2021-03-10T19:37:40Z
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I said a while ago that I thought many ābigā games were being biased towards optimising the first play experience rather than depth on repeated plays, and this seems like an example; SVWAG reached the ālow replay valueā conclusion from the opposite direction (to over-summarise their response, no meaningful choices, mostly a memory game). If thatās what you want, fair enough; to me a board game shouldnāt be a thing thatās played out after eight games. (Yeah, not a fan of legacy either.)
I was surprised Quinns didnāt mention the ālose all your lives, restart from the beginningā of 1980s video games, but maybe heās too young for that to have been a thing.
I do feel that the over-whiteness is the sort of thing youād expect from a small operation, not the largest firm in the business; a big company should be able to afford one person to do what a standard publishing operation apparently canāt, take five minutes to look over all the art roughs and ask āis there a reason everyoneās white?ā
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Iām pretty ok with legacy games. I think they provide an impetus to actually play a game a bunch of times in a row and can elevate the experience. My favourite being Betrayal Legacy. It really did something good with regards the wonkiness of the core. The games that were over before they began at least built up the story.
However I think a non legacy game that has a single play through in it which relies on whatās on a card surprise a bit disappointing. Iāve become a convert to narrative games recently having for years disliked all I played in the genre. This review of Paleo brings me right back in to what I want dislike about so many of them. Treating the player as simply the hands on a games own internal generation engine bores me senseless. If I want to be surprised and delighted in a narrative i have no input in to why donāt I read a book or watch a film? Itās more likely to be a better crafted and engaging narrative experience. Few board games have good enough writing or even the space for it to be worthwhile. For a narrative board game i donāt necessarily need foresight in my choices but even if my blind guesses give the game a shape than that is sometimes enough for me.
This does however lead me to an interesting comparison. Paleo gets some glowing praise but is it fundamentally a very similar core to the game as Arkham Horror? Could Arkham have got a better review if it was much shorter and released now?
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Good review because it makes it very clear this game is absolutely not for me!
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Interesting follow-up from the SUSD twitter account:
"Weāve got a happy ending to this review! The publishers of Paleo have apologised and will be improving the depiction of race in future Paleo products:
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Interesting, looks as if the whiteness was introduced by someone in the publishing/art pipeline rather than the designerā¦
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After seeing several favorable reviews and getting a recommendation at FLGS, I am glad to have seen this one and decided it is not for me either. I want more coop games but not this one.
re: over-whiteness.
This is from a German designer and originally published bei Hans im GlĆ¼ck. Sadly, I am not surprised this still happens. -.- I am glad though that they (I wonder ZMan or Hans im GlĆ¼ck or both?) are willing to learn and do better.
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I donāt know if Paleo is a game Iām interested in or not, but
I see this asked a lot with both boardgames and videogames. I read books and watch films, too. Probably more so than I play games, at the moment. But I enjoy a narrative in anything Iām doing, and the boardgames and videogames are telling different stories than books and films, and are a different way of experiencing stories that, IMO, more than compensates for any weaknesses in the actual story. Thereās more sense of participation, more immersion, the joys of any mechanical cleverness or simply the feedback of popping heads or whatever, depending on the game. And I definitely find that more compelling than really excellent mechanics in an otherwise thematically barren context. Go may be a classic, but without that wrapper I just canāt bring myself to care.
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In general, RPGs satisfy my interactive story cravings better than boardgames do. An Ameritrash game like Firefly or A Touch of Evil will throw off microstories just by combining its contents (why did she work with him and why did it then come out really well?). But I do like a sense of progression, of turn N being different from turn 1.
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Sure. But also RPGs arenāt boardgames, and donāt scratch the boardgame itch for me. (And TBH, I donāt want to play RPGs as much as boardgames - theyāre so much more work.)
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I think experiential board games have a place, but if thereās a shortish campaign with not much replayability, that instantly makes me think āshall we just play it on TTS then?ā.
Paleo sounds like a great time anyway. Iād like to try it out, but personally, I wouldnāt pay Ā£50 for what it is. It looks like more of a Ā£25-30 āplay through and sell on for a small lossā game. It isnāt much cheaper than the kingās dilemma, which appears far more substantial.
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I call this the āRoryās Story Cubes Effectā. Thematic games can spark emergent narrative, but the player(s) have to be receptive to it and be willing to put in the work themselves.
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Iām firmly in the camp of āPaleo isnāt my bagā. However, after watching the SUSD review, I really would like to see the card system used in Paleo developed into something more my style/speed.
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I feel your quoting of me makes it look like Iāve applied that statement to all narrative games which isnāt the case. I maybe wrong but also your reply seems to back that up. That complaint is very specifically about some styles of narrative game. I mention liking Betrayal Legacy as a game for the narrative. I really love Too Many Bones, have played through Gloomhaven noting and telling stories about my characters for example. I very specifically dislike and would rather watch a film/read a book than play a narrative game that the player is just effectively a cog in the games internal logic engine largely just there to draw cards. Even if I have to make guesses that will cause a fork Iāll be able to get in to a narrative game.
Board games ability to engage you in a story, and crucially, giving you a space to make decisions that are outside of your own experience are the part of the magic that you canāt get from reading a novel for example.
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I much prefer boardgames with emergent narrative to RPGs. Iām not a fan of the making stuff up part of RPGs, it feels too much like āenforced funā and I donāt enjoy making up my own story - it all feels a bit laboured I suppose. Getting just enough information to read a story in the games mechanics is much more fun/interesting for me.
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Nothing here excites me at all. THatās mission success for the review, i guess.
I would have loved Eldritch Horror more if it has 1 mission (that is a bit longer) than 3 detached missions that goes on for hours and hours.
They also need to sort out the whole āroll some dice and read paragraphs of textā that FFG seems to love.
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ā¦and there needs to be more to do on your actions. Two actions per turn, and one of those will probably be spent moving (or buying a ticket to move). Limiting autonomy for tension is great when done well, but these days games should be more inventive in how they do so. ESPECIALLY when there is so much failure that you need to spend your next turn trying to do what you failed this turn. I never felt like I had much to do in EH.
The card game solved every issue I had with AH/EH. Shame itās such a high barrier to entry. In general, action cards are a great way of imposing limitations and fragility whilst still allowing players to feel powerful once in a while. Spirit Island, Gloomhaven etc etc.
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I have owned Eldritch Horror longer than almost any other game in my collection. I really want to like it. Iāve played it once, solo, to learn the game.
A story it is not. Itās more like someone took a hundred discrete stories set in the Cthulhu mythos setting, jumbled them all up chapter-by-chapter, added shotguns-capable-of-killing-elder-gods and then surrounded the reader with busy work to fiddle with while reading the story.
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Sorry, usually when I see people making a statement like that itās dismissing narrative in games entirely, so I interpreted it that way. My mistake. 
Iām not really clear on what games would qualify as the thing youāre describing, though. Paleo didnāt look like that to me from the review, for example - I havenāt played it, so I canāt be sure, obviously.
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Sure. I should perhaps have expanded on that bit further: I already play quite a lot of RPGs, and because Iām doing that anyway Iām happy to be relatively undemanding of narrative in boardgames too.
A lot of RPG play seems to come down to complex mechanics plus emergent narrative ā the system tells you which fights you can win by staying in and swinging vs doing something clever, but you decide what you shout as you retreat. (Iām not a big fan of dungeon-based RPGs; Iām more interested in plots that are about people.)
Thereās a big space of RPGs. (Which you may know; I have no idea of your gaming background, so I apologise if Iām talking down to you.) Something like Fiasco or the Hillfolk system is constantly calling on every player to fill in details: āOK you did well in that scene, now narrate how that wentā, and I find theyāre very hard work to play (especially if oneās playing after work and people are tired). A more conventional game may well need players to make plans but doesnāt necessarily require the same sort of real-time inventiveness.
To be fair one can get this kind of feeling with Firefly too, but because the story generators are mostly people it doesnāt feel like a wrench to say āwhat if he had hired on with her instead of with that guyā.
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