inconsequential ruminations

For the last few months, I have been steadily playing a campaign of Pathfinder, basically Dungeons and Dragons v3.75, online using regular forum software.

As a kid I was obsessed with RPGs, but never found enough people to play with and only ever played a few short adventures, so this is a nice way to catch up on what I missed. I’m playing a ranger, the class I always wanted to play and he’s turning out the way I always wanted.

Our DM is superb. I get the impression that he’s a frustrated novelist and this game is his creative outlet. I was invited to join the campaign half way through and I thought I would find it difficult to catch up with the action, but I was quickly hooked and spend the best part of a weekend following the story. It reads like a disjointed fantasy novel.

Some choice excerpts:

• Farcical fight with a bunch of pugwampis – bad-luck dogmen
• Climactic boss fight starts with a botched backstab
• Dungeon maps

It’s been very enjoyable. I wonder if forums would work for more avant-garde RPGs?

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Update at the request of Simpike

This is basically a PBEM, but using a forum instead of an inbox. It’s superb, but it puts a huge load on the DM. Our DM must spend hours writing the updates and resolving the combats. He even programmed an application to help him sort out the combats. The result is worth it. It’s exciting when your backs are against the wall. We had a character die, so it’s not like he’s making things too easy.

We use a dice rolling website to resolve dice rolls. It requires honesty and it’s often down, but it works.

It’d be difficult to use an iPhone to play. Reading the character sheets requires a lot of screen space. I often have to consult the online rules too. We do have PDF character sheets too, which might make iPhone play possible.

Apart from that, just read the threads to get a feel for it. It’s obvious how it works, but it is a lot of work for the DM.

Five of us played A Brief History of the World in 3½ hours last night. I played it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I didn’t want to pay a lot of money on eBay, so I have been waiting for this new version.

History of the World has been around since 1991 and has been published by four different companies. Only classics survive this many reprints.

This new version cuts a bit of playtime from previous versions. The design notes are pretty readable and worth a look.

Rather like Small World, you control several empires taking them to their decline and fall. With simple, intuitive rules you get a flavour of the entire history of the world.

We had a great game with plenty of friendly chatting and I enjoyed drawing parallels to real history – like the Arabs invading Spain or Alexander cutting a swathe through the Middle East.

Duncan remarked that the game feels like a history lesson that plays you. He wanted more strategy. I see his point, but we didn’t use forts or combine events with empires effectively. For me, long multiplayer games needs to be gentle and free-wheeling. Sitting around for hours knowing you have lost at ridiculously over-long games like Britannia or Twilight Imperium 3 is no fun.

My main complaint is that the rules were unclear. At no point is the card layout explained for example. For a game this simple, there are a few too many threads in the rules forum at the BoardGameGeek. I may put together an FAQ.

This is a game for low-brow historians like me. 9/10

The last few months have been crazy for me, so there’s been no chance for gaming. I haven’t logged a game since October, which is annoying me. Hopefully things will look up soon. I’m consoling myself with lots of Fallout 3.

Mikko has been much more consistent, but his blog got hacked recently. His web host weren’t helpful, so he had to move it to a new domain.

http://mikkosgameblog.com

Drakes Flames are the best board game reviews I have read for ages.

Another good night at the Isleworth Gamers.

Tonio taught us a few simple games. He is a maths teacher and runs a chess club at his school. It sounds like they play a lot of eurogames as well. It’s great that he does this. The games club at my school was a safe haven and probably one of the main reasons games are so important to me today.

Ticket to Ride Card Game
I can see why the memory element turns people off. I’m bad at memory games, but I do enjoy them, so it worked for me. The gameplay feels a bit clunky, so it’s not top flight, but it’s solid enough for me. 6/10

Loco
This is a stripped down version of Thor, a game I like and own, but haven’t played for a while. I think I prefer it as it’s so simple.
From Geekdo:

There are five different colored chips, with six cards, zero through five, in each of the colors. The cards are dealt out, and then players take turns playing a card and taking any available chip. When one color has all six cards played on it, then the game is over, and players use the last card played in each category to value their chips. The highest total value wins.

You can’t get much better value for £3. 8/10

Eco Fluxx
My first taste of Fluxx. Minimalist card game where the rules change constantly. Fun in a party game type of way, but it would drive me crazy if I had to play it much. Not for me, but a great gift for kids. 3/10

Dice Town
Do not be put off by comparisons with Yahtzee. This is good fun and pretty clever. Bruno Faidutti describes Dice Town perfectly. 7/10

High Society
One of the classics. I don’t like the art of the latest Gryphon Games edition much. Uberplay did a better job. 8/10

I’m selling 17 games on eBay right now. Free shipping in the UK.

I visited Julian on Thursday to play miniatures. I never got into miniatures, simply because I don’t paint, but I’ll play with someone else’s toy soldiers, particularly if they paint well.

We played a game of The Bloody Borders, a super-simple skirmishing rules set from Wargames Illustrated about the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers of the 16th century.

• background
• rules
• campaign rules

We played two linked scenarios. In the first, my English village, populated by the Charltons, was attacked by Julian’s marauding Armstrongs trying to capture livestock. In the second, a posse of Charltons pursued the Armstrongs back towards the border.

Julian used 28mm plastic miniatures. As you can see from my poorly lit photo, they look great. He uses a fast varnish-dipping technique, which he says is considered a bit naff among the cognoscenti, but I think they look very nice. The bulls were adapted from wine bottles, which is why they look Spanish.

I like the free-wheeling, fast, casual nature of miniatures with Julian. It’s about seeing how a narrative unfolds, not about realism or winning.