Games I Want to Play - David Plank

Ok, my list of woe and lost opportunities mostly encompasses the misty and lore-wreathed lands of role-playing games.

I have to say that, generally speaking, my gaming group are an easy-going lot who will play most games I fling at them. The only problem is that the time and effort that needs to be put into role-playing games often mean that these paragons of creative gaming are left by the wayside.

Let me regale you, dear reader, with the list of games that, given the time and resources (i.e. a bunch of players as passionate about the genres below as I am), I would love to play ad infinitum…

There are two main problems with running role-playing games that I have encountered during the time that I have been working. The first is time; there is never enough of it. Orpheus, for example, is a game that takes up loads of time, to prepare a session, engage the characters, and keep the background and support fresh and interesting. And if you only play once a month at best, your players tend to forget all the little nuances and details that are so important to a game like this, and you find yourself back at square one each time you play. The game deals with a company that hires out ghosts and projecting humans on various missions to, for example, exorcise a house, or frighten a rival, or ensure that a particular ghost is sent to his or her Final Reward. The problem with Orpheus is that there is a storyline to it, and events that happen during the storyline to significantly alter the setting in very unsubtle ways. However, if your players are in the dark about the little stuff – such as the enigmatic Radio Free Death who pops up every now and then to give some advice, and completely fail to grab the little plot bait you dangle in front of them, because they have completely forgotten all about it since the last session – then they may very well miss out on very important things that will help them a great deal in the future. I love the game, and the whole idea of a story with a beginning, middle and end, but fear that without regular play – at least once a fortnight – it is an impossible dream.

Earthdawn is another game that I would love to play, but has been soured by past experiences. Mainly people leaving our gaming group halfway through an adventure, making the continuity troublesome at best, and totally unrealistic at worst. Earthdawn also has a very rich and involving setting, making it very easy to bring it to life for your players, but a complete bitch to read up on every time we get around to actually playing it. I have stopped recommending this one to my players, as the work involved in getting the game up and running for the possibility of getting through an entire scenario is too much for me to take on.

SLA Industries typifies another problem with my role-playing preferences; my players don’t like the setting. Or at least not as much as me. SLA industries is about as dark as setting get, and I like dark… The company (SLA Industries, in case you hadn’t guessed) owns pretty much everything, and the players are all SLA Operatives; trouble-shooters sent on various missions from sewer patrol to the vaunted Black Ops – suicide missions with a big payoff. There is precious little hope or levity in the setting, with depressing backdrops, difficult moral decisions, very evil overlords, and hardly any chance for survival for our heroic characters. There is not even an Earth, as such, in the setting, with humans being a minority, and other races taking the fore. I love it, and wish we could play. But alas, every time I suggest it, it gets glanced at with slight interest, and pushed aside in favour of other games…

Another one that really bugs me is that my players (half of them at least) don’t like super-hero games. And I want to play Aberrant – White Wolf’s foray into the genre. It is another dark and gritty game that really describes what the world might be like if super-heroes really existed (more X-Men than DC). And even the pedigree of White Wolf on the cover has not swayed my group. Ah well, maybe I’ll wear them down one day…

I have a penchant for diceless ‘narrative’ games, and have had many years of pleasure from the Amber role-playing game. Recently I have acquired the Nobilis game, similar in many respects to Amber, with the players taking the reins of hyper-powerful beings and altering the very fabric of reality with the merest gesture. The main problem with this one is the amount of sheer effort required to run it. The time that is needed to maintain the storylines, and commitment from referee (not-at-all pretentiously called the ‘Hollyhock God’ in Nobilis) and players probably means that this one will need to wait until I am independently wealthy and no longer need to work before I will have enough free time to prepare for each session.

Now my role-playing gripes are over, some more mundane games…

Tabletop skirmish games have been a pleasure of mine for years now, and I have enjoyed small-scale fights using the Necromunda rules from Games Workshop. I am also interested by the Gangs of Mega-City One game – almost identical in every respect other than setting. But finding other players willing to invest in a miniatures game is always a problem, and one that I find insurmountable. And I am not spending my Saturday afternoons hanging around Games Workshop to play games! I have a modicum of dignity left!

The only other hardly-played game in my collection is A Game of Thrones. It is a brilliant game, and is always a blast to play, but the problem is that it is, really, a five-player game. You can play it with other numbers, but five is the optimum (barring the expansion pack, which is apparently very good but I have never seen). And it takes a whole evening to play. So having a ‘guest’ player at our table and heaping this complex strategy and diplomacy game on them (with no room for a light ‘filler’ or other relaxing diversion) seems somewhat unfair, to say the least.

As for CCGs, my own lost baby is the Middle Earth CCG – the pre-movie one way before LOTR and Peter Jackson became synonymous. I have lots of cards from all the expansions and scenarios that you can find. But no-one to play it against *sniff*.

Runebound Card Expansions Review

There seem to be two main schools of thought when it comes to expansions for boardgames. The 'fanbase camp' appear to applaude the production of any type of new material for their favourite game and gladly shower the manufacturer with their hard earned cash. Opposed to this are those in the 'cynical camp', who see expansions merely as a way to extend the life of a game, the manufacturer milking it for all it is worth and making lots more money without really having to think about it.

In truth, reality probably lies somewhere between the two. Take, for example, the Zombies!!! series. The base game is fairly average but a good laugh with the right crowd. The expansions add new boards and cards, often without adding anything remotely worth their cost. War of the Ring, on the other hand, has an expansion which adds a great deal of variety to the base game and offers two whole new scenarios, both of a smaller scale, with their own rulebook - essentially a new game in their own right. A lot does depend on an individual's opinion of a game: You won't be able to sell the Memoir '44 packs to someone with only a passing interest in gaming the 2nd World War. Neither will you be able to convince the anti-CCG lobby that Magic's quarterly release of a few hundered more cards is anything other than Wizards making full use of what could be described as a licence to print money ('Oh no!' cry the fans, 'It keeps the game fresh and exciting and people wouldn't buy if they didn't want to!).

Debating the moral or technical issues behind game expansions could lead to many a sleepless night, but it is worth bearing in mind when looking at expansions, as factors such as cost deserve increasing consideration. Those of us who don't think twice about spending £35 on a new game should perhaps take a little more time to think whether £15 - £25 for an expansion really adds that much more to the experence.

Which brings me to the crux of the article. Fantasy Flight have published a series of card based expansions for their popular Runebound game. Currently there are six available, two challenge expansions, two item/ally expansions and two adventure expansions. Each consists of a set of 30 cards and a rule sheet (the same sheet covers all of the new sets).

The Challenge Card Expansions are the most straightforward, with the new cards for each of the encounter decks just being shuffled in to the appropriate stack before play (or drawn from seperately if you like). Likewise, the Item and Ally expansions are also just shuffled into the market deck. What makes these four decks appealing is that obvious thought has gone into giving them a theme. The two challenge expansions are themed around wilderness/forest encounters and undead/horror challenges and the new encounters add interesting new ideas, such as an undead hero rising up and stalking players across the board, marked by an unused hero figure. Some themes even cross the two sets. One has a new red encounter called the 'Living Rune', while the other has one called the 'Unliving Rune'. Similarly you will find yourself facing the animated 'Skeleton of Margath' and the 'Heart of Margath'. No prizes for guessing which come from the undead deck and which from the forest deck.

Also themed are the item/ally expansions. 'Artifacts and Allies' introduces familiars which grant their masters new abilities while the 'Relics of Legend' set offers powerful artifacts linked to each of the cities of Terrinoth, including banners which each aid movement through certain terrain. The 'Relics' set also has allies themed from the cities. Now you can ride into battle on the Griffon of Dawnsmoor or be accompanied by the Wolves of Geyhaven. It is these ideas which give each set a spark of interest beyond what a randomly thrown together expansion could.

Finally, there are two Adventure Variants. These change the game in the most significant manner, taking the focus away from Margath. 'Crown of the Eldar Kings' casts the heroes in the roles of villains competing with Margath for control of the land. The heroes seek to complete a 'set' of vassels, three of either Knaves, Knights, Ladies or Dukes, which are challenges replacing the blue deck from the base game. Once a player had a set, they become the Elder King and the other heroes have a final attempt to dethrone him/her or die in the attempt. The last surviving player wins.

'The Scepter of Kyros' removes Margath from the game entirely and is set 10 years after his defeat, when a new threat arrives to Terrinoth: the Giant Lords. The twist here is that after a certain number of Giant Lords have been defeated, more arrive from the north, occupying the towns on the board. Players have to liberate the towns one by one during the Endgame, a challenge made all the harder by the fact that the giants are able to use items in the town market stacks as if they were heroes and also receive experience tokens depending on how many items are in each stack. Formidable opponents indeed.

These descriptions being me full circle back to the discussion of the value of expansions. In this case, they certainly do not appear to be a blatant attempt to cash in on a game's success. Each is resonably priced and entirely optional, yet at the same time, for what you pay, the added variation is quite a bargain, especially with the Adventure Variants.

Presentation: The cards have good art by a variety of artists and are presented in attractive tuck boxes. The only slight niggle is the somewhat bewildering inclusion of a 2mm thick sheet of card, when a slightly thinner box would have been fine. 7.0/10

Clarity of Rules: Only the Adventure Variants really require any kind of rule addition, but these are explained clearly, with examples of play. 8.5/10

Game Length: Not very applicable as the market/encounter decks don't really increase the play length and the main impact of the Adventure Variants is in the end game . n/a /10

Value: Essentially just cards in a box, but the reasonable cost and evidence of the thought which has gone into their creation means they are good value for fans of the game. 9.3/10

Overall: If you love Runebound you will certainly want to pick up these new cards. Even if you are not the biggest fan it is worth the small expense to bring some freshness to the game 8.5/10 (not an average)

Fury of Dracula Review

Vampires are an incredibly potent and enduring example of a monster: often painted as charismatic and seductive individuals, they’re alluring as well as dangerous. Through modern media they have survived and evolved way beyond the most famous literary example – which is of course Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A little known fact of Stoker’s lore is that vampires are not immediately killed upon contact with sunlight; rather, they are merely weakened by being out and about during the day. It’s a detail that is not forgotten in Fury of Dracula (itself set up as a sequel to Stoker’s seminal tale), in which Dracula can move freely around Europe as much as he likes during the day, but is found to be much more powerful at night.

Fury of Dracula is another update of a long out of print game from Fantasy Flight, this having previously been released by Games Workshop back in 1987. The new edition is gorgeously illustrated with superb painted artwork, which is to be expected from Fantasy Flight. Having never played or seen the original game, I can’t comment on the update too much, although I am reliably informed that the artwork has been nicely overhauled (and the cover art is certainly a lot more appealing than the cheesy - in my opinion – art on the original).

In Fury of Dracula, one player takes on the role of Dracula, and up to other four players must take control of the hunters who have vowed to take care of the Lord of the Vampires once and for all. Dracula uses a location deck to play cards face down into his 'trail', moving secretly around Europe as the Hunters do everything they can to track him down and kill him. Visiting larger cities reaps rewards for the Hunters, as they can draw more items to use in the coming battle against Dracula, but can also lead to drawing events for Dracula to use against them. If they manage to track Dracula down and end up in the same space as him, they get to fight: combat is handled in an interesting, card-led manner with participants choosing a weapon, attack or method of escape secretly, then revealing them and rolling a die to determine the winner. The result depends on which card combination was used, and it’s all dealt with in a thematic, logical way. To win, the Hunters must simply find and kill Dracula – but Dracula wins if he survives long enough to skulk around Europe and create six vampires along the way.

The game is full of tense moments for Hunter and Dracula alike, with the vampire desperately trying to keep himself hidden from the four Hunters (all four are always in play no matter how many players are involved), and the Hunters trying their best to work quickly and track down the devious vampire. Dracula does have it quite tough though - once he’s found, it’s easy for the Hunters to wear him down and kill him within a few turns.

It’s a lot of fun for the most part for both Dracula and Hunters, but it can drag on and become frustrating for the Hunters if Dracula is being particularly lucky or devious and evading them all the time. Likewise, if Dracula is found the game can be over very quickly, especially if he is found during the day (when his combat options are incredibly limited) and is unlucky in his combat rolls. Which leads me to another problem with the game: the card combat is great, but the rolling-to-win is deeply unsatisfying, and doesn't really fit into the rest of the well-designed gameplay.

Fury of Dracula is also very clunky for two players to play, as one player has to keep track of all four Hunters – admittedly, there’s not too much to keep track of, but it still slows things down a lot. The game moves a lot faster and smoother when there is a player available for each Hunter, strangely – with two players the game really seems to slow to a crawl during the Hunter player’s turn.

Aside than those problems though, Fury of Dracula is a successful and enjoyable game of deduction and evasion, and as is usual with Fantasy Flight games the theme is deeply intertwined with the mechanics. This creates an experience that adds up to far more than the sum of its parts, especially for fans of Dracula or vampire mythology in general.

Summary

Presentation: The usual hard to fault Fantasy Flight design is all present and correct, with gorgeously moody illustrations and well-made cardboard components. 9.6/10

Clarity of Rules: The rules are well written but it is sometimes hard to track down a clarification on a difficult to remember rule – although the obligatory FAQ is already available from Fantasy Flight’s website. 7.3/10

Game Length: Games can drag on for hours, but they can equally be over very quickly. With four to five players, the game length seems just about right – as long as Dracula is being devious enough! 7.8/10

Value: Games don’t seem to vary too much as the tactics don’t really differ from game to game. Tip: keep it fresh by rotating your Dracula player for every single game you play. 7.6/10

Overall: Those looking for an original game of Gothic detective work and bloodsucking Counts will be well served by Fury of Dracula, as long as game length is not a problem. Its unique hide-and-seek mechanics easily raise it above average as a game but the time it sometimes takes to play (and the fact that it is best with no less than 5 players) definitely works against it. 8.3/10 (not an average)