Strip Incan Gold

I’ve written before about my immense love of Incan Gold, I truly think it’s one of the best quick play games around. Well, I’ve decided to take my love of it to a new level. A risqué, adult level. I’ve created some rules for Strip Incan Gold, which is bound to be a huge hit with gamers who like to mix some real world excitement and nudity with their board games.

The Setup: You are a member of a group of archeologists, exploring a series of Incan ruins in what is now modern day Peru. Legends exist of massive temples filled with long abandoned stone passages containing gems haphazardly left in piles on the ground. Unfortunately, your exploration of the tunnels has also awakened Iitsatitti, the decadent Incan god of lust! Iitsatitti demands tribute from each person who seeks to plunder his riches! Are you brave enough to bare all and search for untold riches? Or will you seek the cover and shelter of your tented camp?

Gameplay: Strip Incan Gold follows the same basic gameplay as the actual Incan Gold, however there are several differences that result in a much more enjoyable and adult game. Due to the awakened prescence of Iitsatitti each player is forced to pay tribute to the god at the end of each of the five rounds of exploration. And there are only two things that can appease the god’s hunger: gems and clothing. When each round ends every player is required to pay a fixed amount of earned gems to Iitsatitti (the gems can just go back into the pot). At the end of rounds one and two, each player must pay five gems. After rounds three, four, and five the tribute is ten gems.

What’s that? You don’t have enough gems stashed under your little tent? Haha (that’s Iitsatitti howling with delight)! Any player unable to pay the tribute must instead remove a piece of clothing and pay that to the lust god as an offering to his insatiable appetite for flesh. An article of clothing is worth five gems. In the later rounds it is possible that a player must pay multiple articles of clothing to appease the increasingly perverted and aroused god. A player is not required to pay gems, they can choose to instead sacrifice clothing even if they could otherwise afford the tribute. It is a good practice for each player to start with the same amount of articles of clothing. At the end of the fifth round the player with the most gems remaining is declared the winner! Strip Incan Gold is best played over several games in succession. If that’s the case, the winner should get to take back a piece of clothing as a reward.

The five treasure cards in Strip Incan Gold are acquired in the same manner as in the regular game, however rather than having a value in gems each one instead confers some sort of special effect on the owner. Each treasure is usable only once. For a more exciting game shuffle all five treasures into the deck at the beginning of the game instead of adding one each turn.
  
“Trip Nip”- Every player other than the owner of Trip Nip must show their nipples to the other players. If you are already topless, you must deliberately point them at the owner of Trip Nip.
  
That Painful Looking Necklace- The necklace can be used at any time to recover a piece of clothing that has been donated to Iitsatitti. No one likes this necklace.  

The Cup- The owner of the cup may take five gems from any other player at any time. Sucks for them.  

Weird Block Man- The strange block man can be given to Iitsatitti as sufficient tribute at the end of any round. No one knows what he does with the Weird Block Man, but he seems to be real into it.

One Headed Man- The owner of the One Handed Man can force all of the other players to get up and walk around the table at any time. What a creep, that One Headed Man.

Variants: It is easy to adjust Strip Incan Gold to suit the needs of your game playing group. For a more conservative game, decrease the value of the tribute paid each round. Likewise, for a sleazier game increase the value of the tribute to near impossible levels and everyone will be completely nude within a matter of minutes. The above rules are designed for a game of four players. For proper game balance you should adjust the tribute levels to fit the number of players. For fewer players increase the tribute, and decrease it for larger groups.

We Hardly Knew Ye: Newport the Goblin

(One in a series about adventurers who were better off staying at home.)

Who was he? Newport was a third level goblin rogue. A sneaky little fellow with excellent lockpicking skills and some opportune sneak attacks, he endeared himself to his fellow party members with his brutal style of cold hearted murder, most exemplified by his savage killing of a town magistrate that wanted the party dead. Newport snuck into his house and waited outside of the nursery of the man’s child. When he exited the room Newport (along with his hobgoblin partner, Thatcher) ran him through with a sneak attack that quickly took out the adversary before he even had a chance to react. The party rejoiced. Previously, Newport had showed off his quick reflexes by grabbing a falling wine bottle in the cellar of the magistrate’s house, thus preserving the party’s under cover status as they snuck into the house.

Newport was a member of a society of somewhat civilized monstrous humanoids. One day while out hunting, they returned to find that their entire clan had been killed by adventurers! No good adventurers. Killed everyone they knew, took all of their possessions and then left the area. The party was on a revenge mission. Unfortunately for Newport, he will never get that satisfaction.

What happened? A bit overeager, Newport may have bitten off more than he could chew by foolishly charging into a fort occupied by some rangers. Generally it’s not a very good idea to have the rogue with eight hit points (he was wounded) be the first one into the melee, and this example just further supports that somewhat sound theory. Waiting for him was the Forest Warden, a burly fellow with a great axe who just so happened to have Goblin as his favored enemy. Newport may as well have been a pinata. He wound up killed with a single shot, a clean slice across his chest that left him chopped into two pieces. This spurned numerous Newport:Dead Without Pleasure comments from the players at the table.

It probably would have made more sense for the orc barbarian to charge in first, but no one ever said that these monsters were genuises. The orc happen to be outside lighting the fort on fire. The fort that Newport had just charged into. In defense of the orc he had just been introduced to the exciting world of burning down the homes of humans (it started with the Magistrate) and was clearly excited by the prospect of another arson.

Personally, I enjoyed Newport and was a bit sorry to see him go. It is somewhat ironic that the player had just told me the day before that he was really enjoying Newport and looking forward to seeing how he developed. Not going to happen now.

Castle Panic's Master Slayer, or Throwing the Baby Out with the Bath Water

I had always sort of disregarded the Master Slayer aspect of Castle Panic, thinking of it as something of a novelty in an otherwise straightforward cooperative game. I now see that it’s actually the entire point of the game. Defending the castle becomes secondary because everyone suddenly has no interest in helping each other, only in collecting orc and troll skulls. I’ve mentioned before that I find the game fun, but exceedingly easy. This seems to solve that issue since you are once again pitted against other people, rather than some sort of easily defeated game mechanic.

Playing with the Master Slayer (which is actually the way that the game should be played, the more cooperative game is an alternative to it) gives points to the players for killing monsters. Tougher monsters are worth more points. Makes sense. But the game is really structured so that players trade cards and help one another out by planning together. The cards are even played face up on the table, the game presents the illusion that we are all actually working together to save this castle. Which now seems sort of ridiculous since everyone is in constant competition, hell bent on killing the Troll Mage. The thing that makes it odd is that the game is very short sighted. If you offer me a card for a Blue Archer I know exactly what you are going to do with it. You are going to shoot the goblin in the blue zone. I don’t want to help you kill that goblin. I suppose if you offered me a Green Knight that I needed it would be, at best, a zero sum exchange as we both get something that we need. And what’s really the point of that? In a game like Settlers of Catan or Bohnanza trading is a big part of the game, but you don’t necessarily know the extent that you are helping your opponent and can always tell yourself that you are getting the better end of the trade. In Castle Panic the entire board and all of the player’s cards are on display.

The real catch comes with what is now the possible game endings; either one of the players wins or nobody does. That’s interesting. The game ceases to be cooperative. Sure, you could look at it as somewhat of a victory if you successfully defend the castle but one of your partners is the Master Slayer, but who feels that way? Who wants to sort of win, when someone else wins a little bit better? The last time that we played I fell behind pretty early on in the game. The cards I had just weren’t matching up to anything good, and the other players were racking up the kills. At that point it was really in my best interest to let the castle be destroyed so that we would all lose. It wasn’t coming from a point of bitterness, but why would I help someone beat me? Three of us played this afternoon and within a couple of turns the castle was in shambles, orcs and trolls having caused numerous breaches in our walls. No one was looking to trade anyone a brick so that they could be a new wall for it, we were too busy reloading our crossbows. It certainly becomes much more difficult to actually win.

Well, the Master Slayer has addressed what I found to be the biggest fault with Castle Panic. That is, that the game is too easy. I guess I was wrong in writing the game off so quickly and probably should have played the game the way that the designers had really intended it to be played.

Cooperative Games Have Got Me Down

These days Shadows Over Camelot routinely leaves the kingdom in shambles, the world is festering with disease and pestilence whenever the CDC leaves us in charge with Pandemic, even the lost treasures of antiquity rarely make it off of the Forbidden Island. Forbidden Island is a kid’s game! It’s for children! I used to think that cooperative games were great for bonding with my fellow gamers, but now they just leave me feeling hollow inside.

I don’t mind losing a game to friends. In fact, it happens all the time. I usually play games with a smart and savvy group and wins are distributed fairly evenly amongst us all. It’s losing to a game mechanic that I hate. And I don’t mean losing a game because of some sort of rule technicality, I mean when the game is actually the winner. Cooperative games have really got me down these days. We just seem to rarely win, and the silent gloating of the victorious game pieces looking up at me is almost more than I can bear. Whether it’s the stack of black cubes surrounding Mumbai and Tehran, or the hordes of siege engines massed in front of the castle makes no difference to me.

Recently four of us were playing Shadows Over Camelot and we were doing really well. We had won the Grail Quest and several others and basically just needed to keep the siege engines at bay until the game ended. Two of our braves knights had returned to Camelot to do battle with the belfries and catapults of our foes, and they got mangled. Not just defeated, but really embarrassed. On three consecutive rolls the enemy rolled an eight (on a d8) and both knights were killed in successive turns. Undermanned, the remaining two were quickly overwhelmed and the kingdom was plunged into darkness. It was heartbreaking. The next time we played we were dead men walking. We didn’t stand a chance. Our fragile mindset, so recently elevated as we were on the cusp of victory, doomed us from the beginning. We overreacted to threats, jumped around the board like novice squires and bickered with one another. We had lost the psychological game to a non-entity, literally something that had no brain or psyche had gotten inside our head.

What I need to do is play more Castle Panic. That game is absurdly easy, maybe that’s why people seem to like it so much. Because they always win. But therein is the problem. If a game doesn’t present much of a challenge for the group than it’s not a very good game, it makes me feel a little bit like a bully. But if it’s too challenging and we just lose all of the time we feel like doormats. True, it does make victory all that much sweeter, but I’m beginning to forget what it tastes like at all.

Zurich is a Trap: More Thoughts on TTR Europe

I’m sure that Zurich is a beautiful city and it’s residents lovely people, but to me it is nothing more than a horrid trap encased by mountains. At least as far as Ticket to Ride Europe is concerned, which is more and more becoming the lens through which I view geography.

At first glance Zurich seems so appealing. It has four routes that run through it and it connects to a bunch of major areas, it has a great location. So why is it such a trap? Well, for starters every one of the routes that run into it is a tunnel which means that you will probably not be getting a real good return on those trains you put down. Plus, they are all real short. Three routes of two and another of one. No thanks. Like I’ve said in the past I think that TTR-Europe is really a game of board control and getting value out of each of your 45 trains. Not to say that tickets are not important, just not as important as in the original version of TTR. Zurich can be part of a winning plan as long as you just dip into it and get out, spending three turns or so placing trains through the mountains definitely puts you at a disadvantage.

The two games (TTR and Europe) are virtually the same, so why the difference in strategy? Well, the map of Europe is sort of a mess and certainly uneven. There are some very strong regions to claim (mainly the upper right section of the board) and others that are not very conducive to winning (such as Zurich and the surrounding mountains), and if you can lay claim to the high value areas it gives a distinct advantage when it comes time to tally those points. More and more my strategy is to get three or four tickets that work well together and end the game. It’s been working well for me lately. Being the player who initiates the end game is more valuable than an extra ticket or two, at least I think so. If I don’t get one of the 20+ point tickets in my initial draw I try to end the game quickly by focusing on routes of four or more trains, anything less than that may not always be worth it. Of course the chance of all of your tickets fitting neatly into four train routes is nonexistent, but I use that as a guideline when trying to figure out where I am going.

Shadowrun Campaign Journal #2

The party started the night in Mr. White’s warehouse, licking their wounds from the previous encounter. Both Puppy and Phil the Kill had serious injuries so they decided to hole up a while and do some healing. Mr. White did some computer recon to learn about the fallout over the shootout at Morpheus’ Throne. Apparently the police thought it was the work of some amateurs considering the haphazard way that everything seemed to go down. The party seemed to get a kick out of that, especially since the police were right. There was a mention of some military grade weaponry used in the fracas, this seemed to be of some concern to the local police force.

After a couple of days of laying low they decided to contact Zapper and get their payment for killing Handsome Dick. Phil and Katsin met up with a grim faced Zapper who had some bad news for them. First, he informed them that they had all been had by his employer. The “Aztechnology” corp man does not exist, Zapper thought the whole thing was a setup and that there was no money for any of them. Someone just wanted Handsome Dick, and perhaps all of the Silver Streaks, dead. Secondly, he played them some video footage on a small player of the incident with the Silver Streaks. Clear as day they watched Mr. White unload with the autocannon, reducing some gang members to red mist and tearing apart a section of a building in a hail of lead. There was also footage of the inside of the bar showing the rest of the crew doing work. Zapper told them that the footage was going to be released to the police unless the party cooperated with the wishes of the mysterious client. Zapper apologized to the group and assured them that he had no part in this and was very sorry that they were being manipulated this way. After a perception test Katsin believed him, but the party seems unlikely to ever trust Zapper again.

With the blackmail in place the party was assigned a new job. In the Outer Edge section of Seattle (the same area that housed the once semi-prominent Silver Streaks) there is a drug dealer named Dark Cloud. He is to be killed. They were given the address of his warehouse but not much else. Now is where things started to get interesting…

The Hungry Backpack; Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace Resource Denial

While playing Munchkin the other night I had the rare pleasure of using the Hungry Backpack against another player. The Backpack is what I consider to be one of the real power cards in the game. For those not in the know, the Backpack essentially devours the hand of the soul unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of the curse. At the end of each turn the player rolls a d6; on a 6 the Backpack greedily eats itself and is removed, on any other roll the player must randomly discard that number of cards from their hand. Devastating, especially since a hand can’t be larger than five cards. Within a round or two the player is stripped of just about all resources in their hand.

Denial or loss of resources is a basic strategy in most games, the Backpack is merely this principal manifested in Munchkin. In Settlers of Catan it can be seen as the Robber, casting a blight on one’s land. Losing the ability to move your first ship in Starfarers of Catan. In the above example with Munchkin the player in question was at Level 9 (one level from winning) and the Backpack essentially spelled a death sentence for her, leaving her unable to help herself win that final battle. Why is the loss of something so devastating? For starters, the game continues to move forward, other players gain resources, move their pieces, etc…But the affected player is left in a sort of stasis, unable to generate anything new. Even if they are in a good place when the freeze arrives, they may quickly find that the advantage was not as sizeable as they imagined. A turn or two without anything new may not seem like much, but often the best crafted strategies are contingent on each move, and well charted out several turns in advance based on the cards at hand. This ruins all that, so not only is a player not moving forward, they may actually be moving backward as they scramble to readjust or chart a new course.

Also, games may seem like they go on for a long time but rarely does a game go for more than 15 turns or so. Losing out on one or two of them can hurt a lot. And generally each turn counts as much as any other., though that may not always be the perception. Like in baseball, games played in April count as much as those played in the pressure of a pennant race in September, though many would say the opposite. The point is, losing out on some of them can really set a player back and the ability to enact this on another is usually the greatest resource in a player’s arsenal. Even more than helping yourself, is hurting another? Maybe, but I think that the number of players in a game ultimately decides that question.

One of the games that we’ve been playing a lot lately is Pirate’s Cove, a game that I consider to be extremely balanced. Perhaps too balanced, but that’s a post for another day. But the interesting thing about Pirate’s Cove is that there is no resource denial mechanism. Even when you lose a fight you get some tavern cards or some gold. You are always moving forward, even if only in smaller increments than your fellow scalawags. Without a mechanism to really hinder other opponents the game sometimes becomes a crap shoot, with luck playing a large role in the outcome.

It sometimes seems devious and rotten, but hindering opponents is often the most sound strategy to victory. Of course, it also garners ill will and animosity from your fellow gamers, but it’s just a game. Right?

Games for beginners

Navigating the seas of the board game world can be a tricky one. There are literally thousands of game out there with different themes, rules, from all sorts of companies. To an outsider it can either seem like a bizarre and overwhelming world better left to the experts and serious hobbyists, or it can be a tempting invitation into a fascinating realm of social enjoyment. Clearly, I prefer the latter definition but the first one is not without merit, especially the overwhelming aspect. So, I offer up a couple of games for the novice board gamer to get their feet wet.

Settlers of Catan has received numerous accolades as a spectacular game and is often credited as the flagship product for the burgeoning introduction of board games into the mainstream (especially in the U.S.). It’s all true. The game is not just very fun, but also an excellent gateway to the world of strategy games. It’s the pot of board games. The theme of the game is simple; players are settlers on a recently discovered island competing with one another to develop the land and generate resources. Like all the good games it is easy to learn but also continues to hold the interest of more experienced players, which makes it great as a learning game since everyone can get into it. It also introduces some of the basics of board gaming; resource harvesting and managing, planning for the short and long term, recognizing trends and fluctuating values, and developing an endgame strategy. Even with newer players the game shouldn’t take more than an hour, so it is frequently easy to convince people to sit down and play it, which is often a hurdle for some. Additionally, the game has numerous expansions so it is also great to grow into should you find that it’s the right game for you and your group.

Another game that I would recommend for inexperienced players is the cutthroat game of backstabbing and treasure hording, Munchkin. Unlike Settlers, Munchkin is a card game which sets it into a different genre. Though it’s really just like a board game without the board. Thematically Munchkin is in the world of fantasy adventure, that is to say it shares a theme with Dungeons and Dragons. Unfortunately, that appears to be a turnoff for some, but if they can get past that a great game awaits. Players fight monsters, gain powers and treasures, and try to fend off their fellow players and win the game. It’s the last aspect that makes it so much fun and engaging. A big aspect of the game is the ability to hinder other players as much as you can aid yourself. This is great for keeping players involved since you can act even on the turn of another player. I will caution that if the people you game with take things very personally than this may not be the game for them. Munchkin is also quick paced, though it tends to drag when more than four players are involved. And like Settlers, it has a bunch of expansions that add tons of new cards to the mix.

There are also many great resources available on line to get suggestions for games and to read reviews.

Game time?

How long should a game last? Until it's over is the proper answer, I guess. But what's the right length for a game? The group of people that I play with meet primarily on weeknights, so we have some time constraints. While I love the idea of a game that takes six hours to play, it's just not very feasible. Maybe for a once in a while planned gaming experience, but certainly not on the reg. And there is something that bothers me about a five or six hour game. What happens if you are out of it after three hours, you just kind of hang around and go through the motions while the remaining players plug away at one another? Are you obligated to play the spoiler? Is it wrong the make moves that intentionally help another player, even if it's not the best for you? I don't know the answers.

I think for most board game a good time length is about 20 minutes per person involved, maybe a little longer if there are 3 or less. Five people and the game takes between an hour and a half and two hours? Perfect, I'm into it. An hour is a good length for two player games. This also opens the options of multiple games in a night, which I really like.

Our weekly D&D game goes around three and a half hours each week, which I find to be nice. As a DM it keeps me off the hook from having to prepare a ton of material for the game, but it's also enough time to cover a lot of ground and get a couple of combats in. In the past I have played games that meet for six hours or more, and that is also a lot of fun but I could never sustain that on a weekly basis. Maybe if the game met every other week or less frequently that would be the favored method.