Trashdome - Fury Of Dracula VS Last Night On Earth

But seriously Barnes, tell us how you really feel here.

Michael Barnes wrote:

A good, solid, meat-and-potatoes game is fine, but tell me why the HELL I would play LNOE over, say, SIEGE OF THE CITADEL?

One of these is in print. One compelling argument to "do I play this" is "do I even have this?".

Sorry guys but LNOE sucks. It sounds fun and it should be good, but it's mediocre at best and tedious at worst. I appreciate what the designers were trying to do but the game totally fell flat on it's face here. We wanted to like it, honest. In the end I traded it off and never looked back.

On the other hand, Fury of Dracula is a classic of the many vs one genre. I prefer the GW version, but YMMV.

vote - Fury of Dracula (It's not even a contest)

-Will

There are few games I would vote for over Fury of Dracula.

Edit: So uh yeah, put me down for Fury of Dracula. (Duh)

Michael Barnes wrote:

And you know what? LNOE isn't all that thematic. Sure, it's got plenty of executive theme, but you could just as easily replace all those stupid fucking hick-ass characters with pictures of the same friends and family members done up in Party City astronaut costumes, change all the crudely drawn tiles out for spaceship pieces, replace all the zombies with alien figures, and change out the text on the items and events and it'd be the exact same game. Oh, you could make that truck an escape pod.

So you're saying that Last Night on Earth is just a Sucking Vacuum remake with a simpler, less engaging combat system. If that's possible.

Sag.

Barnes seems to be arguing for FoD like it's a piece of art. It's a game and ultimately a game is only as good as the group that plays it. Like I said (I feel like I should defend my vote here, but I shouldn't feel that way) I vote for the inferior game because it comes out more and people have more fun with it. I'm not voting for the game as the rules read, I'm not voting for it based on brilliant design, I'm not voting for it based on revolutionary ideas in gaming or any of that shit. I'm voting for a game that people want to play and that is all that counts. The people I game with. If that's what they want to play, and we have fun playing it, then fuck it. I'm having fun damnit and no amount of clever design can change that.

This is a subjective poll and people will vote likewise. If someone asked me what my favorite novel is I won't answer Finnegan's Wake, I'd answer Journey to the End of the Night... I don't actually think it's better, I just like it better. There is a difference. We need to distinguish between the two and understand that it is o.k. to do so. LNOE is a game that we have fun with. All games to me are about the meta-game more then the actual rules as they read and I always vote that way. I want to have fun, not masturbate over innovative designs.


edit: I just want to add that Zombies AND Vampires are completely played out tierd genres with little left to offer. Arguing that zombies are more boring is silly. They're both old by now and it's down to the game.

Alright, that first comment was more of a drive-by annoyance.

Let me take a little time to put some thoughts down.

First, that's a hell of a strawman (straw-Jenny?) you've got going, Barnes. You're the only person talking about the art (except some mumblings of "it's cheesy, but good enough"). Which it is. Cheesy, but distinctive and fine for the game. AtoE is much worse, but let's let bygones be bygones.

The criticisms of LNOE and the scenarios where the goal is "fish an object out of the deck" are valid. Those can get very boring. The other scenarios are better in my opinion (watering the deck with expansions makes it even worse). However, there's almost exactly the same thing going on in the early game of FoD, where the hunters wander from town to town to acquire items like "Water" and "a Stake". Meanwhile, you're pulling Drac events. Woot.

Here's my problem with FoD vs. LNoE. Fury is much more unforgiving, so it requires a lot more from the players, especially the hunters. Last Night is a wild-swinging dice game, that's meant to be free-flowing and easy. Cooperation in that game is important, but it's also somewhat easy to accomplish. Cooperation in FoD is critical, and can be somewhat hard. What that translates to on the ground is that in Fury, either all the hunters have to be good players, or somebody has to "fucking dick and then bullshit" to keep the game in line. In Last Night, because it's a simpler game, people can have fun doing the things they want to do without feeling like they're letting the game down, or the evil get away. I hate playing a hunter with people I don't know because I have to keep biting my tongue and let them play the game, even when I know they're blundering down a dead end. Otherwise, it escalates and I look like a dick. For me, being Dracula is where the fun is at in that game.

Fury is a better game for gamers. Last Night is probably more fun, especially with a variable crowd. Sometimes you can get into a soulsucking void of "move, draw cards". I'd argue that both games suffer from that. Fury even has the reverse, "move, refuse to draw cards because he might get a good one!".

What we've got here is one of those difficult-to-quantify Trashdomes where we decide if we come down on the side of "games are art, arty games are good" or "games are fun, fun games are good".

I like art. But I play Ameritrash for fun. Last Night isn't my favorite game either (or even close), but sometimes you gotta take a stand. If I'm going to vote for a gamer's game over something clearly bred for fun, I need something I like a lot more than Fury.

Vote: Last Night on Earth

Simultaneous posting of creepily similar arguments.

Zombie mind control at work, obviously.

No Sag- SUCKING VACCUUM has more theme, really.

If there is one adjective that I hate, and that pretty much automatically indicates that I'm not going to like something, it's "cheesy".

I love horror. Horror has informed pretty much every day of my life. I've been into vampires, werewolves, zombies, et. al. for literally my entire life. Horror movies are not "cheesy" to me because I don't watch the crap. When it comes to board games, if it's "cheesy" then I'd like to ask it to kindly fuck off. "Cheesy" science fiction can do the same. These are genres I really care about, and just because someone looks down their noses at them and mocks them doesn't mean that "cheesy" is OK with me.

"Cheesy" is where people retreat when they just don't get something or they've only had prefunctory experience with the worst examples. Yeah, a lot of horror and zombie movies are dumb. But the good ones aren't "cheesy".

Fuck "cheesy". Can I vote against "cheesy"?

Art is fun to me. FURY OF DRACULA isn't art, but it is incredible game design. That's fun to me. And the fact that it is totally beholden to a gothic horror theme, that's fun too. That one player is Dracula and the rest are hunters, that's fun. Fun combat, fun narrative, fun events, fun items, fun combat, fun fun fun 'til daddy takes the black coach away.

Jon Jacob- I completely agree with everything you said...but please, for the love of all that's "cheesy", don't misconstrue the purpose of Trashdome. We're not here to politely discuss the merits of each game without bias and with passive-aggressive friendly acceptance. This is a battle to the death. Be aggressive-aggressive. Stakes are high. But all that being said, in RL I completely support your right to enjoy the wrong game.

Michael Barnes wrote:

No Sag- SUCKING VACCUUM has more theme, really.

And more gameplay. You have to come to an agreement with someone (a potential adversary) to survive. And you have to be ready to break a deal on a moment's notice and realign with someone else. Last Night on Earth is Us and Them and never the two shall meet. If the players could change sides (not the pieces, the players) then that would make for an interesting game. The basic mechanics are sound enough but the scenarios are flat and the rules too limiting.

The thing I found tedious with Last Night on Earth is that in all but one of my plays (about five) the winning side was predetermined by the mix of the cards and boards, and there was nothing any of us could do to make a change to that. So it was essentially Candyland with a big-people theme on it. I had a bunch of non-gamers for one of these sessions and they seemed perplexed that there wasn't more opportunity for them to DO something of consequence. They spent all their time searching. They expected there would be more to it but there just wasn't.

Sag.

So it was essentially Candyland with a big-people theme on it.

Oof. The ultimate board game put-down. That's like a finishing move. We may as well wrap this Trashdome up and turn out the lights.

It's true...I usually could care less when cards sort of determine outcome, but it's really apparent in LNOE. If all of those lighters are whatever are at the bottom of the deck, you're just screwed and chances are all those newbie gamers you've brough on board are going to be really bummed out that they really didn't even have a chance to win in the first place.

SICK TO DEATH of "move plastic miniature, roll dice at it" games. There are great games with that formula, no doubt. But there are plenty of them at this point, and I want something more than that. SUCKING VACCUUM has that, like Sag suggested. And FoD definitely has that. Even lowly TANNHAUSER had more interesting and fun things going on than LNOE. The problem there was that they forgot to actually build a game around them.

ugh...you had me until Tannhauser

Vote = FoD

Michael "I love Sparkly Vampires" Barnes wrote:

But vampires, not even TWILIGHT can make me lose interest.

Barnes, you put up some pretty convincing arguments as to why FoD is the better game. And, in time, I am likely to find that it has way more mileage than LNoE.

But which game has my group had the most fun playing to date?

Vote: Last Night on Earth (and Jenny with the hot pants)