Beer and Boardgames

Ancestry & Culture: An alternative to Race in 5e

I just got my physical copy of this wonderful tome by Arcanist Press! It has a great introduction that explains why the use of the term "Race" in our beloved role-playing games is so problematic, and then offers a great solution for it that fits right in-between existing 5e rules.

We've been looking for a good alternative to "Race" for the character options we publish on our patreon, and we're now going to do some tests to see if this model is something we could use.

I highly recommend you check it out! The free preview on DiveThruRPG includes the introduction & full rules for alternate character creation.

Game: Cthulhu: Death May Die

Beer: Death by a Thousand Cuts DIPA by New Grass Bewing

We’ve played half of the fourteen games on this shelf, though that’s largely because we’ve played all the small games in the middle stack except Mahjong.  This shelf does have the honor of boasting one of our favorite games in Escape the Dark Castle, which is also one of the most played games in our collection.  For a pretty straightforward roll to determine game, the theme is so strong and every game is so tense.  We have all the expansions and were all in on the Escape the Dark Sector Kickstarter.

As for the rest of the games we’ve played, Hats is the newest in the collection and has a neat twist on the set collection mechanic, as well as lovely art.  Bites is a simple set collection game with one of the coolest table presentations for such a small box.  Lanterns is another light set collection and tile placement game with lovely table presentation that is a delight to play.  Proving Grounds is a solo game my wife bought me for Christmas and, unlike some of our other solo games, the timed nature of it does make it a true solo experience.  Welcome to Dino World is one of several roll/draw and writes in our collection and it will remain for the joy of drawing dinos alone.  Infinite City is the game that kicked Carcassone out of our collection, but we haven’t played it in years and it needs another play.

Die Macher is one of only two games currently in my collection that will probably never get played.  It’s 3+ only and we don’t have (nor do we really want) a gaming group.  But a game literally about the German parliament had to be in my collection.  Direwilds is one of the co-op games we haven’t gotten to, probably in part because of the entirely boring white box that doesn’t have the title on any of the visible sides.  Chai just recently arrived from Kickstarter and has some truly delightful art.  Hand of Fate is in our collection because I’ve really enjoyed my time with the video game and they had a co-op expansion.  We haven’t gotten around to it yet though.  Mahjong is one of those classic games that I even have books on how to play, that I haven’t read, so we haven’t played.  Tang Garden is a very new arrival from Kickstarter that I really loved the presentation of.  CO2 Second Chance is the revised version of CO2 which we owned until it was replaced by this fully cooperative version that we still haven’t played.

We’ve only played four of the eleven games on this shelf: Reef, Paperback, Hardback, and Lords of Waterdeep.  Most of the games on this shelf are fairly new acquisitions.  This means we bought them within the last two (ish) years, probably.  1960: The Making of The President is one of the older games in our collection.  I added it on BGG in 2012.  Yeah, eight years is way too long to be in the collection without a single play.  I know that particular statistic is going to show up again.

Of the four games we’ve played, Hardback and Paperback fall into the “word games my English major and absurdly literate wife is 12 million times better at than me and I always feel dumb” category.  Hardback has a co-op mode which is nice but my wife still has to do the heavy lifting.  Just means I need to work on my vocabulary, something I’m always trying to do anyway.  The art and layout design in both games is also quite clever.  Reef is a nice abstract that we played around the same time we played two other abstracts I’ll get to later in the collection.  It has a nice table presentation and I think it’s different enough that it will stick around.  Lords of Waterdeep is a game we haven’t played in years, though I’ve played it several times since digitally and still enjoy it.  It needs another physical play.

Of the seven games we’ve not played, The Towers of Arkanos, Villagers, and Glen More II Chronicles are fairly recent Kickstarter deliveries.  I really liked the stacking mechanism in Arkhanos, though clearly not enough to get it to the table yet.  Villagers looks to fill a quicker civ-style niche, and hasn’t lost out to any other civ-style games yet (that I can think of at the moment).  Of course, it hasn’t won out over any of them either.  Glen More II will definitely hit the table because my wife especially loves Glen More.  It just hasn’t yet because other games have had priority.  

Gizmos is in the collection because of the marble mechanic.  It also seems pretty straightforward to play, we just haven’t yet.  Founders of Gloomhaven is a game I own because we own Gloomhaven.  Some of the really bad reviews of the game (along with the density of the rule book) have put me off playing it so far.  It bears further evaluation.  1960 is a game I own because I love the idea of games like Twilight Struggle, and am especially fond of politics.  The one truly awful experience I had with Twilight Struggle has definitely pushed this down the “to play” list.  Scythe is not here because of the hype.  I actually resisted looking into Scythe initially because of the hype.  But then I was home sick one day and watched a full unboxing and Let’s Play and fell in love.  Again, it’s largely the density of the rule book that’s kept this from hitting the table.  I am still really excited to try it out, I just need to devote some time to it.

Unintentionally, this became a co-op only shelf.  We’ve also played all the base games represented here.  Technically, War Eternal and The New Age are standalones but the general game play is the same.  Having once owned a ton of Thunderstone, the innovations in Aeon’s End are much appreciated.  Specifically, the deck management is a wonderful change and takes a lot of the luck out of deckbuilding.  The breach system is also a really neat way to handle staging combat.  

Arkham Horror and Marvel Champions are relatively new additions to our collection.  Arkham Horror shot right up as one of our favorite games.  Even as a card game, the theme comes through so strongly.  There’s a fantastic tension in the game and it’s incredibly fun to play.  It’s also nice to be able to set an Arkham Horror game up quickly and not need a giant table to play it.

Marvel Champions did not rocket to the top of any list except, possibly, the why did I pay $60 for this one.  I found it mechanically more interesting than my wife but I agreed entirely that it was lacking theme.  I’ve been reading Marvel comics since middle school so I’m pretty steeped in a lot of the lore but this did very little for me.  Also, FFG has set a rather high bar for art, especially in their card games.  I know they used comic art for this game and, frankly, a lot of it is not that good, certainly not by the standards they’ve set with their other games.  Also, very little of it is credited which bothered me a great deal.  Then there’s the price tag.  $60 for cards and some cardboard chits and dials.  The usual FFG price point for a base card game is $40.  Granted there are more cards and more cardboard in Marvel Champions but a lot of that $20 increase is most likely the Marvel (Disney) license tax.

I’m am trying to cull the collection a bit and this exercise should help with that thought process.  I also thought it would be cool just to think about the games we have and my feelings on them.  Also, publicly shaming myself over the number of games in the collection we haven’t played probably isn’t a terrible idea.