CCP has sold its White Wolf properties to Paradox Interactive. Apparently people are excited about the video game possibilities implied? I'm mostly excited about seeing certain mismanaged licenses pried out of Onyx Path's grip. Rich Thomas's erratic behavior lately starts to make a little more sense though, if he's scrambling to justify what's been going on with EX3.
If the licenses are transferred, it would likely be all of the White Wolf licenses not a fractional amount. And the work Onxy Path did would very much likely not be used by the new licencee. So you'd likely be looking at new editions for everything. Paradox seems way more interested in the core WoD stuff. They seem to have hopeful expectations that it will lead to a multi-media empire. But even if the drafts and such were transferred, you're adding at least another year to the third edition of Exalted and even more if they decide not to use the work.
CCP has sold its White Wolf properties to Paradox Interactive. Apparently people are excited about the video game possibilities implied? I'm mostly excited about seeing certain mismanaged licenses pried out of Onyx Path's grip. Rich Thomas's erratic behavior lately starts to make a little more sense though, if he's scrambling to justify what's been going on with EX3.
If the licenses are transferred, it would likely be all of the White Wolf licenses not a fractional amount. And the work Onxy Path did would very much likely not be used by the new licencee. So you'd likely be looking at new editions for everything. Paradox seems way more interested in the core WoD stuff. They seem to have hopeful expectations that it will lead to a multi-media empire. But even if the drafts and such were transferred, you're adding at least another year to the third edition of Exalted and even more if they decide not to use the work.
Didn't they just release the backer PDFs like last week on Exalted? Casts them in a new light of maybe not wanting like 3 years of their life to vanish in a puff of smoke.
CCP has sold its White Wolf properties to Paradox Interactive. Apparently people are excited about the video game possibilities implied? I'm mostly excited about seeing certain mismanaged licenses pried out of Onyx Path's grip. Rich Thomas's erratic behavior lately starts to make a little more sense though, if he's scrambling to justify what's been going on with EX3.
If the licenses are transferred, it would likely be all of the White Wolf licenses not a fractional amount. And the work Onxy Path did would very much likely not be used by the new licensee. So you'd likely be looking at new editions for everything. Paradox seems way more interested in the core WoD stuff. They seem to have hopeful expectations that it will lead to a multi-media empire. But even if the drafts and such were transferred, you're adding at least another year to the third edition of Exalted and even more if they decide not to use the work.
Didn't they just release the backer PDFs like last week on Exalted? Casts them in a new light of maybe not wanting like 3 years of their life to vanish in a puff of smoke.
They released the early preview version. It's a couple of revisions away from final. But it's proof that most of the heavily lifting is done.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
We got a copy of of mysterium out from the boardgame library at Pax and bought a copy of codenames.
Both are the same type of game where it's trying to convey information but not being able to do it well. I think mysterium is the better of the two but both are worth your time.
Why does he have tiny baby hands coming out of his stomach.
That's the pilot! The TAG itself is like, twelve feet tall or something. It's arms mimic the pilot's movement.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I am all about the idea of more games like VtM Bloodlines. I am not all about the idea of Paradox upending everything on the tabletop side as part of some quixotic bid to turn a 25-year-old IP into a VAST MULTIMEDIA EMPIRE.
I'd kind of like it if the state of semi-benign neglect that Onyx Path seemed to enjoy under the last couple years of CCP were to continue. I realize that Exalted is its own special snowflake clusterfuck, but the NWoD 2nd edition games and Demon: the Descent are all baller as fuck.
I think that would be very unlike Paradox, they have always strived for good consumer and community relations (I once whined on their forums and they actually went and changed stuff in their game so they basically earned my neverending loyalty with that) - I think upending the tabletop side would not create a lot of goodwill
This is also a funny story, they always seemed pretty down to earth, I sure hope that hasn't changed
The decision to create Victoria II was influenced by voting on the Paradox Interactive forums and debate within the company. The CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester, publicly announced his belief that the game would never see a profit while other members of the company such as Johan Andersson were confident it would be profitable. To this end Wester promised that if the game did indeed make a profit he would shave his head and post the pictures onto the forum.[11] This belief stemmed from the first game's lackluster sales numbers. It was revealed in a German interview with Fredrik that 70,000 copies would need to be sold in order for Victoria II to be profitable.[12] On 17 June, Jessica Chobot from IGN shaved it off for him.[13]
My regular board game played some Cosmic Encounters Thursday. I picked up the Bandit. At the beginning of each turn, I got to draw three cards from the deck. If any two matched, I got to pick one to keep. If none matched, I lost a card. If all three matched types, I got to take all three, AND everyone else had to discard that type from their hand.
Turn 1, first player: I draw three attacks cards.
It was the most serene game of Cosmic Encounters I've ever played. I won because I was the person sitting on 20 attack encounters when my turn rolled around, and I steamrolled both opponents to leap from 3 to 5 colonies. The last combat, it was literally the entire table against me. Too bad, I had a 40 attack card and two +5's suckahs!
Cosmic is one of the few games that becomes waaaaay more fun when it's hilariously broken
IKR. I forget what race I was, but I had one where I could pick encounter cards back up after I used 'em. I got a 40 at the beginning of the game, and victory shortly came after.
You know I'll say this for Ex3, it worried a lot of people that they were essentially going to nerf Solar exalts massively, and they really haven't.
Because I've been messing around with making a character today, and I have figured out a charm combination that I can make what is, essentially, three attacks before someone can even land a blow on me. And not by going first, but by going second, and cutting them down reflexively before their attack lands. And then burning off the initiative I gained with those attacks to make their initial attack miss me (and it literally doesn't matter what they hit me with, because Heavenly Guardian Defence motherfucker fuck you I can parry ballista bolts and lightning and volcanic detonations and fucking divine curses with this)
And then it's my go.
Stab time, baby! You know, I really have got some love back here, messing around with these fiddly bits. It's pretty cool, very crunchy but very rewarding too. If you approach the game like you would a LCG or something like that, with an eye to really embrace the tactical depth, there's a lot to be found there.
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astrobstrdSo full of mercy...Registered Userregular
edited November 2015
Has anybody had any experience with PbP RPGs outside of this forum? I have some friends in my old hometown that I want to run a game for. I've played and started a short-lived game in CF before, but I would feel weird hosting and not recruiting from forum ranks.
Has anybody had any experience with PbP RPGs outside of this forum? I have some friends in my old hometown that I want to run a game for. I've played and started a short-lived game in CF before, but I would feel weird hosting and not recruiting from forum ranks.
Create a pro board if you're worried about it, they're free.
Has anybody had any experience with PbP RPGs outside of this forum? I have some friends in my old hometown that I want to run a game for. I've played and started a short-lived game in CF before, but I would feel weird hosting and not recruiting from forum ranks.
Create a pro board if you're worried about it, they're free.
I had no idea that existed. Thank you kindly, good sir.
Why does he have tiny baby hands coming out of his stomach.
That's just the real pilot, Kuato
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
I need to run a game where gaining levels tie into quests.
Want to hit level 7? You need to find the rat woven cord and deliver it to the dragon king in his cave.
Level 14? You'll have to unlock the magical training room where a year passes in a day and train under artificial gravity.
Level 20? Unlock that spiral power by digging to the core of a planet.
Dungeon Crawl Classics is doing a 4th printing on kickstarter, they're reached enough stretch goals where if you're getting a printed copy it has a colour outer sleeve, dictionary like page drilling and a whole buncha shit.
Spoiler-free Pandemic Legacy thoughts:
The hooks this game digs into you, holy cow. Win a game? Well, you're on a hot streak! Gotta see what else the game throws at you so that you can conquer it with aplomb. Gotta play one more game. Lose a game? Well, you can't end the night like this. Gotta have that sweet, sweet come back. This loop is how we played six games in one sitting, and never even questioned if we should keep going. We were always, immediately, on the same page.
One of the biggest problems with vanilla Pandemic (quarterbacking) evaporates by the end of the first game. The game gets weird enough quick enough that everybody has to find their footing again, figure out the puzzle again, and everybody's talking and playing. Even the Medic, that poor guy who usually gets bossed around by goddang everyone, ended up triumphantly connecting some dots we'd all missed. By making sure everyone is constantly adapting, constantly learning, the game makes sure everybody is constantly playing. There's no set gameplan to follow, anymore.
The stories you build. We decided as a table that we'd name the diseases when we eradicated them. As we'd been playing, we kept feeling weird about saying things like, "I'll just fly over to Cairo and start taking out those blacks." It's an uncomfortable sentence! So when we got a bit lucky and eradicated that virus, we named it Ra-C15m. Allowing us to say, "I'm gonna take a plane to Istanbul and clear out the racism." We ended up becoming (irrationally?) fixated on wiping out Ra-C15m as quickly as possibly, every game. Stamping out racism, high fiving, and then sighing when it would inevitably return the next month. This whole weird, funny meta-level to the game that we never would've expected.
The game does dread and suspense better than maybe any game I've seen. You're given morsels of information, little teases, that make you LUDICROUSLY PARANOID about what it might mean. The surprises are still shocking, but they come with the twist of a knife: "You knew something was coming, but you couldn't do a damn thing to stop this." It makes for a ludicrously satisfying narrative.
Spoilery thoughts (We played up through April, for those who've played):
I LOVE the angle on the Faded. We had sorta predicted a zombie thing when military bases started popping up, but the approach is fucking top-notch. It's so well-suited to the medium, too - it's an image that's very evocative, very fun to imagine, but that would be hard to pull off in most other mediums. Yet here, where it's largely in your imagination, you see these little translucent figurines and they become that much more sinister and threatening. The simplistic figurine enhances the fiction, and the fiction enhances the simplistic figurine. Damn fine trick.
The pacing on the campaign has been fucking perfect, for my group, in part because of the balance of the game. We got fucked hard in our very first game, and actually lost it. Asia was thrown into chaos, we were rattled, and the task ahead of us seemed daunting. But we got some upgrades, learned some lessons, and came back swinging. We got on a bit of a hot streak. And then the fucking Faded showed up, and we got creamed. We had to strengthen our resolve, re-evaluate our approach, roll up our sleeves, and get back to work. So good!
Game of the year, easily.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
I was trying to describe pandemic legacy to someone and came up with, it is like pandemic was an ice cream.
And each round of pandemic legacy is an ice cream with a fucking story. And because of that all of a sudden you care about that ice cream, you're not going to just eat this ice cream, I'm going to neatly open this wrapper, eat the ice cream like a boss clean the pop stick at the end and fold up the wrapper neatly at the end. You want to become a pro at eating ice cream.
And then as soon as you eat that ice cream you get a new ice cream which is a new flavour. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
(Ours is black/Eastern Europe/Asia, we are at the same month)
Ours is red. It got pummeled early and never bounced back.
One of our players switched to the Quarantine specialist the second she was available, and he has just resigned himself to spending all his time in Asia, trying to mitigate that clusterfuck.
Do any of your characters have scars, yet? We've somehow scraped by without any, yet, so I'm curious how that ends up affecting things.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
No, we've been swapping out a lot really, we've let to lose a game and our area is pretty good, the only area we have at level one is joberg and we only have a small number of cities which have had outbreaks.
No, we've been swapping out a lot really, we've let to lose a game and our area is pretty good, the only area we have at level one is joberg and we only have a small number of cities which have had outbreaks.
How have you had outbreaks but only one city at level one? I thought level one hit as soon as you got an outbreak. Which is how we've got maybe a dozen cities at level one, and a couple at level two. Nothing beyond that yet, mercifully.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Sorry I can't remember the exact rule names
So we've had a few outbreaks getting the first sticker on some cities but we've only had joberg getting the second sticker so there are no flights in or out.
Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Ok so I've got more thoughts on Mysterium and Codenames.
They are essentially the same type of game, where the goal is for one player to transfer information to the other player, but they are limited in someway. In codenames the communicator can only say one word, and then a number. In mysterium communication is handled by cards with imagery (similar to dixit)
Codenames is simpler and funnier of the two, for those who don't of it, the concept of the game is that there is a five by five grid, of random words, team captains take turns to say one word and a number, and someone on that team gets to flip tiles that match to that word, mistakes happen when you misinterpret the word and flip the opposition's tiles, here is a lot of trash talking between the teams, it's fast setup, and mistakes are made and the opposition gets to celebrate, which is fun.
There is a sand timer included also, which someone can flip at any time, usually while staring someone dead in the eye. This is basically giving the middle finger to someone because it's essentially say, you are taking too long, hurry up. When the sand runs out their turn ends. However if they then hurry up and there isn't a lot of sand that has fallen through to the bottom chamber, on the next round, if someone wants to flip the timer, there won't be much sand in what was the lower chamber now at the top, so it can bone you over on your next turn.
Fun times, and for dollar wise it's worth your time.
Mysterious might be less funny, but the better game though. The game's premise is that many years ago, there was a murder at a house and a ghost now haunts the place, so a famed psychic has gather up the rest of his panaromal friends to hold a seance on halloween to find out more about the ghost's life. So in terms of gameplay terms the ghosts tells each seperate player a part of it's life, which is a person, a location and an item. Players must correctly identify one segment before they move onto the next. To win, all psychics must identify their items (it's a co-op game) Then the final part of the game is the ghost telling the psychics what section of it's life was the murder and the psychics vote on who they think is the killer.
Mysterium's hook is the ghost dream cards. They're rich, full of detail and are completed imagery and every card is capable of being misinterpreted by the psychics. There can be so much frustration (which is the fun) from the players and the ghosts in regards to these cards with the players it's frustration that you put into all of this energy into finding the links in the cards only to be told no. Is the vampire there because it's wearing the same suit as someone? Or because he is scared of crosses and there is a nun? Meanwhile, the ghost is hiding behind the screen silently yelling at everyone for not getting what is "clearly" obvious.
Other times all the dream cards are rubbish, and you can only give them one card with the most tenuous of hooks. Which again, is both hilarious and frustrating.
Mysterium is just a lovely game, there has been so much effort put into the art, the models are top notch and it's nice to see an asymmetrical game where everyone works together.
Everyone is probably going to buy codenames because it's cheaper, but everyone should really look at mysterium as well.
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Did you pick up the Libellud version or the Polish/Ukrainian version of Mysterium, Blake? From your description it sounds like the Libellud release, which I hear has a slightly different ruleset and also different art.
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Query re: Pandemic Legacy;
No spoilers, please, but is it possible to play with a varying number of players each game of the campaign? Like, if my group has 4 regulars and a couple of guys that turn up infrequently and unpredictably, can we play a core cast of 4 with an occasional guest star cameo if we have 5 one night?
My understanding is that Risk Legacy was very tied to having a very stable group of people, but dome of the things I've heard have suggested that Pandemic: Legacy is a bit more forgivong and flexible about the playing group. You still need a mostly stable group but the odd man out is still going to have a good time playing the game, and won't detract from the longer campaign for the longer players. Is this impression accurate?
No spoilers, please, but is it possible to play with a varying number of players each game of the campaign? Like, if my group has 4 regulars and a couple of guys that turn up infrequently and unpredictably, can we play a core cast of 4 with an occasional guest star cameo if we have 5 one night?
My understanding is that Risk Legacy was very tied to having a very stable group of people, but dome of the things I've heard have suggested that Pandemic: Legacy is a bit more forgivong and flexible about the playing group. You still need a mostly stable group but the odd man out is still going to have a good time playing the game, and won't detract from the longer campaign for the longer players. Is this impression accurate?
You'd struggle with five. The original is based off four players anyway and you only get four character cards to start with anyway. You might be able to go through on the brink and figure out what are the gameplay changes are for five players (Jaco is right the expansion does support five) and bring them into the base deck, but it'd be a bit of work.
You can easily play it with two or three and technically you can have it with a rotating set of players, but the main reason the same set of people is "required" is that the story is so neat, you'd be silly to miss out on the story.
No spoilers, please, but is it possible to play with a varying number of players each game of the campaign? Like, if my group has 4 regulars and a couple of guys that turn up infrequently and unpredictably, can we play a core cast of 4 with an occasional guest star cameo if we have 5 one night?
My understanding is that Risk Legacy was very tied to having a very stable group of people, but dome of the things I've heard have suggested that Pandemic: Legacy is a bit more forgivong and flexible about the playing group. You still need a mostly stable group but the odd man out is still going to have a good time playing the game, and won't detract from the longer campaign for the longer players. Is this impression accurate?
It maxes out at four, and I'd be hesitant to modify the game too much - rules and cards are already changing enough from game to game that cobbling in another person could have some very mixed results. Given that it's cooperative, though, I see no reason why there couldn't be a team of two controlling one character. It's a game all about sitting around a table and solving a puzzle together, and a fifth person could help with that side of things well enough.
It scales down much, much easier than Risk Legacy but, like Blake said, one of the big draws of the game is seeing the story unfold. Having a plot twist described after the fact is never quite as much fun as cracking that mystery bin open yourself, ya know?
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Huh. For some reason I thought Pandemic Legacy upped the player count to 5 for some reason. I'm not sure when that bit of information got lodged in my brain.
That basically makes it moot. I have plenty of games for 5 off-the-shelf. I was just thinking that if the game supported 5 and one of the irregulars turned up, he might get a kick out of taking a one-off part in a longer campaign - see it and be a part of it, rather than just hearing us all talk about how great it was after it's over.
But seeing as we have a regular 4 we may as well play a campaign with those people, and if/when the others turn up we can stick to the 20 other games I have on my shelf that play 5+.
You can probably maybe make it work for five? There are five roles to start out of the box (not four like I originally thought) the starting rules suggest four funded events for two players, three for three players and two for four players, so to extrapolate if you had five players you would have one funded event.
The real imbalancing comes in the fact that there are more people on board, which more passive powers on the board, it also means it is easier to trade city cards and with a hand maximum of 7, it means you could have as many as 35 cards on the deck, so you might want to house rule it saying that you have a maximum hand size of six? The other alternative rule that is suggested by Rob Daviau for regular Pandemic Legacy is that if you are winning a lot, just introduce another Epidemic card each time you win.
This means you can probably have an occasional sixth player form a corporation (this is what we call two people teaming up as one person in a board game for some reason) with someone else, or you can just have a regular player do the game management (deal all the cards, disperse the cubes etc) while still throwing in their ten cents and let the regular people rotate through that role.
After thinking through all of this though I'm still somewhat hesitant to recommend it is firstly we haven't played through the entire thing yet, and while there isn't anything in the ruleset that seems specifically targeted for four or less, I don't know if there is. And secondly, I don't know if these rule changes would flat out work and due to the cost of the game (at least in Australia it is ludicrously priced, and while I've recommended the game countless times to friends, I say, unless you are desperate to play straight away, paying $140 dollars for a boardgames is insane) I'd feel bad if you bought in used the rule set and found out that it didn't work.
Our legacy group isn't our regular gaming group, I'd suggest you and Jen find another couple for some occasional afternoon board gaming and use that as the game.
Posts
If the licenses are transferred, it would likely be all of the White Wolf licenses not a fractional amount. And the work Onxy Path did would very much likely not be used by the new licencee. So you'd likely be looking at new editions for everything. Paradox seems way more interested in the core WoD stuff. They seem to have hopeful expectations that it will lead to a multi-media empire. But even if the drafts and such were transferred, you're adding at least another year to the third edition of Exalted and even more if they decide not to use the work.
Didn't they just release the backer PDFs like last week on Exalted? Casts them in a new light of maybe not wanting like 3 years of their life to vanish in a puff of smoke.
They released the early preview version. It's a couple of revisions away from final. But it's proof that most of the heavily lifting is done.
Both are the same type of game where it's trying to convey information but not being able to do it well. I think mysterium is the better of the two but both are worth your time.
Satans..... hints.....
Soooooo gooood
To start the reactor
its an exo-squad deal
Mommy and Me in the Grim Dark Future Where There is Only War.
That's the pilot! The TAG itself is like, twelve feet tall or something. It's arms mimic the pilot's movement.
I'd kind of like it if the state of semi-benign neglect that Onyx Path seemed to enjoy under the last couple years of CCP were to continue. I realize that Exalted is its own special snowflake clusterfuck, but the NWoD 2nd edition games and Demon: the Descent are all baller as fuck.
This is also a funny story, they always seemed pretty down to earth, I sure hope that hasn't changed
IKR. I forget what race I was, but I had one where I could pick encounter cards back up after I used 'em. I got a 40 at the beginning of the game, and victory shortly came after.
Because I've been messing around with making a character today, and I have figured out a charm combination that I can make what is, essentially, three attacks before someone can even land a blow on me. And not by going first, but by going second, and cutting them down reflexively before their attack lands. And then burning off the initiative I gained with those attacks to make their initial attack miss me (and it literally doesn't matter what they hit me with, because Heavenly Guardian Defence motherfucker fuck you I can parry ballista bolts and lightning and volcanic detonations and fucking divine curses with this)
And then it's my go.
Stab time, baby! You know, I really have got some love back here, messing around with these fiddly bits. It's pretty cool, very crunchy but very rewarding too. If you approach the game like you would a LCG or something like that, with an eye to really embrace the tactical depth, there's a lot to be found there.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I had no idea that existed. Thank you kindly, good sir.
That's just the real pilot, Kuato
Want to hit level 7? You need to find the rat woven cord and deliver it to the dragon king in his cave.
Level 14? You'll have to unlock the magical training room where a year passes in a day and train under artificial gravity.
Level 20? Unlock that spiral power by digging to the core of a planet.
sounds neat.
So amazing
More detailed thoughts when I'm not typing from my phone, but goddamn. What a game.
The hooks this game digs into you, holy cow. Win a game? Well, you're on a hot streak! Gotta see what else the game throws at you so that you can conquer it with aplomb. Gotta play one more game. Lose a game? Well, you can't end the night like this. Gotta have that sweet, sweet come back. This loop is how we played six games in one sitting, and never even questioned if we should keep going. We were always, immediately, on the same page.
One of the biggest problems with vanilla Pandemic (quarterbacking) evaporates by the end of the first game. The game gets weird enough quick enough that everybody has to find their footing again, figure out the puzzle again, and everybody's talking and playing. Even the Medic, that poor guy who usually gets bossed around by goddang everyone, ended up triumphantly connecting some dots we'd all missed. By making sure everyone is constantly adapting, constantly learning, the game makes sure everybody is constantly playing. There's no set gameplan to follow, anymore.
The stories you build. We decided as a table that we'd name the diseases when we eradicated them. As we'd been playing, we kept feeling weird about saying things like, "I'll just fly over to Cairo and start taking out those blacks." It's an uncomfortable sentence! So when we got a bit lucky and eradicated that virus, we named it Ra-C15m. Allowing us to say, "I'm gonna take a plane to Istanbul and clear out the racism." We ended up becoming (irrationally?) fixated on wiping out Ra-C15m as quickly as possibly, every game. Stamping out racism, high fiving, and then sighing when it would inevitably return the next month. This whole weird, funny meta-level to the game that we never would've expected.
The game does dread and suspense better than maybe any game I've seen. You're given morsels of information, little teases, that make you LUDICROUSLY PARANOID about what it might mean. The surprises are still shocking, but they come with the twist of a knife: "You knew something was coming, but you couldn't do a damn thing to stop this." It makes for a ludicrously satisfying narrative.
Spoilery thoughts (We played up through April, for those who've played):
The pacing on the campaign has been fucking perfect, for my group, in part because of the balance of the game. We got fucked hard in our very first game, and actually lost it. Asia was thrown into chaos, we were rattled, and the task ahead of us seemed daunting. But we got some upgrades, learned some lessons, and came back swinging. We got on a bit of a hot streak. And then the fucking Faded showed up, and we got creamed. We had to strengthen our resolve, re-evaluate our approach, roll up our sleeves, and get back to work. So good!
Game of the year, easily.
And each round of pandemic legacy is an ice cream with a fucking story. And because of that all of a sudden you care about that ice cream, you're not going to just eat this ice cream, I'm going to neatly open this wrapper, eat the ice cream like a boss clean the pop stick at the end and fold up the wrapper neatly at the end. You want to become a pro at eating ice cream.
And then as soon as you eat that ice cream you get a new ice cream which is a new flavour. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Satans..... hints.....
(Ours is black/Eastern Europe/Asia, we are at the same month)
Satans..... hints.....
Ours is red. It got pummeled early and never bounced back.
Do any of your characters have scars, yet? We've somehow scraped by without any, yet, so I'm curious how that ends up affecting things.
Satans..... hints.....
So we've had a few outbreaks getting the first sticker on some cities but we've only had joberg getting the second sticker so there are no flights in or out.
Satans..... hints.....
They are essentially the same type of game, where the goal is for one player to transfer information to the other player, but they are limited in someway. In codenames the communicator can only say one word, and then a number. In mysterium communication is handled by cards with imagery (similar to dixit)
Codenames is simpler and funnier of the two, for those who don't of it, the concept of the game is that there is a five by five grid, of random words, team captains take turns to say one word and a number, and someone on that team gets to flip tiles that match to that word, mistakes happen when you misinterpret the word and flip the opposition's tiles, here is a lot of trash talking between the teams, it's fast setup, and mistakes are made and the opposition gets to celebrate, which is fun.
There is a sand timer included also, which someone can flip at any time, usually while staring someone dead in the eye. This is basically giving the middle finger to someone because it's essentially say, you are taking too long, hurry up. When the sand runs out their turn ends. However if they then hurry up and there isn't a lot of sand that has fallen through to the bottom chamber, on the next round, if someone wants to flip the timer, there won't be much sand in what was the lower chamber now at the top, so it can bone you over on your next turn.
Fun times, and for dollar wise it's worth your time.
Mysterious might be less funny, but the better game though. The game's premise is that many years ago, there was a murder at a house and a ghost now haunts the place, so a famed psychic has gather up the rest of his panaromal friends to hold a seance on halloween to find out more about the ghost's life. So in terms of gameplay terms the ghosts tells each seperate player a part of it's life, which is a person, a location and an item. Players must correctly identify one segment before they move onto the next. To win, all psychics must identify their items (it's a co-op game) Then the final part of the game is the ghost telling the psychics what section of it's life was the murder and the psychics vote on who they think is the killer.
Mysterium's hook is the ghost dream cards. They're rich, full of detail and are completed imagery and every card is capable of being misinterpreted by the psychics. There can be so much frustration (which is the fun) from the players and the ghosts in regards to these cards with the players it's frustration that you put into all of this energy into finding the links in the cards only to be told no. Is the vampire there because it's wearing the same suit as someone? Or because he is scared of crosses and there is a nun? Meanwhile, the ghost is hiding behind the screen silently yelling at everyone for not getting what is "clearly" obvious.
Other times all the dream cards are rubbish, and you can only give them one card with the most tenuous of hooks. Which again, is both hilarious and frustrating.
Mysterium is just a lovely game, there has been so much effort put into the art, the models are top notch and it's nice to see an asymmetrical game where everyone works together.
Everyone is probably going to buy codenames because it's cheaper, but everyone should really look at mysterium as well.
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
No spoilers, please, but is it possible to play with a varying number of players each game of the campaign? Like, if my group has 4 regulars and a couple of guys that turn up infrequently and unpredictably, can we play a core cast of 4 with an occasional guest star cameo if we have 5 one night?
My understanding is that Risk Legacy was very tied to having a very stable group of people, but dome of the things I've heard have suggested that Pandemic: Legacy is a bit more forgivong and flexible about the playing group. You still need a mostly stable group but the odd man out is still going to have a good time playing the game, and won't detract from the longer campaign for the longer players. Is this impression accurate?
You'd struggle with five. The original is based off four players anyway and you only get four character cards to start with anyway. You might be able to go through on the brink and figure out what are the gameplay changes are for five players (Jaco is right the expansion does support five) and bring them into the base deck, but it'd be a bit of work.
You can easily play it with two or three and technically you can have it with a rotating set of players, but the main reason the same set of people is "required" is that the story is so neat, you'd be silly to miss out on the story.
Satans..... hints.....
It maxes out at four, and I'd be hesitant to modify the game too much - rules and cards are already changing enough from game to game that cobbling in another person could have some very mixed results. Given that it's cooperative, though, I see no reason why there couldn't be a team of two controlling one character. It's a game all about sitting around a table and solving a puzzle together, and a fifth person could help with that side of things well enough.
It scales down much, much easier than Risk Legacy but, like Blake said, one of the big draws of the game is seeing the story unfold. Having a plot twist described after the fact is never quite as much fun as cracking that mystery bin open yourself, ya know?
That basically makes it moot. I have plenty of games for 5 off-the-shelf. I was just thinking that if the game supported 5 and one of the irregulars turned up, he might get a kick out of taking a one-off part in a longer campaign - see it and be a part of it, rather than just hearing us all talk about how great it was after it's over.
But seeing as we have a regular 4 we may as well play a campaign with those people, and if/when the others turn up we can stick to the 20 other games I have on my shelf that play 5+.
Nevermind then, but thanks for the answers!
One expansion increases to max 5 players. Another one expands to 1-6 players.
You can probably maybe make it work for five? There are five roles to start out of the box (not four like I originally thought) the starting rules suggest four funded events for two players, three for three players and two for four players, so to extrapolate if you had five players you would have one funded event.
The real imbalancing comes in the fact that there are more people on board, which more passive powers on the board, it also means it is easier to trade city cards and with a hand maximum of 7, it means you could have as many as 35 cards on the deck, so you might want to house rule it saying that you have a maximum hand size of six? The other alternative rule that is suggested by Rob Daviau for regular Pandemic Legacy is that if you are winning a lot, just introduce another Epidemic card each time you win.
This means you can probably have an occasional sixth player form a corporation (this is what we call two people teaming up as one person in a board game for some reason) with someone else, or you can just have a regular player do the game management (deal all the cards, disperse the cubes etc) while still throwing in their ten cents and let the regular people rotate through that role.
After thinking through all of this though I'm still somewhat hesitant to recommend it is firstly we haven't played through the entire thing yet, and while there isn't anything in the ruleset that seems specifically targeted for four or less, I don't know if there is. And secondly, I don't know if these rule changes would flat out work and due to the cost of the game (at least in Australia it is ludicrously priced, and while I've recommended the game countless times to friends, I say, unless you are desperate to play straight away, paying $140 dollars for a boardgames is insane) I'd feel bad if you bought in used the rule set and found out that it didn't work.
Our legacy group isn't our regular gaming group, I'd suggest you and Jen find another couple for some occasional afternoon board gaming and use that as the game.
Satans..... hints.....