Thirty-eight Highlights and Lowlights of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition

A proper review of Dungeons & Dragons’ latest edition would require several thousand words and a lot more play than I’ve put in so far. For now, I’ll settle for indicating what I think is most important and most interesting by way of brief comments, for good (prefaced with a +) and for ill (prefaced with a −).

Omnibus

Yes, I am still gaming. In fact, I’ve gotten to play a bunch of new (to me, anyway) stuff, including one new RPG. This is an omnibus post of my opinions and comments about them, in no particular order.

Recent Boardgames

Over the last few weeks I’ve had the chance to play a few boardgames that are new to me, and this post is a roundup of my thoughts on them.

Parenthetically, I’ll have material for a similar post by the middle of next week. Gil Hova and his lovely wife, Heather, are touring the Maritimes, and they are stopping by for a couple of gaming sessions. They’ve brought a few titles that I want to try out – Thebes, In the Year of the Dragon, and the lesser-known game Industria, first published by Queen several years ago – along with them. I’ll share my impressions of these games soon.

In the meantime, here’s five opinions to chew on.

Two-Player Race for the Galaxy

Contrary to my original expectations, I have been playing a lot of two-player Race for the Galaxy (using the advanced rules, where each player selects two roles every round, of course), starting a couple of weeks ago. In fact, I have average about three-quarters of a game per day in that time.

What i didn’t foresee is that RftG is an excellent coffee shop game. I have packed everything into a couple of top-load card holders, like those used by CCG players, and I can easily carry them in the pockets of my winter jacket – or even by hand – without too much trouble. I now go down to Tim Horton’s 2-3 times a week with another member of my game group to knock out a few plays. I hesitate to call two-player better than multiplayer, but it is significantly different, and maybe more addictive.

Defending Puerto Rico, Deriding Caylus

After a prolonged hiatus, Jonathan Degann has just put up a new article on The Journal of Boardgame Design. Jonathan is among the best writers of boardgame criticism that I know of, so a new essay by him is always something to look forward to.

My joy at his new piece, “What is this board game about?” sank a bit when I thought it was going to preempt the first post of my series Elements of Elegance (yes, really, it is coming). It turns out that its focus is different enough from what I want to talk about, though, that I will only have to reference Jonathan. My article will be more than a link to “What is this board game about?” with a note saying “read this.”

Even after this relief, reading his new piece what not the same unalloyed pleasure it usually is. The main thesis is interesting, although I would differ in a few particulars. As always, Jonathan refers to particular games in his analysis, though, and I disagree strongly with the point he is trying to make with two of his examples. I think he gives short shrift to Puerto Rico, and I think he gives Caylus far too much credit.

My Race for the Galaxy Comments

I finally got around, after eight plays, to posting a rating comment for Race for the Galaxy over on Boardgamegeek. They’re pretty long, and there are points in them that are ripe for debate, so I decided to post a copy here, as well.

[EDIT: I somehow managed to post an earlier draft of my comments, not their final version. I have now updated this post with my current comment.]

The Haul

Another Christmas has come and gone, and three new board and card games were left in my stocking. None have hit the table yet, but I figured it was worth a post to present my pre-play thoughts.

Lines of Action

I first discovered Lines of Action several years ago, when I read Sid Sackson’s book A Gamut of Games. I was immediately intrigued by it, and, although I was not an active boardgamer at the time, it lurked in the back of my mind as something I would like to try.After I signed up for Boardgamegeek, I thought to check it out. I discovered that it was well-rated, but not widely known. I made a mental note to play it when I got a chance, but that meant indoctrinating some friends into boardgaming first.

Fast forward a year or so, and I had a couple of friends that I played my nascent Eurogame collection with. One night, I stayed late at a gaming session with one other player, and I decided to spring LoA on him. We both enjoyed it quite a bit, but we didn’t play it again for about a year and a half. I wanted to, but it was never a convenient choice.A couple of weeks ago I decided to go out of my way to play LoA again, and this time it caught. I played 15 games of it over the course of two days, and I am even more fond of the game than ever.

Notre Dame—No Sale

Notre Dame has been available on Brettspielwelt for a few months now, and I have played it quite a bit. Misleading pre-release reports compared it to Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence, but, after a game or two, the difference was obvious; ND sits in the same weight category as slightly lighter fare such as Torres, Blue Moon City and Ninety-Nine.

The only strikingly original idea in Notre Dame is the rat track—the rest hearkens back to Caylus, Fairy Tale and Pillars of the Earth. Stefan Feld did a good job of tweaking the borrowed mechanics, though, and they work well together—it does not feel derivative to me. There are some annoying pointy bits hanging off of what could have been a nice clean design, though. The Inn and the Park do not follow the same pattern of progression as the other buildings, breaking the rather nice symmetry. The Inn also feels like a last-second-before-publication patch to fix a broken building. This is one of the factors that makes the luck of which action cards you draw together, and which get passed to you by your opponents, a significant factor in how well you do. It is possible to get screwed rather badly by factors that are out of your control. Finally, learning the personality cards takes long enough that it bugged me.

Despite my misgivings, though, I would call Notre Dame a fun, well-constructed game. I rate it an 8 on BGG, and I doubt it will drop from there. I own or want almost every game that I rate 8 or higher, as well as a few that I rate lower, but I’m not going to buy Notre Dame.

Play-by-Forum Werewolf

My third play of a forum-based game of Werewolf is winding its way toward a conclusion (this is the public domain party game also known by many other names — notably Mafia — not one of the roleplaying games of that name published by White Wolf). I have a few thoughts that I’d like to share about this style of play.

First Thoughts About Don’t Rest Your Head

Don’t Rest Your Head is a role-playing game designed by Fred Hicks and published by the imprint Hicks shares with Rob Donaghue and Leonard Balsera, Evil Hat Productions. The subtitle, A Game of Insomnia in the Mad City, is about as good a one sentence summary of the game as I can imagine.

Fred held a one-day sale on the pdf version of the game, making it available for US$5 on Halloween. For reasons I will explain shortly, I had been interested in the DRYH since shortly after it came out. Really, it was only a matter of time before I bought it, but the sale was too good to pass up, so I grabbed it. I didn’t get a chance to sit down and read it for a couple of weeks, and this is the first time I’ve had to write up my initial impressions.

Ninety-Nine

Ninety-Nine, is a trick-taking card game designed by David Parlett, with rules freely available on his website. Parlett is best known for designing Hare & Tortoise (Hase & Igel in the German editions), the first boardgame to win the Spiel des Jahres award. His first love is card games, though. He has written several books about them, and Ninety-Nine is just one of over a dozen games that use a deck of standard playing cards which Parlett has shared with the public on his website.

Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Tiles

During the weekend tour of Metro Halifax FLGSs, I wasn’t the only one buying. Both of my friends picked up copies of a new Dungeons & Dragons product, Dungeon Tiles. I have to say that I was surprised and impressed.

Colossal Arena Addenda

After I went to bed last night, I realized that I forgot about a couple of points that I wanted to make about Colossal Arena from my last post.

Fantasy Flight + Reiner Knizia = Two New Purchases

I did a tour of the Metro Halifax Region’s FLGSes yesterday with two of my best friends (and gaming buddies). Over the course of six stops, I made two purchases, both Fantasy Flight releases of Reiner Knizia designs, one a classic and one brand spanking new. I also got in a couple of plays of the classic. Here are my early impressions.