A Role Playing Games Blog
Sven
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Posts by Sven
Going to Essen tomorrow!
2October 20, 2010
Tomorrow is a big day in my gaming-calendar: The Spiel 2010 in Essen starts!
I assume, that “Spiel” or “Essen” don’t ring any bells with quite a few of my readers here at Stargazer’s World, especially the non-european ones. So let me explain:
The “Spiel” (German for “game” or “play”) is an annual gaming fair held in the west German city of Essen. While you will find Roleplaying games, miniature Wargames, comics and lots of other stuff in the halls, the thing that the Spiel is really famous for, are Board- and Cardgames. For Boardgames, especially the so called “Eurogame”-variety (games in the vein of Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, El Grande, Agricola etc.), this is THE event of the year. Gamers from all over the world come to Germany each October, to be able to be the first to see and play the newest games – and of course to go shopping. The name of the fair and the name of the city where it takes place are often used interchangeably and if you tell a hard-core boardgamer, that you are going to Essen, he will know, that you are visiting the Spiel.
The Spiel (officially “Internationale Spieletage”) is held in mid-octobre each year. This year it will be from 21st to 24th of October and, being in the luxurious position of living only about two hours by car from Essen, I will be driving there tomorrow morning.
Originally I wanted to give you a bigger preview to what new games I am looking forward to, but somehow ran out of time. And since I don’t have the time to write any more tonight (going to see Sting at the Frankfurt Festhalle in two hours…yay!), I will try to give you a bit of an update in the next few days – though I guess that I will be busy gaming. 
In the meantime, if you are really interested, you can see my “watchlist” here. Beware that it is basically a notepad for me and my notes are in german (though the videos and rules I linked are mostly english).
If you want to see some of the newest games: Aldie, Derk & the Crew from BoardGameGeek have their own booth at Essen and will be streaming interviews, demos and shameless bragging about the latest purchases throughout the fair. Check it out here.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark
4October 18, 2010
Descent is part of the FFG Big Box-Line of games.
Welcome back to another board game-review at Stargazer’s World. This time I am going to take a closer look at one mammoth of a game: Descent – Journeys in the Dark by Kevin Wilson and published by Fantasy Flight Games. I will try to give you a feel for this game and what I like about it. I won’t go into a detailed rules discussion – the game is just too complex for that and I fear this review would get rather boring that way. Do you want to know more? Download the rulebook at FFG.
Goggling at the bits
At first glance, this game is an obvious hit with role-players and fantasy geeks. Just looking at all the stuff in the coffin-sized box brings maniacal laughter to the discerning gamer. Or at least a deranged grin – see picture to the right.
There are 80 georgeous miniatures, depicting heroes and monsters. Heaps of cards with weapons, armour, treasures, skills and many other things. Beautifully illustrated map pieces, printed on sturdy cardboard, that can be connected to form ever changing dungeons. On top of that you get a mountain of tokens and LOTS of other stuff. The huge box is filled with high quality gaming goodness and just unboxing the game and punching out the counters and tokens is pure bliss – if you are, like me, such inclined. Just take my word for it (and take a look at the pictures): The components are beautiful and of high quality – we are used to nothing less from Fantasy Flight Games.
Not necessarily what you think it is
- Get ‘em, boys!
What most gamers hope for, when they see this game for the first time, is this: That it is the be all and end all RPG-style Boardgame. That this game will allow them to recreate the fun and depth of a dungeon-delving D&D-Campaign. That they can take a character from humble beginnings to epic hights of heroic might in an ongoing campaign. And that it does all these things within a more manageable timeframe than a “real” RPG. Many old-school gamers might also hope for an updated kind of Warhammer Quest, a game which allowed you to do those things to a certain extent, but which feels rather dated by now, has quite a few problems of it’s own and, being out of print, is no longer easily obtainable.
Let me say this right now and without any sugar coating: Descent doesn’t live up to those expectations. It’s not THE RPG-Boardgame-Hybrid, not the Messiah that the children of D&D and Talisman have been waiting for. But Descent is a really great game in it’s own right – just not, what many people hope for.
Journeys in the Dark – How it all works
- Um…guys? I could use some help here…
In Descent players take one of two roles: Hero or Dungeonlord. There are up to four heroes in a game and these heroes try to defeat the Overlord, who controls the monster and traps in the Dungeon.
I have to get another misconception off the table at this point: The Overlord is not a Dungeonmaster/Gamemaster in the classical sense. The Dungeonlord is playing to win and he has to adhere strictly to the rules. Let me repeat this: The Dungeonlord plays to win. He is not just there to tell a story or pretend at putting up some token-opposition for the heroes but letting them win at the end, just to make a good story. This kind of stuff is for sissies – the Dungeonlord is in it for the sweet taste of victory and for laughing maniacally at each mishap the heroes suffer. So if you feel, that heroes should always win in the end or at least 80% if the time – this game isn’t designed for that. And if you decide to play the Overlord as a plushy push-over, the game gets boring real fast.
Descent comes with a booklet full of quests, telling the Overlord-player, how to set up the map, where to place treasures and initial monsters. While he is doing this, the other players draw random Heroes, draw Skill-cards and buy their starting equipment. The Overlord shuffles his deck of cards and draws his starting hand. The game is ready to begin – and probably half an hour has already passed.
- A hero
Each turn the heroes take their rounds in any order they agree to – but every hero has to finish his turn, before another hero can act. Heroes can move about, attack monster, open chests, pick up treasures, drink potions and lots of other stuff.
The objective of the heroes is defined by the quest they are playing – most of the time it will be defeating some especially evil and mighty monster or something equally creative. But while the goal might be simplistic, it is not easy to achieve! The heroes have to be effective and well organised to be victorious: They have to move quickly and not let themselves get bogged down in pointless fights. They have to be clever in placing the party members, because any square that any hero can see, can not be used by the Overlord to spawn monsters. So a heroes life is quite hard: They have to think hard and coordinate their moves to get the best effect. That’s why Descent can feel a bit more like a squad-level tactical wargame set in a dungeon instead of a fantasy dungeon romp.
The sheer amount of options also carries a high risk of analysis paralysis: It is not rare for heroes to spend the better part of half an hour planning and discussing a single turn. During the course of the game, the Heroes will gain Gold and Treasures and can use these to buy new Skills and Equipment. When a Hero is “killed”, he loses some stuff and re-awakens in the city, from where he can return to the dungeon on his next turn. The really bad thing about dying in Descent is, that it makes the heroes lose Conquest Tokens. The heroes start out with a number of Conquest Tokens and have a chance to gain additional ones at certain points during the adventure. When the heroes ever run out of Conquest Tokens, they have lost the game. LOST!!! Mwahahahaha!
Errr…where was I? Oh, yes…
When the heroes finally finished their moves, it’s the Overlord’s turn. The Overlord can use his cards to spawn new monsters, set traps, buy permanent improvements (getting more monsters or drawing more cards each turn for example) etc. To play a card, he needs to spend Threat. The Overlord gains a fixed amount of threat every turn and can get more, by discarding cards from his hand. Moving and attacking with existing monsters on the board doesn’t cost any threat.
When the Overlord is done, a new turn begins, starting with the heroes. Repeat until one side has won – which means either the heroes achieving their goal or the Overlord making the heores run out of Conquest Tokens.
Is it any good?
- Arrrrgh! The spider got me!
I really can not tell you, whether this game is for you or not. It’s really not that easy to tell with Descent.
On the one hand it is a really cool dungeon-themed game with fantastic bits and pieces. But it can be pretty much a brain-burner – which might put you off, when you expected it to be light beer-and-pretzels fun. All the planning also means, that the game can take quite long: One dungeon can easily last three or four hours. But the game can also be over in an hour or less – which more often than not will indicate a sweeping victory for the overlord. (Dont’ forget that maniacal laughter when you manage to do that as the Overlord!)
Descent also doesn’t really allow heroes to carry over their equipment and improvements from one dungeon to the other, as there isn’t a proper campaign system in Descent. There is the expansion “Road to Legend” which adds this – but it also adds a hell of a time commitment. A campaign can span months, even if you manage to play weekly!
So, to put it in a nutshell: If you would like to spend a few hours dungeon delving with your friends and don’t mind thinking about your move and don’t mind, that there is no real campaign-mode, this game is great. If “light fun” and “deep thinking and long playing time” aren’t mutually exclusive for you, then Descent could be for you.
If, on the other hand, you want a RPG-substitute, something, that feels like an old school RPG – forget Descent. In this respect Descent fails utterly. It is just a boardgame – nothing more and nothing less.
The game also won’t be for you, if you want something, that plays quickly. You should expect your games of Descent to last at least two hours, but the real problem is, that you don’t really know how long it will take. A single play might last one hour or four, so it is very hard to plan.
Ok, I hope, that I was able to give you a rough idea about Descent: Journeys in the Dark. Personally, I really love this game and the only thing I don’t like about it is that I get it to the table so rarely.
Roll Through the Ages
3June 15, 2010
First of all, a big apology to everybody who is waiting for me to write something about Descent or Arkham Horror, as originaly promised. I had very little time to spare recently and many things that kept my mind occupied. So today I will give you another review of a rather light filler type of game: Roll Through the Ages – The Bronze Age by Matt Leacock of Pandemic-fame. But don’t worry, that Descent-review is coming. Promised!
Roll Through the Ages (RTtA for short) is a simple dice game for up to four players. Actualy it is very similiar to that extremely uncool and ungeeky game calle Yahtzee – you roll dice and try to get certain results to cross of your scoresheet. Sounds unsuitable for roleplayers and serious geeks in any field? Ahhh…wait a moment: Have I told you about the theme? It’s a civilization-building dice game and the dice are custom, showing results such as workers, food and trade goods. Does that sound better? Yeah? Thought so.
- Roll Through the Ages – The Box
At the start of the game, each player get’s a score sheet and a peg board (see picture below). The score sheet allows you to keep track of where you spend your resources and a few other things: How many cities and monuments you have build, which developments your civilization has bought, how bad you people have been hit by disasters. During the game you just tick off the appropriate boxes with a pencil. The peg board allows you to track your resources: Food and the five different kinds of trade goods. You just move the peg in the appropriate rows up and down – much more convenient than writing stuff down.
The most useless RPG-supplements you ever paid money for
7March 16, 2010
I guess we all have done that at least once:
There is a new supplement for my favorite RPG, but I am kind of lukewarm about it. I guess, that I will not really need it. But still…I have bought everything else that has come out for that particular RPG. So – come on! I will always know, that my collection is incomplete without it. The place between the books that came before and after will be a gaping void, mocking me for my stinginess. It is my favorite RPG after all, right? Even if I will not really use it, just having it will be good and reading through it will be fun. So I place the order. And the book arrives. And it is worse than I imagined. To be brutaly honest, it is next to useless and a waste of perfectly good paper!
By Sigmar! Why did I buy this turd of a supplement??
My personal “worst buy” was the Character Pack for the 2nd Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay by Black Industries. I have always been a HUGE fan of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, with the 1st Edition being my very first RPG back in the day. So when Black Industries came out with the new edition in the mid-naughties, I religiously picked up every single publication. And I really loved what they did. Great stuff – except for the Character Pack.
What did I get in that thin supplement?
I got 50 copies of the same bland Character Sheets, that I could easily have photocopied from the rulebook! I really expected them to be a improved, more beautiful version. Nope – the same stuff as in the rulebook
But there also is a 16-page booklet – there has to be some good stuff in there! Actually…no. Inside you’ll find:
- Name generators that put thousands of Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, and Imperial Human names at your fingertips.
These were already in the rulebook! Ok, they are slightly expanded here…
- Spell summaries of the most common Arcane and Divine Lores.
I needed those like a fish needs a bicycle.
- A Spell Grimoire sheet for Priests and Wizards.
Ok, somehwat useful – if you have handwriting, that fits in lines for 6pt fonts…
- A recap of Character Creation, including all essential tables.
Great! So I get a second copy of the Character Creation Chapter form the rulebook! Woohoo!
- A Combat Action Summary, with both Basic and Advanced Actions ready for instance reference during play.
Yay! Now I have three copies of this: In the rulebook, on the GM-screen and in this booklet!
- A series of inspirational Character Portraits by Dave Gallagher.”
The big joke, to round it all off: The Character pack was packed in a double-sided, flimsy sheet of paper. On the inside there is a selection of drawings, that I would classify as drafts.
As you can guess, I was not really happy with my purchase.
So, what purchases do you regret? If you could travel back in time to keep yourself from buying one RPG supplement – what would it be?
Tales of the Arabian Nights
6March 15, 2010
Welcome back to another boardgame review at Stargazer’s World!
For my second article I have chosen my newest acquisition: Tales of the Arabian Nights by Eric Goldberg, published by Z-Man-Games.
Tales of the Arabian Nights - Box
I have to digress a bit first:
Many of you will propably remember the Adventure Gamebooks from the eighties, like the Lone Wolf- or Fighting Fantasy-series. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, here’s how those books work:
They are written from the point of view of the player character and every so often, the reader will be asked to make a decision. Each option has a chapter number next to it, that tells you where your story continues. So a simple chapter might be “The path divides in front of you. If you want to go left, read on at 245. If you want to go right, read on at 431″. These books often have simple rulesets with skills and combat rules. All you need for your solitaire-adventures is one of those paperbacks, a pencil and maybe a die.
For me these were actually my very first contact with the concept of fantasy roleplaying and I still treasure my copies of the Lone Wolf-books. I really loved to spend my time in the magic worlds these books created – and unlike other books they let me interact with the world and make my own choices. These books were the door to a whole new world of gaming and fantasy!
So, why am I telling you about this? Quite simple: Tales of the Arabian Nights basicaly is a very ambitious Chose-your-own-adventure-book with a board, a LOT of encounters and playable with up to six players.
Tales of the Arabian Nights with two players
Tales of the Arabian Nights (TotAN for short) places the players in the middle of adventures from One Thousand and One Nights. You will be experiencing stories of adventure and wonder like those of Sindbad and Ali Baba (which are acutally playable characters).
During the game the players create random adventures from encounters and, by interconnecting these, weave legendary stories in their imagination. It can be heroic, whacky, funny and, I’ll admit it, sometimes stupid.
While TotAN is not quite unique, there definitly are very few boardgames that use a book with numbered paragraphs to tell a story. One that comes to mind is Barbarian Prince from Heritage USA (1981).
Some of you may already know TotAN from it’s ealier edition: It was originaly released by West End Games in 1985, though there have been significant changes between the two editions.
How does it work?
TotAN is not a very complicated game, but it requires a bit of work to run. The rulebook weighs in at 18 pages but that includes table of contents, designer’s notes, background info and lots of illustrations. If you understand the game it can be explained in fifteen minutes.
All characters start in Baghdad, with three Skills each. Skills come in many different forms (“Luck”, “Courtly Graces” or “Seamanship” for example) and give you advantages in encounters that refer to these skills. You can gain and lose skills through encounters and it is obviously a rather good thing to have lots of skills.
Before the actual game begins players decide on their Victory Formula – which determines their goal in the game. While the game itself is very rich in theme, this goal is very unthematic and bland: Each player secretly distributes 20 points between Story Points and Destiny Points. These can be gained and lost throughout the game and if you reached your goal (for example 14 Story Points and 6 Destiny Points) and are back in Baghdad, you have won the game. There isn’t even some ingame explanation given or any description, what Story and Destiny Points represent. Meh!
So here’s my take on it: A few bored lads and lasses from ancient Baghdad had a rather wild night out on the town and after a few arabic coffees come up with a wager. They are to travel the world and whoever comes back with the biggest name and the wildest stories to tell is declared the winner. You know, just the typical stuff people did before television and the internet.
Some components - encounter card, dice, playing piece, encounter tables
During the game players take turns travelling the world and having encounters in the space they end their movement in. These Encounters are the heart of the game and while the process is relatively simple in practice, it is very hard to describe in just a few words. I’ll try to give you a brief overview of how it works without going into all the details.
The encounters are determined and resolved by reading from the Book of Tales – a massive, spiral-bound 300-page book with 2600 different encounters! Let me give that to you in words: two-thousand-six-hundred encounters. That’s quite a few adventure hooks – I can assure you that.
The player to your left always has the Book of Tales on your turn and is called the Reader. So, when you have finished your move, the Reader determines from the encounter card you have drawn, which encounter table he must use this turn and asks you to roll a die. He then determines what you will encounter this turn (the picture “Some components” (above) gives you an idea what this can look like).
Reaction Matrix & Encounter from Book of Tales - Studying the Egg of a Roc
The player on your right is called the Matrix Reader, as he now consults the Reaction Matrices and tells you, what your possible reactions to this encounter are. The Reaction Matrices are three pages of tables that allow you to determine, which kind of reactions you can chose in certain encounters and tell the Reader which paragraph to read. You can see an example of a reaction matrix and encounters from the book of tales in the picture on the left. After you have decided how to react to the encounter, the Reader goes to the paragraph determined by the reaction matrix (in the case on the picture on the left, it was to Study the Egg of a Roc – so we go to paragraph number 943). He then reads you the first paragraph and checks if you have any applicable skills. You get the choice of which skill you use (if any) but of course you will not know what the results will be before you make your choice.
After resolving your encounter, the Book of Tales and the Reaction Matrices are passed on and it is the next players turn.
I have to stress that the encounter system is really, really cleverly done. It is quite seldom that you get bogus encounters that doesn’t easily fit the characters location and the system ensures that you can’t encounter a lion in a forest or at sea for example.
Is it any good?
Obviously a game like this is not really about winning or strategy – if you are looking for a game that challenges your ability to outhink your opponents and to secure victory against the best laid plans of other players, this game is not it.
TotAN is a bit of a borderline case between roleplaying games and boardgames. Of course it obviously has a board and the actions of the players are limited by the rules and the game engine. But on the other hand there is very little strategy, winning is secondary and the focus of the game is the telling of stories – all things, that we don’t normaly associate with boardgames but with roleplaying games. The game is quite random, there is little player interaction and you have to accept, that you don’t have total control over what is going on. This are propably the reasons, why the game fails for many hardcore boardgamers – in many ways it’s really not what we expect a boardgame to be.
Talking about the games limitations, I should also mention, that looking up the encounters and flipping back and forth in the Book of Tales can be a bit tiresome. I’d also suggest, not to play the game with more than four people, as the downtime get’s too much and you also really can not follow the developing stories of the characters. Three players is propably ideal, as every player is somehow involved on each turn – one is reader, one active player and one matrix reader.
But if you can accept the game for what it is and enjoy the weaving of a story from random encounters and appreciate the sheer endless variety of it all – and I assume that many roleplayers can – it is a great game. It’s a whole world to explore and the sheer ammount of encounters in the Book of Tales ensures that you will discover something new with every play.
What I have written about the game really just scratches the surface – your character can become a Sultan or a Slave, he (or she) can get married and have children, gain legendary treasures and find hidden Places of Power like the Valley of Diamonds or the Lake of Colors! The character can even become sex changed – yeah, there’s strange stuff going on in acient arabia! It is really a big world of fantastic tales.
So the next time your GM is completely burned out or a few players just don’t show up for your RPG-session but you still want to experience some marvelous adventures – why don’t you visit ancient arabia of legend with Tales of the Arabian Nights?
Fearsome Floors
3February 26, 2010
After your great welcome, I am really eager to get my first article out of the door.
Therefore I have decided to give you a short review of one of my favorite light games. By “light” I mean, that it doesn’t involve a whole lot of rules and is easily accessible even to people who are not hardcore gamers.
Also, it has a dungeon, a hideous monster and lots of blood and gore…on the map anyway. So this should appeal to roleplayers, right? 
Hiding from the monster
Fearsome Floors by designer Friedemann Friese is a rules-light, whacky horror themed race game, in which players are trying to escape from the dungeons of evil Prince Fieso and avoid getting eaten by the horrible monster Furunkulus.
How does it work?
At the start of the game, each player gets four playing tokens of one color, representing a team of people who try to get out of the dungeon. All tokens enter the map, which represents a columned hall, from one corner and try to flee through the exit in the opposite corner. Whoever manages to get three of his tokens through the exit wins.
Movement is done in quite a simple way: All tokens have two sides, each with a number on them – one side white, the other black. The number on the current upper side of the token tells you how many spaces you can move the token this turn. After taking your move, the token is turned over, which makes it easy to distinguish which tokens have already moved this turn. The other interesting aspect is, that the numbers on both sides are different: While both sides of all tokens add up to seven, the distribution is different. There are pieces, that move six spaces on one turn and only one on the next, while other move three on one and four on the other.
Players take turns moving their tokens until all have had a chance to move. After that Furunkulus, the monster, tries to catch the players and eat them.
Game in progress
The monster starts on the exit-square. Movement is done according to a few simple rules. First, the current start-player draws the topmost card from the monster movement deck (which you can see at the top of the picture above). These cards either show a number, telling you how far the monster is going to move this turn, or a number of crosses, representing the number of player-tokens the monster will eat this turn – no matter, how far it has to move.
Then the monster starts moving in the direction it faces. After it enters a new square, it looks left, right and ahead, looking for player tokens. There are three possibilites:
- The monster can see no token in any direction: The monster continues in the direction it is currently facing.
- The monster sees one or multiple player tokens: It will turn towards the closest and start moving towards it.
- There are multiple tokens at exactly the same distance from Furunkulus: This will confuse him and he will continue moving in the original direction.
You check for what Furunkulus can see in each square he enters and he will always turn toward the closest victim.
THIS is the really interesting part of the game: With clever placement of your tokens, you can try to steer Furunkulus towards other players tokens! But beware: This can easily backfire and miscalculations are common.
If Furunkulus catches up with a crunchy snack delicious victim player token, it is returned to the player and can re-enter the board next turn.
When the Monster walks against a wall, it will transport magically to the opposing end of the board (that’s what the letters on the boarder of the board are for).
So…is it any good?
This is not going to end well...
Hell, yeah! First, it is a very simple game. Actually you know most of the rules now. Of course there are some additional pieces on the board (like stoneblocks, behind which tokens can hide, and blood pools, over which they can slide) and there are a few details I have left out of the overview, but basically that’s it. As you can see, it’s a simple game that can be explained in a few minutes.
Second, it is great fun trying to steer the monster towards the other players tokens – and only a little bit less fun when this doesn’t work out as planned and your own tokens get eaten instead. We don’t want Furunkulus to starve, do we?
Another thing, that is great about Fearsome Floors, is that it works with a wide range of players: It is playable with 2-7 players. You just have to be aware that the feel of the game changes with the number of players. The more players there are, the more chaotic the game will be. While you can try to plan ahead and steer the monster effectively with few players, this will prove very hard with many players. The sweet spot is 3-6 players – which is still pretty flexible.
But even if the rules are simple, it is not a very short game. The game takes about an hour.
This is aggrevated by the fact that moving your pieces often requires you to make agonizing decisions. You have to decide in which order to move your tokens, try to calculate the movement of the monster and guess what the other players are going to do. Some people can get caught in a severe case of analysis paralysis during this game and in that case you might consider introducing a turn timer to keep the game flowing.
Fearsome Floors is published in english by Rio Grande games and the original german Edition Finstere Flure by 2F-Spiele.
Sven – that boardgame guy
13February 18, 2010
I am Sven and I am one of the new contributors that Stargazer took aboard. I feel that it is only appropriate, that I tell you a little about myself.
Let’s start with a shocking revelation:
I haven’t played a pen&paper RPG for about five years!
“So what’s that guy doing here??” you might ask. I’ll come to that in a minute.
Of course I am no stranger to roleplaying games and I have played lots of RPGs in my late teens and early twenties. Actualy I was a member of Stargazer’s gaming group back then and we enjoyed many sessions together. I started with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, which to this day remains my favorite. But I also played (and partialy GMed) Star Wars D6, Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and AD&D – just to name a few.
As many of you will have experienced themselves, after people leave school, many gaming groups just fall apart. Some players move away to university, some completely lose their interest in gaming, others prefer to spend more time with their signifcant other and most people just have less and less time to commit to a hobby like roleplaying.
I am one of those people: After I moved away, it became harder and harder to arrange gaming with my old group. At the same time I just didn’t find a lot of interesting roleplayers in Frankfurt, where I live now. The few times I managed to join another group here, I just didn’t get the same enjoyment from it, as I had with my old gaming buddies. At the same time, my girlfriend never really “got” roleplaying – she tried it a few times, but she just doesn’t like it. So after a few unsuccessful tries to get into groups at my new location, I slowly gave up on roleplaying.
That didn’t mean I quit the gaming hobby altogether: I love boardgames. When I was a kid I always bugged my parents to play Monopoly with me and my first kind of “geeky” gaming was the Battletech boardgame – even before roleplaying. So boardgaming became my replacement drug: It doesn’t require as much preperation as a roleplaying session, you are more flexible with the number of players and it is often easier to find players. The top reason: My SO also likes boardgames.
So coming back to the question, what I want to do here:
I want to be your correspondent on the planar side of gaming. I know, that many roleplayers also enjoy boardgames – just as there are many hardcore boardgamers, who are ex-roleplayers like me.
I would like to introduce you to interesting boardgames, that you might have missed otherwise and of course I will focus on games, that I feel should be especialy appealing to roleplayers: Games, that generaly have a strong theme (often Fantasy or SciFi).
And don’t worry: I will not flood the blog with lots of postings on boardgames – Stargazer’s World is a Blog about RPGs and I just want to add an outlook on another aspect of the gaming hobby.
So…to get a bit of a feel for my audience here: Do you even play boardgames? What are your favorites? What was your worst boardgaming experience? What kind of games are you most interested in?
You have a question about an existing or upcoming Stargazer Games product? Ask away! You want to know what we think about a recent development in the RPG industry? Send in your questions. You always wanted to know what we think about game X? Send us an email.
