Vacation on the East Sea Road

10 Days in Africa (and its sister "10 Days" games ranging from Europe to Asia to the Americas to the US) makes a game about a vacation fun and extremely challenging; it's competitive, but in the game, nothing dies or is otherwise defeated or conquered, which in and of itself is a vast separation from normal conduct in the Smith household.

But then along comes this beautiful game in which players are not only, like 10 Days, playing a game about taking a vacation; in this game, the point isn't even to be the first one done with the vacation or race or beat the other players. Instead, the point of this game is to have the most interesting vacation, however long it takes!

The game: Tokaido, a game about a trip along the famous East Sea Road in Japan, an historic road that connects Japan's cultural center of Kyoto with its socio-political center Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Tangentially: season 3 of Wil Wheaton's Table Top premiered the past October, and the first game he went with this season was Tokaido. I was intrigued watching his show, and took a chance and splurged on getting it.  I'm thrilled I did.

The first thing I noticed was the artwork. Beautiful, coordinated colors with characters and scenery done in a peaceful, rounded, cartoony style is done in a way that still achieves a sense of minimalism and simplicity. The colors are bright and pastel and even the gameboard itself is elegant and calm. Nothing about the artwork suggests stark competitiveness or implied violence; instead, the game pieces and elements are a pleasure to look at, art in and of themselves.

Next is the gameplay. The rules are simple: move as many spaces as you want, with one restriction: you must stop at each of the 4 Inns on the way to Edo. The order of turns is simple: which ever player is last, or, furthest from Edo is the first player to move, moving in order as to whomever is last. Thus, the order of play could change every turn, which is an interesting twist. Sometimes is pays to be slow; other times, such as making it to an Inn, it pays to be first.

Assuming the role of one of 8 "characters," each with a different nuance or focus, what does a player do during their turn? Buy souvenirs from villages. Meet interesting people along the road. Paint. Visit a temple. Soak in some of Japan's famous hot springs (maybe even sometimes with Snow Monkeys!). Eat really good gourmet food.

Yup. That's it. Have an interesting vacation.

This is a wonderful family game. I was worried, given the normal nature of competitive (or even combative!) games we tend to play at our house, that the boys would be bored by this game. Once we cracked it open and started it up, though, the boys were captivated and participated with a surprising level of sophistication and forethought.

Moreover, each of the boys grasped the nuances that their "character" brought to the game and used that strength ably. Jacob's character excelled at art, and finishing the paintings propelled his character all the way to 2nd place. Dominic's character reveled in soaking in hot springs and being accomplished. Isaac's, a diplomat, was adept at meeting interesting people along the way who could help him have a great journey. For my part, a priest (heh...), being appropriately worshipful at the temples helped me win the day.

But here it is again: winning isn't a race in this game, and isn't done on the backs of the other players. The is a game about accumulating the best and most wonderful memories. At the end of the game, as your road-weary legs carry you for your final steps in to the Inn at Edo, though you may be penniless, you can still win the game because you had and shared the greatest memories and experiences and have a deep tale to tell. What a great theme for a game! Though it's far from being cooperative, every aspect of the game focuses on a zen calm and in reveling in the surprises and accomplishments of your fellow travelers along the way.

The coolest part is that the journey - the vacation - becomes tangible in a way. I remember my journey from Kyoto to Edo last Friday evening as something fond and fun, and something that still sticks with me. Jacob still talks about how "beautiful" his paintings were, and Dominic declared from the bathtub the other night that he was soaking in a hot spring "like on my trip in Japan." That is what this game is able to invoke, why we will certainly play it again, why I can't wait to teach my friends how to play, and why this game is among my highest recommendations.

African Vacation

Thanks to my good friend Greg and my other good friend Jay, my kids and I were introduced to the fantastic family game called 10 Days in Africa. This game - and all of its other iterations, including 10 Days in Europe, 10 Days in Asia, 10 Days in the Americas, 10 Days in the USA - is a fantastic geography lesson on top of a strategy game deep enough for adults to enjoy but functionally simple enough for even my 6-year-olds to not only grasp, but beat me at!

Each player has 10 days in which to fulfill a trip across Africa by foot, by car, and by plane. Seems easy enough. But the complexity is this: you first fill each of your 10 slots with a random draw of countries and vehicles for travel. Then, in turns, you try to make sense of your jumble, organize the travel correctly, and draw new cards as-needed to make your trip work, all in-secret with your tiles facing away from your opponent. The first one to complete 10 days is the winner.

Players travel by foot to contiguous countries. A car tile allows the player to skip 1 country in between, and a plane tile allows a player to travel from one color of country to the same-colored country using that color of plane (a blue plane allows a player to travel from one blue country to another one anywhere on the continent, red for red, yellow for yellow). 

In Which Isaac and Dominic Conspire

The concept is so simple, but it really makes players think tactically, given your introductory jumble of tiles, about how to quickly put things in order. How does one know if one should start with one of or even any of the tiles they currently have, given what one could draw? 

Endlessly complex and engaging, this game also has given my kids a sense of geography. Each tile includes not only the name and shape (and color for game purposes) of each country in the massive continent, but population and capital as well! 

Tangentially: I tend to listen to NPR in the mornings as I prepare breakfast for the boys before school. With all of the news around ebola, we have played this game, and my kids were able to identify the countries threatened by the disease. They also got a sense of just how vast a continent Africa is, and just how far away other countries are from the threat. 

This is one of those games you can play as a family or even as a date-night couples game (2-4 players). 

One of these days, we'd love to get the other games and find a way to link each of them into one uber-game: 10 days around the world!

TableTop Season 3!

Many of the games I have purchased lately have come from one of my favorite YouTube shows, Wil Wheaton's TableTop (find information here and here). It is actually a ton of fun to watch Wheaton and his friends play board games, and it gives you a sense of what's fun and not, or your type of game or not.

Last Thursday marked the launch of TableTop Season 3! And the first game is one that intrigues me on a number of levels: Tokaido. The essence of this game is that you are all travelers on the famous East Sea Road leading from Kyoto to Edo (modern day Tokyo). The point of the game, however, is not simply to arrive at Edo first, like a race. Rather, the game is about which player has the most interesting journey along the way. From painting to shopping for valuables to swapping stories with samurai to praying at temples and on and on, players acquire points for doing interesting things and become a whole, balanced person. How Zen!

I'll get out of the way; do yourself a favor and watch the episode. I'm putting this on my Christmas list.

Also, do yourself another favor and tune-in every Thursday for a new episode of TableTop.

The Game of the Path

Wil Wheaton's TableTop, soon to start its 3rd season on YouTube, is one of my sources of awesome games (and one of my sources of lazy Sunday morning entertainment). Manhy of the games I've played with my family and friends have come from either that channel or my good friend Greg (one of our contributors on Gamer Dad).

It was TableTop in which I discovered this morning's game: Tsuro: the Game of the Path.

Tsuro is an impressively elegant game that is easy enough for my 6-year-olds to learn and even be competitive. The premise is simple: each player controls a little dragon. Starting from the edges of the board, each player in turn simply places tiles and moves their dragon along the path the tile creates. The more tiles that are placed as the game goes along, the longer each meandering path takes. The goal is simple: through strategic placement of tiles, force your opponents' dragons off the edge of the board and be the last dragon standing.

Beware! The longer the paths get, the more and more likely it is for you to have no other choice but to move your own piece off the board! Being too clever by half is certainly a pitfall for players.

This is a wonderful family game. One game takes maybe 20 minutes to play, and the twins stayed engaged because they could participate directly (rather than "help mom and dad") and enjoyed the challenge of making winding paths and moving their pieces along (and ours if we were unlucky enough to be on a tile that their new tile touched). In one sitting, all 5 of us played twice and 3 of us played a third time, all in less than an hour.

The game is built for 2-8 players, which is perfect for our family of 5. Though the box says it is rated for ages 8+, again, the twins (at 6) were not only heavily engaged, but Jacob won the first game!

As an aside, I love the artwork for this game. The simple, elegant lines of the cards and even the script suggest the swooping, graceful paths of flight of birds of prey, and the drawings and colors are rich and vivid. The game is as much a pleasure to look at as it is to play.

Simple, fast enough for short attention spans, and strategic enough to be puzzling and interesting, I highly recommend Tsuro.

Playing with Acid

Not so much a game today, as playing with science!

Thanks and hat-tip to the Geek Dad Book for Aspiring Mad Scientists, as today we took one of the projects therein: stripping copper from pennies and plating it onto paper clips!

The process is simple, and rather than outline it all here, how about this: buy the book, and watch this vid.

Modeling Behavior - old school DnD

As a fairly old-school DnD gamer (I played  bit of original basic DnD in high school, a full 1st edition campaign in college, and then persisted with playing and then DMing a long-running 2nd edition campaign well into the 2000s), I have tried on several occasions to introduce my kids to RPG style gaming.  As 6-year olds, I broke out the dice and ran them through a little mini-adventure that amused them (and me).  But they were not really ready for the full-on character generation, turn-based combat, and movement rules of a "proper DnD campaign".  I have also done years of interactive storytelling  with them, where they have input into the actions and reactions of alter-ego kids who go through a series of adventures when they move to a new house on the edge of a large, strange forest.

But we never really got back to trying DnD again, and I honestly was starting to wonder if the  Minecraft/Teen Fortress 2/HALO progression had moved my 13-year old beyond the sweet spot where he and his friends could maintain interest in sitting around a table with nothing but dice, paper, and imagination to keep the game going.

But I figured I would give it a shot anyway.  A couple of months ago, as school was winding down, I planted the seeds.  I told my son I would be willing to run him and his friends through a one-off adventure to introduce them to the idea of how DnD works.  He remembered what we did before, but I pointed out that there are a lot more rules, etc, that we glossed over when he was in the 1st grade.  So he grabbed a book, read a bit (his eyes widening), and then he started working on his friends.  Two agreed immediately (their parents had both played in the past or were familiar with the game).  Two others said "what's dungeons and dragons?" but were at least interested in the concept.  He invited them over one by one, showed them how to roll up characters, and arranged a weekend when no one was traveling to bring everyone together and see how this would work out.

I decided to set the adventure at the tail end of a LONG-running, deeply political and (at times) cataclysmic DnD campaign I ran for my wife and friends in the Greyhawk setting. While I knew the guys would want danger and swinging swords and epic battles, I also did not want to just drop them in a dungeon and say "start crawling".  For me, an RPG is about story first, and then swinging swords and splattering orcs second. So I came up with a "your trainers send all of your 1st level characters out to investigate something strange happening in a nearby town" hook.  I spent about 5 minutes with each of the players explaining to them where they are from, how they wound up where they are, a brief hint of history and sociopolitical stuff (you are an elf, you will be traveling to human lands, it will be weird for you, etc), formed up the party, and off they went.

To say they bit hard on this would be an understatement.  As they were getting ready to hit the road, I told them their sponsor had given them 100 gp to spend on equipment beyond their weapons and armor they would need for the journey.  Cue an hour of intense discussion about the relative merits of normal rations vs. iron rations, whether 200 feet of rope is enough or whether they should splurge for an extra 50 feet of silk rope, how many extra arrows they could fit in a backpack and whether the bowyer/fletcher non-weapon proficiency would keep them from running out, and whether they would have enough sacks to carry any loot they come across.

I finally managed to get them on the road (my wife played a slightly higher level character in the party, to help push things along), and they arrived in the town for the adventure.  They promptly ignored the large crowd of worried people gathered in the middle of town, and instead just found an inn to go to sleep for the night.  The next morning, they split up, started to investigate things, and soon found the four different possible sources of trouble in and around town.  The game was afoot.

Eight hours of sugar and caffeine-fueled insanity later, they had discovered and conquered an underground area crawling with goblins, rats, lizards, and other nasties as well as inscrutable magical runes, pools, and rooms.  The thief had gone in first on his own to scout, and for some reason he started tapping on and randomly opening doors ("you do realize that no good can come of this, right?"), and had been bitten by and then splattered a giant rat (natural 20) across the wall of a corridor.  For the rest of the adventure, "splattered rat" served as a convenient landmark ("Okay, we go down this hallway, turn left, go past the splattered rat, then look around the corner.  What do we see?").  In the end, they planned and executed an epic fire-bomb attack using flasks of oil, an Enlarge spell, and Produce Flame that won the day.  One of the guys said "in my brain, this is like the most epic movie scene I have ever seen!"  They also managed to do the one thing they were told NOT to do by their sponsor ("Whatever you do, do NOT attack any servants of Iuz you come across!") and they may well have sparked an international incident that could lead to a minor war.  But they came away with a pile of gold, platinum, and gems as well as a number of magic items of various shapes and sizes, so it's all good.

 All in all, it was a blast.  I had fun (although I am beat this morning...it's been quite a while since I last DMed, and it takes a lot out of me) and the boys all want to get together again next week to divide loot and figure out what happens next.

Result!

A Lesson in Extinction

The by-line of the game is: It's a World of (S)Laughter After All!

And that pretty much sets the tone for the game Small World; one simple letter spells the difference between humor and death. 

In this fantastic game, each player (from 2 - 6) controls one randomly-drawn "race" of beings that has one randomly-drawn special ability. Players go head-to-head, conquering open territories and accumulating victory points. The player with the most victory points at the end of the appointed number of turns (5 turns for a 2 player game, 10 for a 3 player game, etc) is the winner. Simple game, simple rules.

The nuances are anything but simple. In fact, they're complex and change a great deal all depending on the race and special ability each player draws. Uniquely, and entirely unlike most strategy games whereby leaving yourself too thin is a sure way to lose, Small World almost encourages players to over-extend their reach. Go ahead and take multiple territories! March your Orc Commandos or Halfling Berserkers into as many open or occupied territories as you wish! Spread out! Conquering empty territories is easy - you just need 2 troops. Conquering enemy territories is easy - you just need one more troop attacking than they have in the territory. 

And then, here's the fun part: make your race go extinct. Overextend your Dragon Master Amazons on purpose, and then flip them over to "put them in decline." You get a new race the next turn...and you still get the victory points from the territories your old race occupies while your new race gobbles up more!

Isaac's Ghouls battle my Sorcerer's and my brother's Halflings

This world gets really crowded, really quickly. Small World.

The basic box gives you 4 different game boards (for the 2, 3, 4, and 5 & 6 player games), a load of races and everything you need to get greedy. A few expansions are available with some new, fun races and special abilities and expanded game boards for an even more crowded little world.

Backstab your buddies. Backstab yourself! This game is no end of fun, especially given all of the possible combinations between races and abilities. Diplomat Skeletons? Been there. Bivouacking Trolls? Done that.

Isaac, my 9 year old, completely understands the game and is quite good at it (we started playing when he was 8). It's still juuust a bit beyond my 6 year olds, but they like to "help" another older player, and they like to laugh at the utterly ridiculous race/ability combos. At 6, they miss some strategic points and honestly don't read quite well enough to read the race and ability cards. A lot of reading in this game.

I highly recommend this game for families, especially with gamer kids starting around 8 years old. It is perfectly absurd, hilarious, a great intro to turn-based strategy games, and a wonderful way to pass an hour to an hour and a half on  rainy day.

The picture above is a wonderful view of the game. Humans in decline as Berserk Halflings rise, Sorcerers in decline just before a new race is picked, and some Ghouls pre-decline. You see a whole list of available races/abilities to the right of the board, from which players pick as they put their current race in decline.