This week I played Arkham Horror, Roborally, and Touch of Evil.
The first two I don't think I've played in years...not since I was last at Gencon maybe? Sufficient to say, long enough that it felt vaguely familiar, but not enough that I remembered how to do anything.
The third I've never played before and, at best, could be considered Arkham Lite.
I really like Horror, especially for a coop game. Our group was basically relearning or learning the game for the first time, so we made a lot of mistakes. There was also confusion about combat. But by the time we settled into the groove, it was pretty good. Strangely, it made me miss those gothic horror rpgs I played in college. Specifically Justin's Call of Cthulu game or Conan's Vampire game. Equally strangely, it made me want to play the new Res Evil game.
As soon as roborally was set up, I remembered why I didn't love it. It's a fine game, but people back in the day really loved it. We played for about an hour with some pauses using a single board. I know people that would have a huge map across an entire room so they could play with lots of people and used timers and stuff to push the game forward. I didn't encounter Formula De until a few years later, but I always imagined that the roborally people were also the same people that loved Formula...and also the same people that loved Steeple Chase/Parcheesi/Trubble when they were little.
Touch of Evil was okay. Kind of easy, kind of light. If you're played arkham, then imagine a game if you cut the board in half, took out the gate concept, took out half the skills, and then made the objective killing the big bad guy. We played it coop, which the group says is much easier than playing competitive. I probably would have liked it more competitive simply because there didn't seem to be a whole lot of cooperation until the very end of the game, and the added benefit of playing against other people and the board randomness would have probably been nice.
David is going to visit this week. I'm hoping we can get our game on, as I borrowed some stuff and still have the LotR expansions to try out. |
The BBC news program I'm listening to was interviewing people about the validity of the Uigher/Han riots. It then cut away to go to full coverage of the Micheal Jackson funeral at the Staples center. Apparently his coffin just touched down in the center of the stadium.
Ugh. |
I've been thinking a bit about the idea of "self-importance".
Specifically, with regard to the internet social media circus.
How much of one's blog is about them being self important? About them looking for validation from others?
What about their tweets? Facebook? Myspace? LinkedIN? Resume?
Is there really a difference between an obviously self aggrandizing media like Livejournal and a seemingly "professional" forum like your www.superimportantproblognamehere.com web log?
When we say that we do it for communication or global interaction, are we really just askewing the fact that we do it to talk about our ideas and have other people talk about them as well?
Is this electronically mobilized world just one big middle school playground and we're all trying to be the cool kid, perpetually doomed to feeling not quite adequate?
Or is there something to a universal discourse? That shared ideas and interactivity actually do benefit someone somewhere?
How do you feel when you exchange in cyberspace? How do you feel when you read someone else's thoughts about something you care about? Work hard at? Want to be good at? Do you feel better? Really? |
Actually a three parter:
Growing up, what fruits did you commonly eat?
What fruits did you not encounter until much later in life either because they weren't available where you live/lived or your family just didn't eat them?
Did you eat the core/pit/seeds of fruits growing up? How about now? If so, did you find it weird when other people pointed out to you that you weren't supposed to eat them? |
Em and I played the LotR co-op game last night. We each controlled 2 hobbits. We were playing the easy version, and won, though with one event tile away from epic losing.
It got me thinking about the balance of coop games. Specifically, because the players aren't playing against each other, they have to be playing against random elements. Randomizers I've played with generally are dice rolling or card/tile drawing. In both cases, it's possible that any given game will be practically impossible to win. Similarly, any given game could be cake with no real adversary.
How do you then even out randomness so that any given game will tend towards a smaller range of difficulty?
The LotR game tries to do this by having a series of scenario boards. Effectively, it breaks the randomness into chunks so that you play the game at least 4 times over in the course of one sitting with each chunk connected by your resource management.
Pandemic does a similar thing by distributing the major event cards in sections of 15 (or is it 18?) cards in the deck. So the major events are roughly evenly spaced out in relation to the number of turns taken.
I have played other games (the LotR CCG 1-player game comes to mind) where the randomness is used to generate the game board and conditions, and is not an on-going factor. Something akin to randomly pulling out a bejeweled board or suduku and then group playing it. I'm not sure this is a better solution, as some puzzles could potentially be unsolvable.
The version of coop games I haven't played very much is where one person controls the randomness in opposition to the other players. So "dungeon master" games like Heroquest or Descent. I don't have enough experience to say one way or the other, but I'm curious as to how much having an "opponent" helps or hurts the coop environment. |
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Anyone have thoughts on:
Small World
La Havre
Republic of Rome
Through the Ages
Rise of Empires
Brass
Clash of Cultures
The Hellgame
Incidentally, I just found out that Republic of Rome is being rereleased later this year. That's hot.
Jun. 26th, 2009 @ 08:54 am
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We're working on putting together an all-day game some Saturday soon. Any suggestions for a good board game that fills the better part of the day?
The potential list right now:
Arkham Horror (cooperative; up to 8 players)
Android (up to 5 players)
The Order of the Stick (up to 6 players)
Starcraft (up to 6 players)
Twilight Imperium (up to 6 players)
A Touch of Evil (cooperative or competitive; up to 8 players)
I was also thinking about some old games, but I don't really have access to them:
Dune
Axis and Allies
Does anyone happen to have opinions on Game of Thrones?
Jun. 25th, 2009 @ 12:14 pm
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"Gardening is at the core of what all jobs should be doing when they're going right."
~Alain De Botton
The explanation that followed this quote is that gardening is essentially about taming chaos into an ordered, productive system pulling in elements, not only of logical arrangement but also the aesthetic and validation of one's work from input to output.
Agree or disagree?
Jun. 24th, 2009 @ 03:22 pm
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