#oneaday Day 867: Horrified

Apparently Nintendo did some thing today, but I haven't been paying attention. The reason for this is that I was (still am, in fact) at my friend's house playing a series of excellent board games, including Ticket to Ride, Puerto Rico, 7 Wonders and Arkham Horror.

I really like Arkham Horror, though it takes so long to play and we almost inevitably start so late that we rarely finish a complete game. Tonight, we actually got to the end of a game. Okay, it was by losing. But that's still something, at least.

For the uninitiated, Arkham Horror is a cooperative board game that uses HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos to excellent effect, challenging players to compete against all odds in a desperate struggle to prevent various old, evil things from returning to the Earth. It is very strongly thematic, featuring a particularly prominent sense of emergent narrative as the players compete against the game itself in an attempt to come out on top… and usually fail.

The reason Arkham Horror is such a challenge is to do with its complexity. It's not complex in the sense that it's difficult to understand — each of the basic mechanics are pretty straightforward, in fact — but it is complex in the sense that there are a lot of rules to remember, many of which are very easy to forget. There really is nothing worse in a gaming session than snatching victory from the jaws of defeat and then realising to your horror that you've actually been playing it wrong somewhere along the line. It kind of takes the edge off your victory somewhat.

It's frustrating to lose, too. The game puts up a hell of a fight (no pun intended) against the players. Sometimes things seem to be going well then everything just goes disastrously wrong for reasons that seem to have been out of your control. On reflection, though, it is usually the case that such a fate could have been avoided — and anyway, if you were practically guaranteed a win every time, where would the fun be? As it is, Arkham Horror is the board game equivalent of something like Dark Souls — it kicks you repeatedly in the testicles each time you play, and the only way to improve is to practice. This isn't always practical, unfortunately, given that the game's large box contains approximately a million components and takes a long time to set up. The game is, however, possible to play solo, which is always a bonus in my book.

If you're looking for a fun, challenging cooperative game to play with friends on a long, rainy afternoon, Arkham Horror certainly fits that bill well. And if the base game isn't challenging enough for you, the various expansions ensure that not only will the play area take over most of your living room, but you'll be battling the Ancient Ones until the small hours.

#oneaday Day 832: The Seven Wonders of Waterdeep

So, birthday number 31 has been and gone and it's been a pleasant one. It's been a rather more low-key affair than last year's few days of awesomeness that Andie arranged, but it's still been a fine day filled with good friends, board and computer games, cookies, coffee and Catan.

I wanted to talk a little bit about two of the board games we played today that weren't Catan — 7 Wonders and Lords of Waterdeep. These two titles are relatively new to me (in fact, today was the first time I'd even seen Lords of Waterdeep, let alone played it) but I like them both a great deal. They're very different from one another, so let's take them one at a time.

7 Wonders is a card game based around the concept of civilisation-building. Unlike many other civ-building games, however, a game of 7 Wonders is over and done with relatively quickly thanks to its simple, elegant mechanics.

The game is split into three "ages", each of which has its own deck of cards. These are dealt out equally to each player to give them a unique hand. Each player then picks one of the cards from the hand and passes the rest on to the next player. Some cards may be built for free, some require the payment of gold coins (represented by cardboard chits) and some require specific resources to use.

Resources are depicted in an abstract manner by cards — unlike games like Catan, though, they are not expended when used. Rather, they represent a player's potential to produce a certain amount of that resource per turn. For example, if a player has two cards with "wood" symbols down on the table, they may play a card which requires one or two "wood" resources to use, but the wood is not expended in the process. In order to get the ball rolling, each civilisation has its own "starting resource" which it doesn't require any cards to make use of — and player may pay gold to one another to "borrow" resources. Again, this does not expend the other player's resources, nor does it stop them from using the same resources themselves.

Cards are split into several different types — basic resources (wood, stone, brick, ore), luxury resources (glass, silks, papyrus), trade buildings (which generally allow players to acquire resources from other players for cheaper), point cards (which simply score points), guild cards (which provide bonuses at the end of the game for certain specific cards), military cards (which represent a civilisation's military strength in an abstract manner) and science cards. Science cards form the basis of the game's most complex mechanic — collecting sets of the same type of "science" provides the player with points to the value of the number of cards squared, while collecting one of each of the three "science" symbols provides the player with a further 7 points.

Players may also choose to build a stage of their civilisation's Wonder. This costs several resources and prevents the player from using a card that turn in the process — however, this can be a good strategic means of preventing the next player from getting a card they really want. Building a Wonder stage either provides the player with points or a special ability of some description. Some allow cards to be acquired for free, others allow players to rifle through the discard deck and build something which is already out of play, others still bend the rules in different ways.

At the end of each "age", players tot up their military strength cards and compare them to the players on either side of where they are sitting. If their military strength is greater than their neighbour, they gain a point bonus that increases with each "age". If it is weaker, they take a score penalty. This remains the same — -1 — in each stage of the game.

At the end of the game, all scores are totalled up and whoever has the most points wins. Simple.

7 Wonders is a fun game because it's quick to pick up and understand (despite what my description above may read like to you, it's actually fairly straightforward to learn even if you're a complete board game newbie) and fast-paced. There's little in the way of "analysis paralysis" as people agonise over which cards to play, and you can get through an entire game in well under an hour. Despite its brisk pace, it has plenty of depth, though, and various randomised elements provide each session with a degree of variety.

Recommended, then.

Lords of Waterdeep, meanwhile, is a Dungeons and Dragons-themed building game where each player is competing to score the most victory points by the end of a limited number of turns. Most of these victory points come from the completion of "quests", most of which require the expenditure of resources and money — in this case, the resources being adventurers of various types. This is D&D, after all!

The basic gameplay is quite similar to Agricola. A variety of "action spaces" are available on the board, and players take it in turns to place one of their "agents" on a space to claim it and perform its action. These actions range from simply taking resources or currency to more complex activities such as playing "intrigue cards".

Quests are completed simply by having the appropriate combination of resources on hand, at which point the player flips over the completed quest card and takes any rewards printed on it. Quests are divided into several different categories, and at the start of the game each player receives a secret card telling them which categories of completed quests will score them bonus points at the end of the game.

The aforementioned "intrigue cards" provide a lot more interaction than something like Agricola in that they are typically used to attack other players or benefit whoever is playing them in some way. Some cards allow the player to steal resources from others. Others simply force other players to give up resources, or allow the player playing the card an extra turn. They can turn the tide of a round completely almost immediately, and provide great scope for both laughs and wanting to throw chairs at your opponents.

Players may also build buildings in the city, which become extra action spaces but typically provide a bonus to whoever "owns" the building when used. The exact buildings which turn up in the game are randomised, too, so there's an element of chance and uncertainty to what is coming up rather than the more predictable turn order of Agricola.

I enjoyed Lords of Waterdeep a lot. I'd need to play it a few more times to understand its nuances, but I felt like I understood what I was doing a lot better than Agricola. (I am constantly comparing to Agricola because mechanically it is relatively similar, though arguably less complex.) At no point did I feel I was "out of my depth" or being "left behind" — there was always something worthwhile to do, but it never felt like there were too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, which is my biggest bugbear with Agricola. It's not a "beginners'" game by any means, but for those who enjoy a good Eurogame and have any fondness for D&D, it's a worthwhile investment of your time.

Two great games, then; if you're a board game fan, be sure to check 'em out. And if you're at all interested in the hobby but perhaps don't know a great deal about it, I strongly suggest you check out Wil Wheaton's new YouTube show Table Top, in which he sits down with a variety of famous people (well, famous geeks, mostly) to play a game, explaining it along the way. It's a good way to get a feel for how a game works — including the dynamic of group interaction during play. So far they've covered Catan and Small World.

And on that note, time for bed, I think. Night-night.

Pete, age 31

#oneaday Day 732: Last Night on Earth

So I'm back in the UK after a long, turbulent and ache-inducing flight. A necessary evil when dealing with international travel, of course, so I'm not going to complain too much.

Andie and I both fell asleep for a bit in the early afternoon once we got back. I know they say that's a bad idea but we were both exhausted to the point of mild delirium. I awoke a short while later relatively refreshed but still zombie-like, had a shower and prepared to head off to my good friend Sam's abode for some board gaming goodness. His wife is away, so he wanted to take advantage of the situation with a "boys' night". Our definition of "boys' night" doesn't involve drinking and going out on the pull; it involves playing board games until 3AM.

And that's what we did. We got in some good time with a number of new titles, including Last Night on Earth and 7 Wonders.

The latter was a pleasant surprise. Many building and resource management games are very time-consuming and complex, but this one is very straightforward. The relatively simple mechanics belie a wealth of strategies, and the card-based nature of the game means that there's a pleasing element of randomness.

Last Night On Earth is at the other end of the spectrum — "Ameritrash" to 7 Wonders' "Eurogame", if you will. (For the uninitiated, "Ameritrash" refers to board games with strong thematic content but simple mechanics that are light on the head-scratching strategy, while "Eurogames" are the opposite, focusing more on mechanics and strategy, often presenting their thematic content in a somewhat abstract way. Both are fine uses of your time, despite the disparaging implications of the word "Ameritrash", but many gamers typically gravitate towards one kind of game or the other as the situation demands.)

As it happened, Last Night on Earth is a good game for the end of the night. Its mechanics are simple and straightforward, but it encourages you to imagine the movie scenes of the virtual zombie horror that you are playing out on the board in front of you. Instead of simply collecting cards and following movement rules, you're imagining, say, Jenny the farmer's daughter fleeing for her life through the cornfields as she is pursued by a relentless horde of zombies; Sheriff Anderson boldly protecting his son from harm by blowing a zombie's head off with a shotgun at point blank range; Jake the "drifter" stumbling around in the darkness, barging shambling zombies out of the way. (Kudos to the game for covering all the zombie movie tropes along the way, too, including a card which implies two opposite-sex player figures inhabiting the same space will want to shag each other, causing them to miss their respective turns.)

Now it's 3.27AM and I should sleep. There's more gaming to be done tomorrow. And then more sleep. Lots more sleep.

Oh, also, I'm now officially into my third year of daily blogging. Go me!

#oneaday Day 727: Together Apart

You know what it's like. You want to play with friends but they all live on the other side of the world to you, so you can never find a convenient time to play together, and as such, you never get the chance to take each other on.

Not so if you happen to have a smartphone or tablet. There's a bunch of asynchronous multiplayer games out there for you to play, meaning that you can take it in turns to play together when it's convenient for each of you. While it's not quite the same as playing live, it's the next best thing.

But what are these games? Well, focusing on iOS, here's a few:

…With Friends

Whatever you may think of Zynga the company, it publishes some of the most popular multiplayer titles in the iOS library: Chess, Words, Hanging and Scramble With Friends.

Of these four games, Scramble is my favourite because it's quick and easy to play, and impossible to cheat at. Words is far too open to abuse (there are tons of "cheat" apps on the App Store), Hanging is a bit boring and, well, I suck at Chess.

The fact that, at the time of writing, I am unbeaten at Scramble certainly helps!

Disc Drivin'

If you've ever flicked a coin around a makeshift course or played that racing game where you flick wooden discs around a racetrack, Disc Drivin' is for you. Offering a bunch of courses, some powerups and the ability to play with up to three friends, this is a fun one for a while, though lacks depth.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a brilliant entry-level board game, and its iOS version, while relatively expensive, is an excellent port. Offering not only a great port of the base game but also a fun solitaire puzzle mode, this is a personal favourite.

Ascension: Wrath of the Godslayer

A great card game, as discussed the other night. Ascension lends itself well to the asynchronous format because players compete with one another for points, but turns are pretty self-contained. What little direct interaction there is between players is easily resolved at the start of the next player's turn. The only thing this one is missing is a chat facility — you just play.

Starbase Orion

I admit I haven't spent a huge amount of time with this yet, but it's probably the deepest game on this list. Playing out like Master of Orion (or sort of Civ in space, if you like), this is a lengthy, complex game that strategy buffs will have a blast with in either single or multiplayer.

Hero Academy

The newest title on this list, Hero Academy from Orcs Must Die! developer Robot Entertainment is a turn-based combat strategy game that combines elements of DOTA, tower defense, Final Fantasy Tactics and, err, Scrabble. (Yes, really.) Providing players with a "rack" of units and abilities to use each turn, then allowing five actions per turn, this is a simple to understand but tough to master game with a lot of potential for awesome development in the future — new teams, maps and other possibilities are all in the works.

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So there we go. If you have an iOS device and you're looking for some multiplayer action you can fit around your life rather than having to set aside hours at a time, the above are a great place to start.

Do you have any recommendations to add? Let me know in the comments!

#oneaday Day 725: The Godslayer is Still a Bit Peeved

I'm a big fan of Ascension: Wrath of the Godslayer on iOS. It introduced me to an excellent deck-building card game and provides some excellent transatlantic asynchronous multiplayer fun. Always a bonus.

I'd been intending to check out the physical version for some time but hadn't seen a copy of it anywhere. Until today, that is, when I found not only the original Wrath of the Godslayer set, but also a new package known as Storm of Souls.

I shan't get into the nitty-gritty of Ascension's mechanics here as those of you reading this will either already know what it's all about or have the good sense to look it up for yourself. Suffice to say its a deck-building game with some superficial similarities to Dominion, but a much faster pace of play and a greater focus on "combat" of sorts, though not specifically against another player. Rather, all participants in the game compete against the game itself, and whoever does the best is declared the winner and the Lord of All Awesomeness, or something. There is a plot, but as tends to happen with many board and card games, it has little to no importance on how the game actually pans out.

For those already familiar with Ascension, Storm of Souls adds a few new bits and pieces. Firstly, it adds a bunch of new cards. These can be combined with Wrath of the Godslayer's cards to have games for up to six people at once. I haven't tried this yet, but I can imagine it's a very different dynamic to two-player games.

Secondly, a new Event mechanic allows cards to enter play that have ongoing effects. For example, one Event strengthens the Cultist "cannon fodder" enemies, making them more difficult to defeat but also making them worth more points. Others add modifiers to certain cards, some of which require you to think about the order in which you play your cards much more than in Wrath of the Godslayer.

Then there's the Trophy mechanic. Rather than Banishing certain monsters, putting them out of the game forever, certain monsters can be kept as trophies and banished at a later time for various benefits. This adds an extra layer of strategy which is very welcome.

As with many deckbuilding games, the joy of Ascension comes in building good synergies of cards and then unleashing them in a vast combo attack that looks suitably impressive. While it takes time to build up to this point in Dominion, in Ascension you're there within a turn or two, particularly if you pay careful attention to Events and the type of cards you're playing.

So is the new version any good? Most definitely. Tonight has been an all-nighter of play, hence the lateness of this entry — haven't been to bed yet! I hasten to add that it hasn't been Ascension that we've been playing all night — we also took on Dominion and Last Night on Earth. Ascension was the clear favourite though, particularly as its setup is straightforward enough to make three games in a row a very practical prospect.

So, I shall certainly look forward to playing it more in the future, and if you're a fan of the deckbuilding subgenre of card games, I suggest you check it out. And if you don't want to splurge on the physical edition, be sure to check out the excellent iOS version — a faithful adaptation that is very well designed for the small screen and the mobile platform.

Now if you'll excuse me, I better get some sleep…

#oneaday Day 723: The Escapist

Escapism is cool, and an important and valid method of keeping yourself sane.

There are, of course, many means of escapism, and different ones are more or less effective for different people.

There's the escapism of a child giving life to the inanimate lumps of plastic they own. Without a child, they're just potential, models, things to be looked at, without life. Add a child (or, more specifically, someone still in possession of their childish imagination) and something magical happens — those objects come alive, engaging in battles to save the galaxy; heroic adventures; or even just a normal day in a normal street.

Then there's the escapism of a good book. Good readers also have one of the most important qualities of a good creative writer: that active imagination again. But it's partly also down to the writer to create a convincing world, compelling characters and a reason for the reader to commit part of their life to staring at tiny print on paper, e-ink or an LCD display. You know a writer's done their job properly if you can hear the characters' voices, see the places they're in, picture the things they're doing. And as a reader, your interpretation and mental imagery might not be the same as the writer (or indeed the person who designed the book's cover) — but that doesn't make it any less valid.

There's the escapism of interactive entertainment. Instead of passively observing an unfolding story, you become a part of it. It doesn't have to be an explicit narrative as such — a long game of Civilization tells a story just as much as a chapter of Heavy Rain. The meaning the player chooses to assign to the experience is what makes interactive entertainment special.

There's the escapism of film. Increasingly designed as memorable spectacles these days, a good movie plunges its audience into darkness before casting them into a whole new world. It could be a world of giant robots; of CIA agents; of lads on a pulling holiday. For those couple of hours, though, the outside world ceases to matter.

There's the escapism of a good TV show. When you find a show that resonates with you, you want to stick with those characters, to find out what makes them tick, what they want, what they find challenging. You cheer for their successes, feel bad when they encounter adversity. And given the amount of time you spend with the cast of a TV show over an average run of a moderately successful show these days, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the cast might feel like "friends" by the time you're through.

And there's the escapism of music. Music is a powerful imaginative stimulus, but again it means different things to different people. For one person it might stir up dormant memories. For another it might encourage them to close their eyes and picture themselves in a whole new situation. For yet another it might have an emotional impact that reflects the things that are weighing on their mind at that moment in time. And for others still it might inspire them to push forward, to do their best, to power on through and do that extra set at the gym, or put in that extra bit of effort at homework.

All this isn't even getting into what it means to be a creator as opposed to a consumer of all the above media, either.

The fact is, the world can be, at times, a bit of a sucky place. Having something comforting to escape into, whatever form that escapism might take, is important. No-one likes to feel trapped, so even if it's only for a short while, escape into something awesome and return to the real world refreshed, invigorated and ready to tackle any challenges it might want to throw at you.

And if you don't have anything like that? Then you need to have more fun.

#oneaday Day 710: On the Brink

I got a copy of Pandemic and its expansion On The Brink for Christmas. I've played Pandemic a few times with my semi-regular board game buddies, but I've never owned my own copy until now. (Obviously. Otherwise it'd be a fairly poor choice of gift.) As such, I've been taking advantage of actually owning it by playing it a good few times. We had a three player game on Christmas Day, I tried a solo game (me controlling two characters) last night, and Andie and I played (and won!) a two player game this evening.

"But whoa there, hold up, soldier," I hear you say. "What the hell is this game and why should I care?"

Well, I believe I've mentioned it before on this very blog, but I don't expect you to go digging back through over 700 posts to find it, so allow me to explain. Those of you who already know the game, shush for a minute.

Pandemic is a cooperative game based on, as you may have gathered from the title, attempting to cure a series of particularly nasty diseases which are attacking the world. (The game never gives the diseases names beyond "blue", "red", "black" and "yellow" but players inevitably come up with their own interpretation of what each colour represents.) There are four diseases which players must cure in the base game, and the expansion adds a couple of optional scenarios which can introduce a fifth "purple" disease into the mix via various means.

Players win if they cure all four (or five) diseases. This is achieved by collecting cards — the base mechanic is that collecting five cards of the same colour and using them at a research centre allows you to discover a cure of that colour. Cards are acquired either by trading with other players — a somewhat difficult process due to the requirement for both traders to be in the city depicted on the card which is being traded — or drawn at the end of each turn.

Simple enough so far. A twist is added by the fact that each player has a "role" which gives them some form of special ability. The Scientist player, for example, only has to collect four cards of a colour to discover a cure, while the Researcher is able to give any card to a player they share a space with, not just the card depicting the city they're in.

Alongside this, each turn the diseases spread. The board starts with nine different cities being infected to varying degrees, represented by coloured cubes. Each turn, a number of different cards, also depicting cities, are drawn, and a cube is added to each pictured location. Should a location "overflow" by adding a cube beyond the maximum of three, an "Outbreak" occurs, spreading the disease to all surrounding cities, adding a cube to all of these as well. This can cause chain reactions if players are not careful, so an important part of the game's strategy is knowing when to focus on getting cards to whoever is working on the cures, and when to travel around the globe treating the most pestilent areas. When players are drawing cards to take into their hands, there's also the possibility of an Epidemic occurring, meaning one city immediately gets blasted with three cubes' worth of infection (potentially causing an Outbreak if it's already infected) as well as reshuffling all of the previously-used Infection cards back together and placing them on top of the unused cards — meaning that previously-infected areas will see the disease spreading again, rapidly spiralling out of control if steps aren't taken to contain the contagion.

The Outbreaks are an important factor to consider, since if eight of them occur in a game, everyone immediately loses. Everyone also immediately loses if there aren't enough cubes of a particular colour left in the supply to put on the board (representing the fact that the disease is so out of control it will never be cured) or if the "draw deck", from which players pull two cards each turn, runs out of cards (representing the team taking too long over their objective). Conversely, the only way to win is to discover all four (or five) cures, though it's not also necessary to wipe the board clean of cubes. That said, curing then wiping out (or "eradicating") a disease has a big benefit for players — an eradicated disease never comes back, not even in an Epidemic. (There's a variant in the On The Brink expansion which allows a disease to come back after being eradicated if it's been selected as the Virulent Strain, but I haven't tried this yet.)

If all this sounds complicated, don't fear. The people I've played this with to date have all picked up the mechanics very quickly. It's actually very straightforward to play and features a nice blend of theme, strategy and luck. There are times when the deck is stacked against you, leading to seemingly unwinnable situations, but the lovely thing about the game is that everything can turn at a moment's notice. Victory can be snatched from the jaws of defeat — and vice versa. And because everyone's in it together — this is a cooperative game — it's a wonderful moment when victory finally comes.

In short, then, if you're getting in to the world of board games beyond Monopoly, Pandemic is one you should definitely check out. From what I've seen so far, the expansion adds a significant amount of good content to the game — the base game can simply be enhanced by the addition of a number of new roles if you're not feeling confident enough to take on the Virulent Strain, Mutation or Bio-Terrorist challenges — but the basic package will provide you with many hours of fun, whether you're playing with friends or solo. (Don't be fooled by that "2-4 players" on the box — you most certainly can play with one or five people, especially with the expansion, but be warned; adding more players to the mix actually makes the game somewhat more difficult.)

Want to know more? The ever-helpful BoardGameGeek has more information than you could ever want.

#oneaday Day 637: Card-Carrying Lunatic

I like card games. I'm not sure why. It's one of those things where something indefinably pleasant goes through my head when I think of holding cards, seeing (hopefully) gorgeous artwork and enjoying a game that (in most cases) combines elements of luck with skill and strategy. It may be something to do with the fact that, statistically, I appear to be better at card games than I am at some full-on board games — particularly Agricola and Power Grid, it has to be said — but I'm not sure that's quite the right reason.

I've started playing a couple of good games on iOS recently. One, Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is, I believe, an adaptation of an actual proper physical card game. It's one of those games that initially sounded horrendously complex, with all manner of stats and numbers floating around to make lesser men and women tremble in their +5 Boots of Courage. But, in fact, it's a rather simple game with very straightforward mechanics and, like the best games, it's all about what you do with those mechanics that makes it interesting to play.

Essentially, the game revolves around building a deck of cards and making use of their various abilities to score as many points as possible. Points are scored by purchasing cards using the Runes stat, and by defeating monsters using the Power stat. Both Runes and Power are acquired by playing thematically-appropriate cards and adding up their totals to provide a pool of points to "spend" each turn — for example, Apprentices add Runes and allow you to purchase additional cards, while Militia adds Power and allows you to kick the bottom of monsters.

Points are acquired as you go along but also tallied up at the end of the game, so there's an element of uncertainty as you go along — additional points are added according to the value of purchased cards at the end, while defeated monsters and cards with point-scoring special abilities grant their rewards immediately.

That's about it — you buy cards, you kill monsters, repeat until the available pool of points is depleted. Then, if you're anything like me, repeat until bored, which is, in my experience so far, a very long time away.

My experience with the iOS version has certainly made me curious to check out the physical version, though I hear its components aren't up to much. Based on this and Dominion, which I do own a physical copy of and which seriously needs an iOS adaptation, however, I think I can say with some confidence that I enjoy deck-building games.

The second game I've given a shot is a slightly different deal. Shadow Era is more along the lines of a CCG like Magic: The Gathering rather than using the preset cards of Ascension. As such, there's (arguably) a lot more variety, and the game involves a lot more in the way of direct conflict between players than Ascension does — the latter involves a number of cards which indirectly screw over other players rather than attacking them directly, while Shadow Era is an outright fight between the two participants.

I've only had one game of Shadow Era so far but it seems like a solid game, and props to it for offering virtual cards for either real money or, for the more patient, from in-game soft currency, or hard acquired through levelling up. I'll report back further on it when I've given it a bit more time, along with Kard Combat, codesigned by Richard "Magic: The Gathering" Garfield.

#oneaday Day 628: Roleing Wit Da Players

Reading a little about Corvus Elrod and Zakelro's innovative storytelling game Bhaloidam over on Kickstarter brought to mind my past experiences with tabletop roleplaying. I haven't done as much of it as I'd have liked to over the years, but the few experiences I have had were excellent ones.

I was a member of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign at university for a while. My character, a thief named Singol Nithryan, was something of a cheeky chappy and there was some excellent banter and rivalry between him and my friend Tim's character, who was a pompous prig who thought himself better than everyone else. The characterisation of the rivalry between these two characters was completely unscripted, but with each session the plans to outfox each other (well, mostly for Singol to outfox the other chap, whose name I have sadly forgotten) became more and more elaborate. Most times the party settled down to camp tended to end up with Singol cutting his compatriot's purse and "borrowing" some money — the absence of which his companion often didn't notice for some time. They weren't enemies, though — it was good-natured friendly rivalry for the most part, and it made for a fun inter-party dynamic.

To be honest, I can't remember a lot about the campaign itself and I'm not sure we ever finished it — but we certainly had a blast along the way, and that's sort of the point. While computer RPGs are all about powerlevelling and reaching the cap as soon as possible, a tabletop experience is all about the storytelling, the interacting and the emergent gameplay that results from cutting loose and improvising a little bit.

The best example of this came with what our mutual friend Will called his "freeform" roleplaying system. It was a system he'd come up with by himself, and it was very simple, requiring, as I recall, only three stats: attack, defense and power. According to the situation, points from each of these stats were spent on various actions, with more points (usually from the power pool) meaning a greater chance of success.

Again, though, it wasn't about the mechanics, which were almost irrelevant. In fact, the simplicity of the mechanics meant that it was possible — and indeed encouraged — to play bizarre, leftfield characters that simply would have no place in a traditional, say, D&D campaign. As such, our adventuring party — whose backstories we each provided to Will beforehand for him to weave an improvised campaign around — was not your typical RPG lineup to say the least. No, it was a wildly disparate group of… things, that I'd hesitate to call "adventurers" even.

Probably the most normal of the bunch was my character, Rush Hurin, who was born from my wondering what might happen if you combined traditional fantasy tropes with sci-fi. Rush was the last of the elves, and he came from a futuristic Deus Ex-style setting. As the last of his kind, he was a highly sought after commodity. People wanted to do research on him, in other words, but he had absolutely no desire to submit to the demands, prods, pokes and scalpels of some scientists. Consequently, he spent a lot of his life on the run, but, being an elf, had immense agility and was a badass with a sword.

Alongside Rush came Tyrael, played by my friend Tim who was (is) somewhat obsessed with Diablo at the time. Tyrael was a fallen angel in human form who had the ability to, I quote, "go all big and flamey" and also suffered from something of a lack of self control. In one memorable sequence, Rush was fleeing from a skyscraper while Tyrael was turning into his full, multi-storey "big and flamey" form in order to cause some chaos and allow me to escape. That was interesting.

Next up was Arryth (I don't know how you spelled it), who was an animated suit of armour. Was he a ghost possessing the armour? Was he a sentient suit of armour? We never quite found out, but he proved to be a valuable ally on more than one occasion.

Not as valuable as the Luggage from Discworld, however, who had a predilection for devouring our enemies and, occasionally, spitting them back out again, somewhat confused, into the midst of a tricky situation. He also proved useful for carrying our gear.

Finally came a character I can't remember the name of, and who was simply an amorphous cloud of pink gas. It didn't talk much, but it made a good spy and also had the useful ability for flying down opponents' windpipes and choking them from the inside.

Together, we endured some bizarre adventures which Will was clearly making up as he went along, placing signs in rooms he wasn't ready for us to visit yet which said "come back later!" and getting his mental challenges from one of those massive puzzle books your parents would buy you on holiday to keep you quiet — before handhelds and smartphones came along, of course. To call our adventures chaotic would be an understatement, to say the least.

But you know what? Those are some of the fondest memories I have of my few sessions roleplaying. It wasn't about grinding for experience points, making use of my abilities or powergaming — it was about improvisatory, collaborative storytelling, and it was one hell of a lot of fun.

The reason that Bhaloidam has given me such cause for curiosity is that it sounds like something strangely along the same lines to Will's system. It's a little more complex, sure, featuring a system to determine how much players influence the game world (and each other) prior to "performing" their actions, but at heart it's, like our experiences, designed for freedom. It has the scope for telling interesting stories that move far beyond traditional fantasy and RPG tropes and into something that's not quite roleplaying and not quite improvisatory theatre. It's a highly interesting concept, is what it is, and I'll be very curious to see how it turns out in the final project.

If you're interested, too, check out the Kickstarter page for the project here — you can even help fund its first production run. If you're a Google+ user, I also strongly recommend popping designer Corvus Elrod and his amazing moustache in your circles.

#oneaday Day 565: Board Stupid

Board game enthusiasts often get a bit snobby about the more "mainstream" games out there. Sometimes this is with good reason — Monopoly is pretty tedious, after all, and is inclined to go on for hours and hours and hours because no-one really knows the rules properly. But there's a few amongst the pile that are actually worth playing.

Scrabble, first and foremost, is still a great game, as anyone who's played Words with Friends or the numerous Facebook ripoffs will be able to attest. Simple, effective, clear rules, well balanced play and a nice sense of competition — plus the requirement to actually use your brain rather than play based entirely on luck.

Lexicon is an interesting card game based around building and modifying words. It's very quick to play but it's pretty fun, plus random enough to provide a different play experience each time.

Rummikub is an odd game that makes your brain hurt after a while. Ostensibly very simple, the mechanics of the game actually require that you remain very observant throughout and plan ahead.

Yahtzee is a decent game, though mostly luck-based. It has a nice element of poker-like gambling to it though ultimately there's not a huge amount of depth. Word Yahtzee, on the other hand, is a much better — if less well-known — game. Requiring you to build words according to specific criteria (such as "two letters", "three words" and the like) the game requires much more in the way of brainpower than regular Yahtzee but as a result is significantly more difficult.

I remember board games being a staple gift at Christmas and birthdays when I was young. Theme-heavy games such as The Gunge Game and The Bigfoot Game were often filled with exciting plastic bits and pieces but tended to be largely based on luck. Titles such as Scrabble, Yahtzee, Rummikub and the like were often set aside due to their focus on mechanics and strategy rather than theme. But it's those games that stand the test of time a whole lot better — I have no desire to ever play The Gunge Game again, for example, despite its awesome little rubber snot-monsters. I played Lexicon, Yahtzee and Rummikub tonight, however, and I expect I will do so again.

Interestingly, a lot of these classic games have now spawned a bunch of more quick-playing spinoffs. Monopoly, for example, now has a card-based variant named Monopoly Deal. Monopoly Deal is, ironically, significantly better than Monopoly, largely because a game takes about twenty minutes (if that) rather than three bajillion hours. Scrabble also has a couple of variants, such as the fast-playing, hectic Scrabble Dash card game which is a lot of fun but probably better with more people. And there's variants on Cluedo and Boggle out there, too.

So while some classics may not, in fact, be the best games in the world — some of them genuinely are, and in some cases they've spawned spinoffs that are decent things to play in their own right. So while I'm not saying you should cast aside your copies of Catan and Power Grid just yet, dust off that Scrabble box once in a while and give it a chance. You might be surprised.