Board Games!

[Mina]

At the Reckoning, AngryPidgeon called it "the game where everything's made up and the points don't matter." I still enjoy it because I don't care much about balance and haven't played enough to know most of the scenarios--the mystery and flavour behind each haunt are what appeal to me.

Also, Axxle, you are a genius. How did not a single person on the game design team think of that?

[AngryPidgeon]

At the Reckoning, AngryPidgeon called it "the game where everything's made up and the points don't matter."

I was just about to post in the thread when I got home and come home to see this

I dunno, it just feels like optimal strategy is straightforward for the most part in Betrayal? And the pre-haunt phase especially so. Typically you want to stop in a room to gain a stat point if possible, otherwise keep exploring whatever floor is smallest. And the combat after the haunt encroaches on Risk levels of frustration with dice rolls.

[Chevre]

Our group loves it, and we were able to snag the in-demand game for $50 recently. I think what makes it so fun is the randomness and evolution of your own story aside from the Haunt. For example, on my last playthrough a player new to the game created an incredibly long pathway that led to the Underground Lake. Plus it seems like even if you manage to play all 50 scenarios, by the time you repeat it'll be a different experience, of course.

If you don't think balance is a problem, though, you have to consider the fact that the 2nd edition didn't really improve on the 1st, which is a shame because of those gosh darn tokens. :/

[GreyICE]

Hmm, some googling tells me I have a second edition, that's the one where the pieces like to warp into curves.

-_-

Oh betrayal. I'd tend to agree with SU&SD that it's less a game and more a modern art piece, but what an absolutely fascinating modern art piece. I enjoy it, but I'm always hesitant to suggest it, because it sometimes feels like such an anticlimax. "Oh I shall play a game. Oh I shall explore a house! Egad, I am in a basement, let me poke around. Oh dear, water is rising and it appears we have not drawn one of two tiles that could save me. I guess that my objective is to flail about a bit and drown."

(for those who have never played it, it's a lot more fun than that, but that's not only a scenario that can happen, that exact scenario happened to someone who played in a game we played. He never really had a single input on whether or not he could live, and he died virtually immediately after he learned how he needed to win)

[xRECKONERx]

We just did that scenario Saturday night. Mollie was trapped in the basement about to drown but happened to flip the Mystic Elevator and roll a 4

[Axxle]

Cheery getting one shotted on turn 1 was priceless

[AngryPidgeon]

STOP HAVING FUN *Shakes fist angrily*

[quadz08]

Cheery getting one shotted on turn 1 was priceless

That shit was hilarious.

[Mr. Flay]

So yesterday was International Tabletop Day, I guess because Wil Wheaton is famous? idk.

Anyway, I got to watch my friend who is ga-ga over Last Night On Earth play, and I finally understand why she loves that game and I hate it to pieces. She's basically houseruled and custom-charactered it into something much easier and less annoyingly luck-based.

After that I got to play/watch Betrayal. Being Avalon Hill, it is WAY overcomplicated (we rolled the Hidden Traitor haunt, which is really more like Saw with the numbers filed off). We lost miserably with five players, three dead necks by Danger 5. Both of us felt on the way home that Hidden Traitor would work better to just have no traitor at all in that scenario, it was hard enough to get keys and the mess of extra rules were hard to remember. On the other hand the board progression, the Omen/Haunt mechanic, and the character card-balance was quite good. I don't know what scenario we watched at first, it had a Cursed Weapon research thing going on, but the Traitor didn't understand how to use her new role and died too easily.

[quadz08]

Because Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day are famous. DUH FLAY.

We played True American for tabletop day. That counts right? Also some mafia.

[Mr. Flay]

Because Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day are famous. DUH FLAY.

Yeah yeah, I'm sure I'm not a Real Geek^TM because I've never seen FD in

anything

.

[Sudo_Nym]

I don't think FD's really been in much outside of Geek and Sundry- she was in a Cheeto's commercial, she was one of the Potentials in the last season of Buffy, she was the star of the the Dragon Age movie, and she was the love interest in Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. Plus she created/starred in the web series The Guild. Other than that, I can't think of anything she's actually really done.

[Axxle]

I don't think FD's really been in much outside of Geek and Sundry- she was in a Cheeto's commercial, she was one of the Potentials in the last season of Buffy, she was the star of the the Dragon Age movie, and she was the love interest in Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. Plus she created/starred in the web series The Guild. Other than that, I can't think of anything she's actually really done.

She was in three episodes of Supernatural.

[Ythan]

And an imdb page.

[Axxle]

And an imdb page.

That's cheating.

[zoraster]

I mean a lot of people have watched The Guild.

[Xalxe]

Was she in Eureka or am I crazy?

[Sudo_Nym]

I think she was, though in the later seasons I didn't watch because they weren't on Netflix at the time.

[quadz08]

She's one of the Joss Whedon & Friends gang.

Mostly internet-famous, though, for things like The Guild and her work on Geek & Sundry.

[hasdgfas]

Was she in Eureka or am I crazy?

She was in Eureka at one point, yes.

[Ythan]

Doesn't mean you're not crazy.

[xRECKONERx]

http://traffic.libsyn.com/dicetowershow ... sode14.mp3

My CCG episode of Dice Tower Showdown finally came out. A couple notes:

- The people we were arguing against had been on the show before and knew the format
- My partner refused to communicate with me prior to the taping so we couldn't coordinate (and his angles of attack were weird and different from mine)
- We got cut VERY short in the taping because another topic had to record; I thought we had two hours, they gave us one, so I never got into the back end of my arguments
- They got about 75% of the talk time and we got 25%. Probably a byproduct of our newbieness to the podcast
- The pro-CCG side strawmanned pretty hard. "WHY IS IT A BAD THING IF CCGs SUPPORT STORES?", "WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE HAVING FUN?"
- We felt they just brushed aside perfectly valid arguments.
- Interesting after-argument: pro-CCG people seem to always fall back to the "it keeps gaming stores open therefore it's good"... isn't it more like "CCGs transformed gaming stores into CCG stores"?
- Another afterpoint... the pro side really contradicted themselves. They say that the fun of the CCG model is partly the mystery involved in opening packs. That is the essence of the CCG model. Then they turned around and said "you don't have to keep spending money on the game", which completely reverses what their definition of a CCG is.
-

[Faraday]

Heh, weirdly enough I was just about to listen to this.

[Nexus]

I need somewhere to store these...

[Thesp]

Nice assortment! I'm particularly enjoying the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game lately, which sits at the bottom of your stack.