Month: March 2014

1523: This or That

I’ve said this before, and I’ll almost certainly say it again numerous times, but I’m finding increasingly frequently these days that there’s less of a correlation between perceived/agreed “quality” and things that I actually want to spend my time with, whether that’s in TV, movies, anime or video games.

This isn’t just a simple matter of, say, wanting to play “bad” games, though; as, again, I’ve said before, it’s more to do with the fact that the “highest quality” games (by popular definition) tend to be the ones that play it most safe; the ones that stick to the established rules that will pretty much guarantee them a positive reception, whether that’s mechanically or narratively. There’s a reason why all “triple-A” games these days have very similar feelings and atmospheres about them — it’s because that’s what’s been proven to work.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Upon reflection, I’ve come to the conclusion that the things I’m more interested in engaging with are the ones that allow me to bring something new to a conversation rather than regurgitating the same opinions that everyone else is espousing at the same time.

Take Dark Souls II, for example. A great game, no-one is going to deny that, but one for which your average online conversations about tend to run around and around in circles, usually involving one or another of the participants blurting out “Praise the Sun!” as if it’s the height of wit. I have nothing to add to that conversation — at least partly because I haven’t played Dark Souls II (I didn’t like Dark Souls enough to want to invest in the sequel), but I doubt it would be different if I had.

Contrast with say, something I’ve played that other people haven’t. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an obscure game, just something that people might have passed up in favour of something like Dark Souls II or Titanfall. Immediately I have an in-road into an interesting conversation. “Have you played The Witch and the Hundred Knight?” is, for me, much more likely to lead into an interesting opportunity for a conversation and an opportunity to educate my conversational partner than “Have you played Titanfall?”

I’ve seen in happen in discussions with my friends before. A conversation that begins “have you played [game we’ve all played] before?” generally ends fairly quickly after we’ve done the requisite “oh, what about the bit where [cool thing happens]?” pleasantries. A conversation where I have the opportunity to tell someone about something cool they might not know about at all, however? That’s hugely enjoyable; likewise, when I have the opportunity to learn about a type of game I don’t normally consider from my friends, I relish the opportunity, too. I never would have considered the awesome things about Euro Truck Simulator, Crusader Kings 2 or all manner of other games out there had I not been willing to engage in conversation about them. I might not get around to playing some of those games in some cases — or if I do, there’s no guarantee I’ll like them — but I consider my life to be somewhat richer for knowing that they exist and that yes, there are people out there who love playing them, just as I love playing colourful anime games with big-eyed pretty girls in them.

But I’ve found this feeling extends somewhat to games that are in my wheelhouse, too; Bravely Default, for example. It’s an astonishingly good, PS1-style JRPG, and yet when I think back on the games that I’ve played in the last few months, I look back much more fondly on the stranger, the more quirky and the more flawed titles rather than that, which is “objectively” (insofar as it is possible to be “objective” about the quality of a video game) better. I gave Bravely Default five stars when I reviewed it over at USgamer and I stand by that score, since it’s great; when I come to look back on the most memorable games I played in 2014, however, I have little doubt that other titles are going to be far, far ahead of it.

This is what I like about gaming today, but it’s also quite frustrating at times: there’s a wealth of interesting, exciting and unusual games out there to play, but still the majority of conversation seems to fixate on the same one or two titles at the same time.

Perhaps I just need to make some new friends.

1522: Esuna

If only the “Esuna” spell was a thing. (For the non-Final Fantasy-literate, Esuna is a spell that immediately heals all negative status effects.)

That would have sorted me right out on Monday night when I felt this bug hitting me. It would have prevented nearly a working week of lying in bed coughing, moaning and realising that actually, my bed isn’t all that comfortable at all, really, particularly when you’re in quite a lot of pain.

Still, what’s done is done, and unfortunately it’s not as if I could have done anything about it anyway. You can take all the preventative measures you want, but if an illness decides it’s going to strike, it’s going to strike. Fuckers. I do find it slightly worrying and ironic that the last couple of times I’ve felt particularly bad recently — this week and one day last week — have been immediately after I made a conscious effort to do some exercise. It’s like my body doesn’t want to get fit and healthy. I’ll show it who’s boss, though. (Unless I get struck down with the plague immediately after going swimming again. In which case, fuck everything.)

One thing I’ve never been able to shake out of my mind is a hangover from my days working in schools, and that’s the guilt I feel at being ill. Taking a day off sick when you work as a teacher is a massive inconvenience to all of your colleagues, you see, and in many cases you actually end up having to do some work anyway to ensure you have some stuff sent in for those covering your lessons. In most schools, pupils don’t simply get a free period if their teacher isn’t there, after all, and when you teach a specialist subject such as music you can pretty much guarantee the person covering your class will not be a music specialist. (They will almost definitely be a PE teacher, which is pretty much the polar opposite of being a music teacher.)

Guilt at being ill when you’re a teacher is somewhat justified, then, as it often has a significant impact on a number of people’s days — the office staff have to sort out who’s going to cover your lessons, the staffers who were looking forward to a free period or two now have to cover your lessons and, more often than not, your head of department has to check that the kids aren’t killing the poor cover teacher.

But in other jobs? Variable. I felt particularly guilty this week due to the fact that my USgamer colleagues are at GDC and could have done with some support on the home front, but I have no doubt that they successfully handled it between them. And if I had a job that didn’t face the public at all, like my ill-advised brief jaunt into temporary office work? My absence barely mattered at all; in fact, I don’t believe anyone even noticed when I wasn’t there, since none of them talked to me anyway.

Anyway. I think I am on the mend. I still have a nasty cough that keeps flaring up, but the headache and accompanying dizziness appears to have faded. I’m not sure how well I’m going to be able to sleep tonight, given that lying down seems to exacerbate my cough somewhat, but we’ll see. In the meantime, Hatsune Miku is keeping me entertained.

1521: Wretched

Still feeling utterly wretched, though not quite as bad as yesterday in that I can actually move and do things now, so long as I take an hour or two to psych myself up beforehand. Most of the more horrid symptoms I’ve been exhibiting — a cough that makes my head feel like it’s exploding, a fever, body aches so strong that it hurt to even think about moving at several points yesterday — appear to be calming down a bit, but I’m still stuck with an unpleasant sore throat and, perhaps the most annoying of all, a bunged-up head that is not only the source of a constant, dull ache but also has kept me feeling consistently dizzy any time I stand up.

I mentioned yesterday that this has been quite an “interesting” illness, though, and whatever is going on in my head is presumably something to do with that. I’m not sure of the exact definition of being “delirious”, but my mind was definitely doing something odd any time I closed my eyes, particularly when I was lying down.

If I lay on my right side, my brain would immediately kick into some sort of in-depth technical project that, for some reason, I associated with Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, despite the fact that I 1) haven’t played it and 2) have no evidence that there is a Metal Gear in Ground Zeroes. Said project would repeatedly get tantalisingly close to completion, but I’d never quite figure out what it was, and by the time it looked like I might get somewhere, the process would start over again.

If I lay on my left side, meanwhile, my brain would immediately start planning some sort of low-tech project to do with bows and arrows, possibly prompted by the fact that I spent part of yesterday whimpering on the sofa watching Disney’s Robin Hood, which I haven’t seen for a good twenty years or so. Again, this project would never come to fruition; by the time it felt like it might, I’d get uncomfortable and have to turn over and start the other one again.

Both of these mental workouts, whatever they were, were interesting to see, but they made it an absolute bugger to get to sleep, and as such I’m not entirely sure quite how much sleep I’ve actually gotten in the last couple of days. Lying down isn’t relaxing at all right now, but when I sit up I just don’t have the energy to do anything. It took me a while to summon up the strength to sit down in front of the computer and pen this post, and said strength is already fading.

As such, I’m going to dose myself up with Lemsip and try to actually get some sleep. Good night.

1520: fever dream

i’m super-ill right now, like can’t get out of bed ill, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t have a lot to say. i am writing this post in all lower-case too, to elicit sympathy. is it working?

ironically this has been quite an “interesting” illness for reasons i will go into when i feel a bit better. for now, i am going to continue sleeping.

1519: Hidden Traitor

I’ve played quite a few “hidden role” board games recently, and I’m coming to enjoy them quite a bit.

Most recently, I’ve had the chance to have a go at Saboteur, Avalon and Quicksand, each of which have a very different feel to them but all make good use of the “hidden roles” mechanic. They’re added to my list of “enjoyably backstabby games” that also contains the excellent Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica.

Quicksand was a new one on me this evening, and it’s an enjoyable, lightweight, “filler” title. It’s a simple race game at heart, but the hidden role aspect makes it very interesting

There’s six different characters, you see, and only you know which one is yours. On your turn, you can play cards from your hand to move one of the characters — one space per card played. Landing a character on a space of the same colour as themselves allows you to discard any number of cards from your hand and then draw back up to a full hand; otherwise, you simply replenish your hand at the end of the turn without discarding anything. Consequently, the game becomes about shifting the other pieces around to get an optimal hand of cars, then storming ahead with your own character — though naturally, there’s the opportunity to fuck with each other thanks to Quicksand cards, which immobilise a character until you play an extra card of the correct colour.

Saboteur, meanwhile, was an interesting little game that not only had hidden roles, but also asymmetrical play. Taking on the role of dwarves, two teams are racing to be the first to dig their way to the gold, but playing alongside them is at least one Saboteur, who is aiming to deplete the deck of cards as quickly as possible; a Geologist, who is aiming to get as many “crystal” cards on the table as possible; a Captain, who is aiming to help one of the teams to win; and… and… possibly something else I’ve forgotten but can’t be bothered to look up because I feel like crap and just want to get this post over and done with. (Hey. At least I’m honest.)

Avalon, on the other hand, is a completely different beast again. In this game, several of the players are around the table are loyal knights of King Arthur, while the others are evil people of various descriptions. Through an enjoyably silly “open your eyes, close your eyes” sequence at the outset, certain characters know who each other are but others don’t, and from there it’s a matter of assigning people to “quests” and then hoping they don’t vote that it fails. It’s actually a pretty simple, relatively quick game to play, but the amount of interaction around the table makes it a lot of fun and, I would have thought, a fun party game for those willing to invest a little time to learn the rules.

I really do feel awful now so I’m going to go to bed and hope I feel better in the morning. Apologies for the bluntness but, you know. Whatever. Later!

1518: New Media

I’ve been contemplating the ways that people “consume” (ugh, I hate that word, but it seems to be the one in use most frequently these days) content online, and trying to determine a way it could be applied to our currently-stalled podcast over at The Squadron of Shame.

The Squadron of Shame SquadCast certainly worked extremely well for the episodes we did it for, but it did often end up being a little more demanding on the editing time than I would have liked, particularly as we’re all amateurs making use of not-brilliant equipment that often results in things like background hum, echo and other annoying flaws that are difficult to edit out. Much of my editing time was often spent manually trimming out echoes and funny noises, and in the case of a 2-3 hour episode — which most of our episodes tended to be — it would take the majority of the day to do this.

One of the things I’m wondering right now is how relevant the podcast format still is. Obviously I know that there’s enough of a market for sites like Giant Bomb to keep making one every week, and for established podcasting personalities like Garnett Lee to be able to start a new show and have people follow him to see what he’s up to. But I’m also conscious of the rise of alternative means of “consuming” (blech) content in the last couple of years, with YouTube being one particularly disruptive influence, and live broadcasts such as Twitch streaming and Google Hangouts being another.

Awareness of these alternative forms of media has made me ponder whether the standard podcast format is absolutely the best possible thing for the SquadCast going forward, or whether it’s worth contemplating an alternative means of presentation (with an accompanying means of archiving/downloading where necessary.)

The SquadCast has always been a “book group” style of discussion surrounding a game or gaming-related topic, and it’s worked well for us in the past. But gaming is also an inherently visual medium, which makes me wonder whether some form of video presentation might be worth experimenting with, perhaps combined with live broadcasting.

Another reason I bring this up is that Skype, which we have previously used to talk to one another and record the discussions we have, has become a largely unworkable mess ever since Microsoft bought it, making it impossible for me to “archive” the complete conversation just in case someone’s individual recording fails to work properly. I haven’t needed this facility on many occasions, but on the couple where someone’s recording was destroyed by Audacity’s frequent crashes, having that backup facility was a godsend. With the way Skype works now, though — you can’t run it in more than one user account on a Mac at once, which is what I used to do — working this way is impossible without an unnecessarily convoluted setup involving more than one computer.

What I’ve been pondering is making use of something like Google Hangouts, which allows for a number of features that would seem ideal for a discussion about games. It allows participants to converse via either audio or video chat, and it also allows for the footage of the participants to be intercut with other things such as videos from YouTube and the like. For example, while discussing a particularly interesting scene in a game, making use of Google Hangouts would allow you to find that scene on YouTube and then broadcast it to the people watching the Hangout, which strikes me as an eminently good idea. Presumably it would also allow for playing footage while the conversation continues over the top, which is a little more interesting than just gazing at a bunch of talking heads for a few hours.

Google Hangouts can also be easily archived to YouTube, and then one of the many YouTube-to-MP3 converters out there can be used to archive an offline version of the discussion’s audio, which can subsequently be released as a standard podcast for those who wish to continue listening in that way. It’ll be rawer due to the lack of editing and its inherently live nature, but I’ve often felt when I edit a show that I was making the job a lot more difficult and time-consuming than it really needed to be.

Anyway. I’m just thinking out loud here. Interested to know your thoughts, though, particularly if you’ve been either a listener or a participant in the SquadCast at any point in the past. (Those who are neither, you can educate yourself thanks to our archives here.)

1517: The Misunderstood Fan

It can be a trying task being a fan of something at times. And by “fan” I don’t mean “rabid, frothing fanboy/fanmadam” (thanks NISA); I mean simply someone who has a particular preference for something, and who will, in many cases, indulge in that thing to the exclusion of other, perhaps more “mainstream” things.

Since pretty much “coming out” as a fan of visual novels, anime and associated goodness around the time Katawa Shoujo was released, I’ve run into this issue a number of times. In the case of Japanese entertainment, the cultural rift between East and West means that some people are less than understanding about certain aspects of what our friends in the East produce.

And perhaps that’s understandable in some cases; even as a fan of a broad spectrum of Japanese entertainment, I’ll happily admit that there’s plenty of content — primarily around the area where sex and violence cross over — that makes me uncomfortable, and so I deliberately choose not to expose myself to that sort of thing. (“Discovering” Urotsukidoji in my teens was quite enough, thanks.) It exists, though, and I can deal with that; it’s simply something I choose not to engage with. (I also don’t believe for a second that it’s actually harmful — to believe as such is to show an alarming lack of faith in humanity’s ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, and a similarly alarming willingness to believe that everyone is stupid enough to just want to emulate everything they see. Sometimes fantasy is just fantasy.)

The trouble comes when people start to assume the worst about an entire culture’s output based on some of its more questionable or discomfort-provoking aspects, or even, in some cases, based on things they just think they know — the “lol Japan” approach.

Let’s take the recently released Senran Kagura as an example. Here we have a game that explores and respects its characters in great detail — going so far as to give each and every one of them their moment in the spotlight in lengthy, well-written visual novel sequences — that also happens to feature characters with big jiggly boobs who occasionally flash their pantsu. Are the jiggly boobs and pantsu necessary? Of course they’re not, but they don’t detract from all the other good stuff that the game is doing — and frankly, what is there to be ashamed of there, anyway? Senran Kagura’s cast is depicted to be a bunch of strong, independent young women who are more than capable of taking care of themselves and who are, above all, confident and comfortable in who they are and what they look like. (Those who have played it will know that the possible exception to this rule is Hibari, but her own character arc revolves around her coming to terms with her own inferiority complex; the end result is her accepting herself, flaws and all, and recognising that she doesn’t have to go it alone.)

Admirable traits, I’m sure you’ll agree, and so what does commentary about the game focus on? You guessed it; the jiggly boobs and the pantsu. And the aggression with which these criticisms are delivered is astonishing — take this outstandingly vitriolic takedown of the game that appeared not on someone’s personal blog, but on the official Nintendo magazine’s website. Or take the comments that habitually appear on any article about the game, which usually involve accusations of those who enjoy the game being “perverts” or, in more extreme cases “paedophiles”. It’s gross and disgusting, and it makes my heart sink any time I see it. And there’s no point trying to argue your case against these people; they’re people who have made their minds up about something, and have no interest in changing it.

For what it’s worth, I’m firmly of the belief that there’s not actually anything wrong with enjoying the fanservicey aspects of titles like Senran Kagura and its ilk; acknowledging your own sexuality is a healthy thing to do, and finding something that isn’t real attractive does not necessarily say anything about your attitudes towards a real-world equivalent. Indeed, I’ll happily admit to having been attracted to some Japanese titles purely by the fanservice aspect, whether it’s video games or anime; in pretty much every single case, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover that beneath the often in-your-face sexuality of some works, there beats a heart of gold; in many cases, I’ve even discovered that the fanservice aspect is a lot “tamer” than a lot of people tend to make out, and the whole point of it is actually to tell an interesting story with some loveable and, yes, attractive characters. (There’s also some stuff that purely exists to be sexy, and that, too, is both fine and can be enjoyable.)

Here’s the thing: I, like, I’d wager, pretty much anyone else who enjoys anime and other Japanese forms of entertainment, am capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality — and anime-themed entertainment is so obviously fantasy that I find it very difficult to take the more vitriolic criticisms of it seriously, particularly when they’re delivered with such furious anger that it often becomes clear that the one raging has very little actual experience with the work in question beyond the most superficial knowledge — see that Official Nintendo Magazine piece.

I often find myself wondering if fans of other niche interests find themselves subject to similar scorn. Is one of my dearest friends, who is such a fan of heavy machinery (whether military or agricultural) that he describes his reaction to various hulking metal beasts in terms of how “tumescent” they make him, likewise a “pervert” for talking about things in this way? Of course not. Whether or not they really do make him tumescent is neither here nor there, and is nothing but his own business; his own personal interest in such things is something that is important to him, something that I respect and something that, on several occasions, has in fact led me to checking out things that I otherwise never would have explored for myself at all. An ultimately positive experience, in other words.

It’s a pity that not everyone feels they can be open-minded about things not immediately familiar to them, and instead jump to conclusions without bothering to investigate them for themselves. It happens in all aspects of society, not just the ultimately not-all-that-important really fandoms of various forms of entertainment, and it sucks every time it comes up, particularly when I see it upsetting people I know and like. (Or when it upsets me which, I won’t lie, it has done on a number of occasions.)

Live and let live. And perhaps, just once, ask your friend what it is about [x] that they like so much. Be willing to take a look for yourself and reconsider your opinion.

And if you still don’t like it? Don’t be an ass to people who do.

1516: New Dawn for the Galaxy

Been looking forward to this weekend not only for the fact I had the aforementioned shitty week, but also because it’s been planned for quite a while to be a weekend of board gaming goodness, perhaps punctuated with a jaunt into starship bridge simulator Artemis tomorrow once everyone is here.

Tonight, however, we played Eclipse, a game which we’ve had a good crack at on several occasions but never actually finished. Tonight, with no commitments, no-one needing to get home in the morning or any other considerations, we finally played a full game, and it was a lot of fun.

Eclipse, for those unfamiliar, is a sci-fi “4X” (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) strategy game in which each player is attempting to build the best galactic civilisation over the course of nine rounds. You do this through a combination of researching new technology, improving the ships and starbases of your fleet, exploring the cosmos and gradually expanding your sphere of influence across the galaxy. Meanwhile, your opponents are all attempting to the same thing, too, but interestingly — and unlike a multiplayer game of Sid Meier’s classic 4X title Civilization, there’s rarely a feeling that the game is forcing you into direct conflict against other players — indeed, the majority of our game tonight was a fairly peaceful affair, with most people building up their empires in relative isolation, but there’s a pleasing feeling of “cold war” throughout; the sensation that, at any moment, things could erupt into unpleasant hostilities.

This happened in the last round of the game, with several daredevil attacks and the unfortunate loss of a couple of my systems. I still managed to come second, though, which is considerably better than I usually do in strategy games.

The thing I particularly like about Eclipse is how well designed it is. Your player information board may be full to bursting with small wooden cubes and discs, but the way the game asks you to place these and move them around means that you can always see the state of your empire at an easy glance. Take more actions in a round and your cost of upkeep will be higher; have more cubes taken off your population stock and you’ll reveal higher numbers for production of money, science and resources. It works really well.

The research system is also rather neat; it reminds me a little of the PC game Endless Space in some ways in that you have basic “blueprints” for your various ships and can upgrade and retrofit them over the course of the game according to the situation. And there’s a lot of flexibility, too; I saw some mid-game success with interceptors and cruisers outfitted with powerful missiles and efficient targeting computers, while in the late game two of my opponents were slugging it out with immensely heavily armoured but not all that powerfully-armed vessels, leading to a lengthy exchange of dice rolls as they attempted to whittle one another down.

It’s a long game and a complete pain in the arse to set up due to the sheer number of pieces there are to lay out in appropriate places. There’s also a fairly hefty element of luck regarding things like initial placement and whether or not you come across powerful alien technologies to immediately add to your ship blueprints, but there’s also a pleasant feeling of being able to approach the game in your own way. I tend not to be an overly warlike player when playing something like Civilization against the computer, so I appreciate a tabletop game that doesn’t necessarily force me into direct conflict against another player until it becomes apparent that things are otherwise at a stalemate. (As it stands, I should have probably prepared better for the attack that came in the final turn, but eh; I’m happy with second place.)

The expansion supposedly improves the game in a number of areas, so we’re probably going to check it out at some point. This one is very much a “weekend game” though; it’s not one you can easily get through on a weeknight evening!

1515: Bring On the Weekend

I’m having a fairly shitty week. Not only have I not been feeling particularly 100% for a lot of it (though since I took that day off to rest and recuperate a bit, the rest of the week seems to have flown by) but a lot of things have been going frustratingly wrong, too. Nothing major or anything; just a mountain of tiny annoyances that, when added all together, just make me want to throw things.

For one thing, our coffee machine broke. It’s been working perfectly for ages — about 13 months, if our receipt is to be believed — but the other day it just decided that no, it was no longer going to pour coffee out of its spout; instead, it thought it would be a much better idea to pour the coffee inside itself instead. (I don’t even know how or why that is happening; there’s nothing blocking the spout or anything, so I can only assume one of the bits that goes voonkarankachank when you turn it on has stopped moving to where it goes clunk.) Hopefully we should be able to return it to where we got it and get it replaced, though. If not, it’s taking a trip back to Nespresso.

Then my laptop’s battery buggered up again. I only had this fixed back in January, and now it’s stopped charging again. Well, no, that’s not quite true — Windows says it’s charging and it works absolutely fine when plugged into the mains, but the battery percentage never gets off 0%. The Internet says I should try freezing it, but I’m not doing that. Fortunately, given that the machine was repaired not all that long ago, Novatech, bless ’em, are going to take a look and repair it for free. Their customer service has been consistently excellent any time I’ve needed it — which is mercifully infrequently with both my desktop and laptop systems I got from them — and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to others.

Then some documentation I sent off in order to cash in some investment I don’t really understand that my parents had been holding for me didn’t arrive at its destination, which has delayed me coming into possession of a pleasingly large amount of money which I could do with to do things like pay off my credit card and, you know, pay for things with the new house.

None of this issues are “game-breaking” as they can all be resolved pretty easily; it’s just frustrating when all this shit happens at the same time — the same day, in the case of the latter two. Hopefully it shouldn’t take too long to get them all sorted out and I can get back to being pissy at people who won’t talk about anything but Titanfall.

For now, I’m off to bed with Hatsune Miku. On the Vita. Yes.

1514: New Journeys in the Dark

We finally got around to starting a new campaign of Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition (hereafer Descent to save my own sanity) recently. We eventually abandoned our original campaign on the “finale” quest after getting a number of rules exceedingly wrong for the entire campaign, which meant that the party of heroes were exceedingly overpowered, while the Overlord (me) was vastly underpowered.

This time around, we’re going to do it right. I’m playing a hero this time around, so it’ll be fun to be on the other side of the table, and we’re also playing with the Lair of the Wyrm expansion, which adds a couple of new character classes plus rules for “rumors” and extra quests that bolt on to the existing campaign. They’re mostly fairly minor changes, but it should be fun.

The new class I’m playing as — a Geomancer — is looking like it has potential to be fun. Beginning with a ranged magic weapon and the ability to summon a stone familiar which can subsequently make use of aforementioned ranged magic weapon, levelling up eventually equips me with the ability to summon more than one stone, detonate them and blast enemies in the vicinity, and all sort of other happy funtimes.

I actually haven’t really explored the other classes all that much, but the way Descent is designed makes for an interesting set of combinations. Each player gets to pick a hero character, and that hero has fixed stats and special abilities (one of which can always be used, one of which may only be used once per “encounter” in a quest) — but from there, you can pick one of several specific classes for that hero’s archetype. This allows for a ton of variety, particularly given that the game and the expansion certainly don’t skimp on the available heroes. I’m looking forward to working through the campaign and getting a feel for how my character fits into the party as a whole.

The game continues to impress me as a good balance between cooperative and competitive, strategic and thematic play. It is, I think, one of the best games in our collection for keeping pretty much everyone around the table happy for one reason or another, and thus I’m always glad to be able to get it out.

As I think I’ve probably mentioned before, one of the things I particularly like is that it isn’t a straightforward dungeon crawl, despite how it positions itself on its packaging and in its marketing. No, instead it’s more of a small-scale skirmish game in which a small team of heroes faces off against a modest force of monsters, with both sides trying to complete objectives that are usually a lot more interesting than just “kill all of the other team”. In the introductory quest, for example, the Overlord’s task is to get five goblins off the map — and said goblins keep respawning even if the heroes kill them. The heroes, meanwhile, are tasked with defeating a strong boss monster while simultaneously attempting to block the flow of goblins. All of the quests are like this to one degree or another; it gives the game a pleasant feeling of asymmetry while keeping things interesting for both sides and preventing it from becoming mindless hack-and-slash.

There’s also a really nice system of dice for combat. A basic attack uses a blue six-sided die, which determines whether or not you hit and a small amount of damage. Equipped weapons then add additional dice to this basic die of either the yellow or red variety. Yellow dice do less damage overall, but they have more in the way of “surges” — energy markers that, when rolled, can be used to trigger special abilities. They can also be used to increase the range of ranged weapons — in order to hit something at range, you have to roll a high enough number as well as hitting with the blue die. Red dice, meanwhile, are largely focused on dealing more damage.

On top of that, there are brown, grey and black defense dice that reflect how much protection a character has thanks to their equipment and innate abilities — but then certain weapons have a “pierce” skill that allows them to ignore some defense. The systems all gradually build on top of each other, but things never get overwhelmingly complicated. It’s satisfying.

In fact, the only thing I’m really not a fan of about Descent is that the box insert it comes with is absolute garbage — in fact, I chucked in in order to get everything fitting in the box a bit better. Between all the miniatures, the zillion tokens and the big thick cardboard map tiles, there’s a lot of stuff in that box, though, and it’s tricky to keep it organised. I’m going to have to look into a better storage solution for it if I want to play it a bit more often, I think!