That’s the cover to DungeonQuest, a game that came out in 1985. I bought it probably around 1987 or 1988, and it’s a game I really like.

In it, you are exploring a castle with all sorts of rooms and passages. At the center is a Dragon’s lair, where you can find treasure aplenty. Problem is making it there. See, not only are you building the rooms as you go along (by drawing tiles randomly, which means often going in the wrong direction) but you’re encountering all kinds of traps and monsters in your way.

The thing about DungeonQuest is that it is a crazy lethal game. There are cards that just plain kill your guy, period. For instance, there are some amulets in the game. Some are very good. Some are bad. The only way to know what the one you found does is to put it on, and hope it’s not the one that straight up kills you immediately.

And it’s not like getting to the treasure room means victory. There’s a dragon sleeping in that room. Whenever you grab treasure from it, you check to see if it wakes up, and if it does, you’re usually dead. The longer you stay in, the better chance it has of waking up. And if another player is in there with you, it’s an even better chance.

So let’s say you got to the center, grabbed some PH4T L3WT, and the dragon is asleep. Score, right? Nope. Now you have to get OUT of the dungeon. And you might not be able to get out the same way you got in, because there are ways for the rooms to close off behind you. (In addition, there are very few ways to gain lost hit points, so the damage you’ve already taken is still going to be hurting you.)

Did I mention that you’re being timed? You’re going into this hell-hole during the day, which is the only time it’s safe enough to do so. Every turn the sun is going down, and anyone still in the dungeon at nightfall is history.

How a typical DungeonQuest game ends: everyone dead.

Let me put it this way: someone I was playing with went in to the dungeon, found a treasure worth a measly 30 gold pieces in the first room, and then left the dungeon. He ended up winning because everyone else died.

At this point you are probably wondering why anyone would play this thing, but let me assure you that DungeonQuest is crazy fun. Sure, it’s a bunch of stupid luck and player killing, but it is an absolute hoot to play. And it doesn’t take that long, so you can go again and again.

It’s been out of print for a while, and its original company, Games Workshop, eventually put out Warhammer and, upon discovering that gamers would happily pay tons of cash for plastic models, never bothered to make much of anything else. This left DungeonQuest and other great GW games languishing in limbo.

However, recently there’s been a run on other companies taking over old GW properties. A lot of old dorm-room favorites from the ’80s are being polished up and put out by some of the more raucous game companies looking to satisfy fans of plastic and dice instead of wood and auctions. Finally, it’s DungeonQuest’s turn.

Here’s the new cover to DungeonQuest, which is being put out by Fantasy Flight Games and making its debut at GenCon this weekend. FFG has made the rules available on their website, and I have downloaded them and pored through them. It really does seem that they’ve streamlined the game and improved it. And the new edition looks fantastic; Fantasy Flight is known for overproducing components and giving their games a really stellar look. I can’t wait.

Hold on…wait for what? I already own this game! Not only that, the copy I own hasn’t been played since 2008! Why would I buy this? Yet I have friends going to GenCon who I’ve had to force myself not to ask to pick it up for me. (At retail price, even!) I have one friend who has not yet left for GenCon that I still consider asking! This is crazy!

And another thing: this original game had an expansion: DungeonQuest Catacombs. I have the Catacombs expansion and ended up removing it from the base game because I thought it made the game less fun. This new edition integrates the Catacombs into it, so in theory that should be even less incentive to grab it.

I should just take the copy I already have on my shelf, invite some folks over, and treat myself to watching a bunch of adventurers meet their makers over and over again. This would cost me nothing, and I could do it right now. But instead I’m pining for this other edition I don’t need, which costs $60 (and, for all I know, will sell out within five minutes because they only brought twelve copies to the convention, as is so often the case.)

What I need the new DungeonQuest like.

I suppose that I should consider myself lucky to have “problems” like this.

I have two regular boardgame groups, one that meets on Sundays and one that meets on Tuesdays. This past Tuesday Mike, Jim, Kyle, Chris, and I met and played Jim’s new acquisition, Cyclades. This was good because I figured hey, I can review it for Analog Gaming!

Cyclades is by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, who’ve done a number of games together, including the delightful Dice Town, which I love. Cyclades is set in the ancient Greek isles, and the goal is to establish two metropolises (metropoles?) in the isles. To do this you need to win the favor of the gods, hire mythological creatures, and spill the blood of your opponents (or at least sufficiently screw up their plans.)

Briefly, the game works like this. Some islands and some ocean spaces generate income. First you get your income, and then people try and win the favor of one of five Gods. Each God grants a special ability: Ares provides warriors and lets you move them, Poseidon provides fleets and lets you move them, Zeus gives you priests (which make offerings to the gods cheaper) and Athena gives you Philosophers, which can be collected to build metropoli. These four gods also have an associated building that gives some kind of ability, and if you get all four buildings, you can swap them for a metropolis. There’s also Apollo, the slut of the Gods, who is always available to anyone and gives cash. You win favor by, of course, an auction. If you get outbid on a God, you have to immediately move your bid to a different one. Once everyone has their own God, you do the actions in God order (which has been randomized). You can also buy one of the available mythological creatures, which provides some kind of temporary special ability.

Fights are pretty straightforward and are based partly on die rolls. (Pauses to take a sip of water while the luck-averse Eurogamers in the audience clutch their pearls and fan themselves.) You add the number of troops on each side to a die roll, and the loser discards one guy. If anyone’s left, both sides have a chance to retreat, and if anyone’s left after that, you fight again until only one side has troops remaining.

As I said, first player to have two metropolese at the end of the round wins. So there’s nothing overly complicated going on here. We set it up, picked our colors, did a rules read (which got one rule wrong, but that’s okay), and got started.

By round two I realized I hated this game.

Okay, that’s a strong word. I didn’t hate it. I’ve hated games before while playing them, such as Don Quixote. But I realized that I really didn’t care about anything that was happening on the board. None of this was grabbing me, and not only did I not see much of a way to achieve my goal in the game, I wasn’t overly interested in finding one.

Now, I could have offered up The Stick. See, in this Tuesday group, we have a tradition involving The Stick, pictured here:

As you can see, the stick is actually a plastic bone. A few years ago Mike, Dan, TJ, and I were playing a game called Alexandros. None of use were enjoying this completely abstract snooze-a-thon, so Mike made a proposition. He reached onto a shelf and found this plastic bone and declared that if anyone wants to stop playing he can “shake the stick” (the bone) and if someone else agrees, we quit. A turn or two later, TJ was pondering his move and Dan said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking hard about over there because I’m shaking that fucking stick as soon as it’s my turn.” If you’re not enjoying the game being played, you can offer the stick and — and this is important — we’ll stop playing if someone else also agrees. You can’t just shake your way out of losing a game.

I wasn’t liking Cyclades, but it didn’t seem like a stick-shaker. It was just not my thing. Everyone else seemed to be into it, so I just decided I would keep my mouth shut, go with a low-key strategy, and keep on. I’m not a big fan of moaning about a game out loud, and I didn’t want to wreck anyone else’s fun.

Eventually Chris won the game, and we all congratulated him. This is about the time, in the case of a new game, when we all give our impressions of it, and I led off saying, “Man, I really didn’t care for that one.” It turned out that neither did Mike. Or Chris. Kyle wasn’t crazy about it. Jim probably liked it the best, but I don’t think he was going to put it on any “Best of 2010″ lists.

In retrospect, it should have been pretty easy to figure out that none of us were really getting into it. The biggest indicator should have been the fact that, for an interaction-intense, combat-heavy game, nobody was fighting. There was one battle the entire game, and it was what ended the game. We did bump people around in the auction, but even that wasn’t terribly confrontational; most people just accepted their fate. Hell, at one point I got to bid on Ares for practically free (plus the start player position, because of the rule we got wrong) because nobody had grabbed him yet — and I was rebidding after being bumped.

Now, I don’t know why Cyclades didn’t click with the others. I don’t know why it didn’t click with me. I certainly like other games it’s similar to, and there’s nothing about it I could see that doesn’t work. Maybe I was just not in the right mood. Maybe my shoes were too tight. Maybe my heart was two sizes too small.

Cyclades has a good reputation. It pleased both Tom Vasel and Michael Barnes, two very different types of gamers and reviewers. Bruno Faidutti, a game designer whose work I really like, nominated it for his Game of the Year. It’s got a fairly high rating on BGG (but then again, it’s a game that came out within the past six months, which gives it like 25 extra Sexy Points there.) My pal Matt, from the Sunday group, likes it well enough (he wasn’t as enthused as those other reviewers, but he still enjoyed it.) Why did I just give up on it almost right out of the gate? I really don’t know.

I feel like I should play it again, give it another chance. Obviously with more conflict and trash talking and beer and some interested players it would be a different creature. But I don’t know. If it were brought to the table, I’d happily join in, but I don’t feel the need to give it a fair shake. Thinking about it now, while I can see it impartially as a game and understand why those people are excited about it, it still doesn’t do anything for me.

Hence, no review of Cyclades from me. I didn’t like it, but I can’t give it a negative review, since there’s nothing I can point to and say, “this bit bugged me.” Everything in it is fine. The rules were fine, the artwork is fine, the little stupid symbols they use for things instead of actual words are ignorable enough, there’s gobs of plastic if that’s your thing (it’s not mine, but that’s not a dealbreaker unless it interferes with gameplay), it’s a well-done game.

That I just don’t care about at all.

When one thinks of boardgames — assuming one ever does — one thinks of them as primarily mental challenges. They are known for employing the brain through strategy, tactics, negotiation, memory, or even factual knowledge. Yet there is an entire subgenre of games that, while it can involve these things, focuses primarily on physical interaction with the pieces. They’re called dexterity games.

A few of the most popular mainstream games, in fact are dexterity games. Perhaps the most classic example of this is Operation, a game centered around pulling bits of plastic out of a guy who’s ill because he’s got bits of plastic stuck in his open wounds.

Presumably, Operation is still fairly popular with kids, since there are several licensed versions of it available. You can pull organs out of Shrek, Homer Simpson, Spider-Man, and Stringer Bell.

This type of dexterity game is pretty limited to Operation. There aren’t that many other boardgames I’m aware of that use this particular model (I’m sure people will correct me in the comments.)

A more popular type of dexterity game is also found in a popular mainstream title, Jenga, which has a few licensed spin-offs (and several rip-offs). For both of you who have never played it, Jenga is a stacking game in which you pull blocks from the bottom of the tower and move them to the top without knocking it over. Stacking (and balancing) are very popular for dexterity games, and there are a lot of other ones out there that use this idea. Villa Paletti is a sort of artistic Jenga, with brightly colored pieces. Hamsterrolle, as its name implies, takes place in a wheel, where you’re trying to move the pieces up along the interior of the wheel without making it unbalanced and rolling all the pieces out.

Fear the Bandu egg. FEAR IT.

One of the best games of this type is Bandu, which is tragically out of print at that name and price. (It is available under the name Bausack, but for significantly more than the $25-$30 you can usually find a Bandu for on eBay, or cheaper at a thrift store, where they often show up.) Bandu involves a number of odd wooden shapes that must be stacked on your tower without having it collapse. However, you have the ability to try to bid on pieces you want to add to your tower (say, to help out with something oddball you’ve been saddled with) or to avoid pieces you don’t want on your tower (and are trying to force on someone else). Bandu is a lot of fun and highly recommended, if you can get hold of one.

The final major type of dexterity game is the “flicking” game. The star of this show is probably Crokinole, which has its roots in marbles and shuffleboard. you take turns flicking wooden disks across a round wooden board, jockeying for position in the center. It’s insanely fun, but the high price of a good Crokinole board has made it only a dream for most gamers to own (though Mayday Games is producing an inexpensive board now — “inexpensive” being a relative term.)

That's a lot of wood. I'm not talking about the board, I'm talking about the gamers looking at it.

For those not looking to drop a few bills on a board, there are much less expensive flicking games. Pitchcar, while still a little pricey, presents the disks as cars that are being flicked around a track in a race. In Elk Fest, you’re flicking disks in an attempt to let your wooden elk cross a lake. Perhaps the easiest flicking game to get your hands on is Sorry! Sliders, a game you should be able to find in any department store, which replaces wood with plastic pawns with ball-bearings in them. Much less expensive but still quite a lot of fun!

The most interesting recent development in this genre is Catacombs, which is a flicking game with a fantasy theme. That is, the disks represent heroes or monsters and you attack by hitting one with the other. The elf has arrows which are smaller disks that can also be flicked at enemies, and the wizard has a “shield” spell which is just a big wooden barrier the monsters have to get around. It is a spectacularly goofy concept that nevertheless results in a hilariously fun game.

When I first saw this Catacombs demon, I thought he had a bee head. He doesn't, but man how cool would that be?

There’s nothing worse than trying to teach someone a game and having them say, “Do I have to think for this?” Dexterity games allow you to put away The Nobles of Renaissance Italy, pull out something else and say, “Nope, you just have to balance odd shapes of wood on each other while someone flicks disks at you!” See what happens!

As soon as any new computer hardware or software becomes commercially available, most niche groups try to find ways to apply it to their area of interest, especially if those groups are already somewhat nerdy. This is why porn and Star Trek are always the first two third-party applications of any new tech. Boardgamers are no exception.

While boardgames are often presented (in the title of this column, for example) as an alternative to videogames, there’s no reality to this. Boardgames have always coexisted peacefully with computer games (just ask Deep Blue) ever since personal computing devices showed up on the scene. More people have probably played computerized versions of Mastermind and Othello than have played their analog counterparts. Computer versions of classic and modern games do fairly well, and recently a number of favorite Eurogames crossed over to success on the Xbox 360. The idea that folks who play with joysticks and folks who play with dice are separate camps is belied by the thousands of gamers who happy exist in both worlds.

The most recent technological doodad to excite the masses is Apple’s iPad. Despite having made its debut only a few months ago, it already has a wide array of games available for it that are treatments of or comparable to some actual cardboard-and-wood boardgames. Having recently snagged one of these gizmos for myself, I tried out a few of them for “research” because, gentle reader, you’re worth it. Here’s what I got.

Small World ($4.99) — This game was my personal pick for Game of the Year last year, and playing it on a friend’s iPad is what helped convince me to get one of my own. The interface is gorgeous, and the gameplay is handled nearly flawlessly (I’d really like a way to take back an action.) It currently only handles the races and powers from the main set (and not all of them, I believe), but there are rumors of future expansions. Right now it only plays with two human players (who are both at the same machine), but an update with AI (as well as a slight price increase) will change that.

World shown actual size.

Carcassonne ($4.99) — Gamers think of the Settlers of Catan (available on iPod but not iPad yet) as the gateway game, but I think Carcassonne, with its easily grasped rules and scalable nature may be supplanting it. Unlike Catan, “Carc” has no trading element, so AI is easier to program, goes from two to five players without any problem, and even has possibilities for solo play. This implementation underlines all of that. You can play with multiple people, in person or over the Internet, and some of them can be AI. There’s also a solitaire version that is pretty neat. The board looks fine and everything works intuitively. Some folks might feel that the game does a little too much for you (showing you all possible positions for a tile or for meeples, denoting when some spots are impossible to be filled), but that’s seldom a complaint you get to hear. This is the standard to which future boardgame translations should aspire. (Currently this is only available as an iPod game, which is still playable on iPad, but when the iPad version is released later this year purchasers will get the upgrade for free.)

Just because there's no tile that can go there doesn't mean you have to scratch up my wooden table.

Boggle ($2.99) — I’m a huge Boggle fan, and this is probably the game I’ve played the most of. It’s pretty well handled on the iPad (you even can, if you want, shake the device to “shake” the cubes) though tracing along the letters could be better (you often stop tracing when you don’t want to or include letters you don’t want). It plays either solo, with others (where each player takes a turn and then passes the iPad to the next player), or (I think), over the Internet. The main issue I have with the game is that you can’t use some words. While “tit” and “ass” are okay, “whore,” “slut,” and “orgy” are verboten, probably because they only have, I guess, sexual connotations. Yet “queer” is also prohibited which is just, well, queer.

"Thrill Bill," coming soon from Vivid Video.

Words With Friends ($2.99) — Here’s where I went a different way. I enjoy Scrabble (my Facebook account exists solely as a Scrabble game front-end) but went with WWF because I already had friends who were playing it. It’s a Scrabble clone done the way most Scrabble clones are done: by changing the layout of the board and some of the letter point values. Otherwise it’s the same, and seems to use the standard Scrabble word list. The changed board layout seems a little more thought out than usual (often it’s clear that the cloners gave no thought at all to how changing the layout would affect play). I’m enjoying WWF, but there are some really bizarre omissions to the game that bug me. First and foremost, it doesn’t tell you how many points a word is worth until after you play it. Sure, you can calculate it in your head, but it seems that since I am holding a computer in my hand, it might step up to the task. Second, there’s no button to rearrange your tiles. One of the ways I like looking for words on Facebook Scrabble is randomizing my tiles until a word jumps out at me. Here, the only way to change them around is to drag them individually. And finally, why not a dictionary? Since the game won’t let you bluff with a bogus word anyway, go ahead and let me check on “foozle” before wasting my time with it. Especially when, if you do play an illegal word, it doesn’t tell you what the illegal word is — annoying if you’ve created several at once. I assume the iPad Scrabble game is very similar to the Facebook one and if so, I’d recommend it over this, but hey, at least I get to play my friends.

"JOWNDY" is the state of being jownd.

Roll Through the Ages ($2.99) — This one is notable because it’s a game that, in its normal version, I’m not very keen on. Like many dice games, it’s kind of boring to play with multiple people because on their turn all you do is watch them roll dice. There isn’t a lot of player interaction or reason for anyone else to be there.

Consequently, I hadn’t planned on buying the app. I did anyway because I thought it might have more appeal to me as a solitaire game, since it wasn’t the game itself I had a problem with, but how well it worked as an entertaining social activity. Sure enough, for a solo game it plays just fine, and everything is implemented pretty well (though the instructions are simply embarrassing and unprofessional, with lazy typos throughout.) I haven’t played it with multiple players yet and am not in a huge rush to do so because see above. Still, it does include the “Late Bronze Age” rules fix that makes the actual game slightly more interactive and interesting. This again is an iPod release that will eventually be upgraded to iPad.

Man, that is one jowndy roll.

There are a few other games I haven’t tried out yet — like Reiner Knizia’s Money and Keltis: the Oracle, for example, (largely because I’m not familiar with their analog versions – as well as knockoff versions of existing boardgames, but these are the ones I’ve grabbed for now.

The question is: why pay $600 to play Boggle? Is this really an optimum way to play games? In some cases, yeah, it is, for the same reason that playing any game electronically is often worth it: because it allows you to play games with people you normally couldn’t. I have a Words With Friends game going with a pal in South Carolina, and a Carcassonne game going with a friend I don’t normally get a lot of gaming time with because of our schedules. Some games simply work better in a digital medium, where the computer can handle a lot of the routine. And if you add up the prices above, the total is less than a single Eurogame would run me. The social element is still there; I can just as easily play Carcassonne with four other people in the room with me on the iPad as I can with the regular version (moreso, in fact, since I don’t own the regular version).

And of course there’s the fact that neither I nor anyone else bought an iPad to play Roll Through the Ages. That’s just gravy. Sure, a copy of the Small World boardgame only costs about $40, but it can’t also read comics, send email, browse the web, play music, or show me movies. So I guess what I’m saying is, I wouldn’t run out and get an iPad if all you plan to do with it is play boardgames. But if you have one anyway, the boardgame options on it are pretty damn sweet.

Once you’ve been gaming for a while, you’ll notice that, even if you have a constantly rotating palette of opponents, you’re still pretty much always playing with the same people. Sure, some of the similarities will be obvious; if you want to do some boardgaming, make sure you know a bunch of white guys who usually have beards and aren’t too proud to still be quoting Monty Python and All Your Base. But beyond that there are some definite categories that every player falls into at least one of, if not more. Here’s a guide to those categories.

Deep Thought

Is it this player’s turn? Hope you brought a magazine! Deep Thought has to completely analyze every possible move he can make and extend it out to its logical conclusion to determine which is the optimal one. If there’s math in the game, he’ll do it. He wants to know how much money everyone has, how many points, who has actions left this round, the relative humidity, if anyone is diabetic, current position of Saturn; anything that can possibly factor into his calculations must be taken into account before he can risk any all-important decision. (And all decisions are important. He will often take three hours deciding what color to play.) Trying to hurry him up will just make him lose count and have to start over. If you get four of these guys together, a single game of Skip-Bo can take months.

likes: All the information. All of it.
dislikes: People who play “suboptimally” and throw off his calculations.
quote: “But you KNOW I’d do that, so what YOU’D do is…”

This guy started a game at another table against Deep Thought when he was 22. They're now on turn three.

The Coach

The Coach enjoys his turn so much, he makes it last through your turn as well. After all, he’s a much better player than you and you can probably benefit from his helpful advice. Why would you want to make your own decisions when The Coach can easily show you better ones? He’s not trying to sabotage your game, either, just make you a more worthy opponent. Wouldn’t you rather just be there to move pieces for him so that he can essentially play himself — the only true challenge he has at this table? (Female players may often feel that The Coach is being condescending to them because they are women, but in his defense, he’s that way to everyone.)

likes: Mirrors.
dislikes: When someone thinks of a play he didn’t think of first.
quote: “You know, you can score two more points if you put it there instead.”

Blood Ninja

Blood Ninja wants to win. Period. Oh sure, we all want to win, but Blood Ninja lives only to win. No less will do. If he does not win, something went horribly wrong. Either someone wasn’t playing right, or there’s too much randomness in the game, or sinister forces conspired to deny him a victory he so obviously earned. He may find a way afterwards to explain that, although it doesn’t seem like he won, when you think about it, he really did. That’s only if he doesn’t win. And during the game, if his winning makes things utterly miserable for everyone else, so be it. The important thing is that he wins. Because really, what else matters?

likes: The taste of victory.
dislikes: Better players.
quote: “If winning is not important, Commander, why keep score?”

Social Joe

Hey everyone, Social Joe is here! Boardgaming is a social activity and no one knows that more than Social Joe. Say, that card you just played reminds me of a story! Hey, I’m gonna go have a smoke! Oh hey, where’s your computer? You gotta see this YouTube video! Oh yeah, I have to make a move, don’t I? Screw it, I’ll just do this. I don’t even know what’s going on anymore! Hey, anyone want another beer?

likes: Hanging out, chit-chatting, good times with good friends.
dislikes: Serious Joe
quote: “Oh, is it my turn?”

Serious Joe

What are you talking about? Serious Joe also likes having a good time. A good time is quiet, focused play with opponents who are all working at their best. Sure, sometimes things get a little raucous and someone chuckles, but we tend to keep that kind of horseplay away from the game table (along with all food and drinks, because maybe you want your games to look like garbage, but I don’t). The good news is, Serious Joes pretty much can’t stand to play with anyone who isn’t a Serious Joe, so they tend to self-segregate.

likes: Stroking his beard in contemplation.
dislikes: Social Joe
quote: “Shhh.”

Six Serious Joes take time out from being concerned about a runaway leader problem to pose.

The Negotiator

Everything has a price. Everything’s negotiable. So says The Negotiator. No matter what the game, what the situation, he’s ready to make a deal. Don’t take the action I want and I’ll not take the action you want. If you leave me alone, I won’t play this card against you. Sure, that’s a featured part of many games, but the Negotiator makes it the main part of every game. Even if he’s completely stomping you and you don’t stand a chance, he has an offer for you to consider. (He can also, in a pinch, explain how everyone at the table except him is a threat to you right now, and they only way you stand a chance is to team up with him against them.) Very often his offers consist of something you can do for him for which, in return, he won’t attack you, but “threat” is such an ugly word.

likes: A deal.
dislikes: Having his bluff called.
quote: “That’s a nice score you got there. Shame if something happened to it.”

Whiney Whinerson

Double-dubs never does good at this game. And the cards aren’t shuffled well. Also, dice hate him. People are teaming up against him for no reason. That guy isn’t playing right. He didn’t get much sleep last night. He can’t see which cards are in front of you. There’s glare on the board. It’s hot in here. He’s not used to playing by these rules. That one strategy is unstoppable. People are playing too fast. People are playing too slow. Someone’s playing a denial deck. He can’t seem to draw a magic item. The start player has too much of an advantage. This board layout is strange. That card is broken and un-fun. Can we get better light in here? He’s just used to playing green. And then he wins.

likes: Spreading the misery.
dislikes: Everything.
quote: “If I had had better luck on that last roll, I’d have won by 27 points instead of just 22.”

Johnny Takeback

When Johnny Takeback plays a videogame, he saves his game constantly. Unfortunately there’s no such thing in boardgames, but he makes do. While Deep Thought agonizes for years over his move, he eventually makes one and sticks with it. Johnny Takeback does the same agonizing but can’t settle. He’ll make and unmake a move several times, paying and restoring his cash or resources or whatever each time until only he has any idea what his “save game state” is. He’s not cheating, he just can’t settle on a course of action. In addition, once his turn is over, he still hasn’t decided. He may need to re-think it again. Or he might have forgotten to get his money. Or maybe he was going to do a point of damage to you with his war wizard, but he forgot. Is it okay if he just goes ahead and does that?

likes: Options.
dislikes: A decision.
quote: “Wait, wait, let me think about this.”

Someone’s Friend

Usually Someone’s Girlfriend, but not always. Someone’s Friend showed up for game day! Now, if that friend is really interested in trying out boardgames, this is great. More often than not, though, Someone’s Friend has just been dragged into this. They have no interest in playing, can’t (or won’t) follow the rules, are pretty much just doing whatever Someone tells them to do, and pretty much having a miserable time. This is not the fault of Someone’s Friend (though often they will continue to insist on participating even after it’s more than clear that they’re not really interested), it’s the Someone who will keep pushing them into this. Nevertheless, you can count on a pretty lousy time for everybody.

likes: Someone.
dislikes: You, probably.
quote: “Will I have to think for this?”

Someone's Friend is totally listening to the rules.

Captain Chaos
Have your boardgames become too stale and predictable? Captain Chaos is here to liven things up! He doesn’t care if he wins or loses, so long as he has a good time, and what he considers a good time is making the entire game unbearable for everyone else. Do you have any kind of strategy whatsoever? Too bad, because Captain Chaos is going to behave in a completely unpredictable matter and do things that don’t help him in the slightest just to screw with you. If you get frustrated by all this, lighten up, it’s just a game! And God help you if he somehow ends up winning.

likes: The look on your face.
dislikes: Anyone else enjoying themselves.
quote: “Aw, you’re no fun!”

Mr. Fix-It

You’ll know you’re playing with Mr. Fix-It before you even open the box. He’ll take a look at the cover and tell you how the fonts and color choices are all wrong, and what they should have done. Then he’ll examine the components and be totally amazed that any serious company would make these kinds of mistakes with them. He can tell you what kind of cardstock they should have used and why the finish is all wrong for the board. And speaking of the board, who the hell came up with that awful design and color scheme? Through Mr. Fix-It you’ll find out how the rules SHOULD have been written and what player aids they should have included. Once you start playing, he’ll determine, on first play, what strategies are “broken” and how poorly the game was playtested. After that first play, he’ll have the whole game figured out and a list of ways to improve it. He’s got the answers.

likes: Game design theory.
dislikes: Game design reality.
quote: “Hello, there are color blind people in the world!”

Red Dead Redemption

The planets have aligned again and Rockstar Games, the video game studio behind the groundbreaking, trend-setting Grand Theft Auto series, has given us Red Dead Redemption, a new entry in their Red Dead Western series and another prime demonstration of the “sandbox” style of game setting they pioneered.

Red Dead Redemption is about John Marston, a retired outlaw who in 1911 is coerced by federal agents into hunting down his old compatriots. It’s a story of gentrification, calling up varied works like The Wild Bunch, Deadwood and Unforgiven, with a mythical West slowly coming to heel under telephone lines, automobiles and growing federal control.

Bureau Chiefs Benjamin Birdie, David Campbell, Kevin Church, Ken Lowery, Andrew Weiss and Dorian Wright got the game on release day or shortly after, and have gathered to talk about the game’s tone, story, successes and shortcomings.

KEN: The game’s stats tell me I’m a little over halfway into the main story, so I feel I’m more or less capable of calling Red Dead Redemption a qualified success.

First and foremost it’s a beautiful game, in subtle and surprising ways: you get early on that this is The West, and it’s a more or less authentic take on different parts of Texas and Mexico at the time, and you move on. But every now and then you’ll be, say, riding along with an NPC just having a conversation when you hit a breathtaking vista at sunset or sun-up. Or you’ll walk into a town and stop, just to take in the ambient conversations and sounds of people (and their beasts of burden) going about their days. These are moments of remarkable yet understated lucidity.

If there is one thing Rockstar does better than anyone else, it’s create a sense of place. That’s because they understand that “place” isn’t just about physical space: it’s about the people, the color palette, the music direction, the outlook and the attitude. Place is tone, and Rockstar’s understanding of that is what puts them so far ahead of most of their competition.

DAVID: I think that’s the real key to Red Dead Redemption’s appeal–it’s an utterly convincing and recognizable game world. All the game elements work together seamlessly to create an immersive environment, something everyone talks about but you rarely see. The weather, time of day, sound design, population of critters, photorealistic environment, minimal UI stuff on screen–it all just works.

As proof of the game’s quality, Red Dead Redemption passed the Gary Test. My dad Gary sat next to me on a couch watching me play for a few hours the other night, and he was utterly entertained. We skinned coyotes, stopped a runaway herd of cattle in a storm, tracked down some bounties, got horsejacked, stopped a lynching, and just generally had an awesome time. This is a guy who couldn’t sit through five minutes of Arkham Asylum gameplay.

“It’s like playing a Western movie,” he said, which pretty much sums it up.

If a video game can pass the Gary Test and keep my dad engaged for an evening, it has succeeded not just as a game, but as a work of pop entertainment.

KEVIN: The immersive, interactive world has been covered by everyone else and I can’t really add anything to that, but I want to mention how full of character this game is, even as it plays with tropes and stereotypes from the spaghetti western genre. There’s honorable lawmen, Mexican warlords, and desert freaks a plenty, but none of them feel worn-out or cliché when you meet them. In an interesting choice, particularly for Rockstar, the hero John Marston isn’t just a Clint Eastwood pastiche: he’s a family man who stays faithful to a distant wife and son as he seeks the titular redemption.

I’m about at the same point Ken is — a bit over halfway through — and I’ve got to say this isn’t just Grand Theft Horse like some of the pundits have said. This is a game that creates a world you want to return to and experience, the equivalent of a fine cinematic experience that still embraces what this particular medium can do so well.

That said, the minigames are horseshit, particularly Liar’s Dice. I hate Liar’s Dice.

KEN: Man fuck Liar’s Dice.

ANDREW: I have been so busy enjoying the multplayer Free Roam mode that I’ve barely touched the singleplayer game.

There is something beautiful about shooting a random stranger’s horse out from under him with a hunting rifle, then snapping off a quick and final head shot as he scrambles for cover in the sagebrush while vultures circle overhead.

KEN: This hits on what I like about the game: We’ve all played it for a week now, and for the most part we’ve had different experiences. When I read that multiplayer offered levels and experience points with a progression in avatars, weapons, mounts and so on, it read to me like we were essentially getting two games: RDR the single-player, and RDR the MMO-lite. I’ve barely scratched the surface of MP–I’m still getting loading problems, and anyway I don’t care about levels if I’m not riding with my posse, namely you guys–but I’ve gone deep into single player… and still haven’t done all the hunting, herb-gathering and other mini-game-playing you guys have.

It’s an interesting thing. All the “random encounters” you hit in the greater world (saving a prostitute from a client with a knife, fending off ambushes with honeypot lures, and the like) add a lot to the feel, and you never get quite the same experience twice. On the other hand, I think Rockstar could have taken a page from Fallout 3, which is my new benchmark for sandbox games: everything in Fallout 3 was scripted and planned out to some degree, even the relatively contained world events that didn’t affect the greater story. You got the feel that every place you discovered would offer you something new, rather than a recycled event.

I still help out every civilian who comes to me, but I feel like they missed a chance for some flavor in the greater world.

DORIAN: I think the biggest flaw that I’ve come across so far is the same one that affects most of the Rockstar games I’ve played; there’s a slightly schizophrenic nature to the experience. They want to make these big, expansive, open world games where you can go anywhere and do anything, and that’s what their audience wants and responds to.

On the other hand, Rockstar also seems to want to be taken seriously as narrative storytellers. So in the midst of this big sandbox game, you’ve got a storyline that’s very on-rails, where your options are extremely limited and you often feel like you’re being led around by the nose. If you’ve been playing John Marston as a murderous asshole who kills everything that comes into his sights, the moment you trigger a story mission you become this passive guy who just does what people tell him to do. It’s not game breaking, but it can be disconcerting if you haven’t been playing the game the way Rockstar apparently intended you to.

KEN: Agreed. There’s some debate in video game circles about what makes the “best” kind of sandbox or RPG games: Those where the protagonist is a tabula rasa upon whom you impose your designs and will, and those whose actions and design are more controlled by the developers. Rockstar’s decision to have more control allows them to have a nuanced story that goes “how it should,” and as a result they create some of the best stories around… but it can be very limiting.

The easy contrast is to the Mass Effect series, where every action legitimately changes how everyone else reacts to you forever after. There’s also Fallout 3, which I mentioned before, where one of your very first decisions can result in the complete destruction of a town and all the people in it. Heady stuff. In comparison, Rockstar’s method of guiding you through the story–and allowing the critical “choice” element to only show up in a few areas that don’t really matter–can seem quaint, a relic of the last console generation’s shortcomings.

The trade-off is that they do tell a hell of a story. I just wish Marston was less passive, less put-upon, as if everything he’s doing is a chore or an errand. He’s in this story against his will, and it’d be nice to see some passion from him.

BENJAMIN: I’ll chime in with an admiration for what Rockstar are so relentless good at this generation: cutscenes. There’s no other game that I’ve played that allows the kind of subtlety in animation, performance, and even editing that theirs do. Scenes linger on, characters sigh and take their time. While sometimes their stories might not necessarily add up to a perfect narrative experience, nearly every piece along the way is fantastic.

It sucks that Final Fantasies get Movie Theater modes and not Rockstar games.

KEN: On another note, RDR shares with GTAIV a relatively new development in Rockstar’s sandbox games: combat is actually kind of, you know, fun. There’s still a fair amount of stickness and clumsiness to the controls–boy howdy does Marston like to mosey when I’m trying to turn around in the midst of a heated gun fight–but the cover system is workable and way more organic than Mass Effect 2; in that latter game you’d know combat was coming as soon as you turned a corner and saw a bunch of crates lined up neatly like Tetris blocks. In this, the environment is just there to be exploited.

Which makes multiplayer a hoot. I’ve only really gotten going that one time with you guys, but I can easily see myself becoming addicted to team-based play like that. We were riding, shooting, sniping, progressing into box canyons, laying siege to forts and holing up in Mexican towns while the Federales tried to get in at us. To be blunt, I love that shit. When a bunch of you guys loaded up in a stagecoach and I rode alongside on horseback on our way to the next place to attack, I got chills.

DORIAN: I have to say that this is one of the areas where the XBox 360 community is really living up to their reputation. Playing on the public servers, I’ve never seen this much spawn-camping before, not even on World of Warcraft’s Player-versus-Player servers. Spawn, take a few steps, get killed by a higher level player with a sniper rifle. Repeat until you either finally get out of his area or give up and go play on another server. I’m only thankful that I play with the mic turned off for anyone who isn’t on my friends list.

DAVID: Well, shit, that really sounds fun. I haven’t even touched multiplayer at all, but I’m looking forward to it. I’m completely satisfied with the single player, glitches and all.

As you mentioned, Ken, combat is fun and fairly forgiving. The targeting mechanics and deadeye mode tilt most gunfights in your favor and Marston can take quite a few hits before he actually kicks the bucket. Marston also possesses an uncanny healing factor that allow him to quickly bounce back from shotgun blasts and wolf maulings, which is handy. They should have called the game Mutant Cowboy. And made people ride giant radioactive ostriches instead of horses. I’m just sayin’.

BENJAMIN: Yeah, auto-aim is almost too good sometimes. There have been a lot of fights I’ve been in that ended up at night that I just kind of shot where the reticle was hovering and killed everyone without once really seeing them.

KEVIN: This is something I’ve seen people complaining about: how “easy” this game is and how it’s not a game for gamers. (This was in the comments on Metacritic, so, you know, grain of salt.) Personally, I think Red Dead Redemption, GTA, et cetera should be a bit more accessible because they’re games that are going to appeal to a much broader demographic than the Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start crowd. If you want hardcore gaming action, you can go try to shoot at Andrew in multiplayer. Good luck on that.

BENJAMIN: Oh, for sure. I’d much rather be like “Ha ha! This’ like shootin’ fish in a barrel!” than “GOT DAMNIT I CAIN’T SEE A THING WTF.”

ANDREW: Auto-aim (or a wide targeting box) is a is a must for console shooters, especially 3rd person ones. If you don’t like it, you can always switch to expert…while I use auto-aim to find and kill you.

KEN: Rockstar has an interesting outlook on just how rigidly it wants to observe reality. There’s a lot of nice little touches that make the whole thing seem real–that your default movement state is a walk, not a run, which is all about form over function–but when they send you on the umpteenth mission that requires you first ride halfway across Mexico, it can get a little tedious. They’ve also skipped the “you ‘die,’ you go to the hospital” thing and just said that if you die, you die. Start over.

What is nice is that they’ve implemented a “checkpoint” system within missions, as many of the missions are multi-stage affairs that require you to do different things at different points. Did you manage to sneak onto the train but got gunned down once it got in motion? No problem, it’ll just start you off from the “train in motion” point, not the “sneak onto the train” point. Game designers: PAY ATTENTION TO THIS.

Since we began this roundtable, I have progressed through the last half of the game and officially beaten the main storyline. It’s some hours after the credits rolled and I’m still thinking about what’s going on here, and about how Rockstar plays with the word “redemption” and forced me to reconsider what it might mean.

This is not an easy task. “Redemption” is a word that gets tossed around a lot in both Westerns and the revenge drama, and usually it’s just a way to cram in some pathos in hopes that the story will linger for a little while longer. But here I think they’ve done it: for the kind of person Marston is, “redemption” can only mean closing the circle. Tying up all loose ends.

Much like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2–two games I feel exemplify the very best in video game storytelling–I find I’m hesitant to return to the game for hunting and herb-gathering and other such busywork after I’ve beaten the main storyline. I’ve experienced the emotional catharsis of the thing, followed its path from beginning to inevitable (yet nonetheless surprising) conclusion, had my spirits lifted and my heart broken. I figure, why mess with perfection?

I read a lot of stuff on the Internet.

In fact, with the exception of the free daily tab I get every morning on the way to work and books, nearly everything I read is online. Along with the day-to-day news, some opinion pieces from people I like and weird stuff my friends send me through links, I read a whole bunch of sites that deal in, for lack of a better term, nerd news: coverage of stuff like video games, comics, TV shows like Doctor Who and LOST, movie and music snobbery, and so forth.

I enjoy reading most of that material (otherwise it would be pretty stupid to spend my time on it, right?) and think a lot of it has value, but I can’t help but notice its largest deficiency, which is nearly universal. On most of these sites, it is impossible to find what I might call the basis of real journalism: Reportage.

There’s plenty of stuff masquerading as reporting, but very little of it is genuine, shoe-leather journalism. (Though there is some real reportage going on in some corners of the web, like this recent example.) It’s other things. Not all of which are without merit, by the way. Still, I see five areas where these sites could do a lot better.

1. Commentary is not reportage.

When you read a comics news site or a gaming blog, what you’re getting, by and large, is commentary. Whether it’s a column by a staff writer or a guest piece by an industry insider, it’s often one person’s opinion about some trend or a particularly momentous event or whatever else that person finds interesting that day.

And that’s fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with commentary whatsoever. There’s a reason newspapers have had opinion pages since time immemorial. People want to know what informed commentators think about important topics. But here’s the thing: Without smart, tough reporting to inform commentators, opinion pieces often end up being about topics that just aren’t that interesting. Or at the very least, they’re about topics that could be enriched through a little investigation. Call it Feature Column Syndrome. (And yes, I am fully aware that I am making these points in an online commentary piece.)

Hell, the best and most-read newspaper columns are sourced, just like news stories. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

2. A press release isn’t a story.

My biggest complaint about most online nerd-news sites is their unyielding and infuriating habit of posting a press release wholesale, with “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” and all, and calling that a news story. It ain’t.

At most, you should use a press release as the basis for a lead, maybe a quote or two. But it can’t be the whole story, else you become nothing but a mouthpiece for your corporate sources. Which is great for those sources, but is a pretty terrible disservice to your readers, especially when you don’t even bother to label those posts as press releases in your headline. The practice makes you a PR clearinghouse, not a news agency.

The bare minimum for a worthwhile story is to call someone and at least ask if what’s announced in a press release is important. Or why anybody should care. Or if it’s really going to be terrible and that nobody should care. Something other than just to say that something new is going to occupy a shelf in a couple months.

Maybe the biggest problem is that a lot of sites and their proprietors don’t care about breaking real news or questioning the companies that send out releases. They’re OK being the mouthpiece. They just want to be liked, and they dig being able to talk to important people, who, oh boy, know their names. Good for them, but I don’t see that as a very good reason to call yourself a journalist.

3. Rumors aren’t news.

And they should never be presented in the same context as news.

I know, it’s partially the nature of the beast. Blogs don’t really allow for separate rumor pages. Every post just goes into a feed that pops up in a page with a set template. And there’s more competition to get the story now now now now even if it isn’t confirmed. But, honestly, that’s no excuse.

If you’re going to report rumors (and there are plenty of regular old mainstream news outlets and political blogs that do the same thing), separate them somehow. Label them. Throw them all into one big post that clearly categorizes them as rumors. And, if they’re too dangerous – that is, they could be considered libelous, they could cause huge problems for a relatively innocent victim or you reporting it might make you a target – don’t report them.

And hey, why not do a little verification and try to confirm those rumors? You may not be the first one to get the story, but you’ll be the first one to get it on the record from a real, named source. That gives you credibility, and saves you the embarrassment of having to retract something after you post some unsubstantiated nonsense. Plus, if you do get something wrong, and others can prove that you’re wrong, how about owning up to it? Posting a correction? Doing anything other than just saying “oh well” and moving on, or worse yet, maintaining that you’re still right?

You know, professionalism.

4. Q&As aren’t stories, either.

I like reading Q&A pieces. If the subject is someone I find particularly interesting, I can get a lot out of them, especially if the questions are focused, well-researched and incisive.

But they aren’t news stories. Essentially, they’re just variations on commentary pieces, just with prompts from an interviewer to get one person’s point of view. They are one-source pieces.

Sometimes, those are worthwhile. If someone’s at the center of some big event or can offer perspective on a larger trend, a Q&A serves a needed function. But even then, it’s within the context of a bigger, ongoing story. Perhaps they serve a different purpose in entertainment journalism, as they tend to be one of the biggest building blocks of that arena. The good ones get inside the mind of an artist, show a bit of his or her process and maybe give some idea of how he or she views the world, in a way that’s not obvious in his or her art. And that’s great. But to describe a Q&A, even a good one, as a news interview is something of a mischaracterization.

Which brings us to…

5. Sources, research and background are the basis of news reporting.

Let’s say a particular video game didn’t sell as expected. What does that mean for the developer who designed it? Get a comment. What about the distributor? Call them. What about other developers that make games in the same genre? Talk to them, too. Is this a change from the sales figures of similar games? Find out. Does it mean something for the industry as a whole? Ask an expert.

That sounds hard, right? Who are you even going to call? And when you do, will those sources say anything even remotely worthwhile? For a while, they probably won’t. But the more you talk to them, the more they hear from you and get used to your voice, the more they’ll loosen up.

It’s regular old source development. And yeah, everybody within a given industry is on some company’s dime. And they have reasons not to talk. But they might have reasons to talk, too. There’s no reason a comic book creator shouldn’t be able to give you a quote just like a government department head can. They both know the risks. And government wonks and business insiders have been talking to the press for decades.

But you have to ask.

—

Of course, the big dangling question here is whether anyone will care enough to read reportage on the comic book industry or game makers or other nerdy pursuits, and whether the return is worth the cost. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe people are satisfied with only commentary pieces, press releases and rumors populating their RSS feeds. Maybe those things aren’t as important as politics or the stuff that’s on the business page or the celebrities that pop up in the lifestyle section.

But a lot of people feel a lot of passion for these topics. They even devote their whole lives and careers to them. And many want their passions to be taken seriously as valid ways to spend one’s time. Shouldn’t, then, the people who gather and report information about those topics treat them that way, too?

Boardgaming is a social hobby, and for that reason most games are intended for several players (4 to 5 seems to be the sweet spot, usually.) However, there are plenty of fine games that are intended for only two players. If you don’t have a group of people handy, or you just want something that you and your significant other can enjoy over a bottle of wine in the evening, here are some games you might consider looking at.

Lost Cities is considered to be the quintessential “girlfriend game” (or wife, or mistress, or friend-with-benefit, or secret crush who is dating that loser Todd and why doesn’t she see that I would be a better boyfriend than him why). Numerous tales abound of significant others (usually of the female gender because, you know, geeks) taking to it instantly. It’s a very simple card game with an exploration theme tacked onto it. The rules are incredibly simple and the game plays very quickly but it is quite addictive (and inexpensive).

Like I say, chicks dig Lost Cities.

Jaipur is a recent release that threatens to overthrow Lost Cities. Like Lost Cities, it’s a two-player card game in which each move has to be carefully considered. Like Lost Cities, it’s easy to learn and plays quickly. Unlike Lost Cities, however, it’s also beautiful to look at, with vibrant images of an Indian marketplace replacing muddy watercolors of abandoned sites.

Both of the above games are perfect for two players who are looking for something a little more interesting than Cribbage or Canasta, but still want to keep things fairly light and breezy.

It’s interesting to note that while Eurogames intended for three or more players usually downplay direct conflict, two player games often revel in it. For example, in the regular version of The Settlers of Catan, things are competitive without usually getting downright confrontational. However, in The Settlers of Catan Card Game, which is only for two players, things can get downright mean. There are cards that flat-out attack the other player, burning down their buildings, killing their knights, or stealing their goods. This, in addition to the mitigation of luck (every die roll produces SOMETHING for both players) and the addition of more strategy and depth, makes this two-player version preferable to many gamers over its venerable ancestor.

The Scout card from the Settlers of Catan Card Game.

While most titles in the extensive Carcassonne series can be played by only two people, one title, Carcassonne: The Castle, is designed solely for two. It plays a little differently with Carcassonne’s tile-laying scheme, and the result is that instead of letting the landscape features do a lot of the heavy lifting in screwing over your opponent, you can get a lot more down-and-dirty with it.

Of course, if you want straight-up conflict, two player games have you well covered, since most wargames are strictly for two players, and a number of them have designs that appeal to Eurogamers as well as veteran chit-pushers.

2 de Mayo is a small two-player wargame that packs a lot of strategy into a small package. It dramatizes the rebellion of Madrid against its French occupants, but if you know nothing about the history you won’t miss out on anything. It’s largely a game of out-thinking and outmaneuvering your opponent. There are only a few cards and they can add some fiddly, weirdo details (for historical accuracy), but for the most part it’s a fairly straightforward game.

This is Hill 218. Once you notice it looks like a Juggalo, you'll never un-notice it.

At the other extreme is The Battle for Hill 218, a card game that looks like it couldn’t possibly provide much entertainment. It looks absurdly simplistic, and the rules, being rather easy to grasp, don’t do a lot to change that impression. However, it turns out there is a LOT of strategy and fun buried in this unassuming package. With only a few different cards and some simple rules, The Battle For Hill 218 provides ample opportunities for wrestling with your opponent over this damn godforsaken hill that you just can’t seem to hold onto!

Or if that conflict isn’t brutal enough, check out Summoner Wars, in which fantasy armies clash in bloody battle. The appeal of this game is that each race is represented by its own deck of cards (each starter set contains two races, so you can play right away). This provides a lot of opportunities for customization without having to drop tons of cash on similar “collectable” games. The rules are very easy to pick up on and the battles are fast and furious.

But direct conflict doesn’t have to involve the battlefield. There are ways to pit two minds against each other without having to involve cannons or orcs.

One such arena is the campaign trail, and the best depiction of it so far is in 1960: The Making of the President. This game re-enacts the legendary Kennedy-vs.-Nixon showdown in glorious detail, yet is not too overwhelming for most newish players (you probably don’t want to tackle it right away). A single deck of event cards determines a lot of the flow of the game, and as a result the strategy required can change every time. It’s a fantastic design and a rewarding game experience. (Its creators have also made a more stripped down, faster-paced campaign game, Campaign Manager 2008, which I discussed previously.)

You can also take on the conflict of cop-vs-criminal with Mr. Jack, a game based on the lighthearted theme of trying to catch notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper. There are eight possible suspects (including Holmes and Watson), one of whom is secretly Jack. The police player must determine Jack’s identity before he can escape from the clutches of the law. The only downside to recommending this game is that it requires a sort of strategy and thought that some players just don’t “get”, and if they don’t, they’ll never win and never have any fun. If you can do it, though, it’s a tense and fun game.

Four Mr. Jack suspects: John Smith, Jeremy Bert, Sgt. Goodley, Dr. William Gull.

Finally, some of the classic two-player games abandon theme altogether. Chess has a pasted-on theme at best, and Go and Checkers have none whatsoever. If you’re looking for such abstract delights, these final two games should help you out.

Hive is nominally about bugs, but really it’s just a placement and movement game. The pieces (made out of wonderfully clacky Bakelite) have different bugs on them to show how they are allowed to move within the game. The goal is to completely surround your opponent’s queen. This game is especially nice for its small footprint and easy portability; you can bring it camping, play it on the airplane tray table, or bring it to the coffee shop.

Hive: the game itself is portable; the protective outfits are less so.

A similarly portable two-player abstract is Blokus Duo (also known as Travel Blokus). Like its larger sibling, this is a game in which colorful plastic tiles that look like Tetris pieces are placed on a grid to try and prevent your opponent from being able to play. It’s incredibly easy to learn and can be wickedly nasty. This version of the game is made specifically for two players and works well — in fact, even though the “real” version of the game plays with up to four people, if you’re only intending to play with two, I recommend this one instead.

So that’s several options for playing new and fun games with just you and one other person. All of them are currently in print and available, and none are crazy expensive (for most values of “crazy”).

If you can’t even scrape together one other person, you still have a lot of solo options, but that’s a story for another time.

Hobby boardgamers are geeks, and that means it’s important for them to try to get everyone around them interested in whatever they themselves are interested in. There are a special subset of games referred to as “gateway games” because of their alleged success in “converting” non-boardgamers into boardgamers. We’ve already discussed those games here.

Today I’d like to talk about the opposite of these games, games that are not at all friendly to “newbies.” After playing (probably more like “enduring”) one of these games, the target is not likely to say, “That was great! What else do you have like it?” but instead, “Dear God, you call that fun?”

Now, keep in mind that these are considered good games — great ones in many cases. They’re not bad games at all, they’re just not for someone just starting out. Nor are they “Boardgame 102″ to the gateway game’s “101.” These are, like, seminars for majors only. In that respect, if you’re just getting bitten by the boardgaming bug, these are some games you might want to aim towards eventually.

Heavy Hitters

For some games, it’s pretty obvious that they are not to be approached lightly. If you’re holding a box the size and weight of a toddler, you can pretty much assume there’s going to be more here than “roll a die and draw a card.” War of the Ring, Twilight Imperium 3, and Starcraft: the Board Game are all hefty boys who warn you right off the bat of what you’re dealing with. Each one of these games is simulating events on an epic scale, and the accompanying rules, mechanics, and play lengths will all reflect this grand scope. For example, look at this image:

That is page one of a two-page basic rules summary for Twilight Imperium 3.

Puzzle Boxes

A puzzle box is a term (that I just now coined) to describe a game in which there are several things going on at once, all of which interact in some way, so that it’s difficult to both teach and grasp. Each individual portion of a puzzle box may not be particularly difficult, but they’re connected in a subtle and non-obvious way which can baffle even seasoned players. Examples of puzzle box games are Reef Encounter, Caylus, and Le Havre.

In Caylus, for example, you place your workers on locations which will let you get cubes, perform actions, get money, or do other things. Cubes are what you need to perform actions, and money’s what you need to place workers. In addition, you need victory points to win, which are gained through building the castle, which you also need cubes for. However, you also have to pay attention to where the Provost marker is, as that controls which buildings will get “activated.” Confused? Possibly. There’s a lot there to think about, and you neglect any aspect of it at your own peril.

I see you have finally figured out Reef Encounter!

The Bullies

These are games that are not overly hard to learn the rules to, but the first time you play, you are probably going to get pummeled. Possibly by the other players, but more likely by the game itself. These are brutal, unforgiving games in which one tiny misstep can snowball into a full-blown disaster. For gamers used to this sort of thing, such a loss is fine; now they know more about how things work and can try to do better next time. For non-gamers there probably won’t be a next time, as most don’t find it fun to get kicked in the area by a boardgame. Examples of this type of game would be Antiquity (a game about establishing cities that simulates famine to such an extent that many players build cities just to house corpses in), In the Year of the Dragon (sure, you know exactly what crises are coming up to prepare for — and that knowledge is only of slight help) and Age of Steam, a railroad game in which not having a single dollar in cash at a crucial moment can send you into a financial death spiral. These games are great — the tension is quite palpable — but they don’t go easy on new players.

The Inscrutables

This is a sort of catch-all term. What these games have in common is that something about them seems to be actively standing in the way of comprehending the game. For people who have a bit of a working knowledge with hobby games, this can often be worked around, but for a non-gamer, it can be paralyzing. There are a number of ways this can manifest.

In Tigris and Euphrates, don’t bother picking a color; nobody is a color. Instead you are a symbol. And each symbol has each of the four colors in it. Similarly, in Imperial, you’re presented with a map of Europe, but don’t bother choosing a country. Even if you start with control of a country, it’s not “yours” and can easily go to someone else during the game. You can even have control of no countries (and still do quite well). For people used to having a “guy” on the board, or at least something that represents “them,” these games frustrate those expectations.

Elements intended to improve the function of the game often work against it. Race for the Galaxy is a card game in which the cards are slathered in — for many people — indecipherable symbols that, instead of making it clear what the card does, transform new players into grad students working on translating Linear B.

A typical Race for the Galaxy card.

I have right here a figure of Jango Fett from a Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Lego set. Quick, without looking at Google, tell me how much it’s worth! You probably have no idea. In games that rely on auctions — and there are many of them — new players often have no idea how to intelligently bid on items they can’t possibly know the values of. Even a veteran player like myself can get caught at this: in a recent game I was playing for the first time I bid twenty game dollars on something that no one else went above six on. Turns out I WAY overbid, and it really cost me later on. On the flip side, one can bid three bucks on something, unaware that people who have played before won’t go any lower than fifteen. If you don’t have some experience, you’re just making random guesses.

And finally, some games are hampered by off-putting or oddball themes. The mechanics may be fairly straightforward but the theme — what the game is about — might prevent new players from gaining an interest in what’s going on. In the above Tigris and Euphrates, the players are supposedly managing vast empires in Babylonia, but for many folks the game is dry as a bone, and unless you are transfixed by the gameplay, you’re just going through the motions. Sometimes the theme is troublesome to players, such as Chaos in the Old World, which is about “chaos gods” spreading corruption over a map made to look like flayed human flesh. The church group may not be the place for this one. And sometimes the theme is — to American players — just peculiar. The game Die Macher, which is considered one of the most intense games ever, is a three hour boardgame that simulates a German parliamentary election.

This could be you!

Let me reiterate that all of these games are considered good games. They’re well worth playing — but not necessarily by folks who are new to boardgames. Get a couple of other games under your belt and you’ll have a better chance at understanding concepts and mechanics behind games in general that will help mitigate some of the stumbling blocks.

Of course, not everyone’s experience is the same. There are folks who were introduced to hobby games through one of the above, and eagerly came back for more. Some folks have found a way to teach these games to new players and hook them from the start. And there’s always someone out there who has gone all his life wanting to take part in a five-hour simulation of a German parliamentary election and had no idea the opportunity was out there. But for most new gamers, be advised: this won’t be easy.

Interaction is a concept that isn’t discussed much with regards to American games, since they seem to take it for granted. In most American games, the players interact with each other as well as the game. That is, in Monopoly, if I land on your property, I pay you money. You can upgrade that property to hurt me even more when I land on it. In Sorry!, landing on my piece sends it back to start. In Risk, your armies are directly attacking mine. These are pretty basic methods of player interaction: providing hazards, ruining plans, and direct conflict.

As you might expect, things are different in Eurogames. conflict in Eurogames tends to range from nonexistent to light, with few games getting much more confrontational than that. This is partly because of the emphasis in Europe of these being family games, but also because it’s an incidental feature that has become a defining one; Eurogame fans tend to like low-conflict games.

In most Eurogames the players merely do their thing without many avenues with which to screw with each other. There are two main mechanics used to provide enough player interaction to fulfill any legal obligation to have some:

1) Auctions. Jesus, Eurogame designers love them an auction. You will almost never just plain purchase any kind of item in one of these games, instead you will have to bid on it. Even if it makes no sense for there to be an auction, there will be an auction. (This is partly because of the interaction thing, but also because it saves the designer the trouble of figuring out how much things should cost. Instead the players decide.) There are Eurogames such as Modern Art and Medici that consist of nothing but auctions — that’s how much fans love these things.

2) Limited resources. Another trick that designers like is this: if there are five players, there are only four dingles available! (And if only four people are playing, remove one of the four.) Oh no, someone’s not going to get a dingle! Conflict!

This is the most popular Eurogame ever.

Some games don’t even bother with these basic levels of conflict. The popular card game San Juan allows you to interact with your opponents in only a small way. There are five roles to select from each round, which each player can take advantage of, but also for which the person selecting the role gets some added bonus. It doesn’t take long to realize that you can cramp other players’ styles by selecting roles that help you but don’t help the other players (for example, selecting the Trader — which allows players to sell goods — when nobody except you has goods to sell.) It’s not much, but it is a way to turn up the conflict in this game.

One of the most popular card games right now is Race For the Galaxy, which is very much like San Juan, only set in space. There are some changes from the previous game, but one of the most important is that the ability above to choose roles in ways help only you and not others is gone; in this revision, each player can choose whatever roles he wishes at any time. You can never use the process to thwart your opponents’ goals, so even that tiny level of conflict is lost.

A 'Race for the Galaxy' game in progress.

For many gamers, this is presented as an improvement over San Juan, since the other players can’t “mess up” your plans. These players, if they have to lose a game, want to lose only through some failing of their own, not due to “randomness” or “interference” from others.

As a result, a lot of these games get criticized as “multi-player solitaire”. There are games for which this is literally true: Ricochet Robots, Take it Easy, and Cities are all games in which there is no interaction at all. (Well, that’s not completely true. In Ricochet Robots you’re trying to be the player who solves a puzzle first. In the others you’re trying to be the player who solves it best.) I personally hate these games and this past week played a new one in the field, Don Quixote, which adds an extra level of randomness to the mix to make it possibly my most hated game ever.

Left: Horrible DQ, Right: Awesome DQ

For the most part, I like some level of conflict in my games. I like for there to be a reason to have other players at the table. I admit, though, that there are some games where I don’t mind low or nonexistent interaction, because the game itself is so damn brutal I’m glad to not have to look out for others as well. The game Antiquity, for example, features almost no interaction between players whatsoever, but that’s something of a relief; if I’m getting attacked by a leopard, I don’t really need someone also hitting me with a bat.

This is not to say that all Eurogames are pleasant hugfests where we can all just get along. Last year’s critical darling Small World is nothing but conflict, and one of the quintessential Eurogames, Reiner Knizia’s Tigris and Euphrates, is one of the meanest games I’ve ever experienced. And conflict is also finding its way back into Eurogames in smaller, but still pretty direct ways. Another hit from last year, Endeavor, is, for the most part, a pretty standard game except that it allows you to shoot at the other players with cannons.

That is truly a step in the right direction.