Non-Wargames on your table right now

Started by bayonetbrant, June 20, 2017, 10:58:07 AM

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BanzaiCat

#60
I might change that at some point today. Everything is in flux right now.

mirth

It'll all smooth out once you hit 88mph.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

Barthheart

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on July 31, 2018, 03:10:29 PM
If you play competitively, it isn't really a dungeon crawl.  It turns into a hand optimization, area movement blocking, initiative bidding points-salad style game with dick moves and hurt feelings.   

So there's that....

Yeah... but I'd need to have friends for that to work....

BanzaiCat

Updated to add ST: Frontiers. Asking $50 as it's still in shrink, unopened. It's currently going for $60.98 on US Amazon, though granted that is Prime and there's shipping as well. Might go a bit lower on shipping; just depends as it's not a size that will fit in a priority mail box (at least, none of the ones I've been able to scrounge from two different local post offices).

Silent Disapproval Robot

I set up Brass: Birmingham on the table to run through a few turns to get a feel for it (all while speaking with a terrible approximation of a Brummie accent).  Love the look of the game.  Not sure if it's for me though.  Little too abstracted for my tastes.

The map is double sided with a day and a night version for some reason. 







bob48

I've been looking at this as well. The big advantage I have is that I do have a genuine Brummie accent :-)
'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'

'Clip those corners'

Recombobulate the discombobulators!

airboy

I'm playing a lot of mansions of madness.

Silent Disapproval Robot

I picked up a new game called Detective: A Modern Crime on Friday and tried it out with a group of actor friends today.  It was quite interesting.  It's a co-operative game where 1-5 players are given a crime to solve within a set amount of time. Once the time limit is reached, players must answer a series of questions to see how well they did on their investigation. What makes the game different is that you need to use the online app (which functions like a police computer database) as well as the actual internet to conduct research and examine clues. 

At the start of the game, each player chooses a character to play and each character has a unique ability as well as a skill token that they commit to a common pool.  If there are less than 5 players, the unused character cards are flipped over and become NPC consultants that add extra skill tokens into a common pool.  Skills consist of perception, research, tech, interrogation, or wild and are added into a pool of authority tokens.

Each starts with some explanatory text in a case book followed by a list of available evidence, persons of interest, and crime scene/point of interest locations that the players can investigate.  The players decide as a group on how to proceed.  All officers must act together (no splitting up the group) and once an action is chosen, players either use the app/internet to look up information or pull a numbered card from a case deck made up of 100+ double sided cards.  Each action eats up a number of hours (traveling from location to location on the city map also eats up time) and may also require the use of a skill or an authority token.  Information is then revealed and this may provide new leads or require players to decide if they want to spend more time/tokens in order to dig deeper and possibly learn more from a given suspect/location/piece of evidence.

Each regular day lasts from 8 am til 4 pm after which the investigators can either call it quits for the day or they can decide to work overtime and continue working.  Each extra hour worked past 4 pm causes stress which will lower your end game score.  There is a hard limit for the amount of stress you can incur in a scenario and if that limit is reached, the investigation ends and players must go to the final quiz even if they hadn't reached the case's time limit.

The game comes with 5 cases, each of which should take 3-4 hours of play time to resolve.  The cases tie together into a grand campaign and clues found in case #1 may not become relevant until case #3 for example.

The game reminds me a bit of the Sherlock Holmes games, but this is much more involved.  They throw a tonne of data at you and the time limits imposed means that there is no way you'll be able to follow up on every lead/clue before time runs out. 

We did reasonably well on our first case and managed to crack it with a 70% score.  Everyone enjoyed themselves and wants to continue on with the story but we all thought the writing was a bit weak (they really like to spend a lot of time discussing what everyone eats and drinks along the way) and some of their attempts to make things sound gritty and noire are laughably bad.  The case itself was very interesting though and the fact that much of it was based on real world events that you can look up on wikipedia added a lot to the immersion.   

If you like solving crimes and don't mind some cringe-worthy exposition, you might want to give this one a whirl.















Staggerwing

'Rupert Owens' looks suspiciously like Tony Shalhoub.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

Silent Disapproval Robot

Tony Shaloub was arrested for indecent exposure?  Nice!


Staggerwing

I'm sure it was all a misunderstanding.
Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa

Nothing really rocks and nothing really rolls and nothing's ever worth the cost...

"Don't you look at me that way..." -the Abyss
 
'When searching for a meaningful embrace, sometimes my self respect took second place' -Iggy Pop, Cry for Love

... this will go down on your permanent record... -the Violent Femmes, 'Kiss Off'-

"I'm not just anyone, I'm not just anyone-
I got my time machine, got my 'electronic dream!"
-Sonic Reducer, -Dead Boys

Nefaro

Learning some Arkham Horror LCG.

With a few others on the periphery, waiting in the long line of games in the wings.


W8taminute

#72
Finally started playing Twilight Imperium 4th edition after struggling to get up the nerve and energy to play it.  Below is the situation just prior to executing the first action phase of the first round.  I'm playing a three player game against myself.


"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

jamus34

Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on August 02, 2018, 11:56:20 AM
I set up Brass: Birmingham on the table to run through a few turns to get a feel for it (all while speaking with a terrible approximation of a Brummie accent).  Love the look of the game.  Not sure if it's for me though.  Little too abstracted for my tastes.

The map is double sided with a day and a night version for some reason. 


This one is pretty high on my WANT list.
Insert witty comment here.

W8taminute

#74
And here is the situation after three complete rounds of play.  No one has scored any victory points yet but all three races are claiming systems in their immediate areas.  However the green player (Sadakk N'orr) and the yellow player may (Barony of Letnev) soon bump into each other.


"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk