Firefly GenCon 2013 Review

So just back from GenCon, and am feeling it is my moral obligation to review Gale Force Nine's upcoming Firefly boardgame.  Here we go:

Basics

In Firefly, 1-4 players take the role of ship's captains, moving their ships around space to different systems to do jobs for money, buy supplies/crew/upgrades, and be the first to achieve the game's goals.  In the game I played, the goals were to "become solid" with each agent (characters who give jobs), and perform two other tasks at different locations.  Along the way players will have to deal with the Alliance (when in alliance space) and The Reavers (when not).

Gameplay

Each turn you get to take 2 actions, which can include moving, getting jobs with agents, starting or finishing a job, buying goods/crew, or aiming to misbehave.

Every time you move to a new space you flip a card from the appropriate deck (alliance space or Reaver space) and resolve the event if any. Most of the cards just say "keep flying" and have no effect, but occasionally you need to make a skill check (based on icons from captain + crew + items and upgrades) to avoid losing items/money/crew/fuel.  It's fun to flip the cards for about a minute before you realize that it takes forever to resolve them and most of them do nothing.  It's an extremely tedious stealth "roll to move" mechanic, so it's pretty much terrible. There's also one card in the Reaver deck that automatically moves the Reavers to your location and causes you to lose a lot of resources randomly.

Starting jobs requires specific skill icons, so not every job is doable by every captain, but you get a selection of them at the start of the game to pick from, not unlike initial route selection from ticket to ride.  You'll spend most of the game doing jobs, which basically consists of going to one location, starting the job (so long as you have the prerequisite skill icons) and finishing the job in a second location.  Because of how tedious and frustrating resolving movement is, this winds up being not a lot of fun.

Dealing with agents and buying items is very similar, you basically just look at the entire discard pile for each agent or buy location and buy up to three of them.  If you're not going to consider 3 cards in the discard, you can draw fresh cards from the deck and consider those. Either way you're looking at 3 cards maximum that you can consider taking from either the discard or each deck for the location. Because they're random, there's no real way to get exactly what you need for jobs unless it's in the discard, so it seems not terribly worthwhile to go out of your way to go and buy upgrades or hire crew. Again, you have to move to these locations and use actions to do it, so more likely than not you'll just do it when it is convenient .

Aiming to misbehave is just taking tests against a random event deck.  Some jobs require you to successfully complete multiple of these in a row, and it just boils down to a random number generator that gates whether or not you get to continue playing the game or not.

That's how you'll spend your time.  Making skill checks against pass or fail mechanics that decide if you get to keep going or not.  I'm just not a huge fan of mechanics that basically invalidate your whole turn half the time.

Components

The game comes with a board, 4 player boards, 6 ships (4 for players, 1 each for Reavers and the Alliance cruiser), a pile of paper money, and a bunch of tokens and cards.  The componets are of nice quality, but the card layouts are amateurish and inconsistent between card types. Also, maybe it's just me, but I find that licensed games that rely heavily on still images from television shows look extremely tacky.  Maybe it's too much to expect a whole game full of hand-drawn Firefly art, but that doesn't make the game any less ugly. The main board and player boards are attractive enough, and the money and card backs look nice (especially the aim to misbehave cards), but everything else looks terrible.

Problems

This game is extremely non-interactive. Aside from occasionally getting to move the Alliance or Reaver ship one measly space (which never mattered), nothing you do in the game matters to your opponents. It matters so little that the GF9 rep actually encouraged us to start taking our turns before our opponents had finished theirs.

The game is extremely long winded. We played for two hours and only one of the four of us had even completed the first of three goals necessary for victory. Granted, we did take about half an hour to learn the game and get going, but it seems like a very long time to play a solitaire game.

I have a hard time imagining a scenario where I would want to play this game again. There is no absolute loss condition, so even though it is playable solo it is just a grind to roll well enough on skill tests to complete the game's jobs and goals. Playing against other players isn't much better, since you're just playing individual games of solitaire to see who wins first.

My guess is that GF9 acquired the license and started the design in a top down fashion, giving the game a Firefly paint job without fully fleshing out what the actual point of the game was supposed to be.  A better approach would have been the one that FFG took with Chaos in the Old World, with each player controlling a completely different faction (e.g. Reavers, Alliance, Smugglers, Browncoats) with completely different win conditions and play styles. Instead, the game is a boring grindy mess that feels like a chore to play, and is a reminder that games based on licensed properties often wind up just being cash grabs that feed on the fandom's nostalgia.

Netrunner : NetDecking Anarch

So I've been playing a bit of Android: Netrunner in my time off.  I thought I'd post some deck lists. First up is a deck I've been enjoying quite a bit. It's probably not the strongest or most consistent runner deck, but it has been working alright for me in casual games.  It's funny, I like card games that have a lot of player interaction but in the end I'm always drawn towards decks that don't give a shit about what your opponent does. This deck is quite a bit like that, with a final goal of digging deep into your opponent's R&D, it doesn't care about their remote servers, and agendas or potential traps.  All it does is try to build an unstoppable running engine to grab those agendas before the corp even has them in the HQ.  Here's the list:

Identity
Noise - Noise is one of two available Anarch identities as of the time of this writing.  The other, Whizzard, is not suited to the strategy that this deck will run. We're going to be heavy on viruses, so we want to use Noise's ability to trash cards into the archive.  Assuming the corp has three 3 point agendas and six 2 point agendas in their deck, that's about a 20% chance of trashing an agenda into the archive every time we install a virus.

Hardware (4)
2x Grimoire
2x Cyberfeeder

Grimoire serves a dual purpose in this deck. It's a much needed +2 MU and also a free virus counter whenever we install a virus, which will help speed along our deck.  Opening hands with grimoire are great, but even if we don't have it from the outset we will have a good way to draw it with Wyldside.

Cyberfeeder helps with this deck's weak economy.  Without Magnum Opus, this deck can have trouble consistently earning bits, so anywhere we can save is good.

Programs (20)
3x Djinn
3x Datasucker
3x Parasite
2x Medium
2x Mimic
2x Yog.0
2x Corroder
2x Wyrm
1x Crypsis







Djinn is one of the key cards in this deck.  It's ability to tutor up viruses is going to have some redundancy with Wyldside, but sometimes you just really need a Datasucker or Medium.  The other advantage of Djinn is that it acts as a nice reserve of spare MU for your datasuckers and mediums, which you'll be needing.  Three copies might be one too many but I'd rather consistently draw into this card.

Datasucker might be the most important card in this deck. One is good, allowing you to efficiently use Mimic and Yog.0 which can't raise their strength.  It also can push parasite over the edge and allow you to blow up pesky ice that's costing you on repeated runs.  Lastly, it is the only really effective way to use Wyrm, which would be prohibitively expensive otherwise.  Getting virus counters on Datasucker is extremely easy, since you can usually run the archives or HQ which tend to be less defended, and then use the accumulated counters on the important R&D run.  I mentioned that one Datasucker is good before, but two is a wrecking machine. Use your Djinn to tutor up the second one and install it for free off of a Cyberfeeder.

Parasite is a pretty straight forward card. play it on annoying ice and force your opponent to waste a turn clearing virus counters or just take the loss.

Medium is crucial to this deck, but I only run two because they're expensive and one tends to be sufficient.  Digging deep into R&D is really the key to this deck, so install it early and start building those counters up.  If you're reveling 4 or 5 cards chances are you'll score an agenda.

Mimic, Yog.0 and Corroder are serviceable ice.  Yog.0 and Mimic are actually quite good once you find a way to lower ice's strength (i.e. datasucker), but Yog.0 basically requires a Modded to install without feeling horrible about it. If you can install all three of these, you're in good shape, otherwise there are some swiss army knives in this deck that can pick up the slack.

Wyrm and Crypsis are those swiss army knives.  Wyrm is bad, but it's cheap and can break any kind of ice so sometimes it'll just have to do. It also has an added synergy with parasite, allowing you to just blow up annoying ice without having to bother paying the expensive 3 bits to break subroutines.  Crypsis is in as a singleton because it is unique in its dual nature as a virus and an icebreaker. It's expenisve to install and cumbersome to use, but sometimes it's nice to be able to tutor it up with a Djinn and start running.

Resources (7)
2x Wyldside
2x Ice Carver
3x Armitage Codebusting
Wyldside is an important engine that this deck needs to draw into money saving event cards.  I lose a click, but basically never have to spend clicks drawing cards once I install this.  It's worth it, and I only run two copies because you can't install more than one anyway.

Ice carver enables a lot of our other programs. It's another unique card, though, and pricey to install so we only run two.






Armitage codebusting is just good click/bit economics.  It gives  us kind of a poor man's magnum opus, which we can't run because our MU are already strained by the tons of viruses we're going to be installing on top of our regular suite of icebreakers. It's got an added benefit of being cheap to install, so it's a good card to help you recover a stash of bits after a particularly expensive run.

Events (14)
2x Sure Gamble
3x Easy Mark
3x Modded
3x The Maker's Eye
2x Stim Hack
1x Deja Vu

Sure gamble, Easy Mark, and Modded serve the same purpose in this deck. All of them are there to save us money.  Modded is worth it even to install 2 cost programs and hardware because it does it all on the same click, albeit at the cost of the click it would have taken you to draw modded. However, card draw should not be a problem if we've landed a Wyldside.  Easy Mark is better than Sure Gamble since you can use it to quickly recover from being broke, however sure gamble does net you the most immediate bits assuming you've got at least 5 to pay its cost, which isn't always the case!

The Maker's Eye works well in this deck, and on against an early undefended R&D you can dig 3 cards deep and hopefully score something.  Late game the effect stacks with Medium so it's still useful.

Stimhack is included as a last ditch card that can sometimes just win the game.  You hate to play it, but when you know the corp is desperately trying to advance an agenda while you're low on bits this card can pull out a surprise run that takes it.

Finally theres a singleton Deja Vu.  This card exists for the sole purpose of recovering parasites from the heap after you blow up ice, or getting back a crypsis that you just had to use without any counters.  You can also use it to grab a resource that's all used up (armitage codebusting) or an important card that the corp trashed while you were tagged (like Wyldside).

Anyway, that's the deck. Try it out and let me know what you think. Like I said, this is probably not as competitive as the more straightforward Shaper/Criminal decks out there, but it has the advantage of not really having to care about what the corp does.  Let them build their remote servers and advance agendas there, you don't need to run those. You want the cards they haven't seen yet.  If they stack a ton of defenses on the R&D, there's nothing stopping you from then running their remote servers.  Next time we'll take a look at my NBN deck.

Android: Netrunner - Review

Some of the new Android:Netrunner Cards

Based on the beloved 1996 cult classic CCG Netrunner, Android: Netrunner is a relaunch of the game with new and updated rules, new art, and a departure from the randomized boosters of its CCG roots.  The new Netrunner has adopted the LCG format, which is characterized by fixed card sets and non-randomized expansions.  This is great news for people who are interested in CCGs but are wary of the expense of getting into a game like Magic: The Gathering, where rare cards command high prices in the secondary market and drive the cost of top tier tournament decks up into the $500+ range.  Released in limited quantities which quickly sold out at Gen Con this year and due to ship at the end of the month, Android: Netrunner was the talk of the convention. Over the course of numerous games in the event hall I was amazed as people stopped to stare at our copy of the game as though we were not just playing a card game, but were in fact carefully brushing the mane of a tiny unicorn.  They were right to be envious, Android: Netrunner is a pretty good game.

The Basics

So what sets this game apart from the scores of other two player card games in both the CCG and LCG format?  Well, a lot of things, not the least of which is the fact that it's an asymmetrical game where both sides play completely differently.  Without getting too bogged down in details, one player is always the corporation and one player is always the runner. The corporation's job is to advance and protect agendas that they install face down in servers behind layers of ice.  Ice is also installed face down and kept secret from the runner who is trying to steal the agendas. It's only when the runner encounters the ice that the corporation must pay the rez cost of the ice to activate it.  Ice has numerous negative effects on the runner, which are represented by its subroutines, but in general the purpose of ice is to end the run.  The corporation can win if it advances its agendas and scores 7 before the runner can steal that many points.

An agenda worth 2 points.

The runner's job is to steal agendas, which they do by running servers. Central servers are the corporation's hand (HQ) and draw pile (R&D).  Remote servers are places on the table where corporations install agendas and other assets.  To break the ice that the corporation installs in front of its servers the runner must use icebreakers that are capable of doing that. There are a couple of different kinds of ice including sentries, code gates and barriers. Each icebreaker might deal with one or more type of ice, so a runner will need to probe the defenses of each server to see what they're up against, because most of the cards in a server will be face down until the corporation rezzes them.  If the runner can access an agenda in a remote server, they score its value immediately and are one step closer to victory. If they can access a central server like R&D or HQ, then they can look at a card or sometimes multiple cards in that server, possibly trash them, and if they get lucky and reveal agendas they can score agendas that way too.

An icebreaker

A tough piece of ice.

Some Comparisons to Magic: the Gathering

That's the basic gist of the game, and it works totally fine.  I'd like to change gears now and say a little about some other ideas that make Android:Netrunner stick out from the rest of the crowd.  I'll use Magic: The Gathering as a reference point here because it's a game that I'm very familiar with, it's from the same designer, and it's probably the most well known non-traditional card game in existence. In MtG you can do any number of actions per turn so long as you pay for them with mana that is generated from land cards you play each turn. This is one of MtG's most defining attributes and also one of its greatest flaws, because drawing too few or too many lands means that you might just not be able to do anything, and with very few ways to draw more cards some percentage of games will find you either "mana-screwed" or "flooded" with too little or too much mana and no chance to win the game simply because of the luck of the draw.  Android: Netrunner avoids this problem by giving you a limited number of actions per turn.  The corporation receives 3 (but always draws a card at the start of their turn) and the runner receives 4, and with these actions they can draw a card, draw bits (resource), install cards (paying the bit cost, if the runner), advance agendas by paying a bit (if the corp) and more.  The main thing to pay attention to here is that you can always draw more resources or more cards, so you're unlikely to get very far behind if you have a sub optimal draw.

There is a second difference that really makes this game stand out.  That's the idea that you must interact with your opponent. In many other card games it's possible to build decks where your opponent's actions have no effect on how you play.  A classic example of this might be the mono-red burn deck played in the Legacy format of MtG.  Mono red burn actually doesn't care what its opponent does, its goal is to simply spit out as much damage as quickly as possible.  By not playing any creatures, it invalidates a large portion of its opponent's decks and makes those cards "dead" cards.  A deck like this does not seem possible in Android: Netrunner.  For starters, there must be a certain number of agenda points in the corporation deck, so the runner will always have a chance to find them.  The corporation can win by damaging the runner and forcing him to discard past zero cards in hand, but in most cases the runner must be actively doing runs in order to be targetted by the corporation's attacks.  It's also difficult to find out what the corporation has installed in its servers without running them, so the runner must probe the corporations servers to find out if they contain agendas or if they are traps. Yes, the corporation has access to traps that look just like agendas until revealed, and it's awesome.  All that said, interactivity is good and a thing that should be aspired to in games, and Android: Netrunner has a ton of it.  Nothing is worse than sitting down to play a game and feeling like you've lost because of forces completely out of your control. That won't happen here.

One of the corporate factions.

Lastly, Android: Netrunner takes a unique approach to deckbuilding that makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd.  Using MtG again as an example, that game allows you to build your deck using any legal cards so long as there are not more than 4 of each non-land card, and your deck contains a minimum of 60 cards.  Android: Netrunner allows you to build decks containing a minimum of 45 cards so long as there are no more than 3 copies of each cards, the corp deck contains X number of agenda points based on total card count in the deck, and so long as you don't have more than 15 loyalty points worth of off-color cards.  That last bit is important, because in the base set of Android: Netrunner there are 3 runner factions and 4 corp factions that differ by cards available and also sort of a unique static ability that's always on.  Every card has a set loyalty value between 0-5 which is represented by little blue pips on the card, so as long as your deck doesn't have more than 15 pips worth of off-faction cards then you're good to go.  This sounds restrictive, but i think it's the "less is more" kind of restriction that will actually inspire more creativity and a more diverse meta-game than just having totally open deckbuilding.  Additionally, the 45 card deck size with 3 copy limit is great since it maintains the classic ratio set by MtG but requires less cards to do so.

The Bottom Line

Operation with 3 loyalty pips (bottom left)

Phew, that's a lot of Android: Netrunner. I'd like to end by closing on some standard review type stuff.  The cards are high quality, the same as any other LCG or CCG you might be used to.  The art is nice, and the theme is dead-on perfectly represented by the gameplay if that's important to you. There's a number of thick tokens used to track your bits and also various status effects.  The box is big enough to support an additional set, which you'll probably want to buy if you're dead-set on building more competitive decks.  FFG made the mistake of AGAIN including singleton cards in a core set which means you'd really need 3 core sets to build every possible deck but at least it's only a few cards this time, not like it was with Call of Cthulhu the LCG.  They haven't announced any expansions yet, but I've heard they'll have 3 of each card so that's good news for your wallet. The game plays in 30-60 minutes, so it's a bit longer than most card games but it never seems to drag.  I played tons of games with just one set that my friend managed to get his hands on.  I'm ordering two for myself and I suggest you all do as well.

Gen Con 2012 After Action Report

So I just got back from Gen Con 2012, and much like last year, I played a ton of games.  I'll mention some of the ones I enjoyed there.

Games I played

Spartacus

If I recall correctly, the first game we sat down to demo was Spartacus.  I have a fondness for ancient Rome and especially gladiators, but at the same time am kind of turned off by games based on television shows, so it was really going to come down to how the game played. The demo consisted of just one round, but what I can tell you is this: it seems kind of cool.  The parts I like are the first phase where intrigues (event cards) are played and you can share the cost (influence) of playing those cards with other tables. You can make deals however you want to accomplish this, trading money, slaves, and gladiators for a hand in playing your card. However, you can also trade the PROMISE of those things, so a wise bargainer would ask for the goods up front. Even still, after the event is played there is no assurance that it will be played in the agreed upon way, which seems like it could result in a lot of shenanigans.  After the intrigue phase there is a market phase where new gladiators, slaves, and items are bid on, followed by the opportunity to bid on hosting the next fight.  The host of the fight gets to invite players to send their gladiators to their fight and that's where things seem like they might fall apart a bit.

I was kind of underwhelmed by the combat in Spartacus. As it stands the combats are only one on one.  They take place on a hex grid but it seems like the maneuvering is somewhat unimportant, as once gladiators get locked in there is little point to maneuvering unless there's a difference in the speed of the gladiators, at which point the faster gladiator is at a huge advantage because attacks can take place before or after movement. The dice resolution for attacks, defense, damage and initiative are kind of cool, but I think the combat might get a little shallow after a while especially because of the aforementioned limit of single combat.  There's some betting that takes place on the fight which is kind of fun and winning gets you influence which is the key to winning the overall game (there are other ways to get influence too).  All in all it seemed kind of promising, but the one round we played was not enough to convince me of a purchase and I didn't get time to play a longer full game in the event hall.

Relic Knights

This might be my new favorite model from the line. It's bigger than it looks.

I got two demos of Relic Knights, one at the booth which was kind of railroaded but still fun and another more open demo with the designer talking me and another player through the game which was a bit more informative.  Relic Knights is an anime-inspired miniature skirmish game that is characterized by fast action and match-3 inspired gameplay mechanics.  Unlike most wargames, there little emphasis on judging ranges since ranged attacks have an infinite range and models tend to move very quickly across the battlefield.

Gameplay consists of alternating activations where you can move a model's first move distance, do an action, and then move the model's second move distance.  The part where you do the action is where Relic Knights really shines, since there are no basic attacks in Relic Knights.  Instead, every attack is done by playing a combination of power cards out of your hand to activate the ability.  There's six colors of power, and it seems like most factions are focused on two primary colors with an extra third color thrown in to make things more challenging.  Power cards have one major color worth two and one minor color worth one, and an example attack might have an activation cost of two red and one purple, so you could make that attack with any combination of cards in your hand so long as it added up to two red and one purple.  Models are placed in an activation queue that specifies the order in which you'll activate them, so hand management becomes super important because you need to make sure you have the right colors in hand when the next model comes up.  Luckily, the game mechanics allow you to cycle through your hand quickly enough that you won't get "mana-screwed."

There's a kickstarter going for this game right now that looks very promising in terms of value for your dollar. I've been a fan of the models since last year and playing with them at the con cemented my commitment to backing this game.

Alcatraz: The Scapegoat

Alcatraz is a semi cooperative boardgame from Z-Man games that was debuting at the con.  Z-Man runs full demos of their games which is very cool, and it was cool enough for me to buy it.  Expect a full review soon.

Android: Netrunner

Probably the talk of the con, Netrunner is the re-release of the cult classic TCG from the early 90's, dressed up all fancy in Fantasy Flight Game's LCG format.  I played a ton of this over the weekend and will be doing a full review. Great game, even if the Android setting is kind of scraping the bottom of the cyberpunk barrel in my opinion.  It's far more I, Robot staring Will Smith than it is Neuromancer.

Sky Traders

The six regular goods and two special goods in Sky Traders.

Sky Traders is a game of shipping goods and manipulating prices with an airship theme.  Each turn involves buying goods and taking them around to different cities around the map which is made entirely out of hexes.  There are six regular goods and two special goods, and at the end of each turn the six regular goods go up and down in price depending on dice that are assigned by the players.  Each round you roll three dice and each of those dice has the power to change the value of a regular good by one step up or down.  dice results can be traded for other dice and even for goods and money so this seems to be the main meat of the game: making sure you can sell your goods for more than you bought them for and turn a profit.  This might be harder than it sounds because of limited cargo space forcing you to sell goods to make room for better ones and the chance to take damage which can eliminate one or more of your six holds and everything in them.  At the end of the round players have a chance to buy influence, and the game ends once you've reached a certain influence level.  Sky Traders seems like a fun game, but after two rounds I was worried that it might be kind of a one note song.  It's not a bad song by any means, but I didn't sense a whole lot of strategic depth in the game.

Aerotech

My Sai didn't get shot down!

Not a new game by any means, i played in an aerotech event designed to teach new players familiar with Battletech the rules of the game.  All I have to say about aerotech is that it is a totally awesome game for crazy people, and actually far less complicated and ponderous than Battletech. The combats are far more lethal, determining line of sight is much simpler (cause, you know, you're in the air), and the game is an all around blast to play.  I picked up a few Inner Sphere aerospace fighters and the 3039 technical readout so i could get the background stories for all the inner sphere designs that would later fight during the clan invasion. I don't normally like to play clan vs inner sphere, but we were told that the clan have less of an overwhelming advantage in aerotech than they do in battletech, so I'm looking forward to playing that game.

phew, that's enough for one day.  I think I'll save my impressions of the show in general along with some of these reviews for some other time.

Final Fantasy XIII & A Better RPG

I've been playing a fair amount of Final Fantasy XIII since I fixed my blu-ray drive, and it has got me thinking about a couple of things:

1) People need to stop complaining about Final Fantasy.

Any time there is a new installment or even an announcement regarding the series, there's a collective moan from the gaming community that the series needs to take a break, or that Square Enix need to go back to making "good" Final Fantasy games.  This is ludicrous.

Neil Gaiman may have been talking about a game of thrones when he said: "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch," but this sentiment applies equally well to Square Enix and their Final Fantasy games.  Square Enix does not owe anyone a Final Fantasy game that lives up to their expectations of what the series should be. I think that Final Fantasy VI was the best one followed by IV and then Tactics, but I don't need them to make those games again the way that some people think it would be the best thing ever if they made VII again.  Did I like Yoshitaka Amano's character designs better than Tetsuya Nomura's? Of course I did, Nomura's designs are mostly terrible. Does whining like a spoiled baby about it on the internet solve anything? No.  Grant Morrison said it well in his design manifesto printed in the back of the New X-Men hardcover: "Longtime fans will read the book and bitch about it no matter what."  What he's saying here, is that fanboys are irrelevant.

Internet, you are ludicrous! Stop it!

Yes some of the criticisms that have been leveled at this game are accurate. It's incredibly linear. You don't interact directly with random NPCs the way you do in many JRPGs. It's extremely slow in introducing gameplay concepts.  All of those things are true, but you know what's also true? It looks great. The voice acting and cinematics are very well done. The combat system is very interesting. The story is actually kind of cool and not just crazy unintelligible JRPG nonsense.  This game has a lot of really cool stuff going on, which probably explains why it wound up with generally good review scores (metacritic of 83 on the PS3) and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide.  That doesn't sound like a series that's in dire shape to me.

FF-XIII is a game about Kurt Cobain and two pink haired girls.

2) Final Fantasy, along with other video games, can help us make better pen and paper RPGs.

I've been playing a lot of pen & paper RPGs lately, mostly D&D 3.5 and also the occasional Rogue Trader when I can get my group together.  D&D 3.5 is a good game; it's a better game than 4.0 really.  However, it suffers from a lot of the same problems that 4.0 suffers from.  One of these problems is that hit points are a terrible abstraction of how wounded a character is.  In D&D, a character can be hacked apart by double handed swords with no ill effect until he drops below 0 hit points.  Really then, only that last hack of the great sword really does anything to change the dynamics of the game.  Rogue Trader solves some of this problem by giving characfters an extra 7 or 8 points of critical damage beyond 0 hit points where they suffer progressively worse and sometimes permanent injuries.  Still that doesn't solve the major problems that hit points cause for games.

Most of the time, the adventure will proceed until characters become sufficiently wounded and the risks of carrying on outweigh the rewards of going back to town and resupplying their healing items or regenerating whatever restorative abilities they might have. This puts DMs in a terrible (possibly impossible) spot where they have to carefully design adventures that will just exhuast the party's supply of abilities, otherwise they risk creating a narrative that makes no sense.  If the party only makes it through half of the bandit cave before having to turn back to town, do the rest of the bandits just sit around and wait for them to come back when half of their comrades have been slain? If they do - it's crazy. If they don't - all that carefully designed bandit cave has gone to waste and the DM must quickly come up with some convenient resolution to the adventure.

I will sleep until the party finds me, or maybe go to another cave. Whatever.

So, we have a situation where players are healing wounds (most of which don't matter anyway) at the expense of manageable games and stories that make sense.  In older Final Fantasy games I remember carrying around loads of cheap potions so that I could heal up between fights or save spots in dungeons, preserving my precious magic points for combat rather than healing.  Final Fantasy XIII does something to solve all of this by making hit points automatically regenerate between combats and not having any kind of magic points or limits on the number of times class abilities might be used.  On In a way, it's similar to the way health, magic and abilities regenerate in other modern games like Skyrim or even non-RPGs like Call of Duty.  This system is itself an abstraction.  After all it seems silly that you could get shot in a game like Gears of War and that ducking briefly behind a broken piece of chest-high masonry could somehow make that go away.  Still, it's what allows those games to maintain a sense of forward momentum and constant excitement. There must be some middle ground to be found for pen and paper RPGs. That's the game I want to play.

On the other side of this chest-high wall there are good ideas.

Maybe someone has made that game already and I don't know that it exists. A game where each encounter is a self contained challenge where the players don't have to worry about how many more times their wizards can cast fireball.  A game where being wounded is not a binary condition (that's the tricky part).  Let's find that game, and if it doesn't exist, let's make it.

Rogue Trader - The Importance of Not Preparing For Your Role-playing Game

"Preparation for games is one of the most overrated things," said Josh over a game of Solomon cube-drafted Magic the Gathering (cube list forthcoming). This was on Wednesday, and I had not yet at that point started to prepare for my upcoming Rogue Trader game on Sunday.  Josh runs a 3.5 D&D game that meets every 2 weeks.  I play Grak, son of Grok, the half-orc barbarian in his campaign.  I'm routinely impressed by Josh's DMing of the game. Nothing in particular about the campaign or the setting stands out... it's more that he gives us the opportunity (if we so wish), to explore these characters that we've created for ourselves in our own way.  In terms of role-playing, Grak is not a sophisticated or deep character. He is a barbarian, frustrated by magic, short with words and quick to action. I sometimes like to think that Grak is a lot like me, rather than vice versa (not really sure if that makes a difference).

I, unlike Josh, am relatively new to DMing. I ran a reasonably successful 4th edition D&D game for about a year.  In my mind, the best games of 4th edition were those in which there were no combat. The characters simply WERE for about 3 or 4 hours on a Friday night over snacks and beers & bourbon (B&B, is that a thing?).  D&D 4.0 was a dragged down by poor design, which we managed to squeeze some unlikely fun out of by mostly not playing the game.  Some of the group wasn't particularly into that (they're gone now, emperor be praised!), but for the most part we had a good time. I managed to time the campaign's end such that it coincided with the sad departure of Hogarth, warforged barbarian, from our table and also from the state.  From that point, it was up to me really to decide what game to continue with.

After some research, I became deeply interested in running one of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer 40,000 RPGs.  I owned a number of them (Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch), really all of them at the time, and as a fan of the 40k fiction I thought it would be a good fit for me as a GM.  I settled on Rogue Trader, mostly because I felt that thematically it was the polar opposite of D&D, in which players tend to start as nameless nobodies rather than moneyed nobility. In D&D, I feel there is certain greed that drives players to accumulate the most GOLD or items, as though they think that is the measure of success.  In Rogue Trader, you don't even track currency, as it is assumed the characters possess wealth such that carrying money on their persons is ludicrous.  It is a system where the players routinely order dozens (if not hundreds) of their underlings to participate operations which will almost surely result in their deaths.

Anyway, one thing I learned during that year of D&D was that it's really important to NOT prepare for your games in advance.  Preparing for games only results in disappointment for you and frustration for your players. All your machinations are sidestepped by players who you can never hope to understand, or even worse they're rail-roaded into pitfalls that they don't know how to escape. You wind up working 8 hours to prepare for a 4 hour game and you end up burnt out and exhausted. I've taken a different approach in Rogue Trader. Instead of working fervently to prepare for Sunday's game last night, I was eating home-cooked lobster yee mein and watching Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins.  The product of my laziness was a game whose highlight included a routine tech-use failure by Vertus, the group's tech-priest, resulting in some confusion in the room-service order to a rival Rogue Trader dynasty's presidential suite. This confusion in turn led to the voidmaster Maritus (having assumed the identity of the Empyrean Hotel [finest in the Lek system - known for its delicious fungus!] staff member Carlos) having to deliver a service tray of fungus liquor to a room full of rowdy naval officers in a g-string and decorative cuffs and collar. At this point, he had exactly the length of Q Lazzarus's "Goodbye Horses" to extract information he needed from the rival dynasty's officers.  You can't write that shit in advance. It just happens.

Post Game Report Gen Con Indy 2011 - Blood Bowl: Team Manager Review

I'm still sort of reeling from my trip to Indianapolis this past weekend. Between long days patrolling the show floor looking for cool games to demo, long nights gaming and little sleep between one day and the next, I still feel as though my brain is floating somewhere up above my skull, not quite all the way in. I played a lot of stuff on the floor and in the gaming hall, and had a really great time.

Since I'm pretty wasted still, here are the quick hits:

Relic Knights has some of the most beautiful models, and some pretty clever gameplay, but I didn't like them both together. My friend Peter said, "it's like puzzle quest."  Yep, match-three gameplay and anime robot girls. The One Shot model makes me want to learn how to paint better.

THQ's Space Marine feels like a pretty derivative 3rd person shooter, though only being able to regenerate health by performing brutal melee attacks is a cool idea. The weapons felt nice, the action was decent, and THQ's love for the Warhammer 40K setting is well established at this point, so while this might not be a day 1 purchase for most, 40K fans will probably get a lot out of it.

Tanto Cuore was my obsession during the show, partly because of how ludicrous it was and partly because I secretly wanted it to be the best deck-building game I'd ever played. I liked it better than dominion, however the $50 price point seems way off base, even if the art and production values seemed pretty high.  There are some solid ideas in that game, the best being the private maids and the ability to chamber maids by taking actions, pulling them out of your deck and scoring more points at the end of the game.  Surprisingly, the demo consisted of an entire game.  Misogyny..... sometimes it takes a game about being the "master" of a house of Japanese maids to make you realize what a pig you are.

Rune Age is a deck building game set in Runebound's world of Terrinoth. Ugh..... I didn't like this game. Not sure if it is because deck building games are pretty boring once you crack the formula to winning, or if because I generally dislike everything that has to do with Runebound. As much as I like FFG's Silver Line of games, I have to say STAY AWAY.

Blood Bowl Team Manager was the best game I played all show. Unfortunately it sold out on Thursday and I couldn't get a copy. A friend of mine did, however, and you can see my review in a bit.

Ascension..... that's another deckbuilding game.  I like this one more than Dominion, but that's not saying much. It's easy to see the influence of Magic: The Gathering pro-tour players in the gameplay, but really they made a game that's like really linear Rochester drafting where you only sometimes get to pick the card you want.  I accidentally made my friend buy the whole line.  WOOPS!

Star Wars LCG.  A cooperative LCG. I had a fun time demoing it, even though we only played it for one round. This is a game I would like to sit down and play any time, but not one that I would ever buy.  I'm not a big fan of cooperative games (except for Space Hulk: Death Angel, of course), but I had a fine time playing this demo.  It will probably sell pretty well.

Sedition Wars is Mike McVey's game.  The models aren't bad looking. I hear the game is in beta still. The rules felt pretty rough to me.  It didn't stand out.

Psi-Duel is a two player card-game about two psychics trying to melt each other's brains.  I liked it enough to drop $15 on a copy. What it comes down to is a lightning fast (3-4 rounds) hand management game with some rock<paper<scissors elements.

The Ares Project is like a game me and Peter were working on, except finished and really good.  Basically it is like a computer real-time strategy game. Think build orders, fog of war, base development, scouting, skirmishes, and attacks. We only played a very little bit during the demo but even that stuff seemed really cool, so I can only imagine what the rest of that game is like.

Dust is getting miniature rules that they were demoing on a very attractive table. The minis are rather nice, and the setting seems cool, but I was not super turned on by the miniature rules themselves.

Quarriors was another deck-building game, though this one used dice instead of cards and was designed in part by Eric Lang who worked on the Call of Cthulhu CCG. I liked Quarriors because it had a bit more player interaction (sort of), though I imagine that like most deck-building games it might get somewhat stale after multiple plays.  In terms of depth, it ain't no Puerto Rico, but it was fun.

whew, i think that's all the stuff I played, except for the best game of all....

Blood Bowl: Team Manager

So, for those who don't know, Blood Bowl is the game of fantasy football. That is, fantasy as in there are elves and orcs and beastmen running around on the field.  Based on Games Workshop's miniature/board game hybrid, Blood Bowl Team Manager is sort of the fantasy football game of fantasy football.  Instead of controlling the actions of individual athletes on the field, players commit cards representing athletes to  highlight cards (1 for each player) during each week of the season.  Each week there are also special events that effect play and sometimes tournaments which function as sort of extra highlights that all teams can play on simultaneously.  Each highlight can support two opposing teams, and the team with the most star power on one side of a highlight wins a reward printed in the center of the card, though both teams also receive a reward just for showing up.  Rewards include fans (VPs), team-specific upgrades that give you static bonuses, star player cards and coaching staff upgrades that give you special abilities usable once per week.  The goal of the game is to end the season with the most fans.

Each team (there are 6 in the game) has 12 athletes on it who play various positions including linemen, blitzers, throwers, blockers, and sometimes monsters like trolls and ogres. Each athlete has a Star Power attribute when standing, a Star Power attribute when tackled, and might have a number of icons that indicate which skills they have (tackle, cheat, sprint, or pass). They might also have a special ability written in text on their card.  When an athlete is comitted to a highlight they resolve their icons in order, so they might cheat first and take a cheat token and then throw a tackle against an opposing athlete on the other side of the highlight, or they might pass which moves the ball (adding two star power to the team who possesses it) closer to their side of the highlight.  The icons are all pretty useful, though I found that tackle and pass were a bit more useful than cheat and sprint.

Fans of the original will  appreciate the tackle mechanics, which are resolved with special tackle dice that are very similar to those used in the miniature game except that star power doubles as strength in this game.  Tackled athletes have lower star power, drop the ball if they're the ball carrier, have blanked text boxes and are removed from the pitch as casualties if tackled again.   Including dice in the game introduces some variance and makes for some great upsets when your favorable tackle sometimes winds up knocking your own athlete down and reducing your team's starpower for the highlight.  I thought the ball passing mechanic was nicely done, and makes for some great swings where your ball carrier can get tackled, returning the ball to midfield, and then the opposing player can play a thrower with the pass icon out of their hand to gain possession and the extra star power the ball gives. Even linemen, who are generally the worst players on each team come in handy with their ability to take a hit for another player, thus protecting your precious ball carriers.  Cheating is a swingy mechanic that places a cheat token on the athlete that resolves when the highlight is being scored, and sometimes adds star power or fans, but can also get your athlete ejected from the game. Sprinting allows you to draw an athlete from your team deck and discard one from your hand, effectively letting you cycle linemen and other weak atheletes out of your hand in favor of strong blitzers, monsters and star players.

Each round players will usually draw and commit a total of 6 athletes split between two different highlights, though occasionally you might find yourself playing for more highlights.  There is a lot of decision making here, as sometimes you will not be sure how committed your opponents are to winning a particular highlight until it is too late, and you might find out that you should have played more or better athletes to try and secure one highlight instead of spreading yourself too thin between two.  After all players have committed their athletes, each highlight is scored and rewards are distributed, then a new week starts with new highlights.  Play continues for 5 weeks and at the end of the season the team with the most fans wins.

Blood Bowl Team Manager is an absolute blast to play for newcomers and fans of the miniature game alike.  The designers have managed to include a great assortment of teams which feel very different in play style and include Humans, Wood Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Chaos and Skaven.  The game is quick to learn but very challenging, and you will find yourself having to make tough decisions each turn. Play is quick, taking about an hour per game once you've got it all figured out. I expect that  the great variety in teams, star players and upgrade cards along with the variance introduced by the tackle dice, special event and highlight decks will give this game great replay value.  The production value was very nice, with excellent artwork and high build quality throughout, though I could have done without the tiny upgrade cards.  I spent most of my free time at Gen Con playing this game and I highly recommend it to anyone who is even remotely curious about it.  There isn't a lot that I didn't like, though I can see where some might not enjoy the variance in tackles and special events.

On a scale of 1-10, I'd give it a solid 8.5, which is relatively close to some of my favorite games including Shogun, Puerto Rico and Command's and Colors: Ancients, which I would score above a 9.  At an MSRP of $35, this is a game you can't afford not to buy.

Back to Basics - Yomi Review

Despite the fact that Sony's PSP is an almost universally reviled piece of hardware in the Western press, there continue to be a steady stream, or more of a gently flowing creek, of amazing releases on the platform. These occasional blessings are likely in no small part due to its relative success in Japan, and soon another heavenly gift will have managed to float downstream to us here in the west in the form of the upcoming Final Fantasy IV Complete Collection. Originally released as Final Fantasy II on SNES, and then again with the correct Japanese enumeration on various platforms throughout the years, the game is arguably one of the best titles in a series now desperately in need of a break. In a refreshingly traditional move, this one will feature fresh sprites instead of the abominable 3D graphics that were found on the Nintendo DS releases of Final Fantasy III and IV. In an era where your average triple-A titles, which include the last few entries in the series, have production values that are through the roof it's nice to see Square Enix realizing that they can just go back to the essence of what made them a great company and turn that into something we all desperately need. Lets hope that when they cast their baleful gaze on Final Fantasy VI they will have the good sense to not disturb the bones of that game too much. A little bit of a touch-up is nice, but when you have a game that so perfectly defines the genre there's no need to go and mess with the basic ingredients. Which brings us to a new game that succeeds primarily because it presents the essence of a genre to a player in almost as pure a form possible.

Yomi - Boardgame (2011)

Yomi is a remarkable card game that expertly simulates the core tension that exists in a fighting game like Street Fighter. The game was designed by David Sirlin, who is a well respected competitive Street Fighter player and game designer who was responsible for the balancing on one of the best versions of Street Fighter ever released: Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. So, before even looking at the cards it's safe to assume that the guy knows a thing or two about fighting games. The game consists of 10 pre-constructed decks of cards(i.e. it's non-collectible) that represent individual fighters with their own special abilities, moves, strenghts and weaknesses. The decks are patterned after poker decks and feature the standard array of cards from ace to king in four suits. Two players will each pick a deck and proceed play the various attacks, throws, blocks and dodges printed on each card, hoping to beat their opponent's moves and do damage to them. It is basically rock-paper-scissors at its core, with attacks beating throws, throws beating block and dodge, and block and dodge beating attack. Dodges and blocks are unique in that successful blocks are returned to your hand and allow you to draw an extra card, and successful dodges allow you to strike back with a single attack. Players select their moves secretly and reveal them simultaneously and the game ends when one fighter is reduced to zero life, usually after about 10-15 minutes of play.

The core mechanics of Yomi are pretty simple, but once you get past the basic rules you'll see that much like the video games that inspired it there is quite a bit of depth to plumb for those who are so inclined. For starters, each card has two maneuvers printed on it so the direction that you play the card in matters and there are a lot of special moves with extra rules that go along with them like discarding extra cards, drawing cards or penalizing your opponent somehow. Trying to predict what move your opponent is going to throw based on how they tend to play and what moves they've played in the current match is the main thrust of the Yomi, but hand management also becomes a major consideration in a game where you're usually only drawing one additional card per turn. This is primarily because most attacks allow you to combo into additional attacks out of your hand, but your opponent can invalidate your combo after your first hit by playing a face down joker (the equivalent of the Burst move in the Guilty Gear fighting game series), so you might lay out an impressive and highly damaging combo only to have those cards go to waste. You also burn through your hand by discarding pairs, three of a kinds and four of a kinds to search your discard and library for aces which are usually a character's best attacks and can sometimes only be played in multiples. The mechanics of the Yomi breed a tension that comes from deciding when it's right to sacrifice cards and go all out to lay your meanest attack on your opponent or to hold back, keep your options open, and slowly build up your hand. Once you get the hang of it you'll learn to hold your big attacks until after you successfully dodge or your opponent is knocked down or in some other penalized state where you'll have an edge because their potential plays are limited. The intricacies of the combat system such as attack speed, knockdown and some of the deeper combo rules add a necessary granularity to an otherwise simple system, and the combination of fast play and tough choices each turn make Yomi a pretty engaging game overall.

So what's the deal with the 10 decks? For starters, the cards are well made and feel similar to a high quality deck of playing cards rather than your standard CCG cards. They're thin and flexible but not flimsy. The art is very high quality with a consistent and generally imaginative design, but it would have been nice to see more variety in the art for the normal attacks and throws. The differences between each deck are much more than cosmetic with each character having a unique set of moves and special abilities. Rook, for example, has no dodge moves, is throw oriented and though his normal attacks are slow they are very strong and he can sometimes just attack through an opponent's faster attacks. He's sort of the Zangief of the game. On the opposite side of the specturm, you have a character like Valerie, who is reminiscent of Chipp. Her individual strikes are weak but her attacks are fast she can combo any basic strikes together meaning she can pull off explosive combos regularly almost regardless of what cards are in hand. The other 8 characters are equally varied and include ninjas, diplomats, pandas and fish men among other things, and each one takes a bit of practice before you begin to understand what their best attacks are and how they match up against other characters. The game is available as matched pairs of 2 opposing characters ($25), or as a deluxe of all 10 that comes with play mats, counters and a box ($100). It's expensive, but the combination of portability and replay value mean that you'll more than get your money's worth out of it. Some tabletop or eurogaming purists might balk at the theme but it's hard to not recommend this game to anyone, especially if they have an appreciation for the material that inspired it.

Offline Low-tech Co-op - Space Hulk: Death Angel Review

With the advent of online matchmaking services such as Xbox Live and PSN there has been a marked shift away from local multiplayer towards the inclusion online multiplayer in games, be it cooperative or competitive. In fact, a lot of titles now have online multiplayer modes that seem as though they've been shoehorned in by developers, probably at the urging publishers who are hoping to give their customers a reason not to sell games on the secondary market after finishing them. In the past multiplayer usually meant 2-player with the exception of some arcade cabinets which were made to support multiple players. Even up to the previous console generation online multiplayer was a thing that happened almost exclusively on the PC, which has never come close to being the vast cultural phenomenon that console gaming has become. It may seem unfair to say something like that about the PC as a gaming platform, but the PC gaming demographic seems to have not changed at all within the context of a larger culture which has evolved to the point where the elitists now derisively comment about how Call of Duty is a game for frat boys. Taken in that light it seems clear that the home console is now defining online multiplayer to a greater extent than the platform on which the feature originated. There was a time, though, when local multiplayer was the standard rather than the exception. When afternoons were whiled away on games of Battletoads, Street Fighter II, Golden Eye, and Guilty Gear X2. That time is over now, but a bastion of local multiplayer still exists in the realm of board games.

Board games?! No, not those board games that killed so many weekend afternoons in youths, but good board games. The past couple of years have seen an incredible rise in the popularity of Eurogames, which differ from the classic American boardgames in a number of ways. In general, Eurogames are not luck based (little or no die rolling), do not have player elimination (everyone plays to the end), and have themes can seem somewhat outlandish. They're mostly competitive but we have seen a number of cooperative eurogames over the years in which players compete against the board, but these games suffer from a fatal flaw compared to cooperative video games. In a video game, each player controls their "character" or "guy" or whatever and they're the only one who can do it due to the nature of the inputs (i.e. game pads or controllers). In a cooperative boardgame like Arkham Horror, depending on group dynamics, the slow paced turn based nature of the medium can lend itself to an experience of playing by committee, where an individual player's experience is sometimes diminished by a desire to go along with everyone else and not rock the boat. Fantasy Flight Games seems to have at least partly solved this problem by with the release of Space Hulk: Death Angel, which is not a Eurogame in any sense, but manages to rise above the pitfalls of traditional American board game nonetheless.

Space Hulk: Death Angel (Board Game, 2010)

Released about a year after Games Workshop's 3rd Edition Space Hulk, Death Angel is a pared down version of the beloved miniature/board game hybrid that manages to condense the incredible flavor and intensity of the original into a sandwich sized package that plays just as well with 2 players as it does with 6. The theme is pretty rich and beyond the scope of this post, but the tag-line on the box sums it up well as "man versus alien in a desperate struggle."  This flavor is carried very well by the card art and gameplay, so players familiar with the Warhammer 40k setting will feel right at home.  Inside the box you'll find cards representing space marines, genestealers (4-armed scythe-taloned alien monstrosities), actions, locations and events.  You'll also get a number of thick cardboard tokens and a special die.  The die and tokens are nice but the cards are a little small and thin, though they do shuffle very well.  Overall, it is a nice package and a solid value at $25.

During the course of the game, space marines controlled by the players will work together to move through the decks of a derelict spaceship infested with genestealers intent on tearing them to shreds. Each player controls the actions of 1 or 2 teams of space marines, with each team consisting of one basic marine and one command marine (seargent or librarian), heavy weapons marine (heavy flamer or autocannon), or close combat specialist (lightning claws or thunder hammer and storm shield). Each team of marines has three unique action cards which dictate what they do each turn (attack, move and activate, and support), and each turn the team will perform one action so long as it is different from the action they performed last turn. Each space marine, location, and genestealer is represented by a card, and at the start of the game the space marines are lined up in a column which is flanked on both sides by corridors, doors, vents, dark corners and other features of the ship from which emerge genestealers. Throughout the course of the game the space marines will clear sections of the ship and advance through a series of increasingly dangerous random locations by eliminating genestealers until they arrive at the final location where they'll have to satisfy a specific victory condition such as kill the genestealer broodlords or activate a special control panel.

The tension of the original board game is recreated here by the near-constant tide of genestealer cards which are spawned from blip piles based on the location of the marines in the ship, which changes whenever a blip pile is exhausted (i.e. the space marines have survived long enough in the location and killed enough genestealers). The number of genestealers, their locations, and their movements around the formation of space marines are based on a random event card that is resolved at the start of each turn, and the regularity with which they spawn makes it seems like the marines are fighting an uphill battle most of the time. Combat is resolved with a simple die roll, and players must take advantage of each of the unique marine's special abilities to get the most out of their actions each turn, because any genestealers left after actions are taken will attack back, forcing a defense roll that is more difficult depending on how many genestealers are engaging the defending marine. Eliminated space marines are gone for good, so a big part of the game is trying to figure out which marine is most expendable, and making sure your more valuable special weapons marines are not having to make defense rolls that are too difficult. In lieu of attacking, space marines can maneuver around the formation and change facing to interact with special locations  by taking movement actions, or gain support tokens which allow re-rolls on attack and defense by taking support actions. All of the actions have additional benefits that are team specific, triggering a unique bonus effect once those actions are taken, such as firing multiple shots with an autocannon, counterattacking on defense rolls or locking a group of genestealers under a stasis field.

So how does this game solve the problem of gaming by committee that plagues most co-op boardgames? It does so by stipulating that players choose what actions they take secretly and then resolve them based on initiative order (determined by a number on each action card). How much each group of players wants to do this is up to them, so it's a nice option to have in case you get worn down by this unforgiving game in which space marines live and die by the dice. One criticism of the game could be that it the outcome is too dependent on die rolls and luck with the event deck, but if you're coming into Death Angel expecting the tactical depth of Twilight Struggle you're setting yourself up for a big disappointment. This is a light, fun, flavorful game that's good as a warm-up for your game night's main event or as game to share with less experienced gamers who will appreciate the short play time and quick to learn rules.

Scrubland - RPGs can have Scrubs Too

People play games for a lot of reasons. Some gamers might organize their social lives around their hobbies, while others might play games as an escape from the everyday. For some, having fun is enough, while others have more fun when they win. Most games are competitive, so ostensibly people who are playing them are on some level doing so with the intention of winning. However, there are a ton of games that aren't competitive and there are equally many people who play competitive games without any true intention of winning. David Sirlin who is best known as a competitive Street Fighter player and game designer who balanced Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (arguably the best Street Fighter) has written extensively on the subject of people who don't play to win, and refers to those people somewhat pejoratively as "scrubs." Scrubs are people who create artificial rules and self-imposed restrictions that keep them from being able to win, usually saying that certain tactics or plays are "cheap" or "not fun", which is unhealthy for a competitive game like Street Fighter. In most cases, scrubs are bad for a game because they don't promote high level competitive play. In some environments though, being a scrub is actually the best thing a person can do for their game, especially with regards to collaborative games where being competitive can be downright destructive.

Take a game like Magic: The Gathering. There is no doubt that MtG is a competitive game, and in fact its continued endurance as a franchise nearly 20 years after its inception is largely based on the strong competitive environment that Wizards of the Coast has fostered for it. You'd think that WotC would develop their game solely with competitive play in mind considering that competitive players drive the vast majority of their business, but lead designers over at WotC have stated on numerous occasions that they design bad cards with casual or "kitchen table" magic players in mind. It's exactly these players who must find a ways to level themselves (i.e. be scrubs) in order to keep their game alive. Imagine that you have a group of 3 other friends who play MtG and typically you all choose to play tier 2 or 3 decks that wouldn't be competitive for tournament play, and suddenly one of your friends shows up with a tier 1 net-deck that is dominant and just can't be beat by the rest of the group. He is playing to win, and this has severely unbalanced what was before a perfectly functional casual MtG group. The other players have been put in a situation where they have to decide whether or not to invest in better decks to compete in the arms race, be scrubs and choose not to play against that deck, or in the worst case stop playing altogether. Clearly none of these are good outcomes.

Collaborative games are another beast altogether. Role playing games are a good poster child for the genre since there truly are no winners and losers. In an RPG, the Game Master and players work together to craft a story that is enjoyable for everyone. The Game Master invents challenges and situations for the players to overcome, but he is not trying to beat them. In fact, beating the players is no work for the Game Master at all, since they are the final authority when it comes to resolving in-game situations and conflicts it is easy enough for them to obliterate the rest of the player characters, but this is not fun. To preserve the game, the GM must not try to win. Likewise, the players must also not try to win. You might be wondering how you can even play to win in a game like Dungeons & Dragons or Rogue Trader. Some people try, and those people are frequently referred to as power gamers. A power gamer is a person whose intention is to have the most powerful character in an RPG group, frequently (but not always) because they want to break the game (i.e. "win"), and they are generally unhappy if they cannot accomplish this. They use a lot of unsavory methods to achieve their goals, including but not limited to rules lawyering and meta-gaming, which most will agree can really drag a game down. GMs will often make certain types of characters or options unavailable to players specifically to try and ward off power gaming, which only deepens the power gamer's desire to win. To the power gamer, failure to craft their ideal character means that they have lost and the GM has won. In this case the GM is being a scrub to a certain extent, but when playing to win ruins the game he has no choice. It would be nice if everybody could just do what is best for the game, but then again we don't all play games for the same reasons.