tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post211579608148432460..comments2024-02-12T05:24:22.186-08:00Comments on Always Board Never Boring: Review - Gloom of KilforthCarbon Copyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13155710832017131015noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-40229394910336249802018-03-18T03:45:03.113-07:002018-03-18T03:45:03.113-07:00I don't think Talisman is a game. I know it...I don't think Talisman is a game. I know it's a game. It's actually an "okay" game. I don't play it very often; but it's something I play with my daughter sometimes. And it certainly isn't reskinned Monopoly. In Talisman, sometimes you get to go right. <br /><br />Anyway, I believe I only mention Talisman once in the review, as an example of what I mean by "overland adventure games," so I wouldn't go getting too upset about it.<br /><br />And yes, I am colour blind. But I'm colour blind with a "u".<br /><br />You've made a valiant effort to sum up my review, but you've fallen a little bit short. I mean, for a start you've completely overlooked the most important point, which is that I like custard creams.<br /><br />Finally, I feel I should point out that Mage Knight is one of my favourite games. I even call it one of the great fantasy adventure games ever made right in the review.Carbon Copyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13155710832017131015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-38954267952588259762018-03-17T20:05:02.388-07:002018-03-17T20:05:02.388-07:00So you think Talisman is a game and you are color ...So you think Talisman is a game and you are color blind. Does that about sum up what i just read? FYI: Talisman is just re-skinned Monopoly and Monopoly is one of the WORST games ever created.<br /><br />Honestly i'm sure we could all give you a pass but you then further trash Mage Knight which at this point makes you look ridiculous considering you think Talisman is some kind of real game. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17329946010727182401noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-41050570021277554122017-11-10T00:46:37.054-08:002017-11-10T00:46:37.054-08:00Hi, thanks for reading and commenting. Sorry it to...Hi, thanks for reading and commenting. Sorry it took your post a little while to appear, I have to manually approve posts right now because of a massive amount of incoming spam.<br /><br />I've never played Magic Realm, mainly because I can't get a copy and can't find the time nor inclination to print one. The closest I've come is Mage Knight, which I love.<br /><br />Incidentally, Kilforth did push me over the edge to buy the newest edition of Runebound, which I absolutely love.Carbon Copyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13155710832017131015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-83168375857163708142017-11-09T23:54:48.700-08:002017-11-09T23:54:48.700-08:00Wow, I could not write a better and more accurate ...Wow, I could not write a better and more accurate review. Thanks a lot! I planned something similar for BGG but never found the time or energy to make it happen (and because of the hostile nature of the site can tu. <br />There is one small thing I want to disagree about and that's the balance in the game. I'm what people would call a power player, meaning I tend to exploit weaknesses in board + video games almost to the point of abuse. In my first game of GOK I went with the vampire/magician combination and had no trouble whatsoever. I only confronted places and strangers when absolutely necessary, kept the rest on the board for speeding up my movement and only went into battles when it was unavoidable. On turn 18 or 19 I went to battle the boss because I felt there was absolutely nothing essential for me left to do. In last confrontation I was almost killed due to some very bad dice rolls on my side. It made me wonder why I took all the effort in figuring out the puzzle the game threw at me for almost an hour, just to lose the game in the last minute due to bad luck.<br />Have you ever played Magic Realm?dr.mortonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04783129634988441226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-42564970846802003062017-06-23T13:08:13.073-07:002017-06-23T13:08:13.073-07:00It's interesting that movement seems to be som...It's interesting that movement seems to be something that is always quite hard to get right (or which ends up quite divisive in its implementation). In Runebound 2nd, the terrain system was often considered a bit of a slog, Kilforth feels like an uphill battle, and in Mage Knight one of the most common complaints is the difficulty in moving between locations. It's like the designs attempt to represent the sheer scale of a world by making it hard to go anywhere in it.Carbon Copyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13155710832017131015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-2754297800006176832017-06-23T11:56:31.034-07:002017-06-23T11:56:31.034-07:00I haven't tried 3rd edition yet either.
I ha...I haven't tried 3rd edition yet either. <br /><br />I have most of 2nd edition and enjoy the occasional adventure with it, but it can also become a slog. <br /><br />Where GoK uses action points as the implicit speed bump, Runebound (2nd) often uses map traversal (you have to get the right icons on movement rolls to get through certain terrain, and terrain composition itself can shift based on the event deck [aka Night cards in GoK]). <br /><br />At first I thought that GoK's abstraction of map traversal would smooth over some of that, but it just substituted the slog of travel with AP management and also lost some of the narrative that can be built into that concept of a map (like, oh crap, my quest is in the middle of that mountain range, that's going to be slow going, and it might snow soon... vs oh crap my keyword is 3 cards away which is 6AP if I decide to hide; and so forth).Frohikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03970006140259135895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-31130193073573913202017-06-23T11:21:43.114-07:002017-06-23T11:21:43.114-07:00Great comment. Maybe it's something to do with...Great comment. Maybe it's something to do with the fact these games try to be a whole world. Dungeon crawlers are usually very focused, but in an overland adventure game, you have to zoom out so much farther, and think about whole cities, armies, and different types of quests. It makes it so much easier to miss something, or even necessary to sacrifice something.<br /><br />I haven't tried the third edition of Runebound yet, but after playing Gloom of Kilforth, it suddenly came into my mind that I would really like to give Runebound another look. I then discovered that Fantasy Flight is about to release a solo expansion for it, which has pretty much encouraged me to buy the base game and check it out in a bit more detail.<br /><br />Thanks for reading and commenting.Carbon Copyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13155710832017131015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350611440505059146.post-17962341788816076892017-06-23T10:25:43.218-07:002017-06-23T10:25:43.218-07:00You and I are definitely on the same page with thi...You and I are definitely on the same page with this game, and with the genre in general. <br /><br />I thought I was the only one who noticed that every single adventure game seems to be a bit off. They all falter in some way. There's something that seems to chip away at an ideal for an adventure system that I'm not even sure how to articulate, but it's definitely there. It's like all of these designs are iterating on some alchemical formula for an element that we're not quite sure how to identify. <br /><br />In any case, GoK takes a noble stab at it, but it also falters in ways that I think are linked to the conceit of abstracting a lot of the adventure game concepts down to action points and card keywords. If you're a solo gamer who is already invested in fleshing out a world as you play and maintaining narrative immersion, it's not as much of an issue. But I personally can't help but come up for air every once in awhile and notice that the framework is very stifling, and that a lot of the decisions in the subsystems are mostly overshadowed by... lots and lots of dice. I'd rather have one or the other: crazy dice chucking, or procedural steps & decisions. When both are in there, they seem to make everything simultaneously very busy and very arbitrary.<br /><br />But at the end of each session, after I've packed the whole thing in its small box, I'm actually stunned at how much is crammed into such a physically pared back system. That aspect of it commands respect. The fact that Tristan was able to condense multiple Runebound big boxes into a large deck of cards is a pretty amazing feat of design.<br /><br />Now we need to work on some of the underlying assumptions of the adventure genre, and maybe find ways of moving past a few of them.Frohikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03970006140259135895noreply@blogger.com