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Made it to roleplaying this weekend, for the first time in like a month and a half. (I was feeling sick in part of February and there was DunDraCon, then last week most everyone was busy.) Hail, hail, the gang was all there. DS was up from SoCal and DP was also present, after several busy weeks working on selling his house.
KW had forgotten the Erzo character sheets, and so we ended up playing DC Heroes instead. I had a surprising amount of fun. I don't like DC Heroes a lot because much of the time is spent in punch-'em-up fights, tracking down clues, or other such very goal-oriented pursuits. This time, however, there was a lot more pure roleplaying and frivolousness. I've been playing a darker, grittier character since KW began his second era campaign and so I had a lot of fun being mysterious and mildly maleovolent. A good time.
As tends to be the case lately, I brought along a couple of my shorter board games. We played one waiting for DP to show up, and then another while KW prepared an adventure (having suddenly learned that he'd be running).
Transamerica was the first. It technically only sits six players, but we played it with seven. Player #7 (EF) got to use pistachios for his two player pieces. Surprisingly, the game held to the 7-player stress level fine, and in fact I enjoyed it a lot more than I have 2-player play. It's a really basic connection-oriented game where you're trying to connect up 5 cities indicated by cards you've drawn. The only strategy is in figuring out what other players might be building, and using their tracks to reduce your own building-time/costs. Thus, it's not too surprising that it works better when you have 6 other players to bounce off of, rather than just 1. I kicked butt, but then I was the only other player who'd played before.
Pizarro & Co. was second. This was one of the three auction games that I ordered last week, and which arrived on Friday (the other two were Medici and Fantasy Business). The point was to give me a few more viewpoints before I put together an article about auction games for this Thursday. But, when I discovered that this game was by half of TimJim Games--one of only two games Tom L. had produced since TimJim went under a decade ago--I was enthused to try it out. So, I brought it to roleplaying even though they've never struck me as big auction fans.
The game went over like a lead weight, and I was just one of many who thought the auction mechanics badly flawed. (DS, I think, was the sole person who liked it, but it's not the first time he's been a contrarian when discussing game design.)
In my opinion, the core of an auction game is ensuring that auctioned items have different values to different players. This introduces bluffing aspects to an auction game, and thus an entire additional dimension, as you no longer simply bid toward a consensus value, but rather must assess your own value against values held by other players. Instead of supporting multiple valuations, P&C stays at a pretty level playing field.
You're bidding for the services of various explorers in P&C. At certain points, one character may be mildly more valuable to you than another, because you already have or haven't purchased one of that person's other expeditions, or because you think he complements another of your explorers (basically, each explorer has a different special power, giving you either more money or victory points in various ways).
However, for the vast majority of the time, it appears that the explorers are similarly valued for everyone. Thus, the ultimate measure of the victor is how well he's been able to assess the value of each explorer, and thus whether he bid $1 over or $1 under. In other words, it comes down to math. How much is a victory point worth in terms of dollars bid? How about an extra money card?
This game is further let down by a number of constraints. First, particularly in a 6-player game, you're never going to be able to buy that many explorers. On average, 3 in the first round. There's just not that much room for clever bidding as a result. You're unlikely to get 4 explorers unless they're not that interesting/powerful, nor or you that likely to get more than 1 or 2 "good" explorers. Thus, it once more comes down to assessing the value of those explorers and, within very tight constraints, getting slightly better results than your opponents. Yeah, all auction games eventually come down to this, but I thought things were so tight here as to be uninspiring.
One interesting aspect of the game that's going into my article is the idea of liimtations on auctions. In this case you couldn't hire an explorer in year II unless you'd hired him in year I, and the same for II to III. There was a neat little pyramid: three hirings available/explorer in year I, two in year II, and one in year III. It seemed like a great idea.
Unfortunately, within the game proper, this pyramid of limitations can lead to severe degeneracy. First, the later auctions were considerably less interesting because only a few people were involved. Second, the pairings of players really decided the game. If two players were doing very well, money wise, but they ended up facing each other head-to-head, they'd destroy each others' chances for victory even if they'd otherwise have done quite well. Similarly, if you happened to not be bidding against the players in the better positions, there was absolutely nothing you could do to influence the game's outcome.
Much of these could be resolved by more cunning purchases in year I, making sure that you didn't end up in these most degenerative situations, but that just underlined the fact that a lot of the game was decided by the end of year I, with the last two years being much less important for overall standing.
Sadly, this is overall my assessment of Tom L.'s older TimJim Games too: interesting but flawed. I bought most of them when they came out, because at the time it was very exciting to see an American company producing something other than wargames (think: 1990-1992 or so). Today, the only game that gets even occasional play is Mystic War: the rest sit on my shelves, gathering dust, because they're inevitably too long and/or involve similarly degenerative gameplay issues.
Despite the annoyance of P&C we did have fun this weekend with the Transamerica and the roleplaying. And, P&C was worthwhile for me personally because it told me some things not to do in auction games. I'll also probably give it one more chance on the table (with my Thursday group) before I actually review it.
And today it's another hot winter day in California. It's already up to the mid-70s, and my office is starting to bake. As has been the case for the last week, the worthless weathermen predict the Santa Ana winds will subside and the heatwave will break tomorrow.
George W. Bush, certified idiot, continues to proclaim that there is no evidence for global warming, and thus that corporations should be allowed to cavort naked in the pollutants they're dumping into our atmosphere. I hate that man.
Soon it will be time to kick cats out of my office so I can open some windows. Fortunately, it's been windy again today.
KW had forgotten the Erzo character sheets, and so we ended up playing DC Heroes instead. I had a surprising amount of fun. I don't like DC Heroes a lot because much of the time is spent in punch-'em-up fights, tracking down clues, or other such very goal-oriented pursuits. This time, however, there was a lot more pure roleplaying and frivolousness. I've been playing a darker, grittier character since KW began his second era campaign and so I had a lot of fun being mysterious and mildly maleovolent. A good time.
As tends to be the case lately, I brought along a couple of my shorter board games. We played one waiting for DP to show up, and then another while KW prepared an adventure (having suddenly learned that he'd be running).
Transamerica was the first. It technically only sits six players, but we played it with seven. Player #7 (EF) got to use pistachios for his two player pieces. Surprisingly, the game held to the 7-player stress level fine, and in fact I enjoyed it a lot more than I have 2-player play. It's a really basic connection-oriented game where you're trying to connect up 5 cities indicated by cards you've drawn. The only strategy is in figuring out what other players might be building, and using their tracks to reduce your own building-time/costs. Thus, it's not too surprising that it works better when you have 6 other players to bounce off of, rather than just 1. I kicked butt, but then I was the only other player who'd played before.
Pizarro & Co. was second. This was one of the three auction games that I ordered last week, and which arrived on Friday (the other two were Medici and Fantasy Business). The point was to give me a few more viewpoints before I put together an article about auction games for this Thursday. But, when I discovered that this game was by half of TimJim Games--one of only two games Tom L. had produced since TimJim went under a decade ago--I was enthused to try it out. So, I brought it to roleplaying even though they've never struck me as big auction fans.
The game went over like a lead weight, and I was just one of many who thought the auction mechanics badly flawed. (DS, I think, was the sole person who liked it, but it's not the first time he's been a contrarian when discussing game design.)
In my opinion, the core of an auction game is ensuring that auctioned items have different values to different players. This introduces bluffing aspects to an auction game, and thus an entire additional dimension, as you no longer simply bid toward a consensus value, but rather must assess your own value against values held by other players. Instead of supporting multiple valuations, P&C stays at a pretty level playing field.
You're bidding for the services of various explorers in P&C. At certain points, one character may be mildly more valuable to you than another, because you already have or haven't purchased one of that person's other expeditions, or because you think he complements another of your explorers (basically, each explorer has a different special power, giving you either more money or victory points in various ways).
However, for the vast majority of the time, it appears that the explorers are similarly valued for everyone. Thus, the ultimate measure of the victor is how well he's been able to assess the value of each explorer, and thus whether he bid $1 over or $1 under. In other words, it comes down to math. How much is a victory point worth in terms of dollars bid? How about an extra money card?
This game is further let down by a number of constraints. First, particularly in a 6-player game, you're never going to be able to buy that many explorers. On average, 3 in the first round. There's just not that much room for clever bidding as a result. You're unlikely to get 4 explorers unless they're not that interesting/powerful, nor or you that likely to get more than 1 or 2 "good" explorers. Thus, it once more comes down to assessing the value of those explorers and, within very tight constraints, getting slightly better results than your opponents. Yeah, all auction games eventually come down to this, but I thought things were so tight here as to be uninspiring.
One interesting aspect of the game that's going into my article is the idea of liimtations on auctions. In this case you couldn't hire an explorer in year II unless you'd hired him in year I, and the same for II to III. There was a neat little pyramid: three hirings available/explorer in year I, two in year II, and one in year III. It seemed like a great idea.
Unfortunately, within the game proper, this pyramid of limitations can lead to severe degeneracy. First, the later auctions were considerably less interesting because only a few people were involved. Second, the pairings of players really decided the game. If two players were doing very well, money wise, but they ended up facing each other head-to-head, they'd destroy each others' chances for victory even if they'd otherwise have done quite well. Similarly, if you happened to not be bidding against the players in the better positions, there was absolutely nothing you could do to influence the game's outcome.
Much of these could be resolved by more cunning purchases in year I, making sure that you didn't end up in these most degenerative situations, but that just underlined the fact that a lot of the game was decided by the end of year I, with the last two years being much less important for overall standing.
Sadly, this is overall my assessment of Tom L.'s older TimJim Games too: interesting but flawed. I bought most of them when they came out, because at the time it was very exciting to see an American company producing something other than wargames (think: 1990-1992 or so). Today, the only game that gets even occasional play is Mystic War: the rest sit on my shelves, gathering dust, because they're inevitably too long and/or involve similarly degenerative gameplay issues.
Despite the annoyance of P&C we did have fun this weekend with the Transamerica and the roleplaying. And, P&C was worthwhile for me personally because it told me some things not to do in auction games. I'll also probably give it one more chance on the table (with my Thursday group) before I actually review it.
And today it's another hot winter day in California. It's already up to the mid-70s, and my office is starting to bake. As has been the case for the last week, the worthless weathermen predict the Santa Ana winds will subside and the heatwave will break tomorrow.
George W. Bush, certified idiot, continues to proclaim that there is no evidence for global warming, and thus that corporations should be allowed to cavort naked in the pollutants they're dumping into our atmosphere. I hate that man.
Soon it will be time to kick cats out of my office so I can open some windows. Fortunately, it's been windy again today.
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