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Gone Gaming

Headlines

May 8, 2008 - Aaron Lawn: Trade Show Ramblings
May 6, 2008 - Melissa Rogerson: Why you lost
May 3, 2008 - Matt Carlson: A Game About Farming
May 1, 2008 - Shannon Appelcline: Dice Games, Part One: Mechanical Evolution
April 24, 2008 - Aaron Lawn: On the Road
April 22, 2008 - Melissa Rogerson: Family Festival - of games?
April 19, 2008 - Matt Carlson: The Gamers Determine the Reality
April 17, 2008 - Shannon Appelcline: Helping Losers
April 15, 2008 - Fraser_McHarg: Mystery Rummy 3 - Players 0
April 10, 2008 - Aaron Lawn: Overdevelopment? What?
April 8, 2008 - Melissa Rogerson: Australian Toy, Game and Hobby Fair
April 5, 2008 - Matt Carlson: Concentrated Gaming

Articles

Aaron Lawn: Trade Show Ramblings

Ah, lateness. This column was written two weeks ago, just missing my Thursday appearance… Hooray!

I’ve just wound my way back into California after a three day stint at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas. As you may or may not know, GTS¹ is the trade show for the Hobby Game Industry². As far as board games, especially Euro-style board games, it’s an odd show to report on. Why odd?

Posted by Aaron Lawn on May 8, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Aaron Lawn - Comments (4) - Link

Melissa Rogerson: Why you lost

Next time you lose when playing a boardgame, here are some excuses that you might want to roll out.

Or maybe not.

Posted by Melissa Rogerson on May 6, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Melissa Rogerson - Comments (8) - Link

Matt Carlson: A Game About Farming

Have a hankering to play a boardgame themed around trying to scratch a subsistence off the land? Cultivate crops and harvest them in order to try and provide for your family. What game am I talking about, none other than The Farming Game. Wait, were you thinking about some other farming game?

Posted by Matt J. Carlson on May 3, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Matt J. Carlson - Comments (0) - Link

Shannon Appelcline: Dice Games, Part One: Mechanical Evolution

I’m going to be the first one to officially call it: 2008 is the Year of the Dice (at least in the slightly delayed American market). I think To Court the King (2006) really got the current trend going, but since its release we’ve seen several notables including Kingsburg (2007), Airships (2007), and The Catan Dice Game (2007). Going by other publications like Alhambra: The Dice Game (2006) and the forthcoming Ra: The Dice Game (2008?) I’m starting to think that every board game is going to have a dice game too.

Thus, I’ve decided to start a multi-part look at dice games. This week I’m going to concentrate on the mechanics by looking at how dice games have been played over the last several decades and how those general mechanics have evolved over time. Then in future articles I’m going to look at how to control the randomness of dice and I’m going to review several of the most notable games.

As a final tease for this week’s article, let me say that if you keep on reading, there’s a neat diagram toward the end.

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on May 1, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (9) - Link

Aaron Lawn: On the Road

[Editor’s note: Aaron is on a working vacation in Las Vegas at the GAMA Trade Show. He’ll fill us in next column on what he discovered at the show.]

Posted by W. Eric Martin on April 24, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Aaron Lawn - Comments (0) - Link

Melissa Rogerson: Family Festival - of games?

At a “parents’ get-together” at school this evening, I was approached about participating in the school’s upcoming family festival.

The idea of the event is to have a day for families to spend time together (with other families as well as with their children), trying something new and generally having fun.

After the success of our Family Game Nights at school, they are keen to have a room for people to try out some games - and for us to organise that.

Posted by Melissa Rogerson on April 22, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Melissa Rogerson - Comments (6) - Link

Matt Carlson: The Gamers Determine the Reality

Once again I find that some of my more interesting gaming reflections come from my weekly high school gaming group. This week a student brought in one of his favorite games, Pirateer. While it isn’t quite my cup of tea, they played it all afternoon long and seemed to have more fun than anyone else in the club.

Posted by Matt J. Carlson on April 19, 2008 at 04:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Matt J. Carlson - Comments (5) - Link

Shannon Appelcline: Helping Losers

What’s the worst part about losing?

Unless you’re playing in some gladiatorial win-or-die type arena battle, it’s probably the experience of knowing you’re going to lose, then having to play on for hours more. As you’d expect the problem gets worse both the longer a game is and the more strategic (and less random) a game is.

Fortunately, many games have catch-up mechanisms built into them. They’re generally an element that I appreciate greatly in games. On the other hand, you also have to be pretty careful. Between El Grande (a game which is overly tense because of the catchup mechanism) and Liberte (a game which I recently played where I admired the catchup mechanism), there’s room for both bad and good, and that’s what I’m going to talk about this week.

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on April 17, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (10) - Link

Fraser_McHarg: Mystery Rummy 3 - Players 0

I have mentioned before that I was defeated by the Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper rules. I read them twice and after the experience felt that I actually knew less about the universe than I had before. I then shelved the game until someone could teach me.

Some time later that day came and within a hand or two it clicked. Fast forward a while and someone pointed out that we had been scoring incorrectly.

Posted by Fraser McHarg on April 15, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Fraser McHarg - Comments (5) - Link

Aaron Lawn: Overdevelopment? What?

Race for the Galaxy. A game. Kind of popular currently. After several months of musing, I feel compelled to discuss Race for the Galaxy. Hereafter, known as “Race”. Now, for the lead-in.

Underdevelopment is sadly a common feature in board gaming. It’s easy to point out when a game (usually self-published, often not) hasn’t received the development it needs. The few times that I have a drastic immediate dislike for a game is when development has missed some fundamental flaw in design, resulting in a game that only works if played correctly. Correctly? pshaw.

Posted by Aaron Lawn on April 10, 2008 at 11:16 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Aaron Lawn - Comments (12) - Link

Melissa Rogerson: Australian Toy, Game and Hobby Fair

Ahh, early April. The time when the thoughts of the gaming world turn to one place.

I’m not entirely sure that that one place is actually the Melbourne Toy, Game and Hobby Fair, but that’s where I found myself on Saturday, checking out the new releases and up-coming goodness.

Here’s a run-down of the good, the exciting and the rest. No photos this year as Fraser pointed out the “NO PHOTOGRAPHY OR WE WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND HURT YOU” signs that I somehow managed to completely miss again.

Posted by Melissa Rogerson on April 8, 2008 at 01:30 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Melissa Rogerson - Comments (8) - Link

Matt Carlson: Concentrated Gaming

Looking back over the past few weeks of gaming I’ve come to realize that I don’t have a lot of spare time for playing longer games during the regular school year. As a result, a large proportion of my games played fall in to that one hour or less mark. Thankfully, I’ve found a few titles that are fairly quick to play but can still satisfy a deeper gaming itch.

Posted by Matt J. Carlson on April 5, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Matt J. Carlson - Comments (1) - Link

Shannon Appelcline: Whose Job Is It?

Last Saturday I played my best game of Reiner Knizia’s Taj Mahal ever. I finished the game with 63 points, pretty rare in my experience of 5-player games and pretty far ahead of everyone else.

I’d like to think that much of victory came due to good play. I did my best to optimize my hand, built a great set of connections that scored me 1+2+3+4+5+6+7 points over the course of the game, quickly gained the +2 yellow bonus card, and held it for half the game.

However, I also think there was another major factor in my win: No one stopped me.

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on April 3, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (15) - Link

Fraser McHarg: Some Games Click, Some Don’t

As a general rule I don’t expect to be able to master a game in one play (or less). However, I do usually expect to have a reasonable idea of what is going on and thus to be able to put in a mediocre to credible performance in the first play or so.

In many games I expect to be learning or seeing new things for many plays. As an example, I have over 150 plays of BGG’s implementation of Tigris & Euphrates and I think I am still learning, especially with two players.

The reason I bring this up is that I played a couple of new, to me, games over Easter. One clicked, the other didn’t.

Posted by Fraser McHarg on April 1, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Fraser McHarg - Comments (13) - Link

Aaron Lawn: Long Surprises

I enjoy longer¹ games. But there is definitely a different mindset that I have when I sit down for a long game. I’ve prepared myself for something long. But sometimes, a supposedly short game turns long. The game drags out. Sometimes it’s clear why. Sometimes it’s not, and the next thing you know, you’ve been sitting there playing a game that says 60-90 minutes on the side of the box and it’s past midnight.

Posted by Aaron Lawn on March 27, 2008 at 12:21 PM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Aaron Lawn - Comments (1) - Link

Melissa Rogerson: Online Gaming

It’s hard to blog about games I have played when I haven’t actually played a game in over 2 weeks, at least not face-to-face. Life has crawled on top of me and is beating me about the head in a way that doesn’t usually happen until at least August, usually October. I’m guessing that it figures it needs to get all that out of the way before this October, when it will not have a chance to beat me up as I enjoy myself in Essen.

At least I have managed to play some games online, usually at odd hours of the morning or the very late evening. These are mostly 2-player games, and the range of games is somewhat different from the games I play face-to-face, for a variety of reasons.

Posted by Melissa Rogerson on March 25, 2008 at 01:30 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Melissa Rogerson - Comments (12) - Link

Matt Carlson: The Return of the Club

After writing about popular games in my high school boardgaming group, several readers chimed in with additional suggestions. One that came up several times was Diamant. In the U.S., it goes by the name Incan Gold and is co-published by Funagain and Sunriver Games. I acquired a copy and gave it a run-through with some adult friends at a casual get-together on Saturday, then brought it out again for our high school club Tuesday afternoon.

Posted by Matt J. Carlson on March 22, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Matt J. Carlson - Comments (5) - Link

Shannon Appelcline: Small Press Interviews: Eye-Level Entertainment

Now is a great time to be a small-press game publisher. Printing is both reasonably priced and high quality. Thus, even if you don’t license your games to Kosmos, Rio Grande, or Mayfair, you can choose to self-publish a game of entirely professional quality. We’ve been seeing this trend for years on the European side of things. Doris & Frank, Richard Breese, and Andrea Meyer are just a few of the German publishers who self-publish well-beloved games.

Meanwhile, over in the United States, there have been small-press publishers ever since the hobbyist game movement got really rolling in the 1970s with miniatures, war games, and RPGs. However in recent years we’re seeing something different: US small-press publishers that are publishing more European-style games.

This week I’ve talked with one of the small-press publishers that’s caught my eye, Eye-Level Entertainment, producers of Nature of the Beast and E.T.I..

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on March 20, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (0) - Link

Fraser McHarg: Losses and wins with Daughter the Elder

Yesterday Daughter the Elder told Melissa “Mum, I win the grown-up games against Dad, but lose the kids games”.

Thinking about recent games, she is pretty much correct!

Posted by Fraser McHarg on March 18, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Fraser McHarg - Comments (2) - Link

Aaron Lawn: Games for the mass(es)

Most of us are more than familiar with the long-standing tradition of the licensed game. Many games from the mid 20th century are roll-and-move variants with a popular theme pasted on¹. The same phenomenon exists today – not only from the giant companies like Hasbro and Mattel, but also the smaller publishers like Fantasy Flight, and even European publishers like Kosmos². Today, I’m not interested in specific games, I’m interested in why we see so much of it…

Posted by Aaron Lawn on March 13, 2008 at 08:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Aaron Lawn - Comments (6) - Link

Melissa Rogerson: Game designers, Timetables and an Easter Egg

In conjunction with the Australian Games Expo in June this year, Boardgames Australia will be hosting an event for Game Designers. We see this as part of our mission – looking at both promoting great games (through the Awards) and also promoting great game design.

We’re finalising the program now – so far, we have some input from publishers and game designers (who may or may not be at the event); information about the printing and production process; a round table discussion on rules and playtesting; and some input from IP Australia, the body that administers trademark, copyright and registration. This last thing was something that several people asked about.

Posted by Melissa Rogerson on March 11, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Melissa Rogerson - Comments (8) - Link

Matt Carlson: Secondary Boardgaming

For the past few years, I’ve been the sponsor of my high school’s boardgaming club. We meet once a week after school for about an hour and a half. With such a short meeting length, it really limits what games we can bring to the table. It has been interesting to watch which games turn into regular favorites.

Posted by Matt J. Carlson on March 8, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Matt J. Carlson - Comments (7) - Link

Shannon Appelcline: RIP, Gary Gygax

On Tuesday, March 4, 2008 Ernest Gary Gygax passed away. He was the designer of Dungeons & Dragons as well as several older miniature games and several newer RPGs. After some problems in the 1980s when he was forced out of TSR--the company he created--Gary Gygax was able to rediscover his place in the roleplaying world. In the last twenty years of his life he was widely recognized and lauded as the old gentleman of gaming. In the last decade he participated on the Internet in many forums and well knew how much he was loved and appreciated by his fans. That’s more than most of us can ask for in life.

Today I mourn Gary Gygax, because he’s quite simply, the reason I game.

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on March 6, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (2) - Link

Fraser McHarg: It has been a busy busy year and it is only March

We spent a fortnight down at the beach during January (note I am in the Southern Hemisphere) where lots of game playing was done and Agricola hit the table many times.

Fast forward to last Saturday and it was played for the first time since the beach. Not due to a lack of interest, just due to a lack of time.

Posted by Fraser McHarg on March 4, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Fraser McHarg - Comments (12) - Link

Shannon Appelcline: The Expansion Game, Part Two: Bane or Boon?

Four weeks ago, I wrote about gaming expansions, positing a history for them that I really believe is how they came to be. Having thus examined the question of how gaming expansions exist, I’d like to talk about a more philosophical question: should they?

This surely isn’t the first time that I’ve talked about whether gaming expansions were good or bad. In my Carcassonne articles, I discussed how much the various expansions--particularly the latter ones--have messed up the core game play, while in a discussion of Memoir ‘44, I talked about how much I admired the system of scenarios, something that has now been carried across several supplements.

So, there’s good and bad, and when I answer the general question of whether gaming expansions are a bane or a boon, I generally have to say yes.

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on February 28, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (5) - Link

Matt Carlson: A Risky Retrospective

There has been a bit of a buzz around an the next version of Risk to be published in the summer of 2008. Risk: Black Ops is a limited edition preview version that has made a small splash, partly due to its slick nearly all-black pieces and packaging. I was able to look over the new rules and was struck by a fit of nostalgia that made me contemplate changes to the basic game. Despite Hasbro’s large corporation persona, one has to admit that their many recent remakes of the core Risk game have made some nice improvements.

Posted by Matt J. Carlson on February 23, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Matt J. Carlson - Comments (3) - Link

Aaron Lawn: Things I Don’t Miss

I’m not a recent convert to boardgames, or gaming in general, so sometimes it amuses me to look back over the years and notice little changes¹. A week ago, while we were battling through another game of Das Kollier², it struck me just how long it had been since I had to wade through a horrible fan translation of rules.

I don’t miss it one bit.

Posted by Aaron Lawn on February 21, 2008 at 02:57 PM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Aaron Lawn - Comments (1) - Link

Fraser McHarg: Tales of my FLGS

Melissa mentioned last week that a friend of ours had recently resigned from our main FLGS. We still know some of the staff very well, but this would be the first time in living recollection that we haven’t had a friend working at the store. My association with the store goes back to my university days, when I changed from being a customer to a staff member.

Posted by Fraser McHarg on February 19, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Fraser McHarg - Comments (1) - Link

Kimberly Appelcline: A Wife’s Perspective

This week, in honor of Valentine’s Day, I asked my wife to write an article for Boardgame News. Though Kimberly enjoys the occasional game, she’s by no means a serious gamer. Thus she offers a unique perspective on what games your loved one might enjoy. So, consider this a guide to games you might play with your non-gaming-spouse-or-girlfriend this Valentine’s Day, and an insight into why those or other games might be enjoyable. You might even print it out and give to them, so that they can decide for themselves if any of the games sound fun.

As for us, maybe we’ll play some Carcassonne or Lost Cities after a nice dinner out tonight at our favorite Cajun restaurant.

I’ll now turn things over to my wife:

Posted by Shannon Appelcline on February 14, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Shannon Appelcline - Comments (4) - Link

Melissa Rogerson: Games Come in Boxes

There is magic in a games shop.

Walking in, seeing all those games on the shelves, begging to be taken home and loved.

Although I work from home, I often have to travel to meetings. And when I do, I usually try to make time to wander through my FLGS.

The friend who has worked there for years has moved on, but the siren call of the boxes remains. “We look with our eyes, not with our hands,” I tell my kids when I take them shopping - but of course I ignore my own advice when I have the chance to fondle a game box or three.

The funny part of it is that I never buy games there. If they have something I want, I always get Fraser to pick it up for me. This is not quite as sneaky a plan as it sounds, because I do eventually pay for them - it’s just that he has the discount card.

Posted by Melissa Rogerson on February 12, 2008 at 01:00 AM in Columnists > Gone Gaming > Melissa Rogerson - Comments (5) - Link

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