Out of left field

Last Wednesday was board game night at the Monkey Den.  Faithful readers may recall that, last time, we played Nexus Ops.  Now, Nexus Ops is a strong game.  It is manly.  It is as American as a huge cheeseburger.  You are made palpably heartier for having played it.

We did not play Nexus Ops last week.  We went in a slightly different direction.

I know ... I'm as surprised as you are.

Here's how it happened.  One of the guys, the newest Monkey in fact, had been saying for a while that he was going to buy The 'Gric.  He'd played it a bunch before he moved away from his old town, and he really liked it.  Being a man of open mind, I agreed to give it a shot ... once.

My thought process was something like this:  Every single thing I knew about the game led me to believe playing would be a kind of slow torture.  Seriously, actual subsistence farming sounded like more fun to me than this game.  But, what the hell, I figured.  I can sit through one play, right?  Then, I can at least say that I've done it.  In the future, when I sneer in scorn at it, that scorn will be marginally less ill informed than my normal scorn.

So we played.  And I cannot tell you how much I'd love to say that my unerring(!) instincts were right on target again(!).  Really, I would love that.  I'd love it so much that there's at least a 50-50 chance that I'll come back later and edit this post into one big 'Gric-hating, face-saving lie.  But, that's what it would be, a lie.  For you see, friends, I did not hate it.

I loved it.

I am flabbergasted by that, but what are you going to do?  I don't remember the last time I thought about a game so much in the days following my first exposure to it.  It is a brilliant gaming experience.  It is remarkably easy to pick up.  It moves quickly.  It offers interesting choices.  It is -- and I can't believe I'm saying this -- fun.  I didn't think euros were supposed to be fun?  Maybe we were doing it wrong.

So, I've said it, and I'm not ashamed of it (much).  It's not like I'm going to start selling my lead and plastic to buy tweed jackets and a pipe or whatever.  But I've got some things to think about, that's for sure.

I think I'm in love

Last night was game night at the Monkey Den -- the first in three weeks that wasn't snowed out.  We took a break from the RPG scene and gave my copy of Nexus Ops its maiden voyage.

In short:  it rocks.

In slightly-less-short:  What a delightful, delightful game.  I had high hopes for it, and they were met or exceeded.  This is pretty much exactly what I want to be playing right now.  It's light, but not flimsy; fast, but not frantic.  It's fun to look at, fun to play -- just fun.  I cannot imagine why this wasn't a huge commercial success.

I say all of the above even though I got pummeled last night.  Joe F. won with 12 VP's before anyone else had half that many (I think).  It seems like he was burying us under Special Mission cards right from the first turn.  I felt like I was doing OK -- I held the monolith most of the game -- but I guess I wasn't aggressive enough.

Anyway, I can't wait to play this again.  I think I'm going to try a two-player game with Mrs. Greywing sometime soon and see how that works.  I know it will be a very different experience with two instead of four, but I'm hoping we find it worthwhile.

Thieving monkeys

We kicked off a new Pathfinder campaign at the Monkey Den last night.  Joe is GMing the Council of Thieves adventure path.  This is our second attempt at an adventure path -- we started Rise of the Runelords a year or so ago, but decided to give that up in favor of Pathfinder Society.

I am playing somewhat against type and running a rogue in this campaign.  I say "against type" because I'm generally a game mechanics kind of guy (I'm a wargamer, after all) but I'm going to try to approach this as more of a role playing experience.  My character is an actor, and thinks of himself as such (rather than as a "rogue" or an "adventurer").  His highest stat is Charisma, and I'm planning on keeping all of his social skills (especially Bluff!) maxed out, even if I have to skimp on the thievery.  (I'll keep Perception and Disable Device maxed though.)  Again, this will be a new experience for me, so we'll see.

Our first session went pretty well, I thought.  We spent the majority of it fleeing through Westcrown's elaborate sewer system with a pack of Hell Knights on our tails.  We had a nice mix of RP (pre-sewer fleeing) and combat, so that was good. Joe has really outdone himself in one regard:  all of the combat action took place on elaborate 3D terrain that he bought from WorldWorks Games and assembled for this campaign.  I'm a huge eye candy fan, I admit it, so that kind of thing really adds to my enjoyment.

Despite what I said above about focusing on the RP rather than mechanics aspect of my character, I was delighted by the fact that I had a great night in combat.  I have a bit of a reputation for runs of less than stellar luck with a d20, let's just say.  Last night it was really clicking though.  It seemed like I was dropping a badguy on practically every turn.  Here's hoping that trend continues.

You may call me ... master

Pathfinder Society at the Monkey Den last night.  In a bit of a changeup, I DMed.  Now that's something I don't want to make a habit of.  I enjoy it, I guess, but it really takes a lot of work.  I spend way more time prepping for stuff like this than I probably should, but that's the way I'm wired.

The scenario was Voice in the Void -- a return to the oft-troubled Blakros Museum.  We had a good time, I guess.  Nobody died, the mission was a success, and all characters finished their faction missions.  So, from that standpoint, it was all good.  The only real downside was that it took us forever to get through the scenario.  It was after midnight when we wrapped up, and this was even though I  really made an effort to move things along smartly.  (Granted, there was a pizza break in there, but still.)  I'm pretty shot today.

As to the scenario itself:  I wasn't that crazy about it, to be honest.  No spoilers or anything, but I didn't feel the story it told made much sense.  Still, I'm looking forward to the next session, and playing rather than running it.

Runebound at the Monkey Den

The Monkeys are generally an RPG group, but on occasion, we break out a board game. Last night, for instance. Only three of us could show up, and since that's not enough for a Pathfinder Society scenario, we broke out Runebound for the first time.

Runbound is quite likely my favorite board game -- but until last night, I'd only ever played it solo (using the "threat level" variant). I find it to be an exceptional solitaire experience, and I've played it literally a couple dozen times. I'd always wanted to play it multi-player, but I was a little worried how the experience would translate. It turns out, I found it very different with a couple of other guys at the table. And, to be honest, I think Runebound may actually work better as a solo game than multi-player, even though it wasn't specifically designed to be played solitaire. The sense of the building narrative is what I like so much about the game, and that specific facet of play is seriously undermined with other players.

I'm sure my opinion there is tinged by the fact that I got whomped. I was playing Ronan -- as usual, I zero-in on the ranger-archetype character. And (again) as usual, I got off to an extremely slow start with him. Meanwhile Red Scorpion (Joe B., in his first ever game) and Varikas (Joe F., who had played a few times before) were zipping around the board and making mincemeat of yellow and blue encounters while I was still plugging away on greens. What the hell even is mincemeat, anyway? And why do I always start slow with Ronan?

Anyway, despite the fact that we were playing pretty briskly (especially since it was our first time as a group), the hour was getting late so we decided that the first player to defeat any red encounter would be declared the Winner and Lord Sovereign of All He Could Survey. That ended up being Varikas, so, hooray or whatever for Joe F.

The game seemed to go over pretty well. I'm hoping it hits the table at the Den again soon.

No Monkey

For the second week in a row, the Thursday night Monkey Den session was cancelled. Our GM has The Plague. Or something?

Anyway, last night was supposed to be a Mutants & Masterminds game. I think we've hit the time of year, though, where sessions generally are going to be pretty hit or miss, owing to weather, illness, what-have-you.

On the other hand, we haven't managed to play a single time since I started this blog. Co-inky-dink? Hmmmm.

Thoughts on Pathfinder

Thursday is game night at the Monkey Den, as my friend Joe's house is affectionately known. Unfortunately, we had to cancel last night. It was going to be our third Pathfinder Society session under the new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game ("PRG") rules. Since I've got Pathfinder fresh on my mind, I thought I'd jot down a few observations about the new game.

Just a quick recap, for anyone reading this who's not familiar with Pathfinder's genealogy. In the beginning, there was Dungeons & Dragons, and it was good. But it wasn't perfect! In fact, over the years, it went through a number of variations and editions. When I got back into the game a couple of years ago (after a long hiatus), the current version of the game was called "3.5" -- i.e., it was different from the 3rd edition, but apparently not different enough to be considered its own new edition. Whatever.

Anyway, last year, D&D's publisher (now Wizards of the Coast) put out an entirely new edition. This event went largely unnoticed by the internet. You will have to dig long and hard to find any online commentary regarding D&D's new (4th) edition. Particularly rare are any expressions of opinion regarding the relative merits of 3.5 and 4th. Should you stumble across a blog or message board posting actually expressing a preference for one over the other, know that you are beholding the most delicate of fancies. When you have caught your breath, count yourself blessed.

From what fragmentary information I have been able to piece together, however, apparently some D&D players are less than enthralled by 4th. In my own opinion, the new edition has a radically different "feel" from any previous version of the game. Without a doubt, it does some things right. But, in most areas where it differs from 3.5 (and there are a lot of them), I prefer 3.5, plain and simple.

Bottom line: not a fan of 4th.

But, all is not lost for people like me. Enter Paizo Publishing. Paizo has a long and illustrious history of publishing products for/relating to D&D. This past August, they released their alternative to 4th edition, the aforementioned Pathfinder RPG. Unlike the approach that Wizards took with 4th, Pathfinder extended and polished the existing 3.5 framework. As a result, Pathfinder now feels (to me!) infinitely more like D&D than the current "official" version of D&D does. I've heard Pathfinder referred to as "3.75," and I think that's perfectly apt.

Back to my gaming group: We'd been playing 3.5 for a while when 4th came out. We briefly gave 4th a whirl, and the experience frankly fell pretty flat for us. I'm not saying it bombed; nobody was hospitalized or anything, it just didn't work out. So, we enthusiastically embraced Pathfinder when it was released.

My initial reaction to the game is extremely positive. Mechanically, the game is very similar to 3.5. I've made it clear that I was a big fan of 3.5, so obviously, I mean that previous statement as praise. It seems to me right now that the biggest changes are in the character class descriptions. As a general observation, they seem to have fixed some of the problems that some classes had in 3.5, without completely changing the feel of playing those classes. Many of the classes are "jazzed up" a bit too. I think that's a good thing.

Just to throw out one specific example of a case where Pathfinder made a simple change that amounted to a big improvement: In 3.5, one of the features of the druid class was the "animal companion" -- a pet/body guard that got more powerful as the druid gained levels. Rangers got animal companions too -- but, their companions improved at exactly half the rate of druids' companions (i.e., a ranger's "effective druid level," used for determining the strength of the animal companion, was defined has half his ranger level).

This, in a word, sucked.

I get that you don't want a ranger's animal companion to be as good as a druid's -- I really do. It's one of the druid's defining features. I have no problem with the idea that the ranger's pet has to be weaker than the druid's. But here's the thing: because the ranger's pet improved so slowly, the class feature scaled horribly. What I mean is that while it starts out as a pretty neat feature,* its real value in game terms rapidly approaches zero as the ranger levels up. That's just bad game design, plain and simple.

[* Some might argue even this point. I feel, however, that a 2HD companion at 4th level is pretty cool. Goes downhill real quickly from there, though.]

Pathfinder made a minor change to the way this works. Now, the ranger's "effective druid level" is equal to his ranger level minus 3 (rather than times 0.5, as before). The pet is still weaker than a druid's, but that simple change now allows the feature to scale infinitely better than in 3.5. I can see a ranger's pet remaining viable, as a speed bump/body guard if nothing else, all the way into the higher levels. That's good game design.

My praise for the Pathfinder RPG is not, however, unlimited. I have a few issues, most of which are pretty minor.

• Some of the problems (as I saw them) from 3.5 survive fully intact in PRG. The first example I noticed was in two-weapon fighting (that's "dual wielding" to you MMO players). I've done a lot of math on this subject, and I've convinced myself that two-weapon fighting was essentially broken in 3.5. It is completely unchanged in PRG. On the other hand, I've never seen much complaining on this subject, so maybe it's just me.
• I'm not completely crazy about every change PRG made to 3.5. I don't think Jump should have been lumped into Acrobatics. I miss synergy bonuses. I'm not entirely sold on the way Pathfinder handles "favored classes" and the removal of all multi-classing experience penalties.
• This point is still very much a "first impression," but I'm not wild about some changes to feats in particular (or some of the new feats). Combat Expertise had its effectiveness eviscerated, it seems to me, and I don't understand why -- it didn't seem overpowered to begin with. On the other hand, the new feat Catch Off Guard seems way too powerful (think sneak attack).
• I'm not convinced that I'm completely getting the Combat Maneuver rules (this is the one major addition to the way combat works in the game). I think I would have benefitted from a little more depth in that section of the rule book, such as some discussion of how specific feats (e.g. Combat Finesse) interact with the combat maneuver roll. Some more time spent with the material might drive it home for me -- again, this is something that could just be me.

Overall, though, I want to stress that I couldn't be much happier about Pathfinder. I'm delighted the game simply exists, given the direction that Wizards has taken its parent. I feel, without reservation, that the game is a big improvement over 3.5, which I was pretty happy with anyway.