We’ve got something very exciting planned for next week, hopefully you’ll come ready to get involved! For now you can join me in the Village Square to check up on the latest news
Community Talk
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[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]What’s everyone been talking about this week?[/plain][/three_quarters][full][/full]
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Goodbye, Obscurity Mode (League of Gamemakers)
[fifth width=”80px”]–[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]I’m here to tell you that whatever [causes obscurity], you need to fight it. It’s not really a level 10 dragon, it’s more like a level 2 duck of doom, or your own phantom demons.It’s the same thing that makes ppl hesitant to share an idea without an NDA or not post their game’s rules before print. Make a print and play, and get it out there. You can and should share your projects early and often. It’s critical to make sure that both your small kindling of community grows AND bonus – it makes you the best game with the best rules for your market.[/plain][/three_quarters][fifth width=”10px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”50px”]
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Breaking the Habit of Over-Designing
[fifth width=”80px”]–[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]Over-designing (OD’ing) is more common than you expect, and the effects can be devastating. Most abusers simply don’t recover. A lucky few, however, are able to break the cycle of OD’ing and get clean. [/plain][/three_quarters][fifth width=”10px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”50px”][/fifth][full][/full]
Basic Human Actions (Nothing Sacred Games)
[fifth width=”80px”]–[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]Today I’m discussing something a little unusual. I thought it would be interesting to think about the basic actions humans can make and see how they’re used in games. Do games use all actions that people can take? Are there certain actions that stand on their own, preventing other types of actions? Are some actions just more fun than others?[/plain][/three_quarters][fifth width=”10px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”50px”]
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Imposter Syndrome and Gaming (Epic Slant Press)
[fifth width=”80px”]–[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]Enter impostor syndrome: the feeling that someone will eventually find out that I am not what I am cracked up to be. This is a real psychological phenomenon, and I am not a psychologist qualified to dispense therapeutic advice. I do, however, know this feeling.When I see people playing three hour Euro games or reading Atlas Shrugged for fun, I get that funny feeling that my pastimes are sub-par. I’m playing “Ameri-trash” games or reading lowly science fiction novels.[/plain][/three_quarters][fifth width=”10px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”50px”]
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The Board Game Messiah Complex (Club Fantasci)
[fifth width=”80px”]–[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]To make any money in board games is a very, very challenging thing to do as a publisher. What we don’t need is people in the community trying to create a division and tearing down honest, hard-working individuals who pay their own money, take their own time from their personal obligations and give all they have to promote our wonderful community and board games. This does nothing but hurt a very close, loving and supportive community. What we do need to do is support everyone we can who busts their butt to help make board games a success for these publishers who take the risk, put in the hours, lose sleep and for the reviewers who provide the content[/plain][/three_quarters][fifth width=”10px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”50px”]
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How To Fix Things #1, #2, #3 (TGIK Games)
[fifth width=”80px”]–[/fifth][three_quarters][plain]Let me start by saying, I don’t think that the things I write about in this part of the H2BaG series are wrong, I just view them as something I like to minimize in the games we design and I think there are others out there with the same feeling. So I am going to offer up our point of view on how to mitigate various subjects we like to minimize in our games.[/plain][/three_quarters][fifth width=”10px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”50px”]
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[fifth width=”60px”][/fifth][three_quarters][plain]There are some rumors of a special gathering in the village square next week, a forum of sorts. Make sure to check back for all the exciting details![/plain][/three_quarters][full][/full]
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Dragon Slayer Roundup
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Review: Star Realms: Crisis[/plain][/three_quarters]
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The Dusty Dragon: Kuhhandel[/plain][/three_quarters]
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Review: Rivet Wars: Eastern Front[/plain][/three_quarters]
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[fifth width=”30px”]–[/fifth][fifth width=”70px”][/fifth][three_quarters][plain]Dragon’s Peak: January 2015[/plain][/three_quarters]
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Review: Lords and Ladies[/plain][/three_quarters]
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Games On Our Table
XCOM: The Board Game – It was my #1 game from Gencon and it finally arrived. And despite the delay (at Gencon they were hoping to have it in for Christmas) my excitement did not wane. The moment i had the opportunity I swung by a game store to pick this up and we upwrapped it and played that very night.
The first game we did the tutorial mode. XCOM doesn’t have a printed rulebook – the tutorial gets you right in the game by taking you step-by-step through setup and the first two rounds. It also has a complete reference guide included so you can quickly look up rules when you need to. Impressively the tutorial worked well, and although it was a little rough, it was no more rough than many of my first plays trying to teach a group a new-to-me game after studying a rulebook, with the added benefit of being able to jump right into the game. We definitely screwed up a bunch of rules (probably our fault from glossing over things to quickly as the actions progressed) and technically we won the tutorial game after coming back from almost all of our troops and ships getting destroyed. It was cool, but not quite the full experience.
So, I was extremely happy to get in another full game during the blizzard/superbowl in which we jumped into Easy Mode. Things were going smoothly at first, but suddenly the game unleashed its fury. We didn’t handle Crisis cards which were flying at us left and right, and thusly we started losing control of the board and the UFOs. We held on for a while, and we finally unlocked the last mission. Unfortunately, almost every continent’s panic level was in the red. We poured our budget into the mission, though, and I used my satellites to pull all the UFOs in orbit. Orbital UFOs affect the least-panicked continent, so my hope was to take out just enough of them to keep them out of panic mode to give us a chance to do the mission… unfortunately, I rolled poorly and lost my satellites on the first round of dice rolls. Unbelievably, I failed the re-roll opportunity as well. There were a huge number of UFOs in orbit, and so instead of tackling the last mission in a desperate final bid for victory… every single continent in the world went into full-on panic mode. Guess what? It only takes 2 continents in panic to lose you the game, so yes, we lost. Unequivocally.
It was a fantastic experience, and I can’t wait to play again and again.
