Category: Convention

It’s been a while since I covered an in-person event, hasn’t it? I think the last one was Granite Games Summit. I spent yesterday up in Manchester, New Hampshire at the Odd Tabletop Games New England event, hosted at the Boards and Brews game cafe.

As per my usual format for these sorts of things, I’ll be talking about what I played, and the event in general with a small amount of commentary not related to games at the end.

Author Note: I think my general enthusiasm for weirdness for is fairly well documented. For example, see this entire blog. That said, tabletop RPG’s are definitely my third category of focus when it comes to games, after video games and board games. So there may be some things here that I have different opinions on than most folks more in the scene.

Academy of Adolescent Monsters

Academy of Adolescent Monsters was the first game I played yesterday, and probably the most fun I had at the event. It’s a fairly rules-lite tabletop RPG with a simple premise and system for problem resolution. After creating the setting (the school), a starting situation, and the characters, the game starts.

Given how rules-lite the system is, it might just be faster for anyone interested to just go grab the rulebook and read through it. The general gist is that “problems” exist, and players state actions they wish to take to resolve the problems.

To solve problems, the player roles a D20, states what they want to do, and consults a sheet of outcomes. If the player used a positive trait, they can move around a personal bingo board grid and select a different value than the outcome they got. If they use a negative trait, they have to keep the outcome, but get to mark off an additional value.

The results of the lookup table range from solving the problem, to changing traits to positive traits, to just making things worse with various resolutions in between. Much of the fun from the game is the result of the players’ willingness to engage, really embroider the story, and buy into it being “The worst day of school ever.”

The designer, Daniel Jansen, ran the game for us and did a fantastic job keeping things smooth and on-tone. By the end of the school day, we had reconstructed a clock that changed time, convinced a car possessed by a hermit crab-entity to become the Driver Ed teacher, and stopped a camera that stole souls and teeth. In short, a great time.

I don’t think I have much valuable critique or issues with the game. During play, I incorrectly interpreted one part of the system involving changing dice rolls by consulting my bingo board, but it’s such a small confusion I’m not sure it matters.

A game like this feels like it works perfectly in a format like the event: as a one-shot with a bunch of players all willing to buy in and let everyone have their moment to shine, or embroider the fiction.

Overall, I had a fantastic time with this.

Side Note: There were definitely a few moments where I had to catch myself and step back a bit, because if given a chance to make up a monster, I really want to add all the details, instead of letting everyone else contribute. I tried to rein myself in.

Untitled DB Cooper Game

The second game I played was “Untitled DB Cooper Game” by Dr. Mary Flanagan and Max Seidman of Tiltfactor. I suggested the name “Cooped Up” and was told that no one likes puns, so sadly, I’m going to just have to refer to this as ‘Untitled’ for the rest of the writeup.

Untitled is a multiplayer story-telling and hidden details game. One player is the storyteller, one players is the accomplice, and the other players are the interviewer and FBI. The storyteller and the accomplice have agreed on a secret signal: an item in the room where the game is being played. There are also several location cards, and the storyteller tries to weave in details that will point the accomplice toward the correct location. The game is played over several rounds with the signal object staying the same, but the stories changing.

In short, the storyteller tries to secretly hint at a location with using a prearranged signal among the details of their story, while the FBI and Interviwer try to figure out the secret item.

It’s fun, if a bit challenging as the storyteller has a limited amount of time to talk. I got a few critical things wrong that led to me giving up the game a bit too early when I played as storyteller.

We Have Always Lived Here

The last game I played was Glen Given’s “We have always lived here.” It’s a solo journaling game about creating a haunted house.

It did not resonate positively with me.

One of the reasons may be that I’m not big on journaling. Another could be that as someone who isn’t an inherently positive person, I put a lot of effort into trying to maintain a positive mental attitude. As such, if you ask me to pick a sad, lonesome, or haunting song, there is part of me that stands up and suggests that the most appropriate choice is obviously “Macarena,” as a sort of self defense mechanism.

There are many design choices here that I find somewhat aggravating, but are also likely intended to aggravate. The game requires a high number of components and items to complete it, including dice, coins, a deck of cards, song, etc. The system for selecting items from lists feels deliberately cumbersome, involving counting down lists over and over and over, until only one choice is left.

There’s probably a longer discussion on art, catharsis, negative emotions, creation, ritual, and subjective experience. I’ll let someone else smarter than me write it.

Other Things That Happened

I chatted with Carly Dwyer, the founder of Intramersive Media, about some of their projects, including one named “Magical Help Desk” which I found particularly interesting, and really want to try. I also talked to Dr. Loretta Brady of Saint Anselm College about some of the work that she and her lab have done around games.

I also spent most of lunch talking about parasitic wasps, breaking teeth, and still finished my sandwich. I don’t have a link for that last one.

Overall, good times.

Every time I go to a convention, I promise myself I’m gonna write about everything I saw. And every time I get home, a bit overwhelmed, I cover 2-3 games, and then move onto the next thing.

So this time, I’ll write all it all up right now the bus ride home! But first…

The Non-Games part of the Event

This is a very small event compared to something PAX Unplugged. At its heart, Granite Games Summit is a bunch of folks in a hotel ballroom playing board games for four days straight.

It also has a very cozy feeling compared to other conventions I’ve gone to. The whole thing was very low-key, with plenty of of families and children. In terms of lodging, the Doubletree by Hilton is perfectly average. Still nicer than my apartment. For food, there’s enough stuff within walking or driving distance to be fine as well, but nothing special.

There’s very much an air of trust to the whole thing. One draw of the event is that attendees can bring their own board game collections to be borrowed from. And beyond that, the event organizers also provide an entire game library.

Overall, this is a low-intensity event, offering a chance to play a large number of games without buying them yourself. I don’t think anyone comes to an event like this for any reason other than to play board games. So let’s talk about those games!

The Playtests and Prototypes

Given that none of these games are out yet, I don’t want to say too much about them, and I won’t be saying anything I didn’t already say to the designers’ faces. Still, I spent a fair amount of time on them, so I’d like to talk about them a bit.

Cubism by Resonym
A very fun deck builder. The designer is a friend of mine. Still in the tweaking stages, but if you see it at another event, I highly encourage you to try it out. It has a very clever twist on resource generation that I’m not sure I should spoil here?

Cypher Sessions
Cypher Sessions is a beat-the-leader matching game about writing rap. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t have too much fun with it. I said as much in my feedback to the designer. I’d play it again if someone wanted to, but I don’t have any huge amount of interest in it. But it’s still in development, so maybe it will end up great!

The Armory
The Armory is a set collection buying game about trying assemble collections of weapons and armor. It’s in the early stages, but its core concept does feel fun. There were some lulls and weirdnesses, and the game itself doesn’t quite feel ready for prime time, but I’d be interested to see where it ends up.

A quick note: If you’re the dev of one of these games, and would like me to update this article to link to your twitter or blog, please just send me a message on Twitter.

The Fully Released Games

Here are the fully released games I played. So no punches pulled. I’ll be giving my quick thoughts, and ultimately, answering a single question: Would I play it again?

Dice Forge

Dice Forge is a game about Forging Dice. There are customizable dice that you can snap the sides off of, and snap back on. It’s a heavily produced affair where your goal is ultimately to Get The Most Victory Points, by customizing your dice, and using the resources they generate to buy cards that give you victory points and abilities.

Would I play it again? Yes. I generally enjoyed it, and I’d be curious to try different strategies if I got a rematch.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Hogwarts Battle is deckbuilder with the Harry Potter license. I’ll talk about the game in a moment. First though, I would like to note two things unrelated to gameplay that drove me a bit nuts.

First off, it feels like every other name and item in the game has a trademark symbol on it, to the point of ridiculousness. In addition, all the game’s art has a tone of “on-file style guide movie images.”

The end result is that the whole thing has the artistic feeling of licensed children’s valentines from Hallmark, and a tone of tackiness. Someone in the chain of command had a decision to make: was it more important that players be immersed in defending Hogwarts from its villains, or that they know that, should J.K. Rowling’s estate ever wish to make a Peter Pettigrew themed vacuum cleaner, they own the rights to do so. They chose the latter.

Editor’s note: You know, because Peter Pettigrew sucks.

Which is unfortunate, because this game doesn’t feel like it wants to be a cheap tie-in product. Whoever designed it seemed to really give some thought to the characters and items. One small standout function for me was that both Draco Malfoy and Lucius Malfoy have a similar effect, with the elder Malfoy being more powerful. The effect itself is “Not really doing anything bad on their own, but making bad things that happen worse.”

Which at least to me was a pretty good way to encapsulate those characters!

That said, this is not the strongest deckbuilder I’ve ever played, or even the best one I played this weekend. The game has 7 scenarios, all of which are additive as far as I can tell, and I played through 1-3 without being challenged. The lack of any deck-thinning mechanics or way to clear the row of items you can buy to add to your deck can quickly lead to a feeling of bloat with no mechanical remedy.

Would I play it again? Yes, BUT only to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, and see if it gets any more interesting/addresses any of the problems with the deck building elements.

This also would probably be a decent game to play with non-board gaming Harry Potter fans, or maybe your family.

Editor’s note: playing this game at a convention’s library is the best way to play it! You get to try it without giving JKR any more money.

KeyForge

KeyForge is yet another card game from Richard Garfield. I have to assume it was built around the question of “How can we remove deck-building, landscrew, and collecting cards, but still sell you blind box packs?” And thus was born the Unique Deck Game. Each deck is randomly generated in advance for you, and cannot be changed.

Snark aside, I generally like KeyForge. Did it disrupt the big 3? No. Do I only have the game because it’s mostly dead, and I bought a booster box of decks from a discounts bin for $40, when its MSRP is supposed to be about $120? Yes. It makes novel attempts to solve a bunch of problems in the card game space, even if they don’t all succeed.

Would I play it again? Yes. I find KeyForge entertaining, and the unconstructed nature lends to a lower power level than a lot of constructed TCGs. I might get bored at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet.

A Feast for Odin

Feast for Odin is a worker placement game about populating a Tetris grid. Is that an oversimplification? Yes. But this game took 30 minutes to sort components, 30 minutes to explain the rules, and 3 and half hours to play. Whatever I write here will be an oversimplification.

I would like to make a few quick observations, though. If games are art, and art is subjective, then I subject that I would like to never again be subjected to A Feast for Odin. The game has an 8.2 on Board Game Geek, a number would now be infinitesimally lower if I added my own rating. I found the game to be long, tedious, and I struggled to spot interesting mechanical interactions and failed to be engrossed the game’s theming.

This probably says more about me than A Feast for Odin, but it was my experience.

Would I play it again? No. I would rather do my taxes. It wouldn’t be more fun, but it would be shorter, and at the end at least my taxes would be finished.

Fun Fact: A Feast for Odin is a Euro-game, following the traditional Euro-game model of “Everyone should score about the same number of points at the end, despite the winner having a clearly better position.” I scored 30 points. Both my opponents scored OVER 90, and one of them had also never played before. I am very bad at this game.

Clank

Clank is the better deckbuilder I played this weekend. It’s still not great, but it does do some interesting things. The goal is to get into a dungeon, get loot, and get out. This is compounded slightly by fact that you need to do it without getting burnt to a crisp by the dragon living in the dungeon.

There are really three systems in Clank. There’s the deck builder, where the unique conceit is that you must play every single card in your hand each turn. There’s the board that you move around on. And there’s the Clank bag.

Some cards in your deck will generate clank tokens. These get added to the bag, and whenever various cards show up in the games buy row, the dragon attacks. You pull out a certain number of tokens from the bag, and take damage based on whose color they were. Things get more dangerous as players pick up the loot, giving the whole thing a feel of escalating tension.

Would I play it again? Yes. Each component of Clank is “just okay,” but as a whole, it feels like a much stronger game. Apparently the spinoffs also address issues with the game’s pacing.

Spirit Island

Spirit Island is a co-op settler construction game. Oh I’m sorry, I mispelled that. It’s a co-op settler destruction game. This game also took 3 hours to play, though the setup time was much faster.

I enjoyed Spirit Island far more than A Feast for Odin. At least part of this is due to the theming being far more interesting. “Drive out the invading settlers as a powerful nature spirit” excites me more than “Acquire a cow.”

That said, given that both my teammates had played before, I don’t know exactly how impactful I was to the group. There was also a lot of time just spent resolving various effects, as opposed to using my various powers.

Would I play it again? Yes. I liked Spirit Island, and I’d be curious play some of the more complex spirits, and the ones with different playstyles. It was fun!

Wrap Up

Granite Games Summit 2023 was a good time, and I’d attend a Granite Games Summit again. I do think this is an event best attended as some sort of group, or if you’re already local to try to keep the costs for a hotel/travel down.

The other benefit to attending with friends/family is that you already have a playgroup for most things, and can hopefully find people fill out slots should you need them.

That said, this is a very focused event. It’s about playing board games for up to 4 days straight in a reasonable hotel in New Hampshire, and not doing much else. If that sounds fantastic, awesome. Go follow the convention’s account on Twitter, so you can find out when to buy tickets for next year (they sell out very fast).

Alternately, if you’re looking for more stuff to read about board games, why not check out my PAX Unplugged Writeups? I wrote about some Indie TCGs, board games adapted from video games, and some other stuff.