Camp Grizzly

If I can't trust them to write a headline correctly, can I trust them to put a box inside another box and send it off?

Maybe they’re dyslexic, but not shiplexic.

A reprint was announced today! Crowdfunding by Trick or Treat Studios later this year.

Jump to 47:30 to hear about it: www.youtube.com/live/OCYEeGUpskU?si=QtkWMAueaf26ekEZ

It could be weeks before I get around to listening to a long youtube video, so I really appreciate you giving that timestamp. Even so, I won't get around to checking it out for days.

Someone at BGG claimed that there will be revised rules that eliminate player count scaling and player elimination. I don't understand the reference to scaling, because there isn't any in the original game aside from the recommendation to play two characters each if playing a 2-player game.

Eliminating player elimination is horrible idea. I realize that a lot of modern gamers are fragile and easily triggered, but a horror game should also be a game about death. Look at Alien: Fate of the Nostromo... instead of a game about a lethal xenomorph killing characters, it is instead a game about a hostile xenomorph scaring characters and making them so sad that they just give up. WTF? I could live with the game eliminating player elimination if there was at least character elimination. Like in Arkham Horror, where if your investigator gets killed, you get to start a new investigator.

sornars wrote: A reprint was announced today! Crowdfunding by Trick or Treat Studios later this year.

Jump to 47:30 to hear about it: www.youtube.com/live/OCYEeGUpskU?si=QtkWMAueaf26ekEZ

Sounds like I finally got around to selling my copy at the right time...literally sold it last week for way too much money.

Shellhead wrote: Eliminating player elimination is horrible idea.

Agreed, but it will just be a rules variant, easily ignored. I'm looking forward to finally getting to try this one. I certainly have no need for another spooky game vying for attention, but this one is highly revered enough to make an exception.

hotseatgames wrote:

Shellhead wrote: Eliminating player elimination is horrible idea.

Agreed, but it will just be a rules variant, easily ignored. I'm looking forward to finally getting to try this one. I certainly have no need for another spooky game vying for attention, but this one is highly revered enough to make an exception.

I don't see it working well as a rules variant either. Otis does damage, it's one of his three attributes on his sheet. Every character has that damage track right on their sheet. What is the point of tracking damage if there will be no consequence for losing all your hit points?

I imagine they'll address this via Arkham Horror style character elimination as you mentioned; with someone new showing up at the campfire. I imagine with some development to make Otis even stronger after every kill, the difficulty and narrative could be maintained?

To be clear, I have a strong bias towards player elimination and the current rules but I'm happy to see what they come up with.

So, convince me:

Six years ago(!), I tried Camp Grizzly for the first time. I was kind of geeked to finally see it out in the wild because of the glowing opinions that I'd read here. The reason I never sought it out personally was because in 2015 I really wasn't onboard with the KS phenomenon yet and I'm not generally a fan of co-ops or horror themes. My one game was simply bad. The teacher was kind of a withdrawn individual who was more interested in playing the game than teaching it, but it wasn't just that because the gameplay seemed simplistic and really predictable. At the time, Shellhead implied that I was a "serious" gamer and probably wouldn't like it the way others had. I responded with the fact that two of my all-time favorites are Wiz-War and Magical Athlete, despite also enjoying many far more "serious" offerings, so I didn't think my disfavor could be reduced to that. A later thought I had was that it was kind of a "You had to be there" phenomenon, wherein many fans of Dungeonquest, which I think is pedestrian (at best), loved it because they had played as kids and were willing to overlook its (what I consider to be) glaring flaws. But 2015 isn't a "when we were kids" moment for any of us and, yet, people whose opinions I respect like Shellhead, Charlie, Sornars, hotseat, CD, and others are unabashed fans of this game that I found to be bad to the point of not being interested in playing it again.

What am I missing? Is this just going to remain a blind spot for me or can someone get me to understand what the appeal is? Camp Grizzly sits alongside Outer Rim for me, in that one play of the latter was enough to convince me to trade it away. I MIGHT be able to be convinced to try it again (with the expansion that apparently fixed some of my main complaints; I really detest that approach to design) and, from that perspective, I could maybe be persuaded to give Camp Grizzly another try in similar fashion. But I'd really like to know why this seems to be such a huge cult hit, to the point that people were paying outrageous prices for it, and I'd sooner use it for a doorstop.

It really depends on how much you value emergent narrative as well as the game's setting. It's entirely dependent on wild shit happening from the cabin cards each round, and ultimately what random finale you hit.

It's a game that I'd fantastic to reminisce on and discuss what happened and how absurd it was. It's like a much simpler form of Nemesis

I still feel that Camp Grizzly is not a game that is going to appeal to a person who is very serious about games. By serious, I mean someone who is looking for games that offer deep strategy or at least plenty of meaningful decisions. Camp Grizzly is not that sort of game, because it is very chaotic. The game state can change dramatically in a single player's turn, which creates a lot of uncertainty and reduces all strategy to opportunistic short-term tactics.

Charlie is absolutely right that the setting and the emergent narrative are crucial to the enjoyment of this game. The concept, the board and especially the cute, disturbing card artwork do a great job of providing a distinctive setting. The cards offer the illusion of a wildly unpredictable story in that setting. If you aren't there for the story in the setting, you won't find much to enjoy in terms of strategy, mechanics, or meaningful decisions. I mean, there will be plenty of decisions, but you usually won't have enough information to make good choices.

For the record, while this game is definitely in my wheelhouse, I've never actually played it.

I intend to back the KS so that I can rectify that.

Jackwraith, I'm mostly with you. I acquired the game and expansions at some expense based upon the cult status. I've only gotten it to the table once, and it was just alright. Only one of the guys I played it with was really into it, so it just never came out again and I had been procrastinating on selling it for a while. Now, I'm not really that into slasher films, so it was always going to be a tougher sell for me. And with most games that depend on emergent narrative and chaos, you are going to sometimes have dud play sessions. I'm not sure if that's all it was for my one play of Camp Grizzly, or did I really just need to play it with a different group to see the appeal. But the theme wasn't one that spoke to me strong enough, nor did I have anyone fighting for it in my group, so it never got that second chance.

Now I will die on the DungeonQuest hill, as I still dearly love that horribly capricious game for some of its absolutely stellar gaming moments. It's one of those games I can tell you something about every game I've played of it. When two guys are standing in the dragon's chamber drawing cards back and forth until literally only the last card (clearly the "Dragon Awakes" card) is left, and the next player is contemplating drawing it just to spite the other, it's magic (NOTE: in that play I came into the chamber in the middle of that, grabbed some treasure and ran, only to get stuck in a revolving room and dying when my search for an exit failed). Maybe I've just been lucky. I also love WizWar and Magical Athlete, so we're not far apart.

It's funny, I've never given Nemesis a chance (well, I'd have to buy a copy as no one I know owns it) because it's even less cooperative than Camp Grizzly, and I don't think my group would take to that. I keep wondering if that's a mistake, due to the love it receives. But Camp Grizzly makes me think I'm probably making the safer decision...

I like but don't love Camp Grizzly so I kind of agree with Jackwraith.

What I do appreciate about the design is how committed to narrative it is and how well it succeeds in those design goals. What would elevate the experience is if you're a fan of the slasher genre; it emulates every trope perfectly and you can end up playing out a slasher film as if it was directed by John Carpenter or something but in a purely emergent way.

I'm not a particular fan of the genre so falling back to the game itself, as presented mechanically, it remains merely okay to good but the cohesive narrative it generates kicks it back up into great as an overall experience. It is also the most successful attempt at inducing semi-cooperative play without a lot of bullshit gamey decision making that I've ever seen; even moreso than John Company. You end up betraying your friends or stepping up to rescue them because it really does seem like the most logical course of action for the character. It just happens and always fits the story.

Essentially it succeeds on the same criteria that Arkham Horror 2e does for me. It is not a mechanically amazing game but it tells stories in a way that few other games do.

OK. That's some great insight. Thanks! Even though I'm a "serious gamer" , I am all about the emergent narrative thing. Probably our favorite game throughout the 80s and 90s (video, RPG, or board) was Talisman, just because of the stories that could be told with it: rolling just right to land on the space where someone had just turned into a toad to steal all their stuff; hunting people down with the Runesword; etc. I know I've told my story about an opponent with his perfect plan (Troll to Artifact to Archmage to crushing the third level to the worst possible ending...) here before. So, I get it. The indifference on my part is probably the theme, as I've never been a slasher fan, and that first teach, which did not go well at all. Similarly, my first play of Nemesis was with someone who didn't quite get the rules and left out a lot of key elements, so I'm not particularly compelled to try that again, either, although the theme is much more appealing than CG. I love me some semi-co-op play, too (Dune, Oath, CE, John Company, The Last Kingdom, etc.), even though those are mostly mechanically-driven and not story-driven, as noted.

Interestingly, I can't remember a single story from our dozens and dozens of plays of AH, 2nd Ed. I wonder if the theme there was too heavy; in that little measures up to the concept of HPL horror in the sprawling story sense, so trying to duplicate it in game form was just never going to work on me? Or maybe it's just that I'm getting old and have played too many games? Anyway, thanks, again, for the feedback. Lot of good thoughts.