Word from relatives came out on Facebook that Rodger B. MacGowan, the noted wargaming artist–who among other things, he was certainly key in making GMT Gaming a giant in the hobby --has passed away. A cause of death was not reported. He had recently lost his home and all his collections due to the wildfires in California.
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Something I’ve been thinking about for a while based on what I thought was OneSecondBefore’s post on Arcs but maybe actually wasn’t, was that a common criticism I see in the boardgame space is a game having too asymmetrical factions/abilities. I guess this is a consequence of the majority of people playing board games once a week, at a boardgame meetup, where everyone wants to jump between lots of different games to try new things out? While this is something that’s very cool in video games, it feels like I see complaints about it more than I see praises of it in boardgame spaces (mainly talking about BGG forums, r/Boardgames subreddit, and random youtube videos). It’s been hard to grasp how many people replay and dig into one boardgame to get better at it, vs just lightly touching lots of different games. It feels like the latter is the majority of boardgamers?
Am I right or wrong in this impression?
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I think it varies a lot, but in my experience, the more into board gaming you are as a hobby, the more likely you are to fall into that latter category. At least, that’s how it was for me. When I first got interested in board gaming, I bought Settlers of Catan and played the hell out of it for ages, then slowly acquired other games and spent a ton of time with each one. But over time, as I became more knowledgeable and made more board gaming friends, we ended up trying all kinds of new games and only returning to the ones we really liked.
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I don’t see this criticism. we often play the same games but also plenty of new ones, or “new to us” (forgotten the rules). games without asymmetry are sometimes too insular, no needing to pay attention to others if they have the same situation and capabilities. asymmetrical setup & actions just front-loads it, asymmetric rules and win conditions aren’t too much more to handle & make it more explicit
thinking about starting each game of 7 Wonders by congratulating the player who drew The Great Pyramids on their superior gaming skills. and then doing everything possible to prevent them from building their 4th stage
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There’s a few games I have that I like to replay and optimize but most games I intend to show to people I kind of go out of my way to not overplay them, so that myself and any newcomers are at least close to being on an even playing field. It’s the same reason why I don’t think I would grind a Mario Kart. I want the level of competitiveness to be as even as possible if I’m playing with new people
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A few weeks ago, I saw someone on a Discord server offering custom poker chips to use as chaos tokens for Arkham Horror: The Card Game when playing specific fan-made campaigns. (The Bloodborne campaign I mentioned above, for example, calls for special tokens.)
These, of course, would be useful only to someone who already has a basic set of chaos tokens in the form of poker chips, a thing I never would have guessed existed.
I investigated and it turns out a group of people on Reddit put in a big order a few years ago. It was ancient history but the Google form they’d used to coordinate had an e-mail link for anyone who might want to get in on a possible future order. It seemed a longshot, since the organizer’s Reddit account was disabled, but I signed up. (I don’t have a Reddit account myself but I sometimes go there to read about SnowRunner and AHCG.)
To my surprise, I got a response right away. They had a few sets left over. I jumped at the chance to get one and also inquired about the Bloodborne ones from the other person on Discord (even though I’m not sure when or how I will get the Bloodborne campaign printed).
They all came in the mail today, and they look great. I put them in a poker chip tray:
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But the opinions from player who only play one game can be quite cult. They focus on competition aspects. eg, Advanced Squad Leader players often obsessed with balance in scenarios over enjoyment and context.
If you go by the community ratings, the top-ranked scenarios are generally those known as “tournament play”: good balance, play–quick moving and reasonably replayable.
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My partner and I really like Uwe Rosenberg games, so I am interested in getting us another for our anniversary. I see that Glass Road is available on BGA. Does anyone wanna start up a BGA table and play through it together?
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AI slop company with AI slop imagination.
What do you even need from the actual Arkham Horror game to play the custom campaign? Does it require specific sets that the campaign makes use of?
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I played Glass Road once when it was new and liked it. I remember very little but I’d play it again.
I don’t think Bloodborne requires cards from other sets, but some do. For example, Dark Matter requires a few locations and encounter cards from Carcosa. And I noticed that Ages Unwound requires some encounter cards from the base set.
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I went down the rabbit hole of seeing how to get a physical version of that Bloodborne campaign and it’s amazing how that AH LCG community made printing custom content so easy with a chrome extension called “Inextricable Fate” that lets you search for custom campaigns (wow, there are a lot of them!) and have their entire card library automatically uploaded to a custom card printing site. Kind of pricy though (seems like it would be around $180-200 for the Bloodborne campaign cards, and that doesn’t even include the scenario book), but maybe not as pricey as I expected 600 custom playing cards to be.
I think I found that same Discord you were talking about (Mythos Busters?) but it read like they in the process of delivering a group buy of the campaign already. Not sure how to find out when they’ll do another one, but I’ll need to keep an eye out.
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I think the group purchase is just a long-running joke, but I could be wrong.
And yes, Inexorable Fate makes it extremely easy to order high-quality custom cards. I’ve ordered a few myself and they look perfect but it’s not cheap. (They aren’t exactly the same width as the official cards because the official cards aren’t standard, but it’s not something you’d notice with sleeves.)
They especially get you on shipping, so I guess it’s best to order everything you’re going to want at the same time. If you think you might place an order, pay close attention to the thresholds. You might be able to throw in some extra cards for free since you pay the same wherever you are between the thresholds. These are the main thresholds to look at, I think. Below these the increments aren’t worth worrying about.
- 180
- 198
- 216
- 234
- 396
- 504
- 612 (maximum before splitting projects)
One thing I got printed is all the “parallel” investigators and their challenge scenarios. I played one of those the other night. They use cards from various sets and if you’re successful you get an upgrade to the (normal or parallel) investigator’s good signature card. (If you fail you instead upgrade their bad signature card.) Those are official but only ever released as free print-and-play.
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Do you have any ideas on the best ways to get the scenario book and insight tokens printed?
Edit: Found an Australian printer that prints custom AH content. Prices for the set looks cheaper than MakePlayingCards/Inextricable Fate, and it includes the scenario book, but I’d have to see if they ship internationally.
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If you put your chaos tokens in coin capsules then it’s not difficult to create custom ones. You can either print them on glossy paper (or even sticker paper) and use a spare token as filler, or print them on glossy cover stock and punch out a few blanks in between the two images (this is what I do). Either way, you can use something like this to punch them out:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C90WM14?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_2
In case you might find it useful, here’s a sheet I created with images for the Bloodborne custom investigators and the insight tokens. (Someone in the Mythos Busters Discord did the design work for the insight tokens.)
AHCG Investigator Tokens - Bloodborne.pdf (763.3 KB)
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I don’t recall seeing anything about custom Bloodborne investigators on what I’ve read of the campaign document so far. Is this another thing, or is in this in PnP already?
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They are included. I haven’t read too much so not to spoil anything, but I believe you unlock them at the end of the campaign. (But of course there’s nothing stopping you from just using them in any campaign if one sounds interesting.)
Among all the praise that campaign gets, a criticism I’ve heard is that the Micolash chase takes a long time but that’s reportedly by design to reflect the video game.
Also, there was a big discussion in that Discord about using AI images when designing custom campaigns. Many do, naturally, but the designer of the Bloodborne one is very much opposed to it and uses only real art. (There’s a long list of credits in the campaign guide.)
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Yeah, I did actually wonder how a fan campaign of this size was having original artwork and was surprised to see artist credits on all the cards I looked at. I’m flabbergasted at the amount of work that must have gone into this thing. And it seems like there are lots of these huge fan campaigns for Arkham Horror?
I’m thinking getting Bloodborne shipped from this Australian printer might be better than going through MPC and Inextricable Fate. While I don’t know the difference in card quality, I’ve seen people say they’ve used Phantom Press before and thought it was fine. The price of the Bloodborne campaign and a printed scenario brook is $90 USD, and shipping is $45 USD. MPC just for the large size cards (so not including the mini cards or the scenario book, which I don’t know that MPC can even do) was $180 USD before shipping. So I would even be able to add on those PnP investigators you mentioned (it looks like they’re also available on Phantom Press) and it would still be about the same price as getting just Bloodborne from MPC.
Do you know if any of these reference guides would be worth getting (1, 2, 3)? I’ve only got that 2x copies of the original core box (the one that got replaced by the new core set that supports four players), so I wasn’t sure if my rulebook would be outdated too and if it would be useful to get printed copies of these reference guides in case they’re useful for the Bloodborne campaign.
I haven’t actually gotten around to playing Arkham Horror yet despite jumping on that sale I think you posted a while ago on Miniature Market but I think this is a good impetus for me to jump into the system. For as great as great as I hear the game is, and as interested I am in learning it as a game, I’ve found that I’m still Lovecraft-fatigued from when it felt like it was everywhere in video gamer culture in the 00’s or 10’s (and so it’s surprising to see it’s still super popular in the boardgame space).
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I think in the case of Bloodborne the creator was able to use existing fan art with permission, rather than commission everything.
Those guides you linked are for a different game (the Arkham Horror board game).
One of the best guides I’ve come across is the “Rules Reference” found here. I got it printed years ago and still refer to it when I need to remember something.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1T2y8PaRmr76pBmCaMBw2fNprnWwwp-FY
This is a good player aid, if a little cramped (and unfortunately not as good if printed in black and white):
Edit: Just saw in the comments that the creator of that player aid has a black and white printer-friendly version on another site. I may have to grab that.
I think one reason this game is popular is that it’s uniquely story-driven. When you play something like Gloomhaven or Eldritch Horror, there’s a narrative there and progression but it’s ultimately very shallow. This game is not high literature or anything but it does feel like you’re playing through a story (and a story that changes in some ways even if you repeat the same campaign, kind of like Silent Hill: Shattered Memories).
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Probably worth noting that if you have nothing but this (and didn’t get any of those premade investigator decks that were also discounted) you will likely have a difficult time starting with Bloodborne.
Designers of custom campaigns generally assume that you have a decent collection of cards and have played through at least a couple of official campaigns.
That shouldn’t stop you if you want to do it, and the game does overall have the principle of “fail forward” no matter how badly things turn out in a scenario, but I imagine it might be disheartening and give an unrepresentative first impression of the game. (It’s supposed to feel desperate but maybe not quite that desperate.)
Also, be sure you don’t use the suggested decks in the core instruction book. They are very bad, even for the tutorial.
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Hey, I also got Winifred Habbamock, Jacqueline Fine, Nathaniel Cho, and Stella Clark investigator starter decks, as well as the Black Stars Rise Mythos Pack from that sale! I should be good. 
(lol)
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