A couple of key phrases which stand out to me as disturbing/disturbed;
"The sad news is that this is happening and it is just bad for gaming"
"Just because it is technically not illegal, copying is the thing that threatens the core of game design creativity"
Basically it seems to me like the author is sneakily advocating for the extension of intellectual property protections to board game designs (which is utter madness)
He's trying to lead the reader to come to the conclusion he wants them to.
Got Cuba Libre, started setting it up to learn, and I’m really surprised how clean and intuitive it is
When I hear big landmark heavy wargame, I think it’s gonna be homework, but it ultimately seems to be pretty simple design with a lot of depth in the interaction
Plus that guided learning game? Beautiful! Everyone do that!
GMT is really good with the guided learning games. One of the best things about their rulebooks, all the COIN games have them, as does like Twilight Struggle, etc.
It’s a really fun game, if you have any rules or general strategy questions please feel free to ask.
A tip: absolutely wreck the vagabond as soon as you can.
I have heard that the vagabond is the element that sours things for people so I might get an expansion faction sooner than later
It reminds me of the Yellow King in Cthulhu Wars. If left alone, he'll just build a point engine and ride to a win, so someone needs to stomp him, and players need to learn this, but also stomping him doesn't reward you, so you always want someone else to do it.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
edited June 2019
I think the Vagabond is meant to be the timer in a game otherwise without a time limit. The Vagabond player will win in ______ turns, and the other players have until then to beat him to the 30 point line; I haven't played enough yet to determine how many he needs , and this would obviously be a range dependent on how often the other players punch him.
A couple of key phrases which stand out to me as disturbing/disturbed;
"The sad news is that this is happening and it is just bad for gaming"
"Just because it is technically not illegal, copying is the thing that threatens the core of game design creativity"
Basically it seems to me like the author is sneakily advocating for the extension of intellectual property protections to board game designs (which is utter madness)
He's trying to lead the reader to come to the conclusion he wants them to.
Honestly I agree. You shouldn't be able to patent specific mechanics in isolation, but a straight up reskin of a different game with no mechanical changes should be a violation.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I know this is a false binary and all but I’d much rather have laws that are too permissive rather than too restrictive when it comes to things like copywriting game mechanics.
Is Sirlin taking the mechanics of En Garde entirely 1:1 and just tacking on characters with special powers pretty shitty? Yeah.
Is the result, Flash Duel, a much better game than En Garde? Also yeah. It’s one of my favorite portable games.
And I’d certainly rather that than like, no one being able to use ZoCs without paying royalties to the first person who came up with them.
Ideally you have permissive laws combined with a knowledgeable customer base that just doesn’t support blatant ripoffs but that’s a pipe dream.
Started 7th Continent with Mrs. Jam. Just the base game and the suggested first curse (The Voracious Goddess).
In the way of these things it was all going swimmingly well until suddenly it was all going very badly... A few bad draws giving conditions can really lay on the hurt and we're at about 50% health already having just made our way to the west edge of what I assume is tutorial island.
We swam in the shark infested waters which is a sharp lesson in looking closely at the cards and not every action being worth pursuing!
I still love the sheer madness of it as a physical product and Mrs Jam was having good fun as well. I'd almost rather be playing it solo but I guess we're committed now. It does take great effort of will to play it honestly and not peek at what other cards might have come up when there are multiple options! Looking forward to hopefully carrying on very soon.
Quoted post above from August 2017... And spurred on by the arrival of the 2nd Kickstarter tonight we dusted off the original box and finally finished the first curse!
It's been great when we're playing but as you can see, finding evenings with both myself and Mrs. Jam free and in the mood for the game were few and far between, and as time goes on it gets more daunting to try and return.
I have her permission to play by myself now so hoping to dive in a bit more regularly. If we're both doing a game evening again we've always got that Mechs vs Minions campaign to pick up which has been on hold for as long if not longer!
Sod subtlety, currently seeding the deck for a play with every side quest all at once thrown in. Still just a single main curse though.
I like the idea that I'll still have new curses to dig into in 5 years by which time my kids could be joining in.
A couple of key phrases which stand out to me as disturbing/disturbed;
"The sad news is that this is happening and it is just bad for gaming"
"Just because it is technically not illegal, copying is the thing that threatens the core of game design creativity"
Basically it seems to me like the author is sneakily advocating for the extension of intellectual property protections to board game designs (which is utter madness)
He's trying to lead the reader to come to the conclusion he wants them to.
Honestly I agree. You shouldn't be able to patent specific mechanics in isolation, but a straight up reskin of a different game with no mechanical changes should be a violation.
Not trying to be contentious, but I am curious about why you feel this way?
The only game I can think of that has been extensively/exploitatively re-skinned is Love Letter, with a wopping 20+ different versions and almost 30 different publishers.
But did that make the original Love Letter less successful? Or did that make it even more successful?
If we were seeing constant, exploitative re-skins of, say, Scythe I could see an argument in favor of increasing the legal protections available to designers and publishers.
In practice, the market just doesn't work that way; if a new game becomes popular enough to plagiarize then the community already has knowledge of and access to that game.
Our hypothetical plagiarist must therefor find new markets for the same product.
Does this represent some kind of loss or damage to the original publisher or designer? I don't really see how. Nothing is stopping them from offering a more appealing re-skin, or publishing into a foreign market.
our biggest problem was length of vagabond turns. Everyone sitting on their phone waiting for their next forty second bird turn
after reading the rules, i feel like the clear solution to this is an agreement to attack the vagabond and fuck him up if he takes long turns
an agreement? what purpose would that serve! The first time the vagabond takes a long term and realizes we're all opportunistic traitors, the whole solution falls apart!
Cuba Libre seems very interesting but learning that the COIN series is designed by a CIA guy makes me very suspicious about what kind of political messages it aims to send
Cuba Libre seems very interesting but learning that the COIN series is designed by a CIA guy makes me very suspicious about what kind of political messages it aims to send
All wargames/ConSims inherently put forth a political statement in a way. Thought it can be hard to infer the actual intent of the designer without reading their design notes, and weighing those against the game itself.
For example, Twilight Struggle presents the domino theory of communism as being a real thing, so at a surface level examination it would seem that the game is saying that is an accurate reflection of the state of the world a that time. However, reading the design notes it’s stated pretty clearly that the designer thinks the domino theory is not accurate, but he wants to put you in the mindset of the those in power at the time. So things behave how they believe they would behave.
ConSims, just by virtue of what they include and do not include in their simulation of the conflict, put forth a thesis statement of what was important about that conflict. And often that statement is inherently political. I think the lens through which a ConSim views a conflict can be very interesting, even if I don’t agree with the lens, it can be very thought provoking.
The COIN series, being counter insurgency themed, makes some statements in general about insurgencies, and countering them, of course. But as the series is now being used by different designers, each game can end up saying pretty different things.
Sadly I don’t know enough about Cuba’s history to say much about the statements being made by Cuba Libre, which is a shame, to not know my family’s own history.
It’s something I should address. I often find that ConSims are a great launching off point for one’s own research and study, to see if you agree with the assertions the game put forth.
So good news apparently the broken token "Long Bits box compatible with sleeved card game organizer" is too long to fit in the Arkham horror base game box
Where would gaming be today if Wizards of the Coast owned the rights to the core mechanics of Magic: The Gathering?
Or Dungeons & Dragons?
Actually, they already tried that when they trademarked "Tapping" your MAGIC cards. Other games can of course indicate that a card has been used by turning it sideways or whatever but published rules may not call that 'Tapping' without, in theory, legal consequences. I don't believe that their trademark has been successfully challenged.
WotC had it patented for M:TG, but the patent expired about 5 years back. Pretty much every other publisher came up with their own term for it, however, so have mostly just kept on using that. I don't think there's anything actually stopping anyone from using tapping any longer.
Come up with a different word for turning a card sideways or pick a fight with Hasbro’s lawyers? The path of least resistance is pretty clear to see there.
Come up with a different word for turning a card sideways or pick a fight with Hasbro’s lawyers? The path of least resistance is pretty clear to see there.
TBF WotC wasn't owned by Hasbro until relatively recently, especially not when this would have (and IIRC did?) come up.
Did WotC ever take anybody to court over tapping? It feels unlikely to have stood up to scrutiny
I want to say yes, but I don't recall the details.
Not sure about other tabletop games, but WotC sued Hex for:
Wizards alleged that Hex: Shards of Fate "copied the overall plot, elements, theme, mood, setting, pace, creatures and sequence" of Magic: The Gathering — and its digital forms Magic Online and the Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers franchise — as well as the "cards, plot elements, circumstances, play sequence and flow."
Having now spent some time working at an LGS, any time someone tells me "x game is cheaper on Amazon" I immediately leap whatever counter is between them and me to attack
If it makes you feel better, I drove out out to my fgls first and they neither had it nor were able to order it.
The solitaire play for COIN games has always been super tough for me. It technically works but it’s just so laborious.
I think you are better off just playing a couple fake turns where you control all the players to learn the game as opposed to actually using the full automated solitaire rules.
Though the solitaire flowcharts can be an amazing way to get a basic idea of a sides priorities and strategies.
Often when I am stumped on what to do on my turn in a COIN game I try to figure out what the AI would do and why and see if I agree if that is my best move.
Tried out the first scenario in Discover: Lands Unknown and maybe it's because we were only playing with 2 people out of a possible 4 but it seemed very difficult to actually find the resources we needed to stay alive, much less trigger the scenario flags.
It's hard to give an overall impression yet but it almost feels more like a physical prototype for a survival rogue-like video game than a board game? Encounter cards are a bit fiddly in a way that wouldn't matter in a video game, where that sort of book-keeping is automated.
It's still intriguing, but it hasn't made the strong first impression I was hoping for.
Played my first Unlock! title last night (Night of the Boogeymen). It was neat and used unique mechanics well. I'll probably check out a couple others when funds allow.
Played my first Unlock! title last night (Night of the Boogeymen). It was neat and used unique mechanics well. I'll probably check out a couple others when funds allow.
Have you tried the ‘Exit’ line? My girlfriend is on escape room high recently and we’ve done one Unlock and three Exits in the last few weeks. Unlock is really slick and you can pass it along to a friend once you’re done, but I found Exit’s puzzles more interesting. The Unlock we tried was a Chemical Lab themed one.
Played my first Unlock! title last night (Night of the Boogeymen). It was neat and used unique mechanics well. I'll probably check out a couple others when funds allow.
Have you tried the ‘Exit’ line? My girlfriend is on escape room high recently and we’ve done one Unlock and three Exits in the last few weeks. Unlock is really slick and you can pass it along to a friend once you’re done, but I found Exit’s puzzles more interesting. The Unlock we tried was a Chemical Lab themed one.
Yeah the Exit games are consistently, vastly superior to any of the Unlock games, even the very worst Exit compared to the very best Unlock.
Murder on the Orient Express and The Abandoned Cabin are my picks for the best. Sinister Mansion is my pick for the worst (but still well worth playing). The 2 circle difficulty ones tend to be too straightforward and easy for my taste, but they'd probably be great for kids.
Crazy mail order mystery packages ranging from $50-$300. My friend had an anonymous person buy one for him and the thing just showed up on his doorstep one day. Some Cthulhu mythos themed around him being an investigator looking into an ancient one cult. Had a letter from a fake package company announcing that they had just found this "lost" item meant for him. Inside was
minor spoilers
a hand-written note from "a friend" with the usual "If you're reading this, it means I've failed but I'm leaving my notes with you etc etc." Rolled up papyrus scrolls with symbols scribbled all over them. A giant half cracked metal coin. 19th century newspaper clippings. Star charts. Old timey photographs of creepy cult groups.
Slightly bigger spoiler
The whole thing comes in 3 packages sent about a week apart. One week included a photograph of cult members wearing burlap sacks over their heads with creepy faces painted on them. Next week was a giant wooden crate on the doorstep that needed a hammer to pry and break open. Inside was one of the same creepy face sacks. Inside the sacks was a wood/resin carved Cthulhu idol.
A month later and he still doesn't know who sent it.
I was looking into checking out one of the cheaper ones.
Can't agree there. While Exit games have tended to be the best in many ways, there are some real clunkers too. Exit: The Forbidden Castle has weird logic leaps, moments where the right technique can be difficult to execute correctly, and a super strange decision to have missable puzzle content. On the flip side, Unlock: The Adventurers of Oz is one of my favorite entries in either series. As both mature, Unlock has more room for new kinds of experiences because of the app integration, and it's nice that it's nondestructible.
I think both lines have so many choices, now, that we can't make the blanket assessment of which is the better choice anymore. Exit is the safer bet overall, if you're okay with throwing it out when you're done. Both Exit and Unlock have been consistently better than Deckscape. Escape Room: The Game is an odd duck here, with a really nice gadget running the game and generally very good table presence, but with average puzzles.
Crazy mail order mystery packages ranging from $50-$300. My friend had an anonymous person buy one for him and the thing just showed up on his doorstep one day. Some Cthulhu mythos themed around him being an investigator looking into an ancient one cult. Had a letter from a fake package company announcing that they had just found this "lost" item meant for him. Inside was
minor spoilers
a hand-written note from "a friend" with the usual "If you're reading this, it means I've failed but I'm leaving my notes with you etc etc." Rolled up papyrus scrolls with symbols scribbled all over them. A giant half cracked metal coin. 19th century newspaper clippings. Star charts. Old timey photographs of creepy cult groups.
Slightly bigger spoiler
The whole thing comes in 3 packages sent about a week apart. One week included a photograph of cult members wearing burlap sacks over their heads with creepy faces painted on them. Next week was a giant wooden crate on the doorstep that needed a hammer to pry and break open. Inside was one of the same creepy face sacks. Inside the sacks was a wood/resin carved Cthulhu idol.
A month later and he still doesn't know who sent it.
I was looking into checking out one of the cheaper ones.
I've been following them, and they've always looked cool.
They *should* have gotten a black envelope when the experience was over that tells you who was behind it... unless they didn't put it in intentionally for some reason?
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
Can't agree there. While Exit games have tended to be the best in many ways, there are some real clunkers too. Exit: The Forbidden Castle has weird logic leaps, moments where the right technique can be difficult to execute correctly, and a super strange decision to have missable puzzle content. On the flip side, Unlock: The Adventurers of Oz is one of my favorite entries in either series. As both mature, Unlock has more room for new kinds of experiences because of the app integration, and it's nice that it's nondestructible.
I think both lines have so many choices, now, that we can't make the blanket assessment of which is the better choice anymore. Exit is the safer bet overall, if you're okay with throwing it out when you're done. Both Exit and Unlock have been consistently better than Deckscape. Escape Room: The Game is an odd duck here, with a really nice gadget running the game and generally very good table presence, but with average puzzles.
I agree with both Oz being the best Unlock and Forbidden Castle being one of the weakest Exit (I thought Sinister Mansion was the worst).
But I still enjoyed Castle and Mansion more than I did Oz. There just aren't any "Ah ha!" or "whoah!" clever moments in Unlock that Exit has.
The one use thing hasn't been an issue for me. It's easy to just scan and print as you go whenever you have to fold or cut stuff.
Posts
"The sad news is that this is happening and it is just bad for gaming"
"Just because it is technically not illegal, copying is the thing that threatens the core of game design creativity"
Basically it seems to me like the author is sneakily advocating for the extension of intellectual property protections to board game designs (which is utter madness)
He's trying to lead the reader to come to the conclusion he wants them to.
GMT is really good with the guided learning games. One of the best things about their rulebooks, all the COIN games have them, as does like Twilight Struggle, etc.
It’s a really fun game, if you have any rules or general strategy questions please feel free to ask.
I hear there's a moleman expansion coming, which I'm here for
But I got Root instead, so I figure I basically saved money
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
I have heard that the vagabond is the element that sours things for people so I might get an expansion faction sooner than later
It reminds me of the Yellow King in Cthulhu Wars. If left alone, he'll just build a point engine and ride to a win, so someone needs to stomp him, and players need to learn this, but also stomping him doesn't reward you, so you always want someone else to do it.
Honestly I agree. You shouldn't be able to patent specific mechanics in isolation, but a straight up reskin of a different game with no mechanical changes should be a violation.
Is Sirlin taking the mechanics of En Garde entirely 1:1 and just tacking on characters with special powers pretty shitty? Yeah.
Is the result, Flash Duel, a much better game than En Garde? Also yeah. It’s one of my favorite portable games.
And I’d certainly rather that than like, no one being able to use ZoCs without paying royalties to the first person who came up with them.
Ideally you have permissive laws combined with a knowledgeable customer base that just doesn’t support blatant ripoffs but that’s a pipe dream.
Quoted post above from August 2017... And spurred on by the arrival of the 2nd Kickstarter tonight we dusted off the original box and finally finished the first curse!
It's been great when we're playing but as you can see, finding evenings with both myself and Mrs. Jam free and in the mood for the game were few and far between, and as time goes on it gets more daunting to try and return.
I have her permission to play by myself now so hoping to dive in a bit more regularly. If we're both doing a game evening again we've always got that Mechs vs Minions campaign to pick up which has been on hold for as long if not longer!
Sod subtlety, currently seeding the deck for a play with every side quest all at once thrown in. Still just a single main curse though.
I like the idea that I'll still have new curses to dig into in 5 years by which time my kids could be joining in.
Not trying to be contentious, but I am curious about why you feel this way?
The only game I can think of that has been extensively/exploitatively re-skinned is Love Letter, with a wopping 20+ different versions and almost 30 different publishers.
But did that make the original Love Letter less successful? Or did that make it even more successful?
If we were seeing constant, exploitative re-skins of, say, Scythe I could see an argument in favor of increasing the legal protections available to designers and publishers.
In practice, the market just doesn't work that way; if a new game becomes popular enough to plagiarize then the community already has knowledge of and access to that game.
Our hypothetical plagiarist must therefor find new markets for the same product.
Does this represent some kind of loss or damage to the original publisher or designer? I don't really see how. Nothing is stopping them from offering a more appealing re-skin, or publishing into a foreign market.
after reading the rules, i feel like the clear solution to this is an agreement to attack the vagabond and fuck him up if he takes long turns
an agreement? what purpose would that serve! The first time the vagabond takes a long term and realizes we're all opportunistic traitors, the whole solution falls apart!
i don't think you've thought this through, sir
All wargames/ConSims inherently put forth a political statement in a way. Thought it can be hard to infer the actual intent of the designer without reading their design notes, and weighing those against the game itself.
For example, Twilight Struggle presents the domino theory of communism as being a real thing, so at a surface level examination it would seem that the game is saying that is an accurate reflection of the state of the world a that time. However, reading the design notes it’s stated pretty clearly that the designer thinks the domino theory is not accurate, but he wants to put you in the mindset of the those in power at the time. So things behave how they believe they would behave.
ConSims, just by virtue of what they include and do not include in their simulation of the conflict, put forth a thesis statement of what was important about that conflict. And often that statement is inherently political. I think the lens through which a ConSim views a conflict can be very interesting, even if I don’t agree with the lens, it can be very thought provoking.
The COIN series, being counter insurgency themed, makes some statements in general about insurgencies, and countering them, of course. But as the series is now being used by different designers, each game can end up saying pretty different things.
Sadly I don’t know enough about Cuba’s history to say much about the statements being made by Cuba Libre, which is a shame, to not know my family’s own history.
It’s something I should address. I often find that ConSims are a great launching off point for one’s own research and study, to see if you agree with the assertions the game put forth.
WotC had it patented for M:TG, but the patent expired about 5 years back. Pretty much every other publisher came up with their own term for it, however, so have mostly just kept on using that. I don't think there's anything actually stopping anyone from using tapping any longer.
TBF WotC wasn't owned by Hasbro until relatively recently, especially not when this would have (and IIRC did?) come up.
I want to say yes, but I don't recall the details.
Not sure about other tabletop games, but WotC sued Hex for:
Also I think when talking about "stealing" that there is a fine line between homage and rip-off and that is going to be different for everyone.
I dunno if I can do that game with the solitaire aspects, that's WAY too much for me to think about
I think you are better off just playing a couple fake turns where you control all the players to learn the game as opposed to actually using the full automated solitaire rules.
Though the solitaire flowcharts can be an amazing way to get a basic idea of a sides priorities and strategies.
Often when I am stumped on what to do on my turn in a COIN game I try to figure out what the AI would do and why and see if I agree if that is my best move.
It's hard to give an overall impression yet but it almost feels more like a physical prototype for a survival rogue-like video game than a board game? Encounter cards are a bit fiddly in a way that wouldn't matter in a video game, where that sort of book-keeping is automated.
It's still intriguing, but it hasn't made the strong first impression I was hoping for.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Have you tried the ‘Exit’ line? My girlfriend is on escape room high recently and we’ve done one Unlock and three Exits in the last few weeks. Unlock is really slick and you can pass it along to a friend once you’re done, but I found Exit’s puzzles more interesting. The Unlock we tried was a Chemical Lab themed one.
Yeah the Exit games are consistently, vastly superior to any of the Unlock games, even the very worst Exit compared to the very best Unlock.
Murder on the Orient Express and The Abandoned Cabin are my picks for the best. Sinister Mansion is my pick for the worst (but still well worth playing). The 2 circle difficulty ones tend to be too straightforward and easy for my taste, but they'd probably be great for kids.
Crazy mail order mystery packages ranging from $50-$300. My friend had an anonymous person buy one for him and the thing just showed up on his doorstep one day. Some Cthulhu mythos themed around him being an investigator looking into an ancient one cult. Had a letter from a fake package company announcing that they had just found this "lost" item meant for him. Inside was
minor spoilers
Slightly bigger spoiler
A month later and he still doesn't know who sent it.
I was looking into checking out one of the cheaper ones.
I think both lines have so many choices, now, that we can't make the blanket assessment of which is the better choice anymore. Exit is the safer bet overall, if you're okay with throwing it out when you're done. Both Exit and Unlock have been consistently better than Deckscape. Escape Room: The Game is an odd duck here, with a really nice gadget running the game and generally very good table presence, but with average puzzles.
I've been following them, and they've always looked cool.
They *should* have gotten a black envelope when the experience was over that tells you who was behind it... unless they didn't put it in intentionally for some reason?
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I agree with both Oz being the best Unlock and Forbidden Castle being one of the weakest Exit (I thought Sinister Mansion was the worst).
But I still enjoyed Castle and Mansion more than I did Oz. There just aren't any "Ah ha!" or "whoah!" clever moments in Unlock that Exit has.
The one use thing hasn't been an issue for me. It's easy to just scan and print as you go whenever you have to fold or cut stuff.