We’re working as hard as we can to be able to play Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion the way we want to play it – by making a quick, easy to set up and play game an exercise in overcompensation. We play a lot of board games. One thing common to all the most popular games is how well they lend themselves to being modded. The pieces that come in the game are just the starting point. ...
The huge, 20 pound box that Gloomhaven comes in can be more than a little intimidating, but that’s nothing compared to all the boxes, cards, tiles and popout tokens inside the game box. Gloomhaven is more than just a campaign-style adventure. It’s a system that supports the construction and play of millions of custom scenarios. But, it doesn’t lend itself to casual play. The floor tiles have to be found and arranged, the monster AIs need to be set up, their cards found and standees stood up. It could take half an hour to set up a session before I started working on organizing the stuff. ...
It struck me last night, as I was pulling Unrest for our fireplace room group, that it was the experience of taking a camp and pulling mobs to it for the group to kill – probably EverQuest’s core gameplay – is precisely the gameplay feature that no other MMO has valued enough to include in their game. Group content in other MMOs seems to be highly curated; you start at the beginning of the ride, are taken past visually stunning wonders and carefully choreographed boss encounters, and then are delivered to the end, given some gifts, and are set free to go on your way. Certainly World of Warcraft was that way when I played, and Final Fantasy XIV is definitely that way. Significantly, Final Fantasy XI Online was not that way. It leaned into the EverQuest model of finding a camp and pulling to it. ...
Again, my huge advantage over Kasul is that I still am forced to work from home, but on the plus side, I get to get in the Aradune queue early and am usually able to play by the time I am done work and have supper cooking. The question of what to do during the time when I’m playing alone, since I don’t want to outlevel Kasul, was easily answered with tradeskills. I can do all the tradeskilling I like. ...
Aradune has returned to the endless queue strategy, which is a huge upgrade, I guess, from the “let everyone in and watch the server die” strategy they’d been trying for a couple weeks prior. This actually isn’t a big deal, for me. I work at home due to the pandemic, so about three or four hours before I think I’ll be ready to play EverQuest, I just get in the queue and go back to work. Several hours later, as easy as that, I’m in EverQuest. ...
First meeting of the full game group since the pandemic started! The governor of our state recently allowed family groups of up to ten people, but we only needed eight :-) In those lonely weeks and months stranded at home, Wizards of the Coast managed to release the new Ikoria set for Magic: the Gathering, a set focused on such diverse cards mutated beasts, itinerant elemental gods and movie monsters (including the infamous Space Godzilla: Death Corona). ...
I’m not really sure what kind of game someone would expect to play if they were told its name was “Kingdom Death”. Is… a kingdom dying? Is it Death’s kingdom? Kingdom Death is a the most fantastically successful survival cooperative board game that you’ve never heard of. You and up to three friends play a group of settlers returning from a lantern festival that are ambushed by a deadly lion. Armed only with a stone dagger and a lantern, you kill the vicious beast. Wounded, but alive, you return to your village, pile high your lanterns in the center square, and vow to become so powerful that you and your fellow villagers need never fear the monsters that prowl in the dark. ...
We absolutely, 100%, gave it our all. We braved the long log in queues, trying to log in as soon as we got home from work and waiting the two-three hours to play an hour or two before bed. When Darkpaw decided to vastly expand the number of people who could be logged in at once, we patiently waited the ten or fifteen minutes it would take to simply zone. Running to an experience zone could take awhile, but we did it. ...
It won’t be any sort of surprise that a family that has weekly board game nights plays one of the most popular board games on this planet or any other (as far as we know). Terraforming Mars is a long time staple of ours. It’s easy and fun to play, can take as many people as you can throw at it, and is pretty fast moving to boot. We hadn’t played it for awhile, but at one time we would alternate between Terraforming Mars, Vast and Magic: the Gathering. We’ve since gone much, much deeper into board gaming, but we still make time for the old favorites. ...
It’s a week since Aradune opened. Raid guilds have the planes of Hate and Fear on lockdown. Naggy died last night; probably Vox has died, too, when I wasn’t on to see it. Groups have level 50 alts to sit outside the group and buff and heal. I was not prepared for the pace of a Time-Locked Progression Server. Kunark doesn’t open for another eleven weeks! I guess it does take time to farm a full set of planar. I’m hoping people will still want to raid when Kasul and I get there. ...