Come for the air, stay for the games!

About a week before I came to Beijing, I went on Board Game Geek and asked in the appropriate sub-forum about gaming groups and stores that might be around in the city. Unsurprisingly, I got a few replies, and more surprisingly, I've already had a chance to meet some new gaming partners and visit one of the places that was recommended.

Closer to the middle of the city, a short walk from the Dongdaqiao subway station, is what I can only describe as a strange sort of mall, filled with storefronts and restaurants, all at weird angles to one another. On the fourth floor, just at the edge of a sky-bridge to another tower of the building, is Empire Penguin Games... or, what translates as "Empire Penguin Games" in Chinese. I'm not entirely sure why it's called that, but I suppose I'll get around to asking the owner at some point.

It's not a big space. In fact, it's packed so full of games and tables that when they open on Sunday afternoons to make space for gamers, everyone spills out into the hallways around the shop. Yesterday, there must have been at least 40 people, all trying to game in an area about the size of a living room... I'm told the store doesn't normally attract so many people. I've also been told that the handful of security guards that forced everyone to rearrange and cram together don't normally come by at all.

Despite the compactness of the place, there are a staggering number of games available for purchase or for play. Most of them are Chinese language editions of games, but for things like Carcassonne, The Resistance, or CV, language barely matters anyway. Along the back wall, behind the counter where the owner makes transactions, is a precarious stack of games that are so well-played the cards and tokens have been rubbed to an almost unreadable state. One corner of the store has a couple of plush couches around a low coffee table, and there are a dozen or so small folding tables that are pulled out and set up more or less anywhere there is room when people come to play.

I've been in game stores before where people came in to play games. In fact, one of my (formerly) favorite stores had a huge back room with tons of space... Friday nights were for Magic players who might have needed a bit more familiarity with deodorant than they had with white instants that clear out their opponent's enchantments or black sorceries that force unpleasant discarding. I say it was "formerly" one of my favorite stores because the owners really didn't sell very many games, and eventually went out of business. When we talked to them about the space and how many people came in all the time to use it, they said they didn't want to charge a cover fee because they wanted to foster a community. I guess that's one way to run things.

Well, Empire Penguin does charge a cover. Ten RMB per person per hour, up to a maximum of 40. That's not much money at the current exchange rate, but he seems to be doing fine. Being able to play games with a variety of people, to try things out without having to make a purchase, and to feel comfortable... that's worth $1.50 an hour. Probably more.

We've been twice. The first time, most of the English-speaking regulars were out due to a variety of reasons, but we did manage to get an extra-long game of Small World in. The second time, I was a little overwhelmed with the number of Mandarin and English speakers, and I learned to play Keyflower, which Susie sat in on a game of Le Havre. Other goings-on included a raucous Battlestar Galactica game with many accusations being thrown around in Chinese, a couple of learning games of Lords of Waterdeep, Ticket To Ride (another language independent game), and a few things I didn't recognize.

We'll definitely be going back. Staying so long in isolated places, you almost forget that people get together in stores/cafes like this. I'll take advantage while I can.

Fighting to the Death in RPGs

The last couple of times I've been to Athens to hang out with my co-hosts, we played at least one session of a Star Wars RPG.

The first was a quick side-adventure where my traveling negotiator for a crime syndicate needed transportation, which used the Edge of the Empire game from FFG. I've discussed previous podcasts what about the system I liked and didn't (mostly, didn't), but there was something unrelated to the system that happened in the game. As the plot progressed, we were attacked by a bounty hunter who was trying to find my character (presumably to get rid of him since it was only a one shot, and I wasn't going to be around to play him again). The situation devolved, become a fight, then devolved further into a fight to the death... that is to say, at least one character on each side was on their last leg, and no one was going to give up, even if it meant dying.

It struck me as a weird situation, made weirder by the fact that later on, it basically happened again. Some of the other players began an assault on a highly, highly secure facility, and it never seemed to cross anyone's mind that dying was a likely outcome. Or maybe it did, and they just didn't care. Their characters were shot up, blown up, tossed around, and they just kept running at the problem head-first. Every challenge turned into a fight, and every fight was a fight to the death. Weird?

The second Star Wars game was an adaptation of Ghost/Echo (pdf link), a game I put together sort of a reaction to the way that the previous game had gone. The scenario had some opportunities for fights (Star WARS, right?) but the game works in such a way to encourage creative thinking and throwing obstacles into your own way to make the story more interesting. I hoped that, despite the fact that there weren't explicit rules for dying, the players would react to challenges and fights without a traditional RPG "crazed berserker" mentality. It went alright, but there were still hints of the attitude that if there is a fight, it is to the death.

I don't know if this is a common experience or attitude, but it sure seems that way. I've played in many D&D games (and Hero games, and Exalted games, et al) where the players behaved as if there was no possibility of retreat. I'm not really sure why. Was there actually an assumption that every fight was a challenge that could somehow be won, no matter what the apparent odds against the players's characters? Does character death even matter? I know for sure that injury never seems to. In part, that's because having penalties and being on the edge of death all the time isn't much fun, so a lot of games make healing or recovering easy, but maybe that ends up devaluing the characters' lives. Maybe?

There is a definite possibility that other methods of dealing with fights and encounters were undervalued or not even considered. The assault on the highly, highly secured facility was guaranteed to fail, but no one had even considered coming up with a plan, using tricks, diplomacy, money, allies, or any other resource besides ammunition and HP. The only reason I did was because, being unfamiliar with the system, I accidentally made a character who didn't have much in the way of combat ability or utility. If he had, I likely would have fallen right in line behind the "shoot everything, or die trying" folks.

Fighting to the death in RPGs isn't just weird, though. In my mind, it's an actual problem. It isn't just a quirk of habit, it genuinely limits tactical approaches (for people who are interested more in stepping up to a challenge) and it genuinely limits fictional outcomes (for people are interested more in improvising unexpected stories). Realism or "genre-appropriateness" is right out... characters in movies and books only "fight to the death" when everything (EVERYTHING!) is on the line. Most of the time, they try to avoid that sort of scenario, if for no other reason that they might lose.

Say your RPG is about sneaking down into underground ruins, clearing out the monstrous inhabitants, and gathering whatever treasure you might find in the meantime. If every challenge is a fight, and every fight is a fight to the death, you'll have an undeniably boring game. That's true even if the rules and systems for fighting would otherwise be interesting. First off, there need to be other stakes, other possibilities that could result from two war-ready parties encountering one another. With no reason for the fights other than "you want to kill the other guys," there is nothing of interest to do but try to kill the other guys while being killed in the process. Make the fight about chasing someone away, rescuing someone, capturing a creature, securing an important area, or distracting the enemy while someone else infiltrates... make the stakes about lasting damage to the characters (lost fingers or eyes!), the death of bystanders, or the loss of important resources (that map or key they need). There are so many specific situations that can create interesting fights that fights which are only about the relative HP of the players are clearly inferior. Yeah, clearly. I said it.

Second, and probably more importantly, every challenge need not be a fight. Even when one group characters seem entirely at with another, there may still be some interest shared or some exchange of goods or services to be made that could present non-fight-based challenges that are still fun and engage the players' tactical minds. Instead of storming the well-guarded base with automated sentry guns to rescue a kidnapped PC, the players could try to draw the kidnappers out with their victim, but do it in such a way that they don't expect and are unprepared for a fight... or maybe even con them into handing the prisoner over without ever realizing what they had done.

And frankly, if the players don't approach the game as though it were all about a challenge to their skills as CharOps magicians, with fractional bonuses and sandbagged power combos, that can't hurt either. Some games lend themselves better to highly confrontational challenges and tactical advantage-seeking, and other games lend themselves better to internal struggles (within the group or within the individual) or exploration... In the podcast, we often talk about how flexible RPGs are compared to video games or board games, and this case is no different. RPGs can be about investigation, exploration, planning, discussion, power, relationships, curiosity, confusion, unrequited love, unrequited hate... pretty much anything. If the game is too much about fighting (especially fighting to the death), maybe getting everyone on-board with the other possibilities can change that.

I think a key here may be expectations. If the players expect deadly fights, then that's what they'll play. If they expect and have available more options, then they will use those. To make sure the expectations are clear, talk about them before the game starts. When you want the other players to consider the options, nothing goes as far as saying "Hey, you/we will need to run away from some fights, and avoid others entirely. Think differently." And when you want the other players to focus on the struggle between power and corruption, nothing goes as far as saying "Let's play a game where you can have power, but it comes at the cost of what makes you human." I've seen some fantastic, genuinely emotional ideas come from the same group of players who always make death-seeking combat-monsters, and all it took was a bit of discussion of what we were doing before hand.

Gen Con and my Top Three Most Sought After Games

I'm getting psyched about Gen Con!

Of course I am. Of the three of us, I'm the one who plays/buys/reviews/thinks about board games the most, and Gen Con is the biggest, most impressivest board game convention in the world. It, or Essen... they go back and forth depending on how you count people. Regardless of the reality of that kind of statistical puzzlery, if you are someone who gets excited about the prospect of new board games, and I am, then Gen Con is one of the most exciting places to be.

I've been to a couple of Gen Cons previously. They were fun: I got to meet some designers and publishers, try out demos for few games that I'd never seen, and make some purchases for stuff that I had been excited about. We also spent some time in different areas playing actual, full-on, not-demo games, getting a chance to meet and interact with some fun people (and, invariably, some not so fun people... it was a convention hall crowded with nerds). We haven't been in several years, though, and my understanding is that in that time, it has gotten much bigger and much more packed with nerds.

That's exciting, in a way. I understand that the local businesses have begun to cater to the crowds of Gen Con attendees, like restaurants creating special menus and food trucks parking right outside the convention center. More people means that it's a bigger draw for game companies and that it's more important than ever to get something out, even from small publishers, so for the people visiting, there is more cool stuff than ever to try out. You can't try everything, you can't buy everything, and you can't see everything, but if you prioritize well, you can hit the important stuff. The trick is that prioritizing; some people just can't figure it out.

This year, I haven't seen previews for much stuff that I'm rabidly drooling over, waiting to pounce on as soon as the doors open. Sometimes it gets that way. There are many publishers who bring a small number of copies of games that haven't been generally released yet, and very rarely do those not sell out entirely. Most of the time, that's not really a big deal, but I know that for many people, being "first" is as much about having a chance to get as much play time in as possible as it is about the pride of saying you were "first." I've never had that problem. But I do like to get my hands on stuff. And that is one place where my advice about prioritizing really helps.

When you go to a convention, especially one as large as Gen Con or Essen, you have to have a picture in your mind of what things you want to do, and what things you can go without doing. Because you can't do it all. It's only four days, and even a light schedule can leave you entirely worn out. This goes for events (which I tend to avoid) and for demos, game time, and purchases. On top of that, if you don't live within a reasonable driving distance from Indianapolis, anything you buy you have to figure out how to get home.

There are a few things that I intend to get on the spot, should I see them, regardless of what I'm carrying, what room I have left in my luggage, and whether I need them or not. (And I don't need them, so I guess that question is already answered.)

The first is the card game Red, by Carl Chudyk and Chris Cieslik. There are seven number cards in each of seven colors, and discarding a card changes the "win" condition of the game to one of seven things (such as needing the highest single card for Red, or the longest run for Blue. The trick to this is that you have to be winning at the end of your turn, or you are out, so you have to plan a winning path with the cards you get dealt (discard this, play this, then discard this...) and deal with the changes the other players are making to the game. It sounds fast, and since you can string together a long series of hands to make a fuller, more strategic game, it went on my wishlist as soon as I read about it. There is (theoretically) going to be a small print run of the game available at Gen Con, so don't buy it. Because I want one.

The next on my "drop everything and buy" list is Pax Porfiriana. I don't expect to see this one, because it has incredibly small, entirely pre-order print runs, so the chances of there being a copy just sitting around is next to nothing. It's a game about a relatively chaotic time in Mexico's history, where different factions and interests were creating lots of changes in the structure of the country and putting their fingers on the scale whenever they could sneak a chance to tilt things in their favor. It sounds great, lots of varieties of strategy and tactics, lots of dealing and backstabbing, so I would love to have a copy... if there is anyone out there with one.

The last of these games is Quantum. It's not nearly as rare as the other two, or as new, but it sounds absolutely great and I just haven't had a chance to get it on order. Everyone plays different factions in space, taking control of planets with dice-spaceships - higher number ships are faster but fragile, lower number are slow, but devastating. Almost everything in the game is highly deterministic; if you can get the right ships in place, you'll know you can take control of a planet, destroy another player's ships, or whatever else you might want to do. And that's what makes it seem keen. If you fail, it's probably not because you missed a combat dice roll. It's more likely that you didn't plan well.

I've talk about a few other things on the podcast that I want, and will probably end up with if I can squeeze them in, but those are the board games I am most excited about at Gen Con. I'm also going to try to meet up with some people, friends and people we've had on the show. If you are around, and you see me, and somehow you recognize me, say hello. And if you have a copy of Red in your hands, be prepared for an epic game of roshambo to see who gets it. I go first.

Asymmetry: A Ward Against Mayflys?

As any regular listener to The Die is Podcast can probably tell you, I like learning and trying new games. I don't just mean games that have come out recently, but also any game that I've never tried before, regardless of how old it may actually be. I enjoy learning how the metaphorical gears of the machine hook together, how a few simple rules can create a massive emergence of strategic and tactical options, and I really love exploring the mechanics of the game with my friends to see what of those options we can find and screw with.

For me, a regular influx of new games provides me with never-ending variety when it comes to seeking those things out. The variety that comes from playing new games means that the experiences I have are always (or most times) different, so I always (or most times) get fun out of the sense of exploration.

Basically, new stuff is fun in part because I've never done it before.

That doesn't mean I don't love old games as well. Part of the reason I have a collection of board games is because many (if not most) are games that I enjoyed not only for the "newness," but also because there was enough depth that I thought the game would continue to be fun, or that there would be people to play with who would really enjoy some aspect of the game. I love Tichu, Intrigue, and For Sale as much as Paperback and Concordia, even though there is a more than twenty years difference between when some of those were published, and a several year difference between the times I first played them.

Getting really into new games as they are released can earn you a label, like "mayfly." I've heard people speak half-jokingly about the "Cult of the New," people who only seem to enjoy playing things that they've never played before. I don't exactly think that such a label is fair in most cases; as I said, I (and many others) enjoy new and old stuff equally. But there is something to be said about the rush that comes from trying out some new cool thing, and how many people seem to flit away from old favorites (perhaps your favorite game?) just to hop on the bandwagon.

Generally, I try not to get too hooked on that feeling. It's no problem at all trying new things all the time if you have a regular group with a never-ending supply of games, or if you go to conventions where there is an actually never-ending flow of newly published gems, but it becomes fairly problematic if you only really get to try new things by buying them... You could end up with the tragedy of dozens or more unplayed and maybe even still-in-shrink games. And that is, by any standard, a waste. Buying a game on a whim, because it seems like it might give you that "new stuff" rush, is a great way to end up with a disappointing purchase.

There are many games that you can play once or twice, and get a really good sense of, maybe even coming to the plateau of the learning curve just in a couple of tries... basically, once everyone has a solid grasp of the rules, everyone is essentially on the ground for every future play. I've heard these games referred to as "disposable" games by people in some corners, which is another unfair categorization, but they do tend to be games that encourage rather than discourage mayfly-like behavior. These games do serve a purpose, of course: they tend to be easy to learn or teach and great for non-gamers, since even an expert isn't going to necessarily do better than a brand new player.

However, there are also games that have depth that is far beyond what could be plumbed in one, ten, or even a thousand repeated plays. Obviously, games like Chess and Go fall into this category. But the main issue with a game like those is that the sense of exploration and newness tends to be very, very subtle and drawn out over a long period, and the excitement from them also tends to be subtle. This is unlikely to help a mayfly focus down on a single game for long. In Go, the rules can almost be boiled down to two or three sentences, with only one kind of piece or move, but the tactics and strategy are almost boundless. Thousands of years of humanity playing Go, and we still feel like we have only scratched the surface. It's like digging through bedrock with a broken spoon; you are able to find cool new possibilities within the play space, but it can be arduous. Which means that it is only fun for a small subset of people as a game of "newness" and "exploration." To be clear, this doesn't make Chess or Go bad (or really, much like the other games I discuss in this article), but to me, it explains a great deal of why they aren't as popular as other board games.

Many board games, especially on BoardGameGeek, fall somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum. The most popular games on the site, like Twilight Struggle, Through the Ages, and Agricola, have amazing depth, and require lots of time to learn, gain skill at, and master (if that is even possible). Recently, though, I've begun to find that there is a particular sub-set of these games that provides depth much in the same way that deep games do, with a much quicker turn-around on the newness/fun rush that people get from so-called "disposable" games can provide. Games where the player sides are asymmetrical; each player has a different set up, a different stock of pieces or cards, and maybe even a different goal.

Asymmetry in games is not a new thing, but I find that when it is used well in games, it can provide a way for players to explore vast depths of strategy in a guided way that can feel absent in symmetrical games. Assymetrical games that have few rules and are easy to learn can't be easily written off because the progress you make in exploring the depth of the game is far more obvious than in something like Go. This doesn't make them better games than Go, but it does make them better at providing that rush that a mayfly gamer wants, the thing that otherwise would have them chasing after whatever new game they see.

Let's take a game I've talked about before as an example, so I can use specifics. Yomi is a quick card game with fairly basic rules that simulates a Street Fighter-esque video game, where two players face off with distinct characters, and fight using attacks, throws, and defensive moves to reduce their opponent's hit points to zero. The basics of the game are incredibly simple: dodges and blocks beat attacks, attacks beat throws, and throws beat dodges and blocks. There are straight-forward rules for dealing damage, character speed, and a few other things, but it can be learned in about five minutes.

The depth of the game comes from the fact that every single character is completely different. Fire archer Jaina has the same basic kinds of moves as the draconic shapeshifter Midori, but the mix of cards and special attacks make the two decks entirely unlike one another. When you play your first match of Jaina versus Midori, you might find that Midori wins most of the time, due to some built in advantage in the deck. However, as you play more and more, you will see some advantages and cards that Jaina can make use of that turn the game in the opposite direction. Now, instead of Midori dominating with powerful moves in his dragon-form, Jaina relentlessly and repeatedly fires arrows in such a way that she wins most of the time. And again, dozens of matches later, Midori starts to creep back in, countering not just the new style that Jaina is being played with, but also keeping his old advantages in just enough that she has confronted with an entirely unexpected style of attacks.

The Blue Moon (now Blue Moon Legends) card game progresses similarly. When you first play the Vulca, a fiery race with brute strength, against the Hoax, a weaker group of historians with a few tricks up their sleeves, you might find the Vulca win, and they win strongly. After a few games, learning a bit of the deck composition, the Hoax begin to use their tricks effectively, and make the Vulca look positively lame. But slowly, it comes around again, and the Vulca, armed with knowledge of the Hoax's tricks, begin to come up with counters.

The back and forth in an assymetrical game like this is not just within a single play, but in the entire overall strategy of the multi-play game itself. As one strength is discovered, another is brought low.

Anyone who's spent any amount of time learning and playing a deep abstract game like Chess and Go will know this feeling. First you discover the power of your Queen, then games later the trickery of your Knights, and even further into your play you realize the strength of the Bishops who don't stand on the same color of squares... And that is certainly one of the reasons that Chess has been around for as long as it has, and still remains a complex game with many fans. But, I believe that a smaller scale, asymmetrical game like Yomi provides this same kind of feeling, but where the steps you take in Chess might take a hundred games (or, in Go, a thousand games), the steps in Yomi take only a dozen, but each time you take a step, you see there are further steps in a hundred directions.

And that is a real strength in trying to settle yourself if you feel like a mayfly. Instead of hopping from game to game, you can hop from character to character, deck to deck, loop around and discover new strategies, and get the rush of "new cool stuff" without abandoning games left and right. Even the same character vs. character match in Yomi takes on new dimensions every time you play.

Collectible card games have a great strength in this area, as every deck is different and infinitely adjustable. A green-red deck in Magic: The Gathering, with big creatures and direct damage as its main components, can be carefully played and its contents tweaked until it can stand strongly against most varieties of any color of deck. However, people playing these games tend to turn a mayfly's attention to getting new cards all the time, and quickly "fixing" their decks or building new ones to counter any perceived strength of another player, so less depth is explored... and Magic becomes like a microcosm of the gaming hobby, where very few people explore the depth and strengths of a particular set of cards, always looking for the next new thing.

This is less of a problem in the Living Card Games of Fantasy Flight Games, in particular Netrunner. This is a fantastic example of asymmetry: not only are there different factions with different strengths (like Yomi and Blue Moon), but each player in the head-to-head game plays with an entirely different goal and process. One player is the Corp, building up firewall fortresses to protect their secret agendas, the other is the Runner, attacking any weakness they can find. Both sides play entirely differently, and thus, provide a lot of depth to explore without a need for swapping between games, or even between factions.

I'm willing to admit that I could be wrong, and that this kind of game isn't necessarily a solution to the problem that I presented in the beginning of this article. But, for me, I more and more find myself enjoying asymmetrical games because of how easily I can get a rush of "cool/new" without having to learn or buy a new game. Of course, that doesn't stop me from learning or buying new games entirely, but it is a sub-set of games that could provide others with a way to control purchasing impulses and really learn the strength of games that they otherwise might not.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 7: Intermission

We've set a sort of soft policy in my gaming group that as long as a majority of people are present, we will continue to game and have the missing Player Characters appear as secondary characters.  I was all set to do this for our SIF game, but I was enjoying Zoren's antics too much from the last session to leave him out when the group finally arrived in King's Landing.  In light of no game, I thought I would provide a list of characters and the story they have learned so far.  A lot of this is going to be coming to a head soon now that they will be entering King's Landing.

House Buckwell

Bannermen to House Lannister and rival to House Trevayne.  Lead by Lord Darren, father of Rosa and Aiden.  Rumor is that Rosa was to be involved in an arranged marriage but ran away.  Aiden is young, headstrong, and devoted to his family.  Currently in King's Landing to bring accusations against House Trevayne for the murder of their smallfolk.

House Thorne

Bannermen to House Tyrell.  The party has not had much interaction with them having only glanced the second son Orten Throne talking with Aiden Buckwell at a wedding.  Ser Naton, the eldest son, is said to be a skilled tourney night, though he has yet to distinguish himself.

House Vale

Bannermen to House Tyrell.  They only members of this house the party has met are Ser Armattan and his twin sister Amberley.  Through them, they learned that Lord Duncan has recently been betrayed and murdered by a Dornish knight and made off with the house's Valyrian sword, Thresher.  The two are on their way to King's Landing for the tourney and searching for the sword.

The Story Thus Far...

The events of individual sessions are in previous posts.  Here is the overarching plot so far.

The party is on their way to King's Landing for King Robert's yearly Tournament.  In addition, one of House Trevayne's main purchasers of their ore has requested a meeting to discuss new financial arrangements.

Aiden Buckwell is along the road to King's Landing as well, spreading accusations against House Trevayne for the murder of some of their small folk.  The party has learned that this deed was actually performed by a rogue knight, Lord Archay, also known as The Fox Knight, and a group of hired mercenaries.  The mercenaries are now deceased, having been betrayed by one of their own, Hamish Flowers, who was paid off by Lord Archay.  He himself was found recently murdered and robbed of his new found wealth shortly after the party spoke with him.  It is unknown who hired Lord Archay, but the running theory among the party members is Lord Darren himself.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 6: "The Voice of God"

Common sense isn't that common...

When you are the GM, creating an adventure or running a pre-made one, it's hard to see why the players would do anything other than is expected of them.  You see all angles and things that seem obvious to you are not readily apparent to the players.  Case in point;

As the group was setting out from Dag's Inn and further along the Gold Road, it had not dawned on them that the sigil of House Trevayne might not be something to display openly, given the encounter they had the previous night.  Here is where you have to use the NPC's as "the Voice of God."  You aren't telling the players what to do, you are playing their common sense.  It's a way to keep the immersion in the game and not just blurt out possible ideas.  Here, the inn keep questioned whether they wanted to travel so openly as members of House Trevayne.  Of course, as somewhat arrogant bannermen of House Lannister, they didn't feel the need to hide their sigil.  They were too proud.  They did have Elan ride ahead of the main party displaying no colors, to try and keep an eye for potential threats.

Their journey turned out to be fairly uneventful.  As expected, they did get plenty of dirty looks and watchful eyes, and the inn they rested at, The Great Stag, gave them a suitably cold welcoming.  Prior to the main group arriving, Elan made the acquaintance of two apparent Dornish people; a man and a woman appearing to be siblings.  They introduced themselves as Ser Armattan and Amberley, members of House Vale in the Reach.  They chatted a bit and once the other party members arrived, they remained friendly, apparently not caring about the rumors of House Trevayne.

After a time, the group turned their attention to another person at the inn, a boisterous, drunken man, spreading lots of coin about who became peculiarly quiet and furtive once he saw the group.  It was here that they found a potential lead in their investigation.  This man, Hamish Flowers, revealed himself, reluctantly, to be the sole surviving member of the mercenaries hired by the Fox Knight, a disgraced knight turned bandit, to murder the House Buckwell smallfolk.  Everyone follow that?  He admitted to killing the other mercenaries in their sleep, and received a big payout from the Fox Knight.  He had no idea who hired the Fox Knight with this job originally, though.

Reason prevailed with Zoren and Elan and they didn't straight murder Hamish.  They knew he would useful in clearing their name, so they just gave him more to drink, a serving wench to seem him to his room and turned in for the night.

The following morning brought a harsh disappointment;  Elan found Hamish dead, throat slit and robbed.  This didn't sit well with Zoren.  He promptly went to the obvious suspect for Hamish's murder...the serving wench.  He burst into her room, forced her to wake, dress, and be interrogated about Hamish's murder.  He did exercise classic Trevayne restraint and just yelled and accused her.  Lucius and Elan inspected both Hamish's room and the serving girl's room, uncovering no murder weapon, no money, and the suggestion that Hamish's murderer entered and exited through the window.

Dissatisfied with the answers they received, the group set out on their final day's travel.  A few hours from King's Landing, Elan's scouting revealed a small group, armed and laying in wait.  Elan passed them by, circled around, and watched them.  As the main group approached, the men charged out, shouting "For House Buckwell!" and attacked.  After a very short combat, the group killed all but one of the ambushers, learning that they were hired by Lord Dominic Buckwell who gave them a letter bearing his seal.  The letter turned out to be a very poor forgery and the description of Lord Buckwell he gave them matched the description Hamish gave of the Fox Knight.  It seemed apparent that these men were just hapless dupes, hired by the Fox Knight to harass House Trevayne.  So of course, they killed the lone survivor.  Classic House Trevayne.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 5: Normalcy

Sometimes, things go accordingly

This past week was pretty standard affair for our group (aside from some really inappropriate jokes).  I have no glimpses into my GM'ing process with this post, just an update of where the party is in the story.

Following last week's unfriendliness at Masha's Inn, the group set off and reached the nearby city of Deep Den, where the Trevayne's share a distant relationship with Lord Lydden.  They dropped off the bandit to receive the King's Justice, spent the night as guests of Lord Lydden and met up with Lucius, the young assassin in training, and begrudgingly traded the bandit's horses for a cheaper (though not in their minds) price on a warhorse for Zoren.

After a few days travel, they reached another inn of note, Dag's, where they quickly received a cold welcome.  Between the reserved fear of the stableboy, serving girl, and matron, they assumed word had come down from Masha's and were preparing themselves.  Once a couple of sellswords approached the party and accused them of murder, they knew something was up.  Zoren and Elan taunted the two and tricked them into going outside while they locked the door to the inn and had Zoren block it off.  This restraint honestly surprised me.  After Elan's quickness to shot first, ask questions later, I figured these two sellswords were dead.

Talking with the owners of the inn, the group learned that the heir of their rival house, Aiden Buckwell, had been by a day or so before on his way to King's Landing.  During his stay, he told tale of the atrocities House Trevayne committed against his smallfolk; murder.  He brought proof in the form of a bloody shield bearing House Trevayne's sigil.

Learning of the accusations being levied against their house, Zoren surprised the sellswords by opening the door causing them to rush in.  He shield bashed one into unconsciousness and the other fell where Elan drew daggers on him.  They offered the two their lives if they left right then and did not come back.  They agreed.

Now the group has to watch itself on the last stretch towards King's Landing and hope to clear their house of crimes they did not commit.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 4: Adaptability

Players will always derail...always

One thing I have learned in the few years I've been a GM, is that players will always find someway to deviate from the expected.  It could be they ignore an important clue or an NPC that sets up the session that is key to the entire campaign that you have devised for months.  Sometimes it's unintentional.  Maybe the clue was just a little too subtle at the time and you have to work to reinforce the idea that "by the way, that medallion you found on the bandit...it's really important!"  Sometimes it's tied to how they roleplay.  Maybe the players skip over the NPC entirely because their characters "have no reason to interact with them."  This is not a bad thing in anyway and should never be discouraged.  Now you've learned that the band of adventurers really don't like nuns, hate religion and would never step foot inside a church.  Take that important information the NPC had and put it on someone who they would interact with; a tavern keep perhaps, or a guy looking to hire some mercenaries.  They key thing to take away from this is that you have to be flexible.  You have to adapt.  I think we mentioned it a couple times on the podcast, but roleplaying and, more importantly, GM'ing is almost like doing improv.

This past week, I started in on the premade adventure in the back of the A Song of Ice and Fire book.  I've ran very few premade adventures in the past because, I feel, that you have to be ready to react more in those situations when players deviate from the path laid out.  If it is a session or campaign I am running myself, I rarely have concrete paths laid out overall, so I can react a bit better to something of my own creation.  Plus, it might have something to do with the people I game with.

Early in the adventure, on the way to King's Landing, the group found some bodies, presumably killed by bandits.  This set them on alert some, as it should.  After all, one of them is heir to a noble house, and the others are body guards of a sort.  When they go to the inn for the night, they pretty quickly noticed "guy huddled alone, by the fire, sniffing and coughing like he's sick."  So when people turned in for the night, a watch was set and it was Elan, the bow wielding scout, who was awake and noticed the guy sneaking out.  He wasted no time in shooting an arrow right into the guy's leg, crippling him.

Here's where I had to alter a little.  I expected him to follow him silently to see where he was going, maybe confront him about being up so late...not shoot him in the leg, 5 yards from the inn.  I am used to this though, so I used it as the perfect opportunity to slow the game down and make the players have to deal with potential repercussions.  (The other thing I could have done was just scrap the entire bandit angle and make him truly just a random guy, but I didn't want to be that mean.  I may in the future though...)

The guy screamed out, waking the entire inn.

The inn keep was kind of an old lady, and not unkind.  She didn't have much care for lords and nobility, they have to pay like everyone else.  So when she sees one of her patron's bleeding with an arrow through the leg, of course she's upset.  What arose was probably one of the most belligerent common folk in the entire land of Westeros.  I probably played her a little too obstinately, but that made it more interesting.  She wanted them out, they wanted to stay the rest of the night.  They tried to pay her off, she wanted more than they offered.  She wasn't going to back down just because this guy was a lord.  So, while The Fort and Terrance stayed around to intimidate and threaten the innkeep (which was quite easy once they stopped playing nice), Elan went off with one of the household guards they brought along to find the bandit camp the wounded man was running off to.

The bandit encounter, as was printed in the book, was designed to be either an ambush set by the bandits or the players.  Should have been during the day, and at least everyone would be awake.  Here is another place I had to alter.  I don't want to say I "accommodated" the players, but I definitely alter encounters a little when I see the players using their skills appropriately or trying to play the game in a logical fashion.  Instead of the bandits being awake, waiting for their guy to tell them of travelers coming, they were asleep because of the delay caused by the arrow and the commotion at the inn.  It's obviously possible to travel there in a relatively short period of time, that guy was gonna do it.  Elan is a good tracker, and with his high skill, he was able to find them, all asleep.  I could have just said, "no, it's too dark, you can't find them" or "the sun is starting to rise, and the bandit camp is stirring" and kept the book encounter, but that is a cheat I feel.

What followed was a series of stealth rolls where he and the guard went from tent to tent, slitting the throats of the bandits.  Encounter over and Elan was vindicated for his quick, reckless action.

Game Bag Tutorial

Hello Gamers!  Susie here.  I like to be crafty and make things to "enhance" our games.  One of the easiest things to do (and usually impresses friends when you drag them out) is to make some drawstring bags for your game.  They can be used for dice bags or even little gifts for people.

Here are some examples:  Small world (orange), The Duke (Blue and Red), my dice bag (pink), a random bag I made for my sister (white and navy), and the bag I made for this tutorial (I used the same fabric as I did for one of the Duke bags)

My dice bag with the dice in it.  I don't have a lot of dice that aren't also Chris', but these are my special dice that I like to keep separate. 

The Small world bags are my favorites.  The outside is a happy orange with little cartoon flowers and inside are skulls and crossbones.  I think it capture the theme of Small World nicely. No drawstring because we don't store things in this bag, just use them to draw the races and power tiles.

This is the basic tutorial I use to make all my bags for games.  It's a very clear step-by-step explanation of how to make a lined drawstring bag.  I do make a few size adjustments as well as other figits to the instructions.  For example, my pattern size is 8 inches wide and 9.5 inches tall for the outside of the bag and 8 inches wide and 8.5 inches tall for the lining. You can really make the bag in any size as long at the lining is 1 inch shorted that the outside of the bag, but maintains the same width.  I also made a bag that was 7" x 7" for the outside and 6" x 7" for the inside to show you a size comparison.

First things first, you have to have a sewing machine to make these bags!

This is my sewing machine!  It's a Singer Esteem, which only kind of is for teenage girls.  It was about $75 on sale from walmart and has survived being moved 4 times (once overseas via truck, boat, and train) and fallen off the back of a moving truck.  The tension is a little off now (stupid moving truck) but it serves my purposes.

You also have to understand some verbiage regarding fabric.  Here is a handy diagram!  One of my first figits is that the red crown fabric has a facing, meaning it the crowns will need to point up on both sides of the bag so instead of cutting one long swatch of fabric, I need to cut two smaller pieces out

Anatomy of fabric!  Important to know when you cut out your pattern.  Selvage is spelled sevlage, not selvedge.  Forgive the typo!

Anyways, below is the steps to making a bag from beginning to end.  Again, the tutorial has a much more detailed explanation on how to do it.

Freshly ironed fabric! This is fabric I picked out for the game The Duke.   I also have matching blue fabric to make the second draw bag for the tiles.  Picking out fabric is my favorite part of the whole process.  

Applying my pattern to the fabric.  Here is another change I make to the tutorial.  Because I need the crowns to face up on both sides of the bag, instead of putting the bottom of the patten on the fold to create one long strip of fabric, I cut out two smaller rectangles and then sew together to make sure it all faces correctly.

The inside of the bag also needs to be two separate pieces of fabric, so don't cut on the fold, cut near the selvage.

All my fabric cut out!  I also used a much smaller pattern to make a second bag to give away as a gift (it turned out tiny!).

Here is the outer fabric where I sewed the bottom together.  Notice that the crowns face different directs at the very bottom!  If you fabric doesn't have a facing, you can skip this step by cutting out your pattern along the fold and having one large piece of fabric. 

Backside of the fabric. I really recommending pressing the seam.   Pressing the seam means ironing the seam on both sides to make it flat and gives you a more finished and less rumped bag.

After I've sewing the lining to the outside of the bag.  Always iron and press the seems!  It can be a pain in the butt (especially since my iron and ironing board are in a difference room from my sewing machine) but it's worth it for a nicer finished project.

Here is a handy map for how to sew the bag together.  To turn the corner, the easiest thing to do is stop sewing, make sure the needle is in the fabric, lift the sewing machine foot, and then turn the fabric 90 degrees on the needle.   To make thegap, just back stitch when you get to that needle, raise the foot and slide the fabric down and start sewing again from the next needle. If you don't leave this gap here, you will not be able to turn the bag rightside out!  And inch or two is best.

After the bag is sewn together, ready to be pulled right-side-out through that little hole.

Hooray!  Like magic, just pull it through and make sure to poke your corners with a knitting needle, chopstick, or whatever.  Iron again to smooth out the bag.  Close the little open gap on the lining by sewing a very small seam across the gap.

Tuck the lining down into the bag and voila, bag!  

Fin!  

 Note:  I skipped the drawstring because I am out of drawstrings.   The drawsting is the trickiest part.  I also alter the directions a little because I'm bad at lining it up.  Instead of leaving a small gap when you sew the bag together, I just sew it all up, make the drawstring seams as recommended in the directions, and then use a seam ripper to delicately rip out the side seams.  Then, just use a paperclip or safety pin to thread the drawstring through the gap you made with the seam ripper.  The way I do it means a lot of swearing and fussing at Chris, but it keeps me from having to line things up and I can alter how high or low I want the drawstring on each bag.  I will give a small tutorial when I make bags for the Capitals (I have ordered fabric, but it hasn't arrived yet)

Game Expansions: Killer or Filler, or Utter Garbage?

Many board games, if not most, have some sort of "expansion" that comes out eventually. If the game was popular enough to make money for the publisher, it's almost a guarantee you'll see an expansion of some sort anymore. In theory, this is great for people who love the game -- an expansion is more options, more cool bits, more cards and strategies... and more is always better.

Right?

Well, of course not, but it's easy to get sucked into the excitement of new stuff coming out for a game you love. The other day, I was reading a review for an expansion to Eldritch Horror, a game I don't even own (nor do I have any intention of owning it), and I got that little feeling of "Oh, this sounds great." Maybe it's just sort of a generalized positive feeling that someone out there who loves that game are getting something that will expand and improve their experience. Maybe it's just a generic rush of brain chemicals when I see something new. It was a decidedly weird experience.

Don't get me wrong, I have some game expansions that I really love. They are core to the game, for me.

But it's easy to fall into a trap of buying an expansion that you neither want nor need, and this can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe you are new to a game, and in the excitement of discovering new strategies and exploring the depth of the game, you find out about a set of new spell cards or enemy encounter tokens, and you just can't stand to be without them. Perhaps you own a game that you used to play all the time, but as the weeks and months pass, you find you are playing it less and less... but a new expansion has come out, and it might be the very injection of newness and excitement the game needs to go back to the top of your list.

I've fallen into those traps before, and recently I've been thinking more and more about the expansions I regret buying. Not because they destroyed the game, or made it boring, too complicated, or otherwise unplayable. It's just that I sometimes have added an expansion, and the addition has done the opposite of what I wanted.

When I first got Pandemic, I fell in love with it: a cooperative game with an easily accessible theme and a real sense of danger... and without fail, every time I have introduced someone to the game, they have finished and immediately asked to try it again. It was fantastic. So when I saw that there was an expansion that had come out, I leapt at the opportunity. Inside the box were more player roles (more than doubling the original game), a handful of ways to make the game more difficult, and even a one-vs-many variant, where a "bioterrorist" took over the role of one of the viruses.

But I didn't want Pandemic to be more difficult or less predictable. In it's base form, the game can be nearly impossible, even on the easiest setting. I really didn't care for the "one-vs-many" option, either. The cooperative nature of the game was one of the best selling points. In the end, I only really ever used the extra roles, and even those were a mixed bag.

Dominion has ended up similarly, although I realized its expansion problems years ago. The original game was ground-breaking, taking the "meta-game" concept of constructing a deck of cards by choosing the best distribution of the best combinations, and making it the game itself. Like Pandemic, it is a game that people always want to try a second time. It's fast and it's unlike anything they've seen. It's also a game with more expansions than anyone could imagine when it first was published.

We played Dominion dozens of times in a single sitting when we first got it. As time passed, we played less, our attention drawn to other games, but we still really liked the experience of building up the deck from an assortment of cards. So we bought Intrigue, the first expansion, and it gave a bump to our enjoyment. New cards! New strategies! New combinations! But it began a gradual slide down as well. So we bought Seaside, the second expansion... but the bump was less. And as the number of expansions grew, we found more and more that we could pass on, and less and less time to play the game. It just wasn't as much fun. We never got to see the old classics like "Chapel" or "Village," and more and more we had to deal with cards that were more complex and more difficult to use effectively. How many different kinds of "villages" do we need?

As I look through my collection, I realize that there are many other games that have suffered a similar fate. Race for the Galaxy was slowed, overburdened with awkward rules... Agricola was turned from a dense but fun system of interlocking parts into an impenetrable engine with free-spinning flywheels... The tactical options of Alien Frontiers were buried under a deluge of factions...

I love all of these games, and I want to re-emphasize that none of them are made into "bad games" by their expansions. But I find that I play them less now, in part due to the expansions themselves. For me, expansions work best when they simply add more of the same, and they work poorly when they try to add new, bumpy sub-systems and strategies to the smooth play of the original. So, I've begun the process of separating out the parts I don't like from the parts I do.

Race for the Galaxy is great with the new worlds and developments, but the chunky mess of rules for attacking an opponent's worlds are out. Dominion is perfect with its core and one expansion - probably Prosperity, because where Intrigue and Seaside actually add new rules to how the game works, Prosperity is in most cases "regular Dominion, but BIGGER." We're giving away our copy of Pandemic: On The Brink, just sticking to the core game from now on, and I'm weirdly excited to see it go.

I'm careful with expansion purchases now. I need to know what's in them, and if it's not what I'm looking for, if it's not "the same, but more," then I definitely won't get it... and even if it is, maybe I shouldn't! Mage Knight (the board game, not the minis) is fun, but I don't really think I need more artifacts and enemies... I barely have touched the ones I do have. 7 Wonders is fantastic, but the expansions throw off the meticulous balance of the core game and add entirely new phases and paths to victory. Who needs it?

To close, I want to quickly touch on a few games that I don't have any regrets in buying the expansions:

Small World - in this game, the players take the roles of a flood of fantasy civilizations, all trying to colonize a crowded map. These civilizations are made up of power, such as "Rampaging," and a race such as "Elves." It is only improved by the expansions that add new powers and races (Be Not Afraid, Grand Dames, and Cursed!). The base game had only just enough power/race combinations to cover what was needed, but the expansions add variety, surprise, and fun without changing anything about how the game is played. I recommend staying away from expansions such as Leaders, which try to add an extra concern during the game...

Sentinels of the Multiverse - Superheroes vs. supervillains! Every villain requires a different strategy, and different combinations of heroes provide that. So why not add more heroes? Why not add more villains? Why not add environments that can take a chump of a bad guy and turn him into a virtually unstoppable menace? With all of the different heroes, villains, and environments, there is so much to try that it is hard to get bored.

Summoner Wars - A game designed around factions beating the tar out of one another. There isn't any worthwhile deckbuilding to do (although some people might disagree), but there is a lot of depth and variety to the factions, and there is no faction that isn't worth trying. Each faction brings something new while shining a new light onto the old factions - this is a game that could expand forever, and never lose anything because of it.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 3: First Session

So, no game this most recent week allows me to play catch up and keep this thing mostly on schedule.  Today I talk about, what I feel is one of the most important sessions, the first one.

Opening Day

Part of the fun or roleplaying games is creating a story and memorable encounters with your friends, the other players, and having fun.  The having fun part is pretty easy for some games like D&D or games that really only have one focus, like combat or cunning and intrigue.  Every one can be included at the same time and characters have very similar focuses.  There are few times when one or more people are not engaging in the game at a time.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, characters have a variety of choices to focus on.  Looking back at my previous post, you can see that we have basically 3 types of characters; 2 fighters, 1 social character, and 1 assassin.  If I focus on combat in a session, the 2 fighters are happy and quite useful.  The assassin and social character don't work well in straight up combat at all.  On the other hand, if I focus on the political intrigue side, potentially 3 characters are sitting on the side lines.  It's a careful balance one has to strike, but inevitably there will be some points when a player's character is not actively participating in the game, especially in SIFRP.

For the first session, I just recently decided to treat it sort of like the pilot to a new TV show; give each player a small scene where their character can shine and start introducing the mechanics of the game relevant to that character.  In a game like SIFRP, it makes sense, especially if you look at the books and actual T show.  It also would work for any game that has such varied choices for character creation and when having characters with different focuses.

First I started with Lucius, the bastard born assassin.  I set a training scene with him and his assassin trainer.  We traded rolls back and forth seeing who could get the upper hand with Stealth and Awareness rolls.  This no risk conflict allowed us to get used to the opposed test mechanics and roll some dice.

Second, I turned to Terrance, the heir to the house to start on the Intrigue rules.  In SIFRP, Intrigue is almost like combat.  For basic things, like getting past a guard, one roll is usually all that suffices.  Longer cons, or discussion call for multiple rolls, and it is very similar to combat.  I started with a local merchant who was looking for better prices on the metals he buys from the house.  Again, a simple, no to little risk conflict for the player.  That scene doubled as a gauge of power level for Terrance.

Third came the two fighters who got to fight off some bandits that harass the lands around House Trevayne.  This one was more of a learning point for me.  I knew the characters would be able to handle 3 bandits, one of whom was hiding, but I had no idea that they would just stomp them into the ground.  There's nothing wrong with the characters being powerful and it makes sense that trounce no name bandits.  It helps me know that if I want them to face a challenge, they will probably have to be similarly powerful enemies.

After introductions to the characters, I devised a small session to introduce some other noble Houses the group would be encountering; a wedding!  Nothing dire, like in the books, but a simple affair that really just served the purpose of letting the characters roleplay and get them involved in the world more.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid session and introduction to the game.  Next week, the group gets started on the adventure that is published in the back of the rulebook; Peril at King's Landing.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 2: Character Creation

Alright, already a week behind on my weekly blog posts, but that's ok, we shall forge ahead.  Following House creation, our group went to make their characters.

Character Creation

In any roleplaying game, it is important for everyone to be on the same page character-wise.  Roles the obvious coordination groups focus on, someone to deal damage, someone to take damage, and someone to heal the damage  That's easy to figure out and largely depends on the mechanics of the game being played.  What I have been focusing on more recently are the backgrounds and histories of the characters.

Recently in my games I have started trying to implement character relationships more.  Having a general idea the characters' motivations and attitudes will help avoid possible awkward, party-splitting confrontations.  It also helps you tailor scenarios and adventures in such a way that the players should rarely say, "Why would my character care about this?", have their character walk off, and possibly a session you spent days planing out.  When making characters, I like to ask the players, "How do you know at least one of the characters and why would you be traveling/adventuring with them."  Playing in A Song of Ice and Fire, these area two really important questions, but they are also easy to answer.  The characters are members of the Noble House and can fill the important member slots of the House.  With our group, a lot of these relationships were created easily.  Let's look at the generic character concepts;

Elan: archer and scout
Lucius Hill: a bastard born assassin
Zoren "The Fort" Fortunus: a towering knight
Terrance Trevayne XVI: heir to the house

Based off these ideas, we easily got everyone a solid role in the House.  Elan would be leader of the Shadowkin archers that patrol the lands. Lucius is only about 14, the bastard of Lord Trevayne and being trained by the house assassin.  Zoren actually started as a sellsword, but we thought it would be fitting for Lord Trevayne to have bought his services and then have him knighted for his person guard.  Terrance is sort of the lynchpin for the other characters relationships, a la Paul Atreides in the Dune Novels.  He had his trainers and council members and mimicing that with the characters was easy to do.

So we have Elan, a master archer and scout who will travel with Terrance in a damage role and Zoren, a knight in full armor traveling as Terrance's protector and essentially a tank.  Those are the main combat characters.  Lucius doesn't really fit a combat role, since if he gets seen, he's probably dead.  Also, he's 14.  He will be useful in other scenarios, such as facilitating the removal of some of Trevayne's enemies while they are "safely" asleep.  Terrance himself is a talker, not a fighter, so that is another non-combat role.  However, just as Elan and Zoren are both combat oriented, Lucius and Terrance will be working together, mostly to further Terrance's positions in bargaining and power struggles.  All in all a fairly solid group concept-wise.


Next week, we get into a rather important point in the game, the first session.

iOS Smackdown: Hearthstone vs. Yomi

Last week, two games that I have been looking forward to for a while came out on iPad. They aren't exactly alike, but they have a number of similar qualities (e.g. physical card games with asymmetrical factions played on a mobile device against randomly matched human opponents) and I have been playing a lot of both since there release.

Hearthstone is a card game themed to the setting of World of Warcraft. In it, you choose one of nine classes, with a set of cards that represent abilities that a character in the video game might have, and build a deck out of those cards and whatever "neutral," or general use, cards you have unlocked by playing (or by paying, of course). You take that deck and are randomly matched against other real human beings to test your skill and luck. The game plays a lot like Magic: The Gathering, if it were been simplified to keep turns entirely asynchronous, and the changes make it accessible to pretty much anyone. I don't know that it's based on Magic, but it would be hard to convince me that there was no influence at all...

I've enjoyed it a lot in the first week. There are a lot of choices to make in the creation of a deck, and since the game has been in beta for several months, there are experts out there who are giving really great advice in that realm. I've seen some discussion of the game as basically an "over-simplification" of Magic, but I feel like much of what it loses in complexity, it gains in tactical variety. 

As a quick example, in Magic, there are several distinct and more or less sacrosanct phases to a player's turn. You get one, and only one, chance to declare attacks, and you generally don't get to choose the targets of the attacks. In Hearthstone, each creature you have can attack once per turn, but they can attack at any time, and you choose their targets. This creates a sort of puzzle each turn as you try to determine how you can regain control of the board. Or maybe you should just ignore the creatures and attack your opponent? What about cards that have to be attacked first, or really powerful assault creatures with low defense? It makes the game much more about control and tempo-exchange that it might otherwise be.

Other simplifications include a lack of turn interrupting abilities, an entirely automatic resource building mechanism, and automatic calculations and maintenance. The latter is an obviously great benefit to anyone who has tried to track bonuses, enchant targets, token creatures, and recurring effects in Magic. Hearthstone, being a computer program, keeps everything straight in a clear fashion, and even signals to you what cards you have left to play, what creatures you have left to use, and has a clear indication when you are out of options on a turn. 

But let's get back to interrupts and resources - these are two of my favorite "simplifications." First, there is only one way to interrupt someone's actions and react, and that is to have a specific kind of card called a secret, and to play it before the situation occurs, sitting and waiting for your opponent to take the activating action. It creates the kind of "Two untapped blue mana" dynamic you find playing against a Counterspell deck in Magic, where you never really know what you'll be able to do (when your opponent has a secret card sitting there), but it makes it simpler and doesn't rely on me remembering that you were planning on countering X, but not Y. As for resources, you gain one crystal each turn, and each crystal provides you with one mana each turn. There is no chance for mana drought, you don't have to concern yourself with your land-to-spell ratio when deck building, and your resources are consistent, which makes choosing and playing cards more straightforward.

As you play, you gain experience which unlocks a certain number of basic cards, and then you have to start winning matches to gain gold, the in-game currency that you can use to buy randomized packs of cards that you can add to your deck. Yet again, it takes a lot from Magic; these packs assure that you will get at least one rare card, and you can spend real cash to buy them (instead of just playing to win and gathering enough fake cash to do it). This can theoretically get expensive quickly, but the game is free to download and play, and you can easily never pay a cent to Blizzard.

Whereas Hearthstone is only available in a digital format (Mac, PC, or tablet), Yomi was a physical card game for years. There has been a web-based client for playing the game online against other players for a while, but it has taken until now to get the mobile version out. In Yomi, you choose a pre-built deck representing one of twenty characters in a fighting game, and you try to use your knowledge of your cards and your opponent's cards to out-guess and out-play whoever you are matched up against.

Yomi is dramatically different from any other game I have played, and that's coming from someone who has played a lot of games. Instead of a deck full of creatures, spells, equipment, and whatever else you find in a competitive, asymmetrical game like Hearthstone (or Magic), the cards here are basically a mix of attacks, throws, blocks and dodges. Each round, the players choose and play one of these cards face-down, and then simultaneously reveal what they played. Each kind of card interacts differently with the others: attacks beat throws and slower attacks, dodges avoid attacks and provide openings for counter-attacks, throws break through defensive moves and have a tendency to knock your opponent down, and blocks stop most of an attack's power while building your options for later through card draws.

As I mentioned, each character has a different mix of these types of moves, different amounts of damage with each, three (or more) different special attacks, and a handful of cards that can be played as "special moves" instead of during the normal double-blind showdown explained above. Yet, there is no deck-building or design involved; the creator and play-testers of the game have spent years getting the mix of cards and the specifics of the special abilities balanced. Some people might feel put off by this, especially since so many other asymmetrical card games provide some method of customizability. But it does make me question the importance of such a thing. There is a lot to be said for spending time examining the depth of one particular faction/deck and how it can deal with the others, as opposed to losing a match, swapping around cards, and genuinely hoping to build a deck that has 90% uneven match-ups in your favor (the other 10%, of course, wrecking your deck in unexpected ways). With Yomi, the "meta," a term used to refer to the majority attitude of the community playing the game, is not focused on how to get the most imbalanced build, but rather, how to effectively use the well-balanced builds that already exist.

One of the things that makes Yomi so very different from other card games that I enjoy is the way that strategy is implemented during play. In Magic, Hearthstone, Race for the Galaxy, Summoner Wars, and countless other games, each card plays a part in building your board up, eventually with the hopeful culmination in a tableau that will defeat your opponent (or at least, has led to their defeat during the building). In Yomi, you essentially play one card per turn, and even if a few others are added to make a combo, activate a special effect, or take advantage of an opponent playing poorly, the board is wiped clean and you start the next round with a blank slate in front of you. But truthfully, the slate is not blank at all... it's just invisible. You have to consider what your opponent has previously played, what their goal for this round might be, what cards they have left in their deck vs. their discard, what special abilities remain that might interfere with your plans, and how you can best play or manipulate your cards to get the effects that you need... all while sitting there with no protective collection of cards laid out on the (virtual) tabletop.

For some people, this results in an empty feeling to the game. If every round is taken by itself, the game can look like a fancy alternative to paper-rock-scissors. But that neglects the depth of reasoning behind what card each player wants to play, why they want to play it, what they think their opponent will be playing and why, and whether some sort of second-guessing is worth while... while you can sometimes gauge how the momentum in going in a game of Hearthstone by a single turn and a glance at the board, to do so in Yomi requires looking at a dozen turns, possibly more. And, lest it be unclear, I think this makes for a really great game with a huge amount of play-space to explore. It's just that it might not be as immediately obvious a play-space as you get with Hearthstone.

The audience for Hearthstone is almost certainly larger, and the familiarity and ease of getting into the game is the biggest reason for that. If you know Magic, World of Warcraft, like humorous fantasy, or just want to try something quick and free, Hearthstone was designed for you, there is no question in my mind. It's beautiful, the interface is obvious and easy, and there are a lot of incremental rewards to keep people playing. I massively prefer it to Magic, for many of the reasons I explained above, and I love that I am able to compete against strong players with a bunch of rare cards with my free deck of basic cards.

Yomi is obviously more niche, and I think that is intentional. First, and foremost, the app is $10 upfront even to try. This immediately roots out a lot of casual customers who don't know what they are getting into. (In the long run, I feel like more people will spend far more than $10 on Hearthstone, just for the chance of getting some really great cards. I don't object, as much as I am against microtransactions in general - this is a collectible card game, and people like collecting.) The depth of the Yomi is a lot less obvious, too. It's not about getting a lucky booster pack with a super-cool creature and building a deck around that, it's about subtly tweaking how you use your deck's strengths, and learning (and then preying on) the weaknesses of the other decks. And that subtle tweaking and learning is not nearly as straightforward as swapping a few cards around is in Hearthstone.

If you were hoping to come to the end of this article and have me tell you which one to get, I'm afraid you are going to be disappointed. These games which have so many surface similarities and differences are actually both really well designed and really well maintained, and I hold both in really high regard. I'm not going to just be wishy-washy and equivocate, though. If you are looking for breadth, play Hearthstone. It has a huge number of cards, factions, decks, and already there is at least one expansion coming soon. There are so many different directions to go, and so many different things to try, that I can't recommend it highly enough for someone who loves combing through new stuff. On the other hand, if you are looking for depth, play Yomi. There is a lot of breadth to be sure; for $10 more, you can unlock another ten characters, bringing the total to 20 playable decks, each of which is exhaustively balanced against the others. But that is basically where the game will leave you for "trying new things." The real "newness" you experience with Yomi is by digging deep into one character, learning the ins and outs of their attack-throw-dodge-block ratios and special powers, finding workable or even ideal strategies against the other 19 characters, and mastering those. Of course, Hearthstone has depth, too, and you can take a single deck and work it over and over against every class, but the ever shifting "meta" and the ever expanding set of cards is going to force you to explore breadth even more.

I went with both. That's another option.

The French Deck

I love card games. Six of my top ten board games are actually card games. I love the variety, the versatility, and the potential of a deck of cards. I have since I was a kid playing War and Go Fish, through my high school years of Spades and President, to today where Haggis and Mystery Rummy are two of my most played games despite the more than 100 I own.

A few weeks back I was participating in a discussion on BoardgameGeek about card games (if I had to guess, I think it was related to Tichu) when someone mentioned Pippoglyph playing cards. Specifically, they mentioned how Tichu is basically just a regular deck of cards, with four special cards that could easily be replaced with Jokers, or in the case of Pippoglyph decks, the X cards that come included. Needless to say, because of my abiding love for Tichu, I had to learn more. I have bought many Tichu decks in my decade of playing the game, but the idea that there was a set of cards that I could use for that as well as a number of other games I enjoy intrigued me.

All of this lead to me getting a pair of the best playing cards that I have ever owned. The two Pippoglyph decks are printed on fantastic stock with a linen finish (those air pockets that make the cards slide nicely in a shuffle), the artwork and design is great, and the box is sturdier than a standard Bicycle deck. Having them makes me want to play, which I always count as a big positive point. Acquiring them has thus set off a flurry of game play, and lose or win, I am enjoying every minute of it. Cribbage, Lamarckian Poker, Rummy, even "specialty" games like Haggis, Court of the Medici, and Kobayakawa... I just want to play them all.

That pocket-sized stack of cards contains within it dozens of games that I would sit down and play right now, and sometimes, as someone who maintains a fairly large collection of games, I forget how much I enjoy them. It is frankly amazing to me that something as simple as four suits of thirteen cards has that much variety in the experiences you can have - bluffing games, trick-taking games, climbing games, fishing games... and many of them are extremely deep, maintaining a replayability that can't be matched by many big box, "epic" board games.

Plus, there is a sense of history, a rustic universality, to the so-called "French deck." Everyone everywhere is familiar with it, everyone knows what it is, and many people are willing to play "cards" where they would be put off by a game about dragons or farming. That deck fits just as well into the image of wealthy businessmen dressed in tuxedos playing a public game of Baccarat as it does with a bunch of poor kids on a stoop slapping down a perfectly executed hand of Gin. You can find them being shuffled around by little old American ladies playing Bridge as easily little old Chinese men playing Big Two or beefy Russians playing Durak. A pack of 52 cards and two jokers crosses boundaries of class, race, and age and culture like little else.

My cards make me a part of that in some way. So do yours. And it's kind of rad.

A Game of Ice and Fire, Part 1: House Creation

Hey all, Will here with the first in what I hope will be many consistent updates on the new game our weekly group is playing; A Song of Ice and Fire by Green Ronin Publishing.  With these posts, I hope to showcase the fun our group has while playing an RPG and maybe some of the confusing mess that is my GMing ability.  This will not be a review of the game, that will come in a later episode once we have a couple sessions under us, so I won't be going too heavily into the mechanics.  Let's get started!

House Creation

In SIFRP, players get to make characters but also a noble house that they are from or serve.  Not the main seven from the books, but minor houses, the banner men that serve the Lannisters and Starks, etc.  This is an example of why I enjoy roleplaying games in a setting, it lets you carve out your own little piece of the world and have fun with it.  Prior to getting everyone together, I had them all decide on one of the seven to serve under.  Lannister came up pretty quickly and that seemed to be the consensus.  Seems they wanted to play, not necessarily the "bad guys," but at least some scheming underhanded folks.

At the start, certain Holdings, or stats are rolled for to determine things like how much land, wealth, population, etc. the house has.  Each region has bonuses and penalties to these scores as befits the region.  Those that are familiar with the books will know that the West is full of mountains with precious metals and that translates to a large Wealth bonus.  It also happened to be the highest number the grouped rolled on, making them pretty rich in terms of a house.  Then they rolled for their Founding which servers 2 purposes; 1) To determine in what era they came to be and 2) A number of random events that further modify the Holdings and provide ideas for their history.  The group rolled and it was decided that their house was founded during Aegon's Conquest, about 300 years ago with only one event; Madness.  After a while of discussion, the founding of House Trevayne was decided and is as follows:

House Trevayne

The future Lord of House Trevayne began as a knight and second cousin to Loren I.  When Aegon brought his army to bear on the Westerlands and the Reach, Terrance Trevayne was there on the Fields of Fire when the 3 dragons set them aflame.  He survived by some miracle, but was horribly disfigured.  With most of Loren's nobles burned, he gave Terrance control over his own land in the mountains north of the area currently known as Silverhill.  The area was quite small, barely a league, but it had access to 3 prosperous mine shafts and a moderately sized hall built into the mountain, which he renamed Trevayne Hall.  Terrance was a vain man, and with his looks ruined, he squandered a fair amount of his House's money on Maesters and healers, trying to repair his good looks.  Bandits ran free in his lands for a time as well until Terrance finally died and his heirs worked for years to repair the small amount of damage he had done to the House.

House Trevayne is now one of the richest houses in the West.  Their mines run deep and their close location to the Gold Road and river to the south puts them in a good location to sell their metals.  The current Lord is Terrance XV.  He is an unambitious man who spends all day in his keep, though he does keep the mines running.  Pale of skin, thinning brown hair and full of self doubt.  He has one son and one daughter.  His wife died in childbirth to their daughter, causing him to turn to a serving maid once.  She gave birth to his bastard, who he has not acknowledged, furthering his doubt.  His older brother died in the first few days of the Ninepenny King War trying to make a name for himself.  His younger sister is the only success of their now deceased father, having married Lord Serrett of Silverhill.

Their sigil is a black mountain with a golden pick axe.  Their words: "From flames, fortune."


So there it is, the history of House Trevayne.  Next week the group sits down and creates their characters which I am sure will build off the history of this house nicely.