Board Games (Reviews, Rules, Regulations, Random)

[bucsfan333]

2 hours ago, The Gnat said:

Rule #1 when playing D&D, everyone at the table should be having fun.

Rule #2: If you've planned it, the players will do the opposite.

I'd recommend not giving away any of the map at the start, even the areas of the map that the players know. This allows you to keep the map as a reference, but change it up as you need based on what the players do. When the players ask "What do we know about this area?" at that point in time is when you just tell them what they know. Also, if you give the players each a piece of they map, they are going to piece it together quickly and by quickly, I mean literally. 
 

My guess is that you have plenty planned for the game to be able to start it now. Mini's are optional, so try some combats with and some without (assuming you're not playing 4th Edition) and figure out what works best for your group. You might find that they don't want minis. In the games I run, we never use minis with the exception of big arc ending battles. The easy way around using minis with ranges and things like that is place things in "ranges". If you're next to a guy you're "next to", within 30 feet of a guy you're "close", 90 feet is "Medium", 120 is "Long", and anything more is "far away". 

Finally, what I should have asked before all of that, how much have you run/played D&D before? If you've played and run a lot before, take what I just wrote with a grain of salt as you know what is best for you. If you haven't, I highly recommend stopping planning and starting playing/running your game and see what works well for your group before you get too into the weeds while planning. And if you feel like you absolutely need to do more planning, plan small. Just focus in on the area that you are starting the game in and fleshing out that area, the rest of the world can wait.

We've been playing for a few months now. I'm just trying to have something ready to go whenever our current DM thinks we're done. He said something about wanting to be able to play instead of plan/host. I haven't hosted D&D yet. But I've been paying attention to our current DM. He seems pretty good. I've also been reading (and rereading) the player handbook, DM's handbook, and the Monster Manual. I've also read a few things online, as well as watched a few videos on YouTube. I think I can do it. It really doesn't seem much different from hosting mafia; create everything (with some boundaries) and watch everything unfold.

We like our minis. My buddy's got a pretty good collection. I'm just trying to get monsters, really. And I needed a hobby anyway.

I just want to have a few stories kinda ready so I'm not caught too off guard when they decide to do something. I'm not making anything too linear. Like I said, I wanna create everything and watch the chaos unfold. But I wanna have a general idea of what would might happen under most circumstances. I won't be able to prepare for everything, but I figure I should get to a level where I can handle most of what's thrown at me in my own world.

And I'm not gonna hand out physical pieces of the map. Just general descriptions of some of the areas. I wanna try to bring them into the game a little bit. They can do whatever they want with the info. But I'll have a general map available with spots missing and false stuff based on rumors. I'll pass out info in a similar way.

The biggest thing I wanna do is come up with some puzzles. But I'll have to wait and see intelligence levels and what kind of characters we'll have. I don't want everything to be just fights.

[pwny]

11 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

We've been playing for a few months now. I'm just trying to have something ready to go whenever our current DM thinks we're done. He said something about wanting to be able to play instead of plan/host. I haven't hosted D&D yet. But I've been paying attention to our current DM. He seems pretty good. I've also been reading (and rereading) the player handbook, DM's handbook, and the Monster Manual. I've also read a few things online, as well as watched a few videos on YouTube. I think I can do it. It really doesn't seem much different from hosting mafia; create everything (with some boundaries) and watch everything unfold.

We like our minis. My buddy's got a pretty good collection. I'm just trying to get monsters, really. And I needed a hobby anyway.

I just want to have a few stories kinda ready so I'm not caught too off guard when they decide to do something. I'm not making anything too linear. Like I said, I wanna create everything and watch the chaos unfold. But I wanna have a general idea of what would might happen under most circumstances. I won't be able to prepare for everything, but I figure I should get to a level where I can handle most of what's thrown at me in my own world.

And I'm not gonna hand out physical pieces of the map. Just general descriptions of some of the areas. I wanna try to bring them into the game a little bit. They can do whatever they want with the info. But I'll have a general map available with spots missing and false stuff based on rumors. I'll pass out info in a similar way.

The biggest thing I wanna do is come up with some puzzles. But I'll have to wait and see intelligence levels and what kind of characters we'll have. I don't want everything to be just fights.

Are you playing 5E?

[The Gnat]

14 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

We've been playing for a few months now. I'm just trying to have something ready to go whenever our current DM thinks we're done. He said something about wanting to be able to play instead of plan/host. I haven't hosted D&D yet. But I've been paying attention to our current DM. He seems pretty good. I've also been reading (and rereading) the player handbook, DM's handbook, and the Monster Manual. I've also read a few things online, as well as watched a few videos on YouTube. I think I can do it. It really doesn't seem much different from hosting mafia; create everything (with some boundaries) and watch everything unfold.

We like our minis. My buddy's got a pretty good collection. I'm just trying to get monsters, really. And I needed a hobby anyway.

I just want to have a few stories kinda ready so I'm not caught too off guard when they decide to do something. I'm not making anything too linear. Like I said, I wanna create everything and watch the chaos unfold. But I wanna have a general idea of what would might happen under most circumstances. I won't be able to prepare for everything, but I figure I should get to a level where I can handle most of what's thrown at me in my own world.

And I'm not gonna hand out physical pieces of the map. Just general descriptions of some of the areas. I wanna try to bring them into the game a little bit. They can do whatever they want with the info. But I'll have a general map available with spots missing and false stuff based on rumors. I'll pass out info in a similar way.

The biggest thing I wanna do is come up with some puzzles. But I'll have to wait and see intelligence levels and what kind of characters we'll have. I don't want everything to be just fights.

Cool, so you have played and have some of a handle on it.

I would suggest when creating and doing backstory for things, focus in on very specific things, not larger bigger things. So mapping out a whole dungeon is going to be more useful than spending time putting a ton of effort into a town.

And if you're in a town and up for some improv get the players to help you build things. When, in my games, they want to go talk to an NPC, it's generally them coming up with the NPC's name and physical description and maybe even a touch of the personality. That helps with player buy-in into the game.

A general map available is good thing since that's something that they've probably seen before. I'd make it of the whole continent or whatever, but you can leave "blanks" as in areas that aren't as accurately explored and even with areas that people know, those should still be vague because the technology to map stuff out very well doesn't exist.

Puzzles are tricky to do, one major thing to think of, is this for the players or the characters. If it's a riddle or something like that, that's actually more for the players. So with a puzzle for the players, it's going to be less about figuring out a specific answer and more about completing various rolls in the right order. It's more of a skill challenge, which means that you need some sort of timer or state of failure so that they can't just keep on rolling until they roll high enough. And don't worry too much about the INT for the characters, failure can be fun too. Especially since with wondering about the INT it seems like you should be doing more skill challenge related puzzles than you would be doing brain teaser like puzzles. If you can't tell, I highly highly recommend character "puzzles" over player puzzles. Two main reasons, it keeps character immersion high and because it doesn't potentially cause the game to grind to a halt if they can't figure out the puzzle.

For those who might not know what a skill challenge is, it's a series of rolls that are needed to be succeed on before you get a certain number of failures. The players can use a skill that makes sense to get closer to their goal, if they succeed, they progress forward, if they fail, they progress forward but towards their inevitable failure, and based off of party level you can decide the difficulty check for it all. If you want to make it more focused, like it's a puzzle trap in a dungeon and they need to get an INT History, INT Arcana, DEX Acrobatics, and STR Athletics checks, you can have them do that, but even in that case, I'd have them fail forward. What I mean by that is that once they fail something a little bit of bad is going to happen to them, but they still progress to the next step, if they fail all four, they get all of the bad happening to them. You can even have them do it in that situation as a group, so if you have four players either all of them roll it at once, and if enough pass, the group passes, or they  nominate one person for each step. And I'd do that even without them knowing what all the steps are. So maybe your rogue character has decent history as well, and now, because of how they chose, they are stuck with either the druid or the cleric making that acrobatics check.

[bucsfan333]

1 hour ago, The Gnat said:

Cool, so you have played and have some of a handle on it.

I would suggest when creating and doing backstory for things, focus in on very specific things, not larger bigger things. So mapping out a whole dungeon is going to be more useful than spending time putting a ton of effort into a town.

And if you're in a town and up for some improv get the players to help you build things. When, in my games, they want to go talk to an NPC, it's generally them coming up with the NPC's name and physical description and maybe even a touch of the personality. That helps with player buy-in into the game.

A general map available is good thing since that's something that they've probably seen before. I'd make it of the whole continent or whatever, but you can leave "blanks" as in areas that aren't as accurately explored and even with areas that people know, those should still be vague because the technology to map stuff out very well doesn't exist.

Puzzles are tricky to do, one major thing to think of, is this for the players or the characters. If it's a riddle or something like that, that's actually more for the players. So with a puzzle for the players, it's going to be less about figuring out a specific answer and more about completing various rolls in the right order. It's more of a skill challenge, which means that you need some sort of timer or state of failure so that they can't just keep on rolling until they roll high enough. And don't worry too much about the INT for the characters, failure can be fun too. Especially since with wondering about the INT it seems like you should be doing more skill challenge related puzzles than you would be doing brain teaser like puzzles. If you can't tell, I highly highly recommend character "puzzles" over player puzzles. Two main reasons, it keeps character immersion high and because it doesn't potentially cause the game to grind to a halt if they can't figure out the puzzle.

For those who might not know what a skill challenge is, it's a series of rolls that are needed to be succeed on before you get a certain number of failures. The players can use a skill that makes sense to get closer to their goal, if they succeed, they progress forward, if they fail, they progress forward but towards their inevitable failure, and based off of party level you can decide the difficulty check for it all. If you want to make it more focused, like it's a puzzle trap in a dungeon and they need to get an INT History, INT Arcana, DEX Acrobatics, and STR Athletics checks, you can have them do that, but even in that case, I'd have them fail forward. What I mean by that is that once they fail something a little bit of bad is going to happen to them, but they still progress to the next step, if they fail all four, they get all of the bad happening to them. You can even have them do it in that situation as a group, so if you have four players either all of them roll it at once, and if enough pass, the group passes, or they  nominate one person for each step. And I'd do that even without them knowing what all the steps are. So maybe your rogue character has decent history as well, and now, because of how they chose, they are stuck with either the druid or the cleric making that acrobatics check.

That's the problem I'm having; the 'player v character' thing. The guys I play with are all gamers. And a couple of them seem pretty sharp. I doubt I'd put forth a puzzle they couldn't figure out. But it's a matter of making it more for their characters. And I don't wanna fall into something like you said, where it's just a grind and we're waiting for rerolls or whatever. I like the idea of failing but still (somewhat) progressing. I'll have to look around and see what I can find.

[The Gnat]

6 minutes ago, bucsfan333 said:

That's the problem I'm having; the 'player v character' thing. The guys I play with are all gamers. And a couple of them seem pretty sharp. I doubt I'd put forth a puzzle they couldn't figure out. But it's a matter of making it more for their characters. And I don't wanna fall into something like you said, where it's just a grind and we're waiting for rerolls or whatever. I like the idea of failing but still (somewhat) progressing. I'll have to look around and see what I can find.

The RPG Academy has a lot of good podcasts with stuff about failing foward, etc. This is one of them, not sure if it's the best (it's one of the earlier on ones so they might have revisited that topic later) - http://therpgacademy.com/table-topics-episode-68-dcs-in-dnd/

I would probably not give them any indication if they pass and fail, for example, they roll a history check to find the switch to a door and get 8, they needed a 12, instead of saying, you fail, narrate them remembering reading about this in a book and pushing on the left eye on the door swinging open. So they got through the door even though they  needed a twelve, however, the room at the end of this hallway that they're going to get into is now flooding with poison, so they are going to take damage for each reroll on the Arcana check to magically open the next trapdoor and the person who is rolling arcana has disadvantage because of the poison. Now, if they want to get through faster, they could certainly smash through the lock with a very easy athletics check, however, that, they think, would most likely trigger a trap in the next room.

So you can see how their poor roll still got them want they wanted, through the door with the face carved into it, however, now it set-up a time  limit and problems for them in the next room.

[bucsfan333]

Thanks, @The Gnat. It's much appreciated.

[The Gnat]

Here's an article that has more on failing forward and skill challenges and stuff like that which might help you @bucsfan333 if you're interested in more of that stuff for your planning.

http://nerdologists.com/2018/05/failing-forward-rpg-concepts/

[The Gnat]

Wrapped up running a module of the Dragon Age RPG last night with some people. The module itself is pretty combat heavy, and it feels like that's how the game is oriented. It's an okay system that gives you a ton of options when creating characters, but when it comes to rolling the dice, the systems that they use end up just taking too long. You roll three D6, and whenever you roll doubles you stunt and then have to figure out how you spend stunt points, and mages have different sheets then fighters/rogues, and there are different sheets for combat versus exploring. It just makes the game slow down too much for additional mechanics versus additional story investment.

[The Gnat]

Had board game night this past weekend. Played Sushi Go! Party, Say Bye to the Villains, and Deception: Murder in Hong Kong all which I've played before. Then got to play a few games of Fuse. That's a fun game, lasts 10 minutes and is frantic die rolling as you try and defuse bombs before the time runs out.

[skywindO2]

3 minutes ago, The Gnat said:

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

I love this one. I really like playing the clue giver role(can't remember what it's called right now) and trying to craft the story for a crime with it. 

[The Gnat]

2 minutes ago, skywindO2 said:

I love this one. I really like playing the clue giver role(can't remember what it's called right now) and trying to craft the story for a crime with it. 

The Forensic Scientist down in your lab handing out clues.

Yeah, I haven't played that role in the game yet, but one of the people who did that role at the end told us the story she had going on in her head for the clues.

[The Gnat]

Picked up Apocrypha last Friday. It's a scenario/campaign based game. Similar mechanics from the looks for it to the Pathfinder Card game, however, set in a modern world and looks like it has some horror leaning towards it. It's been one I've been looking at for a while, and I'm interested in playing it solo. I just got the first box of it, if I like it, I'll track down the other boxes.

[The Gnat]

Played my first game of BSG (Battlestar Galactica) last night. That is a fun game, I liked the mechanics for it and the fact that it's a game with a lot of social deduction, but it isn't just pure social deduction like a game like Secret Hitler, Ultimate Werewolf, or Resistance is. I was not a Cylon, but I was President for a little bit, so that was interesting. The Cylons ended up winning, but we had a lot of weird things happen in the game, so apparently I got a good and odd experience.

[titansNvolsR#1]

Been playing Gloomhaven for past couple weeks. I'm going with the scoundrel and happened to draw the "Collect 200g" card. Friends have been pissed since I've been snagging every gold coin on the board and forgoing battling at times. Or play slow and waited til they took out a room then swept in with my loot cards. I want to tell them I'm not doing it to be an a-hole, but I'll let them figure it out once I've retired Scabby the Scoundrel. 

[MacReady]

Where do you guys find people to play these games with?  I've been trying to find enough players to play The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 and I've got exactly two other people who want to play.  Also, has anyone played it yet?