Question for the thread: is it possible to have a horror board game that’s genuinely scary? Have you ever experienced one?
Not in the same way as a book or a movie has been able to get under my skin, but some games can be really tense in a similar-feeling way to a horror movie, particularly ones with hidden information/movement.
And yeah there is the hopelessness/desperation of something like the Arkham Files games, when they work properly. So, really, a lot of horror-adjacent feelings, but I've never been scared during a board game, no. Although I wouldn't say I've ever been scared during a movie or while reading a book, either. I think video games are really the best medium for that, honestly.
I've read some amazing play through a but they were driven by grim determination in the face of a game that is begging you to stop playing it and pop it in the bin
Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Apparently it turns into a really cool game about halfway through, but the game it is for the first half is kind of a long boring slog. I still have yet to get through the slog.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
It's broken. Not enough playtesting. We had to seek rulings on BGG regularly which sucks for a game with spoilers.
Persistent scoring with runaway leader also a thing. I can't say why because almost every mechanic in the game is a spoiler. Some strategies have to be chosen before the mechanics that amplify or disable them show up.
There's nothing else like it and it's a very interesting failure and I'd love to see another attempt, but it's hard to recommend to somebody since it would need caveats and they'd spoil it
I will never understand legacy games that reward the winner.
Looking at you Netrunner where my early wins led to me sweeping the entire campaign with zero losses and thus sucking all interest or tension out of the entire affair.
It's broken. Not enough playtesting. We had to seek rulings on BGG regularly which sucks for a game with spoilers.
Persistent scoring with runaway leader also a thing. I can't say why because almost every mechanic in the game is a spoiler. Some strategies have to be chosen before the mechanics that amplify or disable them show up.
There's nothing else like it and it's a very interesting failure and I'd love to see another attempt, but it's hard to recommend to somebody since it would need caveats and they'd spoil it
My group actually played all the way through Seafall and had fun, but I can't disagree with this.
I think it's a fundamental problem with competitive legacy campaigns; it's probably not possible to playtest a 60 hour campaign enough times to get balance and rules to a reasonable point. And even if balance is reasonable (I think Charterstone is the closest one I've played to feeling this way), losing in a competitive legacy game just feels awful to a lot of people, like the whole campaign is ruined.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
My friends and I abandoned Risk Legacy partway through because the runaway leader problem felt super unfun. I much prefer the cooperative versions.
I do feel like Betrayal Legacy mitigates this somewhat because the traitor is random and (several games in) there just isn’t a significant leader advantage. (The winner of the previous game gets a one-use move next time that may or may not be helpful.) So from a competitive perspective that is working fine, at least so far.
That said, it is still Betrayal and for some reason every haunt makes everyone on all sides feel like the deck is stacked against them, which feels like the opposite of what you want?
Betrayal seems cool not just because of the randomized semi-cooperative nature of it, but also because the framing of it as a generations-spanning horror story. It feels thematically appropriate if the players have a difficult time overcoming the haunt sometimes.
But I'm pretty sure no other legacy game has even come close to the synergy of narrative and mechanics of Pandemic Legacy Season 1.
My friends and I abandoned Risk Legacy partway through because the runaway leader problem felt super unfun. I much prefer the cooperative versions.
I do feel like Betrayal Legacy mitigates this somewhat because the traitor is random and (several games in) there just isn’t a significant leader advantage. (The winner of the previous game gets a one-use move next time that may or may not be helpful.) So from a competitive perspective that is working fine, at least so far.
That said, it is still Betrayal and for some reason every haunt makes everyone on all sides feel like the deck is stacked against them, which feels like the opposite of what you want?
I found with Risk Legacy the saving grace for runaway leader was everything was give and take at the beginning, so you could get a good team, or a good start position, but likely not both, so the group has to be careful not to buff something too high.
They say straight up in the rulebook for Risk Legacy that the "balancing mechanic" for people getting a big advantage is for everyone to gang up on them.
They say straight up in the rulebook for Risk Legacy that the "balancing mechanic" for people getting a big advantage is for everyone to gang up on them.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
The biggest problem with Seafall - bar none - is that the game design at the basic level isn't good enough for the legacy component to matter. It's not as tight as the basic design of Risk or Pandemic, so what gets built on top is a teetering mess that's more about seeing what happens than actually wanting to play the game, because the game itself is bad.
I don't think I even had that negative an opinion of Seafall - there was dumb stuff in there, but I liked trying to roleplay stuff a bit. It's just that it's really fucking boring and they expect you to play an awful lot of that boring mess before anything interesting even starts to happen.
My problem with all risk games ive played is that its never everyone vs the person who is obviously going to win. Its everyone vs the person whos obviously going to win and their toady who wants second place even though that isnt a thing. You lose same as the rest of us! Stop helping the winner!
(I have been the toady too, its fun)
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
They say straight up in the rulebook for Risk Legacy that the "balancing mechanic" for people getting a big advantage is for everyone to gang up on them.
And then one of the people I was playing in the campaign with just made it very clear that he felt he was getting shit on, and I lost all desire to play the game.
One of these days I should just open the secret compartment.
My problem with all risk games ive played is that its never everyone vs the person who is obviously going to win. Its everyone vs the person whos obviously going to win and their toady who wants second place even though that isnt a thing. You lose same as the rest of us! Stop helping the winner!
(I have been the toady too, its fun)
I mean...If you are all ganging up on number one than number two is not far behind...
Woot. 7th Continent expansions (Kickstarter rewards) are about to be shipped to me. So excited....at least until i realize my gaming group is about to go on hiatus for several months due to an impending baby drop. Still excited tho. So many new things!
Edit: Holy crap. ebay is already selling the full Kickstarter bundle for 500-700 bucks. and I decided on a whim to order a second copy. This might be a KS investment that returns 300-400%....nice.
That's one kickstarter I was really sad I missed. Not only is it the type of game I love but its one of the few games my fiancé actually gets into too. I was able to pick up the base game off ebay for a great price early on but now the price for all the expansion stuff has skyrocketed and it sounds like they may not run another KS.
FYI:
From the latest Kickstarter update :
Extra production copies
Extra production copies from this campaign (Core box, Expansions and Accessories) will be put on the Serious Poulp (coming soon) webstore towards the end of June or Early July, once all deliveries have occurred.
Woot. 7th Continent expansions (Kickstarter rewards) are about to be shipped to me. So excited....at least until i realize my gaming group is about to go on hiatus for several months due to an impending baby drop. Still excited tho. So many new things!
Edit: Holy crap. ebay is already selling the full Kickstarter bundle for 500-700 bucks. and I decided on a whim to order a second copy. This might be a KS investment that returns 300-400%....nice.
That's one kickstarter I was really sad I missed. Not only is it the type of game I love but its one of the few games my fiancé actually gets into too. I was able to pick up the base game off ebay for a great price early on but now the price for all the expansion stuff has skyrocketed and it sounds like they may not run another KS.
FYI:
From the latest Kickstarter update :
Extra production copies
Extra production copies from this campaign (Core box, Expansions and Accessories) will be put on the Serious Poulp (coming soon) webstore towards the end of June or Early July, once all deliveries have occurred.
I am doing spectacularly bad (in game) through the first two scenarios of the Arkham horror dunwich campaign. This old guy made a giant mistake trusting me to find his friends.
I am doing spectacularly bad (in game) through the first two scenarios of the Arkham horror dunwich campaign. This old guy made a giant mistake trusting me to find his friends.
Enjoy the ride. It gets bumpy. You solo'ing it? I played the trumpet while my friend the waitress wielded an enormous fire axe.
I am doing spectacularly bad (in game) through the first two scenarios of the Arkham horror dunwich campaign. This old guy made a giant mistake trusting me to find his friends.
Enjoy the ride. It gets bumpy. You solo'ing it? I played the trumpet while my friend the waitress wielded an enormous fire axe.
Yeah I'm doing this one true solo which is weird and very different than how it plays out with 2+ so I'm not worried about spoiling the experience with my other groups. My partner is buried in her finals for the quarter and our work group is going to be pretty slow to nonexistent for a while and I couldn't wait any longer and really wanted to play.
In this run I'm currently every bit the "rich girl with two guns" and have been excellent at monster slaying, mediocre at old man finding, above average at surviving a building collapse on me, and I bought the adaptable upgrade right away so it's making me look closer at the card pool after each scenario. which hopefully will help me learn what more of the cards do quicker than I would otherwise... There's just so many cards to figure out if you jump in all at once.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
Yeah, this'll work.
Just need.. um..
16 more base trays
17 individually labeled lids
6 player component trays
a card tray
a tile holding tray
a misc. parts tray
and the large rig that holds the race components in place.
I came into work for my birthday and the manager told me to pick a game and now I can't decide. I'm leaning toward viticulture which I know I love or dinosaur island which I don't know but want to love or like a bunch of other things I just thought of while walking around the store crap there's too many options
I didn't know going in, but it didn't take long to realize it was a satire piece. Lol
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited May 2019
I think 10PM is a good time to stop hammering and gluing on things for today, so that my neighbors don't get more pissed than they might already be.
Sadly, as suspected the Legendary organizer for Scythe does spoil some things about the Rise of Fenris expansion. Nothing that can't be surmised just by knowing the nature of the game, but it's still a downer for as much as I fought to not spoil myself.
I am kind of surprised at how compact the Elder Sign crate came out to be. Like.. I might even be able to take it into work easily!
"Easily."
I still prefer Go7Gaming's products. Broken Token is alright, but MAN the plywood stuff they use takes some force to put together!
This just in hot news y'all mage Knight is rad af hot take I know
I was eyeing the ultimate edition of that, likely for solo play only, but I'm currently embroiled in Gloomhaven so it'd be like buying a Ferrari when you already only have a feeble justification for the Lamborghini parked on your drive.
Group got together for TIME Stories: Madame last night. Didn't have time to finish but so far this is easily the best set yet, mostly because it feels like they've addressed some of the common complaints we've had with the usual way missions go. Just a while bunch of weird shit going on in this one...
I think 10PM is a good time to stop hammering and gluing on things for today, so that my neighbors don't get more pissed than they might already be.
Sadly, as suspected the Legendary organizer for Scythe does spoil some things about the Rise of Fenris expansion. Nothing that can't be surmised just by knowing the nature of the game, but it's still a downer for as much as I fought to not spoil myself.
I am kind of surprised at how compact the Elder Sign crate came out to be. Like.. I might even be able to take it into work easily!
"Easily."
I still prefer Go7Gaming's products. Broken Token is alright, but MAN the plywood stuff they use takes some force to put together!
Are you using a rubber mallet rather than a hammer on the organizer ? If not, I think you'd find the mallet to be a better, quieter tool.
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
edited May 2019
Yeah, I'm using a rubber mallet.
Edit: Okay, organizer assembly is done for this week!
The box is now much, MUCH heavier. But it should also be quicker to get to the table now.
None of the Fenris pieces are in there (they are still in their original box). I hid the spoilers to be nice, just in case. But yeah.. assembling this organizer will spoil at least a little bit about what's in the expansion, but not anything you couldn't have guessed IMO.
How does stuff like that organizer actually come together?
I keep hearing you need like wood glue and shit like that and it always scares me off of buying one
Depends on the vendor. All the pieces are laser-cut, so in theory they should go together snugly. Broken Token tends to be more snug than others...
Don't be afraid of wood glue. You don't even have to use wood glue if you don't want to -- I use the same tacky craft glue I use to put together my paper boxes for X-wing. Just make sure you have a clean surface with some padding, and a rubber mallet for tough pieces. I also personally use kebab skewers to clean up excess glue. Go7Gaming usually includes little square rods that are easier to get into corners and do a better job, but I do like the fine point of the skewer to really get in there.
I have found that if you don't glue the pieces, they will come apart when in transport or if for whatever reason the organizer is dropped. There can also be flex that the pieces develop. In the case of Scythe, the organizer is designed to play the game out of, so I made sure everything was glued so that it wouldn't get messed up by handling.
Wood glue is not scary, super glue is scary. I didn't even bother with using skewers or rods to smear it around, I found it easier to clean up small excesses by wiping it off with a finger and then cleaning the finger on a paper towel. Rinses easy in water.
I've got, like, a hundred of the extra Go7 gaming glue rods that I just hold on to and use to apply the glue / wipe off excess. I usually also use a very slightly damp paper towel to help clean up the outsides of the boxes as I put them together. I use Weldbond glue, but that's mostly because I've got a whole bunch of it.
Posts
Not in the same way as a book or a movie has been able to get under my skin, but some games can be really tense in a similar-feeling way to a horror movie, particularly ones with hidden information/movement.
And yeah there is the hopelessness/desperation of something like the Arkham Files games, when they work properly. So, really, a lot of horror-adjacent feelings, but I've never been scared during a board game, no. Although I wouldn't say I've ever been scared during a movie or while reading a book, either. I think video games are really the best medium for that, honestly.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
I'm waiting to just do a two-player campaign of it sometime with the wife... but I also got my copy for $15 during an Asmodee sale a few years back.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I've read some amazing play through a but they were driven by grim determination in the face of a game that is begging you to stop playing it and pop it in the bin
Apparently it turns into a really cool game about halfway through, but the game it is for the first half is kind of a long boring slog. I still have yet to get through the slog.
Persistent scoring with runaway leader also a thing. I can't say why because almost every mechanic in the game is a spoiler. Some strategies have to be chosen before the mechanics that amplify or disable them show up.
There's nothing else like it and it's a very interesting failure and I'd love to see another attempt, but it's hard to recommend to somebody since it would need caveats and they'd spoil it
Looking at you Netrunner where my early wins led to me sweeping the entire campaign with zero losses and thus sucking all interest or tension out of the entire affair.
My group actually played all the way through Seafall and had fun, but I can't disagree with this.
I think it's a fundamental problem with competitive legacy campaigns; it's probably not possible to playtest a 60 hour campaign enough times to get balance and rules to a reasonable point. And even if balance is reasonable (I think Charterstone is the closest one I've played to feeling this way), losing in a competitive legacy game just feels awful to a lot of people, like the whole campaign is ruined.
I do feel like Betrayal Legacy mitigates this somewhat because the traitor is random and (several games in) there just isn’t a significant leader advantage. (The winner of the previous game gets a one-use move next time that may or may not be helpful.) So from a competitive perspective that is working fine, at least so far.
That said, it is still Betrayal and for some reason every haunt makes everyone on all sides feel like the deck is stacked against them, which feels like the opposite of what you want?
But I'm pretty sure no other legacy game has even come close to the synergy of narrative and mechanics of Pandemic Legacy Season 1.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I found with Risk Legacy the saving grace for runaway leader was everything was give and take at the beginning, so you could get a good team, or a good start position, but likely not both, so the group has to be careful not to buff something too high.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I mean it's risk, I'd expect nothing less
I don't think I even had that negative an opinion of Seafall - there was dumb stuff in there, but I liked trying to roleplay stuff a bit. It's just that it's really fucking boring and they expect you to play an awful lot of that boring mess before anything interesting even starts to happen.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
(I have been the toady too, its fun)
And then one of the people I was playing in the campaign with just made it very clear that he felt he was getting shit on, and I lost all desire to play the game.
One of these days I should just open the secret compartment.
FYI:
From the latest Kickstarter update :
Extra production copies
Extra production copies from this campaign (Core box, Expansions and Accessories) will be put on the Serious Poulp (coming soon) webstore towards the end of June or Early July, once all deliveries have occurred.
We will send out a Newsletter when they become available: https://www.seriouspoulp.com/en/subscribe
Thanks. I'm going to have to watch the site like a hawk to hopefully get a copy before the scalpers move in.
Enjoy the ride. It gets bumpy.
Yeah I'm doing this one true solo which is weird and very different than how it plays out with 2+ so I'm not worried about spoiling the experience with my other groups. My partner is buried in her finals for the quarter and our work group is going to be pretty slow to nonexistent for a while and I couldn't wait any longer and really wanted to play.
In this run I'm currently every bit the "rich girl with two guns" and have been excellent at monster slaying, mediocre at old man finding, above average at surviving a building collapse on me, and I bought the adaptable upgrade right away so it's making me look closer at the card pool after each scenario. which hopefully will help me learn what more of the cards do quicker than I would otherwise... There's just so many cards to figure out if you jump in all at once.
Just need.. um..
16 more base trays
17 individually labeled lids
6 player component trays
a card tray
a tile holding tray
a misc. parts tray
and the large rig that holds the race components in place.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Too real, The Hard Times. Too real.
Sadly, as suspected the Legendary organizer for Scythe does spoil some things about the Rise of Fenris expansion. Nothing that can't be surmised just by knowing the nature of the game, but it's still a downer for as much as I fought to not spoil myself.
I am kind of surprised at how compact the Elder Sign crate came out to be. Like.. I might even be able to take it into work easily!
"Easily."
I still prefer Go7Gaming's products. Broken Token is alright, but MAN the plywood stuff they use takes some force to put together!
I was eyeing the ultimate edition of that, likely for solo play only, but I'm currently embroiled in Gloomhaven so it'd be like buying a Ferrari when you already only have a feeble justification for the Lamborghini parked on your drive.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Are you using a rubber mallet rather than a hammer on the organizer ? If not, I think you'd find the mallet to be a better, quieter tool.
Edit: Okay, organizer assembly is done for this week!
The box is now much, MUCH heavier. But it should also be quicker to get to the table now.
None of the Fenris pieces are in there (they are still in their original box). I hid the spoilers to be nice, just in case. But yeah.. assembling this organizer will spoil at least a little bit about what's in the expansion, but not anything you couldn't have guessed IMO.
The new Thunderstone Quest expansion (To the Barricades) comes in a similar size box to the original Champion reward.
The co-op stuff looks actually cool.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I keep hearing you need like wood glue and shit like that and it always scares me off of buying one
Depends on the vendor. All the pieces are laser-cut, so in theory they should go together snugly. Broken Token tends to be more snug than others...
Don't be afraid of wood glue. You don't even have to use wood glue if you don't want to -- I use the same tacky craft glue I use to put together my paper boxes for X-wing. Just make sure you have a clean surface with some padding, and a rubber mallet for tough pieces. I also personally use kebab skewers to clean up excess glue. Go7Gaming usually includes little square rods that are easier to get into corners and do a better job, but I do like the fine point of the skewer to really get in there.
I have found that if you don't glue the pieces, they will come apart when in transport or if for whatever reason the organizer is dropped. There can also be flex that the pieces develop. In the case of Scythe, the organizer is designed to play the game out of, so I made sure everything was glued so that it wouldn't get messed up by handling.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]