East India Company: More playtesting, more adjusting

My family and I did another run-through of "East India Company" this weekend with my wife, my 19-year-old son, and my mother-in-law, of all people, who isn't afraid to learn something new from time to time.  I made some adjustments to correct the issue with the pace of the game this time, and I wanted to see how effective they were.

HistoriCon 2012: A Submariner's Life and a Gathering Storm

I must say that HistoriCon offered many more lecture opportunities than I've seen at my favorite boardgame conventions, WBC and PrezCon.  After the "Battle for Manila Bay," I turned my sights to a series of presentations by historians on topics of interest.

HistoriCon 2012: High Noon and the Battle of Manila Bay

High Noon

Image (c) Leo Walsh
Used by permission

Friday morning at HistoriCon opened with a demonstration of High Noon (designer and self-publisher Leo Walsh), a home-grown 19th Century Western skirmish game.  Leo had a large, elaborate Western landscape set up in 25mm scale - right down to gullies that descended below table-top level and bald eagles that graced some of the rock formations.  The rules were pretty detailed, and I particularly liked the wounding mechanism (example to follow).

HistoriCon 2012: Borg Attack

Thursday afternoon at HistoriCon 2012 saw me in command of Star Fleet's task force at Wolf 359, assigned to stop the approaching Borg cube that threatened Earth.  The task force consisted of approximately twenty capital ships and perhaps ten interceptors.  The fleet focused nearly all firepower on the Borg propulsion systems to slow its progress toward Earth.  The Borg destroyed a number of Excelsior-class and other major starships with its torpedo missiles and did considerably damage to the fleet with beam weapons and collisions, but our unrelenting focus on propulsion turned out to be successful, as we rendered the cube dead-in-space outside weapon range from Earth.

HistoriCon 2012: A boardgamer's reflection

HistoriCon came to Virginia this year, and though miniatures gaming takes a distant second to my boardgaming preference, I couldn't let the opportunity pass to spend at least a couple of days in the world of scratch-built terrain and tape measures.  Inexcusably, I forgot to bring a camera both days that I attended, a virtual crime at a miniatures convention.

Games for a family of three (or four)

A co-worker recently asked me for recommendations for boardgames that she and her family might play together.  They have a 17-year-old son.  They need something that is perhaps more than just a "gateway" game, but not by much.  They play Settlers of Catan, but that seems to be about as complicated as they want to get.  They like Apples to Apples, Taboo, and Catch Phrase, but those games are more suited to a larger group.

East India Company playtest

While on vacation, I arm-twisted my family into playtesting my work-in-progress "East India Company" again.  I'm not proud of it, but it was necessary, and it was fruitful.

In this round, I incorporated a number of notes from our previous playtest.  I drastically - and successfully - simplified the process for declaring dividends for bonus points.  Also, since the previous game ended just when it seemed to get going, I lengthened the game from a minimum of 11 to a minimum of 15 turns.  I made this adjustment despite my general concern about the overall playtime.  

Ethics in gaming: Reflections on the WBC seminar

[While on vacation in North Carolina, in anticipation of going to the World Boardgaming Championships in Pennsylvania in a few weeks, I scheduled a re-post of one of my most popular articles, a reflection on the "Ethics in Gaming" seminar from the 2011 WBC convention.  Originally appeared 15 August 2011]

Last week at the World Boardgaming Championships, Joel Tamburo led a fascinating seminar on ethics in gaming.  I had no idea what to expect and was pleasantly surprised at the directions that the conversation took.  Right away, the group explored the question of whether it is ethically acceptable to lie in the course of a game.  The immediate example that came up is Diplomacy, a game only half-facetiously blamed for ruining good friendships.  A consensus emerged that there is an understanding that in a game like Diplomacy, lying is an expected part of negotiation.  Although success requires alliances, winning sooner or later requires betrayal.  So as long as it is understood among players that lying is - or can be - part of the game, then that becomes part of the game's acceptable code of ethics.