The Gaming thread - anything but video games

[lanky316]

My next RPG campaign is fittingly on brand. We're going to be running a group through World Wide Wrestling. I've already been assigned as "creative" so going to be GMing this one, I've got a mix of old school wrestling fans, people who keep up and some people who don't know anything about wrestling so it's going to be interesting to see how they cope. Essentially it's a cooperative one where the players are literally working matches (with potential "swerves" to change the booked ending) while navigating backstage politics and fickle fans. 

[Onyx2]

Two lovely casual new games over Christmas:

Flip 7: a twist on pontoon / blackjack / 21 where you push your luck asking for more cards until you stick or bust by getting a duplicate. Much more fun than it sounds.

Spots: take cute cards with dogs drawn on, roll some dice and try to allocate all your spots to the spots on the dogs. Joyful. 

[JNLister]

First new game of 2025 is Darwin's Journey where you're off sailing round the Galapagos Islands, researching wildlife, sending samples home and advancing the theory of evolution. It's pretty much worker placement on steroids, one of the main mechanic twists being you can train individual workers in particular areas which means they can carry out more advanced versions of actions. It's a big old teach (a 30 minute how-to video was actually a quicker option) and it's definitely got an air of a designer going "I really want to mix together this set of mechanics, I just need to put a theme on it." However, it's a good challenge once you get your head round it and it's at a lovely point where your brain hurts a bit, but planning your next few moves ahead and being ready to adjust if necessary is just about within your mental capacity as a normal person.

[JNLister]

Played Paladins of the West Kingdom, the latest in a series of loosely themed games (started with shipbuilders then raiding the North Sea and eventually setting up towns in the West Kingdom.) Here you are defending the town against attackers while building up your faith, strength and influence, all of which interact in a bit of a rock/paper/scissors pattern. This one looks like worker placement but isn't technically as you aren't competing for spaces and the only real interaction/screwing over is in taking cards from a lineup. The big problem follows on nicely from my Darwin's Journey comments as here it's definitely too many moves to plan ahead and remember. You need to figure out not just what you want to do, but which set of workers you get (from a limited selection of combos) at the start of the round and then what extra workers you'll be picking up as a result of the actions and then how you'll use those workers, and so on. Definitely real brain-burning.

Contrastingly I played That's Not A Hat, which has a paper thin theme on what's nothing more than a memory test (think the Three Card Monte/Find The Lady scam but with increasing numbers of cards.) It's barely a game to be honest.

[Chest Rockwell]

We've been playing a lot of Hive recently. It lives out on the kitchen table and gets played at breakfast and dinner pretty much every day.

[gaz2050]

On 12/20/2024 at 2:42 PM, cobra_gordo said:

Is Disney Lorcana any good? They've got the introductory set in Asda for 18 quid but I don't know if I can stomach a Pokemon-size investment to just play it at home with my kids. The artwork and everything looks lovely though, just not heard loads about the gameplay.

I played this recently and yes, it is. I'm not a Disney fan, and much prefer the Pokémon TCG purely for the theme. It does take a little bit to get into, although the starter packs do a great job of introducing different types of cards to ease you in. After a few rounds though and figuring out how to maximise the space from constantly turning your cards, you'll be well away. 

Also a massive thumbs up for Hive. Definitely one of my favourite strategy games along with Quarto. Enjoyed it so much I now have all the expansions for it. (Pillbug, Mosquito and Ladybug)

[Chest Rockwell]

2 minutes ago, gaz2050 said:

Also a massive thumbs up for Hive. Definitely one of my favourite strategy games along with Quarto. Enjoyed it so much I now have all the expansions for it. (Pillbug, Mosquito and Ladybug)

Just picked the expansions. Couldn't find them separately to buy so I ended up buying Hive Ultimate which has them all. Looking forward to playing with them! 

Will sell the regular Hive we already had on eBay...

[Jazzy G]

Went to a Learn To Play D&D session on Saturday afternoon with a friend who'd wanted to get into it as well. Then proceeded to spend far too much on a handbook, dice, character sheets, and a notebook. I kind of had a vague idea of how the rules worked and the mechanics, but my friend was struggling. We're off back down the Geek Retreat on Thursday to sit in on a game and get more idea of the actual flow. 

I have a few ideas for characters along with ideas for some perks and quirks that'd be akin to putting a bit of myself into the character. I'm looking forward to it. 

[Thunderplex]

1 hour ago, Jazzy G said:

Went to a Learn To Play D&D session on Saturday afternoon with a friend who'd wanted to get into it as well. Then proceeded to spend far too much on a handbook, dice, character sheets, and a notebook. I kind of had a vague idea of how the rules worked and the mechanics, but my friend was struggling. We're off back down the Geek Retreat on Thursday to sit in on a game and get more idea of the actual flow. 

I have a few ideas for characters along with ideas for some perks and quirks that'd be akin to putting a bit of myself into the character. I'm looking forward to it. 

Worry less about the rules and more about just having fun with it.  Best thing about a beginners game is that you are all in the same boat.  You will get rules wrong, but a good DM will work around that, and some of the funniest incidents I’ve had have been a result of a misread rule.

[Jazzy G]

The guy who talked us through the mechanics definitely feels like he'll want to enhance the experience as opposed to just trying to wipe parties out.

[cobra_gordo]

Just have fun with it, the DM should be able to work around it and steer you if needed. My first experiences of D&D was us all getting the rules wrong, wandering around aimlessly for ages and then all of us basically turning heel out of boredom and randomly murdering NPCs. The DM is a good mate of mine and you could see a mixed expression of disappointment and complete lack of surprise on his face.

[BigJag]

I watched a Table Making video the other day. They produced a very cool looking D&D table for some guy called Joe Manganiello. He's an actor of some repute. It turns out that Big Show is a regular at is D&D game nights.

I remember playing Blood Bowl a number of years ago. It had elements of American football within its play mechanics.

Edited February 4, 2025 by BigJag

[JNLister]

Catching up on some recent first plays:

I think Ethnos 2nd edition counts as a new play, though I did play the original many years ago. It's switched from the original fantasy races to normal animals, but I think the gameplay has been redone to some extent. It's a very simply mechanic with every turn being a choice of "draw a card, hand limit 10" or "play a set, matching animals or colours", with increasing points for different sets. However, when you play a set you can place a marker in an area of the game island and most markers gets points at the end of the round. So it's a lovely balance between collecting big sets and getting lots of sets out quickly. What keeps it interesting is that each animal has a different bonus that triggers when you play them as a set (you choose one of the animals to lead when you play a set of the same color) such as most bears takes a token which gets you immediate points, plus big points if you still hold it at the end of the round, or playing fish moves you up a track that scores as if it were its own area of the board. You randomly pick six of the 12 animal types to use each game, and the scoring for different areas of the board is randomly drawn, so there's a lot of variation between games.

White Castle is a bit more involved. The theme is ingratiating yourself into a Japanese court, with related side activities like training warriors, tending to a garden and so on. It's all based around a massive roll of 30 odd dice that are then available to pick each turn, either taking the highest or lowest of a particular colour, with a bonus if you take the lowest. You can then use the dice to pick one of the various actions of the board, each of which requires a die of a particular number and you either pay or receive the difference in money if the die you use is lower or higher. It was simple enough to pick up despite having a lot going on and I'd be up for another game.

Finally we did Abandon All Artichokes which is a very quick and light card game. It's the same deckbuilder mechanic as Dominion and many other games (draw a hand from your deck each turn, refill from your deck, once the deck's empty shuffle your discard pile to form a newly ordered deck). However, there's no points or actions. Instead you start with 10 artichoke cards, you pick up different vegetable cards with special abilities (discard an artichoke/trade random cards with an opponent and discard if both are artichokes/pick up random card and decide whether to put it in your hand or an opponent's discard piled/etc etc). You win once you draw up a hand with no artichokes. Silly fun with just enough tactics to make it worthwhile.

[Just Some Guy]

Two more cracks at The Captain Is Dead this week. Lost both times.

We've never been anywhere near beating this thing!

Root next week.

Have ordered Finspan.

[lanky316]

On 1/3/2025 at 8:10 PM, lanky316 said:

My next RPG campaign is fittingly on brand. We're going to be running a group through World Wide Wrestling. I've already been assigned as "creative" so going to be GMing this one, I've got a mix of old school wrestling fans, people who keep up and some people who don't know anything about wrestling so it's going to be interesting to see how they cope. Essentially it's a cooperative one where the players are literally working matches (with potential "swerves" to change the booked ending) while navigating backstage politics and fickle fans. 

So we held our first "show" last night and already I really like the system. For a "style" we wanted to go with something like DDT where you have the silly and off the wall stuff but around that you've got some solid wrestling, especially as we move up the card. Everything is done on a simple 2d6 +/- stats so people could pick it up fairly straight forward. For a first session it was kept simple, we had two PC Vs NPC matches and the two with most wrestling understanding main eventing. We were a couple short and may have picked up a few people who'd watched what was going on for a bit and seemed interesting but it was fine.

It works really well, the show was bare bones while we learned things and people didn't take advantage of the "tools" they could use, people weren't fully comfortable about promos while feeling out characters and we didn't have any run-ins and a few little bits and pieces that people could have done but didn't really try but overall everyone was excited ahead of the next session. There seems to be a lot of options and how we could take it forward which is great. I wasn't entirely sure how it would work but in particular with the main event, seeing two people bouncing ideas off each other and how they worked the match really plays up the cooperative nature.  Even in matches against NPCs though it offered a lot of opportunity. The fact that the fighter was rolling terribly all night meaning he was constantly botching things and generally looked sloppy was being able to be played up, as well as eventually giving some backstage heat and drama to work with going into future sessions.