Let There be Games!: Calendar of Legend!

Benjamin the Adventurer: Ready to Party All Year!

Need help setting and keeping goals? Wish you could find a fun way to have your friends support you meeting your goals? Think life is better when you’re pretending to slay dragons instead of mailing in your bills?

Well you’re in luck, you can, and you’re right (respectively)! The answer to all of these questions are the same; Calendar of Legend.

Calendar of Legend is a game played over the course of a year where you level up for the things you do in real life, battle monsters for gold pieces and treasure, and set up Quests for your friends to complete in the real world. “Sounds awesome!” That’s you. “And it is.” That’s me. Or, at least, I hope it is. But it may not be awesome enough yet!

That’s where you come in. As I’ve mentioned before the point of “Let There be Games!” is to involve the EBPians out there in the game development process by way of letting you play test our works in progress. At present we have a lot of high flying ideas about the kind of game Calendar of Legend could be but without the valuable feedback of actual players we’re shooting in the dark! So check out the game, give it a whirl, and let me know how it’s going.

To participate in this open beta of Calendar of Legend please contact Enchanted Beard Press directly @ benjamin(at)enchantedbeardpress.com. Not only will you get the word doc with all the rules to play but I also will personally help you set up your game!

Finally, it may be a bit difficult to understand just by reading the rules or what you’ve read so far in the blog so you can check out our closed beta wiki here to see an example.

I hope you have a great time with the game and good luck on becoming the adventurer you want to be!

- Bendog Billionaire

Introducing…the Calendar of Legend?

Me being my alternative reality game fantasy adventure hero. Obviously.

Hail there fair travelers! I bid thee a good morrow! Prithee may thine faire eyes read thys blog post I hast writtyn?

Okay, I’m done with that. I’m here to introduce the first game we’ll be releasing under the much anticipated, Let There be Games! title tentatively named, Calendar of Legend. I’ll be upfront and say that if the name isn’t changed in a week when we start the open beta for the game, I will be very, very disappointed. But this isn’t a blog post about my disappointment (as captivating of a subject as that might be). No, instead this is a blog post about anticipation. Wild and unbridled anticipation.

This is a blog post about Calendar of Legend. The Calendar of Legend is unlike pretty much any other game I’ve developed — in that it is not a table top game or a role-playing game. It’s not even like the video game level designing I used to do as an 8 year-old. Calendar of Legend is what’s known as an Alternate Reality Game or ARG for short. ARGs (pronounced Argh! with an s at the end) are games that take place over the course of real life. That is to say that the game does not take place in a specific area for a specific amount of time where people can’t leave until the game is done, but instead that the game is played over the course of hours or days or weeks or months or years. Maybe somewhere someone has developed an ARG played over lifetimes.

I’ll explain by way of example. There is a popular game that goes by a variety of names — I know it as Assassin — where players all get a “mark” (someone else who’s playing the game) that they have to “kill” (murder) by shooting them with a dart gun (squirt gun or NERF gun) or kissing them with poison lipstick (any product by Revlon or Cover Girl) or whatever else. Once the game of Assassin has started the players go about their regular lives, but attempt to win the game by “killing” the other players. This means that if I decide to invite Simon to go out to a movie with me some night, it might be an innocent gesture or it could mean he’s my mark and I’m planning on taking him out… literally (okay, not literally). Now that you get the basic idea, no doubt you’re wondering, “But how does that make the game an ‘alternate reality’?”

First, thanks for the question, it perfectly sets up my next point. Second, ARGs are known as “alternate reality” games because they create an artificial or alternate reality that the players participate in alongside regular (less fun) reality. In reality I’m just a guy who shares an apartment with Simon, in alternate reality I am a stealthy saboteur who is slowly building trust with my intended hit. Get it? Good.

Now Assassin is probably a great game (I’ve never gotten to play it, sadly, though it’s on my list), but my big interest in ARGs revolves around games that improve your life. There are a variety of games that do things similar to what Calendar of Legend sets out to do. Most notably I have drawn inspiration from Epic Win! (an app for the iOS but sadly not for Android) and Chore Wars (a great concept though I personally think it needs a massive aesthetic overhaul). Like these games, Calendar of Legend takes place in a fantasy setting where you play a hero who intermittently battles monsters and earns experience points, gold, and treasures. Also like these games, Calendar of Legend is almost entirely played in the real world — your character never levels up for anything he does in the imagined setting; he levels up when you complete tasks in your real world life. Still also like these games, Calendar of Legend is designed to keep you positive and motivated towards completing your real life goals.

But Calendar of Legend does a lot that goes beyond those games in terms of defining what the game can and will do for you. Calendar of Legend is an Alternate Reality Game about leveling up in the areas of your life you’re most excited about, helping out your friends, and celebrating your successes with the other players. As of tonight I have launched a closed beta for the game with 7 other players but after a week of testing I plan on launching the game in an open beta for everyone to enjoy. I will also be participating in the open beta so, if you’re interested, I would love to game together. I hope you’ve heard enough to get you interested in Calendar of Legend specifically and Alternate Reality Games as a category and look forward to my grand reveal next week!

- Benjamina Beardlette

the Way Home: Sneaky Preeves I

Mysterious whirlpool or a portal to epic adventure? Both!

Last Saturday Simon and I did something we’d been meaning to do for awhile: sit down and play test the most recent version of the Way Home.

The Way Home originated with a vision in my mind of a lonely ship surrounded by the night sky filled with stars and the dark sea beneath it. I began to imagine the story of the ship, of the adventures it had, and of where it was going. It was a crew of people (didn’t matter who) going home (didn’t matter where). All that mattered was that every step they took closer to home there was another adventure awaiting them, another obstacle to overcome in the winding journey from There to Back Again. And that’s where the premise of the game began to crystalize.

The game itself has been through several versions. The initial game felt too much like a racing game and we wanted it to be about adventures. The second game felt too much like a choose-your-own-adventure and not enough like a write-your-own-adventure. Finally we landed on a formula we liked. Last Saturday we playtested it and ran into a variety of kinks that have begun to take the project in a newer, leaner direction that we’re both excited about. The central premise has always remained the same but, over the course of time, we have been gradually honing in on how to mechanically represent the stories we want (you, the players) to tell. Oddly, developing the Way Home has been a lot like playing a game of the Way Home – filled with surprising obstacles but always getting tangibly and tantalizingly closer to the satisfying end.

And so we wanted to bring it here to talk about. The Way Home is about to enter it’s home stretch of play testing and that means I’m working like mad to create text and Simon is working like mad to create art. But what Simon and I are doing isn’t very interesting. The game is.

In the Way Home players take up the ships of crews trying to sail their way from some distant land back to their home again. Using only the stars to guide them they start out slowly but surely, their astronomers scouring the night sky for signs that point them home and their captains steering the crews into ever more dangerous adventures en route. Players compete to tell the greatest story of their triumphant return to their homelands, along the way overcoming the various obstacles the fickle fates have dealt them and displaying the mighty virtues of their crews. In short, it is a game of the Way Home and the legends made in the journey.

As we continue to develop the game (another round of play tests this Saturday!) we will post some teasers and art here. In the meantime, keep your eyes out for a few upcoming free games being released via our, Let There be Games! series including Simon’s gladatorial combat game, Glory in the Arena!

- Capt. B. Beards

Let There be Games!

This baby needs your help. Also, he is the key master. You, in turn, are the gate keeper.

Let us read from the Enchanted Book of Bored James;

And, lo, the people rejoiced when they were given good games. And, lo, the people rejoiced further when such games were given freely. And, lo, the people rejoiced even still more when they participated in the evolution and design process of the game.

Thus it was written in the EBoBJ and thus it shall come to pass.

To take things from the rather esoteric realm of language that the Enchanted Book is written in to more common parlance, we’re going to be releasing a series of games through this blog in a series we like to call, Let There be Games! We are currently working on a small handful of Let There be Games! projects, all of which will be released here for free. Or will they?

Yes, they will.

The goal of this project isn’t just to get more games into the hands of greedy gamers, though perhaps that reason alone is compelling enough. No, we at Enchanted Beard Press really enjoy developing games. Almost as much as we enjoy playing them! We can’t give a full release to every game we dream up, however, but we didn’t like the idea of just tossing out interesting ideas either. Furthermore we wanted to expand our little circle of game development beyond a two man job. Thus the goal of Let There be Games! is twofold; 1.) to get games out of our heads and onto your tables, and 2.) to include you, fair reader, in the game development process.

“How?” you might ask aloud to no one  in particular. I’ll tell you.

By playing the game and giving us feedback through the blog. While our intention is to play test every game we release through Let There be Games! at least once to work out the worst of the kinks, the game will be in a very early stage of development. These games will get maybe one to two weeks of our attention while we develop it into a little seed and egg but only through you can that fetus of a game gestate into a gibbering toothless babe. We’ll be a part of the discourse, of course, as that’s the only recourse for the full realization of our little darlings but we want to let you, the loyal Beardheads, get in there and lead the participation in the miracle of game-birthing. So, as always fair readers, keep an eye out here in the coming weeks. Your game midwifery skills are required.

- Sax Chaff

Musing on the Craft, Episode II: Revenge of the Nerd

Dear Jane McGonigal, I love you, just kidding, but seriously.

In the last EBP post I talked a little bit about some interesting ideas about games, their role in culture, and their potential. If you didn’t read the post, you should, cause then this one will make a whole lot more sense. Also you’ll get to check out some really excellent resources from various game designers including the much lauded Jane McGonigal (also my secret (to her) girlfriend). But this post isn’t an advertisement for the last post or a letter of affection to Jane, at least, not entirely.

I explained the potential importance and usefulness of games in terms of personal development and I also promised you that I’d explain what that has to do with Enchanted Beard Press. I had my fingers crossed when I wrote that blog post but I’m going to be an outstanding guy and tell you anyway. In a word, everything. It has everything to do with Enchanted Beard Press.

When Simon and I first talked about establishing a game company it was primarily as a method of publishing the game I had already created, Drunkfish. As time went on and we began to discuss more seriously the idea of what a business centered around games and run by us would look like we had a lot of ideas about what our values were. Simon and I love games. Love the crap out of them. But we both thought they could be more. We both wondered what the limits of games were too. If a game made you sad when you played it, is it still a game? If the point of the game was that you left feeling a bit uncomfortable, would you still want to play it? Can games rely on emotional intelligence over the more traditional logic and reasoning based games? We had a lot of questions, many more than just these, and in asking these questions we discovered that we wanted to find the answers. Not by polling people or by reading about games but by creating games that did these things.

Drunkfish may not be the perfect reflection of these values but the seed of these values is there. We stand by it because it is a board game that takes play off the board and puts it squarely onto the bodies and behaviors of the people playing the game. In that way Drunkfish is transgressive against board game norms. And although there are untold legions of people out there willing to make a fool out of themselves in front of their friends, there are many more who aren’t. That’s where the value of Drunkfish lies. In changing the location of the action of a board game (from the board to the bodies of the players) and it’s a trial for friends to endure together. If you’ve ever been truly ridiculous in front of your friends you’ve probably discovered they’ve only loved you more for it.

More importantly, the future of Enchanted Beard Press holds much more than Drunkfish. At present we are developing two games that represent these values of pushing the envelope of what games are about, how they are played, and what they teach you. Games shouldn’t just make you better at hoarding and managing resources. Games should teach you to be a better storyteller, games should teach you to be more empathic, games should teach you to think critically. They can do all that and a lot more. And that’s what we’re working on now. It may sound a bit idealistic but, to be honest, I’m okay with that. Game is a media and if any media can inspire change and growth, so can games. That’s our belief, at least, and it’s also our intent.

Thanks for hearing us out. I promise to be more funny next time.

- 6 Beardz

Musing on the Craft

Games: As basic to culture as language or strictly for children?

“For hundreds of years, the field of game design has drifted along under the radar of culture, producing timeless masterpieces and masterful time-wasters without drawing much attention to itself…” – Frank Lantz, foreword of Rules of Play

Let’s start this off on the wrong foot; I find it bizarrely irritating when people discuss games as if games begin and end with digital (i.e. video) games. There is a cultural conversation that has been going on for years now about video games and their effect on people’s lives as if this is a media that somehow sprung whole cloth out of nowhere in the last 30 years. It didn’t. Gaming is a cultural constant for humans. Find me a culture, any culture, that actually exists or existed that didn’t play games. It’s impossible. And not just because someone on the internet said so.

But that’s (mostly) not what I want to talk to you about today. What I want to talk to you is about what games can do and what we (Simon, myself, and Enchanted Beard Press as an otherworldly entity that has taken residence in our minds) want to do with our games. That first point I’m going to get to today, the second point we’ll come back to next time.

Games are about learning. In the book, A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster he posits that the fun part of games is the part where you’re learning. That’s not the only place, of course, it comes from the competition (in most cases), the collaboration (in a few cases), and the temporary community or relationship created by a game. But a lot of the fun of a game is in the learning. Koster says that when your brain begins to master something, making the task easier, that’s what feels so good and fun. The growing sense of mastery, then, is what makes a game fun. Mastery of what? Of a system. Of a skill. Because games are systems that require skills to master.

And this is a great thing. Of course, it’s also like saying, “water is wet” because it’s something everyone knows instinctively even if no one states it directly. People have been experiencing this for hundreds of years. It’s what has turned chess amateurs into chess masters. To some extent it’s gaming’s own fault that it’s got the public perception that it has these days because it’s such a powerful medium and it’s been used in such a limited scope. Jane McGonigal (author of, Reality is Broken, and a game designer) refines this point of Koster’s in an interesting way. If we can learn things from games, and learning things from games is fun, then shouldn’t we be using games to learn things we need to know? The answer, of course, is yes.

“‘Things we need to know’ is a pretty broad category. What does McGonigal mean by that and why does Benjamin think it’s important?” That’s my impression of what you’re thinking.

Things we need to know can mean a lot of things. It could mean very rudimentary and obvious skills, like mathematics or reading. Games get used for that a lot, actually. It could also mean a more ethereal skill like planning or collaborating with others. Plenty of games are good at building those skills even if they aren’t advertised that way. It could even mean really complex skills like learning how to communicate effectively and be emotionally honest. These tier of skills may only be touched on infrequently by games currently but that doesn’t mean it has to be that way or that it always will. McGonigal advocates for people taking an honest look at the skills they would or need to develop and using games to help them do that. Seems like a really great idea.

If you’re interested in hearing more about game design I recommend looking into, Rules of Play by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (as well as that text’s companion, the Game Design Reader), A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster, and Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal (as well as various radio and television interviews she has done recently). Rules of Play is very heavy reading and quite an expensive text (as is the companion) because it is meant to be used as a game design textbook. A Theory of Fun is much more accessible at the cost of Rule’s of Play‘s more expansive attempt at exploring game design as a field. Finally, I have not yet read Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken but I have been very impressed with her interviews. If you are the instant gratification type you can hear an interview she did with KQED here and you can see her giving a spiel about her views on gaming on TEDtalks here. I would love to have posted her interview with Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report but I can’t find it! This internet’s so hard!

I’ll be posting again soon to discuss how this conversation relates to Simon and I’s will-bending master, Enchanted Beard Press, and its cthonic wishes for us to put forth its world-shattering new dawn of gaming.

- Beardjamin

the FATE of Enchanted Beard Press’s RPG forays

Snorlax the Bearded is not to be trusted.

Warning: The following post contains near-constant references to role-playing games. If your life is so distant from joy and happiness that you have never played such a game, you may be confused. Read it anyway though.

Greetings Beardegains! Today’s thrilling blog post is written to inform you of perhaps the best, and definitely my favorite, generic toolbox role-playing game system currently being written and played. The game is FATE and, in addition to the free version of the game, there are a variety of variations on the basic mechanics. In this entry I will introduce you to the basic ideas of FATE that I personally find exciting and then briefly discuss some of the improvements made to it by the very popular RPG, Spirit of the Century.

I’ll be straight up with you – I’m not doing this for no reason (translator’s note: I’m doing this for a reason). I want you to read this and go play FATE or FATE based games for two very important reasons: 1.) it’s a great game that will probably improve your RPG life (or be a great introduction to it), and 2.) we plan on releasing games in the near and distant future based on the FATE engine. In fact, I plan on using this introduction to FATE as a spring board to discuss my personal take on playing FATE as a fantasy game (because even though Legends of Anglerre does it, I really want to see the fantasy RPG tropes of races, classes, and levels played out to their full extent).

What’s Great About FATE?

Good question! The answer is, “quite a lot.” Perhaps the most important, and definitely the one bit of great that was most instantly attractive to me, is Aspects. Aspects are a short phrase, from 1 to 5 words or so, that describe an element (or aspect) of your character. Aspects interact with a pool of something called (appropriately enough) Fate points. When you choose to get the benefit of an Aspect, you spend/lose a Fate point. When one of your Fate points gets you into trouble, you gain a Fate point.

Let’s say, for example, you want to play a dwarf who has always has a light hangover and ale from the previous night in his beard. You could take the Aspect, “Heavy Drinker” and this could come up in the game in a variety of ways. Perhaps as you play your dwarf is poisoned by a powerful sleep potion you might suggest to your GM, “Ah, but you see Snorlax the Bearded has the Aspect, ‘Heavy Drinker’…surely he can shake off some cheap sod’s knock-off sleeping potion.” If your GM agrees Heavy Drinker is applicable then you spend a Fate point and get a benefit (which can come in a variety of ways) to resisting the effects of the sleep potion. On the other side of that if Snorlax the Bearded happens to find himself in a tavern, the GM may look sideways across the table at you in the sly way GMs do and say, “Snorlax the Bearded feels rather parched…he feels the urge to order a drink or 8.” The GM then bribes you with a Fate point which you can either take it (which you should because the antics Snorlax gets into for drinking when he’s supposed to be protecting the duke’s daughter is sure to get him into some excellent trouble) or reject it (which means you don’t get the Fate point or the whatever possible storyline that comes from the trouble you avoided).

What makes the Aspects element of the game so strong is that the game is mechanically simple enough that these become a driving force of game play which really bring the unique qualities of the characters into the forefront in every game. Although the FATE system has a variety of other strengths I am going to leave for further discussion at another time (or for post replies). Instead let’s jump into how one variation on FATE has taken the basic FATE system and improved it.

Variations on FATE

Spirit of the Century was the first FATE game I ever purchased and played. It’s a truly fantastic game (I think it advertises itself as a “pick up and play game” that’s good for one shots but once you make up characters, I’ve found, you want to keep coming back to them as often as possible) that has a couple of noteworthy additions to the FATE system: the character creation structure and Stunts. I’ll go in reverse order because, even though Stunts are great, they don’t melt my heart the way Spirit of the Century character creation does.

What Stunts do to the FATE system is add a level of mechanical complexity that helps distinguish one character from another beyond just comparative stat and skill ratings and their Aspects. While on the one hand this is regrettable, because I really enjoy the elegant simplicity of FATE, on the other hand it provides a fun mini-game for players who prefer that extra level of mechanical complexity to their games. I think FATE is great and works fine without Stunts, I’ll be clear, but with Stunts in the mix I think the game has a lot to offer people with a wide range of tastes in mechanics.

Character creation is really the part of Spirit of the Century that I’m totally in love with. The book spells out that everybody who is playing the game should be together when they make characters and the reason why quickly becomes obvious. Character creation takes place in 5 narrative phases where players describe eras of their characters’ lives. The third phase of character creation is when you title the pulp novel your character first appeared in (ex. Dave Dare and the Nefarious Twinston Churchill – not a typo, a clone of Winston) and the last two phases are you participating in other character’s novels. What’s great about this method is that the characters involved in the game begin play with a pretty involved and interesting narrative about how they all know each other. Running games where the heroes are all long time friends right from the start is a great way to get straight into the action.

Beyond Spirit of the Century there are a variety of other excellent games based on FATE such as Diaspora (which has a really, really neat campaign creation method where during the first gaming session you create the network of solar systems in which the game will take place) and Legends of Anglerre (one take on bringing FATE into the realm of classic fantasy settings). There are many more beyond even the ones I mentioned and I highly recommend if you are interested at all in RPGs you look into getting your hands on a FATE game in whatever setting/genre you prefer.

Give a Man a Boat

So now that you know about FATE you should rush out and read more. You can check out more about the in-development FATE 3.0 SRD or the completed Spirit of the Century SRD. Both of these SRDs are complete games so you can literally play these games from the free information provided there if you so choose.  In addition you may want to check out Evil Hat Productions homepage for more information on all the different FATE games out there. I sincerely hope you enjoyed your (ever so brief) introduction to FATE!

- Chuffington Beardsworth

A Very Enchanted 2011

2010 Part 2: 2011.

Greetings Beardheads!

2010 was a good year to us here at Enchanted Beard Press! In February we released Drunkfish, the game that inspired us to start the company in the first place, and it has sold even better than we anticipated. Later, in August we released an expansion for Drunkfish in the form of Fish & Chips and we got to re-explore some of what made Drunkfish so much fun for us in the first place. Over the course of the year we’ve also gotten a crash course on business, marketing, and direct sales. In truth, looking back on it, it’s hard to imagine the year going much better. We did well for ourselves and every set back taught us valuable lessons about how to make this venture work heading forward into the future.

And speaking of the future, it’s not 2010 anymore so maybe it’s time to quit talking about it. We have been working on several projects behind the scenes here at EBP HQ and though we’ve hinted at them here and there we’ve never come right out and discussed them. No doubt you have written and subsequently burned many emotion filled letters to us demanding details on what we have in store for you. Well, you can stop. It’s 2011 and since we hope to release both of these games within the year it’s time to start “spillin’ the deets” as I’m told people put it. And so, without further ado, I am proud to announce the production of The Way Home and Sefirot.

The Way Home is Enchanted Beard Press’ first foray into the world of card games. In late 2010 we knew we wanted to create both a card game and a tabletop RPG. We had the idea for Sefirot already and felt confident that it would be a worthwhile setting to explore. For card games we didn’t have anything we’d been kicking around for awhile so we did a few meetings where we kicked around some game concepts; chickens racing? high school students struggling to become popular? co-operative fantasy adventure? None of those, as it turns out. The Way Home is a game of epic sagas where heroes long separated from their homeland struggle to return to their former lives even as fate conspires to keep them away. It is a game where players are charged with creating the most impressive legend of homecoming by collecting story cards that they play to overcome the various beasts, foes, and stranger things that stand between their ship and their home.

As I hinted at earlier, Sefirot, is our first tabletop RPG. Sefirot is a setting that I’ve been quietly designing for years, and it has been through countless iterations. What has always kept me back from completing Sefirot is the lack of a system that I felt wouldn’t intrude on a game that would ideally be story driven, a game where the mechanics would either fall by the way side or be an important piece of the story. This year when Simon and I discovered the open game system, FATE, we found a mechanical home for the project. Sefirot is a game of choices and change, where players literally have the ability to change the world around them if they so wish so long as they can stand the consequences those changes have on the world and on themselves.

If you’re reading this, and clearly you are, you were a big part of Enchanted Beard Press’ success this year. Thank you. We are thrilled to be making games and even more thrilled that you’re enjoying them. Hope you had a great 2010 and that 2011 is good to us all.

Truly, madly, deeply,

Benjamin Beard

Game in Review: Smallworld (Part II – Expansion Bonanza)

Be not afraid of ever running out of expansions to buy for Smallworld!

If you want a game that produces expansions at a rate approaching the speed of light, get Smallworld ASAP. 6 minutes of internet research followed by looking at the box left me unsure of whether or not the game was released in 2009 or 2010 but regardless the game has an incredible 4 published expansions to date. Published you ask? Why specify published? Because in the 6 minutes I bothered to spend google searching information about this game I also discovered that there is a free downloadable expansion to the game AND an iPad app version of this game. Holy crap. Judging from Days of Wonder’s website this game is their cash cow and, although I have mixed things to say about the game and its expansions, I totally understand why.

As I mentioned, Smallworld has 4 published expansions. 3 of these expansions are just additional races & special powers which don’t alter the fundamental game play but just provide a wider variety of play experience. 1 of these expansions is a deck of cards which can be combined with the game to create special rules every round that nobody cares about and everyone is just generally annoyed by. Let’s start with the first category of expansions; Cursed!, Great Dames of Smallworld, and Be Not Afraid…. These expansions are good. I could tell you more but I’d really basically just be giving you minute details that aren’t helpful. If you enjoy the base game and you’re interested in increasing the variety of races and special powers, it’s a no brainer. If you’re going to pick these up, however, two words of warning. Word of warning the first, make sure you pick up Be Not Afraid… first since it is the only expansion to come with a storage tray to actually keep all the pieces you’ll get in these three expansions. Word of warning the second, even if you get Be Not Afraid… for the storage tray the addition of the expansions still adds to the incredibly long set up and (even more incredibly long) take down time of the game. So if you’re already frustrated by what a mess the Smallworld box becomes and how obnoxious it is that none of your friends help you put it away after you’re done playing, you might give these a miss. I’m going to step up onto my high horse for one moment and also point out that the Gypsy race packaged in the Great Dames of Smallworld expansion, while mechanically interesting, is pretty friggin’ racist (if for no other reason than that Gypsy is a separate race from Human in the Smallworld universe). I mean, yikes!

The deck of cards expansion which I have previously slandered is Tales and Legends. If it wasn’t obvious from my previous comment, I think it’s a pretty weak addition to the game. It adds an entirely new mechanic to the game that in general is never very interesting and always adds to the already chaotic mess of the play area that generally surrounds a game of Smallworld. I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve only played with the deck two times but every time I’ve tried to add it to a game since then (purely for the purposes of this review since I already knew I didn’t care for it after 2 games) I’ve not been able to muster up the willpower to ruin a perfectly good game of Smallworld by adding it in. Probably someone in the world likes it. Maybe that person would be you. If you have money to burn and are somehow bored of Smallworld but still want to keep playing it, you might get something out of this expansion. Doubtful though.

Having never played either the Necromancer’s Island free pdf expansion or the iPad app version of this game I cannot comment on either however, for the reader interested in either product, know that they are available. I will probably give Necromancer’s Island a shot myself soon and perhaps do a super abbreviated review of it at some point in the future. I’ll probably never review the iPad app. Sorry. Looks like it can be played single player against the computer though and that sounds pretty fun.

In summation:

• Cursed!, Great Dames of Smallworld, Be Not Afraid… = good ignoring the one racist bit.
• Tales and Legends = bad. Don’t do it!
• Benjamin was ambushed by two Smallworld expansions hidden in the misty darkness of the internet.

- Baron Benjamin von Beardington

Game in Review: Small World

This world is HECKA small!

Small World is published by Days of Wonder who, if you’re not familiar with their products, make absolutely gorgeous games. Probably are not topped in the industry as far as game art and presentation go. They have really awesome visual design for their games. So much so, really, that I could probably write an entire blog post just about how much Days of Wonder games make me glaze over with satisfaction BUT this is a game review and not some kind of sick game industry circle jerk. Too much? Fine. Here’s the nitty gritty on Small World: 2-5 players, the box suggests the game for ages 8 and up (I’m a bit suspicious of that), and takes approximately 40 to 80 minutes. In my experience the game works with 2 players but, as with most games, is much better with 3 or 4. Despite the title, there is a lot to say about this game so let’s dive in.

Small World is essentially a game of conquest. I have heard it been described as “Risk but fun” but having never played Risk (because I was told there’s nothing fun about it) I cannot verify that. Regardless, the idea is that you select different fantasy races over the course of the game and attempt conquer and keep the most area earning Victory Coins. The game lasts a set duration of rounds based on the number of players in the game and in the end the player with the most Victory Coins wins. Now that sounds really, really boring. What Small World does to make this formula interesting is add in a system where two sets of special rules (Special Powers & Races) are randomly paired together allowing players to bid on which pair they want to be. These pairs incentivize certain play styles and that’s the real tactical fun of the game. Some combinations will encourage a conservative play style where you take a particular kind of land (say, forests) and try to keep them as long as possible while other combinations encourage players to go to war with other nearby players as frequently as possible. At least once during the game you will likely want to send your combination into decline (using the game’s terms) and select another combination, meaning that your strategy is going to switch up at least once over the course of the game.

Because the basic premise of the game is simple to explain and most of the rules or exceptions-to-the-rules are written down on the playing pieces the players will use, this game works fairly well with a non-gamer crowd and maybe, maaaaaybe even as a party game. I mean, probably not, but maybe. Depends on the party. But it’s definitely accessible. The random generation of combinations also keeps the game from becoming stale and gives new players a potential edge as it can be fairly easy in the game to make devastating use of a combination that everyone else ignored. There are some games that, when teaching them, I just tell new players to sit back and watch a round of the game and they will be able to play and Small World is (delightfully) one of those kinds of games.

Aside from the strategic fun that Small World offers it’s also instilled with a great sense of humor. All of the art in the game is done in a cartoony, caricature-ish style that lightens the mood even when you are getting ground into the dirt (and that certainly does happen in this game). While the art is a really appealing element of the game, I’ll be honest that its presence is a bit of a double-edged sword. It’s not so much the art itself, per se, but just how much of it is on the board at any given time. The first time I played Small World I was completely overwhelmed by the number of playing pieces on the board at any given time. Even in just a two player game there will be a bare minimum of about 30 playing pieces on the board at the start of the game. By the middle and end of the game that number will likely rise. This element of the presentation was really the first criticism I had of the game and is still my chief complaint. It’s a fun game that’s supposed to be light and fast paced (or that’s my interpretation) but sometimes counting up the pieces (and remembering which ones you’ve already counted on a given turn) can be a huge headache.

So what you need to know is this: Small World is good. It’s a lot of fun and it is easily accessible, definitely a game that you could invite your non-gamer friends over to play with you. The few criticisms I have of the game are really most noticeable in large games or once you’ve played several times and are definitely never so heinous that I would avoid a game of Small World if it were offered to me. Aside from Pandemic it may be the game I’ve played the most of in the last several months. Tune in again soon for my review of the many, many (like, a lot) expansions of Small World:

• a game with a great sense of humor and straight-forward, easy to explain premise
• most of the rules are printed on the playing pieces so referencing the rule book during play should be rare
• the board gets a bit crowded with playing pieces and may be hard to keep track of, especially when you are just learning the game

- B.C. Beardsworth