Archive for the ‘Board Games’ Category

I’d like to share two three tips on demoing board games to people:

#1: Play the most basic game possible

Perhaps the game you want to introduce your friends to has some expansions that make your experience better, or there’s a higher difficulty mode. That’s great for people who have the lingo & pacing of the game down, but don’t introduce that right away.

Yeah, I know some of you will respond with “but that makes the game better!” Sure, it does. But if learning it is overwhelming or extra-difficult, then the people you’re introducing the game to will likely end their first time playing with a negative emotional context. And if your goal is to bring people into the game so you can play with them again, don’t do that.

Here are some magic words: “Okay, if you thought that was fun, wait until you check out what we’ll add next time.” Think of it like being a dealer; the first hit’s easy to get.

#2: Don’t be competitive

There’s a guy I’m acquainted with. Let’s call him Bob. What Bob does is find people to try new games with, explain some of the rules, and then play hard and win because of some obscure rule or combo that he didn’t explain.

He’s notorious for that. And it’s like being a cougar[1] looking for weak prey. There are people who don’t want to play those games now, and that’s lame. Don’t be a Bob.

I recall an experience at Gen Con many years ago, when the History Channel game Anachronism came out. The guy demoing it for me was a total ass, what we would today in this enlightened age call a “bro”. He seemed proud to beat me, a guy learning the game for the first time. I wrote him off as a cockbite, but I didn’t let it dissuade me from the game. (As gaming is research for me.) But others would. And that’s, again, lame.

Be open. Teach people the game throughout play, not just at the start. Get them closer to the same page as you, and then get competitive after that first game’s done.

#3: If you’re learning the game as well, be upfront about that

In the comments, Jesse pointed out a good thing that is worth editing this post from two to three[2] tips! :D

If you don’t know the game you’re playing, be clear that this is a learning experience for you as well. Let people decide whether they want in on that or not before you sit down to try the game. (For more, read the comments.)

What are your tips?

Add in the comments!

- Ryan

[1] Take your pick.

[2] And since the URL doesn’t have the number in there, I’m thankful for that accidental foresight.

It’s good to look back and see how games have changes our perspectives, enriched our lives, or just helped alleviate boredom & curiosity. This list is of the games that gave me something to think about and I think is worthwhile for others to. These are in no particular order, and I’ll end up cheating by talking about a couple I was involved with, though the reason I got involved is because the creator had an interesting idea.

I should warn that I’m not reviewing anything I’m going to talk about in depth. If what I say has you curious, I invite you to Google or click on links for more information.

The Story’s the Thing

Of course, as someone who is primarily a roleplaying game creator, I’ll start with the RPGs that turned my crank. First, let’s go with Technoir by Jeremy Keller.[1] The other night, I watched Die Hard, as fantastic film of the ages as all right-thinking people know. Die Hard is an action movie, the modern-day pulp story. There’s ebb & flow, where McClane gets on top, then deals with complications, and is on top again, like a narrative dance.

Why do I bring up Die Hard? Because I think that Technoir is the Die Hard RPG, if you set aside the cyberpunk element (which is one of the finer treatments of cyberpunk since we starting living in an information-ubiquitous age, so don’t set it aside). The way the game uses Push Dice to create moments where the PCs have advantage and when they’re inflicted with problems is inspired. And the player’s booklet is free to download.

I’m looking forward to the supplements coming out for it.

Dungeon World, by Adam Koebel & Sage LaTorra, is one of the more fascinating things I’ve played, because, well, it’s kinda fucking alien. See, it’s old school dungeon crawling…except it’s also not at all. Imagine taking the tropes of First or Second Edition D&D, and then saying: the DM never has an explicit turn in combat, doesn’t know exactly what treasures are around, the players don’t get objectively better at hitting monsters of a given level, and so on.

The first time I played, I was a level 2 Fighter taking on what was apparently a Level 8 demon. That was really interesting in play, because the monster’s level didn’t affect if I could hit it; that was entirely based on my STR roll — a 7-9 meant I hit it and got hit in return, a 10+ means I hit it and dodged retaliation. A 6 or less was…bad. :) I fought, I rolled 10 once and hit it hard, then I got hit and nearly died by taking 90% of my hit points in one blow. The level of a monster was really only rated in how many hit points it would take to kill and how much damage it did when it damaged (and since the DM never rolls dice in DW, once someone got hit you knew exactly how hard future hits would be).

It’s an interesting case of “here’s this game we’ve played in the past, and now let’s fuck with many assumptions.” I like Dungeon World because it makes me think about that style of gaming in a way I haven’t in some time. I like the like of the Old School Renaissance, though the games I’ve been exposed to have felt phoned in. DW isn’t an OSR game, but it makes me think about OSR gaming as much as it does story gaming.

Daniel Solis released Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple the second in what’s becoming a line of “story-writing” or “story-making” games, games that have a RPG sense but focus on the deliberate creation of a written story rather than playing out a story like you would with a RPG. I was it’s editor[2], but the design’s all Daniel’s, and it’s making me rethink some of our assumptions about what a game in that space can be. It challenges the genre more than any other game I’ve seen save Fiasco.[3]

Speaking of Fiasco, the Fiasco Companion came out this year.[4] It is a book of accumulated wisdom, one that couldn’t have come out when Fiasco did last year. It’s an interesting community effort, an archive of story-playing ideas, that should be mined for many games both as a book of information and as an idea of a supplement for other games. There’s a bit of that mentality going into Don’t Hack This Game, I can tell you that.

Little Table Games

I’m a fan of board & card games that don’t have a huge footprint on the table — things that are easy to carry in a bag, but pack a big punch. Which is why I bought Diana Jones-nominated Escape From The Aliens Of Outer Space at Gen Con last year. (Which, given that it’s almost perpetually sold out because the publisher can’t keep up with demand, was a good idea.) It’s a hidden information chase game, with some players as humans trying to escape the aliens who are hungry for sweet, sweet man-flesh.[5] Oh, and you don’t know who is who, other than your own allegiance.

The game says two to eight, which in my experience means “you can technically play it with two but it’ll suck.” I wanted to learn the rules with my friend Albert, so over beer we decided it’d be worth playing two player just to see how it works. It was going to be clear who was a human and who an alien, since we have the magic power of deduction with two players.

Once we opened it and set up, we started with my move. Then his. Then we looked at each other and said “holy shit, this is fucking amazing.” I have not played a game that tense in, well, I cannot remember.

I call Escape From The Aliens Of Outer Space the “Battleship meets Alien” game. It’s a brilliant design that reinforces dread through what little information you’re allowed to say during the game. When you can pick up a copy, do it. They also have some resources on their site for reprinting old maps, making custom new ones, and creating new scenarios.

Hibernia & Cambria: These two games come from local-to-me designer Eric Vogel. You might have read his designer diary on BoardGameGeek about Camberia, where he talks about self-publishing and having a publisher for his board games.

Hibernia & Cambria are both great area control games that use dice in creative ways. Cambria gets featured in the link I just shared, so I’ll bring up Hibernia. It’s a small area control game for three or four players as-is, and for two players with a rules variant (which I rather enjoy). Eric has said a couple times that it’s the inversion of Risk — you know where you can expand, but not if you’ll conquer; in Hibernia, the die roll determines where you can expand, but conquering is deterministic rather than random, so you know what you can conquer once you know where the dice say you may expand.

The way you win Hibernia is to loop around a score track, based on the colors of the territories you have at a given time, so the game prioritizes movement and needing to protect or expand in different places on a given turn, rather than the typical “let’s dominate the world” approach. I have yet to win a game of Hibernia, but I get close, and I love the way the game plays.

And I have to say that Eric is a genially wonderful human being, very accessible and very happy to talk about the craft & process. He had a release party recently at Endgame for those two games, and he was pretty damned welcoming.

(Edit: Eric posted his design diary of Hibernia on BoardGameGeek.)

Eric Lytle, co-creator of the upcoming Race to Adventure! pointed out in the comments below that I didn’t mention Risk Legacy. This version of Risk is by Rob Daviau & published by, believe it or not, Hasbro[6]. I wasn’t sure what to say about it, because, well, it’s a board game with spoilers! It’s a version of Risk with actual stakes: those who win the game — well, the first fifteen times — gets to make a grand alteration to the game that has impact in future games. I will speak of things that one would know by reading the rulebook.

At least, reading the rulebook before it gets changed due to unlockable expansions. Yes, the game changes over time.

A couple of the great folks at Gamers With Jobs invited me to play the second game of their Risk Legacy set, and I was hooked. I put a scar down on a territory and ripping a card up because it told me to. I wrote on the board in permanent marker. Their board will forever be marked because of what I did in one session of play.

I got a set and have been playing it nearly every week with some of the EndGame Oakland board game night crew, and we recently finished game seven. I’ve taken a picture of every aftermath, but I won’t be posting them up until we’ve done all fifteen games. But I can say this much: we keep looking forward to playing Risk. We plot about how we’ll get to mark up the board this time. And even right now, we have a version of the game so very different than one that others have. When the hell was the last time you did since you overcame puberty?

Oh, and the longest game we’ve played was around 90 minutes, I think. It’s the new, objective-based end condition style of Risk. So, a board game with spoilers & real stakes. Have I got your attention? Check it out. (And check out these designers notes, if you dare.)

The Year of the iPad

This was an amazing year for iPad games. Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is by and large the big winner here; for a few bucks, you could start playing a quick turn-based game with, well, a large portion of the gamerdom. Most people with an iPad I knew had Ascension and played it regularly. Passing references to individual games would happen onTwitter, enough to where people joked that Twitter was the chat app for Ascension.

And it no doubt generated sales for the physical game; I bought it so that I could play it with in-person friends. But the real magic is that I would, while setting up the physical game, hand a friend my iPad and have them play the tutorial on there. Suddenly, instead of focusing energy on the initial teach, what I was doing was reinforcement. And damn it that wasn’t a great way of doing things. I look forward to more games being on the iPad, even of only in tutorial form.

 The iPad is not just for board & card games, as demonstrated by the Dungeon World RPG iOS app (and at some point, will also be available for Android). It’s the book, in a form that’s pretty interesting — the individual chapters as a single unit of flow, each chapter a finger swipe away, hyperlinks throughout the document, double-tap navigation, and embedded actual-play audio that can be played near related points in the game (thanks to The Walking Eye).

I found myself thinking about other things they could have done with the app, which is not a slight against what they’ve done, but to highlight that doors have been opened. (And as a software engineer, I’m not so foolish as to assume any feature I’d like is trivial, so I certainly don’t begrudge any “lacking” one. Plus, there’s the future, updates, etc.)

There was a time when I wanted to do something similar, and to see someone tackle it is fucking awesome. Doors are open, friends. Doors are open.

So, those were mine. What were yours?

- Ryan

P.S. Back in January, I set out to do 13 posts a month. Here’s how I did: out of 12 months, I missed the mark on 4. But overall, I did 12 more posts than 156 I set out to. I call the experiment a success, not because of any number, but because I feel good about the output. I’ll keep trying roughly the same output level next year, because blogging is forcing me to put concrete words to floating thoughts in my mind. Here’s to 2012, friends.

[1] Which, having written one of the settings in the book, is my first cheat.

[2] Cheat #2

[3] To clarify: DW has made me think about a style of gaming, but not the very foundations that Do has.

[4] Some might say that having a quote in the Companion makes these cheat #3. But I wouldn’t.

[5] Sorry, I watched Lord of the Rings over Christmas. And the word continues to ring in my head, with that orcish growl.

[6] Which I guess you would believe, since Risk is theirs. Still, it’s been seen as a ballsy move by Hasbro, and I hope to see more of those in the future.

A bit ago, I bought into Get Bit‘s Kickstarter. I was pretty excited by this, because it’s a cute game by Dave Chalker, and watching a video of the game played/reviewed told me it’d be a fun game to play with kids (and thus a fun game to play with drunk friends[1]). That it was published by Mayday Games was something I knew to be wary of, but I took a chance on Dave’s game.

I bought into the level where there would be an expansion shipped separately, where you got to play the shark. I was jazzed about that, because hey, SHARK.

Just in case you missed my excitement: SHARK

I got the first package that had Get Bit in it, played it a few times, and I think there’s something neat to the game. It’s a simple game to play that ends up involving reading the people at the table, which I dig. But the real gem is in the robot pieces you get to rip apart as they’re eaten. Folks know I’m bit on tactile reinforcement of the game, and that really makes this game’s theme sing. It’s pretty fun. The components are pretty decent quality as well.

So, good game. But it’s been soured by how Mayday has treated me (and many other folks) who funded this game’s production. When I got the Sharkspansion in the mail, all I got was a plastic baggie with the six cards for the game in it. No instructions, no packing slip, nothing. I emailed Mayday about the lack of instructions, and was directed to the Boardgamegeek page for it, which had this PDF.

When it loaded, I was treated to this:

Mayday showing its figurative panty lines with print registers

Those are print registers, what you send in some cases to a printer to check tone and color levels upon printing. That that’s in a consumer PDF shows a lack of thought in their process. Not only is it an embarrassment, it’s also a frustration for the user who has to now make sure the printing settings are dead right so they don’t print it wrong, get a smaller version because this nearly 11.5×9 document scales down to printer margins, etc.

(By the way, folding it in a useful way that doesn’t crease on a line — which, on many printers means the ink fades on that line — and getting it to fit in the Get Bit box is a pain. Whee.)

Then, as I read the rules, I see this:

COMPONENTS

Shark Hand Containing:

• Right Leg
• Left Leg
• Right Arm
• Left Arm
• Head (no ties)
• Any Limb (must be tied)

6 Hunger Tokens

Great, now I discover I’m missing these Hunger Tokens. So another email to Mayday, and they guy says he’ll ship it out first thing. I appreciate that response, but I’m already soured on the experience. Their shipping is sloppy, their online resources are half-assed. What’s next?

Given the rest of the stellar production on Get Bit, I’m expecting some decent “Hunger Tokens.” I could play with pennies or bottle caps or whatever, so it’s not like I couldn’t play the game. Still, I’m looking forward to having a complete set for Get Bit, with Hunger Tokens of similar quality that continue to exude theme. Then I get this in the mail…

The physical manifestation of being underwhelmed

Six wooden cubes. Six generic, something-I-could-get-anywhere wooden cubes. That’s what I waited for, that’s what Mayday spaced on sending out to people. (Also, no packing slip.)

Wow.

I get shipping fuck-ups. That happened on occasion when I was managing Indie Press Revolution, because we’re all only human. But by all accounts, nearly every shipment of the Sharkspansion was screwed up. That’s a huge vote of no confidence in their ability to fulfill, if something that sweeping happened.

Mayday has clearly communicated that if you give them money before you get product, you should expect to be crapped on. Noted. I won’t back another Mayday Kickstarter, and I’ll think twice before buying another Mayday game in the store. Now when I look at Get Bit, I don’t think “fun game,” I think “Mayday’s middle finger.” Maybe I’ll play it again. Maybe not. And while that’s a bummer to Dave, it means nothing to Mayday — they got my money.

This gets to a thing I’m starting to feel with Kickstarter projects, which I mentioned before: people who are taking the money and showing absolutely no respect to those backers. That’s always a risk with anything like this, of course, but I’m growing tired of feeling like Kickstarter is an avenue for having good will taken advantage of. Which makes me thinking about what I’ll do in the (probably eventual) event that I’ll do a Kickstarter.

- Ryan

P.S. As I was link-hunting for this post, I saw this on the Mayday product page for Get Bit:

How to say you don't care about selling this

It’s forgivable on its own, but with all the other places where Mayday has shown negligence, all this says to me is “understaffed place that keeps over-committing.” And that’s a dicey place to put your Kickstarter money.

[1] Eleminis was, for a couple months, our “drink scotch and hack a kids game” game of choice. I’ve promised to post our hacks at some point, but that would involve me remembering them.

This Weekend, at Big Bad Con…

Are you going to Big Bad Con this weekend, in currently-not-so-sunny Oakland, California? If not, why exactly do you hate adventure?

Because if you loved adventure, you would Race to it! Evil Hat Productions’ Race to Adventure, a pulp action-selection game set in the Spirit of the Century universe, is one of the events going on this weekend. Want to win fabulous prizes? Then you want to be there!

I’m quite a fan of this game[1], and am excited to see the designers getting the attention they & the game deserve. They’ll be teaching the game during an official slot on Friday at 2pm at Open Gaming, though I wouldn’t doubt that they’ll occasionally hang around Open Gaming to demo RtA more. But what’s more awesome are the tournaments, happening on Saturday and Sunday at noon, again at Open Gaming.

Did I mention this game takes, like, 20 minutes to play?

Speaking of Open Gaming…

There are some cool folks who will be working to keep the Open Gaming area at Big Bad Con active. I’ll be one of those people, where I’ll be running “Mythender Classic” (yes, the ‘way too many dice’ version of the game) on Friday from 6pm on.[2] The Race to Adventure guys will be there, my cohort Leonard Balsera will be there, it’ll be a great time. Check it out!

And I think Endgame will have a booth somewhere near there.

Did I Mention Leonard Balsera?

I totally did! So I would be remiss in my duties as a shameless promoter if I didn’t mention the Game Design Seminar Over Drinks thing we’re doing:

Lenny and Ryan are known for enjoy the finer things in life: making role-playing games, and drinking tasty cocktails. They invite you to hang out with them and talk about game design & publishing, an informal Q&A from these two award-winning Fate developers.

It should be noted that you do not need to buy us a drink to attend. But doing so will make your games more successful and you more attractive to members of the opposite sex. Or same sex. Or both. Okay, fine, we’ll just be thankful and probably talk longer. But the main thing we want is for great company who share the passions we do.

(I cannot tell you how much I enjoy writing these sorts of event blurbs.)

This is on Saturday night from 10pm on. Technically the event says until midnight, and likely that’s when the bar will stop serving, but we’ll be there as long as we have energy and there are people who want to chat. If it turns out the bar isn’t hospitable for such conversation, we’ll find another place and I’ll tweet about it. And I’ll make Sean Nittner, the con over, tweet about it on @BigBadCon.

If You’re Going and use Twitter or Facebook…

I believe Sean’s plan is to have important details announced in, among other ways, over Twitter. So follow @BigBadCon for up-to-date info. Or follow on Facebook. Maximize your fun. Stay plugged in.

Oh, and There’s an Outdoor Heated Pool

Seriously, there’s an outdoor heated pool in the hotel. I may make some use of that. Especially if it’s heated well enough and it’s raining outside.

- Ryan

[1] Which is one of the chief criteria for me editing a game. If I don’t love it, I’m not the right fit for it.

[2] Oh, fuck, I have con prep to do for this weekend, don’t I? Fuck. :)

Lately, I’ve been playtesting Zeppelin Armada, a card game being developed by Evil Hat & Jeff Tidball. I’ve playtested some other stuff for Tidball, including Fantasy Flight’s Horus Heresy. I like playtesting card & board games. And over the years, I’ve refined my process for being able to give decent feedback — and they all involve smartphones. Having a quick internet-enabled camera & voice memo device has been super useful.

Here are some really simple tips for how to capture more information during play with your smartphone. Some designers will be happy to take media, in which case this is of direct benefit. But for those who don’t — and that’s understandable, given that there’s only so much time in the day and multimedia takes more time to digest and index than text — it’ll still help you do up playtest reports.

Cameraphone For The Win

When a weird rules situation or other situation comes up, I take out my phone and take a picture of the problem. This helps me catalog the issues that came up in play, so that later when talking about the game or compiling a playtest report, I have a visual record of what issues we had.

Now, that isn’t always enough. In the last game, we took a picture of something early on and I had forgotten why. So next time I do this, I’ll also keep some note paper nearby, marking it by photo number and a note, like:

(1) order of operations?
(2) needs iconograpy
(3) does it cancel or just nullify damage?

Know that these notes are shorthand for me, not something I’m going to email to the designer. (I might email a very weird situation that comes up at the table to the designer, in which case I’ll snap a few pictures and note “(x) email to Jeff.”)

Note the Initial Game State

This is a new one, a result of the last game of Zeppelin Armada I played. I wished I had taken pictures of each person’s initial state, because you get some random cards at the beginning. That sort of data could be useful in playtest reports for games where that can vary. Such things color the play to follow.

Debrief With Voice Memo

These days, smartphones can easily take voice memos. If your playtest has a questionnaire with it (and it should), go around and record everyone in the group answering each question. You’ll get cross-talk that’ll generate more thoughts than if you just went home and wrote it up based on recollection of the post-game conversation.

And if your playtest doesn’t come with a questionnaire, allow me to riff of the Zeppelin Armada one for some basic things to ask:

Date you played:

Names of all players (as they would like to be credited):

How long did the game(s) run?

How did the game end?

Did you try out the alternate rules/victory conditions? How did that go, compared to the regular rules/conditions?

Did any eliminated players wind up sitting around for a un-fun length of time? About how long was that?

Was there lots of table-talk during play, a moderate amount of table-talk during play, or little to no table-talk during play? Why do you think that was?

Which parts of the game were the most fun? Why?

Which parts of the game were the least fun? Why?

Were any particular rules or cards confusing? Which ones? What was confusing?

What else should we know?

Some designers will happily take your recorded debrief (and others even recorded actual-play). Some only want a text debrief. Some will take the audio but still ask for a text debrief. What’s important for you, as a playtest coordinator, is that you’ve captured information. So even if the designer doesn’t want the audio file, it’ll help you give what’s asked for.

Not an Excuse to Slack

Just because you have all this captured data doesn’t mean you get to slack off. Do your playtest report up as soon as you can. Otherwise, your data points won’t be fresh; even if you’re able to vaguely remember what happened, you’ll have lost some of the emotional context that would also be useful data.

Hope this helps, and happy playtesting!

- Ryan