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Time to write your own Adventure Path! :p

Pathfinder is OGL and has its own compatibility license so afaik you should be able to sell it commercially, and voila: boundless fame and fortune will be yours.

Fellow board-game players,

We had a one-game only session on Monday, it was a series of six-players games of Red Dragon Inn and Red Dragon Inn II combined.

The balance of the game changes a bit, especially if a lot of "drink event" cards are drawn and resolved before one's turn. Money also gets a bit tighter, with increased likelihood of players choosing to raise (two more players). So again for the last two players of the first round, who have not had the possibility to "discard and draw", things can turn bad quickly.

Still a lot of fun got had.
See you all next week.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

The early action was a playtest of a game designed by David. I came too late to play it but it seemed to involve Dwarves or little miners throwing bombs and climbing ladders to escape some tunnels. It looked fun.

This was followed by another epic game of Red Dragon Inn!

We had to tinker the game a bit to keep it balanced at six players, but in the end I think we got it right.

See you next week,

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

I am afraid I will not be able to come tonight. I have one of those dreaded 5.00 p.m. "quick" meetings to attend; i.e. not home until quarter past six, etc.

See some of you on Wednesday for the Legacy of Fire game.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

[|Red Dragon Inn III]

Last night Ian and I played Red Dragon Inn III at my place. I had had the game at home for a year or so and never got to play it. I will bring it tonight.

The game is of course based on the same rule design as the previous two, but with additional mechanics. This is pretty good, but may be a bit hard to combine with the other characters as the new ones could be a bit overpowered. The four new characters can cheat when gambling, even the Paladin! Even though the gambling mechanics for the Paladin make sense: Gamble: yes; but one loses "piety" doing so, which in turn makes the character very different to handle.

Red Dragon Inn I+II+III?

I have read a couple of threads on Board-game Geek about playing with five or more players. The problems highlighted in the discussions are more or less the same that we encountered last time when we played with six players: Cash running out and hands without enough cards.

The proposed changes that we could try could be:

• One more gold per player beyond four. For instance twelve gold each for a six-players game. The idea is that the average gambling game has on average one "I raise" card in a four-players game before it concludes. So the extra gold per extra player beyond four allows for the increased probability of two "I raise" cards in an average gambling game; in turn ensuring the last players can have a turn at least once before running out of gold.
• Allow one "Discard and draw" action for everybody at the start of a new game. This increases the chances of people gathering a card that allows them not to gamble. Of course the first player in a new game gets two "Discard and draw" actions in a row, allowing them to have a slight strategic advantage as per the original rules.

Some people argue for an extra card in hand per two players beyond the fourth, i.e. a hand of eight card for a six-players game; but as we saw last time, more cards lengthen the game thus give even more importance to the alcohol content marker. The alcohol content is the game parameter that is very hard - or even impossible for some characters - to lower. Deidre the Priestess is already hard to win with because of that. Therefore increasing the number of cards in hand would penalise this character even more.
The additional "Discard and draw" should help those unwilling to gamble; because gambling tends to use a lot of cards. For other problems, people should learn to save their cards I guess; for instance, unless critical, taking a "Light ale" should not call for a card that avoids a drink.

I could also bring Red November of we have a lot of people.

See you tonight,

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Arkham Horror.

It had been a while so we had a game. Eight players, a bit of luck for some, less for others, but we won in the end!]

Red Dragon Inn.

A mega-session with eight players combining the first two games together.
The changes were:

• 14 pieces of gold each (four more than standard to account for the extra players.
• One free "discard and draw" before game start to allow a potentially better prepared response to the opening round of play.

Money was the key to survival with so many "Gambling? I'm in" cards being played first. The first casualties came early, with the last three players lasting quite a while. Of course, we were all limited by our alcohol intake in the end and nearly all dropped together.
The most important point though was that I won.

Next session.

As usual, nothing really planned. So come along and play whatever. People are of course invited to bring their own games or buy one at Vague Connections.

Laurent,

Will be at the shop around 7.00 p.m. Relatively long day at work again...

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

A bit late for the report on Monday's session, but here it is.

Early game.

There was a game of Chez Geek and/or
Chez Goth that was being played by the time I came in.

Red Dragon Inn II & III.

A seven player extravaganza, with two games played with the new characters. All things considered, the new characters are not over-powered and mesh pretty well with the older ones. The new event- and drink-cards provide additional fun.

Pandemic and its On The Brink expansion.

A game with four players we played with our custom "more than four players" preparation rules, so a bit heavy on special events. Mixing the standard epidemic cards with the tough ones and selecting randomly six of them brought a bit of a respite with the virulent strain, but we still lost in the end as we were drawing the regular two cards per person.

Next week.

Looks like an Arkham week to me. .

I might bring Jerusalem or City of Thieves, two games I am still convinced are underestimated.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

David was demonstrating his game again as an early game. I arrived early but not early enough.

Pandemic Redux.

We have tried a few modifications to the game, some good, one bad. So next time we go back to the hectic pace with time limit without reshuffle. Adding all epidemic cards in the reshuffle does not make it that hard in the end as we were able to contain the spread of the little cubes pretty easily.

Gambling? I'm in!

We played the Red Dragon Inn game-within-a-game by itself. Good fun was had, playing many different games of card and dice. Next time we shall play it within a Red Dragon Inn session.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

A low-attendance session last night with only five of us. 'Twas fine anyway!
After having spent valuable minutes agonising about what to play, games were enjoyed in the following order.

Ticket to Ride.

Two games, two wins for humble me. I got lucky with my ticket draw for the first game then got lucky that others were cutting one another's route in the second.
That being said, I used all my luck for the evening on that game.

Settlers of Catan.

We used Ian's copy of the expansion for the game that allows six players, and of course played with five. I am not sure why I bothered to play really, although I had locations on highly probable rolls, I hardly collected anything. This was the "game of 5 and 11" for those lucky enough to have little villages and town close to the appropriate resources.

Gambling? I'm in!

Another bout of quick card and dice games. I had brought the actual board-game that is supposed to include the Gambling? I'm Inn component, but it was at the same time a bit late to start a game and too early to leave, hence the quick games of "Warriors and Rogues", "Threes" and "Den of Thieves".

No actual decision on what to play next week.

Laurent,

Fellow board-gamers,

Another small attendance session, but one more than last week, so we had two tables running for the second half of the session.

Settlers of Catan.

A standard four player game this time, very tense and brought to the limit with three players capable to win on the same turn. A stroke of bad luck for Matt followed by and amazingly lucky draw for me with development cards allowed my little empire to win the game. I got stuck with the maximum four cities surrounded by enemy roads and crappy little villages (just there to box me in); but the largest army so sought after by Matt went to me!
Ian, as usual, concreted the island over with roads, with a good fight given by Adam, who seemed always short of a wood or a brick to take over the two extra points.

DOOM

After a long absence, Tim was back and offered to run a new DOOM The Boardgame scenario. I do not know how we do it, we always end-up winning or losing one dice roll just before the end of the scenario, although the game usually runs for an hour or more.
Last time we drove that buggy out of the garage and escaped driving away on the lunar landscape. This time, we could not hold the blue key for one round as directed by the rules of engagement. A bloody Imp took my last couple of HP. We killed all the big guns - special mention to Andrew playing Green with the chainsaw - and got defeated by an Imp's fireball!

My Dwarves Fly.

Adam and Ian played a game of My Dwarves Fly at the other table.

Next week I shall bring the same selection as the one I brought yesterday:

• Citadels.
• Gambling? I'm in!
• Cuba with expansion.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

I have updated the game collection page with a link to an M$-Excel file I created to study the probability of a gate opening due to a Mythos card at a given location.

The .xlsx file can be downloaded by clicking here.

Laurent,

Hello,

Bringing the same games as last week.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Red November.

Two games of Red November were played in the first half of the evening. We played with the kraken in the event pile straight away, making sure though that at least one aqualung and one harpoon was dished out in the start-up equipment.
The first game saw a couple of annoying fire and the kraken, but we survived. The second game had too many drunken sailor, a kraken, many emergencies, a ship with the bow on fire and the stern half-flooded and too many blocked hatches. We died miserably half-way through.

Cuba with the El Presidente expansion.

A game with the full five-player complement, as we started it after the early games, it went on for a bit too long, so we shortened it a bit. The race was tight and we had progressed past the 60 Victory Points milestone before calling it a night.

Next week I shall bring:

• City of Thieves
• Citadels
• Braggart

Of course, we can play anything from the shop's collection or in anyone else's possession.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game enthusiasts,

Bang!

This was the game that was going on while waiting for people to arrive. It went on for quite longer than expected!

Merchants and Marauders.

Pardon me if I am wrong, but I think this is the game that Tim brought. Something about pirates and merchants anyway. People seemed to have been enjoying themselves with the victory going to the most wanted man in the game from what I have gathered.

Arkham Horror - The King in Yellow.

A five players game of Arkham, with two new players. This went quite well despite the fact that there were a lot of added mechanics to the original game, which is not really that simple to learn in the first place.
We basically ran out of time and decided to run the final battle even though we still had two doom tokens to go. Surprisingly we won! Sister Mary had her second blessing going on during the whole fight and overall we had collected a couple of one use items that boosted our chances.
The King in Yellow expansion adds a lot to the game, for instance, the terror track sees a lot more use than usual. Having pulled Glaaki from the Dunwich Horror expansion did not help either as this is an Old One that also uses mechanics based on the terror track. Playing with five players brought in two monsters per gate, and we sadly collected a lot of tough beasties from the monster cup.
The set-up was with all the cards and mechanics from The Dunwich Horror, minus the board. The Dunwich Horror expansion adds tougher monsters and of course we more or less pulled them all during play!
Ross got unlucky with his madness cards, managing to pull the two identical ones straight away, thus losing poor Ashcan Pete...

Not sure what to bring next week, we shall see.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

A stinker of a game from the past.

Ross helped clear an attic or something and unearthed some very old looking board-games. One of them was the Appalling Star Trek "The Final Frontier" board-game. My six-years old nephew has a game called T-Rex that involves little plastic dinosaurs moving around a board, away from a T-rex. Players roll a couple of dice to move the pieces, choose a path, pretty simple yet it offers more game-mechanics that this Star-Trek abomination.
At first (not having read the title properly and ignoring the "Final Frontier" bit), the look of the game made us think it was something straight from the mid-70s. The faded board colours, the badly cut cards, the one page rule-book written in an old courier font... everything smelled of the 70s. So we were surprised to read 1992 on the box!
After a ten to fifteen minutes gruelling gaming experience, involving rolling a die repeatedly, praying for a given number and reading asinine "action cards", Andrew won by visiting his four assigned planets. The action cards are basically nonsensical text vaguely Star Trek related that allow you to roll again, add one or two to a roll... or get stuck for a couple of rounds.

Good old Arkham.

Not one, but two games of Arkham Horror, with the Dunwich Horror expansion were played... and WON! We also played with the dreaded five players configuration. As experienced players know, a five-players game means two monsters appearing per gate instead of one, whereas four or less only requires one.
The first game saw us realising way too late that we had allowed too many gates to open. We fought the Ancient One and got pretty lucky by winning against Ithaqua. The second game was won by closing all the gates more or less simultaneously and having enough gate tokens. Shub-Niggurath was the Ancient One and of course we kept on drawing Dark Young monsters! We collected two tokens on the Dunwich Horror track, but won before summoning it.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

Ticket to Ride.

The early session, which I did not attend, featured Ian's copy of Ticket to Ride.

Lords of Waterdeep.

Matt brought this new game and we had a go at it. Despite all the snark comments we usually make against WotC, we had to admit that it was a pretty solid game. Nothing particularly innovative in it, this is a basic domination game. The board, cards and little chits are of good quality, the art is decent too. All of us had already played Cuba before and most of us Jerusalem. Like these two games, Lords of Waterdeep looks a bit frightening at first glance, but one can understand all the mechanics during the first turn.
There must be a way of countering the "champion builder", but since we never really banded together to stop Matt, even though we had surmised his secret lord assignment from round two, he won handily the second game. After the gaming session, Ian and I guessed that this could be what the ambassador is for, i.e. stick it onto the build space and thwart the "builder" player.

Like Cuba one would need a couple of more games to develop strategies.

I had brought Pandemic but we did not have enough time to play it. I might bring it back next week, we shall see.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

I shall be bringing Arkham Horror tonight and we could have a set-up with The King in Yellow expansion.

Laurent,

Fellow board-game players,

A lot of people in attendance yesterday with two large tables running.

Citadels.

Ian had brought his copy of the game and we played that while waiting for people to arrive. Only one game, won by Ian, relatively quick as he sort of made a rush to eight districts.

Arkham Horror.

Although the plan was to get a King in Yellow game on, the fact that we had three novice players made us go for a standard game. We still used all the added mechanics (injury/madness), spells, unique and commons items from King in Yellow and The Dunwich Horror expansions.
Ironically, we drew Hastur, The King in Yellow himself, as the Great Old One.

The game went on forever as we managed to "control" it pretty well. Monsters were aplenty but Kieran's enthusiastic use of the shotgun, before losing one of his arms from an injury card, ensured that the terror level did not go up too quickly. Hastur becoming harder to hit the higher the terror level increases, this was a good development. We hit our maximum number of opened gates (six) but somehow managed to bring that number down to three after a frantic dash to close them. Due to Hastur's requirement of eight clue tokens to seal gates, and a stupid environment card that simply forbade us to seal any for a while, the game was hard to keep in check.
After close to three hours, the doom track finally hit its maximum and... we wasted Hastur, even with the seventy-eight required successes! His fight modifier was a poor -2 thanks to our monster eradication program and somehow we managed the defencive Luck checks pretty well.
Out of a score or so turns, Adam's Sister Mary never lost her blessing.
This helped a lot, especially during the final fight.

So all in all a very interesting game.

The other table.

I am terribly sorry, but I cannot remember the name of the board-game being played. People seemed to enjoy themselves though as it lasted for a long while too.

Laurent,

The Other Table

I think it was "Guards! Guards! A Discworld Boardgame."
I've read a few mixed reviews about this game so let's hope that 'lasted for a long while' did indeed equate with 'people enjoying themselves.'

In other news:

DOOM: The Boardgame (8th October)

Another home-brew map. I'm not sure if everyone had the time (or the inclination) to read the story-blurb but this was intended as a sequel of sorts from the last scenario. The Marines, driving across the martian landscape in their new UAC Rover, are forced by a sudden dust-storm to investigate the mysteries of... the 'Haunted Outpost.'

There was some good tactical play from the marines: good positioning to limit demon spawning, good use of the rocket launcher's 'knock-back' effect to push a Hell Knight out of melee range, and so on.

I think the decision to ignore the supplies in the 'Living Quarters' (a Health Pack and a Chaingun) to save an extra turn of movement may have been something of a risk though.

Regardless: based on that playtest I am tempted to increase the 'fatality level' of this scenario to FOUR which would have given the marines a narrow victory.

Merchants & Marauders (22nd October)

We managed to fit 2 games of a "3 hr game" into 3 hours. How can this be? Don't ask me, man.

The first game was won by Captain Andrew who, whilst pursuing a personal vendetta against the entire French Merchant Fleet (leaving only a trail of beret-riddled flotsam in his wake), still found time to sail his tiny Sloop through a heavy storm and then lead his small (but obviously elite) crew against an entire island of natives. Who Dares, Wins - as they say.

Honours in the second game went to Captain Matt. After a bit of lucrative piracy he got himself a pardon just in time to transport a cargo of priceless jewelry across the Caribbean - to victory.

In both games I took the less risky and less glamorous role of 'merchant' and came in a close second both times...

A life lesson for us all. Possibly.