Games: "7 Wonders", Location, and Unnecessary Bits
I went out gaming and tried "7 Wonders". Meh. The idea is that you're building a civilization by picking out cards that produce resources, technology, and victory points, with more advanced cards building up over time. So we started the game and did a couple of rounds of "drafting" -- take a set of cards, keep one, and pass the rest to gradually build a hand of your own. ...And that's it. What I thought was a setup phase was the whole game. At least it's short even with many players, since turns are simultaneous.
The way that location works got me thinking about how it's used in other games. In "Seven Wonders" you can buy resources (without consent) from the players sitting next to you, and get VPs based on your military strength relative to your neighbors. So you're interacting with two other players, to a greater extent than some games that become "multiplayer solitaire".
Oh yeah! I finally got to try "Carcassonne", and thought that was pretty fun despite it being a marathon 3+ hour game with a massive map. Heavy focus on terrain generation and control.
It's interesting to compare how the experience of a dungeon crawl is handled in "Thunderstone" vs. "Descent: Journeys In the Dark". Thunderstone has the notion of a dungeon separate from a village, since you can only interact with one of them each turn, and the dungeon consists of three or four levels represented by monsters in play. (Ie. you can fight the #1 monster with one torch or a penalty, the #2 monster with two lights or a bigger penalty...) A few effects move the monsters or make bad things happen if one reaches the village. Contrast that with Descent, which is done with grid tiles and specific locations for where characters and obstacles are. I kind of like having a greater sense of where the characters are supposed to be, even though I'm not a big fan of focusing on exact locations in a board game format (where you have to do the math yourself). What if there were a notion of dungeon rooms so there's a sense of physical movement through the game world, without worrying about how many paces you can step? Then again that's like "Munchkin Quest" and that seems to drag on badly.
There seems to be a trend toward board game RPGs that have lots of plastic figurines, cardboard tiles, and especially cards for every single item. Why do you need a card for every type of weapon and potion and armor? That really limits your options and makes these games ridiculously expensive. ($90 for Descent, for which I could get a D&D 4E boxed set with cardboard tiles several times over.) Maybe I've answered my own question, considering games like "Runebound" that have over a dozen expansions consisting of more cards.
Eh. I guess it's a matter of what kind of experience you're looking for. I'm biased toward story and character vs. combat tactics and figurines, so I get more out of a book-based RPG than a board game.
The way that location works got me thinking about how it's used in other games. In "Seven Wonders" you can buy resources (without consent) from the players sitting next to you, and get VPs based on your military strength relative to your neighbors. So you're interacting with two other players, to a greater extent than some games that become "multiplayer solitaire".
Oh yeah! I finally got to try "Carcassonne", and thought that was pretty fun despite it being a marathon 3+ hour game with a massive map. Heavy focus on terrain generation and control.
It's interesting to compare how the experience of a dungeon crawl is handled in "Thunderstone" vs. "Descent: Journeys In the Dark". Thunderstone has the notion of a dungeon separate from a village, since you can only interact with one of them each turn, and the dungeon consists of three or four levels represented by monsters in play. (Ie. you can fight the #1 monster with one torch or a penalty, the #2 monster with two lights or a bigger penalty...) A few effects move the monsters or make bad things happen if one reaches the village. Contrast that with Descent, which is done with grid tiles and specific locations for where characters and obstacles are. I kind of like having a greater sense of where the characters are supposed to be, even though I'm not a big fan of focusing on exact locations in a board game format (where you have to do the math yourself). What if there were a notion of dungeon rooms so there's a sense of physical movement through the game world, without worrying about how many paces you can step? Then again that's like "Munchkin Quest" and that seems to drag on badly.
There seems to be a trend toward board game RPGs that have lots of plastic figurines, cardboard tiles, and especially cards for every single item. Why do you need a card for every type of weapon and potion and armor? That really limits your options and makes these games ridiculously expensive. ($90 for Descent, for which I could get a D&D 4E boxed set with cardboard tiles several times over.) Maybe I've answered my own question, considering games like "Runebound" that have over a dozen expansions consisting of more cards.
Eh. I guess it's a matter of what kind of experience you're looking for. I'm biased toward story and character vs. combat tactics and figurines, so I get more out of a book-based RPG than a board game.