I showed Julie the game Ido tonight, recommending that she use it as a combination art literacy / gaming session at the school.  As we were fiddling with the pieces, admiring the cool abstract art aspect of the game, we decided to go ahead and give it a try.  Strike one game off my list!  Woot!

Ido is a an abstract game with very simple mechanics – start a new piece, move pieces on the board, or shift a black square frame one segment on the board.  The goal is to move four of your pieces off the diagonal edge of the board.

There are some surprises and challenges in the game – we were both a bit baffled at times about the impact shifting the frame would have on the shape of the board.  The game played quickly, about 15 minutes, but we both agreed it would be more interesting with 4 players.

I thought I’d share some nice photos taken last Sunday morning at the northern tip of Salishan spit.  This is where the harbor seals and sea lions like to congregate, and there were a bunch of them on Sunday.

Hereafter referred to as just “D&D”, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 is the most recent version of the 30–years–and–running juggernaut roleplaying game from Wizards of the Coast.  This was really the game that started it all for me back in the late 70s when as a 6th grader I was given the Basic D&D (2nd ed) set and taught myself, ensnaring several close friends in the process.  From there we learned Advanced D&D (I still remember getting the Dungeon Masters Guide for Christmas, probably around 1980) and were cross-sold by our local game store into the multitude of Avalon Hill wargame titles.  I continued to play through high school and a wee bit in college, finding time to attend GenCon after my freshman year of college (and a summer spent as a cook and drug store clerk in Aspen).  I also played the original Star Wars RPG in college (Mr. Ladewig, are you listening?).

I introduced basic roleplaying to Jacob and Matthew at an early age, probably 8 (Jacob) / 6 (Matthew).  D&D and Star Wars RPG are probably the only games both boys will play any time, anywhere, with no hesitation.  They love the sense of adventure and make believe and the development aspect of their characters.  They approach the game very differently: Jacob devours the books, learning about new classes and special tricks he might employ with his character, while Matthew loves to just go along for the ride.  This isn’t just an age thing, as Jacob was reading the books when he was younger than Matthew.

Ken, Brandon, Jacob, Matthew, and I have had a Forgotten Realms campaign going on for what is probably close to two years now.  I’m the dungeon master and have assembled a series of one-shot adventures into a completely illogical amalgamation of events for the four characters, but we still have a good time.  Emphasis is on light story and heavy action, though I’m starting to sense that the boys are getting more interested in story and character development.

Given our busy schedules, we are lucky to get together once a month to play.  I suggested last December that we carve out a weekend to go out to the coast and play through a scenario in one marathon session.  We didn’t quite get the whole weekend, but last Saturday afternoon we drove out for about 24 hours of gaming, returning Sunday evening.  I don’t have the time to write my own adventures, so I was running an off-the-shelf adventure from Goodman Games called Shadows in Freeport.  I love the tag-line from their Dungeon Crawl Classics line of modules:

Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics don't waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you fear, and the secret doors you know are there somewhere.

True to the brand, this adventure was a crawl in the classic sense – no negotiating with NPCs to determine motive and only a single puzzle to solve.  The rest of the adventure involved killing unread and various demons.

The theme of the adventure was a bit of a challenge for Matthew – the theme was a bit on the scary side for him what with the ghosts and spectres and 16 different flavors of demons.  He’s fine but definitely needed to sleep with me on Saturday night.

Most of the techniques I used to run the game I’ve learned from other DMs at RPGA sessions at conventions.  I use a square grid mat with wet erase markers (four colors) and a wide assortment of miniatures (yes, that is a Chewbacca wookie you see below).  I have miniatures from when I first played D&D, minis we’ve painted at conventions, and a wide range of D&D miniatures (plastic pre-painted) that I simply adore for running campaigns.  I’ve never played the D&D minis game but they sure work for roleplaying.

We have a pretty good handle on the rules but I play infrequently enough that I spend way too much time referring to manuals during sessions.  Fortunately Ken, Brandon, and Jacob are all at least as knowledgeable as I so provide much in-game help to resolve unknown issues.

The good news – everyone survived (there were some very challenging encounters for these guys!) and we now have a party of 9th and 10th level characters ready for their next challenge.  Ken is preparing to run The Shackled City in a new campaign, which will be a nice change.  We need to find the right transition to switch in to the new campaign with new 1st level characters.

While Ken and I prepared dinner Saturday night, the kids worked in a couple other games.  We keep a carom board out at the coast, and the boys played a simple flicking game similar to crokinole.

 They also played a three-way Magic game.

Hopefully this gives some insight into our D20 roleplaying life.  I’m not going to turn this into an RPG session blog, so don’t expect to see too much here unless I try out new systems or play at conventions.

When it comes to gaming conventions in Portland, there’s really only one game in town and that’s GameStorm.  We’ll be running a number of events this year, including a 2–player tournament, a Havoc tournament, our traditional Sunday morning family gaming session, and a Sunriver Games prototype session.  Mark your calendar: March 24–26 at the Red Lion at the Quay in Vancouver, WA.

They are also holding a free game day this Saturday in Portland.  KC and I plan to be there to try out a prototype or two.

I made it to Mike’s “South Tuesday” game night tonight, a good step towards meeting my New Years resolution.  We had a great crowd of 9 tonight and decide to split into 5 / 4, and we would remain in those groups for the evening.

Doug, Chuck, KC, and Rita started things off with Tal der Könige, a game I enjoyed very much when I played at the coast about 10 days ago.  Don’t know much about how this play went but it did look like everyone had fun.  The game lasted about 90 minutes.

Mike declared tonight a “classics” night and suggested the Splotter game Bus along with a few others.  There was a bit of debate about whether or not Bus qualifies as a classic, but I was certainly eager to play it again face-to-face.  I’ve played it 2 or 3 times live before, and about 10 times on Spiel-by-Web.  Only Mike had played before, so the first 15 minutes involved explaining the game to Carey, Tim, and Eric.

The game is a brain burner and it is very easy to make (often crippling) mistakes.  There are so few opportunities to score points in a five player game due to congestion and player chaos that a missed chance or misplayed can easily take a player out of contention.  This makes it fairly unforgiving for new players.  Carey chose the vroom action a couple of times when it turned out he could transport no passengers, probably because he didn’t anticipate some of the other players’ actions.  This is a very common mistake that I still make, though I’m more likely to make suboptimal choices and not think a turn ahead.

The game was very tight, with Mike burning his last cube thinking it was the last turn (there was going to be one more turn) and possibly missing a chance to be in contention.  As it was, Eric and Tim tied for points (2 ahead of Mike, Carey and me, though Mike may have been ahead of us) but Eric winning on the tie-breaker as he had “earned” a stone by stopping time.  A fun game that I’d like to see out more.

While we were finishing up Bus, the other crowd played some David and Goliath.

My last game of the night was 6 Nimmt, my favorite filler game of late. We had an interesting discussion about favorite filler card games, with titles such as Coloretto, Geschenkt, and 6 Nimmt getting mentioned.  Coloretto wore out its welcome with me, and I’m not sure why.  Maybe 6 Nimmt will do the same, but for now I quite enjoy it for what it is – a quick game with decisions to make but nothing too angst-ridden.  I’m sure there are solid strategies to the game, but I use a few basic rules that keep decisions simple and I seem to win about half the time I play.  Maybe I just get good cards.

During 6 Nimmt the other group was playing (what else?)… Havoc!

Saturday and Sunday should involve some RPG goodness out at the beach – I’ll post some details about the campaign I’m running and chat a bit about how to play D&D with pre-teens.

I recently made a commitment that I would post more about the role-playing game sessions I run.  These don’t happen frequently, but they are an important part of my family’s gaming world so it does make sense to talk about it from time to time.

Sunday was a mostly open day, and I offered two choices to the boys – finish our saved game of Attack! or do a short session of Star Wars D20.  They immediately opted for some role-playing action, which put me in a bind as I had no planned adventure for their characters (a rogue and a Jedi).  Jacob was kind enough to do some research on the WOTC site and found a short one-shot adventure for us to play.

We used to play the old West End D6 Star Wars RPG (I played this in college and had all the materials) but switched to D20 once we became familiar with D&D 3.0.  It really is easier on the kids sticking to a single system like D20, though don’t think for a second that I’m not eager to try some other systems.  I already have Thirty and Cat in the queue to try and am also very interested in Polaris.

This adventure turned out to be very short, almost too short, but was a nice way to get back into Star Wars and hopefully will lead to some more play in the near future.  I’ve got a big RPG session planned for next weekend so expect to see some more on our D&D campaign next Sunday or Monday.

We drove over to the Rude’s home around 3pm – I offered to help Ken setup his new computer and the boys sat down with Brandon to play with his new XBox 360.  Ken and I managed to squeeze in a quick 2–player game of Attika.

There were few to no opportunities to connect our temples, so it became very clear about mid-game that the first player to build out his building set was going to win.  Attika is mostly about turn and resource efficiency and might be just a bit too dependent on luck of the tile draw, but I enjoy it nonetheless.  I managed to jump on two map tiles Ken laid out by using several amphoras as once, consuming the best resource spots and effectively blocking him out of his freshly placed terrain.  This gave me plenty of room to breath and allowed me to finish about 3–4 buildings ahead of him.

While waiting for dinner, the boys and I played a three-player favorite of mine, Wyatt Earp.  Both boys managed to catch me off-guard in consecutive games, going out about 2 turns before I expected and snatching way too many points.

Final score was Matthew: $15, Jacob: $14, and Chris: $13.  We played two hands.

Monday is a day of cleaning up, packing, and heading home.  That doesn’t mean we can’t fit in a few games.

I woke up fairly early to watch the Iowa / Florida game.  By halftime there wasn’t much to see, so I moved back to the table to do my day 3 post and watched Ken, KC, and Rita play the Terrain Game.  This game doesn’t have the highest rating on BGG, but apparently KC has a variant that made the game a bit more playable.  He promises to make a post soon on the ‘geek with some more details.

KC recently designed a kid’s game based on the annoying but addictive flash animation Badger Badger Badger.  It is a press-your-luck tile drawing game that the younger kids seemed to like quite a bit, especially Matthew.

KC and I also played a nice little prototype of Kevin Nunn’s Counter Spy game.  This is the best two-player game prototype we’ve had and will very likely go into another round of play-testing with our local group.  It has a CCG feel without the deck building aspect – lots of take-that and hand management.  I’ve played four times so far and each game has been close with plenty of tension.

The final game played here for New Year’s 2006 is of course Magic: the Gathering.  The kids continue to enjoy their cards from Ravnica and we look forward to some trading from our sealed deck acquisitions to tune our decks a bit more.

Overall the weekend was a fantastic success – we saw much more gaming participation from traditional non-gamers this weekend, a specific goal that KC and I had.  The hit party game of the weekend was a tie between Catch Phrase and Plext.  My favorite gamer-games of the weekend were Atlantic Star and Byzantium.

A stormy day at the coast means there’s no good reason to leave the house.  More gaming goodness.

I started off the day with a four-player game of Barbarossa with Julie, Ken, and Jacob.  This is a great little game that offers a surprising amount of strategy and subtlety for what appears on the surface to be a light clay molding party game.  The goal is to make sculptures that are guessable but not too easy.  You can see in the picture below our 8 sculptures – take your guesses, and I’ll give answers at the bottom of this post.

KC had a hankering to get out his beautifully produced copy of Tal der Könige.  This is a pyramid building game that involves some interesting bidding mechanisms and movement-plotting and we enjoyed it quite a bit. Each player has two bosses that can bring workers to construction sites to build pyramids.  The pyramids are built with blocks that are won in an auction at the start of each turn (blind bidding with tiles).  After the auction, players plot moves for their bosses; this is where the interaction comes in.

You can move your boss to another player’s building site to steal building cubes from unfinished pyramids or, in special circumstances, steal the site from the player.  We had a decent amount of conflict in the game and it kept the bickering and jabbing at a high but enjoyable level.  There are defensive measures you can take to prevent stealing, but it is costly and can slow down expansion and building.

I went for the many-ugly pyramid strategy (not intentionally) and did decently, finishing second.  Ken was left alone for the early part of the game and stayed strong enough to win the game.  This is a great game that I’d like to play again.

For mid– to late-afternoon, we engaged in a four-on-four Memoir ‘44 Overlord game.  Ken and I took the commanding general roles; Justin, Brandon, and Matthew were my field generals for the allies while KC, Josh, and Jacob were Ken’s field generals for the axis.  We played one of the expansion scenarios, can’t remember the name but it was July 1944 in France.

As the attackers we had to take some risks and try to capture some of the axis forward fortified cities.  It was rough going and we lost 3–4 units in the process.  The game stayed fairly even for the first hour, but once I put a time/round limit on the game (we have to eat dinner, you know!) the axis made a major counter-attack to try and get a point advantage before game end.  Not only did they succeed in that, they accumulated all 12 medals they needed to win the game.  Overlord is a great way to play Memoir and I think everyone had a great time.

 The kids went swimming for a while and upon return we had a small Texas Hold’em tournament.  Ken was nice enough to stay with the kids and keep things in order.

All of the players stayed in for a surprisingly long time, but Matthew held his own in the end and won the final pot with a flush (two hearts in the hole).

While the kids (and Ken) played poker the rest of us played some lighter card games.  First up was Olympia 2000, a light game of olympic sports.  The basic idea is you have a set of cards in your hand and you secretly choose an athlete to compete in the next event.  Very much a luckfest, but there are ways to influence the direction of the game as you can try to finish last in an event which allows you to choose what the next event in the queue will be.  Not my favorite game but a fun little diversion.

Julie was the champion in both games and was quite proud of her success.

Next up was Trendy, the Knizia game of fashion and runway modeling.  There’s some nice balance in scoring and card counts and some great player interaction, especially in trying to shut down the leader.  Overall a fun game and one I enjoyed quite a bit more than Olympia.  Maybe that’s because I won. 

KC, Rita, Justin, and I also played another game of Tichu.  This game is getting more fun the more I play – reminds me of my early years playing spades and how much I enjoyed the team aspect of that game.  I’m improving but still very green on strategy, but the game has been a blast.

The final game of the night was Atlantic Star.  This was a cheap pickup at Essen (about 10 Euro) and having played it I think it was my best purchase of the show.  This was easily one of my favorite gaming experiences of the weekend.  We played with six and this easily ranks as the best six-player game I’ve played.  Plenty of player interaction, minimal downtime, and some decent but not too heavy strategy involved.

I did pretty well, finishing two points behind the winner KC.  Everyone had fun and I think we’ll see this game coming out again soon.

Answers to Barbarossa Puzzle: Clockwise from front center are shovel, cell-phone, brick, peach, kite, bottle, camera.

First, Happy New Year!  We’ve had a great day of gaming at the coast, including some 3–on–3 basketball action down at the outdoor half-court.

Highlights for today: Byzantium, Oltremare, Electronic Catchphrase, and a sealed deck Magic: the Gathering / Ravnica tournament.

The kids took it on themselves to play a five-player game of Shadows Over Camelot with the traitor, with Jacob explaining the rules.  Chelsea turned out to be the traitor but the boys assured me the knights reigned victorious.

One of my as-yet-unplayed titles from Essen was the Martin Wallace title Byzantium.  It is 2:30am on Sunday morning here and hard to go into too much depth here, but rest assured that there’s a lot going on in this game.  There are also some very creative characteristics to the game that I haven’t seen before, but that might just be my limited exposure.  KC, Ken, Justin, and I played a four-player game that lasted close to four hours.

Each player has the ability to control factions of Arab and Byzantine forces in conflict in the middle-east and Asia minor.  Progress you make for Arabia and Byzantium are tracked on independent scoring tracks, and there are some constraints that encourage balancing VP generation between the two.  Typical of Wallace games, there are many choices players can select, causing initial confusion / dilemma as players learn the various moving parts and basic strategies.  The first turn (there are three in all) took close to two hours as we figured the basics out.

Each player controls an Arab and a Byzantine army and (usually) has a pawn on the board representing the current location of the army.  The essence of the game is using your armies to attack cities controlled by the other side (Arab armies attack Byzantine cities) to gain victory points, though there are exceptions that include civil wars against your own kind and an inability to attack yourself (remember you are on both sides!).

Actions are short enough that downtime was limited, a big bonus in my book (that’s why I like Antike so much).  In our game it looked like KC was in the running for the win for most of the game, but Justin surprised us all with an Arab mad dash across the north of Turkey to take a shot at Constantinople.  While the attack failed, the damage he did along the way was enough to secure a tie with me in VPs at the end of the game, with Justin winning the first tie-breaker.  The game was tight overall, with KC finishing a single point behind and Ken only about 5 behind him.

I think I’m more inclined to play this again than the others, as I think much of our frustration was from first-play confusion rather than any problems with the game itself.  This is a deep Wallace game after all and you need to get in 2–3 plays before it starts to sink in.  I’m rating it a 7 right now but that might increase.

We all took a break 6 of us walked the half mile to the basketball courts for some 3–on–3 fun and exercise.  I mention this to make it clear that we do get outside from time to time.

Most of the kids decided to go for a swim after dinner, so Ken, Brandon, KC, Rita, and I played my new copy of Oltremare from Essen.  I’m a big fan of this game, though after my first play with five I wonder if it is much better with 3 or 4.  I felt that the game ended too quickly (i.e., with too few turns) and exaggerated some of the luck of the draw differences.  Case in point: I never drew a card with more than 2 cargo markers and was unable to trade for anything better.  This made it very difficult to get enough cards down to make long sets.

Still, it was fun and I think Rita and Brandon (first time players) enjoyed it very much.  The bits in the new version are largely gratuitous and hardly helpful.  As you can see in the photo above we replaced the ships with color-coded bits (wooden trucks in this case) so we could actually see what color was where; those ships are completely worthless.  KC pulled out the big victory; Brandon and I tied for last.

While I organized the start of our Magic tournament, all of the women gathered around the Mystery of the Abbey board for some deduction goodness.

For our Magic tournament, I provided a tournament pack plus three boosters from the Ravnica set.  We were all completely ignorant of the set, adding to the excitement of exploring a new set of cards and mechanics.  I’m not a big CCG fan, but this is still one of the best games ever made.  And it keeps on going…

I was hoping to try something different this year, perhaps involving blue or black as I tend to lean towards creature decks (green) or direct damage (red).  The cards spoke for themselves though, and it was fairly obvious that I should play green/white given some of the guild combos and hybrids in my set.  Ravnica introduces cards that can use either/or of two different mana types (green/white, white/red, blue/black, etc.).

I did well in the swiss-style tournament, going undefeated and claiming the victory crown from Ken (he won last year).  Ken and Brandon finished tied for second and will have a playoff match in the morning to see who claims second place.  The games were a blast and everyone enjoyed the new set.

While we finished the tournament the rest of the crowd started a game of Electronic Catch phrase that lasted from 10:30pm until 1:30am.  This was a blast and by 12:30 we had almost the whole crew engaged.

If you’ve never played this, run to Target or Toys R Us tomorrow and pick up a copy – just about any group will enjoy this game.  It was especially nice to see different generations deeply engaged, laughing, and enjoying such a great party game.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring – maybe another play of Indonesia or some prototypes.  You’ll know soon enough…

Friday was the kickoff day for our weekend gaming at Salishan with the Rude and Humphrey families.  That makes 13 bodies in all, so there are plenty of opportunities for a wide range of gaming.  Our goal is usually to bring out games we haven’t played yet or rarely get played in our normal sessions.  Here’s an example of the games with the potential of coming out this weekend.

I picked up Ra at BGG.Con in a trade with Keith Blume.  My first play of this was less than favorable, but given how popular the game is I figured I was missing something and took a chance on getting my own copy.  KC, Rita, Ken, and I sat down to play it as our first official game of the weekend.

KC and Rita have played this game quite a lot, but Ken and I were essentially playing for the first time so we took some time to learn/explain the rules.  I must admit the mechanics are very simple, the game is streamlined and easy to learn, and I quite enjoyed playing.  The fact that I edged out KC for the victory 44–42 might have something to do with it.  I really did enjoy the push-your-luck element combined with the auctions.  There’s a decent amount of luck in the game but that’s OK as you can take steps to mitigate this effect through the bidding process.

Julie and Justin committed themselves to resuming their speed duels. Justin tells me he’s up by three games now.

After our game of Ra, I suggested we try out the Sid Sackson classic Venture.  This is a copy I purchased on eBay from Sid’s personal collection.  Not a bad little game – there are some similarities to Acquire in that players build out corporations, there are takeover mechanics, etc., but the game certainly does stand on its own.  There were a few oddities in the rules that don’t make much sense – money from proxy battles goes to the bank, not the player you steal the corporation from.  Shouldn’t the money go to the player?  Also, as you run low in cards you get penalized even further, because if you can’t afford to buy anything you must discard a card.  I realize this is a mechanic intended to force players to keep cards in their hands, but it seems a bit harsh.  The game went on a bit longer than we would have liked, but it was enjoyable and might be worth trying again with some rules tweaks.

Justin, Josh, Rita, Julie, and I then played the SimplyFun game Plext, an interesting little word game that was challenging and fun.  You shuffle a set of 14 dice and reveal them arranged in a linear sequence.  Players are then challenged to come up with a series of words that use all of the letters in sequence order, inserting as many letters as needed.  For example, if the sequence was “EQRPI” then you might write down “EQuestRian PIe”.  As soon as a player thinks he has a competitive (small) number of words that use up all the letters, he can call out his bid (the number of words), puts down his pencil, then starts the timer.  The other players then have that much time to come up with their own bid, which can be any number of words.  When the timer runs out, whoever had the first lowest bid gets the first shot at solving.  If his solution was correct (valid words, used all the letters), he wins victory points totaling 10 minus the number of words.  Repeat for eight rounds to determine the winner.

While we were playing Plext, KC and Ken played a game of Jambo.  I think KC won.

We gave Barbarossa as a gift to the Rudes, so Julie, Jenna, Chelsea, and Brandon decided to give it a try.  Brandon says he enjoyed it very much, possibly influenced by the fact that he won.

KC was eager to pull out McMulti, one of those hard-to-find holy grail games that often goes for $200+ on eBay.  The game took us close to 3 hours to play and while it was enjoyable, it is a bit too much of a luckfest for my tastes, especially for a game that long.

There are some creative mechanics in the game, especially for a game from 1974.  My favorite is the cross-referenced die rolls that give production to the players on the right and left of the active player.  The economic system is pretty cool as well, though we played with a variant that throttles the economic cycle a bit.  KC, Ken, and I were all pretty close to each other, all surpassing the $1MM mark by the end of the game.  KC ended up the victor with Ken a close second.

Our last game of the night was partnership Tichu, Ken/Chris vs. KC/Rita.  This was my first time through a whole game of this, so it was nice to get the rules and basic strategy ingrained.  I’m ready to try again, especially to get a chance to avenge our loss to KC and Rita.  It was a close match with both teams close to 600, but they shut us down two hands in a row pulling out the victory.