Tim Shippert put together a nice geeklist describing how he won the Kniziathon at the recent GameStorm convention.

I just learned today that a friend and fellow gamer, Jason Sato, passed away this afternoon after suffering a stroke while gaming last night at the Game Depot inTempe, AZ.  Jason was not a close friend of mine, but I did experience several spectacular gaming sessions with him during visits do Arizona.  I always found him to be warm, welcoming, and highly intelligent.  My condolences to his close friends and family.

After too little sleep, Jacob and I swung over to the "other side" to play a roleplaying game starting at 9am on Saturday.  The game: Spirit of the Century, the adventure: Aces Harrington vs. the Snow Monster. Paul Tevis has talked up this RPG and it has been on my maybe-buy list for a while, and I was frankly surprised to see it show up on the GameStorm agenda.  I had a lot of fun, Jacob less so - I think it speaks to the audience for the game and its reliance upon player creativity and maturity.

Spirit of the Century uses the fudge system for resolution, a system I was familiar with but had never played.  Fudge uses six-sided dice with two minuses, two blanks, and two plusses.  You roll four dice, sum the dice, then add to the base ability (generally zero to seven).  The game setting is pulp in the 20s/30s (think Indiana Jones), and I played an Inuit Hero from Canada. The six adventurers were snowed in at a lodge in Canada and squared off against New York mobsters and a German mad scientist working on mind control for grizzly bears.

Back to my comment on player creativity and maturity: this system relies on collaborative story telling where players can alter or contribute to the story line by bringing forward aspects of their character using fate points.  Two of the aspects for my character included "respect for authority" and "lover of nature".  At various plot or action points in the narrative, it behooves the players to invoke these aspects to try and alter the tide of events.  The challenge is (in a well-run game, in my opinion) that the player needs to creatively introduce this aspect as part of the narrative.  For example, I wouldn't say "I'm a lover of nature so I'll use a fate point to reroll my attempt to release the bears".  Instead, I might say "I'm furious that the scientist has violated the order of nature with these dastardly mine control devices!  I must scare this bear away so that he flees the scene, so I rely on my hard-earned knowledge of grizzly bear intimidation forms to frighten him."  Jacob had a hard time getting into the rhthym of this game - his experience (and preference, I think) is the D&D style of tactical problem solving and combat.  These are both different forms of roleplaying - Jacob does get into his character when playing D&D.  It's just that the emphasis on narrative in Spirit made it difficult for him to enjoy the game.  That's OK - he'll likely get there at some point.  I know I had a blast.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing Knizia games and running the Kniziathon.  Like I said, more on that in another post.

Saturday night was a marathon, semi-engaged game of Arkham Horror.  There were two big sessions going on, and I'm glad (for a number of reasons, mostly the company) that I ended up with Doug's group.

Still, this was a huge group (8 players) with plenty of down-time.  OK given that I had some other errands to run while playing, but it definitely pushed the game later into the evening and under normal circumstances I would prefer 4-5 players.

The game is fun, and reminds me of a mix between the board-RPG games from Fantasy Flight (like Doom and Descent) and Betrayal at House on the Hill.  I think it was too late and we were all too green to collaborate like we should have, and I suspect that's where the game really shines.  I know most of the time I was just doing my own thing, and doing it rather poorly at that.  The base mechanics are easy to understand, though I suspect the learning curve would be steep if you learned the game from the box.  The game wasn't great enough for me to consider running out and purchasing it, but I definitely want to try another game with fewer players.  Would be nice to swing a trade for this for my copy of Doom.

(You can see all of my GameStorm photos on my Flickr photoset.)

I'm coming back to this blogging thing with a flurry.  I expect to make no fewer than 5 posts over the next week, so strap on your seatbelts, I'm back!

I spent a lot of time preparing for this GameStorm - I ran the Kniziathon and co-ran the two player tournament.  I'll talk more about the Kniziathon in a separate post and stick to the other stuff that happened on day 1 of the convention.  I consider day 1 to be Friday (making Thursday day 0 of course, because there were a few events that happened Thursday night).

The GameStorm staff selected the Sheraton PDX Airport hotel for the convention this year, by far the best venue they've had and I made it clear to the organizers (Aaron, Aaron, and Beverly) that a return to the same hotel next year would be most appreciated, even at a price premium.  Jacob and I shared a two-queen room with Ken and Brandon for $100/night, and this is one of the recently upgraded Sheratons with improved beds and showers.  Plenty of space and comfortable accomodations combined with nice gaming digs made me a happy gamer.

Jacob and I arrived about 8:15am on Friday to set up the Kniziathon HQ booth.  Most of the daytime hours were spent playing various pickup Knizia games, plus a scheduled session of Amun Re that I ran for 8 people from noon to 2pm.  Even with a new player we played the game in about 90 minutes.  This game is definitely in my top 2 or 3 games list and packs a lot of punch for its short playing time.  I also played Ra, Through the Desert, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, and Pickomino during the day.

After a quick trip to Subway for dinner with a small group, KC and I kicked off the annual Friday night 2-player tournament.  Last year we had a dismal turnout - only about 6 people participating.  This year we made it part of the Kniziathon and made it an all-Knizia affair and ended up having 20 gamers participate.  We ran the tournament for three rounds, Swiss-style, in three hours.  The first round we played Lost Cities, then did a player's choice for subsequent rounds with the "white" (vs. black in chess terms) player choosing the game.  We saw Battle Line, Carcassonne: the Castle, Through the Desert, Ingenious, and Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation played multiple times.  After three rounds Chris Ballowe and Jeff Ganong were tied with three points each.  They agreed to a fourth playoff round, with Chris coming out on top after a game of Battle Line.

Starting around 10pm, I spent the next 3-4 hours tabulating interim results for the Kniziathon.  More on that later.

This is a review of the party game GiftTRAP.  I received a complimentary review copy and am way past due in posting my review. Julie, Jacob, Matthew, and I sat down to play this and had quite a good time.

The components for the game are first-rate - right up there with the best party games I've seen lately (Liebrary, Wits and Wagers for example).  The game comes in a gift box with a nicely designed packing approach on the inside where the board provides some structure for storage.  The player bits come in individual mesh gift baggies.  The cards are solid, full color, and the text is high contrast and easy to read.  This is a nice package and you won't be disappointed with the physical design.

GiftTRAP is a game about knowing your fellow gamers and their preferences, a common mechanic also seen in games like Apples to Apples and Attribute.  Each round consists of a number of possible gifts being put on display equal to the number of players plus one.  The players in turn places markers on the gifts that indicate what the player would like vs. not like, with a few shades of gray in between.  They also indicate what gift they think each other player would most want to receive.  Players score points on a giving track and a receiving track based on how well they give to others and how well others give to them.

The scoring and tracking mechanics are my only complaint.  It was confusing to everyone how to track points on both scales given the reflexive nature of give/receive.  I'm sure we'd become pros at it after a while, but I can't help but think it would be an obstacle to casual gamers.  This is similar to my complaint about Wits & Wagers: the game itself is a blast, but the scoring and winner determination almost seem to be an afterthought.  Still, it is a party game and the journey is more important than the final destination.

The game is light and fun and leads to interesting conversations, even in our intimate family setting.  I think it would work well as an icebreaker as long as folks aren't too wrapped up in winning.  The game is at its best when you've got one gift that is perfect for multiple individuals, and others that aren't good for anyone.  How do you decide?  How will you explain it after the results are revealed?  The banter and laughter that result from these dilemmas are what the game is all about.

My friend and co-worker Milind Pandit recently published a webinar on a great product management topic.  Enjoy.

Julie just wrote this tid-bit to me about our games class.  I'm out of town on business all week so she's handling both classes, and we struggled a bit deciding what to do.  We are nearing the end of the class and I hope to try Bohnanza but am still a bit concerned about complexity.  We decided to pull out Werewolf and it was a smash hit:

Yup…Werewolf got 4’s across the board. And that’s after I tried to clean it up and give it an “E for Everyone” rating. I gave some background about how in the old days, people didn’t know as much about their world and when strange things happened, they often resorted to superstition. In the updated story, we said someone ‘disappeared’ in the night. Villagers woke up and had to blame someone since people don’t just disappear. They chose someone to lock in jail (not lynch). Once the round was over, I always went back to the werewolves (who weren’t really werewolves) and asked them why they were taking people. The explanations were cute – I was hungry and needed someone to cook for me, I was bored and we were playing games, etc. I think it was important to make the change. Even while playing this version, a couple in my group said it was scary since they had to close their eyes and they didn’t know if they’d be ‘taken away’. The more they played it, the better they were. I don’t think they fully understood my role as moderator at first (no one physically is taken anywhere, etc.). Both groups had a ball and didn’t even notice when it was 7:45 and time to leave. Awesome.

Chairman Mike did a fabulous job writing up our recent gaming weekend out on the coast, but I still wanted to share some of the impressions of the games I played.  There were no stinkers in the entire batch and I had an amazingly fun time.

Command & Colors: Ancients

Mike and I managed to play 3 two-player games before anyone else arrived, and this was our first.  I continue to rate this game very highly in terms of playability and speed - I haven't had a game run over an hour since my first play.  I continue to have a hard time winning this game, and this one proved no exception.

Drive

One of my favorite 2-player card games.  Mike plays faster than anyone I've played so far (in terms of laying down sets), so I was forced to adjust a bit and managed two have a huge scoring second round.  This put me well out of reach in the third and I won easily.  I think this was one of only 3 wins for me all weekend, but who's counting?

Combat Commander: Europe

We played a fairly bizarre scenario (#7?) with a randomized setup for the Russian player followed by a clustered setup by the German.  This allowed me to position myself to cut off one of Mike's leaders and it was downhill most of the game for him from there.  It didn't hurt that I was able to bring in a crack paratroop squad to steal a couple of control points on the other side of the board.  This is still my favorite game of the year and I'll be anxiously awaiting the first expansion soon I expect.

Mermaid Rain

Doug and Mimi taught this to me and I quite liked it.  It had an Elfenland / King of the Elves feel to me with a few nice twists (such as card play similar to Havoc). 

Bohnanza

Julie and I are expecting to try this at the end of the game class we are teaching (it concludes just before spring break at the end of March) so I wanted to try this again.  What a blast - I did poorly, but this is a great game that I need to play more often.  I'm very concerned about teaching 3-5 graders the game and playing it within 50 minutes.  I wonder if there are any simplified rules out there?

Mykerinos

This game has been on my hope-to-try list for quite some time and I enjoyed it.  Felt very much like a lighter version of Ys and I can see some real depth to the game.  I'm fairly certain Matt won this one.

Canal Mania (x2)

The hit of the weekend for me, coming out twice with 5 players.  The game is taking about 2 hours to play, which is a bit long.  There's also enough downtime in the game to do 3 loads of laundry during two hours (trust me, I know...) so I think I'll prefer it with 3 players in the long run.  I think with three experienced players we can get the time down to 1 hour.  I did OK in both games, finishing about in the middle but very much in the running during the second game.  I'm glad that the second edition is going to balance the benefits of construction and running goods, as I think there's way too much opportunity to get imbalanced scoring on goods as it is (especially if players aren't paying attention when putting goods out).

18TN

This was by far the longest game I played over the weekend, and while it was fun I didn't have the same great feeling as I did after 18FL and 1850 (maybe because I finished dead last?). I think Mimi was somewhat reluctant to play, but she played fabulously and beat us all.  I was too tied into my major line and didn't get enough participation in some other quality rails.

Power Grid - Easter Europe

Power Grid is a game I still love but I'm just not very good at.  The Eastern Europe map is quite different than most - very cheap raw goods but expensive connections.

Liberte

Man, what a great game with miserable components.  I'd love to do a rework of the graphical elements on this game and make it playable.  I think I'm going to take a sharpie to the board and cards to make the regions distinguishable.  Ken Crangle informed me later that we played wrong in a big way - one of the cards (Terror?) requires that the red faction be in charge in order to play, and we missed this.  Boy, did we have a pile of generals' heads built up in the game box!  Our last 2 battles went without a winner as a result, so this was a pretty broken game.  Still fun though.

Agon

Saturday night I ran a quick session of Agon, an indie RPG set in Greek mythology.  I stumbled a bit with the system and made a few mistakes (this was my first play), but I think everyone had a good time.  Wes is a very experience role-player and did a great job as a player, adding good color text and helping prop me up when I struggled.

Die Säulen der Erde

Sunday after lunch Ken, Mike and I played this Essen release.  I only played 1 turn of the game at Essen, standing in for Jim Ginn as he had to run off in the middle of game.  So, I had a basic idea of the mechanics but no sense of strategy.  Mike maintained a solid lead throughout the game, but I think I had a decent understanding of the economic system at play and made mostly good moves.  Ken adopted a strategy of converting gold into victory points, and I'm not sure that's a winnable approach (though I'm glad he tried - it was interesting seeing the economics).  I think I'll want to buy this one when Mayfair ships the English version in a month or two.

I'm hosting a great crowd of friends out at our beach house at Salishan this weekend.  We are all quite chilly hear at the house waiting for the gas to be turned back on after the disaster yesterday.  Hopefully we'll be able to cook tonight.

Meanwhile...

• Mike is blogging the weekend.
• I'll post photos periodically to this Flickr set.