Scott Tepper: The Other Side of the Table: Origins 2007

I wish there were a single word that could convey being exhausted as the result of working hard and having fun.  If you didn’t already know, I demo games for Rio Grande Games at some trade shows.  While I’ve been to Columbus before, this was the first time I’ve experienced the Origins trade show.  While I heard from several people that this year’s show seemed a little bit smaller and a little less attended, since I have nothing to compare it to, I’ll just say that there was plenty to see and do if you like boardgames.

The most similar show to Origins that I’ve been to is Gen Con.  While Gen Con seems bigger, Origins feels like the better show for boardgamers.  True, Wizards of the Coast veered from history and did not attend Origins this year.  As a result, the show hall had obviously filled an empty space with a cordoned-off area and bleachers that appeared to be set aside for some sort of spectacle.  The only thing I observed it being used for was a warm-up area for a bagpiper before the hall opened to the general public in the morning.

So why do I think Origins is better geared towards boardgamers?  Well, at Gen Con, boardgamers are treated as the awkward stepsister.  Gen Con acknowledges they exist, but gives first preference to roleplayers.  Minimal space, if any, is set aside for open boardgaming.  I’ve even heard (horror?) stories of boardgamers being booted out of areas with tables and not being able to find places to play.

At Origins, on the other hand, not only did they have general areas with open tables for anyone to use, several specific areas are set aside for people to play boardgames.  The most popular one (and coincidentally the one I hung out in the most when not in the exhibition hall) was the Board Room, run extremely efficiently by CABS.  They had a lending library of over 500 games, and more than 60 long tables to play at.  In the evenings it was great to see every table in the room, as well as the larger round tables outside the room, filled with people from all over the country playing together. 

Another nice thing about the Board Room was that it connected to a similar large room that was set aside for wargamers.  This allowed boardgamers to wander over and view games that they weren’t familiar with, and vice versa.  As if they didn’t have enough on their hands with organizing the library of games, CABS also had a raffle for games.  Periodically, they would walk through the room and hand out numbered tickets.  So the more time you spent playing games in the Board Room, the more raffle tickets you’d receive.  Saturday night they attached the winning numbers to the individual prizes—which were a myriad boardgames, of course—so you could walk by and check to see if any of your tickets had won.  This was a considerate way to do the raffle, since spending a half-hour announcing ticket numbers over a loudspeaker would surely have cut into precious gaming time.

As is the norm, when demoing at a convention, I don’t get the chance to play many games.  Origins was no exception.  I was fortunate enough to play a few prototypes by Donald X. Vaccarino (who prefers to go by Donald X.).  It is likely that two of them will be picked up by Rio Grande Games.  One of them is a cute, quick, tile-laying game with fantastic artwork by Nina Paley.  The other is a card game that builds both literally as you are constructing buildings, and also figuratively as the cards you acquire can work together to generate larger effects.

I remarked to Donald X. that it was obvious from what I’d seen of his prototypes that it was important to him that his games play differently each time.  He told me that some of his ideas for variability had come from playing the game Medici.  After playing that game over and over, he came up with a variant to make it different each time he played it.  That idea became the seed for several of his prototypes.  I wish I could share more details about these games and their mechanisms, but as they are only in the prototype stage, it would be imprudent of me to reveal more about them.  Suffice it to say that I told Donald X. that I would be happy to purchase all three of his games that I tried whether Rio Grande Games chooses to publish them or not.

It was evident that Donald X. had spent considerable time playtesting his games.  The ones I tried worked very smoothly.  In addition, the components of all these prototypes were exceptional.  While everything was evidently homemade, he had taken the effort to add graphics to the cards and even put the cards in card sleeves.  It was definitely a classy presentation.

Donald X. had one more asset that I found remarkable: his wife, Josephine.  She obviously had played all of the games and helped us out with some strategic suggestions while we were playing the games.  In response to my asking, she admitted that she had played Donald X.’s games many times, but downplayed her involvement with the games.  It was evident that she believed in and supported Donald X.  I found myself impressed with her clear desire for her husband, who had been playing around with these prototypes for years, to succeed at his dream.

Aside from those few prototypes, I was able to play only one other game in Columbus.  After running through the hall before it opened to the public on Thursday, I stopped by the Stratamax booth.  Max Michael gave me a quick run-through of their new games, which prompted me to buy two of them.  Saturday evening, in the Boardroom, Max taught me and fellow RGG demoer, Ken Hill, how to play one of my new Stratamax acquisitions: Spice Islands.

Spice Islands is a stock market game with a shipping and pirate theme.  On your turn, you roll four dice with colors instead of pips (a staple in most Stratamax games).  You may use the resulting colors that come up to do a variety of actions such as loading goods onto ships, moving the ships, buying stock, advancing markers that trigger stock payouts or allow the takeover of control of ships, or even attempt the ransacking of a ship using the pirate ship.

I must admit that it took me quite a while to wrap my head around the rules of the game.  Although I understood all the mechanisms, two-thirds of the way through the game, I still felt like I had no idea what I was doing.  There is a bunch of speculation in the game, and trying to figure out how to manipulate the system in your favor seemed more complex than I thought I was able to muster after a full day of demoing.  Surprisingly, though, I managed to win the game.  This amazed me because I felt like I was behind during most of the game, as the goal is to have the most money and I had none for a good portion of the time.  Apparently I made some good investing and manipulating decisions.  I’m looking forward to playing the game again now that I understand it a little better.

Tammany Hall, one of the few Stratamax games that does not have colored dice, was my other Stratamax purchase.  A couple of people have already told me that they played and enjoyed this game, so hopefully I’ll be able to give you a positive report on it once I’m able to give it a try.

The only other game I bought during this trip was Robot Martini’s Get Bit.  I didn’t get a chance to play it, but as soon as I was shown the contents of the box while at the Robot Martini booth, I had no willpower to resist purchasing this game.  It’s a quick filler game where each player places their colored swimmer in a line, with a card representing a shark at the very end.  The players simultaneously play a card.  Depending on the players’ choices of cards, the swimmers’ order in relation to the shark changes.  Whichever swimmer ends up next to the shark loses a limb. 

This is where the cool bits come in.  Each players’ swimmer looks like a little plastic version of a scuptor’s bendable model.  The appendages all pop off easily, so that over time, the swimmers might be missing a foot, hand, arm, leg, even half their bodies.  As the swimmers are eaten, piece by piece, players are eliminated until you only have two left.  The one in the front of the now very small line is the winner.  The cuteness of the gore of this game is palpable.

I briefly saw a few other games at the show that I didn’t get to purchase.  One was Duel in the Dark by Z-Man Games.  Apparently the game isn’t out yet, but Z-Man had a few advance copies at the show.  I had seen the rules for this game online months ago and was very impressed by how the game looked in person.  The bits are fantastic, and I was told by Rick Thornquist that the game plays very well. 

At the Slugfest Games booth I got a quick overview of their game Red Dragon Inn.  The theme of this cardgame is clearly geared to role players.  Each player has a deck of cards that is geared towards their character, who has apparently returned from an adventure and is now relaxing in a pub.  On your player mat you have a marker that displays the fortitude and drunkenness of your character. The players take turns playing cards that either affect their own character or someone else’s character.  The game also occasionally slips into a mini metagame where the players bet and raise and in the end, someone’s character is forced to drink.  When the fortitude of your character is reduced to the point that it equals its level of drunkenness (or your character’s drunkenness is increased to where it equals its fortitude), your character becomes unconscious and you’re eliminated from the game.  The last player standing wins.  It seems very chaotic and very much of a take-that type of game, but it’s steeped in theme with very nice artwork and cute and clever card names and descriptions.

Since the bulk of my time was taken up demoing Rio Grande Games, I might as well let you know what games we showed.  We had:

• Guatemala Café
• Notre Dame
• If Wishes Were Fishes
• Zooloretto
• Yspahan
• Caylus Magna Carta
• Jenseits Von Theben
• Vikings

If Wishes Were Fishes seemed to be the biggest surprise to people.  It looks like a game for kids with its purple rubber worms, but everyone I talked to thought it had more of a strategy bite to it than they had expected.

As a demoer, I am aware that not everyone has the same taste in games, and I certainly can’t expect that other people will have the same likes and dislikes I do.  So regardless of whether I think a game is the best thing since sliced bread or something I would probably not pull off my shelf again, I try to teach games to people without hinting at my own biases.

I had played Guatemala Café, Vikings, and Zooloretto each once at The Gathering earlier in the year and thought they were all decent games, but none of them really impressed me.  During the four days of Origins, however, as I ended up demoing them all many times, I was able to see all of these games in action, and they all grew on me. 

Guatemala Café impressed me in that I hadn’t imagined that it would play so differently from game to game.  I saw the game develop in several different ways as people would try all sorts of strategies to win.  Some people focused on just a couple of types of coffee production, others would try to diversify.  Of all the new games we were showing, Guatemala Café seemed to prompt the most scrunched-up, I’m-trying-to-figure-out-what-I-should-do-so-that-it-doesn’t-help-my-opponents faces.

Vikings definitely grew in my estimation over the show as well.  Maybe I was sleep deprived the previous time I played it, but my memory of the experience was just a vague liking of the game.  As I watched people play this one, I found myself wanting to actually play along (which is something I don’t do when demoing because if I’m playing a game, I can’t help other people when they need it). 

I know I originally said that I liked Coloretto so much that I didn’t feel the need to add chrome to play Zooloretto, but now I stand corrected.  I think between the two, I’ll now be playing Zooloretto instead.  Timewise, both games are relatively quick, and the addition of the zoo theme to this new game definitely improves it.  It’s still a light game, so it’ll never fill my itch to play Caylus or Puerto Rico level games, but as a quick, family game, it really is impressive and deserved to win the Spiel des Jahres.

Even though it isn’t due to arrive into stores until next month, I pushed Jay to show Jenseits von Theben at Origins.  Happily, he listened to me.  We occasionally had people waiting in line to play this one, and many people came up to me after playing it to tell me that they now can’t wait to buy it.  The thing that seemed to impress people the most about the game was that it fits its theme so well.  While playing it, you do get the sense of running around trying to prepare for archaeological digs and plot out the best use of your time.

To finish up, I have to recount the funniest thing I heard over the weekend.  While teaching the game If Wishes Were Fishes to Scott Russell’s kids, as I usually do when demoing this game, I asked them if they could figure out the pictures on the board, which represent different types of fish.  If you haven’t seen the game yet, the drawings are clever little drawings, such as a fish with a halo that is supposed to be an angelfish, and a fish with a crown on its head representing a kingfish, etc.

The picture that briefly stumps most people is a fish in brown robes, holding a bible.  It’s supposed to be a monkfish.  When I asked Scott’s daughter if she could figure it out what it was, she shook her head. 

Scott said to her, “I know you can figure it out.”

Still, she didn’t answer.

Then Scott prompted her, “I’ve told you what that is before.  What lives in a Cloister?”

She immediately answered, “I know!  It’s a Meeplefish!”

I think we have another gamer in the making.

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