Board Game Review - Carcassonne

Here we go again, with another week of Gaming stuff.

This week, I'm going to review the board game Carcassonne. Here is my board game review system, and my analysis of Carcassonne:

Strategy: 3
Randomness: 3
Complexity: 3
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Useful
Expected Length: One hour.

Anthropomorphics

It's Easter today! What goes with Easter? Bunnies! Why? Because the Christian Church stole the holiday from pagans, who celebrated Easter (or Ostara; nobody really knows what it was called before the Christians got hold of it. All are merely guesses) as a fertility rite. Thus, symbols of new spring (like baby bunnies and newborn chicks) were common, and the Church just knicked those and said, "They're symbols of Christ's resurrection! Yeah, that's it!"

So to tie in this week's gaming post with the bunny theme, I will discuss an idea that I worked on, briefly, with a friend of mine many years ago. The idea was "Anthropomorphics." We had originally intended it to be a GURPS sourcebook, but that idea never came to fruition.

The idea was that you would play animals. There were three campaign styles: realistic, cinematic, and silly. Realistic is just that: you play an animal in a realistic manner. This campaign style is generally best suited for people who (out of some masochistic reason) want to play someone's pet. However, it can include things such as the Watership Down setting. That is, all the characters are playing one type of animal, living in a colony (a warren of rabbits, a pride of lions, a murder of crows, et c.).

GURPS Divination: part 2

This week, I'm going to return to the GURPS Magic System for the Divination spell. If you need to review so you know what I'm talking about, you can read the original post. This week, I will detail those variations that involve telling the future by observing an event. We start with:

Alatimancy – This is one of three forms of divination involving salt. The first (alomancy) was detailed in the original post, and dealt with patterns in scattered salt. This variation is the reading of patterns formed in salt deposits left behind by the evaporation of salt water. It requires a special ceremonial bowl, and takes several hours (often a full day or more, if there is a large amount of water). The amount of water used depends on the nature of the question, as well as the level of detail desired. Prerequisites: 3 Water spells and 2 Earth spells.

Anthracomancy – The observation of burning coal. Any coal will do, so long as the spell is properly enacted before igniting the coal. The spell requires at least an hour of observation. The answers to the caster's question are obtained by watching the movement of the coal and the behaviour of the fire as it burns. Prerequisites: 5 Fire spells and 3 Earth spells.

Gamer Types

Greetings again to you, my faithful readers! This week, I shall discuss the Lawsian Gamer Types. A prominent creator of gaming resources in the gaming industry, named Robin Laws, wrote an amazingly useful book called Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering. Although this book is geared towards GMs, it has some very useful information for players as well.

One example of these doubly-applicable tidbits is the idea that gaming is supposed to be fun. You know, that sounds pretty obvious, but the problem is that a lot of people forget that gaming is a collaborative effort, and work hard to have fun at the other players' expense. The book suggests that everyone involved work to have fun together as a team, rather than antagonistically.

But that's not the topic of this week's rant.

Today, I thought I'd talk about Gamer Types. This was particularly useful for me, both as a GM and as a player. I'd struggled for years with the others in my gaming group, getting upset at them for ruining what I thought was an otherwise incredible game by insisting on doing nothing but killing the enemies for personal glory. It never occurred to me that different people play role-playing games for different reasons. And for that, I owe a debt to Robin Law.

The Game Dork Profile Photo

Welcome back! Time for another fun-filled episode of The Game Dork's Gaming Corner!

This week, I thought I'd discuss my profile photo. If you're viewing this page on a mobile browser, like a phone, it may not show up, so I'll post it here as well:

It all started many many years ago. I had a friend, a very imaginative and creative friend, named John Trobare. John has a tendency to launch into some lengthy speeches, which are astoundingly funny and will have everyone in the area laughing uncontrollably for twenty minutes or more. Of particular noteworthiness was the time he described the adventure in which he and his friends Mike and Stephen went to Alaska in an attempt to make $30,000 each in a single summer aboard a fishing boat.

But the instance that started this whole mess was when he described the species laevus ludorum, commonly known as the Game Dork. He described their habitats, behaviour, and mating habits. In particular, he devised the Game Dork Mating Call.

GURPS Divination: part 1

For those of you not familiar with the GURPS Magic System, here's an overview. The spells are divided into colleges, such as Animal, Mind Control, Necromantic, Elemental: Air, Elemental: Fire, Food, Healing, and so on. Most spells have a prerequisite. That is, you need to learn certain other spells before you can learn this one. In each college, there are one or more "basic" spells, that anyone can learn (only mages can actually cast the spells unless you're in a high mana zone, but anyone can learn them). These basic spells are very simple spells with no prerequisites, and in turn are the prerequisites for more powerful spells, which are the prerequisites for even more powerful spells, and so on.

Some have options ("Hide" can be learned using either "Forgetfulness" or "Blur" as prerequisites), some have non-spells ("Activate Runes" requires the "Rune Lore" skill), and some spells require that you be a mage (that is, you have purchased the "Magical Aptitude" advantage). Some spells require a certain number of spells from a specific college, but it doesn't matter what those spells are.

I mention this because I want to discuss the "Divination" spell. The spell itself is pretty straightforward: you cast the spell, and if successful, you receive answers to a question concerning the future. The exact method of doing this varies, and the prerequisites for the spell depend on the method you choose for your character to cast the spell. It lists several examples, from the mundane and standard (such as Astrology, Crystal-gazing, Tarot) to common but less mundane (such as Haruspication – examining the entrails of an animal) to the less common (Belomancy – throwing a bunch of arrows into the air and divining the answer from the pattern in which they land) to the bizarre (Molybdomancy – pouring molten lead into cold water and examining the resulting shapes).

Board Game Reviews - The Order of the Stick: The Dungeon of Dorukan

Welcome to another week of the Game Dork's discussions of gaming.

This week, I introduce an activity that I expect to do on occasion: board game reviews. To start with, I was thinking once about the way that people review movies, and it occurred to me that what these reviews are doing is saying, "I liked this movie because..." or "I didn't like this movie because..." but that does nothing to let me know if I'll like the movie! Shouldn't we find a more objective way of reviewing things that will actually tell a reader if that reader will like it? So I have endeavoured to do just that.

Thus, I present to you, my system for reviewing board games. Hopefully, this will enable anyone who reads to decide whether or not they would like the game, without having to rely solely on my opinion. Using this system, each game will be rated on the following charts (you can always click on the graphic to see a larger version of it that's easier to read):

So this week, we start with The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan.