Let's talk about Battlestar Galactica

I have all three BSG expansions, but you probably do need the combined rules because, while I admire what they were going for, the expansions add layers of, ahem, chrome that, at least in my limited experience, didn't improve on things much, and the worst is probably when the expansions start overwriting the expansions' earlier rules or replacing their components. But, like I said, noble effort.

I . . . do not like Homeland (game). It's slimmer but about one-tenth as interesting to me.

I'll be contrarian and say that I mostly enjoyed BSG all the way through, even unto and through the finale, but it's a show that would've been far better served with 13-episode seasons (or seasons of even fewer episodes). Twenty was just too much, and you have to blame Syfy for that, mostly. Plus, if you go back and look, while there was a gap of roughly a couple of years between the miniseries pilot and the first (short) season, there was, like, a summer between that first season and a full second season, so everyone was going pretty hard at it. But I agree that there was no "B5"-style plan, and they even had a clip show called "The Plan" that wasn't that persuasive either, as I recall.

Dark Moon is problematic because its generic setting does precisely zero heavy lifting on thematic immersion; having said that I have enjoyed some great plays of it, most likely due to the people at the table more than the game. I tried a PBF game and hated the experience because there was no life to it, just boring talk about mechanisms and dice roll risks, none of the personality of playing BSG in a forum game which I also tried a few years back and quite enjoyed.

I also feel the same way about Homeland. I have never seen the show so to me the game was just a lot of text on cards and no real drama or interest. I wonder how much of the experience is coming from player's shared experience of remembering the show because I feel that very little comes through from the game itself.

You can count me in as another person for whom BSG was a foundational modern-gaming experience. It woke me up from a Euro-stupor to the notion that a game could be about emotions and not just physical board positioning - paranoia, mistrust, rebellion, suspicion. This is tabletop gaming almost as an art-form and not just a product. Almost every action that you can take in the game has some kind of grey area to it and an argument can eventually be made against any player as these suspicious cues build up over time. It's a subtlety that knock-offs like the rebellion completely miss.

A game that for me gets co-op-traitor completely right is Hellapagos, specifically because becoming a 'traitor' is something that individual players make a conscious choice to do in light of their own selfish desire for survival at all costs. There is nothing in the game that tells you to play against the others, it just happens of it's own accord and usually by more than one person at the same time.

OhBollox wrote: The Thing seems to be outright broken at certain player counts, such that any Thing players should simply play it straight the entire game and win at the end by default. Who Goes There similarly has some design issues, including using dice for 50/50 results, making using dice pointless.

I'd much rather play The Thing from 2010: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/75828/thing

The Thing should be 7 or 8 players, no doubt. You can do 6 if everyone at the table has a few games in. Again, can’t really hold that against it because player count is the downfall for this genre pretty much across the board.

I still think Charlie is wrong in regards to Infected players playing it straight. They really shouldn’t under any circumstance because the captain will get more tests at the end of the game if the Infected players have been behaving themselves the entire game. Experienced players will also spend a little more time looking for the second flamethrower to really help narrow down who they can trust.

None of this comes with 1 or 2 plays though. It’s a very streamlined game but there are nuances that take several plays to find. I may not be a professional writer, and my opinions might get overlooked because people don’t like that I point out that Arkham Horror or Merchants & Marauders suck, but I’m telling you, The Thing is a really, really good game.

It seems that not a lot of people play Legendary Encounters: Alien with the hidden agendas. That turns the game into a potential hidden traitor game.

I’ve only managed to play it this way a couple of times, and being the “company man” one of those times, it was difficult to pull off a win. It is a real fine balancing act that I couldn’t succeed in. But it was still fun to play.

jpat wrote: ...
I'll be contrarian and say that I mostly enjoyed BSG all the way through, even unto and through the finale, but it's a show that would've been far better served with 13-episode seasons (or seasons of even fewer episodes). Twenty was just too much, and you have to blame Syfy for that, mostly. Plus, if you go back and look, while there was a gap of roughly a couple of years between the miniseries pilot and the first (short) season, there was, like, a summer between that first season and a full second season, so everyone was going pretty hard at it. But I agree that there was no "B5"-style plan, and they even had a clip show called "The Plan" that wasn't that persuasive either, as I recall.

I'm also in this boat, I loved all the seasons and I appreciated the ending and the story as a whole - I'm watching it again the last few months and it hasn't aged on me. I also didn't mind Lost once I realised what the story was all about, yes I was bloody annoyed with the strange story arcs that I would have liked a little bit more closure on. but enjoyed the show overall.
The one show I both love and hate, and it's another Damon Lindelof one, is The Leftovers - stunning writing and acting and main story arc, but it had such an underlying story that was never answered and that couldn't be glossed over by what he said the series was all about in the end (a love story).

southernman wrote:

jpat wrote: The one show I both love and hate, and it's another Damon Lindelof one, is The Leftovers - stunning writing and acting and main story arc, but it had such an underlying story that was never answered and that couldn't be glossed over by what he said the series was all about in the end (a love story).

I wrote off Lindelof years ago, but I have to admit that he totally nailed the ending of Watchmen. It was a very good show, with nearly a perfect finish.

Shellhead wrote:

southernman wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Eleven years ago, we played a game of BSG at Fortress: Ameritrash:

therewillbe.games/forum/30-pbem-pbforum/...lay-by-forum?start=0

Unfortunately, it wasn't play by forum, so you can't see the play-by-play action in the discussion thread.

That was a great game ! I had made images and a google doc to post updates as Kingput (I think) ran it for us - 11 years ago, bloody hell ... good times.

That really was one of the best plays of BSG that I ever experienced. I remember playing Apollo and going on a heroic shooting spree near the end, only to see us fall to treachery by a player that I had already determined was definitely not a Cylon. I think it was Drmabuse, or maybe SouthernMan.

I remember I was Baltar and it could have been me. That thread still has a link to the documents I made and, yes, I was a Cylon and we did break the Human morale :

Spreadsheet
Map

One of my favorite games - I'd still happily play it - but it's time has definitely passed in terms of community interest. 5 or more players is a must. Beyond Pegasus and the cylon fleet board, the expansions didn't add much to the game play that really worked. Because the fun of the game is entirely dependent on bluffing/uncertainty, skillful cylon players are a must, and like almost any bluffing game, I think the game experience benefits greatly from repeated plays with the same general group of players.