Not much additional needed here.
We’ve obviously got the hidden movement varietal (e.g. Whitehall Mystery), then the dungeon master varietal (e.g. Imperial Assault, Mansions of Madness), and I guess it’d be the overlord varietal (with hard asymmetry - Kemet: Seth, Fury of Dracula, or Fortress America).
What’s your story here?
Mysterium is running along behind, ears flapping in the wind. Call it a dungeon master, more or less.
Oh yes! I’ve offered exemplars, not the universe. Mysterium is the boom.
I can’t play it because the Mrs finds the cards creepy. But it is the boom.
I’ve played a few hidden movement games, but I hear that the quite recent Sniper Elite may be one of the best.
And it’s highly unlikely to be good, but checking on BGG I’ve just discovered there’s a 1983 tie-in boardgame of the cult horror movie The Keep. The definitely-not-Dracula vampire starts strong “with twelve servants but actually has to “eat” one per turn, reducing his options in terms of blocking the searchers”. And you don’t fight him directly, “The attacked searcher nominating another searcher to play a combat card, which is compared against Molasar’s; the loser is forced to “retreat” by the difference in values”
I have played quite a few back in the day of the fighting games all vs one. Doom, Descent, Mansions of Madness, Level 7 and others I can no longer remember. I struggle to be overly enthusiastic due to the competitive experience being poor universally. Either the one acts like a games master and holds back but curates the experience for the others or they just win easily for most of these types of games. So they become very dependent on the temperament and mood of the person playing big bad. Consequently I view them as too fragile to worry about. Especially with the explosion of coop games, that has stollen a march on fighty one vs many to my mind.
The area I still retain an interest are the hidden movement ones. I have fond memories of Scotland Yard as a kid and really enjoyed the chase Victorian Murderer round London that @RogerBW brought round once. That being said I also don’t own any. Are there other sub genres to this or is it those 2?
At the moment in my collection I only have, mind mgmt and whichever pandemic introduced the bioterrorist.
Both of which are good and probably a little similar.
That’s Whitehall Mystery, which is essentially the 2-4 player version of Letters from Whitechapel — same designers, very similar rules.
I have occasionally thought about an “arsonist” expansion for Flash Point…
Not Alone was one of the first games I’ve ever played when I joined the hobby. A lot of things hinges on how many people can ride the Rover at early game but that one remains in my head for so long. It’s 1 vs Many in a small box
I have a bunch of expansions (alternate locations, basically) that I bought on a KS and haven’t played. Really should.
Oh yeah, I’ve wanted to play that one forever. It’s on BGA but just doesn’t seem right for the format.
I’d have to agree. Like Colt Express, which also loses a lot on BGA, some of the fun is looking round your fellow players and trying to work out what they’re going to do.
Going from memory, I have the following games which qualify:
Fury of Dracula 3rd ed
Imperial Assault
Catacombs
Jaws
Mysterium
Letters from Whitechapel
Fortress America
Batman: Gotham City Chronicles
Treasure Island
And half credit to Betrayal at House on the Hill
Would love to try the Sniper Elite game sometime, but my wife does not enjoy hidden movement games, which we only realized after buying two of them…
Once upon a time, I won Fury of Dracula (3E I believe) as the chosen One vs the many and I still remember the discussions afterward… how unbalanced the game was (supposedly, I wouldn’t know) and how mean I was. We never played again.
We have tried a few hidden movement games and all of them failed to grab us. Though that seems to be an “us” problem rather than a game problem. Treasure Island worked best. I was going to replace it with the coop version at some point but for now I have neither.
We played the 1st ed Mansions of Madness a couple of times but having to have someone GM the game was not to our liking. We never played 2nd edition. I gave away my copy of 1st.
Mysterium and Obscurio are both Dixit-likes considering their cards and we really enjoy Dixit. But the 1 V Many aspect … doesn’t work for us.
I don’t think this is a genre for my table. When we want the 1 person does something else than the rest we revert to RPGs.
(We played another evening of Deadlands this Monday and I almost felt like one of my victims in Fury of Dracula. The RNG really tried to kill my character)
Thinking about it, the only 1 v many I’ve played that never resulted in bad feeling towards the 1 was Heroquest. The DM reveals a preset map room by room so they’re not choosing it to be mean to any player, and runs monsters with preset strength and movement scores. Everyone knows they’re there to facilitate the other players’ fun.
So RPGs, and boardgames simulating RPGs might be the safest form.
