May 4, 2024: Train Games On The Train

Last Saturday, to be exact, on a special Austin Steam Train ride. Along with Jimmie, Randy, and Bridget, I demonstrated Express on a trip with more than 150 people. The point was just to go out and back, playing games. And we did that thing. Everyone had a good time and the railroad would like to do it again.

Express has been out of print for nearly 30 years. Now it's back. Designed by Darwin Bromley, this is the grand-daddy (well, one of the grand-daddies) of train games. If gin rummy and Mille Bournes loved each other very much and had a little game, it might look like this. I like it!

When a demo starts, everybody sees the cards with the nice train pictures and thinks "Oh, this is going to be a cute, friendly game." Then the shin-kicking starts, and the next thing you know, somebody's 12-point train is a smoking wreck. Did I mention that I like it?

Check your friendly local game . . . [more]

May 3, 2024: The Curious Appeal Of New Games

I saw an online point made recently about games that I found very interesting. The thesis was this: Why do so many gamers buy new games when they probably already own so many other games?

The poster theorized that one reason is because of asymmetrical skill level in competitive games. That is, if you play with different groups constantly, then the player who's played 500 sessions of Crush All Who Oppose Me Mwah-hah-hah is going to have a tremendous advantage over a player who's struggling to read the CAWOMMhh rulebook for the first time. Sure, the new player might get the hang of it after a few tries, but if a typical CAWOMMhh game is 1 or 2 hours, the newbie will likely decide that constantly losing for many sessions is not a great use of limited personal gaming time.

In contrast, if players are cracking the seal together on (say) The Kittens Seem Cute But Hunger for Blood together, . . . [more]

May 2, 2024: Munchkin Big Box – Two Terrific Weeks!

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May 1, 2024: Voice Advice?

(Or should that be "advoice"?) I love using different character voices at the table in my tabletop roleplaying games. This technique helps differentiate characters, provide atmosphere, and separate what I'm doing as the GM (or player) from what the character(s) I control are doing. However, I've run into a problem: Keeping track of the voices I've used. This is especially hard in a larger or longer-running campaign. As a result, after a while a lot of my characters end up as BBC-drama-reject vague intellectuals (insert your own conclusions about my default personality here).

I feel like there should be a better way to keep it straight, but I haven't found a magic bullet in that regard. I've tried to jot down notes to myself ("scatter-brained Humphrey Bogart" or "goth-tinged weather announcer"), and that'll often get me close. If I'm feeling really . . . [more]

April 30, 2024: Forget The Hook

I recently posted an idea about how you can use hooks to come up with cool ideas for your tabletop RPGs. Here's another quick-and-easy trick: You can still use those hooks even if you don't use those hooks.

No, this isn't some Yoda-esque Zen koan – although I wouldn't mind a cool cape-wearing action figure of me. Rather, it's an observation that the point of inspiration is the inspiration . . . and once you're inspired, you might no longer need the hook.

In the previous example, I developed the start of an encounter based on the hook: "What if the heroes are in disguise and combat breaks out?" I had a hypothetical GM contemplating how that might mean the heroes were given the idea by their supervisor to go in disguise to infiltrate the hidden base to retrieve vital plans. But what if the players hear the Commander's plan and decide, "That's a terrible idea! We're . . . [more]