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• Prolix – A Designer's Diary That Doesn't Live Up to the Name September 6, 2010
  div class=field field-type-nodereference field-field-gamedesignerd-ref div class=field-labelDiscussed game:nbsp;/div div class=field-items div class=field-item odd a href=/announcements/prolix-%E2%80%93-new-word-game-z-manProlix – A New Word Game from Z-Man/a /div /div /div pi(Note: A modified version of this designer diary appeared as a BoardGameGeek a href=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/58252/a-very-prolix-geeklist-behind-the-scenes-of-my-fi rel=nofollowGeekList/a in August 2010.)/i/p pibProlix/b/i is my first published game and the first word game from Z-Man Games. Finishing the design took me about three years of on-and-off work. Here's a brief game description for those who haven't heard of the game previously:/p blockquotepIn iProlix/i, players take turns coming up with a word. Unlike iScrabble/i and games of that ilk, you don't need all the letters in your word to be on the board in order to use and score that word – a design feature that rewards the use of long words. Those two- and three-letter iScrabble/i words do you no good here!/p /blockquote pIt's pretty amazing how many twists the game took as I designed it. For a simple word game, iProlix/i has a long and complex history that started at a game convention in November 2005, where I played a card-based word game that is very popular in my area. I was struck by how awful the game was: The rules were surprisingly counterintuitive, the game featured a frustrating take that element and, of course, it favored players who had memorized an arcane list of obscure words. In fact, one player passed around a sheet of words with a Q with no U following. Fun times!/p pAfter some thought, I realized that it wasn't that I hated word games. I just hadn't played any that I liked. I mean, I'm a smart guy with a decent vocabulary. I like games. I like words. I should like word games, shouldn't I? And if there were no word games I liked, perhaps I could design one for myself?/p pWhat an arrogant idea – but I couldn't get it out of my head./p pThe first thing I did was work out what I ididn't/i like about word games. The biggest culprit was the need to memorize those lists of two- and three-letter words. With all due respect to iScrabble/i, shouldn't a word game reward players who come up with impressive words? I mean, I was sick of losing to words like XI or CWN. There had to be a better way. I also hated the downtime of most word games. Sure, when it's not your turn you could work out which letters to play next, but the board changes so much in iScrabble/i that your turn (and those of your opponents) will naturally take a long time./p pSo how about a real-time game that would reward long words? I created a deck of letter cards and placed them along a strip. The strip determined each letter's score. When you scored a word, you put a small chip on each letter you used, and those letters advanced to the next space on the strip. The best part was that you didn't need all the letters in your word to be on the board and you could use very long words, if you wanted. This idea of skipping letters formed the core that I built the game around./p pI came up with the name Prolix as a working title, thinking that I might find something better later on. I never did. (Incidentally, prolix is a real word, meaning verbose or wordy.)/p pa class=colorbox title=Prolix – prototype board #1 href=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/prolixboard1.jpg rel=nofollowimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/thumbs/prolixboard1.jpg alt=Prolix – prototype board #1 style=float:right //aThe first incarnation of iProlix/i was a real-time game in which all the players studied the board simultaneously. It had a iGalaxy Trucker/i-esque mechanism in which the first player to see a word would say it and grab a big wooden token with a 1 on it. Then the next player would say his word and grab another big wooden token with a 2 on it, and so on. Once every player but one had a token, everyone scored their words, with the quickest players earning a bonus./p pThe game was decent, but it had a bunch of holes, with the biggest problem being that it was a puzzle game. By which I mean, everyone simultaneously figured out a word, and the fastest player earned the most points. The problem with puzzle games is that one player tends to dominate them, which diminishes the fun./p pThere were also nagging questions: What should happen if two players grab a token at the same time? What happens if a player wants to challenge another player's word?/p pSo I took a new approach. What if I made the game turn-based? Would it still work? Hmm. I gave it a whirl and was stunned by how much better this change made the game. In fact, the game felt close to done. Think of that, three months to design a game, and I was almost done! How much longer could it possibly take?/p pA lot, it turns out./p pThe biggest problem with the game was a lock-up issue. Players could take as long as they wanted during their turns. Remember that in this early version of the game, the only letters that moved were letters that were used; the other letters stayed in place. At some point, a player would knock a whole bunch of letters off the board, and the next player would be left with only a few letters./p pThe first thing I did was come up with a minimum of five letters on the board. That helped a bit, but if those letters stunk, the situation was still frustrating./p pThe straw that broke the camel's back was a game at Spielbany, a quarterly game designer's get-together in Albany, NY. One playtester, who is notorious for having a serious analysis-paralysis problem, dragged a game of iProlix/i to two hours. Something had to be done! But what? I wondered how the game would work if there were a timer on each player. Well, no. I hate timed turns because my brain tends to freeze as the timer starts to run out. I wanted something more organic./p pThen I thought: What if a player could interrupt another player's turn? It would have to be delicately done, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Having everyone involved in every turn would be nice, unlike other word games in which you take your turn and then it's just elevator music for the next fifteen minutes, and just as importantly, the interrupts would provide a soft time limit for each player's turn./p pSo at the next playtest, I gave every player two Interrupt Chips. Each chip let you interrupt once. Immediately I noticed a positive tension that the game had never shown. Everybody was riveted to the board for most of the game, and turns went much more quickly./p pBuoyed by this latest win, I started shopping the game to publishers. One publisher agreed to look at it and wound up holding onto the game for fourteen months. At one point, when I believed we were stalled, I pulled some strings to get myself into the New York Toy Fair and pitched the game to them. After a few more months, they finally rejected the game./p pThank goodness! I was happy to hear the news. For one thing, I could finally move forward to shop the game to another publisher. More importantly, in hindsight the game was so far from complete that not being picked up was a good thing! What happened is that after I received the rejection, I went to Protospiel 2008. I couldn't wait to show off my newly-completed word game. I mean, considering how much work I had put into it, plus the new addition of interrupts, the game was almost done, right?/p pThe game got shredded./p pThe lock-up problem was still there, even with the interrupt chips. The problem was that if everyone spent their interrupt chips, then the end of the game dragged along. And sometimes the board was so lousy that no one wanted to interrupt, and the active player took forever trying to figure out what he was going to do for his turn./p pI left Protospiel in poor spirits. I know that these sorts of playtests are good and healthy, but I had thought the game was almost finished. Now it was obvious that I was nowhere close./p pSo what to do about the Interrupts? One player suggested giving players one Cancel chip to cancel an interrupt, but I immediately vetoed this suggestion as being too take that. I wanted the emphasis to stay on the words, not on extraneous rules, so I instead moved from Interrupt Chips to individual player scoresheets. You would write your regular words on one side of the scoresheet, and your interrupt words on the other side. Now, players could interrupt up to five times (six in a three-player game), but these words would be subject to a penalty. Your first interrupt would be subject to a -1 penalty, your second a -2 penalty, your third a -3 penalty, and so on. At the end of the game, your interrupts would replace your lowest-scoring words./p pThis idea was close, but not quite what I was looking for. I found that players were interrupting twice, maybe three times, but that was it. They wanted to interrupt more, but doing so was never worth the cost./p pAfter a good amount of thinking, I realized the problem. I wanted an increasing penalty for multiple interrupts, but there already was one. See, your first interrupt replaced your lowest-scoring word, your second interrupt your second-lowest scoring word, and so on. At some point, you would likely start crossing out your higher-scoring words, and even without the penalty you'd probably lose points. When I changed the interrupt penalty from an increasing value to a constant one, I found that players were interrupting about as much as I'd originally expected them to. This was a great lesson in emergent complexity./p pMy main problem with the game, however, was that despite the interrupts, the game was still occasionally locking up. I despaired over the problem and wondered whether I'd ever solve it./p pThen at a NYC Game Designer's group I made one of the biggest changes to the game so far. My playtesters begged me to try a version of the game in which we threw out the current chip movement rules. Instead of having only played letters move, how about placing eight letters on the board, and having all of them move, whether or not they were used?/p p style=text-align:centera class=colorbox title=Prolix – prototype board #3 href=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/prolixboard3.jpg rel=nofollowimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/thumbs/prolixboard3.jpg alt=Prolix – prototype board #3 //abr /iSimplified in a good way/i/p pI reluctantly agreed – and was shocked at the result. Suddenly a whole bunch of fiddly problems with the game evaporated. Gone were the annoying chip overflow and minimum chip count rules. Gone was the lockup when there were only five chips on the board. Game play was now as smooth as a baby's bottom./p pAwesome, right? Well, almost. I'd decreased the frequency of the lock-ups, but they were still happening. At Protospiel 2009, Scott Starkey offhandedly suggested putting in a timer that players could flip when someone was taking forever on their turn. I fought off the suggestion at first, refusing to sully my game with a timer. But on the plane ride home, I had a change of heart. What if flipping the timer meant that player couldn't interrupt? Now there was an interesting decision to make./p pFrom that point on, no game of iProlix/i lasted more than 45 minutes. After two years of struggling, the lock-up problem was finally solved./p pI pitched the design to Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games at BGG.CON 2008, and at ConnCon 2009 Zev told me he wanted to talk to me about iProlix/i. Great, I thought. He's probably rejecting it, but at least I'll get some good feedback from Zev./p pInstead, he said, Yeah. Let's do it. Holy crap./p pReactions from my playtesters were incredible. One hugged a stranger, thinking the person was me. There were congratulations all around. One guy who works at a well-known publisher even told me that if Z-Man didn't pick it up, he would have lobbied his company to take it./p pAnd now here we are. To many people, the journey begins here, but hopefully this designer diary will show you that the story starts much, much earlier, from the spark of an idea, to the first playable prototype, to the publisher rejections, to all the despondent moments when I wondered whether I'd ever finish the game, to the magic, unbelievable moment when I signed the contract./p p style=text-align:centera class=colorbox title=Prolix – game board href=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/prolixboard4.jpg rel=nofollowimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/thumbs/prolixboard4.jpg alt=Prolix – game board //abr /iThe final game board/i/p pRight now, I have no idea how the game will do. It tested well, and almost everyone I've taught it to loves the game and has said they will buy a copy. Perhaps they were just being courteous. It's tough to tell. Perhaps the game will flop. Perhaps W. Eric Martin will offer it for a Games for the Animals donation. Perhaps I've gone through all this just to make a game that Tanga will be struggling to sell for $5 next year./p pEither way, I feel like I've succeeded in my goal. I've made a word game that I will want to play, hands down, every time. Biased as I am, I like iProlix/i better than iScrabble/i, iBoggle/i, or any word game out there. It's different enough to be noticeable, and strong enough to hold its own against the big boys./p pAnd as sick as it sounds, I loved every part of the game design process – well, perhaps not so much the writing of the rulebook. That's always a bit of a slog. I genuinely hope that you enjoy playing the game as much as I enjoyed designing it./p
• Rules and a Preorder Teaser Posted for 7 Wonders September 6, 2010
  pa class=colorbox title=7 Wonders href=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/7wonders13d.jpg rel=nofollowimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/thumbs/7wonders13d.jpg alt=7 Wonders style=float:right //aBelgian publisher Repos Production has now a href=http://www.rprod.com/en/7W-rules.html rel=nofollowposted/a the rules for Antoine Bauza's ib7 Wonders/b/i in multiple languages – English, Finnish, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Swedish – and in multiple formats: full rules and quick rules, both in regular and printer-friendly formats. (Head a href=http://www.rprod.com/fr/7W-rules.html rel=nofollowhere/a for the French rules, over a href=http://www.rprod.com/de/7W-rules.html rel=nofollowhere/a for the German, and the link above for all other languages.) If you haven't read my admittedly ravey and effusive a href=http://boardgamenews.com/gamereview/7-wonders-%E2%80%93-wonder-its-own-right rel=nofollowreview of i7 Wonders/i/a on Boardgame News, you can head to that review for first-hand experience of the game./p pRepos also notes that preorders for the 777-copy Spiel 2010 limited edition of i7 Wonders/i go live on September 15, 2010 at 00:01 Belgian time./p
• Andrea Liga Ligabue: Cosa Bolle in Pentola #41 - P. Righi Riva and N. Tedeschi September 6, 2010
  div class=field field-type-text field-field-column-title div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Cosa Bolle in Pentola #41 - P. Righi Riva and N. Tedeschi /div /div /div pHere I'm with the first interview for the series Cosa Bolle in Pentola in the new BGN web site. This is interview #41 but luckily it seems that Italian designers continue to rise up like mushrooms after the rain and so I'm confident to be able to reach #50 soon./p pToday I'm gone to catch the designers of the new game for a target=_blank href=http://www.craniocreations.com/ rel=nofollowCranio Creations/a (the publishers of Horse Fever, one of the Italians hit in 2010): a target=_blank href=http://escapefromthealiensinouterspace.com/index.html rel=nofollowEscape from Aliens in Outer Space/a that will be released in Essen 2010./p pNow the interview .../p pbiLiga/i/bi: Hi Pietro and Nicolò, please tell us something about yourselves/i/p pbPietro Righi Riva/b: This may sound kind of high-hat but I'm not an avid boardgame player. Even though I enjoy the occasional game night with a selected number of board game geeks, most of the time I find boardgames too difficult because of my renown short attention span. I usually get lost in multiple dices, counters and sand timers: that's why EFTAIOS doesn't have any of those! Apart from that I love making games, that's what I've been doing since I was nine. I graduated in Design with a thesis on User Centered Game Design for the Visually Impaired and I now work full-time as a game director in my gaming company Santa Ragione.br /br /bNicolò Tedeschi/b: well, as every child I started playing games as a way to understand the world around me, you know, when you don't know what you're dealing with and you just try to do something with it ( you basically put it in your mouth, if you're 1 year old ), that's what I call a game; it's finding a function and setting some rules that will define an object or a specific situation, especially when creating you own world. That sad, I was obviously enjoying experimenting with every board or video game around me, and that sense of discovery and enjoyment still lasts to these days…then you realize you better get a job, so, why not producing that game you made with a friend a couple of months ago? soon you'll find yourself doing things you'd never imagine, but not necessarily against the law./p pbiLiga/i/bi: Nice! A gamer and a non-gamer; a nice mix for a designer group. Now, cosa bolle in pentola ?/i/p pbPRR/b: As you know we just finished EFTAIOS, but we're already working on some (unannounced) extra content to support our online community: as of now you can check our site and try the beta version of our Map Editor for EFTAIOS. Apart from that we're working on a series of videogame-related projects and on an unannounced new boardgame that is gonna rock your world! The setting is still sci-fi and it is as unconventional as EFTAIOS, so you may want to keep an eye on it, as we announce more. We are also working on a small party-game we plan to release in 2Q 2011.br /br /bNT/b: We are also expanding our company website so check back in a couple of months, we will add new stuff and projects very soon. Also follow us on Twitter @Santaragione./p pbiLiga/i/bi: Very nice news. Of course I'll be interested to inform gamers as soon as possible about new games. Projects for the future ?/i/p pbPRR/b: Of course we plan on expanding our team as we are working on a relatively high budgets for videogames. As far as boardgames go, we plan on keeping this pleasure to the two of us and keep on collaborating with Mario Porpora and Luca Francesco Rossi, the other two authors of EFTAIOS. Prototyping boardgames is just so much fun: and having strangers play them with you, in no time, is fairly addicting. So come and meet us at the major fairs this year.br /br /bNT/b: I need some holidays! No seriously we need time to think about stuff without worrying too much: we plan on going on a creative journey somewhere in Europe to better design our new game/p pbiLiga/i/bi: Finally, to complete your identity cards ... please tell us the 10 games you like to play most/i/p pispan style=font-style:normalbPRR amp; NT/b: In no particular order: The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, Carcassonne, Catan, Munchkin, JENGA (yes, seriously), Perudo, Quarto, Scotland Yard, Magic the Gathering and... Horse Fever of course :D!/span/i/p pibLiga/b: Thank you Pietro and Nicolò for your time. Please inform us as soon as we have infos about EFTAOIS and see you in Essen. Good play and good luck!/i/p piPietro Righi Riva and Nicolò Tedeschi are the founders and owners of Santa Ragione Srl, the game design studio behind Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space: they live and work in Milan, Itspan style=font-style:normalaly.br //span/i/p
• Matt Thrower: Castle Ravenloft Review September 6, 2010
  div class=field field-type-text field-field-column-title div class=field-items div class=field-item odd Castle Ravenloft Review /div /div /div pa class=colorbox title=Castle Ravenloft href=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/castleravenloftboardgame_1.jpg rel=nofollowimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/4/thumbs/castleravenloftboardgame_1.jpg alt=Castle Ravenloft style=float:right //aiDungeons amp; Dragons/i was the first hobby game I ever played, and the first module that I ever saw and lusted after was iRavenloft/i. So in spite of not having touched a Damp;D line product in over a decade, when saw that Wizards of the Coast were re–entering the boardgame market with a co–operative iRavenloft/i adventure game I was instantly intrigued. The kind folks at Wizards of the Coast, Europe, were good enough to whet my appetite further by indulging my request for a review copy which came a few days early, so I've already been lucky enough to play this ten times or so, plenty on which to form an opinion./p pThe very first time that I played this game, I was struck rapidly by two things. The first is that this quite possibly does the best job ever of capturing the spirit of those old–fashioned role–playing game dungeon crawls that were so much fun in the days of my youth. In spite of the fact that it has a decent amount of board game style strategic meat on its bones it really feels like a stripped down RPG session: each turn the heroes move and the dungeon unfurls slowly before them as they draw tiles from a stack and add them to the board. You then draw a monster card, to represent what appears from out of the gloom and attacks, following a pre–set AI routine printed on the card, and often an encounter card representing such things as events and traps. The players must work together to use their mixed abilities to defeat their foes and solve their problems and gain treasure cards in return and the whole is wrapped in a loosely binding plot thanks to one of the thirteen different scenarios that come with the game. You can tell the designers were aiming for this sort of effect thanks to the old–school flavour text that's supplied for one of the players to read out at the start of each scenario and at certain key events, just like the room descriptions that the DM was supposed to read in adventure modules./p pAnd boy, did they ever succeed in that intention. It's partly thanks to the co–operative nature of the game that it gets this effect across, and here the co–operation feels like something natural instead of the feeling of forced jollity in what is normally a competitive medium that so pervades and spoils the majority of co–op titles./p pThe second is that the game is absolutely packed with really neat little mechanical twists that aim to get the most tactical and narrative mileage out of the simple rules. There's nothing mold–breaking involved here, just a real sense that people worked hard to do as much as the could with relatively little. The best example of this is the tile–based movement system which all monsters (and occasionally some of the heroes) use: rather than plotting at path across squares, this involves simply moving to a different tile, and this being a co–op game the players get to choose which square on the tile gets moved to. In a nutshell this sidesteps an array of potentially complex rules for plotting monster movement square–by–square while at the same time providing the backbone of tactical choice in the game since the precise positioning of the target on a tile can result in the powers of the monsters and the heroes having different results on the situation. It's a brilliantly stripped–down design that manages to simultaneously trim off all the excess fat that has historically so plagued dungeon crawl games whilst at the same time actually making use of that minimalism to improve the game experience./p pimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/13/thumbs/ravenloft-play.jpg alt=Image style=float:right /Sadly the rules aren't all a bed of roses. The process of slimming down the rules has, unfortunately, resulted in a slew of minor rules ambiguities. It's unclear, for example, whether dungeon squares containing furniture like coffins or laboratory equipment are valid for movement or not. There's nothing that will bring the game crashing down round your ears and, usefully, co–op games by their very nature can make light work of bypassing rules loopholes so long as all the players agree on how to interpret the rules, but it's still a bit sad to see these sorts of problems in a game from such a major publisher, who certainly have the resources to playtest and iron out rules issues./p pThe low rules weight also means that some of the gothic flavour of the game is almost inevitably lost. Wraiths in this game don't drain levels or need magic weapons to hit them; they're just tough to kill and hand out terrifying amounts of damage. I think this is what's behind some of the accusations of blandness that I've seen levelled at the design. However I think this is pretty unfair: the designers have clearly worked hard to try to differentiate the monsters as much as possible from each other and you can really see this in the AI routines printed on each monster card that governs how they behave. Almost every conceivable point of difference has been worked out and utlilised to make sure that a skeleton is not quite the same as a zombie and so on. Personally I'm entirely comfortable with the level of detail that's been sacrificed in order to make this as fast playing and as accessible as possible. And given that it plays in around an hour, is simple enough for a primary school child to engage with (if not play effectively), and retains enough complexity to support thirteen scenarios, six super–monsters, and ten or so normal monsters plus traps, events, items and other effects I'd argue those sacrifices were well worth making./p pThe other thing that some commentators have described as bland is the artwork in the game. I have a mixed response to this. The dungeon tiles do look a bit generic but on the upside this leaves them interchangeable with future releases. The cards are, it must be said, a bit lacking. Only the monster cards have artwork on them and you really would have thought a company with the resources of Wizards of the Coast could find some stock artwork to use in this regard. It would certainly help you to feel that you'd found a cool item to see it pictured instead of just a line of text telling you that it gives you +1 to attack rolls. But really, to suggest a game that has such great miniatures as this one does as bland is just silly. They're the best sculpts I've seen outside of a Games Workshop title and there's tons of them in the box, the majority of them being unique figures rather than duplicates./p pThe light rules weight and the well–known nature of the license also leaves ample scope for both official and fan–generated extra content to be squeezed in. There are already a couple of extra scenarios you can download from the Wizards of the Coast site as well as plans for another game based on the same framework with interchangeable components called iWrath of Ashardalon/i which includes rules for campaigns, the only really major omission in this title. The game feels like a toolbox in a good way, not by providing you with lots of components that aren't covered by the rules, but by inviting the player to use their skill and imagination to expand the game in whatever direction they choose. span style=color:#000000Want to add some rules for items heroes can carry into the dungeon? Go ahead. Want to add some more monsters from your figure collection? Be my guest. I suspect there are expansions planned for this, waiting, as yet unannounced./span/p pBut frankly there's already plenty in the box to provide plenty of replay value off the bat. One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that each character can pick four or five powers unique to them, and while suggested combinations are offered, there's actually about twice as many to choose from, providing plenty of opportunity for exploring different approaches to different scenarios. The basic items in the treasure deck are supplemented by more powerful scenario specific items and by one–shot fortunes and blessings. And as well as traps the encounter deck boasts all kinds of cool stuff like atmospheric cackling skulls, to old–school dungeon favourites such as gray ooze all the way to bizarre effects that teleport heroes and monsters all round the dungeon. As ever the simple rules are made to work as hard as possible to provide one of the staple requirements of a good dungeon crawler: plenty of variety./p pAfter all the good stuff, I do have one major gripe about the game and that is it's odd, unpredictable difficulty curve. This is a multi–faceted problem. For starters there's no guide as to how tough the various scenarios in the game are, and I can assure you that some are considerably more difficult than others. The characters are not balanced, with some looking distinctly more powerful than others. I remain unconvinced that the mechanics for increasing difficulty when more characters are in the game really works since it's reliant on more than one player drawing the same monster card, and that monster type then acts twice per turn. Not only is it random, but it's actually pretty unlikely to happen with ten–odd different monsters in the game and in any case I don't think it really makes up for the synergy of abilities you get having more characters playing together. There's also the fact that the game adds pressure to the players by making them get behind on their use of actions. Each player gets on action (an attack, for example) each turn and usually they'll reveal a monster on their turn. As long as the next player makes their attack roll and kills the monster the players stay in control: it's when they start missing and the actions needed to deal with the backlog start to pile up that things become hard to handle. And all the action checks in the game are handled by a twenty–sided dice of course, so it's quite possible to get a run of bad (or good) results in a row thanks to the flat probability curve of rolling a single dice, resulting in games that are ridiculously difficult (or easy)./p pThat flat probability curve and all those checks for action success also mean that, obviously, there's a fairly high level of randomness in the game generally because to accomplish many actions in the game beyond moving, you need to roll the dice. There's also quite a lot to think about. I've already mentioned the tile–based movement and the variable character powers. There's also a lot of risk–based decisions such as whether you want to reveal a new tile – and a new monster – each turn or whether you care to risk taking an encounter instead, something you're forced to do if you fail to explore. If you do take it, you have the option of spending some of your hard–earned monster kills to cancel it and if you let it happen it might be a question of whether to take damage or suffer a different effect. The game is permeated with these sorts of what–if decisions. So, although there is meaningful choice in the game, those of you who came looking for a level of detailed tactics like that found in iDescent/i or an iArkham Horror-/ilike level of control will be disappointed. I actually think the game hits a really sweet spot in balancing skill and random elements, and it helps a lot that the game is so quick playing because it means that a trip into the dungeon plagued with ill luck feels more like a story with a bad ending than a waste of gaming time./p pIn a nutshell then, this is a really impressive re–entry into the board game market for the iDungeons amp; Dragons/i licence and one with a lot of mileage in front of it. Another major publisher in the business can't do anything but good for the hobby. My personal distaste for co–op games is well known but iCastle Ravenloft/i has joined the extremely small shortlist of co–ops that have become regular visitors to my gaming table: no small feat in itself. Yet I can imagine it and its brethren returning again and again in the months to come./p
• Wings of War Modding Contest: international miniature modding contest September 6, 2010
  pa class=colorbox href=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/25/wowSerie3Brumwoski_35.jpg rel=nofollowimg src=/sites/default/files/imagepicker/25/thumbs/wowSerie3Brumwoski_35.jpg alt=Image style=float:right //aWith its tridimensional version, a href=http://www.wingsofwar.it/list.asp target=_blank rel=nofollowWings of War/a delighted both thenbsp;tradional version fans and model-making fans. Conjugating impressivenbsp;reproductions of boh World Wars aircrafts with historical adherencenbsp;and extreme playability, the aerial combat simulation by bAndreanbsp;Angiolino/b and bPier Giorgio Paglia/b, published by NG International, wonnbsp;a well-deserved international success.br /br /To provide freedom to express the creativity of model-maker pilotsnbsp;from all over the world, a href=http://www.gioconomicon.net target=_blank rel=nofollowGioconomicon.net/a, in collaboration with a href=http://www.nginternational.eu/ target=_blank rel=nofollowNGnbsp;International/a and with the endorsement of a href=http://lucca2010.luccacomicsandgames.com/ target=_blank rel=nofollowLucca Comics and Games/a,nbsp;announces the first international modding contest of Wings of Warnbsp;tridimensional models: “bWings of War Modding Contest/b”.br /br /The contest will split into 4 categories, in wich partecipants cannbsp;enter their own creations pictures based on modifications andnbsp;personalizations of a href=http://www.wingsofwar.it/list.asp target=_blank rel=nofollowWoW/a’s aerial models. There will be three winnersnbsp;for each category, chosen by a jury made up by specialists coming fromnbsp;the gaming and illustration area and from historical research.br /br /Winners will be awarded with rich prizes; among the others, the mostnbsp;recent productions of the bWings of War Miniatures/b line, provided by a href=http://www.nginternational.eu/ target=_blank rel=nofollowNGnbsp;International/a.br /br /Pictures must be entered by the end of 24 October 2010. Winners willnbsp;be proclaimed during one of the most important european comics, gamesnbsp;and illustration festival: a href=http://lucca2010.luccacomicsandgames.com/ target=_blank rel=nofollowLucca Comics amp; Games 2010/a.br /Partecipants pictures will be available online in in a digital gallerynbsp;hosted on a href=http://gioconomicon.net/ target=_blank rel=nofollowGioconomicon.net/a. Finalists pictures will be exhibited innbsp;the a href=http://lucca2010.luccacomicsandgames.com/ target=_blank rel=nofollowLucca Comics amp; Games 2010/a pavilion.br /br /Any detail on how to attend to the contest is provided in this proclamation:br /- English:nbsp;a style=color:#0000cc target=_blank href=http://gioconomicon.net/wow_modding/WoWModdingContest_bando_eng.pdf rel=nofollowhttp://gioconomicon.net/wow_modding/WoWModdingContest_bando_eng.pdf/abr /- Italian:nbsp;a style=color:#0000cc target=_blank href=http://gioconomicon.net/wow_modding/WoWModdingContest_bando_ita.pdf rel=nofollowhttp://gioconomicon.net/wow_modding/WoWModdingContest_bando_ita.pdf/abr /br /and for every other enquiry feel free to write tonbsp;a style=color:#0000cc href=mailto:pimp_my_wow@gioconomicon.net rel=nofollowpimp_my_wow@gioconomicon.net/a, or clicknbsp;a style=color:#0000cc target=_blank href=http://gioconomicon.net/wow_modding/ rel=nofollowhttp://gioconomicon.net/wow_modding//anbsp;.br /br /Equipe yourself with filler, brush, camera and fantasy and enter thenbsp;bWings of War Modding Contest!/bbr /br /iAbout Gioconomicon.net:br /The information site Gioconomicon.net was born in May 2004 with thenbsp;goal of becoming an italian cardinal reference for gaming informationnbsp;on the web. It offers daily national and international news andnbsp;updates about the gaming universe, also giving space and visibility tonbsp;the announcements and events of italian gaming associations.br /Gioconomicon.net contents range from new product launches tonbsp;interviews with game authors and reportages from the most importantnbsp;events in the italian and international gaming scene. Gioconomicon.netnbsp;acts as media-partner and web-partner for prestigious italian shows such as Lucca Comics amp; Games (since 2006) and PLAY - il festival delnbsp;gioco (since 2008).nbsp;/ia style=color:#0000cc target=_blank href=http://www.gioconomicon.net rel=nofollowiwww.gioconomicon.net/i/aibr /br /About NG Internationalbr /NG International is the subsidiary of Italeri Spa manufacturing highnbsp;quality games based around top-quality miniatures andnbsp;three-dimensional components. Its catalog includes the brands Nexusnbsp;Games and Tenki Games, with a range of games from historicalnbsp;simulation to fantasy, from products based on important intellectualnbsp;properties, such as The Lord of the Rings and Conan, to fast and funnbsp;games for families and younger players. The games published by NGnbsp;International under the Nexus Games brand include the best-selling andnbsp;award-winning War of the Ring and Wings of War series (translated innbsp;14 different languages), as well Age of Conan The Strategy Board Game,nbsp;Battles of Napoleon, Micro Mutants, Moto Grand Prix and Rattlesnake.nbsp;The upcoming Dakota will be the first game under Tenki Games brandnbsp;since it was acquired by NG International. For further information,nbsp;please visit the web sitenbsp;/ia style=color:#0000cc target=_blank href=http://www.nexusgames.com rel=nofollowiwww.nexusgames.com/i/ai.br /br /About Lucca Gamesbr /Lucca Games was born in 1993, and it became immediately a leading shownbsp;about Fantasy, RPG, Card Game and Miniature Games. During all thesenbsp;years, the most important international illustrators have been Luccabr /Games guests ( Brom, Ciruelo, John Howe, Justin Sweet, Larry Elmore,nbsp;Rick Berry, Phil Hale, Paul Bonner, Alan Lee, Iain McCaig, Timnbsp;Bradstreet, besides a huge number of Italian artists); game designersnbsp;as Richard Garfield, Rick Priestley in the nineties, Reiner Knizia,nbsp;Jervis Johnson, Steve Jackson, Christian Petersen, Joe Dever, Justinnbsp;Achilli in the last years have attended the show, as well knownnbsp;writers like Margaret Weis, George R.R. Martin, Troy Denning and R.A.nbsp;Salvatore.nbsp;/iia style=color:#0000cc target=_blank href=http://www.luccacomicsandgames.com rel=nofollowwww.luccacomicsandgames.com/anbsp;/i/p