- We can't really houserule stuff, like letting people pick their Seven Wonder board, or Disallowing the Open Lord card in Waterdeep.
- There are some games in my collection that have no digital versions yet (Concordia, for one)
I don't know if you've looked into it, but tabletop simulator on steam has Concordia available on the steam workshop. TTS can be a little wonky to get used to as it's basically a physics simulator that you can play games in, but you can also play just about anything with it as long as it's on the workshop. One of the big downsides though is that unlike true digital implementations of games that have all the rules built in to prevent illegal moves and such, that isn't there. You have to know how to play and know you are doing something incorrect (basically just like playing it in person). However that does let you do houserule things like you mentioned as well.
There are a handful of games on TTS that you do have to buy as additional dlc, but the vast majority are just on the workshop for free. TTS also just happens to have just gone on sale so you can get it for $10 or a 4-pack is available for $30. I just got TTS myself just over a month ago and it's been great for playing all sorts of games online.
Yeah we've been looking at TTS and Tabletopia for a while now, but unsure of the learning curve to manipulate stuff. How easy is it? And as some of my buddies play on clunky laptops, what are its specs?
EDIT: Yeah, bit the bullet, we are now all happy owners of TTS.
Why have I only now discovered Hexplore It? And it's from a developer in my state. This looks neat! Anyone try it?
I've got a couple close friends that are pretty deep into Hexplore It. From my plays with them, I've found it to be fine. The rules feel a little lacking in places, but it mostly works.
At the end of the day, it feels to me like someone tried to build a DM-less D&D game.
I have hexplore it and have played it several times.
The most important part is setting the difficulty at the start of the game. With 2 you need to start of easy with 6 you need to start of on a higher difficulty setting.
It has been a while since I have played and I remember making some group decision on how some stuff should work because it wasn't explained very well.
Still it's a fun game because it creates a lot of stories.
Yeah we've been looking at TTS and Tabletopia for a while now, but unsure of the learning curve to manipulate stuff. How easy is it? And as some of my buddies play on clunky laptops, what are its specs?
EDIT: Yeah, bit the bullet, we are now all happy owners of TTS.
It's really not that bad overall. If laptop players have a mouse, that would probably be a lot better than using the trackpad thing though. Keyboard shortcuts are big at making things easier.
-"F" to flip cards over
-"R" to roll is a lot better than "shaking" the dice by picking them up and shaking the mouse if only because you don't toss them all over the place. "R" will also shuffle stacks of cards that you hover over.
-Hitting "tab" will put a little pointing arrow where you aim along with a dinging sound to point things out to people.
-alt-shift will secretly look at the other side of a card. So if you wanted to see a facedown card that you had you can use this instead of flipping it over or moving to your hand or anything like that.
-If you pick up multiple things, you can hold them and then hit the numbers (1,2,3,etc) on the keyboard to auto organize them into that many rows. So pick up 5 dice, hit 3 and it will put it in an organized stack of rows with 2-2-1 dice in them.
I think that's the big things I've picked up over a few different games. Not all of those are useful for all games, but they come in fairly handy.
My best random TTS tip is if you draw a thing from a deck or bag or whatever and keep left click held down then right clicking will draw one additional item per click. Handy if you need to blindly draw 10 tiles from a bag without seeing them, for example.
My best random TTS tip is if you draw a thing from a deck or bag or whatever and keep left click held down then right clicking will draw one additional item per click. Handy if you need to blindly draw 10 tiles from a bag without seeing them, for example.
Yeah, that's a really good one I forgot! Also, if you need to draw multiple cards from a deck, you can just hover over the deck and hit the number on the keyboard for however many cards you need and it will draw that many cards into your hand. That might work the same for tiles out of a bag, but then you still have to pull them from your hand so not as effective as the right-click method you covered. Basically right-click for tiles/pieces, do the number thing for cards to your hand.
My best random TTS tip is if you draw a thing from a deck or bag or whatever and keep left click held down then right clicking will draw one additional item per click. Handy if you need to blindly draw 10 tiles from a bag without seeing them, for example.
Yeah, that's a really good one I forgot! Also, if you need to draw multiple cards from a deck, you can just hover over the deck and hit the number on the keyboard for however many cards you need and it will draw that many cards into your hand. That might work the same for tiles out of a bag, but then you still have to pull them from your hand so not as effective as the right-click method you covered. Basically right-click for tiles/pieces, do the number thing for cards to your hand.
Hitting a number draws things into your hand, where you can see them. Left+Right clicking just grabs them and doesnt show them to you. Both are useful, depending on what you're doing.
Okay. So let me get this straight. I buy TTS, then I can either buy the games for it they have listed, or dive into the Workshop, download these games people have built inside the program...and they play? Like real boardgames?
Like me and my kid can play Catan together on our computers whenever we want, without having to go through the chore of cleaning up the kitchen table AND having to be done before dinner?
I have resisted looking into this because this just sounds too good to be real.
ironzerg on
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Okay. So let me get this straight. I buy TTS, then I can either buy the games for it they have listed, or dive into the Workshop, download these games people have built inside the program...and they play? Like real boardgames?
Like me and my kid can play Catan together on our computers whenever we want, without having to go through the chore of cleaning up the kitchen table AND having to be done before dinner?
I have resisted looking into this because this just sounds too good to be real.
Okay. So let me get this straight. I buy TTS, then I can either buy the games for it they have listed, or dive into the Workshop, download these games people have built inside the program...and they play? Like real boardgames?
Like me and my kid can play Catan together on our computers whenever we want, without having to go through the chore of cleaning up the kitchen table AND having to be done before dinner?
I have resisted looking into this because this just sounds too good to be real.
Or you can get a board game table. That's what I'm trying to do. Still gotta convince the wife.
Anyone with tabletop simulator should really get TTS Mod Backup. Unfortunately you need to sign up for a (edit: free) nexus account to download but its worth the hassle: https://www.nexusmods.com/tabletopsimulator/mods/263
The way TTS downloads assets for mods is super annoying. It loads images once they become needed. So art for a card doesn't load until you draw that card. Sometimes downloads fail at random (since the assets are hosted by people who made the mods). And it just slows down play. TTS Mod Backup lets you force download all assets for your mods in one go so they are ready to either load or send to other players connecting to your game.
RiemannLives on
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
Okay, I have a TTS question. Say I want to replace some card images of a game mod with some of my own (color correction), then I want to play that version with my friends, but I don't really want to publish it as a separate Mod. What do I have to do? My initial guess would be via Loading a Saved table that I have already set up, but I haven't tested it.
My initial guess would be via Loading a Saved table that I have already set up, but I haven't tested it.
The rule of thumb is that if you can see something on your table, anyone connecting to your server can see it too.
What you describe is standard practice in the TTS prototyping community. We will import images, set all the components up, and save the game. Then when the time comes for a playtest, we start a multiplayer server, load the saved game, and start playing. Nothing ever has to be published to the Workshop.
If you are going to be tweaking things and iterating, there are some gotchas to keep in mind. One is that it is easy to screw things up on a table, the save/load UI is confusing, and the rewind button is not reliable. So it's a good idea to back up any work you care about. Everything is stored in the Tabletop Simulator data folder (on the Mac it's in ~/Library/Tabletop Simulator/Saves, and it's somewhere similar on Windows) and you can copy files somewhere safe from time to time. I just use Git to version that whole folder so I can roll back if I need to.
Another is that if you change images later and want people to see your changes, you may need them to turn off "Mod Caching" in the TTS settings dialog. This forces TTS to reload all the images when a game launches, rather than assuming all the images are the same as they were last time.
The Erie whoop my ass every time when I'm the Marquis.
I don't have it myself, but from what I understand part of the difficulty of the AI is a lot of the time it's not 1v1v1v1, but 1v3, so you can kinda get ganged up on even when that's technically not the best move the AI could make to win. But yeah, overall it's not supposed to be too bad.
Also, just in general, the marquis can be hard to win with. :-p
I never got into the physical version the times I tried it (in fact, I considered it the most overrated board game of the decade right after Terraforming Mars). But I figured maybe I was wrong and there was some great game there once you really learned it, something I wouldn't get to do with how often you can convince a group of people at meetup night to not only learn 4 different factions but "the ecosystem" of the whole thing. Maybe I could hash that out with the digital version?
So far...nah. Same issues I had with the physical. As SU&SD would put it, Root is not "elegant". I consider a well designed asymmetrical game like Cthulhu Wars or Chaos in the Old World as each side mostly following the same rules, but a couple small tweaks makes each play totally different. Root smacks of Cylon Leaders in Battlestar Galactica where everyone is playing a different game that just happens to share the same components.
Then there are rules that seem to be made unnecessarily fiddly or overcomplicated. It feels like they could have easily left the whole suit system out entirely (it feels like it started as something just for the birds to have to work around, but then included it for all the others). The decree system for the birds is an example of a simple core mechanic that's easy to understand but challenging to master (follow it left to right without breaking the chain), but the systems of sympathy/revolt/bases/officers/supporters for Woodland Alliance is a fiddly mess that always gives players a headache.
Dealing with the Vagabond is not fun. I'm weary of any game's balance that forces X-1 players to all buy into the prisoner's dilemma in order for one faction to not run away with the game.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I honestly think the most balancing thing they did with the vagabond was allow you to have two of them. When you can only get half a kit you are not nearly the freight train you can be otherwise. They absolutely cannot sit beside each other though.
That said, it isn't particularly fun being one of two vagabonds, but I'm also not a fan of the game so ... <_<
My initial opinion my first 1-2 games of Root was, "I don't get the appeal and hype. Have these people just never played an asymmetrical game before?"
But obviously there are people who have who still love it. So the massive praise is still a mystery to me.
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admanbunionize your workplaceSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I've probably posted enough about Root here but I don't compare it to Chaos in the Old World or Cthulhu Wars. They're all asymmetric war games, yes, but Root is a diplomacy game whereas CitOW and Cthulhu Wars are not.
Root is more like a boiled down version of a COIN game, while CitOW/Cthulhu Wars are asymmetric versions of area control games like Kemet or Inis. The fact that the factions of Root aren't even playing by the same rules is fundamental to the complex relationships that form and force non-mechanical interaction.
I've probably posted enough about Root here but I don't compare it to Chaos in the Old World or Cthulhu Wars. They're all asymmetric war games, yes, but Root is a diplomacy game whereas CitOW and Cthulhu Wars are not.
Root is more like a boiled down version of a COIN game, while CitOW/Cthulhu Wars are asymmetric versions of area control games like Kemet or Inis. The fact that the factions of Root aren't even playing by the same rules is fundamental to the complex relationships that form and force non-mechanical interaction.
“Your friends’ and family’s first COIN game” fits my experience. Once they’ve tried root my main problem to getting people to try COIN games is the theme.
Roll for the Galaxy went digital today as well. And like the digital version of Race, its dry as hell but still satisfying to play. So not something I could sell to my friends unless they've experienced having all those candy colored dice in their hands.
Cheap as hell, too. 10 bucks on Steam.
Those COIN games probably are better. But like Root, I'll never get them to the table. Kudos to Ledar Games and Dire Wolf for digitizing.
Cantido on
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Root was also a masterpiece of rules explanation.
At least i think i remember past me saying that 🤔
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I've probably posted enough about Root here but I don't compare it to Chaos in the Old World or Cthulhu Wars. They're all asymmetric war games, yes, but Root is a diplomacy game whereas CitOW and Cthulhu Wars are not.
Root is more like a boiled down version of a COIN game, while CitOW/Cthulhu Wars are asymmetric versions of area control games like Kemet or Inis. The fact that the factions of Root aren't even playing by the same rules is fundamental to the complex relationships that form and force non-mechanical interaction.
“Your friends’ and family’s first COIN game” fits my experience. Once they’ve tried root my main problem to getting people to try COIN games is the theme.
I don't know if it's quite that simple. There's a lot more overhead than just the theme. :P
Agree to disagree. I've heard others say similar, but I felt the "follow these steps" left out some core concepts and was lacking in not covering combat whatsoever. Don't get me wrong - it's really not bad and they made a good effort, but I'm of the opinion it could have been further developed still.
To be fair, that seems to be a lot of BGG discussions, not just MD2. So, consistent I guess?
There are some cool people and posts on that site to be sure, but man I’ve had a lot of head shake moments reading threads.
Totally.
There's an eleven page thread on how two weretigers prove the whole design of the game is inconsistent and bad.
get
a
different
hobby
You made me look this up as a curiousity. I feel like you're dramatically mis-framing the thread. They're upset with the art direction and feel there are a lot of weird choices. Looking at some of the models in question, I think they're in the right to feel that way. It's hardly the worst case of someone passionate wanting something they clearly like a lot to be the best it can be. <_<
Literally any large message board has some incredibly frustrating users ... =_=
I have yet to see any user here sell pictures of his wife to other guys.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
edited August 2020
Talking about actual board games again for a second, we played Nations for the first time in a few years (one in our group just doesn't really like it, but he was out this week so opportunity came a-knockin'), and boy did I get absolutely crushed. I wasn't paying close enough attention to realize that our first turn was actually incredibly brutal, and I both did not expect the other two players to arms race into trying to destroy everybody's board state, and I didn't prepare for that possibility either. So end of turn 1 I hadn't really picked up anything interesting, and had lost all my starting resources (including VPs) except for a stone or two. While I think I played a pretty okay game otherwise coming off of that position, I was absolutely never in the running and finished like 10 points back or something. I really hope we play it again soon enough that I remember this game as a lesson for the next one. :P
Also, Nations is still a really nice civ game. It flows well, competition is tight, the mean cards players can take never attack just one person, and the mean cards the game plays are a good focal point for strategizing. Really a shame that it's not currently held by any publisher and you're looking at second hand to get a copy these days.
Talking about actual board games again for a second, we played Nations for the first time in a few years (one in our group just doesn't really like it, but he was out this week so opportunity came a-knockin'), and boy did I get absolutely crushed. I wasn't paying close enough attention to realize that our first turn was actually incredibly brutal, and I both did not expect the other two players to arms race into trying to destroy everybody's board state, and I didn't prepare for that possibility either. So end of turn 1 I hadn't really picked up anything interesting, and had lost all my starting resources (including VPs) except for a stone or two. While I think I played a pretty okay game otherwise coming off of that position, I was absolutely never in the running and finished like 10 points back or something. I really hope we play it again soon enough that I remember this game as a lesson for the next one. :P
Also, Nations is still a really nice civ game. It flows well, competition is tight, the mean cards players can take never attack just one person, and the mean cards the game plays are a good focal point for strategizing. Really a shame that it's not currently held by any publisher and you're looking at second hand to get a copy these days.
Nationsis really cool! I didn't know my copy was rare tho, that's a shame
Posts
Yeah we've been looking at TTS and Tabletopia for a while now, but unsure of the learning curve to manipulate stuff. How easy is it? And as some of my buddies play on clunky laptops, what are its specs?
EDIT: Yeah, bit the bullet, we are now all happy owners of TTS.
How is the AI?
I have hexplore it and have played it several times.
The most important part is setting the difficulty at the start of the game. With 2 you need to start of easy with 6 you need to start of on a higher difficulty setting.
It has been a while since I have played and I remember making some group decision on how some stuff should work because it wasn't explained very well.
Still it's a fun game because it creates a lot of stories.
It's really not that bad overall. If laptop players have a mouse, that would probably be a lot better than using the trackpad thing though. Keyboard shortcuts are big at making things easier.
-"F" to flip cards over
-"R" to roll is a lot better than "shaking" the dice by picking them up and shaking the mouse if only because you don't toss them all over the place. "R" will also shuffle stacks of cards that you hover over.
-Hitting "tab" will put a little pointing arrow where you aim along with a dinging sound to point things out to people.
-alt-shift will secretly look at the other side of a card. So if you wanted to see a facedown card that you had you can use this instead of flipping it over or moving to your hand or anything like that.
-If you pick up multiple things, you can hold them and then hit the numbers (1,2,3,etc) on the keyboard to auto organize them into that many rows. So pick up 5 dice, hit 3 and it will put it in an organized stack of rows with 2-2-1 dice in them.
I think that's the big things I've picked up over a few different games. Not all of those are useful for all games, but they come in fairly handy.
Steam ID
Oh hell yeah. It's real good but can have a lot of swing plays where one person ends up being the super hero but we still liked it.
Yeah, that's a really good one I forgot! Also, if you need to draw multiple cards from a deck, you can just hover over the deck and hit the number on the keyboard for however many cards you need and it will draw that many cards into your hand. That might work the same for tiles out of a bag, but then you still have to pull them from your hand so not as effective as the right-click method you covered. Basically right-click for tiles/pieces, do the number thing for cards to your hand.
Steam ID
Hitting a number draws things into your hand, where you can see them. Left+Right clicking just grabs them and doesnt show them to you. Both are useful, depending on what you're doing.
Like me and my kid can play Catan together on our computers whenever we want, without having to go through the chore of cleaning up the kitchen table AND having to be done before dinner?
I have resisted looking into this because this just sounds too good to be real.
Yuuuuup.
Or you can get a board game table. That's what I'm trying to do. Still gotta convince the wife.
I use it a lot on a "try before you buy" basis.
(shit, boardgames are a bigger investment than video games at this point)
The way TTS downloads assets for mods is super annoying. It loads images once they become needed. So art for a card doesn't load until you draw that card. Sometimes downloads fail at random (since the assets are hosted by people who made the mods). And it just slows down play. TTS Mod Backup lets you force download all assets for your mods in one go so they are ready to either load or send to other players connecting to your game.
What you describe is standard practice in the TTS prototyping community. We will import images, set all the components up, and save the game. Then when the time comes for a playtest, we start a multiplayer server, load the saved game, and start playing. Nothing ever has to be published to the Workshop.
If you are going to be tweaking things and iterating, there are some gotchas to keep in mind. One is that it is easy to screw things up on a table, the save/load UI is confusing, and the rewind button is not reliable. So it's a good idea to back up any work you care about. Everything is stored in the Tabletop Simulator data folder (on the Mac it's in ~/Library/Tabletop Simulator/Saves, and it's somewhere similar on Windows) and you can copy files somewhere safe from time to time. I just use Git to version that whole folder so I can roll back if I need to.
Another is that if you change images later and want people to see your changes, you may need them to turn off "Mod Caching" in the TTS settings dialog. This forces TTS to reload all the images when a game launches, rather than assuming all the images are the same as they were last time.
I love this game.
I lack the skill to tell you. I think results are "not horrible" from what I see:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rootgame/comments/idd5fz/root_is_now_available_to_purchase_on_steam_in/
The Erie whoop my ass every time when I'm the Marquis.
I don't have it myself, but from what I understand part of the difficulty of the AI is a lot of the time it's not 1v1v1v1, but 1v3, so you can kinda get ganged up on even when that's technically not the best move the AI could make to win. But yeah, overall it's not supposed to be too bad.
Also, just in general, the marquis can be hard to win with. :-p
Steam ID
I got to use "Hidden Tigers" yesterday. So far we've gone thru about half the new spirits, they've all been fun.
I never got into the physical version the times I tried it (in fact, I considered it the most overrated board game of the decade right after Terraforming Mars). But I figured maybe I was wrong and there was some great game there once you really learned it, something I wouldn't get to do with how often you can convince a group of people at meetup night to not only learn 4 different factions but "the ecosystem" of the whole thing. Maybe I could hash that out with the digital version?
So far...nah. Same issues I had with the physical. As SU&SD would put it, Root is not "elegant". I consider a well designed asymmetrical game like Cthulhu Wars or Chaos in the Old World as each side mostly following the same rules, but a couple small tweaks makes each play totally different. Root smacks of Cylon Leaders in Battlestar Galactica where everyone is playing a different game that just happens to share the same components.
Then there are rules that seem to be made unnecessarily fiddly or overcomplicated. It feels like they could have easily left the whole suit system out entirely (it feels like it started as something just for the birds to have to work around, but then included it for all the others). The decree system for the birds is an example of a simple core mechanic that's easy to understand but challenging to master (follow it left to right without breaking the chain), but the systems of sympathy/revolt/bases/officers/supporters for Woodland Alliance is a fiddly mess that always gives players a headache.
Dealing with the Vagabond is not fun. I'm weary of any game's balance that forces X-1 players to all buy into the prisoner's dilemma in order for one faction to not run away with the game.
That said, it isn't particularly fun being one of two vagabonds, but I'm also not a fan of the game so ... <_<
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
But obviously there are people who have who still love it. So the massive praise is still a mystery to me.
Root is more like a boiled down version of a COIN game, while CitOW/Cthulhu Wars are asymmetric versions of area control games like Kemet or Inis. The fact that the factions of Root aren't even playing by the same rules is fundamental to the complex relationships that form and force non-mechanical interaction.
“Your friends’ and family’s first COIN game” fits my experience. Once they’ve tried root my main problem to getting people to try COIN games is the theme.
Cheap as hell, too. 10 bucks on Steam.
Those COIN games probably are better. But like Root, I'll never get them to the table. Kudos to Ledar Games and Dire Wolf for digitizing.
At least i think i remember past me saying that 🤔
Agree to disagree. I've heard others say similar, but I felt the "follow these steps" left out some core concepts and was lacking in not covering combat whatsoever. Don't get me wrong - it's really not bad and they made a good effort, but I'm of the opinion it could have been further developed still.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
There are some cool people and posts on that site to be sure, but man I’ve had a lot of head shake moments reading threads.
Totally.
There's an eleven page thread on how two weretigers prove the whole design of the game is inconsistent and bad.
get
a
different
hobby
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
i'm absolutely not. those people are completely ridiculous.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I have yet to see any user here sell pictures of his wife to other guys.
Also, Nations is still a really nice civ game. It flows well, competition is tight, the mean cards players can take never attack just one person, and the mean cards the game plays are a good focal point for strategizing. Really a shame that it's not currently held by any publisher and you're looking at second hand to get a copy these days.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Nations is really cool! I didn't know my copy was rare tho, that's a shame
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