I decided to do one final post about Glitch Con where I examined the various things I learned and realized over the course of the weekend. I already touched on a few things in my other two posts, but I didn't want to go into too many details in those posts because I had already rambled way too much.
The first lesson I learned was that if you hang around cool, wonderful people all weekend you can totally mooch food. Haha, just kidding. But seriously I barely had to spend any money for food the whole time I was at the con because some very generous people bought large amounts of it and shared. I don't know who exactly was responsible for it all, I know Mike bought pizza one night, but I do know that the next time I see some folks (like Mike, John, Ro, Art, Rob) I owe them some food on me or at least some booze.
Secondly, I feel like the weekend in general and the interactions I had completely validated my idea that I love nerdom and gaming, it is my passion, and I am going to pursue making a contribution to it. Basically I feel okay with the idea of saying that I want to design games. I have spent the last seven years since graduating college pretty much being aimless. I have tried to pursue various paths and choices at times, but have never followed through because they just didn't appeal to me on a deep and passionate level. The only things that have ever really excited me and brought me real joy as far as something that I do have been learning, playing, sharing, and designing games. Well that and storytelling, but that is kind of tangentially wrapped up in the first to a large degree.
I've already addressed how John's statement about why he does game design inspired me. I also feel that I have gotten a lot of great support and feedback on both my blogging and my first forays into game design from the people I play with and the various others I interact with through NWARPG. On top of that, I have realized that while I have no real desire to do any sort of 3D animation stuff using my degree; the general creative and design skills I gained while getting it, as well as the various creative people I'm now friend with because of my four years in a creative degree program, really gives me a good foundation for helping me make both fun and well designed games.
The third lesson I learned was the importance of emotional investment. Emotional investment is a very powerful tool and a very difficult task. Think about what you're trying to do here. You have to convince a group of people, most likely smart and opinionated people, to care about, feel for, and invest in something that doesn't exist and that they blatantly know is not real.
Intimidated yet?
I know I am. I see myself as an emotionally stunted person on some levels. I can find it very difficult to feel empathy, and regularly doubt my actual capability to experience the full gamut of human emotions. So ya, a very scary prospect to think about having to create emotional investment in others. Luckily there is tons of help.
For starters, thing about all the books, movies, TV shows, games, etc that have really drawn you in. Think about specific characters you have become invested in. Use what you see there. Analyze why these stories and characters engaged you and mine the hell out of that for great methods and ideas. Look at your own emotions and see why you feel certain ones in connection to certain things, if you feel self aware enough to do so. Why did I immediately gravitate towards House Fox in Houses of the Blooded? Because they are all about passion and romance and beauty, things that I long for and do not get in my life. My real life emotional needs created the connection to the game.
There were also a few other specific points that I learned over the weekend concerning this.
1. Give people the freedom to take the risk of becoming invested. Why do we guard our emotions? Because risking them often leads to being hurt. Therefore if people feel safe to take risks and try being vulnerable in your game, they'll be more willing to invest the emotions needed to do so. If they don't feel safe they'll clam up.
2. Dropping out of character/looking at your character sheet kills emotional investment. This is probably subjective to each individual, but it is definitely true in my case. The most emotional investment I've experienced in games has been when I'm barely acknowledging the mechanics and I haven't looked at the character sheet in ages. Having to shift my mind over from the fluff to the crunch really kills this. So in general you want to have less crunch if you want more character.
3. Be willing to draw help and inspiration from some unlikely sources. John made a joke at the beginning of one of his panels that is was about how pro wrestling relates to role playing games. He then turned it into a serious point. He posited that there were no finer examples of getting people to passionately invst in something that they know is fake than pro wrestling and soap operas. Now honestly, would you ever have thought to look for game design help in either of those? Or what about the tricks used by magicians, con-artists, and grifters? I bet you could mine their skill sets for tons of ways to get people to think and feel what you want. After all, "game design is mind control". (Another Wick/Sorenson quote)
4. Reward the hell out of the emotional investment. Everyone loves positive reinforcement, so give it to them.
Another lesson learned can be awkwardly put like this: "You have to do it to claim it, but if you do it you CAN claim it." This was something I took from one of the writing panels, but it applies to game design as well.
Basically it means that if you want to call yourself a writer/game designer/whatever, you've got to write/design games/whatever. Not talk about writing, not plan to write, not always start and stop unfinished projects; but really truly WRITE. Churn out the prose. Finish what you start. Get your stuff out there. Write, write, write, and write some more.
It is hard work, but if you want to claim the title you have to do it. But guess what? If you do it, you CAN claim the title. You don't have to be a NY Times bestseller. You don't have to have a 10 book deal. You don't have to win awards or be internationally recognized. None of that is needed to be a writer. All you need to do is write! The same can be said of game design and being called a game designer.
Finally I learned that nothing quite equals the community and camaraderie that springs up around shared passions and loves. Get your mind out of the gutter! :p
I spend a lot of time with the people I work with. I talk to them a lot, we share the same day to day experiences, we have some common interest, etc etc. But at the end of the day I felt closer to the random folks I encountered at Glitch Con than to the familiar faces of my co-workers. Why? My co-workers aren't nerds.
They aren't geeks or gamers. Maybe they can understand and appreciate my love of nerdy things, but they don't share it. While it may be presumptive to think so, I believe everyone I saw at Glitch Con shared my deep and abiding love for nerdy things. We might not love the exact same stuff, but we are in the same ballpark, and we sure are both passionate about these things.
Nerds are a heartfelt and passionate people, and that creates a wonderful bond between us. I truly feel at home when I'm surrounded by my fellow nerds, and in the pursuit of my nerdly obsessions. It is a feeling that I don't get anywhere else, with any other type of people. Which makes it extremely special when I can experience it, and very sad when I can not.
I love being a nerd.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
How I Learn to Stop Worrying and Love to LARP
LARP.
It stands for Live Action RolePlaying. It is a special type of roleplaying game where you do more than sit around a table and roll dice. You get up, you move around, you act in character, and heck you might even dress up in costume.
Among nerds and gamers of all types there are various hierarchies. Some level of nerdom are considered better or worse than others. Which has always struck me as pretty silly, but that's the way it is. LARPing has always been one of those forms of gaming that has been looked down on and derided. Mostly because of a large number of bad examples of the hobby. All the Dark Lords of Dennys have given this type of gaming a bad reputation. I shared this opinion to a degree, making fun of LARPing in the past. Thankfully I have now had the chance to experience what LARPing can be when done with skill and awesomeness, and my opinion has made a total 180. I am completely in love with this form of RP and I am super excited to do more of it.
At Glitch Con this weekend I got to play two LARPs, a Legend of the Five Rings one on Friday night and a Houses of the Blooded one on Saturday night. Both of them were run using the Blood and Tears system, the system that John Wick came up with for LARPing in Shan'ri, the world of HotB. The system is really easy to learn, and is beautiful in its simplicity.
First off, the L5R LARP. Like I said this one was on Friday night and lasted about 3-4 hours. This was my absolute first ever LARP experience, so I went into it fairly nervous, but also excited and ready to try out something new. For those not familiar with the L5R game and universe, John described it as "Rokugan is to Japan as Middle Earth is to Europe." It is a fantasy world based on feudal Japan, filled with samurai, magic, honor, and swords. The players all belonged to one of the major clans that form the political and social scene in Rokugan.
For this specific LARP we had folks play members of the Phoenix, Crab, Scorpion, and Unicorn clans. There were also a few members of the Lion Clan present, at first only the in character host of the game was a Lion Clan member (played by Chris Colbath) and then a couple more got added in when people joined the game as it went on. Each of the Clans has a very distinct theme and flavor, and is fanatically devoted to the Emperor in their own way. This feeling of being "turned up to 11" really makes the world feel awesome, and makes folks love their Clans. I chose to be on the Phoenix Clan for this game, and played a courtier named Mugen Isawa.
In the system your entire character sheet is composed of a Name, a Profession, four Advantages, and a Secret That is it. The thing was barely bigger than a Post-It Note, and it is really all you need. The Profession and the Advantages both provide color for your RP and character, and give a simple mechanical benefit during the few times you actually need to engage any sort of mechanics. For instance, I had the advantage of Making Friends. If a situation had come up where I was not able to make friends by spending Style Points, which I will explain in a second, I could use this Advantage to force the issue and Insist on my agenda. This did not happen during either LARP, and according to John barely ever happens in general.
Style Points. Probably should have explained them first, but it is late and my brain is crazy. This is the main currency and mechanic of the game. You get a supply of them at the beginning of the game and can earn them throughout play by other people giving them to you or by doing awesome things and getting recognized by the Narrator (GM) for it. Why would other people give you style points you ask? Well because that is how they get you to do things and how they make things true about the world. Want to say that you and the lady from the Crab clan are having an affair? Walk up to her, hold out a style, and say "Isn't true that you and I are having an affair?" If she thinks that is a good idea for developing your characters she can say yes, and she gets the style to add to her own supply. If she says no you can try and give her more style to sweeten the deal. If she refuses three times, that is when you can Insist and use the mechanics, but people don't refuse all that often. And when they do it is usually more enjoyable to try coming at things from another direction or renegotiating terms instead of insisting.
That is pretty much 90% of the game. There were a few mechanics for things like duels and the like, but I won't go into much detail on them, both because they can be summed up really easily and because they may have just been worked out on the spot and may not be the exact ways you do things under the rules. It all comes down to this idea though, one player chooses to win, the other chooses to be awesome. Not that both can't be awesome, but it is more about making losing awesome and enjoyable instead of crappy. Oh and it usually seemed to be the case that the "loser" was the first role chose, someone spoke up and said "I will let my opponent win."
So back to the specifics of the L5R game. I enjoyed the game, though I enjoyed the HotB one a lot better. This was both because of my nervousness and because I just did not latch on to the character or the setting as strongly. I ended up making it true that an evil spirt had possessed me. I lost the spirit over the course of the game, but ended up getting a book that allowed one to switch souls with another person, and getting it delivered to the Emperor. Not a very in character move, and not the best LARP plot. It was too solo focused and kind of a bit of wankery. But it was my first time.
The next night was the Houses of the Blooded LARP. This one also lasted about 3-4 hours, and was awesome. Both because I was more comfortable and because I am in love with the world of Houses, with House Fox, and the Ven (the powerful nobles who are portrayed by the player characters).
The plot of the game was basically a big party, an opera performance. The Ven consider Opera to be the height of art. In this game I played Baron Pando Yvarai, a noble of House Fox. My character valued Beauty and Cunning, though he was woefully blind in the area of Wisdom. He was a Courtier and a Rake who was as the opera with the goal of breaking a heart by the end of the night. I only asked for a Fox character, and when I was handed this specific one it felt like fate, I loved this guy already.
I was much more proactive in engaging the other players and pushing my own story into the spotlight this time around. I was largely inspired by a Rumour I saw on the two hosts backs. Awesome new mechanic that, Rumours. Basically you pay one of the Narrator's to create a rumour and they put a name badge sticker with it on the target's back. That way they can't see it, but everyone else can, and they must depend on others to find out what it says. I LOVE this mechanic.
I saw a rumour on the hosts' backs that said that they were both secretly in love with the same person. So I decided that the person whose heart I would break would be theirs, by killing the target of their love. I talked it over with Chris and Rob who were playing the hosts and got them in on it. I decided my character thought that Emily's character was the target of their affection, and that I needed to get rid of her to break their hearts, in order that I might pursue them because I was in love with them. Chris suggested that it would be more interesting if I was certain of that but that I was wrong. Which was a great addition. We got Emily in on it and she thought it was a great idea as well. So the machinations began.
I got a rumour started about the target of the hosts' affection being Emily. Then I went up to one of the more militant, warrior type characters, played by a great guy named Mike Curry, and asked him to kill Emily for me. I was trying to be a bit clever with my words and stumbled around, but he was thankfully patient enough to help me get to the heart of what I was saying. He said that if I could retrieve proof that another Ven was responsible for killing his Lord then he would kill her. I accepted and was able to very quickly acquire the proof. He then told me we had a deal. After it was all said and done I was informed by him that he immediately double crossed me by going and telling Emily someone had just hired him to kill her. Well played sir, loved it.
I felt like my plan was well set at the time, so I relaxed a bit and just mingled. I was also serving as a Herald for Emily's nephew Gabe, since he was ed having small and soft-spoken, so I helped him out a for a bit, announcing his desire to duel with Chris' character. It was during this time that I noticed quite a few people had created Romances between their characters. I was once again inspired and decided to loudly and publicly announce a Romance with Emily's character in order to deceive anyone who looked at me as a possible source of her death. She agreed and so at the next break in the action I loudly called everyone's attention to myself and announced that in light of all the crazy stuff going on at the opera that night, I had to proclaim something immediately. I pulled Emily over, knelt down, took her hand, and professed my love for her character.
We were immediately interrupted by one of the other Fox player whom I had told about my character's true love interest. She loudly proclaimed our love to be false, and a wonderful argument broke out between her and Emily. Apparently their characters' were enemies, lucky chance there. I had to step up to defend Emily's honor after they had argued for a bit, and called for a swordsman to represent me. None answered. I was luckily saved by the Narrator at this point when he decided that spirit of Talia Yavari, the patron of House Fox, descended upon the room and proclaimed that there must be a Court of Love to decide the truth of mine and Emily's characters' feelings for each other.
The Court of Love had a jury of five members that would decide our fate. None of the jurors were people that I had any alliance with or trust in, so I was pretty much doomed. I got first argument, and used it to say my character dipped Emily's character into a long passionate kiss, and then looked at the jury saying, "For love need there be any other argument." Got a few "ahhhhhs" and wistful sighs out of that one. Emily also made an impassioned plea. I should stop here and state that the mechanic for the jury was that there would be two piles of Style Points, one for yes and one for no. The jurors would split the Style in the pile that corresponded to the way they voted. So folks could hope to sway the vote by adding more and more Style to one pile or the other. Me and Emily added quite a bit with our pleas backed up by our character traits and advantages.
Then the parade of negativity followed. Everyone who spoke up spoke up against us, saying such awful things. Mike was awesome when he walked up and loudly proclaimed that I had hired him to kill Emily. Great moment. Gabe had some amazing moments where he just walked up and threw a bunch of Style into the No pile. It was dramatically wonderful and brought me to my knees in laughter. As all this was going on Bobby walked up to Emily and handed her a glass with some Style in it and a card underneath it. She turned to me and asked "Did you really hire that man to kill me?" I looked her right in the eyes and said "Would you really trust the word of that Bear over one of your own House?" Apparently since her enemy was another Fox as well, that gave her her answer and she handed me the glass. The card underneath it said Posion. AWESOME!!
So the Court of Love voted against us. I was not surprised. I stepped forward after the decision, proclaimed that the spirit of Talia had been insulted and dishonoured, and that I must drink to drown my sorrows. I showed the crowd the Poison card, upended the glass, "drank" the "poisoned draught" and then began to pantomime not being able to breath. Whirling around I gave Emily my best betrayed look and then collapsed to the floor. She verbally spat on my corpse with some awesome cutting remark that I wish I could remember, and Chris commented "I do so love the Opera." With that John called the game, the LARP was over. I got quite a few congrats and kudos for the performance, and was on Cloud Nine. Hell I was on Cloud 11.
This post is already really long, and I'm going to do another one on lessons I learned from Glitch Con, so I will just wrap up quickly. Like I have said over and over I loved this experience. I now respect and enjoy LARP. I am in love with Houses of the Blooded, and I can't wait to play more. It looks like we are going to be starting our own HotB LARP here in the area, and I am super excited. This was the most in depth and character filled RP I have done in years.
Finally, remember that you can always trust a Fox, we love you too much to lie to you.
It stands for Live Action RolePlaying. It is a special type of roleplaying game where you do more than sit around a table and roll dice. You get up, you move around, you act in character, and heck you might even dress up in costume.
Among nerds and gamers of all types there are various hierarchies. Some level of nerdom are considered better or worse than others. Which has always struck me as pretty silly, but that's the way it is. LARPing has always been one of those forms of gaming that has been looked down on and derided. Mostly because of a large number of bad examples of the hobby. All the Dark Lords of Dennys have given this type of gaming a bad reputation. I shared this opinion to a degree, making fun of LARPing in the past. Thankfully I have now had the chance to experience what LARPing can be when done with skill and awesomeness, and my opinion has made a total 180. I am completely in love with this form of RP and I am super excited to do more of it.
At Glitch Con this weekend I got to play two LARPs, a Legend of the Five Rings one on Friday night and a Houses of the Blooded one on Saturday night. Both of them were run using the Blood and Tears system, the system that John Wick came up with for LARPing in Shan'ri, the world of HotB. The system is really easy to learn, and is beautiful in its simplicity.
First off, the L5R LARP. Like I said this one was on Friday night and lasted about 3-4 hours. This was my absolute first ever LARP experience, so I went into it fairly nervous, but also excited and ready to try out something new. For those not familiar with the L5R game and universe, John described it as "Rokugan is to Japan as Middle Earth is to Europe." It is a fantasy world based on feudal Japan, filled with samurai, magic, honor, and swords. The players all belonged to one of the major clans that form the political and social scene in Rokugan.
For this specific LARP we had folks play members of the Phoenix, Crab, Scorpion, and Unicorn clans. There were also a few members of the Lion Clan present, at first only the in character host of the game was a Lion Clan member (played by Chris Colbath) and then a couple more got added in when people joined the game as it went on. Each of the Clans has a very distinct theme and flavor, and is fanatically devoted to the Emperor in their own way. This feeling of being "turned up to 11" really makes the world feel awesome, and makes folks love their Clans. I chose to be on the Phoenix Clan for this game, and played a courtier named Mugen Isawa.
In the system your entire character sheet is composed of a Name, a Profession, four Advantages, and a Secret That is it. The thing was barely bigger than a Post-It Note, and it is really all you need. The Profession and the Advantages both provide color for your RP and character, and give a simple mechanical benefit during the few times you actually need to engage any sort of mechanics. For instance, I had the advantage of Making Friends. If a situation had come up where I was not able to make friends by spending Style Points, which I will explain in a second, I could use this Advantage to force the issue and Insist on my agenda. This did not happen during either LARP, and according to John barely ever happens in general.
Style Points. Probably should have explained them first, but it is late and my brain is crazy. This is the main currency and mechanic of the game. You get a supply of them at the beginning of the game and can earn them throughout play by other people giving them to you or by doing awesome things and getting recognized by the Narrator (GM) for it. Why would other people give you style points you ask? Well because that is how they get you to do things and how they make things true about the world. Want to say that you and the lady from the Crab clan are having an affair? Walk up to her, hold out a style, and say "Isn't true that you and I are having an affair?" If she thinks that is a good idea for developing your characters she can say yes, and she gets the style to add to her own supply. If she says no you can try and give her more style to sweeten the deal. If she refuses three times, that is when you can Insist and use the mechanics, but people don't refuse all that often. And when they do it is usually more enjoyable to try coming at things from another direction or renegotiating terms instead of insisting.
That is pretty much 90% of the game. There were a few mechanics for things like duels and the like, but I won't go into much detail on them, both because they can be summed up really easily and because they may have just been worked out on the spot and may not be the exact ways you do things under the rules. It all comes down to this idea though, one player chooses to win, the other chooses to be awesome. Not that both can't be awesome, but it is more about making losing awesome and enjoyable instead of crappy. Oh and it usually seemed to be the case that the "loser" was the first role chose, someone spoke up and said "I will let my opponent win."
So back to the specifics of the L5R game. I enjoyed the game, though I enjoyed the HotB one a lot better. This was both because of my nervousness and because I just did not latch on to the character or the setting as strongly. I ended up making it true that an evil spirt had possessed me. I lost the spirit over the course of the game, but ended up getting a book that allowed one to switch souls with another person, and getting it delivered to the Emperor. Not a very in character move, and not the best LARP plot. It was too solo focused and kind of a bit of wankery. But it was my first time.
The next night was the Houses of the Blooded LARP. This one also lasted about 3-4 hours, and was awesome. Both because I was more comfortable and because I am in love with the world of Houses, with House Fox, and the Ven (the powerful nobles who are portrayed by the player characters).
The plot of the game was basically a big party, an opera performance. The Ven consider Opera to be the height of art. In this game I played Baron Pando Yvarai, a noble of House Fox. My character valued Beauty and Cunning, though he was woefully blind in the area of Wisdom. He was a Courtier and a Rake who was as the opera with the goal of breaking a heart by the end of the night. I only asked for a Fox character, and when I was handed this specific one it felt like fate, I loved this guy already.
I was much more proactive in engaging the other players and pushing my own story into the spotlight this time around. I was largely inspired by a Rumour I saw on the two hosts backs. Awesome new mechanic that, Rumours. Basically you pay one of the Narrator's to create a rumour and they put a name badge sticker with it on the target's back. That way they can't see it, but everyone else can, and they must depend on others to find out what it says. I LOVE this mechanic.
I saw a rumour on the hosts' backs that said that they were both secretly in love with the same person. So I decided that the person whose heart I would break would be theirs, by killing the target of their love. I talked it over with Chris and Rob who were playing the hosts and got them in on it. I decided my character thought that Emily's character was the target of their affection, and that I needed to get rid of her to break their hearts, in order that I might pursue them because I was in love with them. Chris suggested that it would be more interesting if I was certain of that but that I was wrong. Which was a great addition. We got Emily in on it and she thought it was a great idea as well. So the machinations began.
I got a rumour started about the target of the hosts' affection being Emily. Then I went up to one of the more militant, warrior type characters, played by a great guy named Mike Curry, and asked him to kill Emily for me. I was trying to be a bit clever with my words and stumbled around, but he was thankfully patient enough to help me get to the heart of what I was saying. He said that if I could retrieve proof that another Ven was responsible for killing his Lord then he would kill her. I accepted and was able to very quickly acquire the proof. He then told me we had a deal. After it was all said and done I was informed by him that he immediately double crossed me by going and telling Emily someone had just hired him to kill her. Well played sir, loved it.
I felt like my plan was well set at the time, so I relaxed a bit and just mingled. I was also serving as a Herald for Emily's nephew Gabe, since he was ed having small and soft-spoken, so I helped him out a for a bit, announcing his desire to duel with Chris' character. It was during this time that I noticed quite a few people had created Romances between their characters. I was once again inspired and decided to loudly and publicly announce a Romance with Emily's character in order to deceive anyone who looked at me as a possible source of her death. She agreed and so at the next break in the action I loudly called everyone's attention to myself and announced that in light of all the crazy stuff going on at the opera that night, I had to proclaim something immediately. I pulled Emily over, knelt down, took her hand, and professed my love for her character.
We were immediately interrupted by one of the other Fox player whom I had told about my character's true love interest. She loudly proclaimed our love to be false, and a wonderful argument broke out between her and Emily. Apparently their characters' were enemies, lucky chance there. I had to step up to defend Emily's honor after they had argued for a bit, and called for a swordsman to represent me. None answered. I was luckily saved by the Narrator at this point when he decided that spirit of Talia Yavari, the patron of House Fox, descended upon the room and proclaimed that there must be a Court of Love to decide the truth of mine and Emily's characters' feelings for each other.
The Court of Love had a jury of five members that would decide our fate. None of the jurors were people that I had any alliance with or trust in, so I was pretty much doomed. I got first argument, and used it to say my character dipped Emily's character into a long passionate kiss, and then looked at the jury saying, "For love need there be any other argument." Got a few "ahhhhhs" and wistful sighs out of that one. Emily also made an impassioned plea. I should stop here and state that the mechanic for the jury was that there would be two piles of Style Points, one for yes and one for no. The jurors would split the Style in the pile that corresponded to the way they voted. So folks could hope to sway the vote by adding more and more Style to one pile or the other. Me and Emily added quite a bit with our pleas backed up by our character traits and advantages.
Then the parade of negativity followed. Everyone who spoke up spoke up against us, saying such awful things. Mike was awesome when he walked up and loudly proclaimed that I had hired him to kill Emily. Great moment. Gabe had some amazing moments where he just walked up and threw a bunch of Style into the No pile. It was dramatically wonderful and brought me to my knees in laughter. As all this was going on Bobby walked up to Emily and handed her a glass with some Style in it and a card underneath it. She turned to me and asked "Did you really hire that man to kill me?" I looked her right in the eyes and said "Would you really trust the word of that Bear over one of your own House?" Apparently since her enemy was another Fox as well, that gave her her answer and she handed me the glass. The card underneath it said Posion. AWESOME!!
So the Court of Love voted against us. I was not surprised. I stepped forward after the decision, proclaimed that the spirit of Talia had been insulted and dishonoured, and that I must drink to drown my sorrows. I showed the crowd the Poison card, upended the glass, "drank" the "poisoned draught" and then began to pantomime not being able to breath. Whirling around I gave Emily my best betrayed look and then collapsed to the floor. She verbally spat on my corpse with some awesome cutting remark that I wish I could remember, and Chris commented "I do so love the Opera." With that John called the game, the LARP was over. I got quite a few congrats and kudos for the performance, and was on Cloud Nine. Hell I was on Cloud 11.
This post is already really long, and I'm going to do another one on lessons I learned from Glitch Con, so I will just wrap up quickly. Like I have said over and over I loved this experience. I now respect and enjoy LARP. I am in love with Houses of the Blooded, and I can't wait to play more. It looks like we are going to be starting our own HotB LARP here in the area, and I am super excited. This was the most in depth and character filled RP I have done in years.
Finally, remember that you can always trust a Fox, we love you too much to lie to you.
A Look Back At Glitch Con 2012
Over the course of this past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Glitch Con 2012 over in Bentonville. This was a fan run and oriented convention that focused on Sci-Fi, Anime, Steampunk, and Gaming. For those of you who do not know what this means, it was basically a big gathering of hundreds of various fanboys and fangirls of all types and ages. We all came together over the course of three days, Friday through Sunday, in order to hang out, buy and sell awesome products, listen to various experts and celebrities in our beloved nerdy fields, dress in crazy costumes, dance, laugh, talk, and play games. It was an amazing experience and three of the best days of my life for quite some time.
Let me run you through a quick overview of what I did and saw during the convention. A few of the things I did and the lessons I learned will merit posts of their own, which I'll get to soon. But for now I'll try to capture as much of the awesome as I can without making a novel long post.
On Friday I arrived in the early afternoon and started things off by having a look around, purchasing a few books, getting them and some more than I brought signed, and just really getting a feel for the place. I grabbed a few gaming books from John Wick and a couple of paperbacks from Kevin J. Anderson. I loved spending time with both of these guys over the course of the weekend, but more on that later.
After that I went to my first panel entitled "Creation of LARP" which was run by the aforementioned John Wick. LARP stands for Live Action RolePlaying for those that don't know. In the panel he talked about the LARP games he has designed and played, including Houses of the Blooded and the Legend of the Five Rings LARPs (both games that he created btw). He also talked about his opinion and views on LARPing in general and how to design a good game. There were some good things there that apply to any type of RPG in my opinion, like allowing players the freedom to take risks, encouraging emotional investment, and realizing that the other players are an audience. I enjoyed the talk and it made me very excited about the fact that I would be able to do some LARPing at the con. In fact I kinda threw out my plans for the rest of Friday in order to do just that.
After the panel I joined a group of about 20 or so folks in the LARP room, which was basically the outer living room area of two joined hotel rooms, and the emptied out bedroom of one of them. These were John's room btw, and I felt it was quite awesome of him to host the games in what amounted to his personal area for the weekend. I'm going to do a separate post on the LARPs that I played in, both the L5R one that night, and the Houses of the Blooded one the next night. For now I will just say they were tons of fun, and the Houses LARP was the single best gaming experience I have had in years.
After the L5R game I had the privilege to play test a new card game that John is developing. It is called the Houses of the Blooded Card Game, and is obviously set in the game world for that game (which I'll do another post on probably). The game was very fun and employed some mechanics that I loved. Since it is in play testing and it is now my property I am not going to divulge any real details here. I will say you get to play one of the six noble houses, that each one has a wonderfully unique thematic feel, that the game feels like it should based on the inspiration, and that House Fox is best. John will be bringing the game to the public via Kickstarter at some point, and I'll be buying it definitely.
After a late night playing that card game I went home, crashed for a few hours, and then came back to the con mid-morning to run a game of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. I had four players, and made up a fun little scenario where Dr. Doom used the Sinister Six (my version of it) to steal some items from safety deposit boxes and help his crazy, evil plans. The heroes (Iron Man, Storm, Spiderman, and Colossus) took down the Sinister Six, and even managed to defeat all the Doombots that came in to try and help, including the one that was actually masquerading as the Dr. himself. It was quite a bit of fun for me, and everyone else seemed to enjoy it. John Wick even added a bit to the end by asking if Dr. Doom had called anyone a cretin, to which I responded by having the real Dr. Doom show up and do that very thing.
After that I went to my first writing panel with Kevin J. Anderson titled "Things I Wish A Pro Had Told Me". His co-panelist was his wife, Rebecca Moesta (another author). They talked about some of the various tips and advice that they wish they could have received early on in their career. They told us things like Heinlein's Rules of Writing, and ways to be professional. I enjoyed listening to these two very talented writers and was definitely feeling a bit of fanboy-ness towards KJA. After that I went to a great panel about Game Design with John and followed that up with a panel on Media and Literature with KJA, Moesta, John, and another author named Richard Knaak.
After that panel it was time for another LARP and some more hanging out with John, his wonderful wife Ro, and a group of his other friends, who were all cool folks that I was super happy to meet. Seriously one of the best nights I could have ever hoped for.
Sunday morning brought me a bunch more panels to attend. The first one I went to was "Collaborating in Writing" with Wick, Moesta, Anderson, and a romance writer Claire Ashgrove. The panel was a bunch of anecdotes and stories about the subject, and was great. I followed that up with a panel on "Exciting Seconday Characters" with Anderson, Moesta, and Ashgrove. Very informative, and I learned that KJA almost killed off one of my favorite characters back in the day, and thankfully his wife stopped him.
The next two hours I sat around and listened to John talk. The two panels were titled "L5R" and "Collectible Card Game Design". He talked about the L5R world and shared stories of designing it in the first one, and then talked about card games design and his upcoming HotB card game. He also shared some fun general stories and talked about how Pro Wrestling related to Roleplaying Games. After that he and his folks were pretty much done with the Con, so I bade some absolutely amazing people goodbye for now and went upstairs to the gaming room for a few board games before I left.
As I said over the course of this post, I had an amazing time and the convention was wonderful. I was able to get a lot of great advice and information for some awesome people in the fields that I love. I learned a lot about game design, writing, and storytelling. I made some new friends, and had some great new experiences. The con was very well run and had tons of great content. They are moving locations next year and are going to have even more room, so I'm looking forward to that.
But I think the biggest and most important moment of the whole thing came during one of John's panels. I can't remember which one it was exactly, but someone basically asked him why he got into game design, and he said "A lack of desire to do anything else." At first that seems a bit joking or flippant, but it really resonated with me. I am never more excited, happy, or alive than when I am playing, designing, teaching, and building games and stories. It is something I have loved doing for years. I have never really taken it seriously as a possible career path until just recently though. After all it isn't something that you'd normally think about as a job, and as John also said "there is no money in game design."
Now I know I can't do anything crazy like quit my job tomorrow and start trying to make a living as a game designer. I'm fairly certain that unless I become very lucky I will always have to have some other form of employment. I'm working on figuring that out. The realization that I love explaining things to people, learning things, and telling stories makes me think I should very seriously look into teaching. But beyond that I now feel that I'm truly okay with the concept of trying to make games for people on a serious and professional level. That and writing. I may never become a best selling author, but I love telling stories and creating worlds and characters, so I'm going to do some sort of writing. I've got a whole lot of ideas, some of them are even in progress right now. I'm certain it will be a bumpy road, but it is wonderful to feel like I'm actually on a road instead of just wandering aimlessly. I look forward to the journey.
One last little note, I befriended John on Facebook, and these posts get cross posted over to there. So, while I do not really expect him to read this, if for some reason he does I just wanted to say "Thank You."
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Last Night on Earth Review
Last Night on Earth. What a roller coaster ride playing that game was.
First of an explanation of how this game works. In it you are on one of two teams, humans (or as I like to call them Breathers) or zombies. You play through some sort of scenario/mission which usually has the humans trying to accomplish a specific goal, like gather 12 supplies which was the goal in our game, and the zombies are pretty much looking to eat all those tasty, tasty brains.
The game is played in alternating turns for each team. On the Zombie turn the hordes of mindless undead are represented by one or two players (or in our game 3). All of the zombie players do each of the steps in the turn together. First you move the Sun Track Marker, which counts down the rounds in the game until the sun rises and either the humans celebrate surviving or the zombies show up in force and swarm the remaining humans; just depends on the scenario.
Then you each draw until you have 2 zombie cards, which give you nice advantages like more zombies, more movement, better attacks, etc. You then roll to see if new zombies spawn. Roll 2d6 and if you roll more than the number of zombie on the board you get more this turn. In our scenario however we skipped this step because zombies automatically spawned each turn.
Next, move the shambling hordes towards their delicious targets. Most of the time the zombies move one space, though cards can improve that. After movement if any zombies are in the same space as some humans they get to chow down. Combat involves rolling one or more d6s versus the humans two or more d6s. The person who rolls the highest number wins, zombies win ties. If the human gets a higher number but no doubles the zombies is Fended Off, basically the fight ends with no one taking any damage. If he wins and gets doubles he kills the zombie. If the zombie wins he does one damage to the human.
Finally you roll a d3 to see how many new zombies you spawn if you do get to spawn new ones. Add new zombies in at the various designated spawn points on the map, distributing them as evenly as possible. You also have an option of trading in two possible new zombies in order to draw a Grave Weapon card. These add interesting weapons to the zombies that give them cool and usually powerful advantages.
After that the silly breathers get their pointless turns in an attempt to deny zombies their rightful dinner. Each of the human players is playing a Hero character. Each Hero takes their turn in sequence, each one finishing their whole turn before the next goes. First up there is a Move Action. You roll a d6 and can move that many spaces. Alternatively after rolling you can decide to Search an area for useful stuff. Next up is Exchange Items. All heroes in the space with the active hero can both give and receive items via the Hero whose turn it is.
After that you break out the guns and do Ranged Attacks. You get one shot a turn and the card gives you the details on what your roll means. Next you Fight Zombies, using the same combat method detailed above, and then the next person does all that for their turn.
Okay so lets look at what I thought about the game. To start I have to say that we played a game with 8 players, and the game is meant to only have 6 players. We had an extra human and an extra zombie player. Since this was my first and only game of LNoE I can't speak with authority on the game speed, but it really seemed to move slower than it probably should. Other players were saying that it was not normally this slow. It was really bad in this particular game though. There was a TON of downtime and the game took so long that people were yelling for it to end during the last hour.
Other than that the game seemed okay. I played on the zombie side, so I can't really say what the human play was like. I have to say that the zombies were fun from a thematic point of view, but in general there was not much there. I really feel that they could just be automated by the game system and you could just have human players. Yes, it was fun to be the zombies and try to eat brains, but I don't think that that side of gameplay would hold up for multiple plays. There just really wasn't enough there.
The various Heroes that were available to play all looked fun and cool, and gameplay for the human side seemed like it would take a good amount of thinking, planning, and tactics. I'd give that side a try for sure. In the end this isn't going to become my favorite game of all time or anything. But I will definitely give it another chance, and I think it will be improved by trying out the human side, playing when I haven't been awake for over 26 hours, and possibly imbibing some alcohol while playing. That always helps.
First of an explanation of how this game works. In it you are on one of two teams, humans (or as I like to call them Breathers) or zombies. You play through some sort of scenario/mission which usually has the humans trying to accomplish a specific goal, like gather 12 supplies which was the goal in our game, and the zombies are pretty much looking to eat all those tasty, tasty brains.
The game is played in alternating turns for each team. On the Zombie turn the hordes of mindless undead are represented by one or two players (or in our game 3). All of the zombie players do each of the steps in the turn together. First you move the Sun Track Marker, which counts down the rounds in the game until the sun rises and either the humans celebrate surviving or the zombies show up in force and swarm the remaining humans; just depends on the scenario.
Then you each draw until you have 2 zombie cards, which give you nice advantages like more zombies, more movement, better attacks, etc. You then roll to see if new zombies spawn. Roll 2d6 and if you roll more than the number of zombie on the board you get more this turn. In our scenario however we skipped this step because zombies automatically spawned each turn.
Next, move the shambling hordes towards their delicious targets. Most of the time the zombies move one space, though cards can improve that. After movement if any zombies are in the same space as some humans they get to chow down. Combat involves rolling one or more d6s versus the humans two or more d6s. The person who rolls the highest number wins, zombies win ties. If the human gets a higher number but no doubles the zombies is Fended Off, basically the fight ends with no one taking any damage. If he wins and gets doubles he kills the zombie. If the zombie wins he does one damage to the human.
Finally you roll a d3 to see how many new zombies you spawn if you do get to spawn new ones. Add new zombies in at the various designated spawn points on the map, distributing them as evenly as possible. You also have an option of trading in two possible new zombies in order to draw a Grave Weapon card. These add interesting weapons to the zombies that give them cool and usually powerful advantages.
After that the silly breathers get their pointless turns in an attempt to deny zombies their rightful dinner. Each of the human players is playing a Hero character. Each Hero takes their turn in sequence, each one finishing their whole turn before the next goes. First up there is a Move Action. You roll a d6 and can move that many spaces. Alternatively after rolling you can decide to Search an area for useful stuff. Next up is Exchange Items. All heroes in the space with the active hero can both give and receive items via the Hero whose turn it is.
After that you break out the guns and do Ranged Attacks. You get one shot a turn and the card gives you the details on what your roll means. Next you Fight Zombies, using the same combat method detailed above, and then the next person does all that for their turn.
Okay so lets look at what I thought about the game. To start I have to say that we played a game with 8 players, and the game is meant to only have 6 players. We had an extra human and an extra zombie player. Since this was my first and only game of LNoE I can't speak with authority on the game speed, but it really seemed to move slower than it probably should. Other players were saying that it was not normally this slow. It was really bad in this particular game though. There was a TON of downtime and the game took so long that people were yelling for it to end during the last hour.
Other than that the game seemed okay. I played on the zombie side, so I can't really say what the human play was like. I have to say that the zombies were fun from a thematic point of view, but in general there was not much there. I really feel that they could just be automated by the game system and you could just have human players. Yes, it was fun to be the zombies and try to eat brains, but I don't think that that side of gameplay would hold up for multiple plays. There just really wasn't enough there.
The various Heroes that were available to play all looked fun and cool, and gameplay for the human side seemed like it would take a good amount of thinking, planning, and tactics. I'd give that side a try for sure. In the end this isn't going to become my favorite game of all time or anything. But I will definitely give it another chance, and I think it will be improved by trying out the human side, playing when I haven't been awake for over 26 hours, and possibly imbibing some alcohol while playing. That always helps.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
July Game Day
Hey only a four day delay for my post about this month's Game Day. I'm getting better at this.
This last Saturday, July 21, we got together at Gamer Utopia for some RPGs and board games, as we are wont to do. This game day felt a little bit sparsely attended in comparison to the last couple of them, I believe the numbers were somewhere in the low 20s. Now the fact that a gathering with around 20+ people is something that I consider to be a sparsely attended event is in my opinion a very good sign. That means that we are getting into a trend of successful and very well attended game days, and that makes me happy!
I did not fully put on my reporter hat for this particular day, mainly because I was quite engrossed in an awesome game of Dresden Files, and because as usual I was very tired. Emily did a great job of keeping a list of the various games played though. Here is what she recorded:
Dresden Files, Alien Frontiers, 2 games of 1812: The Invastion of Canada, 2 games of Pandemic, King of Tokyo, Kittens in a Blender, Elfenland, 2 games of Jungle Speed, Tsuro, Chris Colbath's Pirate LARP Playtest, Pentago, Mythic Iceland RPG, Chupacabra: Survive the Night, and Last Night on Earth.
A good listing of games. As usual I feel there should be more RPGs, because I love them so much, but with many of the normal GMs not able to make it or playing instead of running it was bound to be a little RPG light. Which is fine, everyone very much seemed to have a ton of fun with a wide variety of board games.
So here are my impressions on the things I both played and just watched. I'll go mostly in order, though I'll put Dresden near the end in order to give it more space.
First off, Alien Frontiers. This is a wonderful, quick playing, space themed board game that has been brought to us by the magic of Kickstarter. You roll dice, and then based on the results on each individual die you spend them like a currency to achieve various outcomes. I find the game to be very simple to learn, and to have some fun strategies. The randomness of the die rolls means that you can't think ahead too much and just have to let the game play; which usually gives it a more laid back atmosphere.
1812: The Invasion of Canada looked interesting. I always enjoy historical board games that abstract the events and conflicts, and from my brief viewing of the game that looked like it might be the case in this game. I could be completely wrong of course, but it intrigued me enough that I will look into more details on it. Plus the ability to beat up on Canada, always a plus. We must stop their evil from oozing down on us like so much maple syrup.
Pandemic is very much a well loved staple of the cooperative board game roster. Who doesn't love trying to save the world from horrible cubed shaped diseases? Communists, that is who. So if you hate this game you are a Communist. Science says so. The only flaw with the game for me is the common one among many cooperative games, strong personalities like myself have a bad tendency to try and play every one's turns for them.
King of Tokyo is a fun giant kaiju monster fighting game. Great theme, fun game. Lots of luck because of dice rolls, but not a serious game so I am okay with that. Kittens in a Blender is another good, short game where you use cards with cute kittens on them; and try to save as many of your own while blending your opponents into delicious kitten smoothies. Elfenland looked like an abstract fantasy themed game with a Euro feel to it. Will have to find out more about that.
Jungle Speed is the type of game that I am terrible at, but that I enjoy messing with people in. Everyone in turn order flips over square cards with various shapes and patterns on them, and you are looking for a match between the card on your pile and the one on someone else's pile. If a match is seen, the two people involved in the match must race to grab the plastic idol token from its place in the middle of the table. Quick recognition and dexterous movement are not my forte. Drawing out my plays to annoyingly increase tension is. I'm a bad man.
Tsuro was a fun, quick abstract game where you control tokens that represent Chinese style dragons. You play tiles with lines that represent paths on them, and you are trying to keep your token on a path that does not go off the edge of the board or impact another token. If you manage to be the last dragon flying, you win. Wil Wheaton showed everyone how to play it on an episode of Tabletop.
.Chris Colbath's Pirate LARP looks really cool. It is still being developed, but it should be featured at GlitchCon. I hope to participate. The Mythic Iceland RPG looked like a fun setting; but it used the Basic Roleplaying system, and I HATE BRP!!!
Pentago seemed to be on of those abstract, "ancient Chinese" games like Go. I'd play it, but I don't think I'd be good at it. Chupacabra: Survive the Night. I know nothing about it, did not watch it being played, only saw the box. But man the name just sells itself doesn't it. Just make sure to have a sacrificial goat on hand.
Last Night on Earth will get its own post. So more on that there.
Finally we come to the Dresden Files RPG session that I played in. We had a group of five players and a GM. The experience with the Dresden source material ranged from having read all the books to having just seen the show to no experience. A good mix that makes for a different type of interesting game, IMO. Our characters were all young teenagers of minor magical talent. My character was Sean Barnes, a teenage metalhead werewolf.
The plot was fairly straightforward. We had heard about an interesting meeting at an old abandoned circus ground on the edge of town. We went and attended, meeting a few of the local supernatural types and making a few interesting deals and purchases here and there. After a bit of chit chatting it was revealed that the group was some sort of organization that seemed to have the agenda of pushing the world of magic out into the open so that no one could deny it. Seems like a dangerous idea to me, but hey to each his insane own.
As the meeting progressed each of us got an opportunity to ask a single question of a fae spirit trapped in a magical mirror. We all asked various interesting questions (though Emily saved her question until the conflict arose and wisely used it to get some helpful information then. Well played.) with my character surprising the GM a bit by asking the faerie "What do you want?" I had by then decided that my guy was a bit of an "eco-nerd" and did not like seeing a wild thing locked up like that. So he resolved to do what he could to get the faerie free. Unfortunately the attention of a demon was called down upon the party via another person's question, so things heated up quickly.
The calamity was helped along by a couple of Warden's rushing in and trying to arrest everyone as well on violations of the Laws of Magic. Silly overzealous wizard police. A really fun an challenging battle ensued, in which my character was constantly getting into trouble by accepting compels from the GM to do bad things, and just straight up acting without thinking. Being a frenzied teenage werewolf is fun!
After defeating out foes, and me forcing the release of the faerie from her new prison in another player's faerie catching bottle, I gave her spirit a lift in my body and ran off to find a way to get her back to the Nevernever before sun up.
Overall I thought the session went really well. Our GM, Josh, seemed to have a very good grasp on the rules, and he sure did a much better job of moving the FATE economy along that I ever did when I ran Dresden. The other players were great and for the most part really did a good job of getting into their characters. Out of character I balked a little bit in my own head at the caution shown by other's actions (hey we are teenagers here folks!) but it wasn't even remotely on a level that could be labeled a "problem". Also I sure let me leap to the forefront and both take tons of risks and push my agenda, so that was nice.
The whole thing went so well that it looks like we are going to start a twice a month Dresden game with the same group. I can't wait to play it. And to build the Dresdenverse version of Seattle, which will be our setting.
July's Game Day was a great time as usual. I played a smaller number of games than I usually do, but each one had a good amount of quality fun in it. I'm really looking forward to next month's. Hopefully I'll both get to play some more good games and get to run a full on play test session of my Mecha RPG.
This last Saturday, July 21, we got together at Gamer Utopia for some RPGs and board games, as we are wont to do. This game day felt a little bit sparsely attended in comparison to the last couple of them, I believe the numbers were somewhere in the low 20s. Now the fact that a gathering with around 20+ people is something that I consider to be a sparsely attended event is in my opinion a very good sign. That means that we are getting into a trend of successful and very well attended game days, and that makes me happy!
I did not fully put on my reporter hat for this particular day, mainly because I was quite engrossed in an awesome game of Dresden Files, and because as usual I was very tired. Emily did a great job of keeping a list of the various games played though. Here is what she recorded:
Dresden Files, Alien Frontiers, 2 games of 1812: The Invastion of Canada, 2 games of Pandemic, King of Tokyo, Kittens in a Blender, Elfenland, 2 games of Jungle Speed, Tsuro, Chris Colbath's Pirate LARP Playtest, Pentago, Mythic Iceland RPG, Chupacabra: Survive the Night, and Last Night on Earth.
A good listing of games. As usual I feel there should be more RPGs, because I love them so much, but with many of the normal GMs not able to make it or playing instead of running it was bound to be a little RPG light. Which is fine, everyone very much seemed to have a ton of fun with a wide variety of board games.
So here are my impressions on the things I both played and just watched. I'll go mostly in order, though I'll put Dresden near the end in order to give it more space.
First off, Alien Frontiers. This is a wonderful, quick playing, space themed board game that has been brought to us by the magic of Kickstarter. You roll dice, and then based on the results on each individual die you spend them like a currency to achieve various outcomes. I find the game to be very simple to learn, and to have some fun strategies. The randomness of the die rolls means that you can't think ahead too much and just have to let the game play; which usually gives it a more laid back atmosphere.
1812: The Invasion of Canada looked interesting. I always enjoy historical board games that abstract the events and conflicts, and from my brief viewing of the game that looked like it might be the case in this game. I could be completely wrong of course, but it intrigued me enough that I will look into more details on it. Plus the ability to beat up on Canada, always a plus. We must stop their evil from oozing down on us like so much maple syrup.
Pandemic is very much a well loved staple of the cooperative board game roster. Who doesn't love trying to save the world from horrible cubed shaped diseases? Communists, that is who. So if you hate this game you are a Communist. Science says so. The only flaw with the game for me is the common one among many cooperative games, strong personalities like myself have a bad tendency to try and play every one's turns for them.
King of Tokyo is a fun giant kaiju monster fighting game. Great theme, fun game. Lots of luck because of dice rolls, but not a serious game so I am okay with that. Kittens in a Blender is another good, short game where you use cards with cute kittens on them; and try to save as many of your own while blending your opponents into delicious kitten smoothies. Elfenland looked like an abstract fantasy themed game with a Euro feel to it. Will have to find out more about that.
Jungle Speed is the type of game that I am terrible at, but that I enjoy messing with people in. Everyone in turn order flips over square cards with various shapes and patterns on them, and you are looking for a match between the card on your pile and the one on someone else's pile. If a match is seen, the two people involved in the match must race to grab the plastic idol token from its place in the middle of the table. Quick recognition and dexterous movement are not my forte. Drawing out my plays to annoyingly increase tension is. I'm a bad man.
Tsuro was a fun, quick abstract game where you control tokens that represent Chinese style dragons. You play tiles with lines that represent paths on them, and you are trying to keep your token on a path that does not go off the edge of the board or impact another token. If you manage to be the last dragon flying, you win. Wil Wheaton showed everyone how to play it on an episode of Tabletop.
.Chris Colbath's Pirate LARP looks really cool. It is still being developed, but it should be featured at GlitchCon. I hope to participate. The Mythic Iceland RPG looked like a fun setting; but it used the Basic Roleplaying system, and I HATE BRP!!!
Pentago seemed to be on of those abstract, "ancient Chinese" games like Go. I'd play it, but I don't think I'd be good at it. Chupacabra: Survive the Night. I know nothing about it, did not watch it being played, only saw the box. But man the name just sells itself doesn't it. Just make sure to have a sacrificial goat on hand.
Last Night on Earth will get its own post. So more on that there.
Finally we come to the Dresden Files RPG session that I played in. We had a group of five players and a GM. The experience with the Dresden source material ranged from having read all the books to having just seen the show to no experience. A good mix that makes for a different type of interesting game, IMO. Our characters were all young teenagers of minor magical talent. My character was Sean Barnes, a teenage metalhead werewolf.
The plot was fairly straightforward. We had heard about an interesting meeting at an old abandoned circus ground on the edge of town. We went and attended, meeting a few of the local supernatural types and making a few interesting deals and purchases here and there. After a bit of chit chatting it was revealed that the group was some sort of organization that seemed to have the agenda of pushing the world of magic out into the open so that no one could deny it. Seems like a dangerous idea to me, but hey to each his insane own.
As the meeting progressed each of us got an opportunity to ask a single question of a fae spirit trapped in a magical mirror. We all asked various interesting questions (though Emily saved her question until the conflict arose and wisely used it to get some helpful information then. Well played.) with my character surprising the GM a bit by asking the faerie "What do you want?" I had by then decided that my guy was a bit of an "eco-nerd" and did not like seeing a wild thing locked up like that. So he resolved to do what he could to get the faerie free. Unfortunately the attention of a demon was called down upon the party via another person's question, so things heated up quickly.
The calamity was helped along by a couple of Warden's rushing in and trying to arrest everyone as well on violations of the Laws of Magic. Silly overzealous wizard police. A really fun an challenging battle ensued, in which my character was constantly getting into trouble by accepting compels from the GM to do bad things, and just straight up acting without thinking. Being a frenzied teenage werewolf is fun!
After defeating out foes, and me forcing the release of the faerie from her new prison in another player's faerie catching bottle, I gave her spirit a lift in my body and ran off to find a way to get her back to the Nevernever before sun up.
Overall I thought the session went really well. Our GM, Josh, seemed to have a very good grasp on the rules, and he sure did a much better job of moving the FATE economy along that I ever did when I ran Dresden. The other players were great and for the most part really did a good job of getting into their characters. Out of character I balked a little bit in my own head at the caution shown by other's actions (hey we are teenagers here folks!) but it wasn't even remotely on a level that could be labeled a "problem". Also I sure let me leap to the forefront and both take tons of risks and push my agenda, so that was nice.
The whole thing went so well that it looks like we are going to start a twice a month Dresden game with the same group. I can't wait to play it. And to build the Dresdenverse version of Seattle, which will be our setting.
July's Game Day was a great time as usual. I played a smaller number of games than I usually do, but each one had a good amount of quality fun in it. I'm really looking forward to next month's. Hopefully I'll both get to play some more good games and get to run a full on play test session of my Mecha RPG.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Monsterhearts Part 3
The MGG played through our third, and for now final, Monsterhearts session last night. I had fun, but I definitely think it is a good thing we are rotating games for a little bit because I really felt the momentum was winding down. Of course I fully admit that could be completely just my perspective, because I was so close to achieving the overall character arc goal for Silas; and therefore didn't have much more to drive towards in general.
The session started out with some recap and a little "Well what are you guys up to now?" Silas went off and tried to apologize to Rosa for his earlier behavior. Caroline went and found the girl she hooked up with at the party and used her ability to get some healing via closeness and intimacy. Dominique continued her weird three-way date with the other selkie Ann and Mr. Samwell (this caused a slight disconnect because it seemed both me and Emily said things that happened in the following day or two after our next session; but then Josh picked right back at the minute of leaving off. I had a little bit of "Well this didn't actually happen yet but we're referring to it as if it had.....huh.") by going to Baskin Robbins.
Dominique apparently got it into her head to try and steal Ann's pelt for some reason. She didn't know where it was though so she called Caroline, who Dominique knew was good at finding out secrets. Dominique described the situation to Caroline and piqued her interest (though the whole time during that conversation I was thinking "Wait, I didn't think Caroline knew you were a selkie.....huh") and Caroline called Silas, so she could use him for his car. :p
Silas and Caroline arrived at Baskin Robbins and joined the other three inside. Caroline squeezed in to the actual table the rest of them were at, Silas just perched on a counter stool nearby and kind of hovered. Silas also got an orange sherbet cone because orange sherbet is awesome. There was some awkward and ineffectual conversation at the table, and Caroline tried to find out the secret location of the pelt by asking her demon the Poisoner, but she backed off of following through on asking because the price the Poisoner demanded didn't appeal to her. Apparently Caroline cares whether or not Rosa ends up as a possible human sacrifice. Silas just made comments from the peanut gallery.
After a bit Ann and Mr. Samwell decided to leave. Dominique and Caroline decided to follow them, and Silas went along with it cause he was bored. They got outside and looked around, not seeing their quarry until, in a classic camera shot style, they turned and found her RIGHT THERE. She warned them to stay out of her business, using some sort of magical fear ability that Silas and Caroline resisted but Dominique failed her roll against and succumbed to. Silas being a smart ass told her off and blew smoke in her face. This caused her to lean in and whisper something in his ear, which resulted in an immediate unleashing of Silas' Darkest Self. Then things go fun *evil grin*
Silas immediately punched Ann right in the gut, causing 2 harm with a good roll. He then tried to hit her again but found that he couldn't do it, some sort of mental block was keeping him from swinging at her. So he turned and backhanded Dominique. Dominique turned and ran away from Silas, crying in terror. Silas then jumped on Caroline, bodily pinning her against the wall and biting into her neck like a drunk, sloppy vampire. He took a little bit of damage while attacking her (from my poor-ish roll) but held on and started lapping up her delicious hot blood. She tried to retaliate and failed, but her fighting back broke Silas' concentration on her neck and blood and caused him to switch the focus of his hunger by forcibly kissing her with his blood covered mouth and getting way too handsy. Silas was still a little pissed at being denied by her earlier. Caroline was even more freaked out by the fact that she was getting turned on by all this (huzzah successful Turn On roll meaning you get turned on whether you think you would or not).
While all this was happening Dominique made it over to Mr. Samwell's car and fought down her fear of Ann long enough to seek refuge and escape with them. Silas because aware of this peripherally and dropped Caroline in order to sprint over and leap on the hood of Mr. Samwell's car; punching his windshield and cause large spider-webbing cracks to spread across it. Silas continued to pound on the windshield until Samwell managed to get the car going and threw him off. Silas glanced over towards Caroline again; but was done with her for now as she fled into the Baskin Robbins. He decided to steal a car and go find more chaos to cause.
Meanwhile Caroline got Steve, the guy working the Baskin Robbins, to help her staunch the blood flow and call 911. While this was happening she used some of her blood to draw on a table and Gaze Into The Abyss to try and understand what was going on with Silas. She saw visions that revealed a lot about him, and found out that this was like what happened with the witches and that Silas' family had stopped him and calmed him down that time. So she quickly called Silas' house and talked to his grandfather, who was dismissive at first but then immediately took action when she told him Silas was out of control. She then got patched up and taken to the hospital.
Dominique escaped with the other two and they let her off at her place, though Ann tormented her the whole way apparently. Silas took his stolen car and crashed it into a liquor store; stealing some high proof bottles and making molotov cocktails out of them. He then proceeded to fire bomb a few things and run off to cause a bit more random chaos before his family caught up to him and brought him to heel once again.
That brought things to a close for the most part. Because of all the rolling and the craziness though I managed to get just enough out of the short session to get an advancement and chose a new Ghoul one that allowed me to choose a new Hunger. So I added the Hunger for Flesh and completed my desired character arc for Silas. At that point there was time for maybe one more scene; but no one really had a strong idea for what to do from there, except maybe fast forward to a climactic confrontation with Ann; which would have been more than one scene. So we stopped and just discussed things for awhile.
We all could see more game play happening at some point, but a break needed to be taken. The opinions on the game in general were quite varied. Josh was a fan of the setting and such but didn't really like the system, mostly because skills were more generic instead of specifically designed. Emily liked parts of the system a whole lot, but was slightly less taken with the theme. John really liked the system overall, but also wasn't as taken with the theme. Me I love them both. The system works real well for being improv and narrative, and really letting you drive towards a goal. The theme is just guilty pleasure fun.
Overall I had a TON of fun playing this game. I enjoyed my character and loved being able to just see something I want and go for it with no regard for consequences or other's perceptions. This is something I totally can not make myself do it real life; so the escapism was nice. I enjoy the directed flow and drive of the Apocalypse World engine behind the game. Also the fact that I got to tie in Lovecraftian mythos was a nice bonus.
Next week we'll be tackling Smallville character creation. We are basically coming into it with the thought that we'll see whether or not we actually play a session or two, based on how character creation goes; but we are leaning towards playing. I can't wait.
The session started out with some recap and a little "Well what are you guys up to now?" Silas went off and tried to apologize to Rosa for his earlier behavior. Caroline went and found the girl she hooked up with at the party and used her ability to get some healing via closeness and intimacy. Dominique continued her weird three-way date with the other selkie Ann and Mr. Samwell (this caused a slight disconnect because it seemed both me and Emily said things that happened in the following day or two after our next session; but then Josh picked right back at the minute of leaving off. I had a little bit of "Well this didn't actually happen yet but we're referring to it as if it had.....huh.") by going to Baskin Robbins.
Dominique apparently got it into her head to try and steal Ann's pelt for some reason. She didn't know where it was though so she called Caroline, who Dominique knew was good at finding out secrets. Dominique described the situation to Caroline and piqued her interest (though the whole time during that conversation I was thinking "Wait, I didn't think Caroline knew you were a selkie.....huh") and Caroline called Silas, so she could use him for his car. :p
Silas and Caroline arrived at Baskin Robbins and joined the other three inside. Caroline squeezed in to the actual table the rest of them were at, Silas just perched on a counter stool nearby and kind of hovered. Silas also got an orange sherbet cone because orange sherbet is awesome. There was some awkward and ineffectual conversation at the table, and Caroline tried to find out the secret location of the pelt by asking her demon the Poisoner, but she backed off of following through on asking because the price the Poisoner demanded didn't appeal to her. Apparently Caroline cares whether or not Rosa ends up as a possible human sacrifice. Silas just made comments from the peanut gallery.
After a bit Ann and Mr. Samwell decided to leave. Dominique and Caroline decided to follow them, and Silas went along with it cause he was bored. They got outside and looked around, not seeing their quarry until, in a classic camera shot style, they turned and found her RIGHT THERE. She warned them to stay out of her business, using some sort of magical fear ability that Silas and Caroline resisted but Dominique failed her roll against and succumbed to. Silas being a smart ass told her off and blew smoke in her face. This caused her to lean in and whisper something in his ear, which resulted in an immediate unleashing of Silas' Darkest Self. Then things go fun *evil grin*
Silas immediately punched Ann right in the gut, causing 2 harm with a good roll. He then tried to hit her again but found that he couldn't do it, some sort of mental block was keeping him from swinging at her. So he turned and backhanded Dominique. Dominique turned and ran away from Silas, crying in terror. Silas then jumped on Caroline, bodily pinning her against the wall and biting into her neck like a drunk, sloppy vampire. He took a little bit of damage while attacking her (from my poor-ish roll) but held on and started lapping up her delicious hot blood. She tried to retaliate and failed, but her fighting back broke Silas' concentration on her neck and blood and caused him to switch the focus of his hunger by forcibly kissing her with his blood covered mouth and getting way too handsy. Silas was still a little pissed at being denied by her earlier. Caroline was even more freaked out by the fact that she was getting turned on by all this (huzzah successful Turn On roll meaning you get turned on whether you think you would or not).
While all this was happening Dominique made it over to Mr. Samwell's car and fought down her fear of Ann long enough to seek refuge and escape with them. Silas because aware of this peripherally and dropped Caroline in order to sprint over and leap on the hood of Mr. Samwell's car; punching his windshield and cause large spider-webbing cracks to spread across it. Silas continued to pound on the windshield until Samwell managed to get the car going and threw him off. Silas glanced over towards Caroline again; but was done with her for now as she fled into the Baskin Robbins. He decided to steal a car and go find more chaos to cause.
Meanwhile Caroline got Steve, the guy working the Baskin Robbins, to help her staunch the blood flow and call 911. While this was happening she used some of her blood to draw on a table and Gaze Into The Abyss to try and understand what was going on with Silas. She saw visions that revealed a lot about him, and found out that this was like what happened with the witches and that Silas' family had stopped him and calmed him down that time. So she quickly called Silas' house and talked to his grandfather, who was dismissive at first but then immediately took action when she told him Silas was out of control. She then got patched up and taken to the hospital.
Dominique escaped with the other two and they let her off at her place, though Ann tormented her the whole way apparently. Silas took his stolen car and crashed it into a liquor store; stealing some high proof bottles and making molotov cocktails out of them. He then proceeded to fire bomb a few things and run off to cause a bit more random chaos before his family caught up to him and brought him to heel once again.
That brought things to a close for the most part. Because of all the rolling and the craziness though I managed to get just enough out of the short session to get an advancement and chose a new Ghoul one that allowed me to choose a new Hunger. So I added the Hunger for Flesh and completed my desired character arc for Silas. At that point there was time for maybe one more scene; but no one really had a strong idea for what to do from there, except maybe fast forward to a climactic confrontation with Ann; which would have been more than one scene. So we stopped and just discussed things for awhile.
We all could see more game play happening at some point, but a break needed to be taken. The opinions on the game in general were quite varied. Josh was a fan of the setting and such but didn't really like the system, mostly because skills were more generic instead of specifically designed. Emily liked parts of the system a whole lot, but was slightly less taken with the theme. John really liked the system overall, but also wasn't as taken with the theme. Me I love them both. The system works real well for being improv and narrative, and really letting you drive towards a goal. The theme is just guilty pleasure fun.
Overall I had a TON of fun playing this game. I enjoyed my character and loved being able to just see something I want and go for it with no regard for consequences or other's perceptions. This is something I totally can not make myself do it real life; so the escapism was nice. I enjoy the directed flow and drive of the Apocalypse World engine behind the game. Also the fact that I got to tie in Lovecraftian mythos was a nice bonus.
Next week we'll be tackling Smallville character creation. We are basically coming into it with the thought that we'll see whether or not we actually play a session or two, based on how character creation goes; but we are leaning towards playing. I can't wait.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Freedom Sunday XVIII (July 15, 2012)
Had a good time playing board games yesterday up at Bear's by the Maul. Managed get in three rounds of gaming before my exhaustion kicked in and I had to head home and get some sleep.
First off me and a couple other folks got to play a couple of rounds of a new game called D-Day Dice. I found it to be an interesting, but apparently rather difficult game. We were playing without actually having the rules on hand though, so we may have been doing it all wrong. I blame John.
The game works very like Roll Through the Ages if you are familiar with that one. You roll a handful of custom dice and you are looking to build pools of resources by getting the die face results that give them to you. The dice can yield Troops, Courage, Stars, Tools, or Skulls. You have six dice to start and have to lock two down immediately after your first roll; but then you get two more rolls to try and manipulate the other four dice into the combinations you want. The dice are red, white, and blue; two of each color. If you get the same type of die face on each of the three colors you can get some nice bonuses out of that, or if you get a "straight" of one of each die face you can also get another reward.
You are building up these resources in order to try and accomplish a thematic World War II combat mission. The one we tried to do was the landing on and taking of Omaha Beach. The method for accomplishing the mission was to basically move up the beach, through various zones to the bunker, and then take out the bunker. This is made challenging by various elements. There are minefields and zones in the path of machine gun fire. There are some zones that require certain Specialists (that you recruit with the Stars you roll) in order to go into and pass through them. Also, every zone has a troop cost that you have to pay each turn you spend in that zone, and the cost rises quickly the further up the beach you get. Making everything worse is the fact that you can only stay in a given zone three turns max, and some of them even less.
The various resources help you overcome these obstacles. Troops gives you warm bodies to soak up the various forms of damage and attrition that come flying at you. Tools give you a currency to buy various items that give you bonuses and reduce penalties. Courage is spent to be able to move over zone thresholds as you go further up the beach. As stated above Stars let you buy specialists that give you some cool abilities. Skulls are just evil, the cancel out one other die that you have rolled; unless you can get lucky and get the one of each color trio.
It was a very quick playing game, we went through the scenario twice in a short amount of time. The speed was helped out by the fact that John is apparently terrible at the game ;). We died before we got past the second set of zones on the beach both times. It feels like one of those games that will be very difficult and just require sheer perfect luck until you figure out the best combinations and strategies; and then it will be fun and challenging, but doable. I look forward to playing some more, this time with actual rules.
This was followed up by a game of Core Worlds, a deck building game of space conquest. The game has a really cool theme in my opinion, each of the players plays a periphery bandit/barbarian kingdom that is fighting its way towards the center of the old and waning Galactic Realm; trying to reach and take the core worlds. Mechanically the game reminds me a lot of both Barbarossa and Eminent Domain; because of the combination of deck building and combat, but if you know about Dominion, you'll at least know the basics. Your aim is to get the most Empire Points, you do this by adding cards to your deck, and then using the cards you draw each turn to conquer worlds and gain resources; which you then use to do the same thing on bigger and bigger scales.
The game has ten turns and each turn has five phases. First you draw cards. Then you build up energy. Energy is your main resource for the game, it is how you buy cards into your deck, play cards onto the table, and activate special abilities on some cards. Each of your planets generates a set amount listed on the card, so the more you conquer the greater your energy production. You also have a couple of Energy Surge cards that you can spend when you have them to get some more energy. These cards normally give you +1 but you can get +2 if anyone else at the table produces more energy than you from their planets, which is a nice little catch the leader mechanic. You also have the ability to discard two cards to get +1 energy. In the two games I have played we have been allowing people to do that last bit as many times at they want. After the last game I was looking at the rules and realized you can only do it once. Oops. The interesting thing with energy generation is that you are doing it before you get to see what cards are available to purchase/conquer this turn. So you have to make decisions about whether to keep more troops or to discard a couple for more buying power, stuff like that.
Next you deal out the cards that are available for this turn. As you progress through the game you will draw from a new deck for these cards every other turn, so you are constantly introducing newer and cooler cards; which is nice. Also cards only stay on the table for two turns max. If they aren't taken the first turn they are out they get a +1 energy token as an incentive on the next turn, and then the turn after that they are discarded. You draw up to a certain number of cards based on the number of players, and if necessary you keep drawing until you have both planets and non planet cards equal to the number of players. This makes sure everyone at least has some chance of getting stuff they want.
Then you start going around the table and spending actions and energy to accomplish stuff. You'll be conquering planets, deploying troops and starships, and drafting (buying) new cards out of the middle into your deck. You can conquer or buy only once each time if comes around to you; but you can deploy as many units as you want each time as long as you have the resources to do so. Conquering planets requires some combination of Fleet and Ground strength. You basically declare you are attacking a given planet, then discard cards from your warzone (the area on the table where you have played down units) that have Fleet and Ground strength equal to or greater than the defense strengths of the planet. Then you take it and put it on your warzone, hurrah a new planet has joined your growing empire. After everyone has used up all their actions/energy or passed there is a quick cleanup and discard phase and then a new turn begins.
Overall I like the game. I'm a fan of deck building and I love sci-fi and spaceships type themes. The thing I didn't like about the two-player game was that there felt like there were a ton of cards that I was never going to see or use because of how few cards were drawn each turn; but that was fixed in the larger game. The rising costs to buy and conquer things can be a bit unforgiving if you don't manage to keep up with the momentum; but I don't think that it is in any way impossible to catch up, just sometimes difficult. There is definitely plenty of room in various places for analysis paralysis, and you need to go in turn order at those specific places since you are all competing for a common pool of resources.
The five player game took quite a while, but I think the time would be cut in half once everyone knew the game and knew what they were doing. I went into the five player game with a distinct strategy, get robots and vehicles and then get the world at the end that gave bonuses for robots and vehicles. I accomplished this, and won by one point, but I felt like I didn't do it as well as I could, and that dumb luck had its fair share of my accomplishment. Looking forward to getting more plays in and seeing if I can get better at it.
Finally we played a four player game of Last Will. I've reviewed that already over here, so not going into much detail on it. I played a terrible game, making stupid choices and having a lot of incidents of "What the crap am I doing being this stupid?". Despite my own advice against properties, I decided to give them a try, and failed horribly at using them. I was doing things a turn or two before I should have, or picking sub-optimal choices all over the place. In my defense I had been up for about 20-21 hours straight at that time. But I still enjoyed the game, and tried to make clear that my anger was only at myself not at anyone else or the game. Anders played a really good game and totally kicked my butt, and he deserved to do so.
Looking forward to next week. I think I saw an expansion to Tanto Cuore there, and if I did then I ABSOLUTELY want to play that soon. I <3 that game.
First off me and a couple other folks got to play a couple of rounds of a new game called D-Day Dice. I found it to be an interesting, but apparently rather difficult game. We were playing without actually having the rules on hand though, so we may have been doing it all wrong. I blame John.
The game works very like Roll Through the Ages if you are familiar with that one. You roll a handful of custom dice and you are looking to build pools of resources by getting the die face results that give them to you. The dice can yield Troops, Courage, Stars, Tools, or Skulls. You have six dice to start and have to lock two down immediately after your first roll; but then you get two more rolls to try and manipulate the other four dice into the combinations you want. The dice are red, white, and blue; two of each color. If you get the same type of die face on each of the three colors you can get some nice bonuses out of that, or if you get a "straight" of one of each die face you can also get another reward.
You are building up these resources in order to try and accomplish a thematic World War II combat mission. The one we tried to do was the landing on and taking of Omaha Beach. The method for accomplishing the mission was to basically move up the beach, through various zones to the bunker, and then take out the bunker. This is made challenging by various elements. There are minefields and zones in the path of machine gun fire. There are some zones that require certain Specialists (that you recruit with the Stars you roll) in order to go into and pass through them. Also, every zone has a troop cost that you have to pay each turn you spend in that zone, and the cost rises quickly the further up the beach you get. Making everything worse is the fact that you can only stay in a given zone three turns max, and some of them even less.
The various resources help you overcome these obstacles. Troops gives you warm bodies to soak up the various forms of damage and attrition that come flying at you. Tools give you a currency to buy various items that give you bonuses and reduce penalties. Courage is spent to be able to move over zone thresholds as you go further up the beach. As stated above Stars let you buy specialists that give you some cool abilities. Skulls are just evil, the cancel out one other die that you have rolled; unless you can get lucky and get the one of each color trio.
It was a very quick playing game, we went through the scenario twice in a short amount of time. The speed was helped out by the fact that John is apparently terrible at the game ;). We died before we got past the second set of zones on the beach both times. It feels like one of those games that will be very difficult and just require sheer perfect luck until you figure out the best combinations and strategies; and then it will be fun and challenging, but doable. I look forward to playing some more, this time with actual rules.
This was followed up by a game of Core Worlds, a deck building game of space conquest. The game has a really cool theme in my opinion, each of the players plays a periphery bandit/barbarian kingdom that is fighting its way towards the center of the old and waning Galactic Realm; trying to reach and take the core worlds. Mechanically the game reminds me a lot of both Barbarossa and Eminent Domain; because of the combination of deck building and combat, but if you know about Dominion, you'll at least know the basics. Your aim is to get the most Empire Points, you do this by adding cards to your deck, and then using the cards you draw each turn to conquer worlds and gain resources; which you then use to do the same thing on bigger and bigger scales.
The game has ten turns and each turn has five phases. First you draw cards. Then you build up energy. Energy is your main resource for the game, it is how you buy cards into your deck, play cards onto the table, and activate special abilities on some cards. Each of your planets generates a set amount listed on the card, so the more you conquer the greater your energy production. You also have a couple of Energy Surge cards that you can spend when you have them to get some more energy. These cards normally give you +1 but you can get +2 if anyone else at the table produces more energy than you from their planets, which is a nice little catch the leader mechanic. You also have the ability to discard two cards to get +1 energy. In the two games I have played we have been allowing people to do that last bit as many times at they want. After the last game I was looking at the rules and realized you can only do it once. Oops. The interesting thing with energy generation is that you are doing it before you get to see what cards are available to purchase/conquer this turn. So you have to make decisions about whether to keep more troops or to discard a couple for more buying power, stuff like that.
Next you deal out the cards that are available for this turn. As you progress through the game you will draw from a new deck for these cards every other turn, so you are constantly introducing newer and cooler cards; which is nice. Also cards only stay on the table for two turns max. If they aren't taken the first turn they are out they get a +1 energy token as an incentive on the next turn, and then the turn after that they are discarded. You draw up to a certain number of cards based on the number of players, and if necessary you keep drawing until you have both planets and non planet cards equal to the number of players. This makes sure everyone at least has some chance of getting stuff they want.
Then you start going around the table and spending actions and energy to accomplish stuff. You'll be conquering planets, deploying troops and starships, and drafting (buying) new cards out of the middle into your deck. You can conquer or buy only once each time if comes around to you; but you can deploy as many units as you want each time as long as you have the resources to do so. Conquering planets requires some combination of Fleet and Ground strength. You basically declare you are attacking a given planet, then discard cards from your warzone (the area on the table where you have played down units) that have Fleet and Ground strength equal to or greater than the defense strengths of the planet. Then you take it and put it on your warzone, hurrah a new planet has joined your growing empire. After everyone has used up all their actions/energy or passed there is a quick cleanup and discard phase and then a new turn begins.
Overall I like the game. I'm a fan of deck building and I love sci-fi and spaceships type themes. The thing I didn't like about the two-player game was that there felt like there were a ton of cards that I was never going to see or use because of how few cards were drawn each turn; but that was fixed in the larger game. The rising costs to buy and conquer things can be a bit unforgiving if you don't manage to keep up with the momentum; but I don't think that it is in any way impossible to catch up, just sometimes difficult. There is definitely plenty of room in various places for analysis paralysis, and you need to go in turn order at those specific places since you are all competing for a common pool of resources.
The five player game took quite a while, but I think the time would be cut in half once everyone knew the game and knew what they were doing. I went into the five player game with a distinct strategy, get robots and vehicles and then get the world at the end that gave bonuses for robots and vehicles. I accomplished this, and won by one point, but I felt like I didn't do it as well as I could, and that dumb luck had its fair share of my accomplishment. Looking forward to getting more plays in and seeing if I can get better at it.
Finally we played a four player game of Last Will. I've reviewed that already over here, so not going into much detail on it. I played a terrible game, making stupid choices and having a lot of incidents of "What the crap am I doing being this stupid?". Despite my own advice against properties, I decided to give them a try, and failed horribly at using them. I was doing things a turn or two before I should have, or picking sub-optimal choices all over the place. In my defense I had been up for about 20-21 hours straight at that time. But I still enjoyed the game, and tried to make clear that my anger was only at myself not at anyone else or the game. Anders played a really good game and totally kicked my butt, and he deserved to do so.
Looking forward to next week. I think I saw an expansion to Tanto Cuore there, and if I did then I ABSOLUTELY want to play that soon. I <3 that game.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)