Fiasco: Breaking Not-So-Bad

Game Date: 11/10/2012

Characters:
Chere -  Lolita McNasty
Cliff -  Bubba Junior
Greg - Shasta McNasty
Matt - Scud
Star - Des
Ted - Gerald McTinkerton


The Session:
Our Traveller campaign is on (probably permanent) hiatus, so we've been trying a lot of different one-shots.  Today we played Fiasco, a fun storytelling game full of twists and turns. 

The game started with us rolling a bunch of dice and matching them to various types of relationships, so we could find out how our characters were connected to each other.  Result: Lolita was the mother of Shasta, who was the manipulative friend of Scud, who dealt drugs with Bubba Jr, who sold drugs to Des, who was the parole officer for Gerald, who was sleeping with Lolita.  Then we used the rest of the dice to assign other plot elements: objects, locations, and needs.

Then we went around the table, each player setting up a scene for specific characters to act out.  After each scene a player with awarded with a white or dark die, based on how well things went for their character.  The Plot (severely abridged):  Scud and Bubba Jr were meth dealers.  Scud lost his meth recipe, which was taken by Shasta, then found by Lolita, who gave it to Gerald.  Scud confronted Shasta, who mistook the conversation to be about a cookie recipe, leading to a comedy-of-errors.  Meanwhile Des was investigated by internal affairs for buying meth, leading to her arrest.  Scud tried to blow up Lolita's trailer with a pipe bomb, but was confronted by Gerald, who offered to return Scud's recipe in exchange for 50% of his future profits.

At halftime, we rolled more dice and assigned them to the "Tilt Table" - some more plot details designed to take the story into new directions.  As a result of the Tilt, when Gerald tried to return the recipe, he found that it had been stolen yet again.  Unable to complete the deal, he drove off, leaving a very angry Scud.  Meanwhile, it turned out Des and Lolita were in cahoots, and some of the story's plot twists were part of their insurance scam.  Shasta and Gerald fought over the meth/cookie recipe, leading to the both getting caught in the pipe bomb explosion.  Bubba Jr and Scud were arrested, but Jr managed to plead insanity.

At the end of the game, we used the dice we'd collected to determine how happy our individual endings were.  Shasta and Gerald wound up alive but with severe injuries.  Des and Lolita left town and retired on their stolen money, while Bubba Jr became an evangelist.  Scud eventually got out of prison and spent the rest of his life trying to make meth out of cookie dough.

Afterthoughts:
I have a love/hate relationship with improv.  I really like watching it, but I truly, truly suck at it.  Still, Fiasco does a good job of making it easier.  It's more structured than the skits you see on Whose Line, so by the time you actually have to act, you should have at least some idea about what your character needs to do in this scene.  I still didn't do very well, but who cares?  I laughed harder than I had in a long time.  The game took a lot of energy, and I even took a nap when I got home.  I could never play this on a regular basis, but it is an absolute blast as a party game.  Highly recommended.

Board Game: The Legend of Drizzt

About a year ago I posted about D&D's Wrath of Ashardalon board game.  It's one of a series of D&D board games, based on a very simplified version of 4e's rules.  The series also includes Castle Ravenloft, and most recently, The Legend of Drizzt.

I'm not exactly sure what made me buy the Drizzt game.  I really liked that time I played Ashardalon, and I've read most of the Drizzt books (though I'm definitely not a Drizzt fanboy), and I felt this would be fun to play with certain friends who don't have time to commit to a full campaign.  This series of games is fairly expensive, though to be fair they include a lot of little pieces.  Each game sells for around $65 when they're first released, but if you look hard enough (or wait long enough), you can find them for around $35-$40.  I was leery about spending the money, but I'm not disappointed by my purchase.

I haven't played enough of the other two to really compare them, but from what I've read, there's a bit of "power creep" in this one.  The player characters are a bit more powerful, especially Drizzt himself.  The PC selection has all the major characters from the series: Drizzt, Bruenor, Regis, Catti-Brie, Wulfgar, Artemis Entreri, Jarlaxle, and Athrogate.  Jarlaxle and Artemis can be used as heroes or villains, depending on the scenario.  

I do have one issue with the playable characters: the class selection doesn't feel varied enough.  They spent so much time staying true to the books, that they didn't fill out the standard "Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Wizard" combo you see in more generic games.  On the other hand, these games are meant to be somewhat interchangeable, so they might be assuming I already own the other two.


If you enjoyed the Drizzt books, you'll probably have fun playing through the included scenarios, most of which are based on actual events from the series.  We have Drizzt escaping from the Underdark, Bruenor searching for Mithril Hall while Artemis Entreri hunts Regis, fighting the dragon Shimmergloom, Drow from Drizzt's past trying to hunt him down, freeing Wulfgar from the demon Errtu, and so on.  Most of the scenarios follow the same format; you keep drawing tiles/monsters until that adventure's boss appears, and you defeat him to win.  But some of them simply have you trying to escape, or even have you competing against the other players to kill the most monsters.

Some Pix:

Artemis Entreri and Jarlaxle

Athrogate

Yochlol, Matron Mother Yvonnel Baenre, and Methil El-Viddenvelp the Mind Flayer

Regis, Bruenor, Drizzt, Catti-Brie, and Wulfgar

Drider and Drow

The Demon Errtu

Shimmergloom the Dragon

Trolls and Goblins

Board Game Night: Wrath of Ashardalon and Zombies!!!

Game Date: 2/19/2011

Our "normal" campaign (if you can call it that) was canceled, so a few of us met at The Next Level Games and played a couple of board games instead.

Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon

Wrath of Ashardalon is a board game based on D&D 4th Edition, along the same lines as Castle Ravenloft.  It uses 4e as a base template, but the rules are simplified so that players can just pull it out and play without a lot of setup.

Upon seeing this game for the first time in the store, my initial impression was, "Wow, that's expensive."   But now that I've seen it opened, things are a little more clear.  It comes with 42 plastic miniatures, which are unpainted versions of older D&D minis.  Included among them is the "Huge Red Dragon" mini from the Giants of Legend line, which itself currently goes for around $70 on Ebay.  So even though this version is unpainted, it still makes it a pretty good value.  You also get some interlocking dungeon tiles, and way more tokens and cards than you'll ever want to keep track of.

It's a bit strange that this product exists, when you could always just play normal, full-on D&D.  But WoA has the advantage of being simpler and self-contained.  Everything you need is in the box, and a full game doesn't take nearly as long as playing actual D&D.  So that's probably the target audience: people who want a quick D&D fix without the commitment.  Another great feature is that you can even play solo. 

I mentioned in an earlier blog that Gamma World is a simplified version of D&D.  Well, Gamma World has nothing on WoA.  This is probably as simple as D&D gets.  You don't roll up a character, just grab one of the 5 character cards and pick their powers.  Leveling up is as simple as turning your card over, revealing your Level 2 stats.  I could see this game being used to give a non-gamer a taste of D&D to see if they want to learn more.

I haven't yet played Castle Ravenloft, but apparently WoA and Ravenloft are compatible board games, meaning you can swap out elements between them to customize your experience.  There's also a Legend of Drizzt game coming out that will most likely be compatible as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if more are in the works.

I had a great time playing it, but I don't know if I could justify the price unless I found it on sale.  I already have a lot of D&D materials, and there's not a lot of good reasons to play WoA if full D&D is available.  If you just keep a few extra characters printed out, and a Monster Manual or maybe a copy of Dungeon Delve on hand, you can already run a quick adventure whenever you need to.  And that's my worry:  D&D fans don't need this, and non-D&D fans won't like this.  Overall I thought it was pretty cool, but part of me still wonders what the point is.


Some pictures:

Zombies!!!
I'd played Zombies!!! once before, but this time there were more players, and we got to use the "Mall Walkers" expansion.  Zombies!!! is a fairly simple board game in which players try to survive a town filled with undead monsters.  The ultimate goal is to be the first player to either kill 25 zombies or escape in a helicopter.

It's an easy game to learn, and it's a lot of fun.  Like Wrath of Ashardalon above, the game involves randomly drawing board tiles that increase the size of the play area.  But each tile brings a few zombies with it, and after a few rounds there are dozens of the creatures on the board.  While some cooperation between players can occasionally help, in my experience the game is more about screwing each other over.

And that's what makes it fun.  It's a harsh world, and while it would be nice if everyone could work together to defeat the zombie hordes, the fact is that only one of you is going to make it.  If you want it to be you, you're going to have to treat your friends as bait.

I highly recommend this game to people who like zombies.  Just make sure you have a really big table to play it on, because after a while the tiles tend to spread out all over the place.

Some pictures: