Golden Age

People are fond of pointing out the 'golden age' of things. There was the golden age of comics, the golden age of cinema, the golden age of television, the golden age of aviation, and so on. Normally, a golden age is identified in retrospect. People who study a particular topic look at the history and say, 'Look at the innovations that were made during this historical time period. Look at the great people who made a difference in that time. That was the golden age of [insert topic here].'

Rarely does one get to identify a golden age whilst it is occurring.

But that's exactly what is happening with board games right now.

I remember as a young boy in the 80s, reading Games Magazine. I enjoyed solving the puzzles, doing cryptograms and rebuses and other word games and visual puzzles. But there was a section in the middle of each issue that I always skipped: board game reviews. That seemed silly to me.

Back in the 80s, board games included staples such as Monopoly and Scrabble, as well as party games like Scruples, Pictionary, Trivial Pursuit, and Balderdash. Those were your options. I was familiar with a few games from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which populated my grandparents' cabinets: games like Life or Payday. All of these were fairly simplistic. They may have had an interesting theme, but there wasn't a lot of meat to the mechanics. Roll some dice, move a pawn, draw a card, follow the instructions.

Board Game Cafe

I recently learned about Thirsty Meeples Board Game Cafe. This is a shop where you pay a cover charge (the Thirsty Meeples cover charge is £6.00 for three hours, £5.00 for children, with a discount of £1.50 if you order something from the food/drink menu). If they're slow, they'll let you stay beyond the three hour limit. You are then welcome to come into the shop and play any of the games they have available (over 2,000 titles, according to the website). It's not the sort of place you go when you want a meal; their food offerings are a handful of cakes, snacks, and sandwiches. They're there mostly for people who want to play board games.

Thirsty Meeples is far from the only one. Board game cafes are popping up all over the globe. There are some in New York, at least one in Beijing, another in Toronto, a few in Australia (Brisbane and Melbourne at least), even one in Malaysia. There doesn't appear to be one in the state in which I live, unfortunately; that might be good news though, as I'd probably bankrupt myself if there were one.

The staff have to be well versed in board games. They're responsible for helping people find the right game for their group, and ensuring that they know how to play. Of course, this sounds like a fantasy job to me; spending all day showing people how to play board games and getting paid for it would feel like it was too good to be true!

Board Game Review: Hanabi

I've been keeping an eye on my site traffic, and something I've noticed is that the entries that are getting the most views are my Board Game Reviews. Apparently, those entries are generating some international traffic, which I think is excellent! I've been getting visitors from India, Germany, Australia, even the Ukraine!

I'm a little disappointed that people don't seem to be reading the other entries as much. But I suppose I shouldn't look a gift horse in the proverbial mouth, should I?

So with that in mind, I think it's high time I wrote another board game review. Although to be fair, this one will really be a card game review, as the game I'm reviewing this week is played entirely with cards, aside from a handful of tokens. That's right, it's time to review Hanabi!

Let's look at the ratings, and the system:

Strategy: 3
Randomness: 3
Complexity: 2
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Pretty
Expected Length of Game Play: 30 minutes

My Game In Progress

I've mentioned here before that I'm working on writing a roleplaying game. I think it's high time I talked about that.

I'm actually working on two games. They use the same system; I started writing Shifters and then realised that the system worked really well for an RPG set in the Tron universe. So I've begun adapting the rules for a game called The Grid.

I got the idea for Shifters when playing with a group that would cycle through GMs; one GM would run a game, then another GM would take over and run a different game. We played Changeling a lot, and one of the games was a crossover of Mage: The Ascension and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Several of the players in that group were new to gaming, and there was talk of introducing them to a lot of different RPGs. I found myself worrying about the fact that every time we switched to a new genre, we'd have to teach them a new system and spend time creating new characters. Even if we'd used a universal system like GURPS, we'd still have to make new characters every time we switched genres.

Co-operative Board Games

A couple of years ago, someone published an article over at cracked.com entitled '6 Board Games That Ruined It For Everyone.' The article describes six of the most well-known board games that suck (I don't necessarily agree with the author that they all suck; I still have a soft spot for Risk, although I will agree that that's better played as a solitaire game on the computer for the same reasons that the author lists for why it sucks). For each, it offers an alternative that does what the listed game tries to do, only better.

Three of the alternatives, I hadn't heard of. The other three are excellent choices. Even the three that are new to me sound like excellent choices. But there's something I think they should have mentioned in this article: co-operative board games.

In most board games, there's a single winner and the rest of the players lose. Some board games use teams, like Pictionary or The Resistance. But in co-operative board games, all the players win or lose together.

Tabletop Role Playing Games

In 1971, Gary Gygax's game Chainmail (which he adapted from a rules system created by his friend Jeff Perren) was first published. This was a miniatures wargame, along the same lines as Warhammer 40,000 and Bolt Action. It had rules for mass combat, jousting, and single combat, and also contained a supplement that allowed you to include fantasy elements (magic, wizards, etc) in your war game.

Dave Arneson later took those rules and merged them with his own ideas for controlling a single warrior instead of an entire platoon. He showed this adaptation to Gygax, and the two of them created Dungeons and Dragons from it. Thus, the first roleplaying game was born.

The idea took off, and Gygax released another RPG two years later, Boot Hill. Variations on the original D&D soon sprang up, such as The Complete Warlock, by Robert Cowan, Dave Clark, Kenneth M. Dahl, and Nick Smith, and Tunnels and Trolls by Ken St. Andre. Bunnies and Burrows was an early attempt to push the boundaries of what was possible in an RPG, and as early as 1977, gamers had already started to adapt existing franchises with the introduction of the game Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo.

Board Game Review: Puerto Rico

Last week, I mentioned some of the great games to which I've been introduced as a result of joining the local game club. One of them was Puerto Rico, which I would describe as sort of a cross between Citadels and Settlers of Catan. I think I'd like to do a review of that particular game. So here we go! First, the ratings:

Strategy: 4
Randomness: 1
Complexity: 3
Humour: None
Attractiveness: Average
Expected Length of Game Play: 1 hour