Social contract for board games

Forty years ago, when I was at university, experienced students went to a villa in Switzerland on weekends once a year. He brought board games to these events because they were better played by 7 players. The only problem is that some people do not know what to expect to play the game. We explained the rules of the game, but we did not talk about the social contract. Junta, like diplomacy , is primarily a game of negotiation and betrayal. In order to play well, you need to be able to turn around at the right time while waiting for your friends to play. If we are not ready for this, many couples will break up after the board game because it will lead to real life, believing that they have been betrayed and mistrusted by each other. It's a game I don't play with my friends today, let alone my teammates.

Modern RPGs often have a "zero session", in which social terms to play together are explained. In this way, future conflicts will be avoided, with some people in the group looking for a way, while others want to work differently. This allows us to discuss what kind of behavior is acceptable and what is not. But in board games, I've never heard anyone do that.

My wife and I do not like to compete, so we usually buy board games together. But even then, we should not have the same motivation. To play skillfully, to understand the basic mechanics of the game I want to have a good understanding of complex games. For example, a year ago there was a blog on how to win on the 7th continent ; And sometimes I watch videos that people play without understanding how it works on YouTube and then they give a bad signal because they are too heavy. I find this to be a little annoying.

But then it is difficult to find good sources for board game strategies. I recently started playing the Wingspan digital version , which is great, but I was not fortunate enough to get some good tips on how to play the game better. If you are looking for spreadsheet strategy tips you will find a lot of discussion about which bird to win, but first you do not need to get one of these migratory birds, these tips are not very useful. . After a few games I understood the mechanics of the game to score more than 90 points but I still did not cross the 100-point fence. But 90 points in the game looks like a "competent player level." I saw a designer play Wingspan on YouTube and I got 93 points. I could see how fun it would be to play Wingpan with people playing at that “player skill level”. But I also saw teammates or random guests sitting together and they had very different levels of skill and experience in that game and nothing was fun. Wingspan is a "motor building" game, and if the player builds an engine much worse than the others, the movement will be shorter, provide fewer inputs, and be more fun.

It is easy to see that players often have different experiences and perhaps different motivations in competitive board games. If the player does not know the game better than anyone else and also has the motivation to beat opponents, no one will like him. Team games and the role of pen and paper are much safer. But maybe it would be nice to talk about social contract before the game starts.

Tobolld Blog

Wartales - A rough, low-fantasy gem

I played a lot of Wartales last week և it took և 35 hours. It is enough to share my first impressions. It has not been reviewed as Wartales is not just a finished product. It has very * very * sharp edges, a relatively low level cap of 5, այում lacks almost all the quality of life features you can think of, including training. Well, the next update guide has been announced, the և level threshold will be increased in the first quarter of 2022 , and the full release is scheduled for the end of next year. At this point, the game is definitely still available early. Why are you playing it? The tactical game in Wartales is better than in XCom, it is a very high level.

At Wartales you play as a mercenary group. They are not heroes with a humble past, like farmers or caravansmen. They have no special destinies or prophecies about them. They are just armed people trying to survive in a very difficult world. Learning to "cannibalize" is very difficult because reducing the cost of food is actually an option. It's especially difficult to start the game, և refugee caravans are the easiest targets (և unlike shopping caravans, they do not rise to the level or you can end up paying for stolen items). Oh, by the way, there is no magic in the game, just a little chemistry. In short, Wartales is a low / dark fantasy world that feels very refreshing after so many fantastic / heroic games.

But the real reason for playing Wartales is the tactical battle, which is great. There are really innovative things here, such as characters that can only "lock in" the enemy instead of having a control zone. Despite the low level at the moment, there is actually a good set of different skills and abilities that can be combined with an interesting horse. In addition, each weapon has its own combat effectiveness, so some two-handed axes can attack the area, while others can not. Instead of getting "action points" for each character, each character can move և make one attack with his main weapon in each turn. If he wanted to do more, he had to spend valuable points. Each character has ways to gain temporary combat points. You can also easily return your vault between fights. This makes the fight very fun. For example, we recommend using a skill that is worth one point if using that skill kills an enemy, և you have the opportunity to gain a temporary value of points each time you kill an enemy. But if you use all your valuable points without getting any of them back, you can lose them later in the battle, as First Aid also requires them. There are many factors involved in the fight, from territorial attacks to increasing damage, especially to thieves (in the game they are called "guardians" because this is a mistranslation). Unlike XCom, Wartales has no chance of losing, just to do more damage with critical blows փոքր for a small change in the damage done.

Because of the early availability status of the game, some people will want to wait until the game stops improving. But I definitely recommend adding the game to your wish list և get it later. I like this game very much at the moment և I am not entering 2 of the 3 regions of the current version yet.

tobold's blog

The Sad Reality of Fantasy Worlds

I have a six month subscription to World Anvil and it was very difficult for me to use it. I tested the software I wanted to use for my next D&D campaign to create a corner of a fantasy world. But in practice, it seems like the world-building tool isn't all that useful; It is customary to say that the sad reality of fantasy worlds is only a small part of each of them.

Experience a famous fantasy world like Westeros in Game of Thrones. If you've watched every episode of the entire season, you might think you know the world well. You've seen a lot on the show, from the icy north wall, the seven kingdoms, winter to King's Territory, to Esteros and the desert city-states. How? If so, then Game of Thrones is a gimmick with a lot of characters, and you've seen the world of Westeros through the eyes of each one of them. Now do a meditative experiment: choose a character from Game of Thrones and imagine that you only saw the scenes in the program in which this character is involved. Even if you choose the "main" character, you will see less of Westeros. Some little characters are always together. And the truth is, there are parts of Westeros that you can't see.

This is the problem of building the old D&D world. Will your team actually see all the places you've created? If you come up with a story for your party, how important is it to the adventure you're playing? Yes, World Anvil allows you to create a complete wiki encyclopedia of the world you've created, consisting of hundreds of articles. But if you don't want to expose your players for hours, you can play the campaign for a year and touch on some of these articles. Your imaginary world is the city of Potemkin, and everything you do behind the facades will be in vain.

Instead of working on all the details in your world, you can find those details as soon as you need them. He does not need the name of the village blacksmith until the players decide to visit him. A random fantasy name generator will help you find it quickly, and then if the players ever come back, all you have to do is enter that name. This method is much more efficient than pre-determining all the names of all the inhabitants, have your players decide not to visit the city at all. In fact, no one cared about the lineage of the king.

Of course, you can use World Anvil to record the most important information about your world and then add notes based on the information gathered during your game session. But does it really need a subscription service? Generations of Dungeon Masters have managed to keep their fantasy worlds in one folder, in fact if you have more than one folder of information you are already overusing it. I like World Anvil as a concept, but I don't need it for my campaign.

Tobold block

Western Digital NAS forced downgrade

I have two Western Digital My Cloud series NAS devices. Not only is it useful for backing up, but it also allows me to access my files from a mobile device even when my computer is shut down. They come with free software such as WD Sync, a program that can be configured to automatically back up files from your hard drive to your NAS. And everything was fine until late.

I've received a number of threatening emails from Western Digital over the year stating that I definitely need to "upgrade" from My Cloud OS 3 to My Cloud OS 5 in order to have my hardware by the end of this year to be able to continue to use . So I checked for all necessary firmware and software updates. WD Sync has stopped working. If you look carefully and follow all the links in the OS 5 upgrade article, there is already a graphic showing that OS 5 no longer supports WD Sync, but this information is no longer easy to find. Then Western Digital will prompt you to install GoodSync for WD instead, which I did.

A few weeks later, a pop-up suddenly appeared. GoodSync for WD is not actually a Western Digital product. It's also not offered free to Western Digital customers. In fact, the download link on the Western Digital website offers you a free trial program. After this free trial expires, you need to pay $30 per year to continue using it.

What a silly gesture! Western Digital just forced me to downgrade the storage space on the NAS from a free version that works perfectly to one that only has me paying $30 a year for the basic hardware features. I do not pay! I'll use other solutions, although it seems that the Windows Sync Center only comes with Windows 10 Pro and not the Home Edition. And it seems that installing SyncToy for Windows 10 is quite complicated . But I will find free solutions because I am not willing to put up with these Western Digital scam tactics to force me to switch from a free service to an expensive subscription service.

Tobold's blog

Curse of Strahd - Session 12

Last season , the team reached level 9 and became the main attraction of the Stroud Curse. Now Ravelloft's main adventure is limited to Module Barovia և Castle Ravelloft Villages. The new 5E campaign has added several locations to Barovia to help players encounter the Vampire Master. I understand the idea, but there are obvious flaws in the structure of this campaign. Castle Ravenloft is a large prison trailer with 88 rooms. Strategies are completely different, it is not clear how to move from one game to another.

As a result, the team did something unprecedented in a spectacular prison adventure. It was especially impressive in Brazier's room.

This room is thirty square feet և about twenty feet high. The stone stove in the middle of the room burns badly, but the long white flame does not heat up. The edge of the incinerator is surrounded by seven inner cubes. At each entrance there is a spherical stone made of colored crystals, the diameter of which is twice the diameter of the human eyeball. The two stones are not the same color.

Above the ceiling hangs a long, wide glass clock, like an elf, with thick metal chains. All the sand stuck to the watch glass, making it impossible to dive. It is an ordinary verse written in a mirror on the basis of a clock mirror.

Iron figures standing on horseback two and a half feet high in the deep Alcos, ready to use their sharp swords. Copper among them!

[Spool Warning] This is actually one of the most deadly rooms in the palace. Teams can be tempted to spoil the bra, mirror or photos. In this case, the two statues act like metal balls, which can spoil the party. The rest can be finished without touching anything in the room, as the use of the oven is a bit confusing. But my team read the text of the clock, translated it correctly, activated Hell, immediately moved to Strad's grave, istəd they wanted to go.

After taking the grave from Strach's grave, he fell to zero and could not be born again. They saw very little before the students and now decided to go directly to the manager. While telling them Fortune, he told them where to find Strod, discovered the palace, found the architects of the Amber Temple, so they went to read without hesitation. They found the secret door, the second secret door, a fake treasure, and now they were right next to Strad. The debate between the leaders lasted for a while, so we ended the meeting there.

Tobold's blog

Roleplaying game in a box

While Dungeons & Dragons is a good game for 4-7 people, you can't play it alone and it doesn't work well with two players. I played many board games this year on my own or with my wife as a "box". These games simulate a partial multiplayer experience without the need for dungeons or large teams. It is interesting to see how they do that.

Talisman , warrior or wizard, was one of the first board games, back in the early 1980s. Currently there are many games that you can play in Virtual Hero, one of the games I have not played before is Altar Quest . But I did not consider these games in this article because they are not based on a story. There are a lot of "prisoner" games that you don't need to build your story on, but just about random monsters in random dungeons. It may sound funny, but here I want to discuss a game with a more narrative story.

If storytelling is an important part of the game, then the game needs a way to tell that story, and most importantly, a way to make decisions and discover different stories based on those decisions. The best way to do this is in a book with a series of sections, such as Fight Fantasy / Choose Your Adventure. For example, it's very close to becoming a Dragons Holt Legacy book. Probably the best book game I've played this year is God of Sleep and the best board game elements have a storybook that tells the story of the personal space and the first. But so am I, folklore: I suffer , and darkness has a fantasy theme. I Didn't Get to the Foolish Fireplace: The Fall of Avalon , but that one is from a book.

Another way to tell a story is through cards. The Seventh Continent 's performance was good. The advantage is that you can have more than one card with one number, so that you can get a random result by drawing "No. 10", and "Reading Paragraph 10" will always get the same result. The system used in the seventh continent is followed by one or more green cards with gold cards, and the various instructions to "restore", "throw" or "cancel" the cards are very complex. Basically, you create a kind of storytelling algorithm that has different results. Crow Skyrim from Elder Scrolls V This adventure game seems to use a very simple card story system.

Nowadays, some games use storytelling apps. Sometimes you still get books, but you can read articles through the app. In other cases, the application is only available. The obvious advantage is that instead of reading stories out loud, professional voice actors can read stories in multiplayer games. The problem is that you can no longer see the algorithm and you don't even know if the results are always the same or if random results are possible. We love Forgotten Waters where you can buy DLC online and get more content without adding any additional physical features to the game. Destiny has long promised to release a "community editor" that will allow players to customize their own mode . Destiny only makes small audio games, but Destiny is the cheapest game option mentioned in this post. Smallest miniatures too, but still very good at $45. The Forgotten Water is the same price, cheaper than printing books or cards, but Forgotten Water has less porch and no miniatures. Note that some games come with books, but you can use a third-party app like Forler to create sounds.

The game that reminds me the most of Dungeons and Dragons is the recently released Roll Player Adventures , which is on my Christmas wish list. It's based on a book, but each situation has a different pamphlet and the D&D adventures are very similar to the thin-cover pamphlets that preceded the fifth edition. I don't know why D&D is talking about rough skin these days. Role-playing adventures such as Sleeping God use map books and history books. This allows the diversity of maps for more than one board game, such as Altar Quest, but is much faster to set up than real-world maps. I'm looking forward to this RPG adventure as it combines an RPG in a box with an original dice game.

While I love games like this, they have one big problem: the lack of repetition. Roll Adventures costs $150 and contains 11 levels. Yes, you can play the campaign twice by choosing to support another faction. But this same game does not have the same repetition and can be repeated over and over again. On the other hand, I already have a lot of games and time is very limited, so I am good at playing these games for a while.

Tobold's Blog

Weird VPN use

If I don't want to play or I'm really tired, I like to watch YouTube videos, mostly about games. But I am using the free version with ads because the YouTube premium is too expensive. The only problem with that is that YouTube shows me that most ads are in Holland and I do not speak that language. So at first I tried to play with all the settings on YouTube and Google to say I could not speak Dutch but I could speak German, English or French. Nothing works. My IP is based on a Dutch-speaking site in Belgium and all my experiences have shown me that this determines the content of the ad. This is foolish, but it is not strange. Most of the Internet completely ignores the possibility of becoming a foreigner who does not speak your native language. And a language like Belgian is a very complex issue (I speak two Belgian languages ​​but not a third) I often have language problems because "Inter" does not mean "international" on the Internet.

But a few weeks ago I subscribed to the VPN service ExpressVPN because it works with Netflix and I wanted to access the Netflix Library from other countries. And I realized that I could use it to solve my problems with YouTube. Yes, I often jump as fast as I can, but the parts that I see or cannot see are more interesting in the language I speak.

I agree that this is a very strange use of VPN service. YouTube / Google should think about displaying ads that I can understand, so it is very effective that there is no advertising language option. I am currently using a paid VPN to fix the design problem in my YouTube settings. This is a wonderful and strange world in which we live.

Tobolld Blog

Why is Aftermath so cheap?

In the past, Kickstarter board games were a good thing, relatively inexpensive. Take Gloomhaven, for example. If you're on Kickstarter, the regular version with plastic miniatures will set you back $79. If you go to Amazon's Gloomhaven today, you pay $116.99, which is already available at a discount of $139.99 MSRP. In 2021 I promised 99 euros for the non-miniature version of Agemonia (without the heroes) because I didn't want to pay 149 euros for the miniature version. Overcrowded games don't come cheap, so I didn't buy the new Descent for 175 MSRP (or about $140 off).

So I saw a video on YouTube with the best storytelling games and I found Plaid Hat Games effects. Now I like their Forgotten Waters so I watched some gameplay videos. I really liked what I saw. You are a group of rodents in a post-apocalyptic world. . The game features a colony management system between different missions, changing encounters and missions even if you look at the same map again. It made me think of the Realm of Death. You show in a beautiful and more comfortable way. The set comes with 23 plastic heroes: monsters (cardboard character for fewer monsters), these plastic figures are surprisingly large. And how many are all the works? $85 MSRP, but less than $50 off at Amazon.com . I bought the English version on Amazon.de for €60 which is still a steal as it will be too late with the cost of shipping from the US to Europe.

Why is this game so cheap compared to games with similar components and smaller or smaller miniatures? One possibility is that the match will take place in 2019, before inflation and shipping costs rise and no one has yet adjusted the price to the new reality. Another possibility is that some board game companies that have games without crowdfunding remain conservative on pricing. The growing demand for all Kickstarter board games, which are always in high demand behind closed doors, has convinced some other companies that they can get more customers by pocketing money and blaming inflation. I must admit that I have sponsored some of these games at prices that I am not sure are correct, or limited their basics. But with collection prices rising, he could lose additional campaign funding next year.

Taboldun block:

Armchair game designer

I like games. I also like to learn how things work. So, after playing the game for a while, I realized something about game design. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that you need to play a wide variety of games, from board games to video games, and I can say that I have some knowledge of game design. Composing your own game is probably not enough, but at least one rule is enough to understand how it works, but also to understand why it is in the game.

My first use for this is tabletop RPGs, in my case Dungeons & Dragons when I was a dungeon master. The DM must make decisions about the state and present or create the adventure. All these questions are related to game design, so what you say helps you understand how this will affect the motivation of the players. If your partner wants to jump into the mischievous lantern in the middle, back to the bottom, and then slit his throat, it’s bad to say “you can’t do that” or “well, the giant is dead.” ". solutions. A good solution is to request one or more tests and accept some kind of bonus, such as an automatic critical success if you succeed. You want to be rewarded for this, but don't want to set a precedent for a powerful, simple and repetitive action.

But I also use my knowledge of game design to change games, which some people call cheating. Cheating is hard work: for example, some video games have cheat consoles that allow you to activate an invincible "god mode"; in most cases this is not a good idea because it can easily kill all the fun of the game. But even when you understand game design, you understand that some things can only be in the game because of it. . If some element of the game is routine, I am not ashamed to change it. I recently saw a YouTube video where someone said they didn't like the Tainted Grail board game because it takes the fun out of the normal standing stone burning game again. I haven't played Tainted Grail yet, it 's on my board games shelf , but I already know how to play it. Standing stones are very important in the game, I won't remove them, but if I changed the rules I wouldn't be upset if they lasted longer and gave players more time to explore. Tainted Grail is a $100+ board game (and more expensive in the US); If there are rules that don't make your game fun, would you like to change the rules or stop playing?

I feel the same way in some video games like Assassin's Creed Odyssey where I hate collecting wood because it wasn't part of the game for me. But there are programs like Cheat Engine or WeMod that allow me to painlessly cheat and change these elements of the game.

The routine involves changing the complexity of the complex instead of removing elements. Unless the game is PvP (and I rarely play PvP games), issues with board and video games can be a bit arbitrary. You never want to change them to make them completely pointless, but different people have fun at different difficulty levels. Video games have made great strides in game design over the past decade, which is why, for example, games with a lot of story and exploration often offer a "story mode" where complexity is minimal. . For people who play storytelling and exploration, this can be the perfect solution, and for others, play with the problem and choose one of the hardest paths. Different levels of difficulty in board games are less common; but changing the rules of a board game is easier than breaking a video game. You need to have a good understanding of game design, such as not changing a healing potion to restore it again if there is something that will make the game a little easier or if it does not make sense.

The purpose of the game is to have fun. Either because of a mistake in the game design, or because of a game design element that might be interesting to other people but not to you, the game may not be interesting. We live in a world with so many games where if something isn't fun, it's tempting to move on to the next game. But in some cases, I think it's better to change the game to make it more fun than to give up.

toboggan block

Aftermath - undervalued

So I bought a free copy of Aftermath and answered the question of why it's so cheap. There are two main reasons: first, the first golfers who play the game have only one set of rules to learn the game; And since the rule book is small, and some rules are not in the rule books, but are scattered around the adventure book or some letters, some people had very difficult moments in the first games of the game. This is definitely not a good situation, and board games on BoardGameGeek can seriously depress user ratings. But she returned in 2019; Today there are many videos on YouTube that describe how to play the game, you can even watch the games of different people during the first mission. BoardGameGeek contains an extended grammar tutorial and other useful files. So in 2021, it's much easier to understand and play the game without getting bogged down in the rules.

Another possible reason why Aftermath is so cheap is that the original developers lost the right to play Plaid Hat Games games when they split from Asmodee, one of the game publishing giants. He then moved to Z-Man Games, an Asmodee company . "The entire team is thrilled to be the new home of Adventure Book Games, to support them and explore new opportunities in this space," the new owners said, posting a custom letter announcement. , the simple fact that the developers of the original game are still at Plaid Hat Games means that the planned expansions for Aftermath will never see the light of day.

As I said in a previous post, today you can buy Aftermath on Amazon for $50 in the US and €60 in Europe. That's no less than the manufacturer's suggested retail price, which is just $84.95. Considering the amount of sunburn and wonderful miniatures the game brings along with the quality and quantity of the other ingredients, it's also cheap. Although the Aftermath main chest is never tight, it contains 18 missions and 5 side missions in a kind of sandbox open campaign that can keep you busy for hours. If you like Story dungeon crawl board games, I highly recommend that you choose Scores.

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An interesting offer from Epic

Most of my PC games are on Steam. However, like many people, I also have an Epic account because they give you a free game every week (and often during these holidays). And after "purchasing" such a free game today, Epic gave me a $10 coupon for their current sale. You get a $10 coupon for every purchase, but surprisingly that includes a $0 purchase. This isn't the first time they've done this, the last time they've bought Assassin's Creed Valhalla for $25.

This time I picked one of the worst video games of all time: Cyberpunk 2077. Which, of course, has never been as enjoyable to play on PC as it is on PS4. Since its publication a year ago, it has been edited several times. The game is now half price on Steam and Epic, and with the addition of a $10 Epic coupon, you only paid $20 for the game. That's the level I thought I could risk. I don't plan to launch it now, but I doubt it will be much cheaper anytime soon.

Tobold's blog