This post is part of the H. P. Lovefest. Important: If you are thinking of playing this game on the PC (as opposed to on X-Box), please see my caveat at the end of the review.

In 2003 I began to hear rumors of a forthcoming video game based on Call of Cthulhu. My interest was piqued but my hopes were not high. I assumed that the game would be a routine first-person shooter, with the thinnest veneer of Lovecraft slapped on so as to justify the license. After all (thought I), how could a video game approximate the experience of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game?

That question soon became moot. In early 2004 I became a father, and my career as a gamer came to an end–at least for a spell.

I was, however, reminded of the game last month, as I continued research for the H. P. Lovefest. And I discovered, to my surprise, that Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was not only released, but released to mostly positive reviews. Even more encouraging to me, though, were some of the negative comments made by gamers on Amazon and Metacritic. They accused the game of being overly linear; they lamented the long and unskippable cut-scenes used to provide voluminous expository information; and they railed against the ridiculously high difficulty level.

A frustratingly lethal game with a focus on narrative and a proclivity toward railroading players? This sounds like a better adaptation of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game than I’d expected!

And so, for the sake of the H. P Lovefest, I downloaded a copy of the game from Steam and played it all the way through. Oh, the things I do for you.

My fears that the game would be heavy on first-person shooting and light on Lovecraft were allayed immediately. Dark Corners opens in 1909 with the protagonist, Private Detective Jack Walters, venturing into the homestead of a strange religion called the Fellowship of the Yith. As Walters explores the house, searching for clues as to the purpose of the cult, he discovers paintings of the Great Old Ones upon the walls, finds the Pnakotic Manuscripts on an altar, and stumbles across some horrible Yithian technology in the basement. And, significantly, he does all this unarmed. Even from the get-go, the focus of the game is on investigation, stealth, and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

The main story, set six years after the prologue, keeps you in the role of Jack Walters, and deprives you of weapons for at least the first quarter of the game. Which is not to say that you lack opposition–far from it. After you travel to Innsmouth (yes, that Innsmouth) you are beset by enemies on all sides, and must survive by skulking in the shadows when possible, running like hell when necessary, and patching up your wounds with first aid kits when you can find a moment’s reprieve. The flight-not-fight tenor of the game is so emphasized that, even after you acquire a gun, you’ll tend to use it as a last resort rather than as a first.

The story of Dark Corners is impressive, on par in detail and faithfulness to Lovecraft with the best of the Call of Cthulhu scenarios. And it even incorporates CoC’s most interesting mechanism, the sanity attribute. When Walters encounters horrors, key aspects of the game change to reflect his mental distress: the video becomes blurry, or wavers in and out of focus; the audio warps and wafts; and the controls become unreliable. Too much terror in too short a time frame and Walters may well go insane–with deadly consequences.

The devotion of the Dark Corners writers to the source material–both Lovecraft’s stories (The Shadow Over Innsmouth foremost among them) and the CoC RPG–is immensely gratifying, and shines in every chapter. I actually played the game through twice: once on the regular level of difficulty, and a second time on the easiest level, so as to enjoy the story without being murdered every forty seconds.

And you will be. Murdered, that is. Often. Even I, a fan of the notoriously fatal role-playing game, found myself exasperated at times by the lethality of the game. There is, for instance, an scene about a third of the way though, in which you must escape from the Innsmouthian locals, that is inexcusably unforgiving. I am also going to side with many of the game’s critics in declaring the save points in the game to be way too few and far between. I understand the philosophical unpinning of this decision on the part of the game designers–preventing players from saving at will makes the game all the more scary–but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t feel like defenestrating my laptop on more than one occasion.

All that said, I enjoyed Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth as much as any game I have played recently, a list that includes the both the Halflife and the Portal series. As a Lovecraft aficionado I am obviously biased, but even so it does not surprise me that the game was included in this compendium of Best Games of All Time.

Dark Corners is as close of a Call of Cthulhu campaign as you’re going to get without five other people and some ten-sided dice, and it’s a loving tribute to the master of dread.

Huge Caveat for PC Gamers: Dark Corners was originally developed for the XBox and, as I understand it, the PC port was performed hastily, in the last days before Headfirst Productions went belly-up. As a result, the PC version has some bugs. Some are small and ignorable; others are large and obnoxious. One however, near the end of the story, literally renders the game unfinishable.

The bug doesn’t occur on all systems, but it occurred on mine and, I suspect, on most modern systems. It takes place on the ship, when you are asked to fire a cannon at Devil’s Reef. The reef is supposed to show blue lights to indicate your targets, but the bug prevents them from appearing, making this mini-game all but impossible to complete.

Here is the solution:

1. Get to the point where you are supposed to shell Devil’s Reef, which takes place in the “A Dangerous Journey” chapter. Look through the viewfinder and, if the blue lights aren’t obvious, exit the game.
2. Download this zip file.
3. Unzip the file and copy the “A Dangerous Voyage 5-28-2011 6.11.26 PM” folder into “C:\Users\[yourusername]\Documents\Bethesda\Call of Cthulhu”
4. Relaunch Dark Corners, choose “Load Game”, and select the “A Dangerous Voyage – 05/28/2011″ save slot.

A bug of this magnitude is clearly unacceptable, and I therefore cannot recommend the PC edition of this game (even though that’s what I played). But reviews of the XBox version make no mention of this glitch; that version is presumably unaffected by this and several other errors.

A couple of announcements for the gamers in the crowd.

Tabletop: Wil Wheaton, best known for his role as “Wil Wheaton” (The Internet, 1992-present), is launching a new web show called “Tabletop”, in which he sits around and plays board games with Felicia Day.

Dude is living the dream. Specifically, he is living my dream. Thaaaaaat doesn’t seem right.

Geekway 2 the West: My buddy Chris is one of the organizers of an upcoming gaming convention, Geekway 2 the West, which runs May 17-20 in St. Louis, Missouri. Take it away, Chris:

Geekway started 8 years ago as 22 people in one man’s basement, and last year we had 350 people for four days of pure boardgame bliss. We’ve always had the tradition of pouring back in every red cent we get into prizes, facilities, etc. Last year, we had some of our local woodcrafters make a crokinole board and raffled it off. It was such a huge success, that we’re doing the same, and donating all proceeds to Child’s Play.

Chris is good people, and someone with whom I routinely consult when looking into new games (either by pestering him in email, or by reading his reviews on Boardgame Geek). Full details on the convention are available on the Geekway 2 the West website, and you can follow @geekway on Twitter.

PAX: A speaking of Wil Wheaton and conventions and Child’s Play, I’ll remind folks about my absurdly long essay about the Penny Arcade Expo. And be aware that PAX East takes place in Boston just a few weeks from now, April 6-8. Seattle’s PAX Prime, meanwhile, is slated for Labor Day weekend, and I will absolutely be attending again.

Lovecraftian Gaming: Even though my article on Lovecraft ran in The Morning News last Thursday, and was originally intended to be the culmination of the the H. P. Lovefest, I will continue to post about the author and his legacy through Walpurgis Night, April 30th. In addition to my post on Arkham Horror, I will also be reviewing the board games Mansions of Madness and Elder Sign, the video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, and the Lovecraftian role-playing game–the other Lovecraftian role-playing game–Trail of Cthulhu. Sweeeet.

This post is part of the H. P. Lovefest.

There are countless board games that simulate D&D and similar “dungeon crawl” RPGs. They accomplish this by providing the components and rules necessary for the hack and slash element of the game: the movement through the labyrinth, encountering of monsters, the throwing of dice to resolve combat. The narrative aspects of the roleplaying game, meanwhile, are surgically removed, or reduced to an “Introductory Paragraph” to be read to the players before the action begins.

But how does one recreate the experience of Call of Cthulhu, a roleplaying game in which story is paramount? Arkham Horror does so by focusing on the aspects of CoC that make it unique: the teamwork (AH is a cooperative game), the escalating sense of doom, the “sanity” attribute, and, above all else, the plot arcs of the characters involved.

Pete the Drifter investigates the Black Cave

The board depicts Arkham, the fictional setting of many of Lovecraft’s stories, in the most functional manner possible, with locations such as “The Witch House” as circles with artwork, streets as colored rectangles, and the routes connecting the two as thick white lines. The background shows tract housing in an attempt to make things look a little more City-ish, but it’s clear that the board was designed to be pragmatic rather than aesthetic. The first time you see it you are likely to wonder how the game hopes to capture the spirit of Lovecraft with such a drab playing surface.

The answer, as in the roleplaying game on which Arkham Horror is based, is via story–a staggering amount of story of story. Flavor text is everywhere and, unlike most games of this sort, demands to be read. For starters, each player begins with a Investigator–Joe Diamond the private eye, Jenny Barnes the dilettante, etc.–and the back of each character card tells “The Story So Far”, describing how this unfortunate soul came to uncover those Things That Man Was Not Meant to Know. For example:

Sister Mary has served the Church faithfully for many years, so when she was sent to Arkham to work with Father Michael, a man whose writings she had admired for many years, she felt that she was truly blessed. Now, after witnessing Father Michael’s strange mood swings and seeing some of the bizarre practices that go on in this town, she’s beginning to feel that she may have been a bit too hasty …

Now, gathering her things and quietly leaving South Church, Sister Mary has decided to investigate this town, and in so doing, reaffirm her faith.

Sister Mary is one of 16 Arkham Horror Investigators

These characters move around the city of Arkham, investigating locations, collecting items, and unearthing clues. There is a separate stack of cards for each neighborhoods on the board, and when an Investigator visits a building–the Library in the Miskatonic neighborhood, say–a card from the corresponding deck is drawn. The text describes an encounter experienced by the character, and usually asks the player to perform a Check by rolling a number of dice and comparing the result to the Investigator’s relevant Skill: Fight, Sneak, Lore, Luck, and so on. Here again the mechanics of the Call of Cthulhu RPG are emulated, albeit in a simplified form.

Meanwhile, gates to Other Worlds open around town and unleash terrible creatures into the streets, while the power of some terrible god grows ever stronger. Players can close these gates, but only after traversing the bizarre dimensions to which they lead, and returning to town before irrevocable madness sets in. If too many gates are open concurrently, or if monsters completely overrun the town, or if any of a number of Apocalypse-triggering conditions are met, the Great Old One shows up for a climatic final battle. And as anyone who has played Call of Cthulhu can tell you, shooting Yog-Sothoth with a .45 rarely ends well.

Yes you can battle–and be devoured by-the Big Guy himself. It’s an honor.

There is more to the game–lots lots lots more–but you get the gist: from humble beginnings the Investigators uncover a terrible threat of mankind, and save the world in the nick of time … or suffer a fate worse than death in their failure. No game I own comes closer to recreating the feel of a RPG than Arkham Horror.

Now the caveats, of which there are many.

First, this is a Byzantine game, with a dizzying amount of stuff of which to keep track. On more than one occasion while playing Arkham Horror I have thought that this, the board game version of Call of Cthulhu, is more complex than the roleplaying game on which it is based.

Second, it takes a loooong time to play: three hours at a minimum, unless you are spectacularly (un)lucky. A corollary to this is that the game’s player rating of “2-8″ is universally acknowledged as BS: playing AH with more than four is ill-advised, unless you’ve set aside a week for the playing.

Third, AH is an very much an “experience” game; anyone who cares more about victory than enjoying the ride will wind up vexed and frustrated at the vagaries of fate. Don’t play with that person, they are a drag.

The Fantasy Flight version of Arkham Horror was released in 2005, but for some perverse reason I didn’t pick it up until last year. Once I did,though, it quickly became a favorite, and remains for me an ideal ways to while away an evening. If you are interested in playing, see if someone you know has the game and would be willing to teach it to you–there is no better way to learn. But even if you have to undertake the Herculean task of decoding the rulebook, your investment will pay you back with interest. For fans of Lovecraft, Arkham Horror is a game for the ages, and the strange aeons therein.

Risk: Legacy (no spoilers): We have now played seven games of Risk: Legacy, and our interest in the game has yet to flag. As I mentioned in my initial review, our first session ended with new rules and cards coming into play, inspiring us to reconvene the following Sunday and continue our campaign. Yet more goodies were unveiled during the second session, but scheduling conflicts prevented us from gathering a third time until yesterday evening.

Last night we played two more games and, in the middle of the second, the most significant change yet was introduced, a literal “gamechanger” that goosed our enthusiasm for one more session at least. I was dubious that we would complete the full 15-game arc, but with the eighth and ninth installments approaching and yet more stuff in the box to discover, my skepticism on this point is waning.

It’s still Risk, for good or ill. But at the very least you you gotta acknowledge the skill with which they seeded the game with hooks to keep the players engrossed.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch: My atrophied pinky fell off as prophesied, but the good folks at OSI stepped in and replaced it with a bionic prosthetic.

I am still getting the hang of it, and have thus far broken the hands of three people while consummating pinky swears. Also I guess I have to fight Bigfoot? That sounds like bullshit but whatever.

Return of the Elder Gods: The H. P. Lovefest resumes tomorrow with a review of Arkham Horror.

Story I heard from Sheila Davis:

Last weekend I attended Ghengis Con in Denver. During a game one of the other participants told me of his experience at a previous convention.

He’d signed up as Gamemaster for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, and drew the morning slot. Only one person showed up at the time of the game, but they decided to play anyway.

Talking to the player, the GM learned that the gentleman was unfamiliar with the game. In fact he’d never roleplayed before, and had no idea what the hobby was about. He and his wife lived in one of the small mountain towns of the Rockies, and every few months they’d drive into Denver to see what was happening. He’d discovered the game convention while his wife was at a doll show and, thinking it sounded fun, decided to drop in.

The GM handed the player a character sheet for a stalwart Ranger, gave him a brief overview of play, and they were off. When the player ran into his first monster, the Gamemaster helpfully pointed out the Ranger’s skill in archery and swordplay.

“So what do you want to do?” the GM asked.

The player studied his character sheet. “It says I can do bird calls,” he noted.

“That’s right,” the GM replied, somewhat puzzled.

“OK. I do a bird call to distract the monster, and then sneak past him.”

The fellow rolled the dice and successfully evaded the monster. In fact, over the course of the game, the player cleverly avoided every monster in the dungeon, with nary an arrow fired or sword unsheathed.

The Disclaimer

I wouldn’t consider anything in this review to be a spoiler, and I’m about as spoilerphobic a guy as you are likely to meet. But spoilers are in the eye of the beholder, so caveat emptor. If you are really worried, skip the section entitled “The Playtest”.

Why does a board game review requires a spoiler warning? Read on.

Beastmen wrasslin’ robots. What’s not to love?

The Hook

Every once in a while an extraordinary idea galvanizes the board game community. Dominion, for instance, introduced (or, rather, refined) the idea of a game centered on deck building, and dozens of games utilizing this mechanism have since been released. Before that it was the idea of “worker placement”, pioneered by the seminal Caylus.

Risk Legacy, the newest version of the classic war game, is built around such an idea, though it would be more accurate to describe the premise as “polarizing” than “galvanizing”. Reaction to the announcement of the game ranged from accolades to derision, and spirited debates abounded months before it was published. But no one, not even that game’s fiercest critics, could deny that the central conceit of the game is extraordinary–and perhaps even brilliant.

Here’s the hook: as you play Risk: Legacy, the game changes. I don’t mean in the conventional sense of gameplay evolving as players become more experienced; I mean the game literally, physically changes. The components include an assortment of stickers, which players use to irrevocably alter play: stickers affixed to the board forever enhance or mar the topography, stickers added to cards permanently revise their value and utility, and so forth.

But wait, as they say: there’s more. The rules frequently ask–demand!–that players take up Sharpies and annotate the board, to name continents, record events, and immortalize victories by scrawling their John Hancock on the “Winner’s List”.

Some events require that cards be removed from the game. This is not uncommon–many games ask you to “take cards out of play” by setting them aside or returning them to the box; only in Risk: Legacy are you told to do so by ripping them into confetti and then tossing them in the trash. The horror.

The upshot of all this is that, after your first game, you are playing on a board unlike any other in existence, with cities positioned according to your whims, locations named by your opponents, and cards customized per the preferences of your game group. And that’s just the beginning. The Risk: Legacy box contains a number of sealed packets and compartments, which are only opened when specific conditions are met (e.g., a single player wins his second game). Opening a cache may introduce to the mix new cards, new stickers, new rules, and even new pieces (maybe! I don’t even know!). The game was designed to be played at least 15 times, preferably with the same group of people.

It’s difficult to overstate how anathema this is to many gamers, for whom even minor wear on the edges of a card is a travesty on par with the Hindenburg. The idea of defacing cards on purpose has some railing about the impending tsunami of “disposable games”, even though Risk: Legacy is, to date, the only game featuring this innovation.

Me? I’m a sucker for a gimmick. I had to have it.

Sealed packets introduce new elements into the game as milestones are reached

The Game

Risk: Legacy is … well, it’s Risk, albeit Risk with a science-fiction theme and a 100-word backstory so ridiculous that it was apparently dashed it off in the moments before the game went to press. As in the original, the map depicts Earth divided into 48 Territories, into which players place Troops. On a turn a player selects a Territory he occupies and commits a number of Troops to attacking an adjacent space owned by an opponent. Dice are rolled and Troops are removed; when the defender’s Territory is vacant the attacker moves in and can continue his conquest. At the end of a turn in which a player took at least one Territory he receives a card, and these cards may later be redeemed to receive bonus Troops.

That’s what’s the same; the biggest difference between Risk: Legacy and its progenitor are the victory conditions. In the classic Risk, a player only wins after systematically eliminating all of his opponents and controlling every Territory on the board, a process that typically takes three or four or seven hours. Here, the goal is simply to obtain four Red Stars. Each player begins play with a Headquarters, and ownership of an HQ is worth one Red Star. Much of the game revolves around the battle for these HQs, as control of four–regardless of to whom they initially belonged–wins the game.

There are, of course, lots of additional tweaks to the original design. But the game is much more Risk than not.

We watch in irritation as J. prepares for war

The Playtest

Four of us gathered Sunday evening to break in my copy of Risk: Legacy; we conscripted our host’s 13-year-old daughter to fill the fifth position.

I am, and always have been, a fan of Risk, even though I dislike the player elimination and find the playing time to be entirely too long. Some of my fellow players are less charitable to the original game. But we all enjoyed this latest incarnation.

We played the game three times in a row, in the space of perhaps two and a half hours. Early games go quick; until a player has won at least one game he begins with a free Red Star in addition to his starting HQ, and therefore needs only two more points to win. (The length of future games increase as, one by one, players require three Red Stars beyond their starting HQ for victory instead of two.)

The “gimmick” of the game–that of altering the components as you play–has real strategic implications. Early in game one, for instance, I applied a “bunker” sticker to Greenland, which gave the Territory a defensive advantage; as a result, Greenland became a good place for a player to hunker down in the second and third game. Another player used stickers to increase the value of the China card, turning the corresponding Territory into a resource coveted by all.

As one of my opponents observed, the brevity of the game lends itself to bolder play; if you take a gamble and fail, you will only suffer the consequences for another 20 minutes or so. In other words, this version of Risk actually encourages its namesake, and the game is more exciting for it.

We opened our first sealed packet at the end of our third game, to reveal new cards and rules. I won’t describe them, but I’ll confess to looking forward to our next match, eager to see how they affect play. The premise of Risk: Legacy–that of a game that evolves as you play it–appears to work exactly as intended.

Because my opponents wanted to start in China, and the rules disallow starting in a Territory with a sticker, I founded the city of Skruyu.

The Verdict

My policy is never to review a game until I have played it at least three times. In one sense I have fulfilled this obligation, having played Risk: Legacy thrice Sunday night. In another very real sense, though, I’ve only played a fifth of the game. With rules, cards, and pieces entering the game over the course of 15 plays, I still haven’t experienced everything it has to offer.

Given my previous statement, that I like Risk except for the player elimination and the long playing time, it stands to reason that I would enjoy a version of Risk that has neither. And I did, quite a bit. I remain unconvinced that my enthusiasm won’t wane before we reach game 15, though. An alternative peril, since the game is designed to be played by the same group week after week, is that I will want to play through to the end, but that one or more of my colleagues will eventually beg off.

Of course the “evolution” element is designed to address this, to goose the replayablity of what is at heart a pretty simple game. Whether it succeeds remains to be seen–we have another play session on the books for next Sunday, and I will report back after.

If I make it through game 15, what will I do with Risk: Legacy then? Maybe just toss it out; by that point the board will be covered with graffiti, the cards will have been defiled and destroyed, and, for all I know, I may be instructed to set fire to the box at some point. You might think that $50 for a game you’ll only play 15 times is a total rip-off, and many are making this very argument. But honestly, 15 plays ain’t bad for a game, especially one that can provide a unique experience. I don’t regret my purchase yet and, based on what I’ve seen so far, do not anticipate doing so.

You can find more information on Risk: Legacy on its Boardgamegeek entry, and even read a PDF of the rules online. Risk: Legacy is available on Amazon, Funagain, and elsewhere.

The Update

Rob Daviau, the designer of Risk: Legacy, responds via Twitter:

@matthewbaldwin Thanks for the review; glad you are liking the game. The backstory took me at least 20 minutes, thank you very much.

January 26, 2012 10:58 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@robdaviaugamer

robdaviaugamer

@matthewbaldwin (Actually, game theming is deliberately vague to allow each group to fill in the history and details as they see fit.)

January 26, 2012 10:59 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@robdaviaugamer

robdaviaugamer

Rob discusses his inspiration for the design in this NPR story.

The Top Ten Eleven

My 2011 Good Gifts Game Guide (G4), in which I provide capsule reviews for my favorite easy-to-learn-and-teach games of the year, appeared in The Morning News last Friday. The listed games follow.

Honorable Mentions
Whittling the list down to 10 (actually 11 games, as Summoner Wars and Jab share an entry) was unusually difficult this year, as I started with 19 worthy of inclusion and amassed half a dozen more as I asked others for recommendation.

Here are some that didn’t make the cut but are worth looking into if they pique your interest.

Elder Sign (1-8 players, 90 minutes, dice): Arkham Horror–the dice game! If you are unfamiliar with Arkham Horror or uninterested in H. P Lovecraft, this is not the game for you. If you are a fan of the mythos, though, Elder Sign allows you to battle eldritch horrors in as short as an hour. I will be reviewing both Arkham Horror and Elder Sign soon as part of the H. P. Lovefest. Why it was left off the main list: Uses the same central mechanism as the more accessable King of Tokyo. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Letters from Whitechapel (2-6 players, 90 minutes, family strategy): One person assumes the role of Jack the Ripper, carrying out his dark business on the streets and in the alleys of London; the remaining players are detectives, trying to track the killer down and bring him to justice. Why it was left off the main list: It is currently out of print and the company that made it has gone belly-up, so there’s no guarentee that it will be available anytime soon. If you want a copy, call your local game store and see if they have any in stock. Otherwise check out the classic game Scotland Yard (which uses the same One Person Plays the Bad Guy, The Others Play the Detectives mechanism), or the two-player Mr. Jack (which has both the Ripper theme and the deduction element). [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Mondo (1-4 players, 20 minutes, puzzle): More multi-player jigsaw puzzle than board game, Mondo has players racing against the clock (and each other) to assemble a map of the world, striving to score points for completed environments and collected animals. Similar in feel to Carcassonne, with the timer injecting an element of urgency. Why it was left off the main list: It’s a fun game, but the dearth of player interaction ill-suits for the G4. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game (1-8 players, 90 minutes, adventure board game): Rated highly on Boardgame Geek and perhaps the board game with the most buzz at the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo, Fortune and Glory is a loving recreation of pulp-era yards, complete with lost treasure, abominable monsters, and boatloads of Nazis. Flying Frog‘s streak of producing well-received thematic games remains unbroken. Why it was left off the main list: List price of $100. Yikes. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Quarriors! (2-4 players, 20 minutes, dice): As “deck building games” reach the saturation point (see my review of Thunderstone: Dragonspire on the main 2011 G4), designers need a unique take on the genre to stand out. WizKids has done so by eliminating the deck entirely, and replacing the cards with dice. The result is a game that plays fast and gives you the great satisfaction of rolling a huge handful of bones on each turn. Why it was left off the main list: Same reason as Elder Sign, essentially: too many dice games on the main list already. [Boardgame Geek | Amazon | Funagain ]

Other Opinions

Don’t trust the yeti? Here are the highlights of some other “2011 best game of the year” lists.
German Game of the Year:

• Winner: Qwirkle (featured in the 2007 G4; maybe it just made it to Germany this year?)
• Winner (“Advanced Strategy” category): 7 Wonders
• Runner-Up: Asara
• Runner-Up: Forbidden Island (a fun, lighter version of Pandemic)

Deutscher Spiele Preis (the “other” German Game of the Year award):

• First Place: 7 Wonders
• Second Place: Die Burgen von Burgund
• Third Place: Troyes

International Gamers Awards:

• General: 7 Wonders
• Two-Players: A Few Acres of Snow

GAMES Magazine Awards:

• Game of the Year: Tikal II: The Lost Temple
• Family Game: Lemmin Mafia
• Strategy Game: Glen More
• Advanced Strategy Game: Die Burgen von Burgund
• Abstract Strategy Game: Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War
• Card Game: Hey Waiter!
• Party Game: Funfair
• Word Game: Pathwords

Where to Buy

I dunno about your hometown, but board game stores have recently been cropping up in Seattle like toadstools after a rain. Plug “games” into Google Maps and see what you get.

As for online, Amazon now carries just about everything I recommend. Funagain Games is one of the oldest board game retailers and remains one of the best. Others that I’d recommend include:

• Boards and Bits
• Fairplay Games
• Games Surplus
• Thought Hammer
• Time Well Spent

Need additional info, or want a more specific recommendation? Don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

My 2011 Good Gift Games Guide will appear in The Morning News this Friday. In the meanwhile, I have updated my list of Good Gift Games Greatest Hits, a showcase of my 20 all-time most recommended easy-to-learn games.

In doing so I added nine new games to the list, replaced Wits and Wagers with Say Anything, and dropped Hoity Toity entirely (sorry H.T., you had a good run).

Most of the newcomers are titles from the last five years that have earned their place in the Hall of Fame. They are as follows.

Pandemic

Players: 2-4
Time: 45 minutes
Price: $35
Type: Family Strategy / Cooperative
My Full Review: Here

“In this game we are all epidemiologists, trying to synthesize vaccines to four deadly diseases that are rapidly spreading across the globe …” Oh my God, can you even imagine a less-enticing introduction to a board game? It sounds so soporific that you’d expect to find pillows and PJs in the box. And yet Pandemic, an engrossing (if stressful) family strategy game, has exactly this premise: travel the world, conduct research, and cure the virulent contagions that threaten mankind. As a cooperative game, Pandemic has the players working as a team, winning or losing as a group. And, like any good medical thriller, the tension in Pandemic builds geometrically: Halfway through you’ll be high-fiving each other over your presumed victory; 15 minutes later you’ll be sweating bullets as the situation grows increasingly dire. Also: Forbidden Island is by the same designer and uses the same central idea, but is easier to learn and easier to win. The former makes it more suitable for families; the latter, however, means that it will not challenge you for as long as Pandemic.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

* * *

Dominion

Players: 2-4
Time: 30 minutes
Price: $45
Type: Card / Family Strategy

Every once in a while a game comes along that spurs an entire new genre of design. Such a game is Dominion, which spawned the latest craze of “deck building games”. Each player starts with an identical deck of ten cards, which they use to “buy” more cards, which they use to acquire yet more cards, until each has built up a formidable deck from practically nothing. This innovative system is complemented by the huge amount of options available: The game comes with 500(!) cards in total. It’s perfect for the recovering Magic: the Gathering addict on your list, or anyone who enjoys a quick card game with myriad of variability.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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Say Anything

Players: 4-7
Time: 30 minutes
Price: $30
Type: Party

After its release in 2005, Wits And Wagers quickly became my favorite party game. It held that distinction for three years, until the company behind it, North Star Games, introduced their newest title: Say Anything. One player is appointed the Judge in each round of Say Anything, and asks the group a question such as, “What’s the most important invention of the last century?” or, “Who is the most annoying celebrity in show business?” After everyone has jotted down their replies, players then bet on which answer the Judge will deem “Best”.  The “all players answer, all players bet” mechanism was taken straight from Wits and Wagers, but this implementation is slightly more to my liking.  Pick Wits and Wagers if you lean toward trivia games, Say Anything if you prefer party.

[Official site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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Bananagrams

Players: 1-8
Time: 15 minutes
Price: $15
Type: Word

Take Scrabble, distill it down to just the fun parts (i.e., remove the scoring and the downtime), and you are left with Bananagrams. Players receive 21 wooden tiles, each bearing a single letter, and simultaneously assemble them into a lattice of words. When a player has used all of his letters he yells, “peel,” whereupon everyone claims two more tiles from the central pool. When the pool is depleted, the first with no tiles left cries, “Bananas!” for the win. Playable in a quarter hour, portable in its stylish bananabag, Bananagrams allows you to scratch your cruciverbal-itch at the drop of a hat.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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Small World

Players: 2-5
Time: 90 minutes
Price: $50
Type: Family Strategy / Light Wargame

Remember Risk?  Remember how fun it was?  Unless, of course, you got knocked out early, and had to watch Golden Girls reruns while the rest of the players staggered on to the finish line five hours later.  Imagine all the fun of Risk, but with no player elimination and a system that guaranteed that every game would play out different.  Or better yet, stop imagining and pick up Small World.  Each player adopts a unique civilization composed of a random race and a random class, which can give rise to Commando Halflings and Diplomat Skeletons.  He then marches his tribe across a fantasy landscape, snapping up provinces and giving the previous inhabitants the heave-ho.  Small World allows you to watch the rise and fall of civilizations in a civilized time-frame of only 90 minutes.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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No Thanks!

Players: 3-5
Time: 15 minutes
Price: $10
Type: Card
My full review: Here

On your turn you do one of two things:  take the face-up card (and all the chips on it), or place a chip onto the face-up card and pass.  You now know all the rules to No Thanks!. Except for scoring that is, and the scoring is what makes this game shine. Each player receives points equal to the value of the cards he took minus the number of chips he owns, with the lowest score winning.  So ask yourself: how many chips will a card need before you are willing to take it?  You will agonize over that question for the 15 minute running time of No Thanks!–and then another 15 minutes, and then another, as you and your group keep playing “just one more”.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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BANG!

Players: 4-7
Time: 30 minutes
Price: $20
Type: Card / Party

Who will rule the West: the Sheriff and his deputies or the outlaws? Players are randomly assigned to one side or the other, but the composition of the teams begin a secret. Want to know who is on your side? Shoot someone and see how they react. BANG! is a clever variation on the traditional game of Werewolf, works best with a group of six or seven people, and has no shortage of expansions to keep things fresh.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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Blokus

Players: 2-4
Time: 20 minutes
Price: $25
Type: Abstract / two-player

Blokus is one of those abstract games that even people who profess to hate abstract games (such as myself) wind up loving. Players place plastic pieces (alliteration!) onto a grid in accordance with a simple law: newly placed pieces must be diagonally adjacent (and only adjacent) to previously placed pieces of the same color. That one rule, along with the variety of differenly sized and shaped pieces, makes for a tense game of control, as you wall off territory with the goal of leaving your opponent with no possible moves. Go play a few games of Blokus online and see for yourself. The original Blokus plays up to four, and is suitable for kids as young as seven; if you are looking for a two-player version, check out Blokus Duo instead.

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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Incan Gold

Players: 3-8
Time: 20 minutes
Price: $20
Type: Card / Party / Push-Your-Luck

Two men enter, one man leaves! Or, in the case of Incan Gold, as many as eight explorers enter a perilous temple in search of jewels, and one by one flee in terror as they encounter snakes, mummies, and rock slides. Those who get out before catastrophe strikes keep the booty they amassed; those that push their luck too far wind up with nothing. One of the simplest game on this list but also one of the most tense, Incan Gold packs all the anxiety of a two-hour suspense film into a tidy 20-minute package

[Official Site | Boardgame Geek | Amazon]

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This post is part of the H. P. Lovefest. It is not, however, a review of the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying game, despite the title. It is instead an high-level overview of the game and its affect on both roleplaying and Lovecraft’s legacy.

If you are unfamiliar with tabletop roleplaying games, or have only been exposed to RPGs of the electronic variety, you might equate the entire genre with Dungeons & Dragons: wizards, unicorns, swords, potions, and lots of dice. And that’s not a bad description of D&D, at least insofar as how some groups play it. Players draft characters, form a party, delve into a dungeon, and hack away at the monsters therein, accumulating Experience and losing Hit Points.

“Hit Points”, in the lexicon of D&D and many other roleplaying games, are a measure of physical health, and when they drop to zero or below your character may pass out or even die. “Experience”, on the other hand, is an abstract measure of how much your character has “done” in its life, and is amassed by performing tasks such as killing monsters and completing quests. After you’ve accumulated a certain amount of Experience your character “levels up”, becoming more powerful in the process. As there are many many ways to recuperate Hit Points and few ways to lose Experience, the end result is a game in which characters become ever more powerful and very rarely die.

This model is ill-suited for a roleplaying game set in the world of H. P. Lovecraft for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the entire concept of “Experience”–the rewarding of players for performing tasks–implies that doing things is worthwhile, which flies in the face of the pervasive futility found in the Mythos tales. For another, a game in which death is rare is about as far from Lovecraftian as you can get. And what’s the point of characters becoming “more powerful” when, even at their zenith, they are but specks before the Great Old Ones?

Sandy Petersen, designer of Call of Cthulhu, solved all these problems with one deft stroke of genius. While the core of the roleplaying game is very generic (so much so that it is called the “Basic Roleplaying System)–with statistics such as Strength and Dexterity, a list of possible skills, and yes even Hit Points–it features something that no game before had included: Sanity. Sanity (or “SAN”) works much like Hit Points do, as a measure of someone’s current condition; however it does not track the character’s physical health, but rather his mental health. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult to recuperate Sanity in a Call of Cthulhu game. And as the characters (called “Investigators” in CoC parlance) learn more about the horrors of the Mythos, the maximum that their Sanity rating can reach slowly dwindles. In short, the heroes in Call of Cthulhu grow ever more fragile over time rather than stronger, as exposure to eldritch horrors drives them to the brink of madness and beyond.

To the uninitiated this might sound like a clever twist on the Hit Points formula, but not something that would necessarily set the tone for the entire game. But it does. For one thing, players quickly learn not get attached to their characters–after a few sessions they will be dead, or insane, or–best case scenario–retired recluses with a crippling fear of everything. Needless to say, all of this serves wonderfully to reinforce the sense of existential terror. It also has characters acting in ways striking different than they would in other RPGs; when monsters appear in CoC, players quickly learn that the best strategy is not to attack but to turn tail and run like hell. With brawn all but useless when faced with the omnipotent horrors of the elder gods, Investigators can only succeed by using their wits; when they enter battle at all, they typically do so armed not with knives and guns but with dilapidated tomes and arcane knowledge.

The relationship between H. P. Lovecraft’s legacy and the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game is one of strange symbiosis. The sanity rule, inspired by Lovecraft’s brand of cosmic nihilism, has made CoC one of the most beloved roleplaying games of all time; the popularity of the game, in turn, has sustained the interest in Lovecraft’s works, and the company behind CoC (Chaosium) had expanded the pool of Mythos-related material though the publication of fiction and CoC sourcebooks. And when you consider the overlap between those who play roleplaying games and those who work in technological fields, it’s no wonder that the Internet is rife with Lovecraftia. (Wikipedia alone has hundreds of pages devoted to the man and his creations, everything from Azathoth to Roger Zelany …) How odd that the man who described games as “avenues of escape for persons with too poorly proportioned and correlated a perspective to distinguish betwixt the frivolous and the relevant” would have his own relevance extended into the 21st century by a pastime such as CoC.

Last month I attended the 2011 Penny Arcade Expo. Last week I wrote a ridiculous amount of words about it. And today The Morning News published every single one of those words, in the form of PAX Primer.

I grateful to a lot of people for their help. First and foremost Anthony Yvarra, a.k.a. Nerdgasm, who gamely (ha) answered my questions about the fabulous life of an Omeganaut. Sarah Giffrow of SGC, who generously allowed use of her beautiful and evocative photographs. And Robert Khoo of Penny Arcade, who let me reprint some PA strips and then publicized the article by tweeting about it this morning.

And a thank you to novelist Nicholson Baker as well. I had intended to write my report in the week following PAX, but kept putting it off; I may never have done so had I not read Painkiller Deathstreak, in which Baker plays video games for the first time in his life, mostly the first-person shooters recommended by his teenage son, and then simply describes them. It’s an amazing piece, and inspired me to knuckle down on my own longform chronicle of gaming. Do not read Baker’s article just before reading my essay, or just after reading my essay, or within a year of reading my essay before or after, but please read it.