Very scary solstice…

Cooperative board games are made of much win. Everyone against the board game. You all win or you all lose. Brilliant. More kiwis with that. And there are very few board games that are fully cooperative. Why? Because its easier to face off against human players than to make up rules that will keep the players entertained for as long. Lord of the Rings (one of the many) and Shadows over Camelot are two cooperative games. I played one and havn’t played the other. The one I played, I wasn’t impressed with much and the other seems very linear. But that’s for some other time.

Today is about: Arkham Horror the Call of Cthulhu board game. Players each control an investigator that face off against a random ancient one that will surely devour them if it wakes up. Investigators scramble around the board, dodging, fighting and/or fleeing monsters as they close gates to the other worlds in a weak attempt at curbing the ancient ones power over Arkham. Sometimes players win, but mostly they lose. Which makes ‘em come back for more. (No really. I have seen this. It baffles me too.)

Arkham Horror is best with four players but can play from one (singleplayer board game? sweet) to eight players. Six to eight players makes the game last a long long long long long long time. But for any number of players, it’s a great game with lots of bits and pieces and some complex (and sometimes cryptic) rules. How do flying creatures work again? ‘Course the different rule versions don’t help. The FAQ is a must for explaining those annoying cryptic rules.

But once you get past the rules part and get four players and actually get down to playing (with some knowledgable rules-lawyer to run the monsters) the game is loads of fun. The game has two parts: The investigation and fighting the ancient one. The investigation part is everyone pretty much running around Arkham trying to close a gate as three more appear. If the players don’t win in this part (by closing all the gates or sealing six) the second part happens: fighting the ancient one. Which is all investigators smack the ancient one and then it smacks all of them. Some players enjoy the investigation part, others enjoy smacking around the ancient one. I prefer the first, since the ancient one usually ends up smacking you around unless you are fighting against a weenie like Yig. (Yig is a tough fight…its just easier to beat than the others.)

Course, I love the whole Cthulhu methos so I might be a teenie tiny bit biased.

And to prove that even ancient ones have a lighter side of life (and their own call line) try: Calls for Cthulhu.

Until next time: Have a very scary solstice. (I know its not anywhere near any kind of solstice but it fits with todays game.)

println(”foo”);

Great games made better

Fundamental Truth One: Tabletop games (like pen and paper DnD and board games) are an excuse for good friends to sit around and talk rubbish for a good few hours. The games fill up the gaps when everyone has run out of rubbish to say. And lets face it: it’s good entertainment.

That means that the games should be good enough to provide a hook so that said friends will come back for more (provided those friends don’t know about Fundamental Truth One). A good start is a good board game. Carcassonne aka “The farmer game” is such a good game. (Ok, I used up my quota of the word “good”.) The point of the game is to get the most points (groan now). I am usually against point gathering games but this one is so fun that part can be overlooked. One gets points by placing your farmers as early as possible and make lots of little cities for the win. Some say that you should go for points by claiming roads, cities and cloisters and completing them in a timely fashion but they are delusional rule-lawyers. This is not called “The farmer game” for nothing. And if you do decide to get some points from cities, make sure you have a share in every other players cities, sometimes even usurping their cities and taking all the points for yourself. I am usually against competitive games (preferring cooperative ones) but I enjoy this one mainly because its very hard to lose a claim (Very passive-aggressive). It happens but kudos to the player that can pull it off.

If the above made any sense to you then you have played Carcassonne (or read the wiki) and either loved it or hated it. I choose to go back to it every now and then because its a relatively short game (1 hour max) and its good fun. Non-violent, land grabbing is your friend.

Until next time: Keep on making deities disappear in puffs of logic.

println(”foo”);

Greetings and salavations

Greetings and before anyone gets confused, I am not from New Zealand (though I do find Flight of the Conchords quite enjoyable in as much as I enjoy any satire).

But this tenletter blog (which has nine letters in its name but who’s counting?) is about gaming and I like gaming. I have enjoyed RPGs since Baldur’s Gate. From there it was a short step to table top RPGs including DnD. Then jatori introduced me to Magic the Gathering (I have stopped that (for now)). And now I am looking at boardgames, since they are games too. Plus I need a break from coding (which is where my nick (avianfoo) comes from).

I hope this blog stays around longer than some others I won’t mention. So until next time: leave the politics to madmen.

println(”foo”);

The 4th post is always about DnD

As mentioned in a previous post, I’ll be running my first DnD game (in many long months) this coming Saturday. I’m also posting early this week (already breaking my Tuesday routine), because I’m going on a training course for the next couple of days.

I’m going to be using the Pathfinder Alpha 2 rules and shall post about the session next week. The group contains two new players. They are not only new to DnD, but to pen ‘n paper rpgs as a whole. This is how I explained the game to them:

You don’t need to prepare much at all. I just need you to think about the role you’d like to play in the party. There are two types of situations in DnD, namely combat and non-combat. And your character will fill some sort of role in each situation. You’d either play a primary role or a support role. After you’ve decided on your roles, you can then think about how you’d like to go about fulfilling those roles. There are 3 character super-types (warrior, rogue, magic-user) and each type would handle each role differently. We’ll work all the mechanics of it out on Saturday.

It’s kinda sad, yet kinda cool, that DnD is KOMBAT! and then the rest. In DnD, you’ve got to perform in combat or you’ll let everybody in your party down. Combat performance is of vital importance to any character. Is this a good thing of the system? Maybe, maybe not.

The critical drop

Hi - I’m a fresh recruit to this scene, run by the name trashcondor, and figured I should make a first comment to make my mark

I’ve had occasion to play the highly addictive Puzzle Quest and I recommend you stay well clear if you value your hours - but, if like me you fell into the trap of addiction you will most likely have come to the conclusion that this game hates me.

I’ve been thinking about some of the more hideous failures of chance and justice - and come to the conclusion that some of these are wholly earned. Picture if you will:

11
22
11

(Where 2 represents a damage skull)

If on either side a column drops by 3 or more steps the first inclination would be to think that the situation is fair game and both PC and human player are equally likely to benefit. This is, however, not true as the active player only benefits if a skull drops exactly into the match3:

111
222
111

But loses out if one of two cases occur:

112
221
111

or

111
221
112

In other words, the active player is half as likely as the subsequent player to benefit from this particular constellation. The solution, naturally, is to be the subsequent player - either due to the PC (or opposing human player) causing the move - or by forcing an additional turn through a match4+ or apt use of stun-type spells.

Direction

And so, I have come to the decision that I should blog about gaming. tenletter is now officially a gaming blog.

yay.

There’s very little hope of me successfully maintaining a blog on the very latest of the bleeding edge of gaming, which means I’ll be looking at different aspects of gaming and not just throwing in GTA reviews and complaining about how Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe is going to suck because of Superman (Batman is far superior - it should be Mortal Kombat vs Batman Universe).

Right now, I’m quite excited about finally getting to play some good ol’, Mountain Dewey, Pen ‘n Paper Dungeons and Dragons next week. It’s been months since I last played. For at least the early days of this blog, I’ll be writing predominantly about roleplaying games, particularly DnD 4th ed and Paizo’s 3.75 Pathfinder. My new group is scheduled to have its first session next Saturday. I shall be GM.

Will probably be posting a bit about the game this Tuesday.

Also, we have another contributor to the blog: Ed. He’ll probably be blogging about Battletoads.

-j

momentous first post plus one is momentous

Here I am, starting a new blog - again. I’m not too sure what I’m going to do with this blog. Random musings or focus on one particular subject? Or maybe I’ll do something gimmicky, like not using punctuation whilst musing randomly unlike my previous forays into blogging i am going to see if i can keep this one alive i think a schedule would help with that i shall hereby endeavour to publish a new post each and every tuesday with fullstops hopefully

hello world!

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