board game
Dominion – I finally played this too!
Thanks to the friendly folk at Budget Board Games Singapore, I managed to finally get copy of Dominion a few weeks back. If you’re not a board game person, you’ve probably never heard of it, but it’s been one of the hottest games on the scene for the last few years. Again, wikipedia has all the history but it won the Spiel des Jahres this year (the ‘Oscars’ of board games) which basically makes it this year’s best board game. › Continue reading
Thursday Link Day
I’m going to try to do the links on Thursdays from now on. I’ve got some niiiice ones today!
- Holy crap – Planescape: Torment is getting a re-release! Best CRPG EVER. This will work properly on Vista and Windows 7 apparently so it will work nicely for the new PC… (thanks to the Wertzone – no idea how I missed this on my RPS feed)
- Boing Boing has a piece on using Google Wave as a chat channel for RPGs. I guess, but it won’t replace the table top for me.
- Boardgame News has a great article running down card games and boardgames that have been released using the whole Cthulhu/Lovecraft mythos – great, good, average and bad. I really want to play some Arkham Horror.
- And finally, here’s a report about the Essen Game Fair by a guy from local shop Paradigm Infinitum.
Making Germans Light Up – a Power Grid actual play
With one of my recent gaming group having left for six months, my friend Duncan arriving back in Australia after 4 years and a delayed departure of me and mine for Singapore, we decided to get down and dirty with some games last night. Duncan’s a board game person and so we busted out one of Duncan’s German contraptions: Power Grid. › Continue reading
Boardgames and RPGs
I don’t go to cons or spend much time with gamers I’m not already friends with so I can’t say I’ve noticed this but according to two seperate industry figures boardgames are making major roads into RPG circles.
One’s a throw away comment by designer Ken Hite in a con review:
boardgaming boomed this weekend as it seems to be doing all over.
And the other is a longer, more considered piece by Steve Darlington, known for his work on the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay line, amongst other things:
In short, for what people want out of an RPG – to move through something like a plot, to have a character of their own design, to make meaningful choices about goals and combat, to roll dice and produce random events, to make choices IN character even if they work against what might be best for winning the game…all of these are being met, more and more, in board games.
(as a side note, Steve’s a fan of this blog)
I’m not sure about this myself, but my experience of boardgames is that they are too directed in their story – one of my signle favourite RPG-things is that the GM can’t predict what the hell the players will do. I don’t miss the box set games of the past – big maps annoy me and I don’t need more crap in my life, just good ideas.
Do any of you feel that there’s an increasing convergence between RPGs and board games?
Geek Resolutions for 2009
Most of us make new year resolutions of one sort or another, and most of them don’t last through January. I suspect that’s because most resolutions are thinks we don’t want to do, but think we should – exercise more often, diet, drink less, stop sleeping around, yadda yadda yadda (for the record, mine is a perfect example – quit drinking coke).
But I thought it would be nice to have some new year resolutions that I actually do want to achieve so here they are:
RPGs
1. Play in a regular campaign, work allowing. This should happen as I’m supposed to play in my friend Dan’s ‘Mythic Japan’ game, using the World of Darkness rules.
2. Run/Play at least one of the following games that are on my shelf but have never been opened in anger:
- D&D Rules Cyclopedia
- GURPS 4e (preferably using the complete collection of Transhuman Space books I have)
- Dark Heresy – the Warhammer 40k RPG.
- Angel – I had a great idea for a game set in Hong Kong in the lead up to the handover. Hong Kong is a city I know fairly well, having lived there as a kid and having visited at least once a year for the last three years as well, but no one I’m likely to play with really knows it at all.
3. Work on the campaign world I’ve got kicking around in my head – a grim, dark fantasy world with lots of malevolent faeries.
Video Games -
1. Finish at least three of the following:
- Grand Theft Auto 4 – I’m on the last bloody mission and can’t manage to finish it. Bah!
- Rainbow 6: Vegas – similarly, I’ve got one level to go. I refuse to buy the next one until I’ve finished this.
- Call of Duty 4 – I’m roughly half way through, and being annoyed by a sneaky level.
- Bioshock & Mass Effect - barely started these, but I was enjoying them both and with the sequels due either this year or next, I’d better get onto them!
- Fable II – again, barely started, but it’s a loaner so better get on with it!
As there’s nothing I’m actually looking forward to coming out on the 360 any time soon, I hope this resolution isn’t too hard.
2. Play online more – I have a Xbox Live Gold account which I’ve used next to never (OliveTheMage is anyone is looking to play). Currently it’s a waste of $100 a year so I’d like to either use it or drop it entirely.
Books
1. Read a bit more!
2. Read more of the Fantasy/Sci-fi classics that Gollancz publish. I’ve been working my way through some good stuff in 2008 – finally read Elric and some Gene Wolfe for example – but I’d like to make a concerted effort to read some of the origins of these genres.
3. Review. One thing I’ve like to do on here is review some of these books. These won’t be major reviews, but hopefully they’d be a good way of organising some thoughts on the books I read and perhaps even generate soem discussion.
Board Games
Once my friend Duncan gets back to Melbourne, I’d like to do at least one serious, all day, board gaming session. Perhaps a return to Axis and Allies?
So there you have it. Check back in 12 months and I’ll go through what I achieved!
Here I am, thank you Ma’am
Thanks Soph.
As I became a father for the second time only a few months ago, my ability to keep up with table-top RPGs has been pretty limited. But I still come across interesting things from time to time and I’m going to be playing a new game in the New Year, so I’m intending to post occasionally on matters relating to all kinds of geek subjects – comics, books, and games of all sorts: board, electronic and table-top.
As an introduction, I thought I’d do a slight best of. It’s not actually a best of, as I haven’t played enough of anything to really judge, but it’s probably the things I’ve enjoyed most in 2008 across a number of categories.