And of course the trailers:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

Thanks for Listening to 10 Minute Marvel

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Comments or Questions

What did you think of the two trailers, which one looks better to you? And are you going opening weekend to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever? And what do you think about the character that Emilia Clarke seems to be playing? How do you think she’ll tie into the story of Secret Invasion?

You can let me know all of those things down in the comment section below. Or tweet them to me @TheScando or by using #10MinMarvel.

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Thank you for listening. I hope that you’re enjoying the podcast. If you are, please consider leaving a rating and review. Those help more people find the podcast and join into the 10 Minute Marvel community. Subscribing and sharing with you friends also helps so much. You can find the podcast on iTunes, YouTube Music, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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The idea for this campaign is clearly the wild west, we’re looking to create something that feels less like high fantasy and more like cattle rustling and duels at high noon. And, borrowing a little bit from the Lord of the Rings, the people mining for gold have dug to deep. And now monsters are pouring out of the mines and troubling the towns and villages out in the wild.

The players can start out with some smaller things, some cattle going missing, accusations and weird occurrences happening down by the mine. I’d almost give it another worldly vibe to it, to borrow a little bit from the board game Shadows of Brimstone.

Now, you have a couple of ways you could go for the bad guys, you have have the mines leading into the underdark and going so deep for some special magical material has caused them to disturb the residents down there and get them to fight back. Or, I think most interestingly, make it the Gith. The reason the Githyanki and Githzerai are more interesting is because you wouldn’t expect them. But they live in a limbo area and almost have a pirate vibe to them, so give them a stagecoach, train robbing vibe and they are out there to get this magical materials that makes magic much more common. Almost an Eberron style where there are trains, people have their wands which is a common weapon that can just sling six charges of something like a six shooter.

So as the players dig deeper they find out that what they thought was happening isn’t actually it. The Githyanki and Githzerai are certainly causing issues as their magical materials are being grabbed from the mine, but what the materials are being used for is now being called into question both by the Githyanki and Githzerai but also by the people who run the mines and give the players a mystery of what is happening there.

This unravels a big conspiracy that leads all the way to some other monster who is the real monstermind behind the mines and who is getting these magical materials in order to invade limbo and take out the Githyanki and Githzerai and make them into mindless drones, in fact, some sort of massive mind flayer would make a lot of sense here as the Gith do not like Mind Flayers.

Finish the campaign with some sort of epic western battle, the mind flayer is coming to town for a showdown at high noon, but the players don’t have a shot with a direct confrontation, so their only hope is to intercept the flayer while they are still on the train. And if you don’t want to do a mind flayer, do something like a vampire or someone who can glamour or mind control their way into the hearts and minds of the people.

That could be where you wrap up the campaign, but now that you’re touching limbo and the outer reaches of the worlds and planes because of the mine, and now that the magical material has such value, you can even have a bigger bad come after it. Maybe while all of this is going down and the players are dealing with the big bad mind flayer or vampire, there’s a cult that suddenly springs up with a charismatic Rakshasa as it’s head who is working on summoning something even more powerful from the outer edges of the multiverse into the world to rule it all and for the Rakshasa to rule under it. So similar feeling to the first part of the campaign, but different in that instead of going out somewhere like the vampire or mind flayer was planning on doing, it’s trying to bring something here, and even if something happens to the Rakshasa, it will be back.

So what do you think about it, is this a campaign that you’d play in or run? What part stands out to you as the most interesting?

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In this weeks episode, besides saying Thank You to everyone a lot, I do have a few bits of news. Plus, I look back at the year and some of the Marvel highlights and I look forward to what is coming in 2020 and 2021 for the second year of 10 Minute Marvel.

If you have been enjoying the podcast, please consider subscribing and leaving a rating and review. Those help more people find the podcast and join into the 10 Minute Marvel community. We’re on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, and Stitcher.

And if you have any comments, you can leave them below. Or you can find me on Twitter @TheScando or use #10MinMarvel. What are you looking forward to from Marvel in the next year? Is it an MCU movie, comic book series coming out, the Disney+ shows?

I’ll see you next time.

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Pros

• Based on existing game
• Awaken Realms has a great track record
• Cooperative/Semi-cooperative/Solo play
• Theme, described as playing Alien movies without the IP (Intellectual Property)

Cons

• Spendy
• Even spendier if you go all in base game and standalone expansion
• Game Length

Page Thoughts

Awaken Realms is the current “King of Kickstarter” having taken that crown, in my opinion, from CMON. And even though they don’t hold the top spot for a board game, that’d be Frosthaven, they just do consistently good work throughout and the quality of their games is very high.

I don’t actually love that you get so much in terms of components and minis to start, I want some game play information higher up, and in particular, how does this different from something like Nemesis, the base game. However, even with that, I’m glad to see that the core concept of the game seems to have said the same.

Back or Brick

For me, this was one that I had missed before I was really checking out kickstarter, that is the base game for Nemesis. So when I heard a standalone expansion was coming for it, I thought that might be a good jumping off point, and then it came out that you can actually get the base game as part of it as well. So for me, this was an easy Back but not for the standalone expansion. If that hits retail I’ll get it later, but more because I wanted to get the base game. So I am backing for that, to get the original game and it’s expansions, even though that’s a bit more expensive. For me, the theme just sounds great, and while it can be played and is made to be played semi-cooperatively, it seems like one that is going to be tough enough that you can probably just play fully cooperative. But, yeah, I love the alien theme, I like the horror element to the game, this is the type of game for me.

How about you, is this a back or a brick?

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In Not Alone one person plays as the planet and the monster on it where a space ship has crash landed, stranding it’s crew. The crew needs to explore the planet and survive until they can get off of it, but the monster doesn’t want that. On each turn, all plays can discuss where they want to go and will play cards face down for the location that they are going to go, they can split up however they want. However, all discussions need to be able to be heard by the person playing the monster. Then the monster will pick a location as to where they are going to go, blocking off and hurting the people who went to that location, but everyone else gets to take the actions of their locations. However, the monster, when they select has ways to manipulate where they are, where people are actually going, or to cause more places to be bad spots for the players to go. As the monsters get crew members, they progress on their track, while the players are trying out last and do a few things to speed up how fast their rescue ship is coming.

This game is a clever cat and mouse game where the players don’t want to accidentally all end up going to the same place and getting caught by the monster, but talking about it and planning can mean that the monster will better understand the strategy. So how much information do you talk around the table is an interesting piece to the game. Plus, cards being discarded and the monster being able to see what starting cards might be left for the crew, it means that sometimes it’s fairly obvious where someone is going to go. The best example of this is the beach as to why you want to discuss. At the beach, you can either light a beacon or use the lit beacon to help speed up the ship, but only one of those actions can be taken on a given turn. So if three crew members go to the beach, you’re wasting two peoples actions there.

Another piece of this game that I like is that the monster can get the crew, but when a crew member dies, that doesn’t mean the person is out of the game. Think of it as Star Trek with their seemingly unlimited number of red shirts. They are getting sent out of the crashed ship every time another crew member dies, so there is no player elimination in the game. However, dying is still bad, not surprisingly, because that means that the monster is getting closer to their goal which is based off of hurting crew members and killing crew members. So, if you aren’t careful, even though you won’t be out of the game, you can be speeding the monster on their way to victory.

Final piece that I want to talk about is the monster cards and ability cards. The game gives everyone a chance to feel unique. There is technology and things that can be scavenged from ship, so that means that as a crew member you’ll be able to be unique. But the monster definitely has more fun cards. There are a number of different things, where a monster can force people to discard cards, or maybe the monster can go to two locations or do something to make the planet block off a spot for players for a round. But the players might not know where that’s going to be, as the monster gets to place after everyone has picked their locations. The cards do interesting things, and you won’t ever go through all the monster cards in a single game, so even if you have played a lot before, the monster is going to feel different depending on the cards drawn, when they are drawn and the strategy of the person playing the monster.

This is a really enjoyable game for me. I like the cat and mouse nature from both sides of the game. I think I’ve played it six or seven times at this point, and about half of them I’ve been the monster, and generally, since I’ll be teaching it as well, once we’ve played once with myself as the monster, someone else will want to play again and try being the monster themselves. I also have the expansion for this, but I haven’t played that yet, but I’m excited to try it soon. When a one versus all game can make it fun to play both sides, I think that’s a good thing for the game, and because Not Alone is a pretty straight forward game as to how it works, after a play, people can figure out how to play the monster, and I think, if someone wanted to be the monster on their first play, it wouldn’t be hard to teach them that as well.

Now, if there were a downside for the game, and I do know people who don’t like it nearly as much as I do, it’s that the game is stressful, and that’s intentional for the game. As the crew, you are worried about the monster catching you and dying, and even though you come back, if the monster is on the same wavelength that you are, you can feel like your letting down the team. I think for some people that is going to turn them off from the game, and the fact that it is only a card game, so it might feel like it’s heavier than the components suggest, though, I would not call it a heavy game.

Finally, let’s quickly mention the theme. I think that the theme is a lot of fun. People know the concept of being stranded on a planet or an island, so there is something for them to grasp onto. If someone has seen Predator, they can get even more into the theme, because that’s a lot what the game feels like, someone has crashed on the Predator planet, because there isn’t much that the crew can do to the monster. Is it a massively thematic game, I think that it’s more thematic than not, and while you can definitely get into the strategy and count cards, the game works best when people are enjoying the theme.

Overall, I really do enjoy this game. I like how much it packs in, in terms of tension , for the small package that the game has. I like the them, those survival on an alien world movies and shows are fun for me. I also like that it’s a larger group game without it being a party game or social deduction game. The cat and mouse feel of the game definitely sets it a part and definitely makes it seem heavier than most games of that it’s size.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: B

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In those games, you would build your deck of cards, however many that might be, from cards you had bought and collected. You were looking for interesting interactions and synergies between cards. That is something that still definitely exists in modern deck builders. But the modern deck builder doesn’t have you create your deck ahead of time. In fact, everyone starts out with the same cards and then you can build and expand your decks beyond that.

That is what makes the mechanic interesting, in a lot of the early deck builders, you would customize and try and develop your own strategy for the game based off of a set of cards that were available to everyone in the game. Dominion, the first popular deck builder, created an economy where you would search to combo cards to the point where you could buy victory point cards, in particular the high cost victory point cards which were one way to end the game.

While I do appreciate the mechanic in Dominion, Dominion does have one serious flaw to the game. There will always be a best strategy because everyone is purchasing from a static market of cards. This can lead to a run away leader problem in the game, or if the cards don’t synergize well, the strategy is then just to buy more money, so you don’t actually end up using the combinations. Also, the game has a medieval theme that could literally be any sort of economy, so it’s very very themeless. Toss in inconsistent art throughout the game and expansions, and I’ve moved on from my copy of Dominion.

But Dominion was the one that started it for deck builders, maybe not the first, but the first big one. From there we’ve moved on to a few different ways of deck building.

The first big advancement is the rotating market. The game Marvel Legendary is a great example of this. While the market is limited more so than in Dominion, the market rotates as people buy a card, you flip a new card down. This means that the market is constantly changing and there isn’t a way to create a specific strategy as clearly that is going to be the best. This helps solve the run away leader problem. It also provides more strategy for creating your deck as the option of just buying money isn’t going to fix your problem in the game of figuring out card synergies.

In a cooperative game, like Marvel Legendary, you can still make your decks highly focused as you’re talking about what is out there and who might want what card when it comes around to their turn. But in Clanks! In! Space!, you are playing a competitive game with a rotating market. This means that someones you might buy a card that isn’t ideal for your deck, just because you don’t want anyone else to have it.

There are also interesting ways that they fixed the fixed market issue in Dominion in other games without it being a rotating market. Xenoshyft: Onslaught is a good example of this. In the game you are working together to defend your base, but I might have the role of the science department while someone else might have the barracks. Because we have different roles we have different powers that make our strategies unique. If you are the science department, you have the two unique cards in your deck from the start, and you can get a discounted buy on science cards each round. That means your deck is going to lean a certain direction because it’s easier for you to load up on a certain type of good card than it is for other people. Variable player powers cover over a lot of issues you can run into with deck builders by actively making people build their deck in different ways or they won’t be building it the most efficient way using their resources.

Xenoshyft: Onslaught also has another interesting mechanic that helps. One issue with deck builders is that as the deck gets larger, you can either get a deck that is too big to really get the cards you want together, or gets too full of early game cards that you don’t get enough money at the same time to purchase more. Xenoshyft: Onslaught fixes both of these issues in unique but good ways. The first thing it does is you area always gaining money to your hand each round of the game, in the first three rounds, you get an extra xenostatham (money unit), in the next three, you get a three xenostatham card, and in the last three rounds, you get a six xenostatham. Now, this means you are never short money, but it adds bloat into your deck. Xenoshyft: Onslaught realizes this, so in the middle rounds, you can trade three one xenostatham cards for a three xenostatham card, and in the last three rounds, you can get your threes to sixes. This keeps the deck cleaner. It also allows you to use troops that you can buy in the first three rounds as discounts on troops in the later rounds, this helps keep the deck thin and focused.

One thing that all the games that I’ve mentioned thus far do better than Dominion as well is that they’ve added theme back into a deck builder. The cards that you are buying and using make sense in the game for the ultimate goal of the game. Wen you’re recruiting heroes to fight against a super villain in Legendary, it makes sense. When the cards have certain abilities on them, they make sense for the hero. That was a huge move forward from what we had been previously seeing in Dominion, and while Dominion might still be the most popular, it gave people a lot more options for games.

There are now some other interesting things that have been added into deck building that make certain deck builders unique.

A game like Cry Havoc, while not a pure deck builder, has some deck building in the game as you add in various terrain cards to your deck. It uses a draw two and pick one methodology of building up your deck. So depending on where you are locate don the board will determine what you want to take, and whom you might be fighting.

Aeon’s End (a game that I’ll have the legacy version of the game on it’s way, but this one does something unique as well. It’s interesting because instead of shuffling your deck like you do with every other deck building game I can think of, you literally just flip your discard pile. However, when you discard cards on your turn, you can sort the order that they go into your discard as long as they are used in the game time in the game. That means that you can stack your deck in an interesting way and specifically create hands, especially earlier in the game.

Deck building is definitely a mechanic that has been extremely popular and I think will remain popular, though we’re now seeing less pure deck building games. A game like Cry Havoc has deck building, but that’s fairly secondary in the game, and you’d actually be able to play the full game without doing any additional deck building if you wanted (if I remember correctly), but it’s fun to see a fairly familiar mechanic showing up in a diverse cross-section of games that wouldn’t always seem like deck building games. It’s also led to some interesting games that have hand building that can work similar to deck building, but you have access to all the cards from the start and then lose them as you play them.

So, to wrap this up, if deck building seems like an interesting mechanic, where would I start?

That’s a tough question, Dominion is probably the purest deck builder out there, but there are a ton of expansions, so it might seem a bit intimidating to get into. It’s also not the easiest game to sell to people to play, because the theme is very bland. But if you are playing with less gamer-y people, I would start with Dominion.

If you’re playing with people who are used to playing games, just not deck builders, I’d probably start with Xenoshyft: Onslaught. The game has some very interesting choices in it, and it’s fun to face off against a bunch of alien bugs. Marvel Legendary is good as well, but there are so many expansions, I wouldn’t consider it a great starting deck builder. You could look at Legendary Encounters games and just pick the them that works best for you, whether that’s Alien, Big Trouble in Little China, Firefly, or one of the others. These games all offer more to do with your cards and a lot more depth of strategy than Dominion while still keeping the focus on deck building.

What are some of your favorite deck building games?

“There’s so much on the planet, all this money to be made.”

“What about the giant bugs?”

“Hire some good security for the mines.”

“And the scary looking brain scorpions?”

“More security.”

“And the hydras?”

“Alright, mechanical armored security.”

That’s how I imagine it went as they set off for this unknown planet. And I don’t know how anything could go wrong as you fend off wave after wave of monsters as they throw themselves against your base. Xenoshyft: Onslaught is a cooperative deck building game where players upgrade troops and equipment while trying to keep the base working through nine rounds of creatures attacking. The feel of this game is somewhere between Alien and Starship Troopers. Definitely not as silly as Starship Troopers, but you are still fighting off waves of bugs for at least part of it.

Xenoshyft works really well as a deck builder as compared to something like Dominion, it has more game to it and feels much more thematically involved. As compared to another heavier deck builder, it doesn’t run into the situation of Marvel Legendary where you can just get stuck at times with the combinations and with money. The fact that each hand you get to add in a dollar for the first wave, three for the second, and six for the third means that you always can make a purchase. That along with being able to use the wave one troops to discount future troops makes the game scale a whole lot better.

And that’s a good thing, because this is a very tough game. Even without getting the wave bosses at opportune times, such as early in the wave, this game is really tough to beat. For each player the base gets an extra 15 hit points, but possible, early in the game, you can get down to half the points before you’ve gotten into wave two. You can often right the ship and push through wave two, but then wave three hits and now you’re dealing with a whole new level of creature. Maybe we should have just stayed on earth, but there was so much money to be made.

Another fun thing in this game is that you can help other people when they might not be getting what they need. Some of them are using abilities of your troops to help them fight the creatures. However, when you play a troop, weapon, or gear that the troop wears on the other players side of the defense, that card then goes into their deck for good. It makes for an interesting tool, because you want to empty your hand as much as possible each turn so helping other people can do that. I also like it because with the cooperative nature of the game, if one person wasn’t drawing well, it could come down to their side of the base that caused you to lose, but with trading weaponry, troops, and helping the other players out, it’s definitely more of a team game.

Finally, one of the biggest unique things is the idea of the combat lanes. When I say each side of the base (or mine), I mean that each player has a small player board where they can have four troops. These troops can then be outfitted with armor and weaponry. Then four enemies are dealt onto another player board, face down, and you face off against them one at a time. The monster attacking the first troop in your player board, figuring out damage, and then repeating as need be until that monster is killed or until the monster has killed all of your troops. Then, if you have no troops left, any monsters left end up doing damage to the base. But having these unknown monsters means that you have to guess when you might want a stronger troop, because you might not want them right at the front. Or you have to decide, do you want to use an item to help you troop stay alive longer or do you need to save that because a worse monster is coming?

Overall, this is a very fun game. I have only one once, and that was because we cheated slightly in our advantage. The other four times I’ve played, we’ve always made it to the third wave of creatures, there are three difficulty levels/waves, and in each wave, you face off against them three times. But it’s a game that you want to reset and play right away, and in some ways, it feels better to make it further, and it’s less about winning the game, because it might be a while until I can win the game again. Components of this game are okay, the cards are very nice, but when I called them player boards, it’s more like player cardstock, so that part of the game feels a little bit cheap. The plastic health and shield tokens also feel a little bit chintzy. If you’re a person who wants all the components to be amazing, this game might not be for you, though the game play is very good. Or if you’re someone who doesn’t like cooperative games where you lose more often than not, this game is definitely not for you.

Overall: A
Casual Grade: C+
Gamer Grade: B+

How do you get an A out of those grades? I really like this game, I’d play it whenever anyone would want to play it. However, I think that there might be a touch much going on for a more casual player, and with the grittier artwork and look of it, it might be a bit little going on for someone who thinks they are a heavy gamer and wants a lot of conflict. But for me, it’s really enjoyable.

Have you played this game before? Have you beat it before? If so, what has worked well for you in this game?

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With possibly my favorite holiday coming up, probably Christmas then Halloween, I thought it would be a fun to toss out some of my favorite or good ideas for scary books, board games, movies, anime, or anything else. They are going to be horror focused, obviously, for Halloween, but there are probably going to be a few interesting ones out there that are more monster features versus Halloween horror.

So, starting with board games, because I love board games in case you haven’t noticed, what are some cool game options for Halloween?

Betrayal at House on the Hill

Super easy first option, this game is literally distilled Halloween, you could be playing a game where the traitor is death or you could get stuck in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. You never know, it’s the Cabin in the Woods of board games, it can hit every classic horror trope. For those who aren’t familiar with the game, you are exploring a haunted house, however, one of you in the betrayer. You don’t know who that betrayer is going to be, because omens of bad things to come start being drawn, and depending on what omen is found in what room, the haunt is going to be different. This game does have a few issues with some of the scenarios not being balanced, but it’s more about the horror feeling you get from the game as you joke around exploring the house, and suddenly, everything is serious.

Mansions of Madness

While I think that Arkham Horror LCG (Living Card Game) is more enjoyable for me to play, probably because I’ve played it more, Mansions of Madness hits the HP Lovecraft horror out of the park as you are exploring a location and all sorts of horrific things are happening. You and your group of investigators are pushing forward while fighting off monsters, solving puzzles, and trying to stop monsters from being summoned. This game has some of the same feeling as Betrayal at House on the Hill where you are exploring the house, finding what horrors might lie inside of it. I would recommend playing Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition as the app integration makes the game run really smoothly.

Zombie Dice

Because zombies, that’s really why it is on this list. Also because it’s a simple, light game, where you are just rolling dice. You are the zombies who are in search of brains, and trying to collect as many as you can and figuring out when to stop, before you get blasted away by a shotgun. Zombie Dice is a great ice breaker game because it’s easy to teach, turns go fast, and it’s easy for people to still have conversations while playing this game.

King of Tokyo

When it comes to Halloween, I still think of giant monsters. And while King of Tokyo doesn’t have deep horror roots, playing a bunch of monsters trying to get points and smacking the other monsters around is a blast. You can play as not-Godzilla, not-King Kong, and a lot of others. It’s another fight game, and the Yahtzee style rolling mechanic makes it an easy game to teach as people generally are familiar with that. This is definitely a more family friendly style of Halloween game, like Zombie Dice above.

XenoShyft: Onslaught/Dreadmire

I’ve only played Onslaught, but from what I know, Dreadmire has a similar feel. This is a fun horror/space marine sort of game in the vein of Alien and Starship Troopers. It’s less silly than Starship Troopers, but has the feeling of fighting off swarms and swarms of bugs as they try and overrun the base. You’re working as a team, each person defending their own side of the base from the alien bugs by building up a line of defense and hoping to get lucky. The game has a nice cooperative feel and generally feels like you’re close to winning, though, if you get the bugs in the wrong order, especially the wave boss bugs early in a wave, it can set you back a long ways. However, you get a chance to help your fellow marines while the bugs are attacking which gives the game a unique feel for a deck builder.

Dead of Winter

This is for the more serious zombie player. You’re trying your best to survive the cold winter, deal with zombies as they show up, and complete your objectives before time runs out. This game has a nice feel of somewhere between a classic zombie film and The Walking Dead where it’s more focused on the characters. The game runs with a lot of tension as well because there might be a traitor among you and you all have secret objectives, so everyone looks a bit like the traitor. Can you work together well enough to survive and complete your objective, will the traitor cause you to lose the game, and will you be able to complete your own objective. This game can have some heavy moments because of the Crossroads story cards it uses, so it isn’t a game to play with children.

Now, obviously there are a lot of horror or monster based games. Games like Descent, Claustrophobia, Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, and many more can work for Halloween. What are some of your favorite games to pull out at Halloween?

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These are all games that Fantasy Flight has taken from a license and turned into a ton of products. I’m pretty sure I’m evening missing a game. There are also other games like the Game of Thrones living card game or the new game that came out from CMON, Song of Ice and Fire. There’s a whole system of games, the Legendary Encounters based off of Marvel Legendary (another licensed property) for Alien, Predator, Firefly, Big Trouble in Little China, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now X-Files. The point of writing all of that was that there are a ton of board games that have cool properties behind them and there are more coming out all of the time.

Unlike Robin Hood and Lovecraft’s work which can be slapped on anything because they are public domain, there are a lot that need to be licensed. So, what are some of these other stories that I can to see board games made out of?

I’m going to give the title of the book, TV show, movie, and some description of what I think would make it an interesting game or how I might go about building a game. I’m also going to be avoiding things that I know are already board games, you might not know there is a Kung-Fu Panda game, but there is, so I won’t be making my own for that.

R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. is a movie and comic about a cop who dies and then becomes a cop in the after life taking crazy bad guys. I like the theme for this one and think that with a bunch of minis and different cops who you could play, it could be a fun game playing against a scenario(s). You’d be trying to defeat different bad guys, or maybe a scenario would have you get information while trying to survive long enough to get back out. There’s a good number of stories that you could do with it, and while it is a lot of the current meta, I’d lean into the supernatural. Give the players and monsters abilities that they can use that are a bit game breaking, but come at a cost to the monsters of the players. That would then give the game a unique feel as compared to other scenario based games because it’s the last ditch sort of move instead of other variable player powers.

Kingkiller Chronicle

Now, there is something coming out that can have some tie in to this series by Patrick Rothfuss, but I want to take it in a different direction than that game. That one looks like it is more about the whole fantasy world, and like I said, it isn’t an actual game on the series, it just has a module for it, so it counts for me. I’d focus on the time at the university. People could take on different students, doing different things for different classes and the game would be split into four or five parts which would be different years at the school. Each turn you’d take an action to either study, go to classes, make money, or if you are playing a character who has money, just get money. You’d play as different characters who are studying at the university and at the end of each round you’d score points and depending on how you did and your income, you’d get your tuition set for the next year which would take money from you, and you’d repeat the process. If you didn’t have enough money, you’d be limited to actions in town or going and taking out a loan to be able to stay in school, but that would be costly for you. I think you could make this game interesting by having characters increase in skills, do sneaky things, and complete missions for teachers. I think I’d then have the players try and get as many points as they could in completing their education or at least advancing in it.

Killjoys

Killjoys is a space television series about a crew who picks up criminals and turns them in and deals generally with all the problems that are going on in their world. I don’t think I’d make my game as dramatic as the show, but I do think I’d set it up so that it really focuses on bringing in those criminals like the earlier part of the show does. It would somewhat be a pick-up and deliver game where you fly to a planet, pick up what you need, and deliver it back for money. However, the longer you go, the more troubles you are going to run into completing missions and also the more events and worse events that will be happening to the Quad, the area of planets you are working in. In the end, the winner would have the most money at the end of the game from bringing in criminals, but you have to decide how to use it because you might want to upgrade your ship, weapons, or crew to make the jobs easier.

Stranger Things

I’m a little surprised I haven’t heard of one besides some company branding an ouija board with Stranger Things, because of money. For those who don’t know, Stranger things is about a girl who escapes from the grasp of an evil company that is messing around with her abilities and is also looking into another dimension, the Upside Down where there are monsters that start bleeding over into this small town. I would make this as an asymmetric game for up to five people as that’s about how it works in the game. There are the kids, the teenagers, the adults, the company, and the upside down. The upside down and the kids would be required to play the game, but the rest could be optional. As the kids, you are trying to keep Eleven safe and close the portal to the Upside Down, as the Upside Down, you are trying to capture all the kids or get enough monsters into the world that you win. If you were the adults, your goal would to find one of the kids who gets lost in the upside down, and as the teens your goal is to kill as many monsters as possible. Finally, as the company, your goal would be to keep Eleven alive, but have her under your control, and not have anyone else win for a certain number of rounds. I could also see cutting it down to three factions and having the people of the town, adults, teens, and kids, all be the same person. But I think it could be interesting, each group having their own special powers and goals that they are going for in the game.

What are some stories that you think would turn into a good board game? What are some of your favorites that are already board games?

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