Ranking My Fantasy Games

46: The Red Dragon Inn

This should be a game that I like more than I do, it’s basically a hand management game around drinking in a bar after you’ve been out adventuring and gambling to win money and getting in fights. And I suspect I do I like this game more than I think. I just don’t like it at high player counts. Most of the time when I play The Red Dragon Inn it is over the recommended player count, to me this is a 4 player game only. I don’t want fewer, I don’t want more. At four, it’d feel like good silly fun and not a slog.

45: God of War: The Card Game

God of War is another theme in a game that I should love, but the game around it wasn’t that great. The deck building was interesting in the game. But the card play and the monsters that you fight, those aren’t all that interesting. It feels like the game was meant for mass market without hitting mass market. Or it’s a weird area in between mass market and hobby.

44: Kodama: The Tree Spirits

This is one that barely falls into the fantasy area. Yes, it does have the tree spirits, but that’s barely part of the game. It’s more about building out trees trying to create runs of the different things that you want. In concept it’s not that bad, and in game play it is okay. Kodoma is one of those games where I think a lot of people will enjoy it, and it’s not a bad game, but it won’t be many people’s favorite game.

43: Stuffed Fables

This is a game, in Stuffed Fables, I should maybe have given more tries. The theme of a being stuffed animals and toys of a kid trying to get their blanket back that was stolen, super cute. And the game was cute when I played it, but also more complex than it should be. I get what Plaid Hat Games is doing with their adventure book games, but with changing rules it just made it more complex than I wanted.

42: SeaFall

SeaFall, people would probably put that to the bottom of their lists because it is not a good legacy game. Though, legacy games, to me, have higher standards than most other games. If I am only going to get a limited use out of it, it needs to be epic. I liked the mechanics pretty well though they needed to be less punishing. But the story was a bit too scattered, though, with some tweaking, could be made better.

41: Near and Far

Well, I just wrapped up Sleeping Gods, that isn’t on the list yet, so I like it better. For me, Near and Far is a cool concept, a cool world, and just falls flat. The game has story, and even vignettes of story like Sleeping Gods, but it’s more mechanics than anything. And I think since it’s competitive the game couldn’t get away from the mechanics as much as how you score points.

40: Legacy of Dragonholt

Legacy of Dragonholt is another one of those games that isn’t bad, but could have been better. The system for an RPG/Choose Your Own Adventure game is fun. The story is okay, and that’s what kept me from diving back into it. It wasn’t that the concept of the story wasn’t good, but the execution of it felt too YA (young adult) and not a well written YA story, but one that got published because other YA books similar were well done and popular. I’d love to see Fantasy Flight come back to this system, keep some of the ideas and just improve the writing.

39: Fae

Fae is a fantasy game in cover art only. It is really an abstract game where you are a fae creature who is then hidden from everyone else and you try and score the most points. The game is good, and I like the challenge of trying to score points but not make it too obvious so that people tank your fae’s scoring. A clever idea and very abstract.

38: Legends of Andor

Another game that was in my collection and then left. And another one that is fun, it is an efficiency puzzle of how you get through the story as effectively as possible so you don’t trigger end game too early. My issue with it is only a me issue, I have too many campaign games. I let it go when I realized I would only ever play the starting scenario at least for right now. When I have capacity for that campaign, then I might get it back.

37: Sword & Sorcery

Sword & Sorcery left my collection, but that’s because I did play through the campaign. It is a fun campaign but one that I knew I wouldn’t revisit. The depth of game play is fun for a lighter dice chucking game. And the story is also light, well, in terms of the decisions that you make. I wish the story branched more, and that your powers would change up more, because once you found a few good things, you just did those.

36: Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients

Shadows of Brimstone is one that hasn’t left my collection as a campaign game, but maybe should. The only issue is that I need to glue the figures back together. My first gluing didn’t stick as well as it should have, because I didn’t use the right glue. But also, it’s a theme that I don’t have games for, the weird west. So monsters and other worlds all messing with the old west. I love that theme and there aren’t many games or good books that I’ve found with it.

35: Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth

Another campaign game, and another one that left my collection just because I wasn’t going to get to it anytime soon. But it’s Lord of the Rings, and app assisted from Fantasy Flight Games. The story was fun that I did play through. The writing was well done, which I appreciated, and you can see is something that’s important to me. Definitely a good one for Lord of the Ring fans, which I am.

34: Krosmaster: Arena

This is a skirmish game with fantasy characters casting spells, summoning monsters, and hacking and slashing away. I like that you pick and build the teams that you play with. I like the dice rolling and how you can play with secondary objectives so it’s not just knock out your opponent. But you can play just with knocking people out as well. Krosmaster is one I would keep but I didn’t have people to play it with, and now I have another skirmish game or two that I put over it.

33: Too Many Bones

This one will probably move up the list when my Gamefound comes in for the latest expansions. Not that I own any other Too Many Bones, but that might start me getting more. This is kind of a short campaign game where you fight some battles and then fight against a boss. But where the game really shines is how you build up your characters. Each of them do different things, and how you level them up gives you room to explore a character multiple times. Plus it’s a different fantasy world than anything else out there.

32: Lord of the Rings: Journey To Mordor

This is a roll and write game, but it is a fun little one. Not one that I own or one that I’d go and seek out to add to my roll and write collection. But Journey to Mordor basically has you advancing your Hobbit on their journey to Mordor while trying not to let the Nazgul get you. Very simple roll and write but it has a little more player interaction, so it feels different than some.

31: The Hobbit

Speaking of Hobbits, we have The Hobbit. This is a competitive game about dwarves trying to get treasure, which is kind of what the book is as well. I like the mechanics where you are leveling up skills based off of cards you play. But you want to balance it so everyone levels up because you can’t defeat the monsters all by yourself. So it’s semi-cooperative, but not in a way that someone is working against the group, it’s just that sometimes you let another person get the better thing.

30: Deadly Doodles

Another roll and write game, and this one I think has dropped a little on my list. It’s a good simple roll and write where you are trying to get treasures, find weapons and defeat monsters. And what you do gives you points. There are some different dungeons which add in more things to do as well, which I need to play around with.

29: The Lord of the Rings

And even more Lord of the Rings, this is the classic Fantasy Flight Game. I like how it plays through the books. And you play as the Hobbits taking the ring to Mordor. It is fairly abstracted, but the locations you go and the scenes you play through are all very Lord of the Rings, so it feels more thematic than just with what you are doing. Plus it’s a really tough cooperative game and I like those.

28: Titan Race

Normally I don’t love games that have a lot of in your face, try and mess the other person over, but Titan Race is a lot of fun. This is a fast game and a silly game with great fantasy in it. Titan Race is very silly and I like how the tracks work. You can either do a race where you loop over the same board over and over again, or you can do a grand prix and go over three boards and each board does different things. And those things make the game even sillier.

27: Claim

Claim is a two player trick taking game which is odd. Plus the first hand you play doesn’t actually give you a score, it is how you build your hand for trick taking. It’s such a clever idea and I like that it plays really fast. The fantasy theme comes in that the different suits are fantasy races. And each of those fantasy races has it’s own powers, or they might. Some of them there are just more of, whereas others have powers. A knight always beats a goblin, for example. So it puts even more of a twist on trick taking in a way I really enjoy.

26: Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler

I don’t know where this one will end up, so middle of the list is good for right now. I don’t know where it’s going to end up because I’ve only played this roll and write game once. And I liked it a lot, it’s a dungeon crawler as a roll and write. But as compared to Deadly Doodles where you go into a dungeon and cross over stuff, you do a lot more in this game. You level up your heroes, you have powers and abilities, you craft items and brew potions. And the better you do in other things, better you can explore. A lot going on, but not too hard.

25: Skulk Hollow

Skulk Hollow is a game of woodland creatures, the Foxen, fighting against a Guardian. It’s a two player only game and one that is very asymmetrical. As the guardian my goal might change from game to game, depending on which guardian I am. And the Foxen, well they always want to beat down the Guardian. And the Foxen can change up depending on who their leader is. Really cute game and fast to learn and play.

24: Silver

I think I say this every time I talk about Silver, but it reminds me of a game I played growing up with a deck of cards. In Silver you have a village in front of you and you want the lowest score possible. You know what two of the cards are in your village. You don’t know the other three. So now you swap cards out or play them for powers to get rid of cards in your village and lower your score. It’s simple, it’s fun, there’s a lot of take that, yet it feels nostalgic in a good way.

23: Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Clank is a fun push your luck, deck building, dungeon delving game. You want to get the best treasure that you can, but as you get cards, make noise, and well, annoy the dragon because it’s their horde, now the dragon starts damaging you. So you could jump in, grab the first thing you see and run, but if someone else can make it out, now they have more points and better treasure than you. Really fun game and easy enough to play for most people.

22: Deranged

Deranged might fall more into a horror game. But there is a magical gate and fantastical monsters who are out to get you. And you yourself can become one of those fantastical monsters if you don’t deal with your curses and get out in time, why, because you might become Deranged. The game has a lot going on, but I like the dual use cards and the theme of the game. A little horror I’m most certainly interested.

21: Village Attacks

Village Attacks is another darker themed game because you for sure are the monsters. And after a long day of terrifying villagers, you are ready to settle down. But nope, here some villagers to break down your door because clearly you’re the monsters, not the people trying to trash your place. That sounds light, and I find it silly, but it is themed dark. Still a very nice tower defense type of game.

20: The Grimm Masquerade

Themed with Grimm Fairy Tales, The Grimm Masquerade is a deduction game. You are each a masked party goer, one of the Grimm characters. You are of course looking for something, a glass slipper for Cinderella, but also have something you don’t want. Can you get what you need or make everyone else bust before they figure out who you are?

19: Ascension: Deckbuilding Game

Another deck building game, Ascension is fantasy themed. Really, like most pure deck building games, it’s about building up an engine that gives you points. I just like this fantasy theme and variability of it better than something like Dominion. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This lets you get heroes and casters and sages and constructions to fight monsters, get more income and buy more cards. I like that it offers a ton of different strategy for the game.

18: Res Arcana

Res Arcana is another in theme only fantasy games. You are basically building out an engine to get points and who can do it better to get points faster. I like it though with the theme of brewing potions and dragons and places of power. It makes it feel different, and I also like that you only have 8 cards to make your engine with.

17: The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

The Dresden Files are my favorite fantasy series. I love the world that Jim Butcher has created. The game, it does a good job of giving you the pieces of that world. But you need to know the world to connect them together. So it’s not the best fantasy game or story game for everyone, but if you know the series, it’s a lot of fun to play.

16: Small World

Small World is Risk with fantasy creatures, crazy powers, and well, a whole lot more fun. What really works is that this is a small board. The game is in your face, but it’s in everyone’s face. The option of hiding away in Australia is gone that you’d have in Risk. Plus, you get crazy combos. Flying Halflings, Seafaring Giants, Wealthy Trolls, all of them are possible. Really accessible game too for most new gamers.

15: The Lost Expedition

This one is on the list because of the expansions and promo cards. I don’t think in the base game there is anything too fantastical, but werewolves, fountain of youth, yeah, those are fantasy. This is all about surviving to get to the lost city of Z. The game is a really good cooperative one that if you have someone who is a alpha player, it keeps them from being too much of one.

14: Century: Golem Edition

This is another one where the theme is fantasy, but game play doesn’t really shine through on that. Still, the artwork and gem pieces are great, and I wouldn’t want a different theme. It’s a hand management game where you are building up cards in your hand to use them to turn gems into other gems until you get the right combinations to get golems. And the golems at the end of the game give you points. What is so amazing about this game is that turns are super fast, so while there are good decisions to be made, it doesn’t take long to get back to your turn.

13: Potion Explosion

We’ve all probably seen the app games where you get like colors to touch and that removes them from the board and if more hit, those are removed as well. That is what Potion Explosion is. You are making crazy potions by pulling dice and trying to get the like colors to hit. Light game with a great table presence.

12: Root

Root was one where I was thinking, is this actually fantasy. Well, let’s see, it’s animals fighting and building, so yes, that seems like fantasy. But really, it’s a confrontational game where you fight it out with your group trying to get points to win the game with everyone trying to keep everyone else in check. Great asymmetrical game, just know it’ll take some time to teach. And don’t let the artwork fool you, this is not a nice sweet happy game.

11: Roll Player

Roll Player is a game about making your Dungeons and Dragons (or Generic RPG) character. You draft dice to put them into various stats for your class. It’s a lot of fun as you try and match up colors and get the numbers right to score more points. Plus you buy up gear and abilities which can influence your stats or points as well. And that’s the game, it’s about building up your character.

10: Spire’s End

Spire’s End, coming soon to Malts and Meeples is a story adventure game. In Spire’s End you wake up to find a spire has appeared at the edge of your town and many people are missing. You and others go into the tower, fight monsters, make choices, and generally go on a weird and dark adventure. Really like this one as a solo game.

9: Super Fantasy Brawl

Super Fantasy Brawl, it’s in the name that it’s fantasy. Super Fantasy Brawl is a two player skirmish game where you are trying to complete objectives in an arena and knock out your opponents. Complete objectives, get trophies. Knock out your opponent, get trophies. The first to five wins. What I really like is the turn speed, you play up to three cards, one of each color and do what it says on the cards. And the cards you play determine who moves. Light game but very tactical in how you play.

8: Cartographers

The second game I have in the Roll Player world, won’t be the last. But Cartographers is a roll and write game where you are making a map of the land. And you get points for making it in certain ways. Forests surrounding mountains might give you a point or two, things like that. What makes it fantastical is that you put monsters on the map as well. And you don’t put your own down, you put them on your opponents board in the worst spot for them to make them score negative points.

7: Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods, well, you can watch me play this one I just wrapped it up over on Malts and Meeples. Sleeping Gods is a big adventure game where you, as the crew of the Manticore are transported to a new world. You want to get home, but in order to do that you must awaken the sleeping gods and all you know is that totems might help with that, not where to find them. So it’s really a sandbox game of exploring, finding quests, fighting monsters and more.

6: Roll Player Adventures

Roll Player Adventures, the final Roll Player world game, this is an adventure game set in the world of Roll Player, using mechanics or dice mechanics that feel like Roll Player, and it’s really good. I really like that Roll Player Adventures is an easy game to learn and a lighter game to play. A lot of the big adventure games can have a lot to keep track of and a lot of tokens. Roll Player Adventures has enough, but not too much. And the world you play in isn’t too dark.

5: Aeon’s End

Aeon’s End is another deck building game and the highest on the list. This is a cooperative game where you play as breach mages trying to fight off nemesis that come through. The game does two really interesting things for me. Firstly, you never shuffle your deck. So when you discard cards you can kind of put them in an order. And the other is that turn order is random. There is a deck, in a two player game, which has two activations for each character and two for the Nemesis. On a really bad draw you could go twice with each character and then two Nemesis turns, plus then shuffle that up again and two more Nemesis turns.

4: Lords of Hellas

Lords of Hellas is fantasy in the future, or mythology in the future. It’s a cyber world of Greek gods. An odd setting with some amazing miniatures and mechanical creatures. But a really good game with some rough edges and a lot of ways to win. To me that is one of the best parts of the game where you are able to win in a number of different ways. You might fight monsters or build and control a monument or take over areas, how you play is up to you and the powers you have.

3: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Tainted Grail, if Roll Player is light fantasy or happy fantasy, Tainted Grail is very dark fantasy. The world of Avalon is falling apart, the Menhir that drove back the wyrdness are failing and you aren’t sent out to stop it. You are sent out to find out what happened to the people who are better equipped to do this than you. But the story in Tainted Grail is amazing and one that I highly recommend people track down, which can be hard. Also know that this is a survival game with a ton of story, if you want the story, play in storymode, I am.

2: Dice Throne

Odd one to put on the list but Dice Throne is very much fantasy. It is fantasy head to battling in almost a Mortal Kombat type setting but it is still fantasy. My Pyromancer is going to blast your Barbarian with fire or then there is a Seraph or a Treant or a Gunslinger, all sorts of things, and you can take any of them up against each other. I’m so excited, it isn’t that far out to when Marvel Dice Throne will be delivered, several months but not that far. And Marvel Dice Throne is compatible and can be played with everything else I already have.

1: Gloomhaven

Finally, my #1 game of all time, Gloomhaven, This is a massive fantasy game of dungeon crawling combat. It is amazing and what really makes it is the card play. You pick two cards to play, one will determine how fast you go. Then when you go you use the top of one card and the bottom of the others to move and attack, so you can set yourself up for some epic turns or make it flexible to cover a changing board state. And there are so many different characters that are interesting to play as.

Final Thoughts

I love fantasy as a theme. A lot of my favorite series are fantasy for books in particular. And for board games, there are a lot of games that use the fantasy theme. But when you get down to some of my favorite games of all time, the big fantasy games are hard to beat. I think that my Top 3 games are all fantasy games. And I even skipped some games, like stuff in the Lovecraftian Mythos because while they are fantasy, I feel they are more horror. Maybe I’ll do a horror game ranking soon.

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10 – Ultraman

One of the two animated shows on the list, this one was just a lot of fun to watch with good voice acting as well. It’s fairly typical in how it works, someone becomes a hero who wasn’t always planning on it but they end up being Ultraman and they have to figure out how to deal with that power and how to save the world. A good fun romp with only one season thus far, but it has been renwed for another. I like the blend of 2d and 3d animation in it that works very well. The voice acting is really good in it. It’s not a heavy show, but it’s a lot of fun.

9 – Umbrella Academy

This one, had the first season started out more consistently would have been much higher. I really like the absurdity of the show, and I like how it’s a group of super heroes, but they are basically failures at what they do and completely dysfunctional. The question, always, is can they figure it out to stop the end of the world by working together in time. What makes this show so good though is the characters. Number 5 is amazing, and Hazel was a great character in season one and Klaus is just amazing all around. And in season two they really develop the rest of the characters in great ways and it really tackles a lot of big issues and interesting dynamics. If you can power few the first few episodes of the first season it is very much worth it.

8 – Lucifer

One of the interesting ones on the list because this is only half Netflix. They picked it up from Fox, I believe, and kept it running. The show is just a lot of fun, it’s a procedural show based off of a comic, but not super hero or as completely absurd. It is really absurd because the Devil has come to Los Angeles and he meets and intriguing Detective who doesn’t really fall for his charms, and he wants to know why. So he joins the police as a consultant after helping her with a case, and it’s about the adventures and misadventures of the two of them. It is procedural, which isn’t always my cup of tea but it works in this case because it is fairly absurd.

7 – Dragon Prince

Another animated show for the list and the highest one on the list, but this is a really good show. Technically it’s a kids show, but I think it does a great job of being what a family show should be. It doesn’t shy away from emotions and some big questions, but it doesn’t fill itself with needless violence, sex, etc. that permeates most shows that target adults at all. In this show it’s about what happens with two sides won’t work together and are butting heads and how people can fall from grace and rise to power and what all that means, and what emotions people have when the world around them is very tough or unexpected. Overall, this is an extremely well done show with a ton of interesting things in it, and I’m excited for more of it to come out.

6 – Ragnarok

One of the first of a few foreign language shows that will show up on the list. Not out of where you’d get most of those shows, Ragnarok takes place in Norway and is about a family that is returning to their home town and the things that are off about their home town. Something is happening to the water and there are some people who might not be who they seem to be. It is kind of a teen drama, but it does more than that tying itself interesting into Norse mythology and developing a really fun story. One season thus far, so it’s easy to binge, and it has been renwed for another. I’ll be curious to see where this show builds to into the second season.

5 – The Order

I really like this show because it’s just cheesy schlock, and it’s amazing. It’s about a college age kid, Jack Morton, who is trying to get into a secret society at the local college, because something happened to his mother, and he blames the head of this secret order for what happens. Along the way he stumbles into a world of magic and werewolves, falls in love, and generally everything completely absurd that you’d expect happens. Jack is one of those characters that has a punchable charisma to him and he just kind of makes the show, plus he’s surrounded generally be a really good cast of characters and the use and abuse of magic in this show is really enjoyable. The second season takes a little step down but still really binge worthy.

4 – The Rain

Now, I will say with this, I haven’t seen the latest seasons of the show, so I’m only going off of the first, but this show was amazing. I like survival shows that really pull at your emotions, and this one does that. Something has happened to the rain and turned it deadly. Simone and Rasmus are brought into a shelter that was created maybe for this happening and then left their by their father, and they grow up in there. But when the bunker starts to malfunction, they have to leave and join up with a group who are trying to survive. What has caused the rain and can they find their way back to their father who is somehow connected to the rain? It is a good adventure, but like a lot of these shows, it’s about the dynamics of those who are surviving and how they can work together.

3 – Dark

I love time travel, but rarely is time travel done all that well. In Dark, they nail it. This is a topsy turvy show that takes you through a few different times as you try and figure out everything that is going on and if the cycle can be broken. A German show, it is probably worth watching subtitled in German, though the English dub isn’t bad, it is just noticeable. The feel of the show is very much dark, but it works really well and it is highly atmospheric. Definitely one to checkout if you like shows with a bit of mystery and horror to them. I’m not fully caught up, so it’s one of those shows that I’m going to have to dive back into again soon.

2 – Stranger Things

This is what most people would have pegged for the top of my list, it has monsters, it has adventure, it has humor, it has kids on bikes. And I love it. But there is one show that beats it out for me. This is what really brought the original and variety of Netflix shows to the map, and I love all the characters, I love the campy nature and I like that they’ve been able to keep the show fresh and interesting. The first season had so much interest and intrigue to it, and the second season, while it had an episode that was a complete miss, was really good, but then they came back with a third season that was maybe even better than the first season. I like how you get different group dynamics of over and younger characters and how the adults never treat the kids just as dumb kids. I need to go back and watch through it all again because I just love this show.

1 – Locke & Key

So, the show that beat out Stranger Things only has a single season thus far, and that’s Locke & Key. If you want to say I should wait for season two, I can see that, but I love this show. I love how they manage to take what is a fairly rough comic and something that probably wouldn’t have been as successful if they hadn’t turned it into something more young adult, but still manage to make a great show out of it. I like the acting a lot in it, especially from Kinsey who has an amazing moment and change in her acting in the show. And I like the world that is being built with the keys. The idea of these keys that can do magical things is just really cool and feels like there is so much that can built out around that. I’m extremely excited for a second season and this is a show that I am going to go back and watch again soon.

So for you, what are some of your favorite shows on Netflix, there are so many out there that could be considered. I know with my tastes that The Witcher could have been one considered, but for me that was just okay. Plus there are shows like Ozark and many more that I haven’t even checked out yet because they just aren’t quite my type of show that I know other people love. Let me know in the comments below.

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In Silver you have a village of five cards in front of you. These cards are face down and at the start of a round, there are four, you look at two of them. Then you take turns either taking cards from the discard pile to put into your village – face up, drawing a card to put into your village from the draw pile – face down, drawing a card and playing it for its special power, or calling for a vote. You call for a vote when you think your village has the fewest points left in it. Each villager has a point total, and while you don’t want to get a 12 in your village, using it to steal a good card from someone else and giving them a high value card always works out nicely. There’s one trick for calling for a vote, though, and that’s that your village has to have fewer than five cards. To get rid of cards, you can trade in two cards of the same number when playing a card from the discard or that you drew into your village. When the vote happens, whomever calls for the vote, if they have the fewest points, they get zero points for the round, everyone else gets what is one their cards, but if they don’t have the fewest points, they get ten plus their total while everyone else just scores the total points on their cards. After four rounds, the person with the fewest points wins.

There are some things that I really like about this game, but I didn’t love it the first time that I played it, which was at GenCon. The concept of the game is quite simple, and I hadn’t picked up on the amount of depth that you might need for the game. Knowing what cards are strong when is interesting, and knowing to just discard a card sometimes and do nothing with it, because it isn’t worth the risk. There’s more depth to it than you’d initially think. That said, just the base box with the base set of cards, that is enjoyable, but for long term replayability, I think that you need some of the stand alone expansions. Silver Bullet and Silver Coin I haven’t actually played yet, but from what I know of them, they mainly add more villagers that you can play with.

In Silver there are villagers numbered from 0 to 13. A 0 is just a normal villager, no special power, unless both are face up in villages, at which point you just score. But other numbers have powers. A 13 is a doppelganger of any other number when trading in two for one (or even three for one or four for one if you can set it up). A 2 face up in your village allows you to peak at one of your cards each turn so you can figure out all the numbers that you have. A 7 lets you look at two of your cards once, if you discard it after drawing it. And every number has something that it allows you to do. However, in the base game there is only one set of cards from 0 to 13. 12 is an exception to that, but you pick which set of the 12’s you want to play with. Silver Coin and Silver Bullet give you more sets of cards of various numbers. That means that you choose which set of 1’s, etc. you play with and you can create your own combinations. This is very much like having Sushi Go and then getting Sushi Go Party! which gives you more possibilities, this just creates them as stand alone expansions so you don’t have to buy everything.

But even with that said, I do like Silver a lot. I think that while the expansions would make it more playable over time, just the base game is nice because it’s easy to teach and it plays quickly. Once you have a concept of what you can do on your turn, you just need to learn the cards, and as the teacher, I don’t need to teach all of them. I can just show you what a few symbols mean and you can learn as you go. Now, learning as you go can sometimes suck because that probably means you’ll lose the first game, and in Silver, that’s no exception, except for the fact that the games are short. Maybe a four player game would take 60 minutes, which isn’t that short, but a two player game, even the first one with me teaching someone, maybe took twenty minutes, and after that, probably could play a game with two players in fifteen minutes. And I think with four, maybe 45. So as a two player game, it can really fly, with more, it does add more time, but the more comfortable people get with the game, the faster it goes. And even if the person is picking stuff up in the first round to figure out the game, rounds two through four will go much faster. Plus, as I’ve said, it’s so simple to teach, it’s easy to get to the table.

Overall, I think this is a good family weight, almost party game. Yes, it can only play up to four, but it’s one of those games that I’d use as a filler between bigger heavier games, and that people can really get into because of the simplicity of the game. If you’re looking for something with longer term strategy, I do think you’ll need the expansions, but for a good game to pull off the shelf with your more casual gaming friends, I really like Silver as a new game to do that. And I do now, after teaching it once, think I could teach it in five minutes to new gamers.

Overall Grade: B
Casual Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B-

Have you had a chance to play Silver, is it a game that you like?

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Season One Spoilers To Follow

Season Two picks up fairly quickly from season where, where the Knights of Saint Christopher have had their memories erased and various acolytes of the Order of the Blue Rose have been tasked with keeping an eye on them. There’s one issue, though, they keep on getting their memories back as the werewolves keep healing them. To add to that, the werewolves keep on almost escaping because someone is doing magic, and the Knights, without their memories can’t stop them from coming out. Things go from bad to worse when a new magical organization shows up, this one with the plan of bringing magic to the masses, but what is the cost of that going to be. Meanwhile, Alyssa Drake is struggling to control her own magic for some unknown reason.

I think a good starting point for talking about this is that season two is probably more absurd than season one. There are some cameos in it that are just hilarious and extremely well done. And a lot of the situations are completely out there. That said, this has always been a show about secret magic, werewolves, and college, so it was never a show that took itself too seriously. They do a good job of setting the tone for that early in the first episode of season one. So I like that this has continued down a pretty cheesy path as that’s one of my favorite things, cheesy monsters. And I don’t feel like it’s too overbearing though, there are some real moments that happen in it with the characters, and there are real stakes so it’s not just about the goofiness, though that was a highlight of season two.

In terms of the acting, it’s on par with the previous season. Basically all the main players who survived season one are back again and play large roles. They do a good job of giving Randall more to do as well as Gabrielle this season, though both did a fair amount in season one. But they become very important characters in season two. And the new characters introduced are fine, I think that the sect of magic users who want to bring magic to the masses are okay. Their acting is not always the best, nor is their motivation properly defined. I think this added group muddies the waters a bit too much, and they really are trying to lean into everything being grey, but not in a way that really works all that well. And I feel like the character development of Jack Morton and Alyssa Drake kind of takes a bit of a step backwards. Now, I know the rules that characters shouldn’t get together because once the ones you are pulling for do, they become more boring. However, they had ways to keep them apart, and they used them quite well early on in the season, but later, especially Jack’s motivations are messed up with what we have known his personality to be.

With that said, I have to go back to this being a cheesy show about monsters, werewolves, and magical secret societies, 90% of which takes place on a college campus. It doesn’t take itself seriously, the writing isn’t high quality, so I don’t expect it to be handled perfectly. When I watch The Order, I’m doing so because I want to have fun, and this season hands out a ton of fun. If you enjoyed the first season, it’s more of the same, just with a less well defined bad guy. If you didn’t, this season won’t change anything for you. And if you haven’t watched it but like cheesy monster college shows, it’s a very specific genre, you’ll enjoy this show. I’m hoping the numbers will do well enough for season three, because I think there’s ways to go with the story that will be interesting, but if not, it ends in a solid spot.

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For a campaign though, I think that you have to find some lower level monster that seems classic campy horror that starts out harrowing the town that the 0 level or maybe level 1 characters are based out of.

Just as an aside, you might be wondering what a 0 level character is. That is basically that you’re just playing a villager, someone who wants to become a wizard might have a cantrip or two, but no first level spells. The characters probably don’t have anything more than a rusty short sword and a little bit of leather armor at best. Basically, you are really leaning into them launching into being heroes.

Anyways, back to what I’m going for. In the world you’re building these monsters should be normal. The players should know that the scary castle a long way up in the mountains that seems to be always casting a shadow over this town as a monster in it. They should know that the woods has werewolves in it. The creature from the Black Lagoon should be a few towns over, and this is a world that has campy and classic monsters around.

Now, something like this could just be the monster of a week, and while that is going to be good for a little while, eventually I think you should start dropping hints of something or someone bigger controlling everything. You don’t need to use Strahd’s stat block for your vampire lord, it can be lesser than that. I think that it would make sense for a Mummy Lord (or maybe a Lich) to be running this group. They are experimenting with other ways to extend life or something like that, or maybe the bodies are going missing and the Mummy Lord is using the monsters to kill off to create an army of the shambling dead.

I’d play around with whomever your BBEG is, give them some sort of curse. And make that a way either for the players to eventually win by solving the riddles and taking care of the mummy’s curse, or the riddles/curse could just reveal a weakness that the players will be able to exploit. The BBEG should also be very into monologues and having that evil genius mindset, though that might make more sense for an evil wizard in a tower or a lich as compared to a mummy lord, so there are different ways that you can lean into campiness and movie monsters.

What would probably take the most time would be finding those classic monsters you want to use. Some of them don’t fully exist in D&D. However, there are going to be things close, and just reskin them so that they look like what you need at the challenge level you need. And if you wanted to you could also pull in horror movie villains like Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees for your game to flesh out the cast of characters. Or you could also steal monsters from things like The Dresden Files and Supernatural to get an idea of how to be a bit campy, but also to use a wide variety of monsters instead of just limiting yourself to the classic movie monsters.

I think that something like this could be interesting for a game personally. It would allow you to pull in the players real knowledge of these things while they have to deal with them in the game. And it wouldn’t have to be a super high level campaign at the end, but you’d get a nice building feeling, especially starting at level 0 and going up.

What do you think? Would you want to play in this game? Have you used classic movie and movie monsters in your games?

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In a Halloween game, you’re obviously looking at a few basic ideas. You either are going with a monster situation, so something like a vampire, Frankenstein’s monster, werewolves, or zombies – the classics, or you might be looking at a cult, or you might be going with something more twisted and sinister, but it isn’t going to be a story about picking daisies in a meadow somewhere. The story ideas are going to be a bit more grim, a lot of the time. But before you go making the darkest D&D game possible for Halloween, we get to our first point.

If you think about D&D as a movie, what sort of Halloween movie do you want this to be like? Are you going to go with something dark and gritty like Repulsion, see my Halloween Movies Post for what it’s like, or something that’s a little bit more off the wall like Repo! The Genetic Opera or Cabin the Woods? Both of these are fun things, and you can go quite goofy with the latter. But it depends on the feel that you are going for. So, as you’re planning picking which type you’re going for will determine a lot of other things.

From here a lot of your game building is going to be fairly similar to a normal one shot. Think about what sort of encounters you want, keep them varied, do combat, social, investigative, even skill challenges. Try and focus the theme down more so onto the game that you are going for. Also, plan out some more description than you might normally. The more you can describe, the more you can set the theme for your game. If you’re going for something that’s more serious, set it with description that demonstrates how the world seems off.  Plan this out ahead of time, because it’ll be tricky to do it all on the fly and it’ll be one of your bigger tools to use.

When it comes to the actual session, there are things you can do to reinforce the scene. If you normally play in a well lit room or during daytime, move it to a darker location or at night. Running the game outside can even be fun. But, for example, if you are playing a Gothic style of vampire game, play at a table light in a room that is primarily lit by candle light. Just have enough light that you can see the player sheets. Music is also going to be nice and easy to create the feel that you are going for. It can either be ambient noises like a woods if you are hunting down werewolves in a dark forest or it can be be organ music for when you come to the vampires castle. It might be cheesy, but if that’s the type of game that you are going for, it’ll work out just fine.

That’s how I’d run a one shot for Halloween. I wouldn’t recommend doing it at a convention, unless you have your own room where you can control the atmosphere, a big convention hall just won’t work.

But what are some ideas, because that’s what I really like coming up with:

Dracula’s Lair

Your players are a team of vampire hunters who are pretty skilled at what they do. They’ve managed to figure out when the vampire lord Dracula lives. It’s a pretty straight forward murder Dracula game. What I’d do is create it into a house of horrors, the castle that Dracula lives in. Start with the players getting social interactions with some villagers who can help them find a “secret” entrance into Dracula’s lair. Then once in the lair, have Dracula show up and taunt them, throw Renfields at them, other vampire spawn they have to deal with, and traps and puzzles they have to figure out. None of the combats/challenges should be too hard, but the players shouldn’t have a chance to rest. Make it about resource management for them, and let them figure it out as they go along, and then allow creative solutions to problems.

The Last Night

A zombie outbreak has happened and only pockets of nomadic people are still around. The adventuring party has banded together and is being forced to defend a small tent town from a horde of zombies that is coming over the hill at them. Another game idea where you’re trying to keep enough resources in reserve in some ways, but I’d probably borrow from my Pride, PrejuDICE, and Zombies game where there is one head zombie. The players have to make rolls for the army of humans or for themselves to take out a large horde of zombies, but mainly, they are trying to take out the necromancer who is controlling the zombies. But if rolls are going poorly enough, have some way to track if the zombies are getting closer to the civilians or not. Lots of women and children in that group will probably mean that the players try and stop the attack. So dealing with the horde is a skill challenge whereas dealing with the necromancer or head zombie is going to be straight up combat. You could also make this on the road and the players being harried by zombie attacks as they try and keep the civilians safe and make it to a safe zone.

Love Bites

A werewolf is madly in love with a village boy and they enlist the adventuring parties help to get the boy to notice the werewolf and possibly agree to become a werewolf. This game is clearly on the sillier side of things, but it would be a number of quick quests that the players can do. Vary them up from collecting a certain flower or weapon that is lost deep in the woods, finding a master poet to write a poem for the werewolf to give to the boy, fight through a band of goblins to keep the boy safe while they are out hunting in the woods, etc. Find a few of those and make them fairly absurd how the players have to do it so that the game has more of a lighter feel to it.  Maybe even hold off on the werewolf reveal until a few minutes into the game when the players have already agreed to help. They shouldn’t attack the werewolf because the players have agreed to play in the game, and you can also create PC’s for them to play who aren’t going to be apt to kill the werewolf as a monster.

Have you ran a horror through D&D before? How did that work, would it work well for a Halloween game?

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To start us off, I want to talk about a show I’ve recently discovered — Lost Girl. Peder has seen a good portion of this show’s five seasons, and has been telling me for some time about how great it is. This month, we’ve finally got around to watching it together, and are partway through Season 1. There’s a lot still to be watched, but I’ve seen enough to know that it’s fantastic.

Lost Girl originally aired in 2010 on a Canadian channel called Showcase, and made its way to the US via the SyFy channel in 2012. It centers around the story of Bo (played by Anna Silk), a woman with a dark past, and whose origins are a mystery — even to herself. It’s soon revealed that Bo is a member of the Fae, a magical underworld populated by supernatural beings and hidden in plain sight from the human world. More specifically, she’s a succubus — a creature who feeds off of the sexual energy of humans. She finds out (the hard way, naturally) that when she engages in…certain behaviors with humans, she ends up draining their life force and killing them. Basically, she’s a more smoldery version of Rogue.

Early on, Bo encounters Kenzi (played by Ksenia Solo — if that isn’t the coolest name ever, I don’t know what is), a clever, wildcard human girl she saves from a nasty fate and who latches onto Bo like an adorable, friendly stray cat. They set up shop in Bo’s condemned-barn-style house and form what amounts to a two-woman supernatural crime-fighting team. They’re soon befriended by Dyson (played by Kris Holden-Ried), another member of the Fae — he’s a werewolf/cop who consistently rivals Bo for her smoldery-ness. He helps Bo and Kenzi out of (and sometimes into) all kinds of trouble, and he and Bo quickly find themselves in a complicated friends-with-(supernatural)-benefits relationship.

If you know SyFy at all, you’ll know that its shows can be pretty hit or miss, but Lost Girl is decidedly one of the hits. It balances great action sequences with skillful character development, special effects that somehow manage not to be cheesy, unique plot elements…and quite a bit of fanservice, which somehow doesn’t feel overdone.

On that note, I will share one caveat — if you tend to try to avoid sexual content in the shows and movies you watch, this won’t be the show for you. We’re not talking Game of Thrones or Outlander levels of that stuff by any means, but there’s definitely enough to give some people pause. I will say, though, that it’s used in a pretty ingenious (and generally not gratuitous) way. Since that element is so much a part of Bo’s character as the source of her powers, it feels relevant to the story whenever it comes into it, and is often an important part of Bo’s character development as she learns to control her powers in order to both use them to her advantage and to keep from hurting the people she loves.

In short, this urban fantasy show doesn’t just tell an interesting story; it has the right amount of depth to keep it compelling and engaging without feeling too heavy. Add in some of the funniest, most complex, and most unique characters I’ve encountered in quite some time, and you have one fantastic show.

So, have you heard of Lost Girl? If so, what do you like the most about it? If not, is it one you’d add to your to-watch list?

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