Re: What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

I have zero idea how, even if the GM wasn't just nerding out with his Traveler stuff for the first time in years, anyone would've expected to finish a scenario of that game in four hours in a way that would've felt satisfying to everyone involved. Whenever I think about the emergence of White Wolf's World of Darkness stuff, with its rules minimizing in favor of role-playing, I think about what probably spawned that approach and games like Traveler occur to me. So many numbers... You did the right thing.

Been wanting to try Torchlit, but not sure if anyone in the local groups has a copy.

I would visit a Middle-Earth brewpub. Probably regularly if the beer was good.

It has been a long time since I played an rpg at GenCon, but nearly every time I played, it was an above average role-playing experience, because convention GMs tend to do these things to make an adventure work in a limited time slot:

1. Pre-generated characters, especially if they come with some background text that includes some information about the player character, the other player characters, and the setting.

2. A quick start to the adventure. In medias res is the best way to get things going quickly, but an irresistible hook is also good.

3. A clear objective for the player characters. Rescue the princess. Protect the caravan. Steal the artifact. Survive. Just one or two objectives, so the players can stay focused.

Yesterday was kind of a quiet Game Day. I thought it was going to be at least three of us-Me, my wife, and my friend Nate. However, my wife woke up day of and felt terrible. So, it was just me and Nate. After catching up, we pulled out our first game.

The first one was Twilight: The Card Game Nightfall. Since I didn't want to overwhelm my friend with all the expansions, we just used the core game. Nate loves deckbuilders, as do I, so he took to it quickly. In the end, I got demolished.

The last game of the evening was Neuroshima Hex. I played Outpost and he played Hegemony. Since I had more experience with the game, I told him of optimal plays in certain areas and again he ended up beating me by 1 point. His HQ had 12, I had 11. He really liked it as well.

He also told me to stop buying games when I told him, "2 down, 26 (unplayed) to go!"

Then I told him I bought the Nemesis: Retaliation game with all the bells and whistles. I then followed up with, "At least I didn't buy G.I. Joe The Deckbuilding game!"

He gave me this face.

I finally got to play the famed Western Legends for the first time.

This game has been in my house for almost two years, unplayed so I happily accepted the invitation.

The dude organizing it is really friendly, but a bit of a completionist if that is a word, so we play with all expansions, painted minis, a neoprene map instead of the board and laser cut wooden trays, the whole shebang. Three other men in their forties are present and we set off.

These people play a lot of board games, but seem to have all started in the last ten years or so and are unaware that good games have existed before. I am surprised they like Western Legends, but do they? Or are they just going through the motions because the internet says one has to like it?
They are very busy optimizing their turns and squeezing out points and when I try to lighten up the mood with a couple of bad western-themed jokes and trash talk nobody even smiles. This is serious business.
I start to think only me and maybe the host are here to have fun and this is not fun at all. I can't help but wonder if I would want to hang out with these people without the game, the answer is of course no. Either they are very boring or they are in some kind of tournament mode.
The game lasts just over five hours and I love it as much as I'd thought I might. Still, that was too long.
I will keep looking for a nice table that better suits my idea of a nice evening. And my personality, looks like.

While having available players is great for game nights, I have never regretted firing people for future invitations if they are insufferable.

Same. There's a regular group that meets at the clubhouse of a co-op community near here and I know a couple of them from other groups and even a couple from my tournament MTG days back in the 90s but, yeah, they are all SERIOUS BOARD GAMERS. Everything is about the competition and the victory points. I showed up there my first time with Funkoverse because I thought it'd be both flexible (variable player counts) and easy to teach and got an almost universal eye roll. Since all of the SERIOUS GAMES had been filled up, one of them deigned to sit down with me and a woman who was part of the co-op but had never participated in the game gatherings. She loved it. He spared no moment to mention how he was playing under duress and was making his moves only because he had to because he "ha[d] no investment in this game whatsoever." Whatevs. Needless to say, I've never gone back, despite one of said former Magic veterans sending me the link for the schedule every month.

Re: Con RPGs. Shellhead's absolutely right on this. I think the Traveler GM probably runs a fine home game (assuming you're into the style, setting, and system) but con games are different. E.g. if I am running a D&D-like game at a con, and the session starts at 11:00am, then we introduce ourselves and pass out pregens, and at 11:01am I'd better be saying "okay, you are all in front of the dungeon entrance; what do you do?" And every minute that passes without this happening is an emergency.

Re: Western Legends. I am also a completionist and have everything for it; I just took the plunge into mini painting about a month ago (after resisting that aspect of the hobby for decades) and started painting the buildings last night. It's a fun game but absolutely not a game for hardcore competitive people. Ride your horse around the map and shank people with whisky bottles, don't waste time calculating the odds of successfully panning for gold. Those people sound pretty miserable. I only play it once a year at my annual eponymous housecon, but within about five minutes everyone at the table is speaking in a drawl and calling everyone else a durn galoot.

Played Versailles 1919, co-designed by our own Geoff Engelstein. Was hoping to do a 4-player, but only managed three, which was still fine for a learning game for all of us. Man, there are SO many moving parts in this thing and so many contextualized moving parts, in that every action you take will have ripples that affect both short-term (settling issues) and long-term (goals determined by strategy cards) strategy and you have to decide which of those ripples are the most important at any given moment. The Region chart started out moving very slowly and I was wondering if uprisings were going to have any real impact in the game. Ha! A couple rounds later and we were having an uprising on almost every turn. Sometimes the die or properly-placed military saved us. Sometimes not. That ended up being kind of key because the UK was significantly ahead in terms of points from issues settled but uprising after uprising in a couple key areas (mostly the Middle East and Balkans; surprise!) left them unable to bid enough to retain those issues, which were swiped by France and the US (me.) But the right series of issues also came down late for France that allowed them to fill in a couple key goals on their strategy card and they ended up walking away with the win, 61-47 (US)-39 (UK.) Geoff and GMT produced another excellent one which will take a number of plays to really get comfortable with and suss out the proper approaches for any given scenario. In other words, it has the Root problem, but that's a great problem to have, IMO. We probably could have done more negotiating to curb things one way or the other, but with it being the first game for all of us, I think we were still just trying to see which way the waves pushed us before really digging the oars in, as it were. Definitely going to play this one again soon.

So my weekly game night was last night and is worthy of a report to this site: played a 6-player game of Stationfall. If you're not familiar with this game, think the board game version of Space Station 13. If you're not familiar with Space Station 13, basically there's a cast of characters on a space station with their own competing agendas, and that space station will eventually blow up. In Stationfall, the station will crash into the atmosphere in about 13ish minutes (rounds), and there over a dozen of crazy characters on board. You will secretly be one of them, but you can control any of the characters by spending your influence to reach your objectives. For instance in this game I was the Engineer, who wanted the anti-matter core to detonate on-board the station, prevent any contaminated characters from escaping, and keep the artifact from escaping. Key moments:
- I was all setup to have the Engineer bust into the magnetic containment unit to grab the core when inexplicably everyone decided they want to take the Engineer across the station. Switched to have the Counselor do it, which did make me lose a few rounds, but I did arm the core to explode at the beginning of minute 2 (1-2 rounds before natural destruction).
- The Exile player did their job to pick up Kompromat (character-specific incriminating evidence), but failed to secure an escape plan for themselves and other characters they needed to score.
- We had the Legal robot in play, which meant two of the escape pods were locked until someone had the NDA from the bot. Alas, the Legal bot was launched on a broken escape pod and was Annihilated, making escape on the other two pods literally impossible.
- My Engineer revealed and made sure the other remaining pod was damaged.
- The Engineer also used the station claw to take out the Daredevil in outer space who was attempting to get the Rocket Pack from the Troubleshooter and escape with the artifact. Instead, the Daredevil player instead decided to escape the Troubleshooter to spite me from getting the artifact (the right move).
- So now it's dawning on people that the only pod they could escape on (well, there was one on the other side of the map and needed a downed character to launch, but there was no time) needed to be repaired. Well, two characters in the game could do this: The Engineer (me), who wasn't inclined to, and the Troubleshooter, who had just escaped back to Earth. No one else got off alive. I was really hoping to save the Billionaire's Dog for some extra points, but it was not meant to be.
- Security bot decided to finally start murdering people, but too little too late, and he missed the part where he needed weapons to plant on their bodies to get points for most of them. The player who was the Stranger was busy trying to keep his characters revived to get more points.
- Though I played only a little defense, the anti-matter core blew up the station on schedule and ended the game. I ended up tying with 2 other players for the win, The Stranger, which surprised me, and The Cyborg, who was aligned with my agendas and helped me along (he launched the Legal bot, for instance). The tie breaker of least cubes in the betrayal box went to me.

So this game is a rules bear, but we agreed to a rolling teach and it went just OK. You need to print out good handouts and give them to everyone that's new, that was a life-saver. I actually printed out new ones afterwards that cover the characters. You can't get too bent out of shape over this game or you may have a bad time. It started off really slow, not much interesting happening, but the last 4 rounds or so were fantastic, at least for some of us.

Finally, after a year, I got four people of interest in this kind of game together to play Weimar: The Fight for Democracy. I was sucked in by this KS when it opened because I like this style of historical sim and I'm fascinated by this time/region of history. The Weimar Republic was a period of intense transformation, not just for Germany, but the globe, but a lot of the really dynamic processes, on a cultural and public policy level, were happening in Deutschland. Plus, given current circumstances in the US, it seems highly appropriate to play a game that was at one of the root locations of the rise of fascism in the world. Weimar requires four players, as each is playing a key element in the whole scenario that simply can't be automated to any decent extent, especially since coalition governments are essential to the whole process and period. It's the SPD (socialists; moderate left), Zentrum (conservatives; moderate right), KDP (communists; hard left) and DNVP (monarchists; hard right.) Each of them play differently and have vastly different decks that enable different tendencies within the game. But at least two (Zentrum and SPD) are committed to making the republic last as long as possible so they can win by VPs, while the other two are attempting the overthrow of the regime, either through the streets or the Reichstag. It's card-driven, in that cards can be played for action points (either on the streets or debating issues) or events and sometimes both. It uses dice for a certain level of risk. It encourages heavy interaction and dealmaking, especially since two parties will almost always be in a coalition to keep the government running. And it's dripping with history on every card. It's fantastic. We made it to the end of round 3 (of 6) before the SPD, in an incongruous conclusion, triggered a foreign agreement that added a seventh and final crisis token to the nation that sent the Republic into anarchy. When a government party does that, they lose 8 VPs (which is considerable), but it still left them 1 VP ahead of the commies and gave them the win.

I was the DNVP and they start fairly slowly, but the snowball of their progression is undeniable (many of the actual DNVP would go on to become Nazis) and I was closing in on an overthrow in round 4 that would've been tough to stop. Unfortunately, our collective first play was marred by my poor interpretation of a significant rule, which would've changed the play of everyone at the table (including both me and the KPD, who could've tried for an earlier win in round 2.) But everyone was thrilled with it and talked eagerly about playing again, so I know it won't take another year to get a game in.

I played a 2p game of Captain's Chair, the follow-up to the Imperium system, last night. I'd only played it solo thus far.

It's an interesting one, a bit of a hard recommend because of its up-front complexity on cards. On the plus side, they really went a lot of the way toward solving the multiplayer solitaire accusation with the area control over planets between the players. There are a lot of points at stake and it's hard to imagine anyone ignoring it. I also think the delta in game quality between solo and 2p is much bigger in Captain's Chair than it is for Imperium.

Your choice between the games is pretty simple. If you like sorting through three hard choices per card and figuring out how to play your hand at the serious expense of a lot of shit to figure out, Captain's Chair is your game. If you like to make the deck go brrr, trimming it as much as possible and doing the classic deckbuilder thing with simpler individual card plays, Imperium is the way to go. I like them both, I think I might like Imperium a little bit better but I'm willing to buy into both.

Special game day meetup: me, kuhrusty, HiveGod, and my local buddy Adam.

1. Nemesis. Legally distinct sci fi horror! "In a vacuum, no one can hear you yell loudly in terror!" I was the soldier, HiveGod was the scientist, Kuhrusty was the scout, and Adam was the pilot. Kuhrusty got us all to agree to stick together to minimize noise, which we promptly didn't do. We roamed around the ship, checking engines, checking nav, and swearing our undying loyalty to each other. Aliens started appearing and things got bad; I could take them out but couldn't find reloads, and every time I hit the showers to clean myself of slime (Kuhrusty helped with a handy Space Loofah) I would immediately get re-slimed within a turn or two. HiveGod got repeatedly inflicted with serious wounds until he got one too many. Adam was running around with a larvae squirming inside of him but then we drew the event that caused it to burst out of him, killing him. The escape pods opened right as I finally found a reload, so I stepped into the pod access room, unloaded on full auto into the lurking alien, then attempted to slip into a pod without being heard. I rolled the one result on the noise die that I needed and hit LAUNCH on the pod as Kuhrusty was running into the room, screaming for me to wait and pounding on the pod bay doors. Unfortunately I had turned up the volume on my in-helmet personal entertainment system and was stretching luxuriously in the built-for-two pod that only had one occupant (me) inside. Kuhrusty turned around and ran for the cryosleep chamber, throwing a decoy to make an alien run for another room and jumping in on the last turn before the engines fired. We escaped, but had to see if we were dead from infection. I had five contamination cards, none of which were actual infection. Kuhrusty had a larvae and had to shuffle all his cards together and draw four -- if any of them were contamination, he was dead. None of them were. Final step to determine the winner, among the two survivors: Check hidden objectives. He revealed his objective: Survive and have at least one other person survive. Success. I revealed mine. Player 2 (Kuhrusty) must not survive. Fail. Kuhrusty won. BROKEN.

2. Schadenfreude. Trick taking screwage where you want to be second place. I sprinted out to an early lead, then Kuhrusty got all the points and landed on 40. One more and he busts and ends the game, with the winner being the highest score that didn't bust. Kuhrusty starts playing cagey, not getting any points, with HiveGod and I jockeying for more (but not too much more) points, Adam bringing up the rear. On the last trick, Kuhrusty played a 9, chortling as he knew someone would undercut him and take the trick, then Adam dropped the one 10 (in the whole deck of 50 cards) on him. Kuhrusty took 17 points in the last trick, ending the game. HiveGod edged me out and didn't bust, winning and laughing madly as Kuhrusty sobbed in bitter humiliation.

3. Cat in the Box. Continuing the trick taking theme. Kuhrusty jumped out to an early lead but on the last hand I managed to connect seven tokens and make my bid, winning gloriously in this, the ultimate test of skill, strategy, and gaming acumen.

Grabbed dinner and relocated to a FLGS. Adam had a prior commitment so it was three from here on out.

4. Camp Grizzly. The legendary OOP grail game, 2nd edition supposedly Kickstarting soon and maybe even delivering someday, 145% tariff notwithstanding. I was C.J. the athlete, Kuhrusty was Jody the loner, and HiveGod was Sherry the nature guide. We meandered around, had a lot of trouble getting anything together, and Otis gradually grew stronger and faster as we kept finding random bodies around the camp. We died ignominiously in about 45 minutes.

5. Don't Skip Leg Day. Or as I like to call it, "Sushi Bro," because that's basically what it is. Two rounds of drafting cards, collecting sets of exercises. But if, at the end of the game, you have the fewest leg day cards, you're out. Unfortunately leg day cards are worth zero points bro, because it's all about getting swole guns. 3 (of 7) cards each round are played face down, so you can never be sure of how many leg day cards everyone else has. HiveGod and I tied on fewest leg day cards, and then he lost on the tiebreak (fewest protein shakes). Kuhrusty had SO MANY leg day cards so I won by ten points.

6. For the Queen. Storytelling card game about escorting your queen to an important meeting and revealing elements of your past along the way. A very fun self-contained experience with evocative prompts and the ability to call back to other elements previously introduced. Playing with Kuhrusty and HiveGod, what would ostensibly be a fun fairy-tale story went about as one might expect: cannibalism, breeding humans for meat, and repeatedly asking the queen to please stop taking her face off and grinning at us with her naked skull.

7. Torchlit. Finished the night with this weirdo trick-taker. You don't really win tricks; rather the "winner" advances deeper into the dungeon and the "loser" seeds the dungeon with treasure from defeated monsters. Eventually you want to stop going deeper because you're already at the level with the most treasure. I can't wrap my head around this for whatever reason, and dithered around in last the whole game. HiveGod and Kuhrusty battled fiercely until the latter won by ONE POINT.

Been teaching my little guy a simplified Memoir ‘44 (basically, only section cards) and it has been a hit.

The ending of that Nemesis game was epic, even if it was a series of tiebreakers and both people survived. Wish I'd had a better teacher on my one play of that. Teacher got several rules wrong and it was generally a gameplay disaster.

Jackwraith wrote: The ending of that Nemesis game was epic, even if it was a series of tiebreakers and both people survived. Wish I'd had a better teacher on my one play of that. Teacher got several rules wrong and it was generally a gameplay disaster.

Yeah, it's a great game but the rules are kind of a mess. There's a nice simple core, but then there's all this stuff that gets layered on and doesn't quite follow the logic of the other subsystems in the game, so it's hard to keep track of stuff and remember how things work. But, every game produces such a great story that I'm willing to put up with it.