Octopus Overlords

Worthington Games is rebooting the 1970s TSR classic Divine Right. They're keeping the original aesthetic but raising the component quality.

I never played the original, but I was always interested.

Debating on backing Horror on the Orient Express: The Board Game

I'm a sucker for anything Cthulhu related, and the fact that this is an officially licensed Chaosium product makes it all the more tempting. Plus you've got good designer pedigree (Adam Kwapinski who did Nemesis and Frostpunk). And a cute little cardboard train. Throw in some mechanics I love (deduction, push your luck bag draws, co-op), and it's close to a no-brainer.

My only real hesitation is that I've heard from folks who played it at GenCon last year that it's REALLY difficult to win. While ordinarily I don't mind difficult games, it does scare me off a tiny bit.

Hopefully there will be more gameplay videos out before I have to decide. Or I may just throw in a buck to late pledge later.

YellowKing wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2024 2:49 pm Debating on backing Horror on the Orient Express: The Board Game

I'm a sucker for anything Cthulhu related, and the fact that this is an officially licensed Chaosium product makes it all the more tempting. Plus you've got good designer pedigree (Adam Kwapinski who did Nemesis and Frostpunk). And a cute little cardboard train. Throw in some mechanics I love (deduction, push your luck bag draws, co-op), and it's close to a no-brainer.

My only real hesitation is that I've heard from folks who played it at GenCon last year that it's REALLY difficult to win. While ordinarily I don't mind difficult games, it does scare me off a tiny bit.

Hopefully there will be more gameplay videos out before I have to decide. Or I may just throw in a buck to late pledge later.

Same to all the above, but I backed it anyway. Even with those limitations, I think it will be good, and the price point, for a kickstarter, is fairly low.

You twisted my arm. I'm in. Also found a Jon Gets Games run through of it, and a positive preview from Rahdo that both helped seal the deal. This is one I'll primarily play solo, and the brain burnery puzzle nature looks like it will fit well with solo play.

Like many others, I'm a sucker for the theme and I'm of an age where I actually remember the paper-based RPG campaign of the same name.

I do need to watch some preview videos though as the little I've seen suggest this is Euro-ish with lots of bits and pieces. That's not a mechanic I typically enjoy (Euros, broadly) so I'd need to verify how things work. I'd also most likely be playing solo so it has to make sense from that standpoint as well.

Here's the JonGetsGames playthrough I was talking about:



It's one of the first videos I've found that actually shows what the actual gameplay is like.

Mike from One Stop Co-op Shop is probably my favorite YouTube teacher of games. He dropped his tutorial/overview if anyone is still on the fence:

Today's workout: Hauling Dungeon Universalis up the stairs. The box wasn't as big as some games I've lugged up the stairs, but it was so full of books and cards that it might as well have been a block of solid wood.

Now, to squint at the rulebook.

welcome to HARDCORE dungeon crawling.

Get out some of your fantasy minis and go to town.

I'm a survivor of the Battle of the Red Box, and a veteran of the Rolemaster Wars. I can handle it.

As soon as I get a magnifier to read the rulebook!

PAGE SIZE FRESNEL MAGNIFYING SHEET - $2.50

I'm not that desperate.

Yet.

I'm getting there, though.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 11:07 pm I'm a survivor of the Battle of the Red Box, and a veteran of the Rolemaster Wars. I can handle it.

As soon as I get a magnifier to read the rulebook!

Warning: I believe there is a penalty in Dungeon Universalis for shooting into a group of two or more figures engaged in melee that includes the chance of hitting a random participant.

But man, I love how they handle shields.

Now you got me wanting to whip out my copy and get back into it. We could even play online with their party/map site sometime.

Damn it, those types of rules screw me over every time. When it comes to clutch die rolls to avoid catastrophe, I make interesting and bad things happen.

hepcat wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 9:54 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 11:07 pm I'm a survivor of the Battle of the Red Box, and a veteran of the Rolemaster Wars. I can handle it.

As soon as I get a magnifier to read the rulebook!

Warning: I believe there is a penalty in Dungeon Universalis for shooting into a group of two or more figures engaged in melee that includes the chance of hitting a random participant.

Not... how... bows... work.

Now that I'm OK with (if I'm reading the rule correctly, sans-context.) Hitting an ally on a fumble is reasonable. It's always been the "when firing into melee, apply the attack to a random target" type rules I hate.

To be fair, they usually only enforce the "hit random enemy/hit ally" rule when you fail your role in the other games too. Usually only when a certain really bad roll is made.

Yep, which is why the ones that have it as I described are so freaking annoying.

Are there any that actually have you hit allies automatically if firing into melee engaged combatants?

There are some that, if you fire into melee and hit, require you to randomly determine the target, yes. Both 1st and 2nd edition AD&D did it that way, I've seen it in other RPGs more recently, and I've seen it in a couple of board games. It's not common (except where the GM is a dick and house rules it in), but it is real.

hepcat wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 6:33 pm Are there any that actually have you hit allies automatically if firing into melee engaged combatants?

Yes. Zombicide.

When using a Ranged weapon, the shooting Survivor does not choose the targets hit by successful rolls. Hits are assigned to Actors in the targeted Zone following this targeting priority order:
1 – Survivors (except for the shooter)
2 – Walkers
3 – Fatties or Abominations
4 – Runners
The hits are assigned to targets at the lowest priority until they’ve all been eliminated, then to targets at the next priority until they’ve all been eliminated, and so on.

So you're actually more likely to hit allies than enemies.

Correct. Guaranteed, in fact. Apparently the Survivors really don't like each other.

That's worse than random. Geeze.

TheMix wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 9:48 pm Correct. Guaranteed, in fact. Apparently the Survivors really don't like each other.

FWIW, they fixed this in Zombicide 2.0 so that only misses hit survivors and you can apply the damage to any survivor in the zone.
I think this was one of the things with the highest backlast.
Our house rule for this when playing Z1 was just no...
It made it sound like you were always aiming for your friend.

Yeah, I have zombicide undead or alive and that must be based on 2.0 as I don’t remember having to hit allies engaged in melee.

The majority of games I see that in, it's a penalty for failing a roll. Which makes sense to me.

It's from Rue Morgue. I probably should have included that. Good to know that they changed it though. So I won't feel bad when I don't follow that rule.

I just double checked the rules for Undead or Alive. It's only misses that hit allies:

UNDEAD OR ALIVE RULES
FRIENDLY FIRE

Survivors can’t hit themselves with their own attacks However,
emergency situations can call for Ranged Attacks aimed at a Zone
where a teammate is stuck
In that case, misses during the Attack roll automatically hit
Survivors standing in the target Zone Assign these Friendly Fire
hits in any way players want and apply Damage as usual (Damage
2 weapons inflict 2 Wounds, and so on)

I'm fine with that. You're firing into a group of people moving around frantically in a small(ish) space during combat. Mistakes happen.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of that either. What they are basically saying is that no shots miss. Not if there is a Survivor in the zone. I think it would be better to say all misses get re-rolled once, and any subsequent hits count against another Survivor. I mean, it's virtually still a guaranteed death as is, if you are using dual submachine guns. My recollection is that it's 10 dice that only hit on a 5 or 6. There are going to be a lot of misses. So you are essentially back to guaranteeing a death.

For a game like Zombicide, I think that's fine. It's not meant to be a realistic recreation of combat by any means. But rather a chaotic, goofy fun beat 'em up with fast and loose rules.

TheMix wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 11:33 am I think it would be better to say all misses get re-rolled once, and any subsequent hits count against another Survivor. I mean, it's virtually still a guaranteed death as is, if you are using dual submachine guns. My recollection is that it's 10 dice that only hit on a 5 or 6. There are going to be a lot of misses. So you are essentially back to guaranteeing a death.

[GM hat] If you were wanting to make it realistic, you'd do it the other way around. Misses get rerolled, and and subsequent failures (misses) hit a survivor, while successes (misses) count as missed shots. Reasoning: The higher the shooter's skill, the lower their chances of hitting an ally should be. Hits on a reroll counting against allies means that the more skilled you are, the more likely you are to shoot a friend. [/GM hat]

That's me just playing with game theory, though, because:

hepcat wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 12:34 pm For a game like Zombicide, I think that's fine. It's not meant to be a realistic recreation of combat by any means. But rather a chaotic, goofy fun beat 'em up with fast and loose rules.

This is the real answer. Action games need fast abstraction rather than time consuming realism.

One realistic version I've played in someone's house rules (for either Pathfinder 1e or D&D 3.5e, I don't remember which.) The rule was basically that you got a penalty for shooting into combat to represent having to avoid hitting allies. If you missed within range of that penalty, you hit the ally. In other words, if you have a +5 to your attack roll, and the enemy's armor class was 15, you'd normally need to roll a 10. But shooting into melee gave a -2 penalty, so if you missed by 1 or 2, you hit the ally. It made sense. It was also a very dense, slow, math-heavy rules system that was largely abandoned by the industry a couple of years later.

Poking through the DUN contents has managed to get the soundtrack from Man of La Mancha stuck in my head.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 6:45 pm Poking through the DUN contents has managed to get the soundtrack from Man of La Mancha stuck in my head.

There are worse sound tracks that could be going around in your head! I love Man of La Mancha!

So, confession time - I pulled out of Horror on the Orient Express. After watching a couple of gameplay videos, it just wasn't grabbing me. I think it still looks like a neat game, but with me only playing solo I just felt it wasn't the kind of game I could see bringing out repeatedly.

On the other hand, I did back the Earth expansion today. That's a game I've really enjoyed solo. The expansion doesn't add a lot of complexity, but does give players a new mechanic to allow them to look for cards that better fit their tableau. One of the small negatives with the base game is that you can get stuck where you really need a certain card for a killer combo and are at the mercy of the randomness of the deck. This helps alleviate that a bit.

Earth is a really good game. Like Townsfolk Tussle, I wouldn’t have backed them without YouTube reviews from Alex at Boardgameco.

hepcat wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 12:01 am Okay, everyone sing along: Oops I did it again.

Forsaken is a competitive sandbox adventure game where the player who lives the greatest legend wins. Play is contained to a single session--your decisions will have a rippling impact and change the game, but it is fully reset when the game is over.

I dropped this one after playing the demo, but I was surprised to see a notice go out today that the game was suspended on kickstarter due to some IP lawsuit.

As someone in that thread on BGG points out, the timing is really weird. It's been 2 1/2 years in production, and was nearing release. So it seems late in the game for someone to step up and say "hey, we got an IP issue here!".

I'm guessing it hit the magical amount funded to gain attention - similar to how V-Commandos needed to be changed to V-Sabotage because of Eidos / Kalypso.

That one still sticks in my craw. Just because they had the damn name Commando somewhere within theirs, they got sued. Thankfully, Triton Noir is a great company and they provided upgrades to everyone who wanted them for a very small amount.