PinkFae Archive #54: How to GM Part 9: Handling Player Conflict

This is the final entry in the PinkFae Archives. It is also the final entry in the 'How to GM' series. It was originally published on 18 February 2017.

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 Player conflict is a problem that all GMs must face at least once in their life. It may result from any number of causes. But regardless of the cause, it can result in a total disintegration of the gaming group. Even if everything else is going well, two players (or their characters) being antagonistic towards one another can ruin the game for everyone.

Ideally, you'll be able to assemble a group that gets along well enough that this won't be an issue. But sometimes, no matter what you do, two people may develop an insurmountable conflict in the course of playing. Even worse, a disconnect may arise between a player and you, the GM. How do you handle this situation?

In today's entry, we'll look at ways to minimise potential player conflict, and how to handle it when it does happen. Whether vetting potential players or mediating between players once the game has started, there are always ways to avert this possible crisis.

PinkFae Archive #53: Board Game Review: Power Grid

In this, the penultimate entry from the PinkFae Archives, we have the last board game review I wrote for that site. It was originally published on 11 February 2017.

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In my quest to play eighty of the top 100 board games, I have finally been able to play Power Grid. I first heard of this game when I read the Cracked article 6 Board Games that Ruined It for Everyone. That article lists Monopoly as the worst board game of all time. Perhaps it's only fair to say it's the worst widely known board game of all time. But the article goes on to recommend Power Grid instead. The article states:

Power Grid is everything Monopoly should have been. You're genuinely aiming to build a monopoly, earning ever-increasing fountains of money, but you still have to spend every cent to stay ahead of the competition.

I've only been able to play once, but I already know I need to own a copy for myself. Let me explain why.

Let's look at some ratings:

PinkFae Archive #52: How to GM Part 8: Awarding Experience Points

As we near the end of the PinkFae Archives, we come to the second to last entry in the 'How to GM' series. This article was originally published on 4 February 2017.

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 The evening is over, and the game is finished for tonight. Everyone is ready to go home. There's one last thing left to do. It's finally time to award experience points. For some players, this is, in some ways, the entire point of the game. They see it as a reward for having done a good job. Getting a lot of experience indicates that they're a proficient gamer. After all, it helps them feel as if they were useful to the completion of the goal. For that reason, awarding experience points is an important and often delicate task.

Depending on the system you're using, this can be a very easy task, or it can be daunting. Let's look at some of the intricacies involved in effectively awarding experience.

PinkFae Archive #51: Fate Core: An Overview of a Great Roleplaying Game

We are getting closer to the end of the PinkFae archives! After today's entry, there are only three more archives left!

This article was originally published on 28 January 2017.

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I've played a lot of roleplaying games in my life. I've talked about some of them here before, like Changeling: The Dreaming. The first I ever played was Marvel Super Heroes from TSR. I've tried the big, well known ones like Dungeons and Dragons. I've also played many small obscure ones, like Albedo, The Whispering Vault, and Tales from the Floating Vagabond. Although I'd heard of the Fate system, it wasn't until last month that I got to actually play it. A friend invited me to play in a two-session Dresden Files RPG game, which uses Fate. He then loaned me his copy of the Fate Core book.

I am a convert.

Let me tell you why.

PinkFae Archive #50: Board Game Review: Five Tribes

This week's entry is another one from the PinkFae Archives. It was originally published on 21 January 2017.

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 A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through the top 100 ranked games on Board Game Geek. I noticed, to my dismay, that I had only played about seventeen of them. That was when I decided I needed to fix that. So I made a new year's resolution for 2017. Before the end of this year, I want to, at some point, be able to say that I've played at least 80 of the games on BGG's top 100 list. This led to me playing Five Tribes with some friends last week.

I'll talk more about this resolution on my other blog, where I'll also keep track of how many I've played. But for now, I will use the opportunity to review a wonderful game. At first, I was hesitant to try it, based on the relevant episode of Tabletop. I have learned that I need to be less reliant on that series. Games that look uninteresting to me turn out to be a lot of fun. That was the case with Five Tribes; I really liked it. So let's see why, starting with the numbers:

PinkFae Archive #49: How to GM Part 8: The End of a Game Session

Today we have another entry from the PinkFae archives. This article is part of the 'How to GM' series. It was originally posted on 14 January 2017.

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The evening is drawing to a close. The session is ending. You're nearing the end of the time allotted for tonight's game. All done, right? Time to say, 'See you next session!' and pack up your stuff and go?

Not quite.

The end of a game session is at least as important as the beginning. Before you call it a night, there are a few important details that you should cover. In this entry, we shall look at some of the essential issues to consider at the end of your session.

PinkFae Archive #48: Geocaching Game Designer J Keller (Interview)

This article is another entry from the PinkFae Archives. It was a follow-up to archive #47, the board game review of Geoquest. This article was first posted on 7 January 2017.

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Last week, I posted a review of the game Geoquest. This week, I have the privilege of sharing an interview I was able to do with the creators, geocaching enthusiasts J Paul Keller and his son Jason. Unfortunately, the audio recording I made of the interview did not record Jason's input, so his dialogue will not be included. However, pretty much everything he said was reiterated by his father, so don't feel like you're missing out on anything just because his words don't appear below!

PinkFae: So what made you guys decide to make this game?

J Keller: We love games, and we're pretty active in geocaching. I think we ended up looking for one, and there wasn't anything out there, and we thought we could probably do that. It kind of evolved about ten years. We made a prototype, and it was fun, and it started getting better and better, so we thought, 'Let's see if we can actually do this.'

PinkFae Archive #47: Board Game Review: Geoquest

Today we have another board game review from the PinkFae archives. This one is for a game released through Gamecrafter called Geoquest.

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One of the advantages of living in the early 21st century is that there are print-on-demand services available for just about everything you might want. Games are no exception; through the Gamecrafter website, anyone can design and sell their own board or card games! This means that if anyone wants to play a game based on a certain topic, but such a game does not exist, they can make their own. Such is the case with the new game Geoquest.

J Keller and his son Jason are board game enthusiasts who wanted to find a game that captured the enjoyment they get from their other hobby, geocaching. They were unable to find such a game, however, so they created their own. It's only just recently become available on Gamecrafter, but they were kind enough to send me a copy. I was able to play with some of my friends, so today I will review it for you.

And as an added bonus, next week, I will post an interview I had with the creators! Until then, we start as always with the ratings.

PinkFae Archives #46: Party Gaming: The Dangers of Playing with Non-Gamers

This week's entry is another one from the PinkFae Archives. Today's article focuses on playing 'party games,' or perhaps 'games in a party context.' It was originally published on 18 December 2016.

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I recently went to a November holiday party. We played The Red Dragon Inn and a few other games. I became quite angry during the course of the evening, as people were playing the game wrong.

OK, that's not really a fair statement. Technically, there's not a wrong way to play a game, as long as everyone is having fun. But, of course, I was not having fun. And that can be the problem with playing games at a party. People play games for different reasons. The problem comes in when those reasons are at odds with one another.

This is not to say that board games have no place at a party. Rather, that the decision to play a game depends on several factors. Not least of which is the people with whom you are playing.

PinkFae Archive #45: How to GM Part 6: Beginning a Campaign or Session

Today we have another entry from the PinkFae Archives. This one is another installment in the 'How to GM' series. It was originally published on 10 December 2016.

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Last time, we talked about running a game session. However, there is an important corollary that goes along with this idea. That is the the understanding of how to begin a game session. But this concept of a beginning doesn't apply exclusively to game sessions: the beginning of a campaign is just as important (in some ways, more so!). So we're going to talk about beginning things in today's session.

For those less familiar with gaming, a trope exists about most campaigns beginning in a tavern. The location of the beginning is less an issue than the nature of the characters themselves. I wrote an in-depth discussion of the concern on my other blog. In short, the first session of a campaign often starts with the characters, who have never met, in the same tavern. There are problems with this approach, which we will discuss later in this article. The important point here: the beginning of a campaign or game session is very important.

PinkFae Archive #44: Board Game Review: Widow's Walk for Betrayal at House on the Hill

Today's entry is another PinkFae Archive. This one is another board game review, but unlike most of the reviews I've written, this one is a review of an expansion. It is thus far still the only review I've written for an expansion. It was originally published on 3 December 2016.

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Back in 2004, Avalon Hill released an innovative board game called Betrayal at House on the Hill. A friend had a copy, and I got to play it, and loved it so much I bought a copy. It became popular, and many of my friends loved playing it. It soon went out of print, though... but demand increased. So in 2010, they released a second edition, with improved parts and corrections. It continued to be popular. So everyone continued to wonder why such a popular game had no expansions. Earlier this year, they announced the first expansion: Widow's Walk.

This review is going to be a little different. Instead of reviewing the game itself, I'm going to review an expansion. If you're not familiar with the base game, you can read my review over on my other site.

PinkFae Archive #43: Fantasy: Defining a Genre

Today's entry is another article from the PinkFae Archives. It was originally published on 26 November 2016.

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Normally, when someone says the word 'fantasy,' a person is most likely to think of one of two things:

• A literary genre, or films and television shows in that same genre, involving magic in a world, most likely in the milieu of the European middle ages, that often includes elves, dwarves, goblins, and other semi-mythological beings.
• A desired or preferred sexual activity.

Obviously, we're not going to talk about the second of these. But as gamers, we often find ourselves in games that fit the first.

PinkFae Archive #42: How to GM Part 4: Running the Game Session

Today, we have another installment of the PinkFae Archives. This article is the next in the 'How to GM' series. It was originally published on 19 November 2016.

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Finally, the time has come to play! You've assembled a gaming group and you've chosen a game. You designed the campaign, and you're ready with the story for the first session. Now you're sitting at a table with your friends, dice nearby, and the players all look at you. What do you do now?

PinkFae Archive #41: Board Game Review: Tides of Madness

We come once again to a PinkFae archive. This article is another board game review. It was originally published on 12 November 2016.

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Earlier this year, Portal Games released a Cthulhu-based card game called Tides of Madness. It was a rework of their game Tides of Time, which was released last year. It's a surprisingly enjoyable game, given that it consists entirely of eighteen cards and a handful of tokens. I got to play it a couple of weeks ago, so I will review it for you today.

PinkFae Archive #40: Descriptive vs Statistic: An Evolution in RPGs

Today's article is another entry from the PinkFae archives. It was originally published on 5 November 2016.

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 Last week, when I posted the interview with Whitney Beltrán, I had to cut out a lot of material. The transcript of our conversation was over 5,000 words long. I usually try to post articles of around one thousand words. Generally, I keep a thousand five hundred as an upper limit. Even cutting out entire sections of the conversation, it was hard to get the article down to two thousand words. This is especially disappointing to me, as there were some really interesting topics that I had to remove entirely. The interview I posted absolutely stands on its own. It does a great job of communicating the important aspects of the game. But one of the topics I had to eliminate was a discussion of the evolution of roleplaying games. In particular, we discussed how roleplaying games are becoming less statistics-based, and more descriptive.

PinkFae Archive #39: Bluebeard's Bride: An Interview with Whitney Beltrán

This article is an installment from the PinkFae Archives. It was originally published on 29 October 2016.

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About a week ago, I received an email from Whitney Beltrán, one of the creators of a game called Bluebeard's Bride. I agreed to do an interview with her. We sat down over Skype, and I am pleased to share a condensed version of our conversation. We started with the usual pleasantries, before I described PinkFae's mission.

Whitney Beltrán - That's a pretty fascinating intersectionality. Because Bluebeard's Bride is specifically a feminine experience, whether you are a man or a woman or somewhere in between. It would be really interesting to see what trans men or trans women think of this. Would they react any differently than anyone else? Probably not, but would there be special purviews where they would identify with things more strongly or less strongly? It's a whole separate bag, that I am not super qualified to talk about, because I am not trans. But I would be interested to explore.

PinkFae Archive #38: Board Game Review: Steve Jackson Games Triple Threat

This week's entry is another board game review from the PinkFae archives. It is also an entry in the series of articles on Gen Con 2016. It was originally published on 22 October 2016.

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For my last entry about Gen Con, I'm going to do three board game reviews in one article. Why? Partly because the games are all short and simple. Partly because they're all from Steve Jackson Games. Partly because it's time to finish up the Gen Con posts and get on to something else! So we're going to look at the three games they demoed at their 'Play New Releases' table: Simon's Cat Card Game, I Hate Zombies, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Board Game.

The Ratings

Here are the ratings for all three games.

PinkFae Archive #37: How to GM Part 4: Preparing a Game Session

This entry was part of the 'How to GM' series on PinkFae. It represents a brief break in the entries about Gen Con. It was originally published on 15 October 2016.

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A swan telling a story. Much like the GM tells a story to the players in a game session, often of fantastical tales, such as a swan telling stories.

I have one more post to write on Gen Con. But we've been hearing about Gen Con for months now. Let's take a break before we finish it up. It's been a long time since we've had any installments on the Analysis of GMing series. Let's get another one of those in! This time, we'll talk about planning a game session.

So you've chosen a game, gathered a group of players, and have a design for the overall campaign. It's time to start getting into the nitty-gritty. Before you meet up with your players for that first session, you need to know what's going to happen in that session. So let's take a look at that.

PinkFae Archive #36: ZOE (Zombie Orpheus Entertainment) - A Great Little Company

This article is another entry from the PinkFae Archives. It is another in the series I wrote about Gen Con 2016. It was originally published on 8 October 2016.

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One of the booths I stopped at whilst I was at Gen Con was the Zombie Orpheus Entertainment booth. I knew I wanted to see what they had, because I'd enjoyed Dark Dungeons so much. ZOE was the company that had produced that particular film. So I stopped by and talked to one of the representatives for a moment. This is what they had to say.

PinkFae Archive #35: Board Game Review: Tell Me a Story

This week's entry is another PinkFae Archive, this one being a review of the game Tell Me a Story from Escape Hatch Games, by Kirby Atwood, Cody Faulk, Brent Woodside, and Kayla Woodside. It is also an installment in the series I wrote about Gen Con 2016. This article first appeared on 1 October 2016.

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A brand new company called Escape Hatch Games had just released their first game a month or so before Gen Con. As I was wandering around the exhibit hall, I saw their booth, with the name of this first game proudly displayed on a banner behind them, and I knew I had to check it out. I stopped to ask them about it, and they did a quick one-round demo with me, and I knew I had to have it. Last week, I finally got to play a full game for the first time with three of my friends. It was epic. So now I shall review for you, my loyal readers, the wonderful game called Tell Me a Story.