Legends Untold Board Game Review

Shellhead wrote: Conan the Barbarian? Conan the Aryan.

Conan the Barbarian (the surprisingly still-excellent movie) features a European-like setting (it was filmed largely in Spain) yet it features a black villain and two Asian sidekicks. None of these castings feel jarring to me. As such, I think it's possible to include people of colour into a European fantasy setting without ruining its verisimilitude.

The thing is, Conan the Barbarian never feels like typical European-fantasy settings. It's like amalgamation of Europe, Asia, and may be a little bit of Middle East. Heck, Conan was surrounded by Mongol-like friends at a time. From timeline perspective (BC era), it's also a far cry from the typical Tolkienese fantasy.

It’s... Teutonic fantasy, Sevej.

Alek’s point is that the film adaptation found wiggle room, as did pretty much anyone’s uncomfortable reading of Howard’s straight up racist material, so why can’t these board games squirm their way out of the same ideological blind spot?

Because laziness and white authors (personal opinion)

No, if I created the typical fantasy world, be it teutonic, tolkienese, etc, it would have been, like, 99% white people. Pointing it's due to laziness and white author, without any due diligence, IS being lazy.

I am really glad I don't live in the US as the white and male guilt you all seem to live with would drive me to suicide. Living in countries where races and genders get on pretty well has really made my life a great experience, even in the UK here where there is a great mix of ethnicities yet those non-white groups have the confidence to refer to themselves nationality as Black or Asian and it doesn't make a ripple with anyone. Yes, still race issues here (I'm sure there are race issues in every country in the world, hell the south Pacific island country of Fiji had a military coup in the 1980s because ethnic Fijians were upset with the Indian majority having too much control) but most people work together on it.
When we play games we probably don't even notice what ethnicity/gender the characters are - in Eldritch Horror I could have the black female investigator or the old white male investigator, same with the others males in the group and we're all white males over 30.

southernman wrote: When we play games we probably don't even notice what ethnicity/gender the characters are - in Eldritch Horror I could have the black female investigator or the old white male investigator, same with the others males in the group and we're all white males over 30.

This sounds like the rallying cry of the cis white male. I find it's common for white dudes over 30 to feel representation isn't important so everyone can stop worrying about it already.

Dude, you're talking about board games. If it's a media enjoyed by a more wide audience, sure. Right now this just looks like a silly demand to have all media cater to "representation". Some guys just want to have fun, make a game, for factors they don't fully realize created all the characters white and getting blasted for it. Urgh...

These are just as bad as the other white privileges:
1. Demanding anyone creating anything to represent everything (are you going to create guidance for minimal amount of race in a game for it to stop being called "not representative" because it's technically impossible to include all races except if you're *gasp* generalizing races?)
2. Getting offended for other races

Yep, I'm calling these white privileges, because it seems only they do this. I mean... I LOVE being represented in games, in form of race or nationality or religion or sexual orientation (but I'm straight, so apparently I have no say about it!), but really don't think that I have ever demanded it. This is just like that brouhaha on C2077. The real Haitians are totally happy being represented in game, and some white dudes in a news outlet getting outraged on the Haitians being evil dude! Geez...

Should we stop reading & watching lord of the rings also, now? I mean, some of you really shy away from the Cthulhu Mythos on the base of the author is a racist...

Sevej wrote: 1. Demanding anyone creating anything to represent everything

I don't recall anyone taking hostages on the issue in this article or thread.

The reviewer expressed an opinion, we've expressed ours as well. The designer of the game is likely fully capable of hearing what was voiced and proceeding as they see fit.

Anyone care to speak to other facets of the article, which, frankly, gushes on the game and seems to indicate that perhaps we should consider playing it instead of talking about it!

Oh, and I'd like to apologize in advance regarding my comments on "Deke" in my next article.

It's imperative that the ones being catered to, i.e. the white males, are vocal in speaking out about representation. If they are "the market", and are demanding change, then change sounds like a better idea to companies who really only care about the bottom line.

Games are for everyone, and it's nice when people can find a relatable face in the game.

People on ToS sure got hot under the collar that SEAL Team Flix had female Sailors. Fuck 'em. It's non-negotiable.

I find all of this very interesting because a couple of years ago I playtested this game at a local RPG convention and had completely forgotten about it until this thread. One of the things that I mentioned at the time was that it was lacking appeal for a diverse audience, for example my daughter didn't even want to try it because the only female character on offer at that time was a very manly-looking blacksmith. They didn't care because apparently we weren't their "target audience" and in general they weren't really interested in any kind of feedback on gameplay as the answer to everything was "well, our KS backers seem to think the game is brilliant and we've already funded." The playtest was clearly just being used as a sales pitch rather than for actual playtesting.

They explained their angle as being a product made in and for a niche market, a GM-less boardgame for roleplayers who are into historical RPGs, waving the goblins away as Viking/Saxon mythology rather than generic fantasy trope. It didn't sit right with me at the time, I mean this game is about as generic a fantasy dungeon crawl as you're going to get so why limit yourself in such a way? Based on my experience I'm disinclined to give them the benefit of the doubt here, there's really no reason why it couldn't have been more representational even if their intent was to make a game about ye olde Saxon villagers fighting off mythological creatures.

This was an own goal on the entire game production's personnel, from designer to publisher. Especially with this game, since the characters were simply big cards. Sure, it wouldn't have been free, but multiracial character cards would have been easily doable. Ironically enough, the character cards do have male/female versions, so somebody in the chain thought that diversity was an issue.

As for the game itself, I played it a few weeks ago and it didn't click with me, or any of my relatives that played it. I'm not expecting to go full LARP while standing on the table when playing a dungeon crawl, but I never felt like I was my character. It felt like I was just minmaxing dice rolls.

Sagrilarus wrote: Anyone care to speak to other facets of the article, which, frankly, gushes on the game and seems to indicate that perhaps we should consider playing it instead of talking about it!

It was nearly two years ago that I played it and it may have changed between then and now. At the time it felt very linear - choose a location to move to and flip over a card, check if you have matching symbols, then pick the person who can roll the most dice. You either run out of hitpoints or you make it to the end. Along the way you level up which basically meant that you acquired more symbols to look up just as the difficulty started to increase. It was fairly repetitive and uninspiring to play but the cards and the levelling up, plus the big map which you use to pick your way through various adventures in the grander narrative, was intriguing. My son enjoyed it, he would have just turned eleven at the time, and it was hitting some RPG tropes in the same way as the Pathfinder card game which I found interesting. The attitude at the booth more than the gameplay put me off wanting to spend money on it which is why I walked away and forgot about it.