The Gaming thread - anything but video games

[Thunderplex]

On 3/14/2025 at 1:34 PM, Jazzy G said:

My character is an Orc Bard called Weerdal who plays the accordion. 

Please ignore my post earlier.  For this, you are now banned from this thread!

[Jazzy G]

OK. It's a fair cop. 

[TibBo]

Not sure if it really fits here, but I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit-hole of treasure hunting this morning and the different ways it permeated 70s/80s culture.

You had books like Masquerade https://bunnyears.net/kitwilliams/masquerade/ which contained puzzles for the reader to solve which ultimately led players to a real-life location with buried treasure (a gold artefact in this case).

Cadburys did similar promotions with real gold eggs hidden around the country.

There were also car treasure hunts, where folks would drive around the countryside from location to location solving clues, and whoever got to the endpoint first would win (imagine that without a satnav!) 

I remember GoingLive/Live & Kicking doing something similar where they released some balloons into the sky, and if you managed to find one you won a prize…

Did anyone ever get involved with anything like this? Appreciate it might be a bit outside our age-group, but there’s a chance parents could have dragged us into it when younger.

 

[Nexus]

Our usual DM was sick today (only gave us 2 hours notice) so I stepped up and ran two of Grant Howitt's  one page RPGs - Crash Pandas and Goat Crashers. Just a bit of silliness where the players can just do dumb things like try and break into King Charles' garden party or drive an illegal street race in a Fiat 500. Lots of improv and messing around, gives a nice break from our buttoned up, inflexible DM. 

 

I like getting to play, but I've been getting the itch to DM again.

[Thunderplex]

Got Heat Pedal To The Metal on Saturday and have not really stopped playing it.  Not a car racing fan, but this is great fun.  Brilliant solo mode and tons of expansions in the main game that will keep me busy for a while.

[JNLister]

I played Finspan, the second official "Wingspan-a-like" after Wyrmspan. As the name suggests, it's fish rather than birds. It's similar in concept but much simpler mechanics and a lot more about placement/movement planning than resource management. It's functionally fine, but I don't know how many plays it would get before becoming repetitive and I'm not really sure of the audience. If you like Wingspan, you'll probably find it too simple to be a regular alternative. If you don't like Wingspan, this isn't really a good enough game to stand out in its own right. And the "look at the pretty artwork and components" element isn't quite as strong, while I assume "I love birds" and "I love dragons" is a bigger audience than "I'll buy any game with fish, me."

Sadly I was unable to persuade people to play Sushi Go immediately afterwards, just for my own silly amusement.

[Jazzy G]

D&D is still going well. We all reached level 4 this week, so I took the opportunity to change up my spells a bit more in line with my character's background as well. 

I picked up a copy of Talisman 5th Edition while it was reduced in the recent Amazon Deals. I'm in the process of getting a crew together to play it. 

I'm looking into picking up one of the Warhammer Underworlds starters as well, because they look quick and easy and a friend wants to have a go at something like that. 

[Thunderplex]

Talisman was the first adventure board game I had, back in 1982.  Gets a bit of a slagging off and is called fantasy monopoly, but is still love the game.  Plays great solo and will get hours of fun with it.

[Jazzy G]

I remember playing Heroquest at some point because a childhood friend had a copy. I got Key To The Kingdom one Christmas, which got a lot of plays. In my teens some friends and I all chipped in for a copy of Warhammer Quest as well, which we loved. Talisman looks like fun. I own the app version as well. 

[JNLister]

Amazing scenes last night as, after four years, I finally won a game of Ark Nova (with expansion). I was doing my usual strategy (ignore all the water based stuff from the expansions, pretend I'm not going to collect monkeys, wind up collecting monkeys) but everything just flowed. The combo of the board (cover specific spaces to get sponsor cards, cover them all and get a discount on sponsor cards) and the drafted action cards (can cover rock and water spaces/get money for doing so after upgrade) worked together great, I was getting lovely combos of sponsor cards (extra income from the start, major discounts on donations), and at one point my action cards were in a perfect order that meant I could plan five moves in advance and even line up the relevant cards so I didn't forget the plan.
 

But I have to give credit where it's due. One of my monkeys let me steal a card and I was unimpressed when it turned out to be the stoat, the single shittiest card in the deck IMO, which gets you three points and toss-all else. And yet he came good. Getting him meant I had animals from all five continents and got five conservation points from one of the starting project cards and then picked the three X tokens as my bonus reward. And I was one point away from triggering the end, which I spotted, so didn't do a sponsorship. Instead (as I could see happening), another player immediately triggered the end. That left me with one turn, at which point I had association on level one, but used my three Xs to get it to level four, used a sponsorship card to do conservation projects at level four rather than five, and revealed I had a release herbivores card and immediately set that stoat free to claim two more conservation points and take the win.

And boy have I just realised how completely baffling those two paragraphs are to anyone who hasn't played the game.

[Just Some Guy]

After years away I am going to be starting a very casual game of Vampire: The Masquerade tonight.

Hopefully my players are going to lean into it rather than standing around waiting to be invited to a dungeon bash!!!

 

[Thunderplex]

8 hours ago, JNLister said:

Amazing scenes last night as, after four years, I finally won a game of Ark Nova (with expansion). I was doing my usual strategy (ignore all the water based stuff from the expansions, pretend I'm not going to collect monkeys, wind up collecting monkeys) but everything just flowed.

Completely understand the monkey strategy.  It’s my main failing when I play too.  If a monkey, a raccoon or a red panda appear, it’s mine no matter the theme of the fucking zoo!

[Carbomb]

On 4/4/2025 at 6:56 PM, Thunderplex said:

Talisman was the first adventure board game I had, back in 1982.  Gets a bit of a slagging off and is called fantasy monopoly, but is still love the game.  Plays great solo and will get hours of fun with it.

Talisman is a good game, but I do get the fantasy Monopoly criticism: it can be a bit too reliant on dice rolls, which is a shame, because the other elements of it are excellent.

I saw the Talisman TTRPG on DriveThruRPG - I have to say I'm a little intrigued, mainly because, good as it is, Talisman is rather generic fantasy, so I'd be interested to know what distinguishes the RPG from others.

[Shirtie]

On 4/6/2025 at 6:37 PM, Jazzy G said:

I remember playing Heroquest at some point because a childhood friend had a copy. I got Key To The Kingdom one Christmas, which got a lot of plays. In my teens some friends and I all chipped in for a copy of Warhammer Quest as well, which we loved. Talisman looks like fun. I own the app version as well. 

Heroquest and Space Hulk got me into Warhammer 40,000 as a teenager. Loved them!

[Jazzy G]

I had Space Crusade, could never properly get into 40k. Loved putting the armies together from the códices, couldn't do the tactical side for toffee. Tried Necromunda with similar success. Also Blood Bowl. I actually managed to kill one of my players trying to run an extra square.