I am jealous. Please tell me I need to buy it
Itāll probably be a bit before I can play it. I can tell you you need to buy it right now if you want, though. You need to buy it.
I think narrative more as within the group and keeping up with whatās going on. Thatās been one of my groups issue with consistently getting certain things to the table. I just couldnāt handle the teach every time, and then trying to go over changes, even minor ones, would probably drive me wild.
But I will absolutely live vicariously through othersā¦ Or Iāll use inception to make someone else buy it.
This seems like an odd take to me. You donāt think there is any continuity in the winner of the previous game becoming the incumbent ruler for the next game? With the location they rule as the centre of the new state? That that is simply ānot putting everything back where you found itā?
I mean, I agree that Coleās claims to historiography are extreme, but your take seems even more extreme in the opposite direction.
I think the game changing subtly between sessions is interesting but itās not a narrative element, at least in my mind.
I liken it more to a variable setup, where the variable is a function the prior gamestate at its conclusion.
And, like I said, there will certainly be groups that play consecutive games of Oath and a story emerges - and that story will be influenced by the gamestate, both initial and continuing, but we tell ourselves similar emergent stories about all games; I make up backstories for the family members I send out into the world when playing Village (i.e. emergent narrative in gameplay), but I would mock anybody any publisher who described Village as a game with ānarrativeā because itās a function of the group/people and not the game.
EDIT: clarification
EDIT2: additional clarification
I would qualify that as not all games, and in my experience very few games ever get emergent stories that span multiple plays of the game. More to the point most games donāt lend themselves to the generation of multi-play narratives, or even work against them.
YMMV, of course. I have seen this dismissive take on Oath a few times now though, and it still seems unreasonable.
Yes, I agree. I was just about to make another edit to back down my previous position a tad:
Some games are more evocative of narrative than others; such as I donāt tell stories about Skip-Bo in the same way I do about Village. King of Tokyo certainly is more evocative than than Patchwork, etc, etc.
This is true. I still wouldnāt go so far as to call Oath a narrative experience. But perhaps others would? I dunno.
The question I would ask: If you were 5 games into the evolution of the Oath deck and you were sitting down to play game 6 with a new player, would you first tell them the history of the game?
I pretty sure I wouldnāt; and thatās why I have the position I do.
I donāt see how that follows.
At the end of the day though, we seem to be justifying why we did or did not buy a game that isnāt finished yet, which is a pretty fruitless starting point for a discussion.
Edit: I canāt imagine not mentioning at least some details of how the current chancellor won the previous game though. Why focus on the evolution of the deck? That said, it might even be worth mentioning which factions have become dominant, and how that relates to the chancellorās cohort - depends how competitive the new player is.
I think thereās minimal incentive within the gameās systems to form a character out of the factions, let alone in a way that will persist between games as different players take on those factions.
The Oath that determines the victory condition depends on the whim of whoever won, unless they were an exile. The deck-building changes are somewhat complicated, but again come down largely to player whims rather than the things that happen during the game. The highly abstracted map is the only element that depends intimately on the events of the game.
When you start a new came, youāre in an odd place whether you maintain player continuity as suggested or not. That is, there isnāt a strong continuity between the idiosyncrasies of the faction you played leading into victory and the idiosyncrasies of the faction you play as victor.
The degree of abstraction is such that the game is constantly being tweaked and customized by the players themselves more directly than by the things that players do.
For my part, any dismissiveness is instead more with respect to Coleās, as you put it, claims of historiography than of the game as an experience. Cole came out strongly suggesting that his game does something other war games do not. Thereās an implicit suggestion in Oathās approach to storytelling that other similarly abstract games donāt have the same capacity to react to player behavior and I really donāt see how the mechanics make truth of that assertion. I think the way it changes and the core mechanics still look pretty interesting. The price tag put me off, not my lack of faith in the gameās strength as a storytelling experience. (Edit: Also the Kickstarter engaging in the most literal board game dick measuring contest Iāve seen in comparing itself to Root, but thatās a minor detail and was probably at least partly a joke that fell flat. )
Which is reasonable, and not something I disputed here.
I donāt see why āplayer whimsā make less of a narrative than any alternatives. The more player-directed a narrative is, the better, I would have thought.
The game is sooooo good. That looks like an all in pile, or at least close.
My copy of undertow with Ghillie and Tink arrived about 3 days in to lock down. I donāt like playing solo enough to have tried them out yet. Kinda frustrating
It is in fact all in. Just the Trove Chest wonāt ship until Augustish. So I probably wonāt open most of it until then. Iāve already had a look in the core box andā¦yeah, thereās a little space for more stuff butā¦not that pile.
I saw last night that the new version of Kemet should be going live on the 26th.
Iāve had one disappointing play, at RulesCon when we grabbed it out of the library and learnt it out of the box and missed a few rules.
Iām very tempted, although the original has come back into retail stock in the UK recently. Not a huge fan of DOAM, but a lot of that stems from conflict games being tricky with kids. We have/ had a regular group now (I assume weāll continue after lockdown ends), so this would probably get a lot more play.
Nice haul!!!
Still waiting on my shipping notification for Splice and Dice. I think Canada is starting soon, maybe next week? It could have already to be fair.
Not sure if youāve seen the updates, but the.Trove Box looks insane!!!
Itās gonna be real heavy, I can tell you that. This is an aspect of Store-It-All boxes for games Iād neglected to consider previously, but my complete Sentinels collector boxā¦itās astonishing how much that many cards in one place weigh. And the chips from TMB are even heavier.
Kemet is one Iāve been waiting on since I heard about the relaunch.
Although having personally been a bit disappointed with lords of vegasās Kickstarter. Iām not gonna hold my breath.
Time will tell.
My current wait list is:
Blood on the clocktower- itās the game that made me stop lurking in the shadows of the forum.
edge of darkness - backed the expansion only but still havenāt played the base game. The correcting some of the production issues of the base kinda sealed the deal on this one for me.
pax pamir- iām really looking forward to this one, even got the coins.
return to dark tower- I like the co-operative aspect to this game, although I can easily see that there could be some massive issues.
Currently backing:
Nothing.
Unless the Duncan Jones moon universe comic counts.
I did end up opening Undertow and Splice and Dice, just to check them out. The spliced tyrant sheets have a faux-burned edge thing going that I thought was amusing. Then I took them out to make sure they were a pad of sheets and not like, neoprene I was gonna have to write on or somethingā¦and got soot all over my hands. Turns out the way they got that effect was by burning the edges.
(Guessing probably with a laser or something along those lines.)