with a world of islands floating in the volcano with renaissance duelers and steampunk monks who didn’t wear goggles. We never ended until doing anything with it but it was pretty.

However, there are now a number of options for collaborative world building. The first one I heard of was Universalis, which I still haven’t really looked at. Downfall is another one I want to look into. I have actually played the Quiet Year, which explores building a community but also has a definitely helping of collaborative world building.

The world building game that I have, by far, had the most experience with is Microscope. If someone asked me to recommend a world building game, which has never happened and probably never will, I’d recommend Microscope. In fact, that the first Microscope game I was ever in had the goal of creating a campaign world for D&D and the player who was the DM used it for more than one campaign.

World building hasn’t been on my mind lately. However, after my mind was poked, I not only remembered that I enjoy it, there are systems that really explore it.

Thanks, Secret Santa!

Holy cow! I already got my Mini-PnP Secret Santa package and it exceeded my wildest expectations.

Inside the mysterious box, I found full color copies of Strawberry Ninja and Pleasant Prospect Farm. They are in boxes, the cards look like they have linen finish and there’s a nice cat figure for Strawberry Ninja.

Man, I thought I was doing well with B&W laser printer, a laminator and a good paper cutter. But, to quote Prince of Tennis, I still have lots to work on :D

(Haven’t read it in years but I had fun reading Prince of Tennis. I liked how Ryoma isn’t some mysteriously gifted novice but rigorously trained the start. And how middle school tennis matches were  treated like Dragon Ball Z fights on steroids.)

This definitely exceeding my expectations and I know I won’t be sending such a spiffy gift. Still, I will do my best!

octaNe: the FUN apocalypse

octaNe is an RPG about the fun side of the apocalypse. Don’t worry about starvation, radiation poisoning and the collapse of civilization. Just crank up the eight track and get ready to party with mutant truckers, Elvis impersonators and masked luchadores. 

One of the ways I personally measure RPGs is how much fun they are to read and octaNe score high on that category. It is a total hoot to read. 

The game is a campy love letter to wacky science fiction movies of the 70s and 80s. In a world where anything east of the Mississippi doesn’t exist, where road warriors cruise the desert, masked Mexican wrestlers fight for justice and dinosaurs are back in South America, you know it’s going to be crazy. This is a rules-light system where the rule of cool trumps any worries about physics and realism. 

Okay, I’m going to write one paragraph about the play mode section, one paragraph on mechanics and maybe one or two  paragraphs about settings. Then I’m going to say what I like and dislike about the game.

The game has five suggested plays modes. From out-and-out wacky to serious they are: psychotronic, grindhouse, arthouse, and Cinema Verite. Honestly, I don’t see any reason to play anything but psychotronic. But having the modes laid out helps everyone understand what kind of story you are telling.

The game uses a simple dice pool mechanic to resolve conflict. You roll three dice and use the highest die to determine who controls the resolution. You can spend plot points to add more dice and the GM can use hazards to reduce die rolls. Your styles, the equivalent of stats, don’t add dice. They help you earn plot points. It’s a little more complicated than that but that’s the thumbnail.

Okay, let’s do another paragraph. High rolls and low rolls don’t determine success or failure. They determine who narrates the rest of the scene. Which does help break up the role of GM and player but there are other games that do that better.

The setting. Oh man, the setting. Take everything silly and cool and wacky from the cheap science fiction movies from the 70s, jam them into a cocktail shaker, shake them up and pour out a tall drink of crazy. This is the real selling point of octaNe. If you don’t want to embrace free-wheeling honky tonk kitsch and coolness, you don’t want to play this game.

I have heard it said that the setting is what you fall in love with in RPGs. And octaNe is a love letter to this setting. You’re not going to play octaNe to explore narrative dynamics. You play it to get funky.

However, I do have some concerns about the system. As simple as it is, there seem to be some potential issues. One roll can potentially resolve a scene, which is fine if there’s just one player is making the call. But if several players are vying for control, things could get awkward. There’s a hierarchy of styles (Indiana Jones gets preference over Doctor Strange :P) but it could still be an real issue.

I also have specific concerns for the two special styles players can take, Might (basically super powers) and Magic. They have a bonus effect to reduce hazards and let players do the impossible. But they are fueled by plot points, making them expensive, less mathematically effective and able to be burned out. Which wouldn’t be so unreasonable, given the whole do the impossible bit. Except that, given the flexibility of the system and the rule of cool, any of the styles can kind of do that.

I also think there are systems that do some of what octaNe does better. As far as sharing the GM’s narrative role with the players, I think games like Trollbabe and InSpectres do it much better. And if I want an apocalypse game that is anything other than whole hog honky tonk, I’d reach for Apocalypse World.

All that said, I wouldn’t pass up a chance to try octaNe. Because, mechanical quibbles to one side, playing in this setting sounds like it would be a total blast.

Abstracts for a teenager

I was included in a request to suggest games for a smart teenager who likes chess and strategy games. While other folks handled the strategy end, I decided to focus on the abstract end for my suggestions. 

I had fun making the list and I thought it would be fun to share what I wrote:

I’m going to tackle the abstract side of the question, since I like abstracts. Most modern abstracts tend to play faster than Chess or Go, by the way.

Hive - This is a chess-like game of insects trying to surround the enemy Queen. The pieces are thick, chunky tiles and they create the board as you add them. It’s been around for years and still have a strong following.

The GIPF Project - A collection of pure abstracts by Kris Burm. I’ve played all but LYNGK (which came out this year) and I enjoyed all of them (although I didn’t care for the first one GIPF, as much) I’d recommend YINSH and ZERTZ in particular. And, to the best of my knowledge, the names don’t mean anything.

Pyramid Arcade - This is a tool kit of games from Looney Labs, the folks who made Fluxx. They all use nifty plastic, space-age looking pyramids. I’ve been having fun with the pyramids since 2004.

Ingenious- A domino game that uses hexagonal dominoes and the same scoring system as Tigris and Euphrates. It does have a random luck of the draw but it was my favorite game for a while.

Qwirkle - Scrabble without a board and using colors and symbols instead of letters. This is Carrie and my favorite game to play together and we have played it a lot over the years.

I’ve also heard very good things about Santorini, which involves building towers with special powers but I haven’t played it yet. I also have to give a nod to Puerto Rico for family gaming.